- Written by: Revital Vered Teva & Uri vered
- Last update: 28/05/2020
- WordPress - SEO
Looking for a quick and simple way to promote your WordPress site?
It’s important for us to emphasize, from the beginning that this is a process that requires thought, planning and work.
But we can guarantee that it is possible to rank number one on Google with organic promotion!
WordPress website promotion has changed a lot over the last 10 years,
On this page you will find up to date tips to help you promote your WordPress site in minimum time with maximum results.
We’ve created a table of contents that will help you navigate this WordPress site promotion article easily:
WordPress SEO – Promoting WordPress sites on Google
Promoting Websites on Google
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It's important to remember that Google is not your customer!
Promoting your WordPress site is not about what Google thinks, but rather about giving real value to the web surfers who visit your site, and for them to like your content.
If people connect to your content and feel they have received important information – they form a significant connection with your site, and they are, therefore much more likely to become your customers.
Your article bay be 100% optimized for Google and other search engines, but if your readers leave it after a few seconds, it will not be promoted on Google and, of course, it will not help you get new customers.
One of the most important parameters in Google’s site ranking is the amount of time that users spend on the site. The higher the quality, the more interesting the site, the longer they will stay.
In summary, it is important to spend time optimizing your site, but ultimately the most important thing is to give real value and speak in a language that your prospects can understand.
Don’t have a website yet? Click here for the complete guide to building WordPress sites for business.
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Promoting WordPress Sites on Google - We Made Many Mistakes along the Way!
Our journey promoting WordPress sites was a bumpy road. We paid a heavy price for the mistakes we made along the way, but learned a lot from them.
It all began when we left our paying jobs to start an independent business. At first, we created income through Google AdSense by setting up and promoting content sites in Hebrew and English. During this period, we earned thousands of shekels from Google each month. (Yes! Google pays 50% of the click price on an ad to the site owner). That entire business was wiped out in one night in 2011, with the Panda Update, and we found ourselves in a financial and professional crisis.
But we were still fascinated by the field of digital marketing. We did not despair.
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We began to study the field in depth!
We took web promotion courses in Israel and around the world. We read every research article we could lay our hands on. We joined website promotion forums and examined every possible angle in the industry.
Slowly we began to formulate an organic method, and a path to generate constant traffic to our sites. We realized that the first step is to grasp what is different, what is special in our business and then to create content with real value for customers.
Over time, traffic on our websites increased, friends and acquaintances who heard about our success asked us for help promoting their sites and so we established muchmore.co.il
In the article below, we’ve summarized the quick and easy way to promote your WordPress site. Take note of the links embedded in the article – they point the way to additional articles which can deepen your knowledge. Enjoy.
Introduction:
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What is SEO Promotion?
Website promotion is a way to get traffic and potential customers to a site by earning higher search engine rankings.
In English, organic site promotion is called SEO which is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization.
Despite the popular notion that site promotion is very complex and technical, we believe you can do it too, it is far less complex than people think. 🙂
Studies from 2015 show that there is a big increase in investment and interest from business owners of all sizes in promoting websites, SEO (see the graph below) and it’s worth your while to join this trend as well!
WordPress site promotion and search engine optimization is not about faking results or promotion tricks.
The purpose of optimizing your WordPress site through organic promotion (free of advertising and promotion fees) is to make your site more search engine friendly.
WordPress site promotion also optimizes the content for the web surfers who come to your site – by ensuring the quality of your content, making it interesting, original, editing it in order to make it easy to read and understand – for example by splitting it into paragraphs and adding clear headlines.
Sponsored promotion (like Google AdWords) as opposed to organic promotion, is an ad where the advertiser pays for each click on your ad (“pay-per-click”) leading to your WordPress site.
If you already have sponsored advertising – it’s important to know that the more your site is promoted organically, the lower will be your cost for each sponsored click.
We decided to do some research and see if there really is any interest in the world of SEO. According to research in the past 5-6 years, there has been a clear rise in the interest of small and large businesses around the world in SEO, and the demand curve for sponsored advertising such as Google Ads and PPC pay-per-click has flattened or even dropped.
