Wordpress SEO Expert

Improve your Google ranking with Peter Mahoney, 20+ years SEO & Wordpress experience

  • SEO Overhaul
  • SEO Campaign
  • WP Support
  • Blog
    • SEO Emails
  • Praise

Should I get you involved now or after launch?

May 18, 2020 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

I am about to launch a landing page on my website for a new online business. I have a hair salon and will be selling haircolour kits off of website and social media. I have just written the copy. Would now be the time to get you involved or would it be after I launch?

Thanks for contacting me!

And congratulations for getting the new landing page up.

The best time to get me involved with your SEO is actually right after the site goes live. That way when I do the work I can do it all:

  • Keyword research
  • Devise the best strategy
  • Deploy all the SEO and related settings on the site
  • Do all the search engine submissions work (including sending the sitemap to them, pages, etc.)

I do from time to time get involved earlier though if a client really wants. The way I manage that is I do everything except that final step, and we wrap the job up when I’ve done all I can at that stage.

But when they do put the site live they just let me know and I jump back in to do the Google, Bing and other search engines work – obviously without any further charge.

I hope that helps!

So the short version would be – after it’s live is best. But I can work on your site’s SEO earlier if you’d really like.

I hope that helps!

Thanks again,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Filed Under: SEO Emails, Social networking, Wordpress

I’m starting a small business and checking out SEO options

May 17, 2020 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

I’m thinking of starting a small business and I’m in the process of checking out SEO options.

As you are so highly recommended I thought I would try here first.

My question is if I created a Wix website could you help me in anyway on the SEO front?

Thanks

Thanks for contacting me!

I can do Wix SEO, absolutely. But there’s some important notes to consider if you’ve not already chosen the content management system you’ll be using.

Quite simply (and despite what they might say) Wix doesn’t offer anything like the range of SEO configurations that WordPress does.

Their SEO options are very limited.

As such, while I can technically SEO your site, a Wix site simply isn’t going to be able to compete in search results with a well SEO’d WordPress based competitor’s site.

It would still be better to have all the SEO you can get on it, but really I always recommend WordPress for anyone seriously looking to make the most of organic search ranking.

Thanks again,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

 

Filed Under: SEO Emails, Wordpress

I need to improve my sites’ SEO and Page Speed.

May 17, 2020 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

Hi Peter,

I hope you’re well.

I am in need of some help with my website to have some work done to improve its SEO and also its Page Speed.

I have done a fair bit with the SEO but I do need more help. The Page Speed score is currently only 10 and I really would like this up there in the 90s without changing the structure of the site (which I am having difficulty with).

Thanks for contacting me! I can certainly help with your SEO (the homepage description I can see isn’t in line with best practice – and that’s the first thing I check!)

But speed might be another matter. My work is based around making the site load faster – NOT trying to improve Pagespeed % scores.

Here’s a little background on that:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/problems-with-google-pagespeed-insights/

But the short version is unless I was to totally recode your WordPress theme, and change a lot of it to reduce bloat – it’s probably impossible to go from 10% to 90%. That would be just huge.

WordPress is great in that it is so extensible, it’s easy to make it pretty much anything you want. But that comes with a lot of extra code. It’s not a great platform for % scores.

But it came be fast – my work usually reduces a sites loading time by 30-40%. (I can’t make promises on that though.)

Where my hands are tied is if the reason a site is slow is the server – if load balancing isn’t great, or a bunch of sites are thrown on the same web server – because I can’t affect that.

Anyway, some food for thought.

Thanks again,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Filed Under: SEO Emails, Website Speed, Wordpress

I noticed that in the ‘Coverage’ section there are a few URLs marked ‘noindex’

May 14, 2020 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

Hi Peter

thanks for that advice. I’ll look into int. I was just looking at Google Console and noticed that in the ‘Coverage’ section there are a few URLs marked ‘noindex’ – do we need to worry about this in terms of it negatively impacts our SEO or anything else?

Thanks.

Thanks for checking – those are all pages we want marked as noindex!

They’re the ‘Stock’ pages I referred to in my initial report when I delivered your SEO. In this case they are all just policy pages, terms & conditions and cookie policy pages.

I’ll re-paste that section at the bottom of this message in case that’s helpful.

The reason they’re marked as ‘submitted but not indexed’ is because they used to be submitted before I marked them otherwise. So really this is just Google letting you know about that change – eventually they’ll stop reporting these because they’ll see they are in fact not being submitted anymore.

I hope that’s helpful!

Thanks again,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

5)
A couple of pages on your site were “stock” pages, for example policy information. In order to make sure your site is compliant with the latest Google update, these were marked as “noindex”.

The reason those sorts of pages are considered “stock” is they’re essentially standard pages (also known as ‘boilerplate’) that don’t reflect what your site is actually about.

A lot of sites use standard content for those, copied and pasted from elsewhere. So there can be duplicate content issues – but at the very least they don’t reflect the main purpose of your site, so they water down the message so-to-speak.

Google and Bing both recommend these sorts of pages be marked as “noindex”, meaning they won’t scan them and add them to the body of data about your site.

Filed Under: SEO Emails, Wordpress

Do you add all the below to each pages? Page titles, Keywords, Description.

May 14, 2020 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

Do you add all the below to each pages? if so is there a set number of pages you do and is it different descriptions for each page?

Page titles, Keywords, Description

What your turnaround at present?

Thanks for contacting me, it’s great to hear from you again.

My turnaround is the usual up-to-three business days.

Your other questions actually have quite a bit to unpack though. So I’ll go through them all in turn.

