SEO Search Engine Optimization

Setting up your pages properly so you have optimized them for search (SEO) is something that TechCare takes seriously.  There are many aspects to setting up your WordPress site with great SEO, and here is a sampling of considerations (there are plenty of other things to do properly as well such as Local SEO, Correcting Directories and Citations, etc)

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Proper URLs for SEO

The URLs (or the actual link to your page) of your pages are important. The way google wants to see the URLs are all lower case, non-stop words separated by a dash (hyphen) (where a space would be) with keywords are used and make sense.  It is not helpful to have numbers in the URL or to use words such as /services (every company has services they offer).

Changing Existing URLs

You should not simply change the URLs of your pages because other websites may have links to your pages and visitors will be returned a 404 error.  Also, google has most likely indexed your pages already, and you will lose any ranking you have on those pages if you simply "get rid" of the URLs.  In order to avoid these issues, we need to tell google where to find the new page, at what URL.  We "redirect" the page to a new URL. There are a few ways to do this properly without making a mistake. One mistake you should never make is accidentally redirecting a URL to a URL that redirects back to the original URL, or redirecting the root. These can cause your website to basically break.

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Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

When you perform a search on google, you are returned with a list of website that google thinks would be a good match for your search.  These website listings are formatted with the title of the website in a blue link and then a small description below the title.

Where does google get the title and the description?

If you don't specifically tell google what to put here, google will guess. Most of the time this is not a good choice.  You want your page title and description to be interesting and exciting so that people are more likely to click on YOUR listing, increasing what is known as your Click Through Rate (CTR).

The title and description also should be a certain length - not too short and definitely not to long or it will be cut off.  Google has a specific number of characters it is not up to you.  You want to use your key words in your titles and descriptions as well, and this is why we require keyword research to come up with good titles and descriptions.

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There should be a title and description set for each page, each post, and each product of your website.

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On-Page Content Optimization

While we are optimizing the titles and the meta description, we will also optimize the content on each page. We will read through your content and add your key words where google is looking for them. There are definite places where you should be putting your keywords not only for Google but also for visitors.

Creating an XML Site Map

A standard file should be created on your website, called an XML site map. This file  tells google how to read your website and what is important on your website. Once we create this file, we also submit this file to google so google knows the name of this file and will research the links within the file. It is kind of like if visitor to a museum and receives a map of the museum so they know where to find things.

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