Dude! Where’s My WordPress Site!?
Is your WordPress site MIA in the search engines? Do you wonder why you aren’t getting found? Or, do you have a new site that is still not ranking and wondering why?
When I hear these questions, more come to mind. How long has your site been online? Do you offer anything unique? Why should your site get found in the first place? The answers to these questions lets me know if the site owner has realistic expectations or just pie-in-the-sky desires.
“I Moved My Site to WordPress Just for the SEO
and I’m Still Not on the Top Page of Google!”
Well, it takes time and allot of hard work to make that top page now-a-days! That is a pretty unrealistic expectation to have simply because you moved your site to WordPress.
Yes, moving your site to the WordPress platform, which is inherently SEO friendly, was a great move. If you don’t have your site on WordPress or are thinking of putting up a new site — WordPress is the way to go. And all new sites take more time to acquire relevant rankings over established sites. Patience is a virtue here.
But SEO doesn’t happen by osmosis. The act of “putting” your site on WordPress alone does not negate the other things you need to think about consistently and for perpetuity when planning and updating your site.
WordPress and SEO
It is what it is!
I have close to 100 articles on the topic of SEO if you are in the mood to read, but if you only read one, read my article WordPress How To: Learn About SEO.
Then, hop over to Google as they just updated their SEO Starter Guide and download a copy and read it.
Google’s SEO Starter Guide Table of Contents
SEO Basics
- Create unique, accurate page titles
- Make use of the “description” meta tag
- Improving Site Structure
- Improve the structure of your URLs
- Make your site easier to navigate
Optimizing Content
- Offer quality content and services
- Write better anchor text
- Optimize your use of images
- Use heading tags appropriately
Dealing with Crawlers
- Make effective use of robots.txt
- Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
SEO for Mobile Phones
- Notify Google of mobile sites
- Guide mobile users accurately
Promotions and Analysis
- Promote your website in the right ways
- Make use of free webmaster tools
Read, learn, absorb and do. There are no tricks or shortcuts. No schemes, programs or software to negate what these two resources advise.
By following the above, before you know it you’ll be saying “Dude! I found my WordPress site on Google!”.
At your service,
Judith
Your WordPress Consultant
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Thanks a lot, found this very useful. My WordPress has only been up a couple of months, so I’m still finding my feet with SEO :-)
Hey, Marios:
Thanks for stopping by and all the best with your new site!