Search Engine Optimization for WordPress

For a site to be searchable in google there are a lot of factors that need to be considered. The Google search engine indexes sites over a period of time — not overnight, but by visiting your site every few weeks and crawling through your content looking for keywords. It looks at that content and ranks it by a range of factors in an effort to determine where in its search results it should place your website. While there is no quick fix-all for getting your site to the top of a google search, with a basic level of effort and a little bit of time you can see your website ranking improve.

The process of improving how your website is presented by search engines is called search engine optimization or SEO. There are a lot of resources out there to guide you through some basic SEO strategies, but this resource will point you to some of the basics:

• Add more content
  • Without lots of content, Google has no way of knowing what your website is about and won’t be able to show it to the right people. That means making more pages, posting minutes, adding photos, etc…
• When you design your formatting for your website, use well structured content to create a hierarchy of information.
  • Headings and subheadings help search engines distinguish what is important on your website, so that it can show it to the right people.
• Add content to the website on a regular basis
  • Google won’t show an inactive website to its users. Posting regularly indicates to a search engine that your site is alive and relevant.
• Link to the website to manually drive traffic
  • Once everything is in place, send people to your website! Don’t tell them to search for it on google, but send them the link yourself. If google notices that your site has traffic and gets returning visitors, then it will boost your SEO ranking.
• Use a descriptive domain name
  • A more concise/unique/specific domain is another area where search engines look to understand what your site is about. If you don’t have a custom domain, you can purchase one and point it to your website. 
• Time
  • A brand new website is rarely searchable unless it has really unique keywords. In your case, soil health is a pretty hot topic and you’re competing with a lot of other websites for attention. That’s okay. With time, search words such as “MT”, “Montana”, “conservation” or partner keywords such as “MACD”, “conservation districts”, “DNRC”, etc… will help differentiate a website and make it more searchable.

Again SEO is a process that takes time. Again, google isn’t everything! You can always link to your website directly, and ask your partners to link to the website in their own newsletters and websites.