Not sure what SEO is or how to get started with it? The term SEO is used thousands of times on the internet these days, often confusing beginners with what it is. And even worse, how to get started with it.
In simple terms, SEO means Search Engine Optimization, a process that involves a series of tricks done on a website to improve its visibility on the search engines. SEO is what makes Google or Bing rank a site on the search results whenever somebody searches for any content that is related to the site’s content.
Is SEO a Plugin?
SEO includes a combination of multiple tasks such as backlinking, keyword titles, mobile friendliness, title tags, meta descriptions, and meta keywords. For a site to be fully optimized, all these tiny, unrelated, but crucial steps have to be effectively completed and updated.
Since the majority, if not all websites follow the same optimization procedures, several plugins have been developed to help optimize. The objective of these plugins is to ease the optimization process, especially for beginners, by providing simple step-by-step guidelines and instructions. Therefore, it is important to understand that SEO is not a plugin, but rather a process whose part can be achieved through plugins.
Quality Content
The other thing that makes SEO not to be a plugin is content. The main objective of creating any website to share information with the viewers. If the content of your website is not interesting or helpful enough to make a new viewer visit your site again, then despite how much money you spend on SEO you will have failed.
Quality content is the ultimate SEO tool, and no plugin can help create that. Apparently, they can give you suggestions for the best title keywords to write about which is all helpful; however, it is upon you to create the content.
Before you can even think of getting started with the more complicated SEO processes, I would advise you first to ensure you have the type of high-quality content that entices your visitors to want to subscribe or read more in the future.
Continuous Process
Additionally, SEO is not a one-time thing. Google continues to change its ranking algorithms almost every year. You have to keep up with these changes for you to continue ranking high.
For example, mobile friendliness and social sharing are currently among the two best Google SEO. You can check the latest SEO algorithm upgrade from Google here for more insight.
Traffic
Despite all the Google upgrades, there is one algorithm that will forever remain constant, and that is traffic. The thing is, Google wants people to continue browsing the web through it. The only way they can achieve this is by showing the content that other people have searched for in the past, and possibly giving positive feedback about those sources. In other words, it shows what people want to see for it to remain competitive.
So, if you want a guaranteed high ranking on Google or any other browser, you need to have high daily or monthly traffic to your site. Even better, you can request viewers to share your content for example on Facebook or Pinterest.
Do not feel overwhelmed though if you are just starting, all you need is a new visitor and social media share a day. Before you even realize it, you will be ranking on the first page. Quora, Reddit, Pinterest, and other forums are incredible sources of free traffic that you should consider taking advantage of.
How to SEO your WordPress Site
SEO always sounds complicated to beginners but it’s not. Well, I’m not saying it’s straight easy, what I mean is it’s not that difficult. You can easily pull it off by just reading several SEO-related articles and watching videos. Even better, you can install an SEO plugin or even hire an SEO expert to help make the entire process easier.
Talking of plugins, you have probably come across numerous free and premium plugins that claim to optimize your WordPress site. But before you get tempted to pull out your credit card to purchase one, you need to ask yourself what kind of optimization are you looking for. And will that plugin achieve the objective you want it to?
Well, I can’t help you answer the first question; however, I can recommend a tested and proven Yoast plugin to help answer the second question. It is an incredible SEO plugin for every WordPress site owner whether novice or a beginner. It offers a free and a premium version that costs $89.
The reason I recommend it for beginners is the tight budget most beginners are on, yet desperate for results. You get a chance to kick-start your site’s optimization without spending a dime or stressing yourself up with all complicated procedures.
The free version offers basic optimization tools such as keyword optimization; Google page preview; readability check; content duplication check; Gutenberg readiness check; technical robots, sitemaps, URLs, and permalink configurations; and Google algorithm updates check.
The premium version offers all the other advanced features. Yoast also offers free SEO lessons on its blog and also has courses which you can easily access.
Conclusion
If for whatever reason you want to do the optimization yourself without using a plugin, here are the most critical optimization processes you should do. Set your permalinks or website page URLs correctly, create sitemaps for your site, increase your site’s loading speed, and optimize your title tags, meta tags, key phrases, external linking, and interlinking.
You can achieve the majority of these with the Yoast free version. However, with it installed or not, you will be forced to do some of them on your own. The plugin is supposed to accomplish some tasks and guide you on others, but it’s not the end-all means-all SEO optimization tool.