Simple SEO best practices for every page on your website! You can implement these 7 easy SEO tips today to boost your rankings in search engines AND improve how you look online!
If you are a coach, consultant, personal brand, blogger, or any service-based business, you should use at least basic SEO on your website.
But you may be thinking–okay, great! What is SEO?
You have probably heard the term “SEO” mentioned when people talk about websites, but what is it exactly? And what does it mean?
Definition: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, it means how easily you are to find online, especially in a Google search. It means that search engines can find you and will show your website or blog posts as the answer to someone’s search.
The easier you make it for search engines to find you, the more you will show up in the results!
Good SEO also determines how you look like online when those results are shown.
You know, that little blip with a title and short sentence that Google shows when you’re searching for something? The one you click on? THAT is what helps search engines find you and gives people the incentive to click to your website.
For example,
You want to show up as close to the top of the search engine results page as you can, especially since most people only scroll down about 3 or 4 results to find what they’re looking for.
Great SEO will get you closer to the top of those results and encourage people to click through to your website.
Here are 7 easy SEO tips you can implement TODAY, in less than 5 minutes, to help search engines find your website and show it to potential customers!
Table of Contents
These simple SEO tricks, that every online business owner can do, will improve your ranking in search results:
1. When writing a blog post, use titles people will be searching. DON’T use fun “cutesy” phrases no none is searching for!
For example, think about how you search on Google–you typically ask a question. You might type (or speak to text) something like, “How do I build a website with no budget?” or “What are the best SEO plugins?” or “What are some easy things I can to get ranked higher on Google?”
Your blog post title should be an answer to those questions, or even the question itself.
Example, you could have a blog post called “How to build a website with no budget” or “The 2 Best SEO Plugins to Use on Your WordPress Website,” or “7 Easy SEO Tips You Can Do in 5 Minutes or Less.” (See what I did there?)
Notice how these titles specifically answer a question people are asking? Google will read your title and know that your blog article is the answer, and show it in the results.
If you have a cutesy title like “Website Wonders with No-Budget” or “SEO Super Stars,” search engines can’t tell what your article is about and won’t show your website in the results.
2. Use your SEO Plugin to add the metadata (title and meta description) to EVERY PAGE and EVERY BLOG POST on your website.
First, what is a “metadata?” Metadata is the information you supply to Google to tell it what your article or webpage is about.
Notice in the example above with the search results from the search “April Hiatt.” The results give a title and short description. I put that information in using the RankMath SEO plugin.
One main purpose of an SEO plugin is so you can add the title and description for every page and blog post on your website. Search engines read this data to help determine if your page has the information someone is looking for.
Then, search engines will show this in the results. You are limited on the number of characters you can use, but a well worded title and description added to your SEO plugin can make all the difference in you being found.
Every plugin is a little different, but here’s an image of how the metadata looks for this article. You should be adding metadata to every page and blog post on your website via an SEO plugin.
(NOTE: another great SEO plugin is SEOPress)
3. Add a featured image to EVERY PAGE and EVERY POST on your website!
Ever wonder where the image comes from when you send someone a link to your website or post a link on social media?
It’s pulled from the “featured image”.
When you are editing any page or blog post in WordPress, there is a column on the right side with a section called “Featured Image.”
You need to add an image here as this is the image that search engines use and social media will also use. If you leave this blank, you either won’t have an image that comes up, or the search engine will decide on one for you… and that’s never a good idea!
4. Add a keyword rich title and alt text to every image on your website!
Every image should have a title that describes the image and/or article or page it’s on.
For example, if you have images of YOU, title them your name. Then in the alt text, describe the image. Something like, “April Hiatt wearing a purple shirt sitting at her desk working on a website”.
Now when someone Googles “April Hiatt,” not only will my website come up, but my images too.
In WordPress, go to your dashboard, then on the left side click on “media” and go through every image one at a time to make sure they have “alt text” and a keyword rich title.
In addition, as you add images to your site when building a web page or blog post, be sure to update your title and add alt text to every image along the way. This will be much faster and more reliable than trying to add them all in later.
5. Link to yourself!
Every page on your website should link to at least one other page on your website. And every blog post should link to other related blog posts as well as your lead magnets.
These are called “internal links” and are an easy way to show search engines that your article is full of good information.
Be sure to give yourself a boost and link to other pages and posts. You want to keep people on YOUR website, so give them places to click!
For example, another GREAT article if you are a new coach building your website is the article on “6 Web Design Tips for Your Coaching Business”. Notice how that phrase is a link that takes you directly to that article. (And FYI–it’s got some great information for coaches building their website!)
Another example is every time I talk about resources for business owners building their own website, I will link to the “resources” page on my website.
6. Make sure your site looks good on mobile!
The term you will hear often is, “mobile optimized”. Meaning, is your website optimized to adjust for tablet and mobile viewers?
It is estimated that 60.67% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. That is more than half of your website visitors!
And depending on your niche, it can be higher than that! So think about your website visitors–are they moms who are looking at your website on their phone while waiting in the carpool line, or waiting in the doctor’s office, or waiting to pick up kids from soccer practice, etc.?
If your ideal audience is more likely to be on their phone looking for help, then it’s even more important that your website looks good on a mobile device.
7. Have a website that loads fast! Does your website load in under 2 seconds?
Search engines will always give preference to sites that load fast, so be sure yours is loading quickly.
The two biggest reasons most websites load slowly is that
- the images are too large and not optimized, meaning they are not the smallest size possible.
- You are not using a caching plugin.
So… do you know how fast your website loads?
Here are a couple of free resources you can use. They are links to “site speed tests.” Just put in your website URL (address), then click the button to test it. Wait a few seconds and you will get your results.
- Google Page Insights: (be sure to look at both the mobile and desktop scores)
- GTMetrix
- Pingdom Website Speed Test
What do you do if your site speed is low? The two easiest fixes are to add a caching plugin and add a plugin to optimize your images (compress them to make them smaller). WordPress caching plugins I recommend:)
- Siteground Optimizer (if you use Siteground hosting*, what I recommend to ALL my clients).
- WP Fastest Cache if you use a different hosting provider.
And to optimize your images, I recommend SG Optimizer for those using Siteground* hosting (my favorite), and Smush for everyone else. (The free version is awesome).
If you want to be ranked higher in online search results and have more people find your website, be sure to take advantage of these 7 easy SEO tips you can do in 5 minutes or less.
Now, go check out your website and fix anything you might be missing. Then, watch your search engine rankings go up!
(*This article contains affiliate links. I only recommend companies I have fully tested and vetted and that I love and use myself!)
