Transcription
Hi there, my name is Ferdy Kopershoek for WordPressKing.com, and in this video, I will teach you everything I know about search engine optimization, also known as SEO.
Before we start this tutorial, I would like to ask you for a favor. If this video is in any way helpful for you, please give the video a thumbs up. If you want to have more videos like this, then subscribe to my channel.
Let's dive right into it. What is SEO? It stands for search engine optimization, and it is everything you do to improve the search engine rankings on your website.
So basically, SEO is a method you apply in order to be found better in the search results of Google and other search engines. SEO is not one way to optimize your website, but there are a lot of ways to do it, and that's what we're going to talk about in this tutorial.
Before you apply SEO to your website, it can help you if you make a list with words and phrases you want to be found by in Google. For me, it is WordPress tutorials, WordPress help, how to make a website, complete website tutorial, and WordPress things. So I'm going to try to be found by words and phrases like that.
The first thing in SEO you need to take a look at is the domain name you have. If you want to be found, a domain name is very important in the search results. If I’m going to search for Apple, the first website that comes up is apple.com. If I'm searching for 6 pm, the first domain that comes up is 6pm.com.
I live in the Netherlands, and for football, which means soccer, the first website that comes along is voetbal.nl. So you see, a domain name is very important. You could use the phrase you want to be found by in your domain name if the domain is still available.
The second thing that is very important is the title. This is the title on the page, and if I search for how to make a website, I see all kinds of advertisements. Here we see the first organic results. How to make a website, exactly like this?
So the title is also important. The second one, "make a website," "how to make a website," is very important, and the more you place it at the left, the earlier in the title you start with the text you want to be found by, the better you will come up in the search results.
Another example: "learn how to play guitar?" "Learn to play the guitar," so use it in your title if you want to be found by "learn how to play guitar." I have a website, and I want to be found by photography Maassluis in the Netherlands.
So if I type photography Maassluis, I have to scroll down. I have to say a little bit here: photography Maassluis. It’s most at the left, and I'm found at ferdykopershoek.com/portfolio/photography and not just ferdykopershoek.com. Why? Because here it says in the title photography Maassluis.
The advantage of titles is that you can create unlimited pages and blog posts and give them all relevant titles. So you can make blog posts about every word or phrase you want to be found by. That's the reason I created a portfolio item with the title photography Maassluis.
Although I'm not number one in Google with that phrase, I get a bit more exposure, and if you keep on making relevant content, then eventually you will be found better in Google. So when it comes to pages and blog posts, the sky is the limit.
It is a great way to get more exposure through the Google search results. If I click here, you see the title photography Maassluis. It says it here in the URL photography maassluis, and I could not put it on my home page because I'm doing more than photography Maassluis.
So I say photography, movies, and web design. I go back to Google, but we know it's important to have a good domain name and to have a good title on every page of your website.
Another example is "400 jaar Maassluis," a blog post I made two years ago about my city, which exists for 400 years. I made a blog post about it, and if I take a look here, just "400 years of Maassluis," again it's at the left, "400 years Maassluis," and it's number one, two, three, four. Why? Because I used the title over here at the left.
So I have my website wordpressking.com, and the title was "WordPress King, here to serve you." There's a slogan here: "to serve you." I'm here to serve you with all kinds of tutorials to help you make a beautiful website, but people are not going to search for "here to serve you."
If they want to learn how to make a great website, they are going to search for "how to create a website." So if you have a slogan "here to serve you," I should not put it in a title if you want to be found better in Google.
In the title, you need to say where you want to be found on. So in my case, I have WordPressKing.com, and I want to be found by the term "how to create a WordPress website." Later in this video, I will show you how to get that done in your WordPress website with a great SEO tool.
The third one is images. If you search for Photoshop tricks and go to images, this is YouTube, also YouTube. Here, if I say "view image," you see here in the URL, Photoshop tricks, not IMG 001, IMG 002, but give your images titles that are relevant to the picture and where you want to be found on in Google.
