SEO Made Simple | 10 Beginner SEO Tips for Wordpress - Diane Houghton

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[00:00:01]: Hello everyone and welcome to SEO Made Simple. And today I'm going to give you 10 beginner SEO tips for WordPress so you can get found online without the tech overwhelm. First, let me introduce myself. I'm Diane Houghton from wpbasicsguide.com and I help WordPress beginners get their site up and running as quickly and painlessly as.  

[00:00:25]: Possible so that they can concentrate on their business.  

[00:00:31]: Getting found online doesn't have to be complicated. If you're just getting started with WordPress, SEO might sound very intimidating and overwhelming, and it's really not. It's just about making your site easier for people and search engines to understand. And there are here's 10 easy things.  

[00:00:49]: Today that I'm going to talk about that you can do right now to.  

[00:00:52]: To start optimizing a site for SEO. No tech skills required. Number one, Write useful, easy to read content. Now this may sound like a no brainer, but if you look at this block of text over here on the.  

[00:01:10]: Right, you can see that it is.  

[00:01:12]: Like looking at a wall.  

 [00:01:14]: It's boring, it's not broken up.  

[00:01:17]: You can't read it, especially on mobile.  

[00:01:19]: Imagine looking at this on a mobile device.

[00:01:23]: But if you break it up with headings, short paragraphs, subheadings and bullet points.  Speaker B [00:01:29]: You'Re going to make it so much easier to read.  

[00:01:32]: In fact, I call it skimmable.  

[00:01:35]: So most people, when they come to a website and they're reading a blog article, they're looking for an answer to a question.  

[00:01:42]: And if you have that answer in.  

[00:01:45]: An easy to skim format like this.  

[00:01:48]: They'Ll find that answer more quickly and.  

[00:01:50]: Then they will most likely go on.  

[00:01:52]: And read the rest of the blog post. But they're coming for answers, so give.  

[00:01:57]: Them those answers and make it easy to find.  

[00:02:03]: Number two, use descriptive image file names and alt text. Now this is another one that people tend to forget about and they'll upload images that are called image1 or some.  

[00:02:15]: Of those DSC and numbers and.jpg and.  

[00:02:20]: Google can't read those.  

[00:02:21]: You want Google to be able to read your images and know what they.  

[00:02:25]: Are and how they're relevant to your post. So before you upload them, rename them. For example, on this one, dog in field of flowers, it describes what's in.  

[00:02:37]: The image in a very simple way.  

[00:02:40]: The alt text on this would be a golden retriever in a field of.  

[00:02:44]: Pink flowers or whatever is relevant to that particular post.  
[00:02:50]: So use your alt text wisely because Google reads it.  

[00:02:58]: Number three, make sure your Site loads quickly.

[00:03:01]: Have you ever gone to a website.
 
[00:03:03]: Especially on mobile, and it takes forever to load?  

[00:03:07]: How long do you wait? Well, the average time that a person.  

[00:03:11]: Waits is three seconds. If your site doesn't load, they're gone.  

[00:03:16]: And they're going to go to another site.  

[00:03:18]: So Google will start to understand this.  

[00:03:21]: And realize that there's something wrong, that.  

[00:03:23]: People are bouncing off your site and.  

[00:03:26]: They'Re going to lower your ranking in search. So use your tools. Use a tool like PageSpeed Insights to.  

[00:03:33]: Check the load time.  

[00:03:34]: It will give you a mobile and.  

[00:03:36]: A desktop version and it will also give you ideas on what needs to.  

[00:03:41]: Be done to make your site load faster.  

[00:03:44]: And one of the ones that I.  

[00:03:46]: Have seen the most in my experience.

[00:03:48]: Is images and image sizes that are too large.  

 [00:03:53]: So you need to compress your images and you can save them as a webp with tools like Short Pixel.  

[00:03:59]: If you go to their site, you can put your images in there, you can load them, bulk, upload them, save.

[00:04:07]: Them as a webp.  

[00:04:08]: And for example, this image right here.  

[00:04:12]: Would be dog in fieldoflowers webp.  

[00:04:16]: They're compressed, but they don't lose resolution.  

[00:04:20]: So here's a little walkthrough of Google's.  

[00:04:23]: PageSpeed insights so you can get a feel for the kind of information that you can get there. And I am just searching for Google Page Speed Insights. And this is it, Page Speed Insights.  

[00:04:45]: And you just enter your URL in there.

[00:04:48]: And I am using an incognito browser. And the reason I'm doing that is so that I'm not picking up any caching from my regular browser. So it will give me better numbers and more accurate numbers. So we're just waiting for this to diagnose my site.  

[00:05:14]: And you can see here, on mobile, I'm doing pretty well.  