We searched through Google Trend (looking at the number of searches and trends over time) and saw very clearly that the amount of interest in SEO has been rising sharply since 2004. The level of interest in sponsored promotion – Google Ads and PPC pay-per-click shows a clear decline.
Of course, SEO on Google WordPress also shows growth over the last 5 years…
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SEO - Why is it important?
Google search is the biggest source of potential customer traffic for most websites.
Google’s search engine ranking algorithm is very complex and has thousands of parameters,
But even so, it is not that smart…. It needs your guidance to understand what is important for you to promote.
An average site has tens of thousands of words. One of the goals of website promotion is to explain to Google what the most important words are on your site.
For example – if you came to this page through a Google search, you probably searched for “promoting WordPress sites in Google”, we “explained to Google” through the SEO of this page that this phrase is – an important group of words in the article.
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Promoting a WordPress site on Google - SEO
We really believe that promoting Google WordPress sites brings results that justify your investment.
With over nine years of experience in website promotion, we can confidently say that if you work right – you’ll get inquiries and paying customers from your website.
True, it doesn’t just happen on its own.
The WordPress site and blog system, that began as a simple blogging platform is gaining momentum and today about a third of all websites in the world are built on WordPress.
If your website is a WordPress site, you chose it wisely!
WordPress Website SEO - Basic Operations:
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Check this - Is Your Site Blocked for Search Engines?
Your WordPress admin panel has an option which enables you to hide your site from Google and all search engines.
The purpose of this option is to give you time to work on the site before it is ready for publication.
We recommend never to select this option!
If this option is enabled – Google comes to your site – and for a period of time, sometimes for weeks or months, the site tells Google that the door is closed, and Google, to save resources, stops visiting the site.
Google really “doesn’t like” this and it can take a long time even after you have opted out of this option before Google comes back to visit the site.
We recommend that, after considering your basic design, you prepare your content on Word documents and then upload them immediately, live on-line. You can begin with one page at first and progress from there, one page at a time.
It’s OK even if the site is not perfect at first. It will take some time for it to start progressing on Google searches. If it is really important for you not to upload before the site is “perfect” we recommend that you build the site on a temporary domain and not on your permanent domain!
In any case – if your site promotion isn’t advancing or if not all the pages on your site have been crawled – check to see if the “hide from Google” option is selected on the WordPress admin page.
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Link structure - what is the URL of your pages
The initial definition of a new WordPress site is the site name + number. It looks something like this: muchmore.co.il/?p=123
It really does not look good in a Google search or in any link you leave on any social network like Facebook.
It is clear that a URL like – muchmore.co.il/contact is better than muchmore.co.il/?p=123.
so what do we need to do?
Under WordPress admin settings, select ‘Settings’ >> ‘Link structure’ and select ‘Post Name. This option will allow you to create the URL or page that has a link to the page / post you created, such as – about, contact, blog, etc …
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Is your site secured with SSL - HTTPS?
Securing your site with an SSL certificate is a really critical issue in the promotion of WordPress websites that can cause you and your site users damage.
If you have a store on the site – it is absolutely mandatory to install an SSL certificate.
SSL security is especially important for users of your site. If your site is based on the old http technology and not https any information that users will leave on your site is completely exposed!
Google announced in 2018 that it will “penalize” any website that is not secured with SSL by reducing their SEO ranking.
In addition, Google will sometimes send an alert that the site is not secure for users who have received a link to the site by email or WhatsApp.
Without Security/Insecure
Secured with SSL/SSL security installed
Secured
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Checking how many pages Google crawled on your site? And which are the most important pages?
This is a very simple and important test!
The result reflects how many pages Google has crawled on your site including pages, posts, categories and more.
Google usually displays the pages it thinks are the most important on the site.
The results allow you to assess whether the site hierarchy needs to be changed, so that Google, and the website users will also understand which pages are the most important on the site.
Checking how many pages Google has crawled and which pages it displays can inform you that not all of the pages on the site were crawled. If this is the case there is probably a problem on the site that needs to be examined in depth.
To check, go to Google standard search page and enter the word “site:” in the search box: then your domain name.
