Good SEO practices are the hidden script behind every successful web development project.
Even the small margins of including rich keywords or none at all provides a stark difference between content that’s buried in search engine results and content that rises to the top. For agencies, mastering the art of SEO can provide a cornerstone to faster site speeds, better user experiences for the range of clients that expect the most performant web offerings.
The fundamentals of SEO are a great place to get started in implementing the practice throughout a website, as we’ll cover in this comprehensive, handy checklist.
Be in control of site speed
Page speed isn’t just vital for user experience, it’s a core pillar of SEO that can have knock-on effects. Websites that load faster usually gain higher organic search rankings and are more likely to be discovered by users. But not only that: websites that load in 1 second have a conversion rate that’s three times higher than those than load in five! Improving web speed is an ongoing commitment, but there are some surefire ways to keep the load speeds low:
- Image optimisation: simple compression tools can shrink image sizes without significant loss of quality, avoiding bloat in the site’s stacked media library.
- Use browser caching: by storing website files in visitors’ local web browsers, the load time upon return will be drastically reduced.
- Minimise code: a good spring cleaning WebOps job includes cleaning up CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files, by removing unnecessary white space, line breaks, and comments.
- Leverage CDNs: content delivery networks store your site’s files much closer to your users at location around the world, reducing the physical distance data has to travel.
- Go mobile: Google, as one search engine example, ranks sites higher if they’re used on mobile: just another excellent reason to translate usability from desktop to mobile.
Consistently manage SEO in WordPress
Many web developers use WordPress for its user-friendly interface and abundant SEO tools, but implementing good SEO entails more than selecting a snazzy theme, and is instead about layering the right elements to build towards maximum performance:
- SEO-friendly themes: however (speaking of themes), ones that are already well designed with SEO in mind are typically leaner and often include proper schema markup, which allows search engines to understand your content – so look out for those!
- Consider your permalinks: complex permalinks can slow pages down considerably, so customising your permalink structure to include only relevant keywords and avoid unnecessary features (such as category names) will help this and boost traction.
- Use keywords everywhere: WordPress makes it easy to include title tags, meta descriptions, and heading tags that correspond to your focus keywords.
- Update sitemaps: submitting a sitemap to Google on a regular basis is good practice to make sure ensure all of your content is indexed and able to be found. Some SEO related plugins help generate, or regenerate, your sitemaps automatically.
- Crawling tools: robots.txt and .htaccess can control how search engines crawl your site and manage redirects effectively.
An SEO checklist for content makers
Every jigsaw piece of content on a website is a potential gateway for organic traffic. With that in mind, SEO has to be applied across the board to maintain a competitive edge and draw users in to the products, services, or thought leadership pages that make a website stand out.
Step 1: Conduct keyword research
Before a single word is typed, understanding what your audience is searching for is paramount. Search for trends via Google Chrome or Google Trends, or use tools like SEMrush to find relevant, low-competition keywords.
Step 2: Content execution
High-quality, original content that addresses the intent behind a chosen keyword will take its use beyond a requirement to tick an SEO box. Each post should answer the complete query that the keywords represent, adopt a tone of voice relevant to your brand and be able to be shared to spread its reach far and wide.
Step 3: Keep SEO on the page
Keywords should be present throughout the content (in a subtle way to not sound shoe-horned in), as well as in the title tag (the first thing searchers see in results), a clean, readable URL search crawlers can use to parse content quickly, and image alt text to boost accessibility on top of SEO.
Step 4: Consider technical aspects
Pages should adhere to a clear and navigable site structure, making it intuitive for users to surf around and link with internal pages, and any barriers for search engine bots to index your content should be removed.
Step 5: Measuring success
Data-led tools can give quantitative proof whether your content and keywords are resonating with users: Google Analytics plugins can monitor your search traffic and performance, and identify where refinements to an SEO approach can be made.
Get started with plugins
WordPress offers a plethora of user friendly plugins to smooth the path to SEO success, including these examples:
- Yoast SEO: a comprehensive tool that’s extremely popular with WordPress users, providing solid guidance on content execution and on-page optimisation.
- All in One SEO: a well-rounded plugin with features including sitemap generation, automatic redirects, and AI capabilities.
- Semrush: Not just a plugin for SEO optimisation within WordPress, but a suite of tools for keyword research, rank tracking, and more.
SEO is a concept that needs constant attention, refinement and iterations to make it work. Websites, after all, are evergreen and can grow exponentially; but SEO must always have its place to make sure that great site experiences do get experienced!
If you have any questions about SEO for agency teams, get in touch with SiteBox’s WordPress experts to learn more.
