Using WordPress SEO to be a Better Freelancer

The most common thing you will ever hear in internet marketing is SEO. A lot of people don’t understand what SEO is or even what it stands for. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. But what does this mean? Well in simple terms this means what page of google your site ends up on and how it appears. SEO is a competition since everyone wants to be number 1. Well now that you know what SEO is you are probably wondering “How do I use SEO in WordPress”?

WordPress makes SEO as simple as they can to help you succeed. SEO is actually very complicated and not the easiest thing to learn in one day. The good thing is that you don’t need to know everything about SEO to be a good freelancer. In order to maintain a WordPress website you just need to understand their basic setup to keep your client happy. If you are working in a very competitive niche don’t expect to rank on the first page of google. If you are able to do it you will be more valued as a freelancer and will have an easier time getting work.

To access SEO on WordPress go to the section titled “All In One SEO” or on the top of the site where it says “SEO” (I know who would have guessed it was there). By clicking on it you will open the general setting which is where we will be focusing. All of the basic general settings are located here and everything has a info button on it for additional help. We will focus on the section titled “Home Page Settings”. There is a lot of other sections on this page but for now we will focus on the more important and basic SEO. Now I’m sure whoever hired you has info in all of these text boxes. I can also guarantee this is the most basic, uncreative writing you have ever seen. My first piece of advice is delete everything there.

Now that your title is gone let’s start thinking of a new one. Now the title isn’t the most important thing in the world. This is what appears when you look at the tab at the top of your browser. You can easily just do the normal name of the site. If you are as big as Amazon or Ebay go for it but odds are the site you’re working on has a name like greatcheapinsurance.com. This just looks unprofessional, cheap, and poorly designed. WordPress will tell you the average title is around 57 characters. All this means is the title should be a decent description but not too long and not to short. Think of something creative that someone will remember when they go to close the tab. Don’t use your 2nd grade description words no matter how tempting. This is a lesson for every section and every piece of writing you do. Great, like, nice basic descriptions words like this should be avoided. If you need to look up synonyms to improve your word choices.

The title is just the foreplay for the main event, the “Home Description”. That is the little blurb of text that appears under the website name on google. Whoever is paying you will probably only notice this change so make sure this is done well. Once again WordPress gives a suggestion for how many characters you to use. This means that it should be a decent length, around a sentence or two. Nothing too fancy or flash but enough to cover what the site is about. Talk about what your site is about and what it can do for the viewer. Give them something to wonder about so they need to come to your site to figure it out. Another way to go is to tell them how to further their lives and how this site provides the best advice. There are hundreds of ways to work it but these are two strong options. Your boss will want to see a creative unique piece that will draw in new viewers.

Now we are on to the really challenging part that most people struggle with. Keywords. Keywords. Keywords. Love them or hate them (you will probably hate them). Now this determines if it will even be on a page when someone googles something. Ever notice when you google Reddit you only see results related to Reddit. This is all thanks to keywords. It basically tells google what your site is about. Stronger keywords mean the more likely your site is to appear when someone googles something vague. Relevant keywords determine where it is ranked on google. Now the question is how should we pick our keywords? Well the easiest way is to pay someone to figure that out for you. Well that’s kinda why you are here so doesn’t help you out too much. Unless you want to sub it out to someone else and not make as much then this is not a liable option for you. As a freelancer every you are probably after every dollar you can get. Now we want to find relevant keywords that are highly searched. Google offers a great tool called google trends (https://www.google.com/trends/) . It tells you how often a word or phrase is searched in google. This will require some research and creative thinking to find what will work. Don’t bother wasting your time with basic sayings and uncreative words since the pros have trouble ranking with this. Think deep about what the site is about and what the people want from it. Think out of the box and get a little uncomfortable and you will think of something that will work out fine.

As a freelancer all of your clients will ask for help with their SEO so get use to working on it. They won’t understand the thought process that goes into the keywords or into the writing. They probably wont go into the SEO so they won’t see all of your hard work. If you want to be payed well and be recommended again make sure what they see is worthwhile. They will want to see the site move up on google but they don’t understand how this happens. With time and practice you will get better results every time. . He/She will be please with any improvements that you can get in rankings or views. If you really want to impress them walk them though what you did and how these changes impacted their sites. If you can use data to prove you know what you are doing.

Now there is way more to learn about SEO and how to work it on WordPress. This is all you need to know in order to do a good job when your first starting out. As a freelance you should be a jack of all trades when it comes to WordPress. Know how to succeed in every area not just one small little part. The more you know the less competition that you will have on low level projects. There is always more to learn no matter how long you research or work. In the end just keep working your best and keep bringing home the bacon!