[00:05:17]: Performance is 92, accessibility is 91, best.  

[00:05:22]: Practices is 96, and SEO yay me is 100.  

[00:05:27]: And if we try desktop, normally the numbers are better on desktop. So if we scroll down, everything looks good.  

[00:05:38]: It will give me some ideas to make my site better. Reduce unused css. This is not something that's really that critical.  

[00:05:54]: It's a yellow, a small savings. So I'm not going to worry about that. Usually the big problem is under this largest contentful paint.  

[00:06:05]: And if you look at that, you.

[00:06:07]: Can see that my images are all.  

[00:06:09]: Being served by a cdn.  

[00:06:11]: So I used Fast Pixel so it serves them much more quickly. And also they're serving up as a webp. That's why I mentioned you really should switch over your images to a webpage. Now I can show you Short pixel as well, and that's where you can, you can serve them from as a web page. So here we are on short pixel@shortpixel.com and right on their homepage, if you start here. So you can go right here to, to upload an image and it will bring you to this free online image compressor.  

[00:06:56]: And what you do first before anything.  

[00:06:59]: Is go to Settings and ask it to generate webp.

[00:07:04]: Otherwise it's just going to compress your JPEG images.  

[00:07:07]: So we want it to generate webp. So you can now just drop up.  


[00:07:13]: To 50 files here to optimize them. So I have a folder full of.  

[00:07:20]: Images on my computer and they're all.  

[00:07:24]: PNG images, which is probably the worst.  

[00:07:27]: Thing you can do to upload onto your website because they are much larger than even JPEGs.  

[00:07:34]: So I'm just going to drag these and I'm going to drop them in here. And you can see that short pixel.  

 [00:07:41]: Is optimizing them and it goes quite quickly. So let's see what happens. All right, so this one is telling.  Diane Houghton

[00:07:52]: Me there's a savings of 80%.  

[00:08:00]: This one, I don't know what that one was, but it doesn't want it.  

[00:08:05]: This one's 95%. So let's take a look at this. You can click on this little eyeball.

[00:08:14]: And you can compare them. This is the original one and it.  

[00:08:19]: Will give you the size of it down there.  

[00:08:24]: So it went from 1 megabyte to 217 kilobytes. That was 79% image compression. And this lets you look and see. You can slide this back and forth.  Diane Houghton

[00:08:38]: That's the before and after.  

[00:08:40]: And you can see that there's very little change. And unless I had a very high.  

[00:08:47]: Quality photography site or an art site, this is actually fine.  

[00:08:53]: So that gives you a good idea of how you can compress your, your images. And now when you go to the little download button, you click that and you Click on Download WebP and you're going to save these onto your computer and then you can rename them to.  

[00:09:11]: Proper names and then you can upload.  

 [00:09:13]: Them in bulk onto your WordPress site.  
 
[00:09:19]: Number four, create a mobile friendly layout. Use a responsive theme.  

[00:09:24]: And I always recommend Kadence. It's a very clean theme and it loads quickly.  

[00:09:31]: So that's the one I usually recommend.

 [00:09:34]: And if you right click on your site and you click on the little mobile computer little icon down in the corner here, you will be able to simulate what your site looks like on different mobile devices. Up at the top you'll see a pull down. You can try out all the different.

[00:09:56]: Mobile devices and see how your site.  

[00:09:58]: Looks, but don't rely on that.

[00:10:01]: It's only a simulation. You need to check your site on.  

[00:10:04]: An actual phone and make sure it looks good.

[00:10:10]: Number five Install an SEO plugin. So use Rank Math or Yoast SEO.  

[00:10:16]: They're both good to guide you through.  

[00:10:18]: Optimizing each page and post.  

[00:10:20]: I use Rank Math because I feel.  

[00:10:23]: Like the free version has a little.

[00:10:25]: More functionality than but it's a matter of choice.  

[00:10:29]: Try them and see which one you like the best.  

[00:10:33]: This is a screenshot from Rank Math on my site and I use it as a guide. Okay, it's not the be all and end all.  

[00:10:43]: I don't try to get 100 out of a hundred. It's not necessary. If you can get it up into.  

[00:10:48]: The green, that's a good thing.  

[00:10:52]: And it will give you all these guidelines for optimizing your post. And remember, it's guidelines. You don't have to do everything that's on there.

[00:11:02]: You don't want to keyword stuff or over optimize. You just want to, you know, get this up in the green so that.    

[00:11:11]: You know that you've covered most of.  
[00:11:13]: The bases of what it's guiding you to do.  Diane Houghton [00:11:17]: Number six, Use keywords in strategic places. So if you use a tool like Right Blogger to find keywords and there's lots of keyword search tools out there, I really like Writeblogger.  

