SEO

There are some Site specific recommendations that can help boast SEO rankings such as XML site maps, breadcrumbs, permalinks, and others.    All of these configuration settings are advanced settings and have already been configured as part of the build process.

 

The process of optimizing local SEO is pretty simple and advanced all at the same time.     If you will be adding content over time, then someone should be able to become familiar with this process.    Your site is structured to lend itself well to constant Blog updating and thus the need for SEO customization for each blog post.     I would recommend finding a need to update your blog area routinely to stay current on events, and link your business to those events.     The more blog posts you have the more chances you have of being found.    Caution, however, that too many blog posts tends to annoy people and too much similar content can cause page penalties by google.    i.e.   Having two of the same page doesn’t give you twice as much content to be found, but rather gives google cause to think you are trying to manipulate their system and they thus apply a penalty to your ranking.     About 1 – 4 unique posts per month is good for a business like yours.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE:      Search rankings will tend to bounce up and down over the course of the first few months as certain variances in site structure will be detected by the search engines.     Over time the rankings should normalize and be more consistent.

 

Optimizing SEO is done on a per page basis.     In other words, Google doesn’t find your site, it finds pages.    If your site has 1000 pages, it has a much better chance of being found than a site with 1 page.       This does not mean you can make 1000 pages of nearly the exact same content as google sees that as cheating and will actually penalize you.     If you do have 1000 pages of unique content, that will give you favorable chances of being found on at least one of those pages.      This is why blogging can be so important because it gives you additional pages with unique content.

 

Since SEO is done on a per-page basis, we need to optimize the local SEO parameters of each page.     Below is the process for doing so on a single page.

 

The process should be repeated on every page.

 

After the main content window on the page Editor (see above for editing pages) – you will find a form called “Yoast SEO” which looks like this:

 

This is the area where you will manage everything relating to SEO on the per page basis.

 

The Snippet preview shows you how your site will look in the google search results.    The three fields below help you choose the right SEO parameters for a page.

 

NOTE:    Google is mostly looking at content these days, so we dont want to “stuff” these fields with keywords.     You want to think about what the user may have searched for and what the might see based on that search that will entice them to click on this page.

 

So choose something that relates to what the page is about as the Focus Keyword.     This is NOT used on the page or by google.   It is used by this tool to help us pick quality search terms.

 

So this is an example for the company page.    I chose “Company” as the focus keyword because that is what this page is about.

 

I am leaving the SEO Title blank for this page.    When left blank, it will default to the Page Title Followed by the Site name.

 

 

The Meta Description area is where we put as many keywords as possible that relate to the content of this page while still keeping something readable.    This is probably the ONE and only field you should update on your own on the main pages until the site has been live for quite a while.       You will need to worry about ALL of the fields for your blog posts.

 

Notice as you change these parameters, you will see Green “yes” and Red “no” labels next to certain items under Focus keyword.   We want to try to make them all green as we  have done here.

 

So if the focus of the page is “Company” – we want to try and have Company near the top of the content – this is the Article Heading.    This should most of the time if the Focus keyword matches the title of the page.    If not, you can add the focus keyword near the top of the content.     If doing so causes the content to look poor, just ignore this and leave red.

 

The Page Title should match the focus keyword if possible.    This is not always possible as it can sometimes throw off the content.  It should be easy to do for Blog posts.    You should be able to leave the core pages alone for several months.    You can change if needed over time.

 

The page URL should also contain the focus keyword(s).     This is easy to do.   Near the top of the page under the title, click “edit” next to permalink and enter the focus keyword(s).     Hit OK.   Spaces will be converted to dashes.

 

 

The content and Meta Description fields should also contain the focus keyword(s) exactly.     If possible, the content section should contain the focus keyword(s) multiple times.