I am often asked about how I do the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on my websites.

I AM NOT a guru by any stretch of the imagination! However, I can share with you what I do and what has worked in the past.

There are two main stages of SEO, on page and off-page.

On-page is the content on your posts and pages of your website, while off-page is more about the speed of your site, the quality of your hosting, the domain age and authority, backlinks and a bunch more little tricks.

Let’s start with the most basic aspects – helpful plugins:

My favourite SEO plug-in is All In One SEO. I like it the most because it is very visual and it leads you step by step through the process of making sure your on page SEO is top notch.

There are many SEO plugins you can use such as Rank Math, Yoast, The SEO Framework and lots of others, however I keep coming back to AIOSEO, and it is one of the marketplace leaders.

The other plugin that I think is very important to help you with your on page and off page SEO is Site Kit by Google

This plugin links your site automatically to Google Analytics and then by default to Google Search Console.

Google Analytics gives you a very detailed overview of your website’s performance in the search engine results page (SERP). This information is then pulled back into Google Site Kit on your website’s dashboard.

This means that you actually don’t have to leave your website to get a good overview of your page’s performance.

Google Site Kit automatically indexes your page with Google. What this means is Site Kit tells the Google search engine “hey this is a brand new page over here”.

It still takes time for the Google bots to crawl the page thoroughly and determine where it’s going to go into the search engine results, so your page might be discovered but it might not be fully indexed immediately.

If you don’t use any kind of indexing tool such as All In One SEO or Google Site Kit it can take a very, very long time for the Google bots to find your page or your post. 

Both Google Analytics and Search Console are very good tools to help you keep track of how your website is performing and also Search Console will help you diagnose any problems with your website.

Some of the key elements in search console are:

• managing 404 errors (page not found)
• ensuring that the pages you want to be indexed are “do follow” pages 
• and the pages you don’t want indexed are “no follow” pages
• speed of site
• search terms
• and a lot more….

When it comes to writing a post or developing a page All In One SEO can help to ensure that everything on that page is going to help the search engine optimization of that page.

The plugin allows you to go through the page step by step ensuring that every element that Google is looking at for optimized pages is there.

Elements  like:

• internal and external backlinks
• an optimized headline
• having alt tags in your images 
• having rich media on your page
• the readability of your text – are your words too difficult, are your paragraphs too long?
• is the Meta description the right length for Google search engine 
• do you have a featured keyword which is optimized throughout your post

I use moz.com as a free keyword research tool. Sign up for a free account on Moz and go to the free keyword research tool.

 I use the keyword suggestions page. I type in my base keyword and I’m look for higher volume and lower competition keywords.

Informational keywords are looking for information and stories about their keyword.

Transactional and commercial keywords show buying intent.

Using this tool you can find the best “higher volume search and lower competition” keyword to use as your featured keyword in your blog post. Then design your entire blog post around that keyword.

Keyword density is very important in your post. You should have your featured keyword in the title, in the first paragraph and then some of your subheadings, and about three or four times throughout your blog post. I use that featured keyword as my alt tags for images as well.

Backlinking is a much more difficult task as it can take a long time for your backlinks to be indexed and recognized but what backlinking does is create, or build, site authority.

I use about a dozen free websites that allow you to create a Blog.

If I use ChatGPT to help me write my article then once I’ve got the outline and a bit of the text, I take it over to a Google doc for editing. I then ask ChatFPT to write around a 300 word review with an equal mix of positive and negative points about the blog post.

If I’m being really pedantic I use spin rewriter to create a dozen versions of that review post so I can put unique content on every one of those dozen free blogs.

I then I add my featured keyword to the alt tags of the images, in various places in the review article, and then I add the link back to my main article.

Now these random free sites will not get indexed all on their own – well, they will, but it will take a long time for the Google bots to find these pages!  

So I use a syndication tool called SyndLab and SyndBuddy (by Joshua Zamora on JVZoo – no, I don’t have an affiliate link!!!).

Syndication is exactly what I am doing when I share my backlinks to those dozen free websites, however, these tools automate the process (not well enough, but at least some of the job is done!). 

In the process of setting up a syndication I can index the URL through Syndlab and that will, eventually, help get those backlinks indexed.

Off page SEO is a lot more complex than the on page optimization. Regardless of if you want to go to the effort of setting up those backlinking blogs, the on page optimization is a must for your site.