How to improve SEO performance (Easy and Intermediate tips)
When it comes to getting a better ranking SEO score (appearing higher on search result pages), you may have come across the question of writing content for robot crawlers versus your visitors. Well, you need to make it easier for both, because the robot crawlers need to understand your page and place your content in their database to be available when a user searches for your content. Plus you need to be able to make that content of top quality value to them when they actually come to your page. The more value it has, the longer they will spend consuming your content and this is information that gets relayed back to search engines to tell them that you have verified quality content and deserve a higher position on SERP (Search Engine Results Page) results
Use a Meta Title and Meta Description tags
The title to your page typically is displayed in the browser tab, but it can and likely shows up as the title on the SERP listing. Your description for your page is also shown on your SERP listing just underneath your title. A very simple concept that has been around for a long while and there's no shortage of resources: Here are some resources to create a great title tag, and meta descriptions by the Moz team who make it their business to improve your SEO.
Don't forget Alt text on your images
Alternative text is not just for more text to appear to those robot crawlers, but actually provides valuable content to visually impaired visitors to your site. Do your best to provide all visitors great content to consume, read more in my Inclusive Design post. Describe the images for within your context but be literal in what is in the image too. Those words do get picked up by search engines and may even broaden your potential audience.
Wordpress Plugins for SEO
If you're a WordPress user, you likely have heard of the Yoast SEO plugin, of which they have a Free Plugin and a Paid Subscription Plugin. Install the plugin and make sure you edit the snippets (Meta Title and Meta Description) for each of your pages and blog posts. I highly recommend that if you have other custom post types in use on your site, set a default meta title and description template under the Search Appearance > Content Types settings. If you don't use the specific Author pages for your admins and editors, disable that archive page in the Search Appearance > Archives settings. This is also useful for any other taxonomies or archive pages not in use. It's best to disable them so they don't show up in search results and lead visitors to dead end pages.
WooCommerce and SEO
If you are looking for a quick way to setup your products with the wonderful SEO punch that Yoast has brought to your site, they have a plugin that will integrate with WooCommerce. But if you're a developer and want the places to start to get some intermediate SEO steps, checkout Google's Product JSON-LD markup guidelines, then setup your product pages and product archive views with as much product information as possible. Did you know, that WooCommerce actually stores a short product description in the Product's post_excerpt value in the database? So at the very least, under Yoast SEO > Search Appearance > Content Types > Product, you can reference Yoast's variable %excerpt% to setup a quick Meta Description for each product (works with the Free version of Yoast, the paid plugin changes which variable name you use).
Add Structured Data
The best way to get your site visited, is with increased visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and sometimes, they need a little help to understand the content that you have. Have your developer look into adding structured data to your site. It's extra light-weight code that helps differentiate a product from an blog post, or a food recipe. Think of it as a blueprint to all the key points of information to your content. There's even tools to help check the code is correct and list the active structured data on your site.
Still need help improving your SEO?
I help clients improve their SEO by identifying key performance areas that need updating and content areas that should be tweaked to better suit your audience. SEO is an ongoing journey and is best observed overtime. So start now!