Setting up your site for good search results

When you start looking at optimising the search reults for your website, most WordPress blogs and plugins focus on Search Engine Optimisation. But to get good search engine results there are 4 key steps:

1. Setup Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) within the website: this involves setting page snippets, keywords and other factors against each page on your site to increase the probability of your pages meeting the most common search criteria. You should also consider any pages that you don’t want search engines to show (particularly any pages that require password access)
2. Register your site with Google Search Console (GSC): you should register your site ownership with Google and submit the sitemap to Google in order for the Google crawler to find and index pages. Once the sitemap is registered you should periodically review GSC to confirm the pages that are being indexed, and any issues.
3. Register your site with Bing and other search engines: you can also register your sitemap with Bing and other search engines that you want to use
4. Register your business with Google: this verifies your business as being legitimate, and identifies the areas and markets that you service. It also allows you to request Google reviews – which significantly increase your ranking in search results, This is critical if you want your business to be found by customers within the markets that you serve.

This article provides an on overview of those 3 steps. However, before you start on those topics, you should check 3 items on your site:

• Make sure that the site is searchable by crawlers. Go to 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 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

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as "organic" results) rather than direct traffic, referral traffic, social media traffic, or paid traffic.

The market for SEO plugins is highly competitive, and there are lots of SEO plugins available. When choosing the SEO plugin for a site I want to understand whether the customer:

1. Wants search results to be optimised, because they operate in a competitive market, or
2. They operate in a non-competitive market, and simply want their site to appear in search results. This can be the case with some non-profits

In order to optimise search results in a competitive market, 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:

• Confirm that Google can find and crawl your site.
• Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.
• 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)
• At least one email account with the same domain as the website that you are registering. You may be asked to provide this so that you can confirm your association with the website.
• Access to update the DNS entries for your website (normally managed within cPanel with your hosting provider). You will need to add an entry for GSC to your DNS listing.

You can manually setup your registration with GSC and submit your sitemap by following the steps at:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592?hl=en&ref_topic=9128571&sjid=4472750807782989857-AP

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.

Bing Webmaster tools

You can register your sitemap with Bing by going to https://www.bing.com/webmasters/about .The functionality of the Bing search console is similar to GSC. However they also have an extra tool that helps you with keyword research - I found that that was interesting, and it confirmed the keywords that I had selected using Rank Math.

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 because:

• When customers are searching for a business, they often want someone who is either close or in the same city as them (e.g. “supermarket near me”, “web developer in Brisbane”)
• Positive reviews (and lots of them) tell Google that you are a trusted business with lots of customers, and that will push you further up the rankings in the search results

The process for successfully registering a business profile is tricky, and is described at

https://support.google.com/business/answer/10514137?hl=en#zippy=

Before you can register your business, you must be able to demonstrate that you have a business address that:

1. You can show you have control over, and the premises are in your name (either leased or owned). You must be able to demonstrate that you can unlock the premises and have control of access to an “employee only” area with some kind of keyed access
2. Clearly displays your business signage on the outside/entrance of the building (e.g. a co-working space will not be acceptable)
3. You can prove the address by showing street signs and the street number of your business
4. You have control over key business systems, such as the ability to unlock a cash register, or sign into an invoicing system

You also need to show your association with the business by showing a business card, or car with signage, or a licence.

If there are problems with verifying your business you might also be requested to provide:

• A utility bill
• Evidence of business registration (e.g. an ABN registration certificate and the associated ABN URL)

The first step in the process is to enter your business profile, including the address, website, services, etc. After that you will be asked to verify the business.

The most common method of verifying your business registration is through a video, which must be recorded using the Google Business Profile verification process. This becomes available to you after you have finished entering the business profile information. You should ensure that you cover as many of the above items as possible in your video.

Once you have submitted the profile and the verification video, it then goes through a verification process with Google - it can take up to 5 business days to receive the results of the verification. It is also common to need to redo the verification process a few times (it took me 4 tries).

Once your site is verified then you can start requesting Reviews. A Customer Reviews URL becomes available to you, which you can use for sending to customers.