SEO Basic and content writing on WordPress
Content writing and SEO is often overlooked, by web designers when building a website. The problem is that lists of basic content writing tips might not take you very far. There are a few basic SEO practices that can help better your website and get your content on the right SEO track.
If you follow a few simple practices, you can get the majority of your content into decent shape, this will give an SEO experts the groundwork they need to take things to a high level. SEO changes rapidly, so in this particular article, I won’t be sharing some golden fixes to your SEO problems. I will be sharing some tips that can help improve your SEO. These things may change by the time you’re reading this article so it would be encouraged that you do constant research on the SEO to stay on top of the curve.
Search engines are constantly changing and this means two things:
- that attempt at trying to and beating the system will often fail;
- Content should be written so that it is easy to read and not too complicated.
Writing content that makes sense, read well and has plenty of heading, subheading and lists will help improve your SEO score. This is better to focus on than the precise placement of keywords, this human-focused content seems to be more of a common focus nowadays. This human focus seems to be more prominent in SEO and is one of the parts that should be focussed on.
Make sure you have the correct architecture
Here are a few very basic pieces of architecture that you need in place to make sure your efforts on your content actually mean something:
- Add an awesome SEO plugin (like Yoast) to your website;
- Claim your business listing in Google, Bing etc;
- Claim all social media profiles relevant to your audience.
Do Keyword Research
Once upon a time, Google provided a phenomenal Keyword Planner Tool for anyone to use that had useful, specific data. There are plenty of paid and free tools out there, so find one that you feel comfortable with and do some basic keyword research before you start creating your content.
Include the keyword phrases (but not too often)
Keyword density is how often the keyword or keyword phrase appears on a page/article compared to the total number of words on the page/article. The second a search engine starts to feel like you’ve stuffed an article full of keywords, your page/article’s ability to rank is going to plummet.
Meta Description
Do not ignore the meta description. If someone finds your article/page through a search engine, they are (most likely) only going to see two pieces of content: your title and your meta description.
A lot of focus should go into the meta description as it is the first thing that the viewer will see. This will entice the viewer to read the article or view your page/website. This is where the Yoast SEO plugin comes into play as you can easily change the meat description.
All headings inside your page/article should be H2 or lower
The H1 heading tells search engines what the page is about so having more than one H1 tag on a page will be damaging to your SEO score.
Include images with relevant alt tags
Include relevant images in your articles will help search engines pick up your article/page but they can have a negative effect on SEO if optimised or left without alt tags.
You can make images more SEO-friendly by following a few simple rules:
- Include your keyword phrase in the title of the image.
- Include your keyword phrase in the file name of the image.
- Reduce the size of the image as much as possible without sacrificing quality. (Basically, get the size of the image down to the actual size it will be displayed at.)
- Include your keyword phrase and a solid description of the image in the alt text.
- Include your keyword phrase in the caption (if applicable).
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