[00:11:30]: It has over 80 tools that you can use for all different things on your blog. And the keyword search is very good.  

[00:11:38]: So you find a keyword and you add that target keyword in the title, the URL, the first paragraph and in your headings. Now, now you don't keyword stuff.  Speaker B [00:11:50]: You use your primary keyword and then.  Diane Houghton

[00:11:53]: You can use variations of it in your section headlines. And if it doesn't flow naturally, then.  

[00:11:59]: Don'T use it because if you force it, it looks like keyword stuffing and.  

[00:12:05]: Google will not be happy with you. Number seven, Link between your own pages in your blog. Those are internal links and and high authority sites. Those are external links. So if you mention and link to other relevant blog posts in your pages.  

[00:12:22]: On your own site, this helps Google and your readers. It tells Google that you have some authority in your site and that you.  

[00:12:32]: Know what you're talking about. In other words, if you have one post that answers some relevant questions and.  

[00:12:39]: It Links out to some other posts.  

[00:12:41]: That expand on those questions and answers could Google will reward you for that. And linking out to a high authority.  Speaker B [00:12:50]: Site, you want to link to a.  

[00:12:51]: Site that is not a direct competitor.  

[00:12:54]: But that gives more information on what you're talking about so that it shows.

[00:12:59]: Your authority to Google. And this is a little screenshot from.  

[00:13:04]: Rank Math and it's giving me all.  Diane Houghton [00:13:07]: These ideas of what I can do.  

[00:13:09]: To improve my ranking. And like I said, I'm going to.  

[00:13:16]: Use it as a guideline, not as a be all end all. Number eight, write a compelling meta description. Now, what is a meta description? It is the little block of text.  

[00:13:30]: That Google serves up when you search for something. Okay, so what you want to do.  

 [00:13:37]: Is create a short one to two sentence summary using your keyword. All right, so again, this is Rank Math. Yoast would have a similar one. You have a meta description right here.  

[00:13:51]: And the default will be the first.  Diane Houghton [00:13:54]: Paragraph of your blog post. You can write a different meta description in here that will show up on.  Speaker B [00:14:01]: Google and put your keyword in there.  

[00:14:03]: And be sure that it's near the beginning. My keyword, my primary keyword on this.  

[00:14:09]: Article was WordPress for beginners.  Diane Houghton [00:14:12]: So I used it in here. WordPress makes it easy for beginners.  Speaker B [00:14:16]: I'm using my keywords in a natural way in my meta description.  

[00:14:24]: Number nine, use an SEO friendly URL structure.

[00:14:28]: Keep your URLs short and clear and.  Diane Houghton [00:14:32]: To the point and and use your keyword. So on this one, my permalink or.  Speaker B [00:14:38]: My URL is WordPress for beginners. That's also my primary keyword.  

[00:14:45]: So you can see how this can be found. Also it's in my title.  Speaker B [00:14:49]: So here's my keyword, keyword and keywords down in here. It all makes it clear what I'm talking about in this blog post and Google will thank me for that.  

[00:15:02]: Number 10, create a lead magnet. I think a lot of people overlook this, but it's a very valuable way.  

[00:15:09]: To not only help yourself in search.  Diane Houghton [00:15:12]: Engines, but also it keeps people on your site. So if you give them a valuable freebie, keep them on your page longer, which Google loves. Time spent on the page is a.  

[00:15:24]: Factor in ranking and you can also.  Diane Houghton [00:15:26]: Gather email addresses with it.  

[00:15:29]: So this lead magnet was created with writeblogger using their tool Studio. And I had a blog post about using alt text for images and I.  

[00:15:42]: Made this tool that could go right.  

[00:15:44]: On my blog post.  Diane Houghton [00:15:46]: First I collected an email address. Then they get this tool and they.  

[00:15:51]: Can put in their own blog keyword, a little description of their image.  

[00:15:57]: They can upload the image here and.  

[00:15:59]: The tool will look at the image.  

[00:16:01]: And read it and generate alt text.  

[00:16:04]: So it's kind of a fun time.  

[00:16:07]: Saver for people, but it also keeps.  
[00:16:09]: Them on my site because they're going.  

[00:16:11]: To keep trying it out with different images. So this is a great way to keep people on your site, keep them.  

[00:16:17]: Engaged and keep them coming back.  

[00:16:23]: Thank you so much for joining me today. It was such a pleasure to be here and I hope that you will grab my free SEO checklist and my.  

[00:16:31]: Resource guide and it will have all.  

[00:16:33]: The links to the different tools that I've mentioned in this presentation

[00:16:37]: And I hope you can go out there and use these tools to get your site found in search.