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Ready to move up the Google ranks but not sure where to begin?
The world of SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is a big, complex, and daunting task to most website owners. Of course, there’s always the option to outsource this task to a dedicated SEO agency, but the price tag is often out of reach for a lot of small business owners and startup companies. If you’re looking to improve your search engine rankings, but don’t yet have the budget to spare, there are plenty of things you can do to get the ball rolling.
First up, you should check out our recent blog posts on all of the 6 main things you can do for your website’s SEO for free:
- 6 Easy Ways To Improve Your Website’s SEO For Free – Part 1
- 6 Easy Ways To Improve Your Website’s SEO For Free – Part 2
This particular article largely expands upon tip #2 in the blogs above: “Optimise your posts and pages for meta titles, descriptions, keyword density, and so on.”
As the posts above instruct, you’ll first need to install an SEO plugin, which will allow you to conduct the steps you’re going to need to take for each of your posts and pages. Our favourite option is Yoast SEO.
Once installed, you’ll have a new panel on the edit screen when you open up any page or post. You’ll find it beneath where you edit the content of your page/post, under the “Yoast SEO” heading.
The first thing you should do here is to choose the focus keyphrase for that particular page or post that you are editing. The focus keyphrase is the word or group of words you wish to target the page/post for so that when people type that term into a Google search, your page/post will compete to be one of the results. You might pick a different focus keyphrase for every single page and post, or you may reuse some of them on multiple pages and posts.
Once you’ve chosen your focus keyphrase for the particular page you’re editing, the next thing to do is move down to the Google Preview. This shows you how the page/post will appear when it comes up as a result in Google search results. You have the power to adjust and optimise this preview completely. Customising it is always a good idea, as you can add your focus keyphrase into both the title and the description, to further increase how well the page will rank for that word (or words).
To edit the preview, click anywhere on the preview box. Then, below the preview box, several fields will dropdown. The main two that you want to focus on are the “SEO title” and “Meta description” fields. As you type in your title and description, you’ll be guided as to the best possible length to ensure it displays well.
Once you’ve finished with your title and description, it’s finally time to double-down and optimise. This may even include changing the work you’ve just done. Yoast offers two main checklists of analysis. The first one to check is just below the preview box. Here, click on the “Seo analysis” heading. You’ll be shown a list of problems, improvements and good results. Each of these points offers you a way to improve. Each point contains a link in case you need to research it further. The goal here is to get as many green lights as possible by optimising your metadata.
Once you’ve done as much as you want to do on this panel, you can move on to the second checklist. Scroll back up to the top of the Yoast SEO panel, and you should spot the “Readability” tab. Click on this, and you’ll once again be shown a list of ways to improve your content – this time in specific regard to the text content of your page.
Once you’ve achieved as many green lights as possible in both checklists, you can rest assured that you’ve set a great SEO foundation for your page or post. By optimising as many pages and posts as you can across your whole website, you’ll place yourself in a strong starting position to begin climbing the ranks.
Remember, this is just one of the many steps involved in the world of SEO! To get an idea of what else is involved, be sure to read up on our blog posts below, or get in touch with a reliable, local SEO agency if you feel like you need a hand from the professionals.
- 6 Easy Ways To Improve Your Website’s SEO For Free – Part 1
- 6 Easy Ways To Improve Your Website’s SEO For Free – Part 2
As always, if you have any questions about this post or our shared hosting, VPS, reseller or dedicated server plans, simply call us on 1300 MY HOST (694 678) during business hours, or submit a ticket through our Support Portal and one of the crew will be in touch!
