How I helped my WordPress client solve site indexation & migration issues (short term) and provided forward-facing SEO strategy to help them grow.

Opportunity

• Business: improve brand visibility for a business leadership speaker & coach’s website, especially for (but not limited to) local ‘san diego’ searches
• Local SEO: provide step-by-step onsite/offsite strategy to improve ranking in Google results – starting with local search
• Migration SEO: complete migration checklist and do implementation to redirect & reclaim search value from two old domains to the new WordPress site
• SEO: resolve all the immediate-priority technical issues with the WP installation and do onsite optimizations using my site audit deliverable

The Way Forward

April–May, June–July 2018 (two rounds of SEO work) Before starting SEO work for Simon Leadership’s WordPress site, I pitched them on the idea of getting as much done as possible to resolve issues with their WP installation – including lots of low quality, thin content URLs in their site’s Google index, and a site structure that needed work – while also optimizing for target local keywords in my ‘step 1’ SEO package. For many if not most small business sites on WordPress, I think that my consulting/implementation package offers the most value because it allows us to cover a lot of ground very quickly and hit ALL of the tactics that matter: technical, onsite (content/keyword optimization), structural and offsite/local SEO. In a 2.5–3 week contained package scope, I’m able to get all the heavy lifting done in terms of immediate SEO priorities.

So my site audit took care of all the immediate things specific to their WordPress installation and situation in organic search. Then with the Strategy piece, for Simon Leadership I was able to handoff step-by-step SEO input for optimizing their profiles & local listings and getting listed in new places (niche industry directories, etc.).

My SEO package is great for WordPress sites because the audit implementation also utilizes my knowledge of tried-and-true WP plugin solutions for just about any SEO situation. But Simon Leadership had a lot more work to do past this initial package — given the competitiveness of their search market and work that was needed on the content side — so I provided specific feedback around migration SEO (including a checklist for reclaiming value from two old domains) and also did 301 redirects & Search Console work for these in a second follow-up round.

Here you can see the results (screenshots above). SEO no doubt is a lot of work across every client situation. And the results take time. In the long run, though, the reason this client was so successful is that they were very receptive to the feedback I gave them both in the Strategy work and in follow-ups, and were able to act accordingly on everything I couldn’t do myself within the package.