For example, site: muchmore.co.il
Focus, Uniqueness, Value and Checking Out Competitors
Regardless of the platform, your site is installed on (WordPress, Wix, Gumla),
for the process of promoting your site, it is important for you to have a clear understanding
of what is unique about your products and services that differentiates you from your competitors.
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What are the 4 steps you should take before starting your site promotion?
Here are some tips that will help you promote your WordPress website in minimum time and with maximum results.
Our goal is to save you time!
So, before we start promoting your website, it’s important to clarify:
What exactly are your customers looking for?
How to give them real value?
What is the area you would most like to promote in your business?
What sets you apart from your competitors?
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What are the pros and cons of doing WordPress SEO on your site by yourself?
Should you write your own promotional content for your WordPress website on your own?
It depends on your writing skills. On the one hand:
- Obviously, it’s cheaper to do it by yourself
- Only you have the “hands-on” professional experience and the deep knowledge of your field, with your daily experiences of successes and a well of ideas for useful tips for your readers.
- Only you have the intimate knowledge about what your customers need and experience when using your product
- This information is essential if you want to capture first place in search engine results.
On the other hand:
- You might need a skilled writer and someone with a familiarity with SEO tools to get your message across effectively.
- Quality site promotion allows you to create original, high-quality and valuable content for customers.
- The web is full of low-quality content. Nearly everything has been said before and sometimes one needs to find new ways to say it.
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What is important to do before setting up a new WordPress site?
If you have begun building a WORDPRESS site, we recommend that you stop for a second (or two…).
It is vitally important that you test your marketing focus before your new site goes live. A new site with well-targeted keywords and texts >> will really fly in terms of its promotion on Google.
It turns out that GOOGLE’s initial crawling of a new site has great importance for the site’s success going forward.
What should you do?
Decide on the uniqueness and business focus of the site.
See what your competitors are promoting.
Decide on about five marketing directions that are worth promoting (five products or services) – and open a page for each.
Install YOAST and define the important words
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WordPress SEO & Site Promotion – Researching Your Competitors
Full Disclosure…
Before we began to write this article, I Google-searched the following phrases: “Promoting WordPress sites on Google” and “WordPress SEO site promotion” and looked carefully at the first 10 search results.
I was looking to see if there was anything new, interesting or original in any of the results. I checked to see if anyone gave any really useful tips or if it was all marketing and selling content.
I must point out that I was pretty disappointed.
In my opinion Google has not done a good enough job here. Of the top ten sites that first appeared on Google, almost all of them mainly offered marketing and promotional content.
In my opinion,
Only very few sites gave any information with any real value.
What really amazes me is how, in all ten sites that appeared first on Google there is almost no reference to super important topics like:
How to find your focus?
What’s differentiates you from your competition?
What is unique about you?
How do you find out what important questions your customers want answered?
How do you write quality content that gives real value?
As a first step I strongly recommend that you begin with a little research. Google your field and check out the content in the top 10 results. What works and what does not? Figure out how to make your content more valuable, more interesting and original.
From our experience real value is one of the most important parameters for promoting your site. And also … anyone who comes to your site and receives real answers to the questions she is asking will be impressed with your professionalism and is more likely to contact you.
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Google WordPress Site Promotion - in the Time of Corona
We’ve been through tough times before. We’ll get through this as well. On the day after, every business that promoted itself, that proved itself to be flexible, will be strong and will appear among the first search results. And yes, there will be many searches the day after …
In my opinion, we have today, more than ever a great opportunity to take time out for thinking and refocusing. This is a time to find more ways to promote your business, more markets, more technologies, more services.
Training sessions, online ZOOM courses, writing stimulating and high-value articles.
Now is the time to edit and to upload articles to your WordPress website, and to promote them in every way possible.
The emphasis is on creating original and high-quality content that gives real value to the customer and highlights your expertise!
WordPress Plugins - Our Recommended and Selected Plugins for WordPress SEO
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YOAST SEO
YOAST is without doubt the best SEO plugin for promoting your WordPress site.
The YOAST plugin has more than 5 million downloads so when you install it you are not alone 🙂
And… the good news is that it’s free – you don’t need to pay for the plug-in.
So, what does YOAST SEO know how to do?
