SEO does not have to be complicated to work. For most small business sites, a handful of habits done consistently beat any amount of plugin tweaking. Here is the simple strategy we use, and the tools that support it.
What SEO is actually for
The goal is not traffic. It is the right people finding you when they are looking for what you offer. Ten visitors searching “WordPress site down help” are worth more to us than a thousand reading a general article. Keep that in mind for every step below.
1. Choose keywords your customers use
- List the services you offer and the problems you solve, in your customers’ words, not your industry’s.
- Type each into Google and look at the autocomplete suggestions and the “People also ask” box.
- Check Google Search Console for what you already show up for. It is free and based on real searches.
- Pick one main phrase per page. Local businesses should include the city or region.
2. One focused page per topic
Each service and each important question gets its own page. Put the main phrase in the page title, the H1 heading, the URL and the first paragraph, then answer the question better than anything else that ranks. Avoid several thin posts on the same topic: they compete with each other. (We just merged dozens of old posts on this site for exactly that reason.)
3. Write titles and descriptions for people
The SEO title and meta description are your listing in search results. Keep titles under about 60 characters and descriptions under about 155, lead with what the searcher wants, and give them a reason to click.
4. Cover the technical basics
- Fast pages on decent hosting
- A mobile-friendly theme
- HTTPS everywhere
- An XML sitemap submitted to Search Console
- Redirects whenever you change or remove a URL
- Descriptive image alt text
- Internal links between related pages
5. Measure and adjust
Once a month, look at Search Console: which pages get impressions but few clicks (improve the title and description), and which queries you rank on page two for (improve or expand that page). That loop is most of SEO.
The plugin we use
Most of the steps above need only a lightweight SEO plugin for titles, descriptions, sitemaps, schema and redirects. We built Mantis SEO for exactly that: the essentials without the upsells, dashboards and bloat of the bigger SEO plugins. Yoast, Rank Math and SEOPress all work too.
Want help?
A free site review includes a look at your SEO basics. If your site already gets traffic but not leads, our conversion rate optimization work is the next step.