Again, my website photography Maassluis. This is mine, Ferdy Kopershoek, this is mine, and this is mine, and a lot of our pictures are mine. If I go to websites, you see at the picture resource, this is mine, and this is mine.
So again, here photography Maassluis. It's important to give your photos a title like that. If I go back to images and I go for instance to this one and I go to "view image," here it says photography Maassluis, and that's how I can be found.
It says here Amy van Soest. If I search for Amy van Soest, go to images, this is my picture Ferdy Kopershoek, and this is a picture of mine. So that's a way to be found better by giving all your pictures a title that has something to do with the picture.
The fourth tip I have: you need to use good title tags, H1 tag, H2 tag. I'm going to show you how to do this tutorial. So I'm going to do a specific title, and I say, "What other fonts look like Google’s logo?"
The first result is designforhackers.com, and I copy this and I click here, and I search for the phrase, and here's a title tag: "What other fonts look like Google’s logo?" So it's quite a specific term, but sometimes people are searching for specific terms.
If I take a look at the source, I'm going to search for it. It says over here, "What other fonts look like Google’s logo?" and you see it's an H3 tag. So H1, H2, H3 are important to be found better.
So that's another advice on how to be found better in Google. Of course, these are tips, and they can help you, but the most important thing is that you offer value to your visitors. You can optimize what you want, but in the end, you have to have something valuable for a visitor.
So you have to have great content about a certain subject or some advice, and that will, in the long run, help you to be found better in Google. But we can also use Google to find better terms.
So I want to be found by WordPress, and if I take a look here, it said WordPress themes again downloads. So if I search for best WordPress, this is the first thing that comes up.
If you type something, Google will give you some suggestions, and in that way, you can see what people are searching for. So I'm going to create a blog post about this because Google says with a suggestion that people are searching for this.
So I will go to WordpressKing.com/WP-admin to log in. If you want to learn how to create a login page like this, please click here for the tutorial login. If I go to the front page and to blog, I have three blog posts. They're all personal: "No way back," "I love WordPress," and "Good news, I'm back from honeymoon, and I have a thousand subscribers," but no information about how to create a beautiful WordPress website or how to see which theme is the best in WordPress.
So I’m going to create a new post, and the post title is "Best WordPress themes 2016." Why? Because people are searching for this phrase. If I take a look here, "2016 best WordPress themes advertisement," "30 best clean WordPress themes," so you see "best WordPress themes 2016."
So again, you see here it's important to have a good title. What you see in the URL: WordPress themes. WordPress themes, so we need to let it come back every time. So my title will be "Best WordPress themes 2016."
What you see here is wordpressKing.com/blog/best-WordPress-themes-2016. Let's take a look at the blog categories. What I see is that all these blog categories have not much to do with the subject I will write about.
So I make a new category and say "themes." Enter, and I'm going to make a text about this. So I wrote a blog post about the three best themes in my opinion. The third one, the X Theme, the second one Avada, and the first one is Enfold. I love this theme.
Why? I added some external links. There are blue over here, so that's a way to optimize your page: to put some external links in it. But you also can do is underline the term you want to be found on.
So let me search for "Best WordPress themes after 2016." I can say make it bold, and I can underline "WordPress themes" over here and do the same for "X themes," make it bold. "Avada," make it bold once. The word you want to be found on, I should make them bold.
So that's what I did: some external links and some words I made bold. The next thing I want to import some images. I uploaded them already, so I click here, I say "Add media," and go to my media library.
This is the X theme. WordPress X themes, you will see the title of the images were "WordPress X theme." Over here, I removed the dashes, and I copy this and I place it here. It's Alt Text, and I want to display it at the left or at the right, not in full size, but large like this.
Insert it into the post. It’s still quite big, so I'm going to make it a little bit smaller. Update, and then the second one Avada at media. Avada, this one, small at the left, insert it into the post, and Enfold is here again at media, right medium.
