SEO rules for a WordPress post that stands out

Find your Keyphrase

Think of your Keyphrase as your theme or topic. It doesn’t matter if your post is short and simple, or long and complex. You can always find the root topic behind it. It helps to think of your post as the answer to a question your audience is searching for. Then logically your keyphrase will be the essence of that question and you will use it as a beacon telling searches “look here, I have the answer”! Note: it can be a single word, or a set of words without punctuation. It must not be used on other posts, as you don’t want to compete between your posts, that’s probably the golden rule or SEO rules!

Keyphrase in Title & Slug

Now that you have your key phrase, you must remember to include in right into your post title and slug. If you think of it rationally, it makes sense to do that. If people are looking for the answer of a question, they will most likely want to see the root of their search directly in the title of what they will click. At least that is how Google and other search engine think. The topic of your post must appear on the title of the post. To help them, you also must include it in the last part of the URL called the slug.

Note: it is best to put your key phrase at the start of your title. I know it is not always easy or natural, but it helps.

Consider your 1st Paragraph

You know how people have short attention span. Well you need to keep their attention within the 1st paragraph of your post. In other words, they should get the answer to their question right there. For this, you must include the keyphrase right at the beginning and provide them with what they are looking for. You will use the rest of your post developing your idea or theme.

Note: One good way to do this is to clearly say what they will find in the post if the full “answer” is not possible.

Minimum 300 Words

You should not write a post shorter than 300 words. For that length you should consider repeating naturally your keyphrase twice in the whole post. But consider writing more content, and developing your topic more. That will give you more room to be found. For much longer posts, it is recommended to use the key phrase more often but not overly used too.

In general avoid writing paragraphs of more than 150 words. It is best to have many short paragraph, rather than fewer longer ones. People tends to skip longer reads, especially online.

Active voice is better

You should alway favour active voice in your article. This way your writing is more personal, direct and has more punch. So for example, you would prefer to say: “I design logos for clients in the hotel industry” rather than “The hotel industry is one of my clients for logo design”.

I think the general rule is 80% active, 20% passive max. One way to avoid passive voice is to make shorter sentences and split your idea into more sentences. This will ensure punchier copywriting.

SEO Title & Meta description

In another article, I recommend Yoast SEO wordpress plugin. You can use it to easily set SEO titles and meta descriptions. They are not exactly the same as your post title by the way. They are what search engine can pick up to display your entry in the list of results. In general you have the Title, the URL, the description and possibly an image on the side if you are on mobile.

The SEO Title should not be too short but if your post title is good enough then this should be enough to be your SEO Title. Not to forget it is best to also include your site title at the end of it. So something like Post Title + Site Title = SEO Title.

For sure you must include your keyphrase in both the SEO Title and meta description. The description should be around the 156 words maximum. Try to make it exactly that, as too short is not good and too long will not be seen in full.

Internal & External links

There is nothing worst than a “dead-end” post. That means your audience will feel better if they see links within your post. That helps building up confidence in what you say. Those links should be both within your site as well as outbound links.

Internal links will have the benefit of redirecting people to different place of your site. It is like a contextual navigation. People like that as it is a more natural way to introduce another part of your site and guide them to it. Search engine value this a lot too, it helps them understand the structure of your site.

External links will send people to another sites opening yours to a “highway of knowledge” rather than trapping people within your world only. This is what help the flow of information through the internet, and give your audience plenty of ways to access information about things you discuss. That’s the trust and confidence part mentioned earlier. Consider those external links as useful resources for your audience and send them to them in new tabs (so they don’t loose your site).

Note: Never place an external link on your keyphrase. You do not want to send people away on the very things they came to you for.

Images & Alt tags

A post with images is always better than pure text post. But when you do include images, you must remember to add “ATL Text” to them. That is information not directly displayed on the image but more as metadata in some way. You can easily add those tags in the media area of WordPress.

Make sure that your key phrase is included into the ALT text of your images. In other words, it is best to include your topic within those tags, so you clearly state the relevance of the image relative to the post.

Note: People use image search a lot these days, and this will directly help your images come to those results. That is another way to grab visitors to your site.