Search Engine Optimisation considered holistically

A holistic look at SEO

Many SEO plugins focus on only one aspect of SEO – the on-page optimisation. This aricle looks at the steps required to setup SEO holistically for your website. But before you start on any of the topics listed below, you should check 3 items on your site:

Make sure that the site is searchable by crawlers. Go to WordPress Settings / Reading and scroll to the bottom, and look for the item "Search engine visibility" and ensure that the associated setting is NOT turned on
Make sure that you have permalinks correctly set, because that makes your URL more readable. Go to WordPress Settings / Permalinks and ensure that you are using "Post Name". If this wasn't correctly setup when you started building your site, you may need to go back to each of your pages and posts and update the URLs
Ensure that the URL in General settings for WordPress Address and Site Address is the same

An overview of SEO components

(Source: the following content is from a Google overview of SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of improving a website's visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords or search terms. The goal is to attract more organic (unpaid) traffic from search engines like Google. This is achieved through various technical and content-based strategies that make a website more appealing to search engine algorithms. Here's a more detailed breakdown:

On-Page Optimisation

This involves optimising aspects of a website’s content and structure, such as:

Keyword Research: Identifying relevant keywords that users search for.
Content Optimisation: Creating high-quality, engaging content that is optimised for relevant keywords.
Title Tag and Meta Description Optimisation: Ensuring that these elements are informative and keyword-rich.
URL Structure: Creating clean, descriptive, and keyword-friendly URLs.
Image Optimisation: Optimising images with alt text and file names.

Off-Page Optimisation

This involves activities outside of the website that improve its reputation and authority, such as:

Link Building: Acquiring backlinks from other reputable websites.
Social Media Engagement: Promoting content and building a social media presence.
Online Reputation Management: Maintaining a positive online reputation.

Technical SEO

This focuses on ensuring the website is technically sound and easy for search engines to crawl, index, and understand, such as:

Website Speed: Optimising website load speed.
Mobile-Friendliness: Ensuring the website is responsive and accessible on mobile devices.
Schema Markup: Using schema markup to provide search engines with additional information about the website’s content.

Local SEO

This is a subset of SEO that focuses on improving the visibility of a website in local search results, such as:

Google My Business Optimisation: Claiming and optimising a Google My Business profile.
Local Keyword Research: Identifying keywords that are relevant to the local area.
Local Backlinks: Acquiring backlinks from local websites.

3 key tools for SEO

SEO Plugins

In order to optimise search results it is important to ensure that page snippets, keywords, and internal links meet guidelines and use terms that are often used in searches. An SEO product that uses AI can significantly help with that process. The solution that I use is Rank Math SEO, which provides good guidance in the free version, and further simplifies the task in the premium version.

If you are less concerned about optimising search results because you do not operate in a competitive market, then you still should ensure that you are marking pages that you don’t want found by search engine crawlers (e.g. any password protected pages). The solution that I use in this case is The SEO Framework. It gives you a nice set of SEO “traffic lights” against each page, and allows you to set the NoIndex and NoFollow tags against pages that you don’t want in search results.

All SEO plugins will also ensure that the sitemap is created - this is essential for registering in Google Search Console (the next step). But no matter what, you must have a clear understanding of the markets that you serve, and not use vague or ambiguous terms as you setup the SEO.

Google Search Console (GSC)

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. Search Console offers tools and reports for the following actions:

Set the sitemap for Google to use
View Google Search traffic data for your site: how often your site appears in Google Search, which search queries show your site, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more.
Receive alerts when Google encounters indexing, spam, or other issues on your site.
Show you which sites link to your website.

Before you setup Google Search, you need to have:

Created a sitemap for your site. SEO tools will confirm that that has been done, and provide the URL for the sitemap. A WordPress sitemap is an XML file that lists every URL on a website that should appear in search results. Your SEO plugin will provide the URL for your sitemap for example "https://yourdomain.com.au/sitemap_index.xml"
A Gmail account that you can use for signing in (ensure that you keep a record of this – it is critical for continues access to GSC)

You can manually setup your registration with GSC and submit your sitemap by following the steps at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592 - the hyperlink on the top right corner of the page takes you to the Search Console. Alternatively you can install the “Site Kit by Google” plugin, which steps you through the process (this is my preferred approach. Once I have finished doing all of the registration steps, I often delete the plugin, as it adds some overhead to WordPress, and you can review your GSC results in a browser).

Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile places your business on Google Maps, and allows people to submit reviews of your business. Both of these things further improve your positioning in search results. The process for successfully registering a business profile is tricky, and is described at https://support.google.com/business/answer/10514137 Also, there are good links at https://support.google.com/business/answer/15697615 and https://support.google.com/business/answer/15697617

A key question is which of the following which type of business you want to register as (see https://support.google.com/business/answer/10514743 for more information). The two main options are:

A business that has people visiting your premises as well as doing deliveries (a hybrid business). The requirements for registering this type of business are quite strict, and you must be able to demonstrate control over the premises (i.e. you own or lease the premises)
A Service Area business (which services business areas but doesn't have people visiting the premises). The requirements for this type are less stringent, and you can find more information at https://support.google.com/business/answer/9157481