Online Marketing Services for Coaches, Consultants, Trainers and Service Entrepreneurs

Easy SEO Strategies You Can Use Right Away

Do you want your site optimized for the search engines, but don’t know where to start?  Most coaches and consultants I speak with list search engine optimization (SEO) as a top priority for their website.

But there is often confusion over what makes a site optimized, especially when it comes to WordPress blog themes.

Here are the basics of what you need to know in order to optimize any website or WordPress blog.

You’ll only need two things to use SEO:

1.  Keywords - These are the words or phrases people search for when looking for your coaching or consulting services.

2.  A website - This includes traditional websites and blogs.

The key to getting your site ranked well in the search engines is to use a combination of two strategies:

  • choosing the best keywords and
  • using them in the right places.

Choosing the Best Keywords:

You’ll want to do keyword research in order to determine your best keywords.  You don’t want to guess because there can be huge differences in search volume and competition between two related keywords.

For example, take the two keywords “traditional Italian recipes” and “authentic Italian recipes.” One gets 9,900 searches in Google a month and the other only 1,900. Which one do you think gets the most searches?  How profitable do you think it might be to know the answer if this was your niche?

A great place to start your keyword research is with a free tool called Google Keyword Tool.  That’s where I got the search volume numbers in the above example and learned that “authentic Italian recipes” gets 9,900 searches per month - a 500% difference.

Using Keywords on Your Site:

Whether you are using a traditional HTML website or a WordPress blog, there are five main areas where you need to use your keywords on your webpages:

  1. The webpage title - This is the title of your webpage that appears in your browser.  You want to create a unique title for each page.
  2. The meta description tag - This is where you enter the description of your webpage that appears in the search engine results listing.  You want to write something here that will entice prospects to visit your site.
  3. The meta keyword tag - This is a listing of keywords that tells the search engines what your site is about.  Only the search engines see this list, not your website visitors.
  4. The H1 tag - Also known as the headline tag, it is often used to create large font text on your site, like the kind usually used in headlines.
  5. The URL - This is what appears in the browser address bar and looks something like this: “http://www.mysite.com/.”

Tips for WordPress Sites:

If you’re using a WordPress blog, then you’ll want to use a plugin called “All in One SEO Pack.”  This will allow you to set the title, description, and keywords for each blog post and blog page.

The reason some WordPress blog themes claim to be SEO optimized is because they already include the All in One SEO Pack plugin (or one like it) with their theme.  You can do the same thing with any WordPress theme.

You’ll also want to set your permalinks to either “month and name” or “custom structure” and include the title of your posts in the URL.  The default permalink setting for a blog looks like this: http://www.mysite.com/?p=153.

That doesn’t allow for any keywords in the URL other than your domain name.  And I don’t think anyone is searching Google for “?p=153,” do you?

On the other hand, a URL like “http://www.mysite.com/authentic Italian recipes/” has a great keyword in it.

And the search engines can rank your site for that keyword - making it easier for prospects to find your web page.

Keep in mind that a WordPress blog isn’t search engine optimized just because it has a particular plugin or permalink setting.  You have to remember to use it and optimize your individual posts and pages in order to get the best results.

Now, It’s Your Turn:

One of the top reasons coaches and consultants choose to work with me is because they want their site to be search engine optimized.  The sites I create typically get high rankings in Google and other search engines because I use some simple but effective techniques, like the ones described above.

Start using these techniques on your own site today, and see how they help improve your ranking in the search engines.  Using these same strategies, my webpages get ranked by Google in less than one day - usually in just hours.

If you’d like to have a site that uses these and other advanced SEO techniques, I have a Mother Lode WebsiteTM package that may be just what you’re looking for. You can get the details here: websites for coaches and consultants http://www.essdreamteam.com/websites-for-coaches-packages.php