PSEO Phase 2 - Create
Create personal web page that can be optimised using SEO techniques (PSEO)
After the initial analysis, it is apparent that there is some content out on the web that is specific to me. There is a huge amount more that is about the other John Lilleys around the world.
If like me you have some digital footprint then it is likely to be in places where you cannot directly influence the optimisation and therefore the position that the search engines give this information. To change this we start with a series of steps that will allow us to assert some control.
Step 1 - Register a personal domain name, to host your own web page.
There is some debate over the actual role a specific domain name plays in the search engine optimisation process. That said, make sure it is a professional name, with some relevance to what you do. Try and get the domain name that is country specific, i.e. johnlilley.co.uk or jeanpaul.fr this helps with country specific searching.
In my case the .com and .co.uk were already taken, I opted for the .info and we will see how this impacts my ability to optimise my site.
Step 2 - Create a personal web page using Wordpress
Another key point is to ensure you get a domain name through a hosting company that allows for the hosting of a Wordpress site. I have tried many blogging providers, and have found Wordpress to be the simplest, and also the most effective in ensuring basic SEF (Search Engine Friendly) features are built in. The fact that you can create pages of HTML that are separate from the blog posts is a big bonus for a personal web page.
This all makes for a simple way to create a CV / Profile page and other information specific to my interests and expertise. By having these pages separate from blog posts it helps develop a structured approach to your personal web site, with different areas that can be optimised.
Step 3 - Optimise for basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
As you create your Wordpress site it will ask you for a title, make the title of your site your full name. This will be used in the Title tag of the HTML formed by Wordpress and will show in the title bar of the browser. The title tag is one of the most important tags for search engine optimisation.
We are optimising our site to ensure our name is found when someone is looking for us in the search engines. Our name becomes the most important keywords to use in our optimisation efforts.
Step 4 - Create a version of your CV in a seperate page from a blog page
When your Wordpress site is set up you can login and click on the Write (tab) and then choose Page. This gives you a simple for to fill in. Keep it simple for now and create your CV that you probably have in word on this page.
Give the page a title i.e. John Lilley’s CV / Profile. This title will be used on your home page as a title and link to the content of this page. By using your keywords (your name) it also gives you the ability to increase the density / frequency of the keywords on your page.
The other benefit in using this title is that the page title is used as a heading for the page itself and as we discussed the title is essential to optimisation with the search engines.
As we are not likely to be an avid blogger immediately, I’d recommend making this CV page your home page. You do this in the Admin side of Wordpress;
- Click Options (Tab)
- Choose Reading
- Under Front Page, Click Front Page Displays - Static (Choose the CV page from drop down)
It is also a good idea to create a blank page with a title of Blog. Select this from the Front Page Displays - Posts drop down. This will create a link on your front page to your blog posts that you will write shortly.
Step 5 - Make an advanced change to aid Search Engine Optimisation
The basic installation of Wordpress leaves your URLs as a series of numbers and question marks with page and post IDs. These are not ideal, and can even prevent Search Engines from indexing your pages in their databases.
Ideally we would prefer to use the page and post titles to build the URLs used to refer to our pages. By using effective titles we can therefore influence the optimisation of our pages in the Search Engines.
To achieve this in the Admin side of Wordpress;
- Click Options
- Click Permalinks
- Select Date and Name Based
- Click Update Permalink Structure
Depending on your web host you may need to add some lines of code to a special file called .htaccess on the web server. See your web host for help with this. Without updating the .htaccess file the changes you made to the permalink structure will not work.
Step 6 - Get to know Wordpress a little more
Wordpress is a simple and yet powerful application for you to develop your profile online. Explore more of the options and get a feel for how you can change the way your site works. Nobody will know your site exists yet so you can play all you like.
Next, we will look at letting the search engines know that our site exists!
