Beginner’s guide to SEO for WordPress

If you are a beginner when it comes to creating a website, you would undoubtedly been overwhelmed by the thousands of articles about how you need to SEO your website. And the last thing you need is for me to “tell” you to do it.

Well, if you are expecting me to pat you on the back and say that SEO is overrated… then I’m sorry to disappoint you. But what I will offer is a simple guide to SEO in easy to understand language. No jargons. No rocket science explanation. At least, I will try to reduce them whenever possible.

Today’s post will be the first part of my 6-part series on my take of the Beginner’s Guide to SEO for WordPress. So if you are a beginner and interested to know how to promote your WordPress website or blog to increase your traffic, then do read on.

What’s this thing called SEO again?

For starters, do you know how many websites are there in the world today? No? Neither do I. For that matter, no one else has the information either for the Internet’s too dynamic to track. Google for it and you’ll find various answers. But one thing I can assure you is that there are millions of them. Talk about needle in a haystack!

So the more appropriate question is how you make yourself more visible among all the others. Here’s where SEO (which is the abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization) techniques come into place. It is just basically certain actions you take to improve the chances of your website being spotted and having it placed in search engines’ results pages. It’s kind of like talking to these search engines using their language.

What search engines like is for your website to provide a great surfing experience for your visitors. So you see, SEO techniques are actually on your side. It helps you create a visitors-friendly website.

Can I do away with SEO?

Sure, of course you can. Many websites owners do not implement SEO strategy and they are still around. But then the thing is, your website would lose out in a lot of areas in the competitive Internet world.

• Visibility
  Most Internet users use search engines to find information or businesses. Also, researches have it that 90% of search engine users stop at page 3 of the search engine results pages. Meaning that the higher you are the more visible you get.

• Lower ROI
  With lesser visibility, you get lesser potential customers visiting your website. Thus, lower sales and profit. And because setting up a website has certain fixed costs, this will results in lower ROI (return on investment).

• High Advertising Cost
  Unless you do not care much about your site’s traffic, you would need to incur advertisement costs to attract targeted potential visitors. These costs can be avoided or reduced if you had goo SEO in place to bring in the traffic.

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Alright, tell me how much SEO will cost me

The good news is that it won’t cost you an arm or a leg. It can also be totally free depending on your choices eg to purchase a premium SEO plugin (or software) or to install a free one. The not-so-good news is that you need to put in effort. Hey, no free lunches, remember?

So where do I start?

If you are new, I recommend that you start with the simplest SEO technique. And probably one of the most important too.

Keywords

Keywords are specific words that summarizes part of or your entire post. In SEO, keywords are used by search engines to locate your post and later, categorizing it for future related searches.

Keywords are not just about getting traffic but they help you find your targeted traffic. An electronics shop in Tokyo wants to target people in its area, rather than someone in, say, Brazil.

How do you find the “right” keywords? Try Google AdWords – Keyword Tool if you like. You can search a keyword and it will list down which is more commonly used. There are many ways to describe electronics goods but for someone who is serious about purchasing, he would Google for “best price for Casio electronic dictionary in Tokyo”.

Now, does your website have the appropriate keywords? Note that while keywords are great, you DO NOT stuffed your website with the same keyword. Just 1 or 2 will be adequate. You definitely don’t want to sound too pushy.

Is the top (of the Search Engine Results) still far?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. It doesn’t happen overnight. There are lots more things you need to do to catch up. Some website owners spent years in perfecting their SEO techniques in order to enjoy the ranking that they are getting now. It’s delayed gratification!

But just to help newbies (that’s Internet slang for beginner) out a bit, there are quite a number of WordPress SEO plugins that you can install to give you the boost you need. The All in One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps and WordPress SEO by Yoast are great tools when it comes to improving your website’s SEO.

There you are, my first part of the Beginner’s Guide to SEO for WordPress series. I do hope you are able to take away useful information. If there are anything else you like me to highlight in my subsequent articles, do drop me a comment and I’ll do my best to include them.

Part 2: How to Write Great Content for your Website

Stay tune for my next article on tips on how to produce awesome content real soon. In the meantime, subscribe or bookmark us so that you won’t miss it when it’s out. Till then, have fun SEO-ing.