Looking to set up a basic website or blog for your business? Look no further than WordPress. WordPress offers all of the essentials that you will need for your website and it is very user friendly. WordPress is trusted and used by CNN Reporters to top musical acts like Jay-Z and Katy Perry. With the thousands of themes and plugins, you will be able to create your website just the way you want it, meanwhile, being able to keep is SEO friendly and effective. Here are a few basic steps to take when starting your new WordPress website.
URL Optimization
This step can be set up in 1 measly minute. Having clean URL’s for search engines to read is a must. Your URL’s should be able to tell your users and the search engines what the page is about. The best way to do this is a quick edit to your Permalink Settings. Simply click on Setting then Permalinks. You will be given a list of a few options, I recommend using the Post Name setting. This means that whatever the name of your page or blog post is, it will be incorporate into the URL. You will also be able to edit the URL just the way you want it while you are editing each individual post/page. This will allow you to remove words like “a”, “the” and “of”. For Example, if your Post title is “Roofers Inc Rated the best Roofing Company in Massachusetts”, the URL would read: www.roofersinc.com/roofers-inc-best-roofing-company-massachusetts.
Must Use WordPress SEO Plugins
There are thousands of SEO plugins out there in WordPress. It is important to know which are the best to use to get your website started and found on search engines. The most important plugin to install is All in one SEO. This plugin allows you to write unique page titles and descriptions for each page/post on your site. Search engines read Page Titles and Descriptions to know what a webpage is about. You will want to use Keywords that you want to get found for in the Page Title and Descriptions, but also keep it within the allow limit of characters. WordPress provides a character counter on each page so you know when you reach the limit.
Simple Lightbox is great plugin to use for photos. This allows photos to flash full screen when clicked on and will make your website look much more professional.
Another SEO important Plugin is Google XML Sitemaps. This program will create an XML sitemap of your website so that you can submit it to search engines like Google and Bing. This will allow the Search Engines to read and index your site better. And this brings me to my next step…
Analytics & Webmasters Tools
I recommend setting up Google accounts first since Google is the largest and most used search engine. Set up Google Analytics and Google Webmasters Tools. These useful tools will allow you to track data on your website like how many visitors you are getting, how they are finding you, improvements you can make to your site and much more. WordPress offers great plugins for these tools called All-In-One-Webmasters, where you can also install Google Analytics coding. These programs will allow you to easily verify your Google accounts and get them up and running and tracking valuable info. This is where the sitemap comes in. Google Webmasters allows you submit your XML Sitemap for much faster indexing. You should do the same thing with Bing Webmasters as well.
Image Optimization
Search engines cannot read photos, so it is important for you to optimize them properly for search engines to read. This can be done very simply in WordPress by writing Alt Tags, Captions and Descriptions for each photo. This can easily be done when you upload the photo to your site for the first time. Once you select the photo to upload and it finishes loading to your website, a bunch of options will show up including the Alt Text, Caption and Description. Simple fill these out when first uploading the photo and you won’t have to worry about it down the road.
There are plenty more plugins and features that WordPress will allow you to use to optimize your website, but these are just some of the basics that I think are important for all WordPress websites to have. Do yourself a favor and take a few hours out of your day to set these tools up. Or, contact the experts at Boston Web Marketing to take care of it all for you and get you found on Search Engines. Contact us today at sales@getfoundquick.com or call 857-526-0096
By Mike Fedotowsky