- Easy control your website’s appearance in Google searches
- Defining the visibility and promotion of each post, page, picture, category and more on the site
- Selecting promotion Key Words for testing and inclusion in the content and site description
- Adding a sitemap (we recommend this) to connect to your Google Webmaster account
- And more….
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Speed Improvement Plugin - WP FASTEST CACHE
The upload speed of your WordPress website is critical both for your user’s browsing experience and for Google promotion.
Google has announced that sites that are slow for browsing on mobile phones will receive lower search ranking.
In addition, a slow site makes it difficult for Google to crawl all its pages.
One of the best ways to improve site speed is through Cache technology, which allows you to save a static HTML page that loads faster.
WP Fastest Cache – is a free plugin that usually improves your site’s upload speed.
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How does Elementor’s Page Builder help Worpress SEO Site Promotion in Google?
We recommended that you read the Elementor section of this article if you have an Elementor plugin on your site, or if you are interested in an Elementor for promoting or building pages on your WordPress site.
We use Elementor on all WordPress sites that we build and promote and recommend it as an important tool that saves time in promoting WordPress sites.
We have found quite a few guides on the operation of Elementor for WordPress sites, but we did not find any guide that relates to Elementor from the perspective of WordPress site promotion, including website optimization and SEO.
After several years of experience working with Elementor, we’ve written a guide focusing on the pros and cons of the Elementor plugin and how to check if Elementor slows down your site.
Our guide shows the correct way to use the components of Elementor, such as “the call-to-action”, headings, H1-H2-H3, adding icons that can be article headings, the proper use of video, adding a table of contents etc.
Example of Elementor’s Call to Action component:
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Do you have too many plugins on the WordPress site?
Yes.
There are lots of free software plugins for WordPress and I’ve seen many sites that have forty and even more plugins installed.
I recommend using a minimum number of plugins, as any WordPress plugin slows down the site a bit, and may collide with other plugins and can actually crash the site.
This is similar to what happens on a smartphone where there are many free apps. Installing too many of them causes the device to slow down, and eventually to stop functioning.
I recommend using a maximum of ten software extensions on the site. When it comes to a complex site with a store and other features, twenty plugins is the maximum.
Why WordPress?
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Is there really an advantage to WordPress in terms of SEO?
The short answer is “yes”.
Not because the system itself is so special, but because there are a lot of free plugins (unique additions to WordPress) that if used well, can be a great help in promoting the site.
Examples of the benefits of WordPress for promotion on Google:
- A free extension like YOAST lets you easily control how your page appears in Google searches
- YOAST also lets you select a Key Word phrase for promotion and checks if we added it to the content and site description
- A free and really good plugin like Elementor helps to create outstanding graphical appearance easily
- It is easy to control the URL of the site and the entire link hierarchy
- It is very easy to add new content including video images and more
- If there is a page of articles or a main blog page, then new articles and their images will automatically appear there
- It is quick and easy to tag images to make the site appear in image searches
- For every question that you may have, there are many WordPress forums in both Hebrew and English including very active Facebook forums where you can find answers
- Finding a WordPress developer or programmer, should they be required will not be a problem
- If you want to add a shop to your website, a forum, or to make the site bilingual, etc, – WordPress has many free plugins like Woocommerce (Digital Store) that help expand the site easily.
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WordPress or Wix - Which suites you better?
SEO requires attention and work regardless of the platform your site is built on. In our experience the promotion of WordPress sites is much easier and more effective. From our experience, promoting and running Wix sites for example – takes a lot more time and is significantly less effective for promotion.
The most important point, in our opinion (without going into too much technical detail) is that it is easier to promote WordPress sites than Wix Sites!
Our specialty is building websites that are easy to promote organically, free of charges to Google or other advertisers. In our opinion, the most important thing about a business website is its ability to bring paying customers to your business.
Our intention is to build a focused website, that will be promoted on Google from its first day on the air, and from our experience over the last ten years, it is much easier to promote WordPress sites than Wix sites.
The following graph shows the number of searches for WordPress sites versus WIX or DRUPAL.
It is no coincidence that there is much more interest in WordPress – it is the best system for promoting Google sites. So, if you also have a WordPress site – you are already on the right track!
Practical tools for promoting your WordPress site on Google:
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How to add WordPress tags to pages?
