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People hear about SEO and get really perked up! People hear a lot of great things about WordPress – and really, that is because WordPress is pretty flipping awesome! People hear that they can easily keep a blog, they can easily update the content on their site – that it does well in search engines…. That last part is a little tricky because it isn’t the WordPress platform itself that makes for good SEO juju… It is the fact that sites hosted on WordPress.org are on their own domain name. You know, yaaotchere.ca instead of yaaotchere.weebly.com or yaaotchere.wix.com. THAT is the big difference.

What’s this about domain names and hosting?

When you have a professional website and are running a business around it, you gotta have your own domain name. That means, you need your own URL that represents your business. None of this “yourbiz.weebly.com” stuff cuts it anymore. We are in a digital age so all of your online presence has a place. If you have a business you need your own domain name. Having a somethingsomething.wix.com ain’t good enough. The hosting part means that your website needs to live on your own slice of the web, through a web hosting service. Instead of living on Weebly’s slice of the web or Wix (or even sweet ass Square Space) your site lives at chez vous. It is important to have your own slice of the web so that the Google machine can keep coming back to YOUR HOUSE, not the sketchy basement apartment you rent from Weebly (with no heat OR A/C).

Got, it. My own domain name is key, hosting is a must. Now what about that SEO juju?

Search Engine Optimization sometimes seems like sorcery, sometimes seems like trickery – always seems to be on people’s minds. What it is at the core is, making your website people friendly which makes it Google (and Bing and Yahoo and and and…) friendly. If your website is people friendly, Google pays attention. When you put in your business name or YOUR name, you want it to be near the top. Getting it up there is a long game – Twista can’t make you a celebrity overnight. You need to have a strategy for SEO and being on WordPress makes that easy. If you have a WordPress site and you care about SEO you NEED to download the Yoast SEO plugin. Open up a tab, go in your WordPress dashboard, go to plugins and add new! It is an effective, easy to use and powerful plugin that really gets your SEO juju flowing. The free version is ace! It’s got instructions and guide and amazing videos. Do the things it says in the plugin and you will be cool.

Stuff you can do independent of a plugin is….

  • Make sure your content is tagged, has unique titles and is easily shareable. To make it shareable, pop on a nice image!
  • Go forth and guest post for other blogs! Have them link back to you! Link to them
  • Don’t make posts just for the sake of it. Make content that is relevant, serves your audience and has value
  • Start collecting emails! Pop up a freebie for people so they can come back when then time is right

The biggest message for this is, WordPress does not necessarily equal “good” SEO but use the tools at your disposal, for a long time, and you’ve got an edge!

Posted in How I Work, Website Tips and tagged , , , , , ,

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