Oh, I need to have the Enfold theme. This one: WordPress Enfold theme. Right, so this is important. If you upload an image, it has to have a name like "WordPress Enfold theme." The title needs to be "WordPress Enfold theme," and the Alt text needs to be "WordPress Enfold theme."
Right, insert it into the posts, and then I want to have a featured image. Actually, I don't know what I could choose. Maybe I can get some inspiration: "Best WordPress themes," images. There are all kinds of themes.
So let's take, I saw this one, which is Enfold, set the featured image. So now we have over here a Header one, so it's an H1 tag, over here H1 opening X theme. So that's good for the search results.
I have some things bold. I put some images in it which are optimized for Google, some external links, and now I want to create some internal links. Let's start with Avada. If you want to follow a tutorial on how to make a website with the Avada theme, click here.
Now I go to the website, and I go to tutorials for WordPress tutorials, and I click on the Avada theme tutorial. I copy this link and paste it here. Maybe it’s better if they link on the Avada theme.
You know what? "Learn how to make a website with the Avada theme." Select it, insert link, paste it, apply. It's okay. This is an internal link. If you want to be found better in Google, this is an internal link.
If you want to rank higher in the search results of Google, it helps to use internal links on your website. So link from one page on your website to another page on your website.
So the more blog posts you have with all these different subjects, the easier it becomes to use internal links within your website. So the second one will be Enfold. "Learn how to make a website with the Enfold theme."
Let me see if it works the way you can press CTRL or Command K. Go to the link options, and now I search for "Enfold WordPress tutorial for beginners 2015." I edit. That's another way to link internal.
I have a picture over here, featured image, and I'm going to publish it. So let's view the post: "Best WordPress themes 2016." People can share on Facebook. It's everything to do with the newspaper theme I have: X-theme, Avada, and Enfold.
I always say optimize your website for Google, but rather offer great available content for your visitors. You can optimize your website until Google itself wants to learn from you how you do that, but if you have no useful available content, you will not attract more visitors.
You want the content of your website to be so good that visitors are willing to share it, and becoming number one in Google for your desired search term does not happen overnight. It takes effort and perseverance.
I want to make a call to action in my blog post, where visitors can comment on what WordPress theme they like. When a comment is added to a blog post, the content of the post increases, which is good for the Google ranking.
Longer blog posts with relevant content about a subject are a great option to let people comment on your pages and your blog posts. Edit posts: "Your favorite theme - what is your favorite theme and why? Let us know below in the comment section."
OK, update. We did quite some optimization already, and we did not even install Yoast yet, which is an SEO plugin. Now people can comment, which is great.
OK, let's install Yoast. I go to the back-end of the website. I go to plugins, add new, and search for Yoast SEO. Enter and search for the plugin that is installed more than a million times, and it is this one. Install now and activate the plugin.
The plugin is activated. Remove this, and I remove that. So I go to posts, all posts, "Best WordPress themes 2016," and I scroll down all the way. Yoast SEO, and this is new since we have installed the plugin.
This looks like Google, and this is what we can change on our website. So I can decide here how I want my WordPress blog post to be shown in the Google search results.
So this looks nice, and here you see a code. It says title, page of the title, page separator, that's okay, and the site name. Well, I don't like this. So if I go to SEO titles and metas and then go to post types, site template, I can say title page, and actually, I like this more.
I just say WordPress King. So it gives us the title or the page and this and WordPress King. I do the same over here for pages and for title templates and for products. I save the changes, and now if I go to posts and I go to "Best WordPress Themes 2016," I scroll all the way down, it will be something like this.
So that looks a little bit better. If you want to change it, just click on it, and then you can change it over here. "Best WordPress themes 2016," WordPressKing.com/themes/best WordPress themes 2016.
If you want to change this, you can change it over here, and then it will be changed over here. If we go to the top over here, you can change this like also over here, but I like it the way it is.