For those unfamiliar, WordPress allows you to add tags to any post on your WordPress site. Later in the article we will also talk about how to add tags to pages as well.
Assuming you have done keyword research, we recommend adding about five keywords to each article as tags.
This is a great way to tell both readers and Google about the content of the article.
Through the use of keywords that bypass competition, the volume of website traffic can be significantly increased.
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Start a Google Business page - that is connected to your WordPress site
Google Business links to your WordPress site (from experience !!!) will greatly help promote your site.
In Business Google you can publish posts regularly with promotions and updates, upload photos, videos and more.
If you have not yet opened a Google business for your business:
I recommend you contact now about half an hour and start a Google business from here – https://business.google.com
All it takes is a Gmail address and a physical address (can also be a residential address).
Google will send a postcard with a code that needs to be entered and lo and behold, you have a Google business.
If you have Google Business – Google Business
It is recommended to update it regularly, upload posts, videos, promotions, updates.
Whenever a new post appears on the site – it is recommended to write a short post in Google Business with a short description of the post, a photo and a link to the post.
A weekly Google Business update will look good in the number of visits to your WordPress site.
Your customers can also recommend you through Google Business which can greatly help in advertising the business.
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Exact keywords with long tails
Having quality content on your website, including articles and marketing content, is vitally important but it is not the whole story.
To have your WordPress site well-promoted on Google, you need also to fine-tune your keywords.
We rec0omend selecting Accurate keywords with as many searches as possible and with as little competition as possible such as “examples of critical path analysis“and not general words such as “critical path“.
Let’s look at another example, if you are a massage therapist – don’t start promoting a keyword like “massage” unless you want to compete with Wikipedia and other large and highly promoted sites!
We recommend choosing words like “Swedish massage in New York” assuming that the New York area is within your radius… and of course to check first in a regular Google search and through Google AdWords that this phrase does have searches!
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Uniqueness and differentiation - the way we went ... is special!
Promoting WordPress Sites on Google – Real Value
In order for your WordPress website to overtake the sites of competitors in search engine results, we recommend that you fill it with value. True value, that will meet the desires and cravings of the customer.
The days when attractive pictures and tempting prices were enough to close a deal are over.
Attracting customers is a dynamic game. A game that is constantly refined. Market analysis shows that Google and the search engines can identify and promote sites which offer true, original value. Sites that enhance the customer’s life.
Promoting WordPress Websites on Google – Focus
Our goal is for every page on your site to reflect your business focus, differentiation and branding and to drive every potential customer to action:
Positioning yourself as an expert in your field – will attract more prospects
In the video above, Revital spoke about focus, uniqueness and differentiation.
The following article tells the the story of how Revital and I found our way to define our unique and differentiated brand as website promoters
Speed and Security
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Speed Test - Improving the speed of your WordPress site
One of the things that affect the promotion of your WordPress website on Google is the website’s upload speed.
Because about 70-80% of surfers will find your site browsing on their cellphones, Google is paying close attention to the speed of page upload.
Users who land on a slow site will abandon it pretty quickly… Today patience is in short supply… …
About six months ago, we began to promote a large site full of marketing content and lots of interesting articles, that received relatively little free organic traffic. Only by improving the site’s speed did we manage to double the number of organic search entries within a month.
I recommend starting with the speed test!
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Improving WordPress Speed with Cache Technology (CACHE)
One of the reasons we like WordPress so much is the amazing number of free software plugins.
For example: free Cache extensions that will, without too much hassle, help improve the upload speed of your site.
Cache technology allows you to save a mirror image (static HTML page) of every page on your site, which helps the site load up much faster.
It’s a little confusing because there are so many free cache extensions that you can download – in the next article I’ll explain a little about cache technology and recommend how to choose the best plugin for your site.
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Who does your site belong to?
Another critical step that is important to take is to make sure your site is listed on your name! It would be very sad if the site you put so much work into just disappears someday, because the site’s domain name and storage is not listed on your name.
WordPress SEO - Writen by:
Revital Vered Teva
Designs content-based strategies for website promotion and writes content
Uri Vered
Expert in promoting WordPress sites on Google, building WordPress sites
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