Website Help??

24 Mar 2018

So my current mood is: Fugly

Is it possible to improve my search engine friendliness for my WordPress without upgrading to use their plugins, and if so, How- To- for- Dummies? I like my site but it's a work-in-progress so I want to help it out.

I have used the tags for each post. I know that search engines use programs, crawlers, that search for terms. If I search for a blog post title, I didn't see it. If I search for my job description (I don't see me despite being on "Google My Business" or having a few social media accounts and having it somewhere on my blog)

Here's a link to my blog page:

https://mysensualthought.wordpress.com/blog/

I just did a DuckDuckGo search of "The Ambassador's Daughter" and after scrolling down past the movie (yikes! oops! it's not that!), I did find a story on a couple of other sites like this one (my aim), but my blog is nowhere to be seen in the results.

If anyone was willing to team up with me and work on the websites and profiles, I'll be happy to discuss something to trade. ;-) What's on your mind?

A Private Message would be great.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Nichole

evil4

24 Mar 2018

Hi Nichole,

Welcome to Lush!

Liz here: web designer, WordPress pro, and all round sassy sex bomb.

The problem with using the WordPress.com blogging platform as opposed to a self-hosted copy of the WordPress content management system are the limitations they put in place. One of these is the ability to install third-party plugins, which requires you to upgrade to their Business Package at $25 per month. I believe there are some basic SEO tools in the Jetpack add-on which is included in the free plan, but these are not very substantial.

My advice is usually to run your own self-hosted copy of Wordpress, and then you can do whatever you want with it. Arguably, the best SEO plugin for WordPress is Yoast SEO and it is outstanding. You can also run the site on your own domain name instead of using a Wordpress subdomain which is a restricted feature on the Wordpress.com free plan. Plus there are other SEO benefits like playing around with permalinks and setting up custom sitemaps.

A custom .com domain name is about $10 for two years and hosting is about $20-25 per year. In fact, I think a lot of hosting companies, like GoDaddy, give you a free domain name when you register a hosting account.

If hosting and running your own WP site is not something you fancy, then you might have to consider a paid upgrade for better SEO tools. There is only so much that tags and H1 titles can do for you.

Hope this was helpful!

Liz

@Lizerotica

25 Mar 2018

Quote by Liz
Hi Nichole,

Welcome to Lush!

Liz here: web designer, WordPress pro, and all round sassy sax bimbo.

fixed that for you. Regaeman Man

You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.

31 Jan 2021

Quote by mysensualthought

So my current mood is:

Is it possible to improve my search engine friendliness for my WordPress without upgrading to use their plugins, and if so, How- To- for- Dummies? I like my site but it's a work-in-progress so I want to help it out.

I have used the tags for each post. I know that search engines use programs, crawlers, that search for terms. If I search for a blog post title, I didn't see it. If I search for my job description (I don't see me despite being on "Google My Business" or having a few social media accounts and having it somewhere on my blog)

Here's a link to my blog page:

https://mysensualthought.wordpress.com/blog/

I just did a DuckDuckGo search of "The Ambassador's Daughter" and after scrolling down past the movie (yikes! oops! it's not that!), I did find a story on a couple of other sites like this one (my aim), but my blog is nowhere to be seen in the results.

If anyone was willing to team up with me and work on the websites and profiles, I'll be happy to discuss something to trade. ;-) What's on your mind?

A Private Message would be great.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Nichole

I would be very happy to help you but I am not sure that I am so good at all this stuff reliable with websites... I am a young entrepreneur and I have a website for it. I have never needed help with the website because, from the start, I employed a company that offers SEO services for those like me who do not understand a lot about websites but want them to look great. I was advised to check this site [URL=https://aiad.com.au/services/seo-sydney/]aiad.com.au[/url] and to appeal for help at them. This way, I feel safe because I know that experts are dealing with my website.

14 Mar 2021

First of all: make sure you make your website for your visitors, not for search engines. Some people seem to forget who they're making their websites for.

That said, make sure you have good content, with descriptive headers and link labels. There are a few elements that weigh more than others for search engines:
- Headers weigh more than regular text, assuming they're defined properly in HTML.
- The document's title (what's appearing in the browser's tab) gets extra weight.
- Words in the page's URL get extra weight.
- Words in links pointing to the page get extra weight.
- If pages that themselves have a high ranking link to yours then that may increase your ranking too.
- If your CMS allows you to provide a description and keywords then those words may get extra weight, provided that those words also appear in the content.
- If possible, and where it makes sense, try to use some variation in the words you use when talking about your subject. It makes for better reading and for more search terms that your page matches on.

=== Not ALL LIVES MATTER until BLACK LIVES MATTER ===

1 Apr 2021

Link yourself to other sites that get a lot of traffic.

Noll has some great points.

helpful tips

1 Apr 2021

Quote by Liz
Hi Nichole,

My advice is usually to run your own self-hosted copy of Wordpress, and then you can do whatever you want with it. Arguably, the best SEO plugin for WordPress is Yoast SEO and it is outstanding. You can also run the site on your own domain name instead of using a Wordpress subdomain which is a restricted feature on the Wordpress.com free plan. Plus there are other SEO benefits like playing around with permalinks and setting up custom sitemaps.

I just renewed the hosting (shared hosting, not virtual private) for a site I run and it was a little over US$120 for a year and includes Wordpress hosting in the base package so self-hosting need not be expensive, either (I don't use WP myself, the site runs on commercial forum software). And domain registration, as said, is fairly inexpensive but I use a .ca domain for the site so my pricing is not really applicable. I paid CA$48 for four years when I renewed in January.

2 Apr 2021

Quote by seeker4
I just renewed the hosting (shared hosting, not virtual private) for a site I run and it was a little over US$120 for a year and includes Wordpress hosting in the base package so self-hosting need not be expensive, either (I don't use WP myself, the site runs on commercial forum software). And domain registration, as said, is fairly inexpensive but I use a .ca domain for the site so my pricing is not really applicable. I paid CA$48 for four years when I renewed in January.

That's not especially cheap web hosting. My hosting account works out to circa $80 USD for several sites. I hope you get all the bells and whistles for that: SSD drives, unlimited resources (disk space, bandwidth, databases, emails, subdomains), server-side caching e.g. LiteSpeed, daily backups with a month's worth of recovery points, etc.

@Lizerotica

2 Apr 2021

Quote by Liz

That's not especially cheap web hosting. My hosting account works out to circa $80 USD for several sites. I hope you get all the bells and whistles for that: SSD drives, unlimited resources (disk space, bandwidth, databases, emails, subdomains), server-side caching e.g. LiteSpeed, daily backups with a month's worth of recovery points, etc.

Don't have unlimited disk space, but do have most of the others. They put in a new backup system a while ago that is great (using Acronis which, interestingly, we dumped at work after one year). It's likely the premium we pay for keeping our data on Canadian soil (the company is in Kingston, Ontario). Most of my membership are Canadian so it keep their data "at home." I looked at a couple other Canadian hosts but there wasn't much cost advantage relative to the work I would need to do to move. In the end, I know a couple hosts who specialize in the software I use and would use them if I was going to "go global".

Are you sure?