Last week we talked about optimizing your site to make Google happy. Today we will be talking about how to fine tune some of the settings that allows search engines to crawl your site better.
Good hosting
Picking a good hosting account sounds easy. When you look at all of the options, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and just pick the cheapest because they are all the same right? Well not really. There are several options and picking a bad one will impact how search engines look and index your site. I covered a lot of options in an earlier blog post.
Let Google in
Make sure the site is indexed by Google. WordPress has a setting that can keep search engines from indexing your site. If you log in to your dashboard and go to Settings > Reading, make sure the Discourage Search engine box is not checked.
Permalinks
One big area that’s overlooked (or not known about) is Permalinks. Basically, this is how the link looks and is worded. There are several options but the best is to use the Post Name option. The easier to read, the better it is indexed.
Headings
Put in proper page titles and descriptions (metadata and meta descriptions) – This was one of the things in the previous email that makes Google Happy so you want to make sure you get this setting right.
Use proper Headings and HTML structure – When you are adding content, you have several options for headings listed as H1, H2, H3 and so on. The key here is to only use one H1 per page or post. This tells search engines what the important keywords are to index.
SEO friendly content
Last week we mentioned that you should have good and unique content. For your normal pages, Home page, about and services, 250-500 words is a good starting point. A blog post will vary but look to shoot for 500-2500 words. Just remember to include your keyword in some and make sure it’s in a header at least once.
Use clean HTML
It’s easy to want to type up content and something like Microsoft Word and then copy and paste it into your website. If do this, make sure you use WordPress’ text tab.
This way you will only get the text pasted in and not all of the formatting code that will come with Word and other word processing programs. The problem with that code is that it’s not clean HTML and Google will not want to index it.
Good site linking structure is in place
When possible, create links to other parts of your site and to other websites. Don’t go overboard though. Just link what is needed.
Optimize loading speed
Images are key here. It’s easy to want to run out with your new smartphone and take a picture and then use it for your website. The issue is if the quality to high, then it will take longer to load. If Google sees a site it taking a long time to load, it won’t rank as high. Use images that have been optimized for the web or use a plugin that will optimize the images for you, SiteGround Optimizer Plugin, Short Pixel, Smush and others. Also, look at using a CDN service like Cloudflare. A CDN is a content delivery network or content distribution network, is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. Or basically, they take your website and save a copy on other servers across the globe and when someone accesses your site, they get it from the closest server to speed things up.
Add “alt text” to images
Search engines will use this text to determine what images show up in the images section when people search for things. So the better the text, the better search results.
Lock it up
Make sure website is secure (SSL Certificate) – Google is now looking at whether or not your site is secure. Sites will be ranked higher when they have a valid SSL certificate installed. A lot of hosting companies are now offering these free but there are some that are still charging and these can range around $70/yr. The SSL certificate is what will give you the padlock in your browser.
Site mobile-optimized
Most WordPress builders will now do this out of the box but you may need to make some changes here and there. But Google has now started indexing pages based on how they look in a mobile view, so if it doesn’t look good on your phone, it won’t look good to Google.
Jordan Web Solutions can perform a free website audit to see how happy your site makes Google. We will review your site and send you a report containing information from how secure your site as to how many of these tips you are following and how many you could use some improvement in. Just let us know if we can help.