Here we can create a Meta description. By default, it's text of the first [Unclear 23:36]. So in my recent years of web development, I came across some really nice WordPress themes. I click on it, and I can change it over here.
You see here a green indicator that means that this title has a great length. If I make it longer, this is too short, this is great, and this is too long. So leave it like this. This is also great, and here we can create a summary of our blog post.
This text has to be short, and it has to be catchy. If people see this, they should want to click on the link. So we have "best WordPress themes" in our SEO title, we have it in our slug, and we have it in our Meta description.
That brings us to the next thing: our focus keyword. On what terms do we want to be found? This is the keyword or phrase, and of course, it is "best WordPress themes 2016." I'm going to save it or update it, and it says "WordPress themes 2016, best WordPress themes only no 2016."
So it says the focus keyword doesn't appear in the first paragraph of the copy. Make sure the topic is clear immediately. So I could go to my first paragraph, and this is what Yoast SEO is doing. They are giving me advice: "Best WordPress themes of 2016," because this is between it.
It doesn't count, but Yoast is not perfect, and I do not say we have to follow all these rules, but there are guides that can help us to be found better. But as I told you before, the best thing you can do is create a great article that has great value for the visitor.
So what we could do is take a look: the focus keyword doesn't appear in the first paragraph of the copy. So what I can do also is say that focus keyword is "best WordPress themes." Now everything changes because this phrase is used more often than with 2016.
So it says already it's green. So I update it, and if you want to, you can change some things in the text. You have not used your focus keyword in any subheading such as H2 in your copy. I can change that: "best WordPress themes."
Update - now you see it is gone, but it's not totally honest, so I say the best WordPress themes mentions. So like this, scroll down again, the keyword density is 0.3, which is a bit low. The focus keyword was found two times.
Yeah, I don't use the word best often, but I think the blog's OK like this. I think people can find great value in this information. I give my opinion about the three best WordPress themes in my opinion, and I think this is okay.
If I want to use this post on Facebook, then I can go to this step over here, and we get a Facebook title, and I just use the same as here: "WordPress themes 2016." Facebook description, same as here, and eventually a Facebook image.
Use image and update. If for some reason I don't want this page to be found in Google, I go to this icon and make the robots follow. I say no follow, and that means that this page will not be shown in Google. I wanted to be shown in Google, so I select it over here, and that is how it works.
If you want to be found better in Google, what you need to do is start creating more available content about the subject you want to be found on. It is a lot of work; there can be only one page number one in Google search results.
It is a lot of work, but there can only be one page on the number one search results in Google. So even though you know how to optimize your website, you need to beat the competition by creating more valuable content that people will like.
As share this on Facebook. So view post, it can take a while before Google sees this page. But if I go to my Facebook and I post it, you see there's no picture yet, and it takes sometimes.
So what I do, I often wait a day, and then Google can take a blog into Google, and then I post it on Facebook, and I get a nice image, as I have shown here.
It is now 38 hours later. I select the blog post. I go to my Facebook; it's here in Dutch. I place the link over here. You see no picture right now. I like to say something: "What are the best WordPress themes of 2016? Read it over here, and if you like it, please like and share it."
I place it, and here it is: my text, the link, the title. If I click here, I go to the blog post, and I can also share it here, and that is how it works.
If you want to create more information based on what people are searching for, then go to Google, start typing "WordPress How to make a child theme." So if I was me, which I am, I could make a tutorial about how to make a child theme because people are searching for that.
And if I do that, I make a video on YouTube. I make a blog about it. I post my video into the blog. I will make a blog post about it, and I will embed my video into the blog post, and in that way, I can get more visitors to my website.
So my advice is to use these steps and start creating some great content for your visitors and persevere in doing it.
Thank you for watching this tutorial. I hope you liked it and learned some good stuff. Good luck with applying everything, and if you want to see more videos like this, please subscribe and please like this video.
See you next time. Bye.