1)
Up to 40 pages per site is usually considered fair. But that just refers to the number of pages you might want to have tags crafted for manually. You don’t always want that for all types of content.

So, the main pages on a site should always have manually strategised and written tags. But the same isn’t always true for other types of content. Sometimes for posts, and nearly always for products, you want those to be created on-the-fly (when a visitor loads the page) based on a series of rules, or schemas, that Google recommends.

There are several reasons for that, but the two main ones are:

AUTOPILOT
When those more dynamic content types can be set up to create tags for you, it saves you having to worry about that going forward. You’re free to focus on creating new content, posts, products, etc.

RELEVANCY
This is the biggie. Google cares a lot about the ‘relevancy’ of your SEO settings and tags. Does the content in the tags match the content on the page? This sort of setup gives a 100% relevancy for description tags which is awesome.

And of course search engines don’t just judge each page by itself, they look at the site as a whole and ascribe SEO authority to the domain too.

So let’s imagine a site has 10 static ‘Pages’ in WordPress, but 100 ‘Posts’. If all those posts have a full, 100% relevancy score then we have a bit more leeway with the main Pages. So we can make them more keyword rich without risking triggering a ‘lack of relevance’ problem.

2)
On to keywords. Those keyword meta tags haven’t been used in a very long time, well over a decade. Google confirmed in 2009 they didn’t (and hadn’t) used them:
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Bing never used that tag, and Yahoo stopped around ten years ago.

In fact while the Yoast SEO plugin does have an option to use keyword meta tags, but it actually has a comment next to the option:
“I can’t think of any reason you’d want to use this.”

There’s even strong evidence (from Bing) that using them incorrectly will get you penalised!

It can be confusing because in the industry people do still talk about keywords, but they mean it in a different context. You can read about that here:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/a-few-key-words-about-keywords/

That’s rather a lot of information about on-page SEO – but I hope it’s helpful!

Thanks again,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Filed Under: SEO Emails, Wordpress

I run a small design agency

May 13, 2020 by Peter Wordpress SEO Expert

I run a small design agency and looking for someone to help integrate good SEO practice into the new website for my client.

Someone is working on the messaging and content for the client and I will be working on the front end design and branding. We will probably be going for a WordPress based theme.

I had a few questions:

  • Are there any ongoing monthly fees?
  • Do you integrate Google Search Console?
  • Do you use Yoast or Rankmath?

Would you need more detail about the client/website before getting started?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Many thanks.

Thanks for contacting me!

I have a few answers for you…

1)
I do offer an ongoing SEO campaign option – many people are perfectly happy with the one-time overhaul and the fee for that – but clients that really want to commit to SEO (which is hands down the best, cheapest marketing you can do) will usually carry on.

I actually throw in a free month of that service too, so people can see the value first-hand.

2)
Yes, absolutely. Google Search Console is the authoritative place for Google’s organic search statistics. It’s a vital tool for anyone working in SEO.

3)
Actually, I choose the plugin based on several factors with the site itself. Different plugins are best for different websites–the way you’re using pages, posts etc is important in deciding. I don’t have a favourite, I like to look at a site and decide which plugin would be best for it on a case by case basis.

Something I can say though is in about 80% of cases All In One SEO pack ends up being selected.

Additionally)
The best time to engage me is immediately after the site has gone live. That way I can do all the various submission processes alongside the search engine optimisation.

I’m a big believer that all information is good information – so if you wanted to send through more info on the client that would be welcome. But it’s also true the current content I can see I believe gives me more than enough information about her to base the work on.

Thanks again,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Filed Under: Google Search Console, SEO Emails, Wordpress

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • …
  • 18
  • Next Page »

Get FREE Wordpress SEO tips!

I send regular newsletters with WordPress SEO expert-level tips. Sign up to get them, along with my FREE e-book “Ongoing SEO Success”.

Did I mention they’re free!

Subscribe for free

Praise

I have over 2,500 5-star feedback reviews (and I’ve never received less than the full five.)

Here’s just one example, from Mike who runs Costello Entertainments:

Migration, Hosting, SEO and Speed Work on our new website all completed quickly and efficiently and Peter was most helpful in fixing an issue with a Popover on the site as well. If you’re thinking about asking Peter to do a job for you or hesitating, JUST DO IT! – He knows programming and the internet inside out, he’ll get the job done for you professionally, with a smile. I wish I could call a plumber or a tradesman to do the jobs I can’t do myself with the same level of confidence.
Read a lot more.

Recent Blogs

  • Outreach for backlinks – how to get quality links that Google will love
    I’m thinking of redirecting my Virtual Assistant work to other tasks as the generic LinkedIn work I ...
  • (Small) Pricing changes for 2025
    When COVID first hit, like a lot of people around the world I wanted to help my clients as much as possible ...
  • My site has errors – timeouts – and my host isn’t helping me
    Hi Peter, My site has been reporting errors (timeouts) which have become more regular the past week or so. I ...
  • How do we fix 404 errors after a site move or migration?
    Hi Peter, We migrated from Visualsoft to Woocommerce approx. 10 days ago and are experiencing 404 errors. ...

Legal

  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Disclaimer

Prices are quoted exclusive of VAT unless expressly stated.

Also read

  • Payment information

RSS

Peter Mahoney, WordPress SEO expert blog

Recent Posts

  • Outreach for backlinks – how to get quality links that Google will love
  • (Small) Pricing changes for 2025
  • My site has errors – timeouts – and my host isn’t helping me
  • How do we fix 404 errors after a site move or migration?
  • Why does SEMRush show my ranking change so much?

© Copyright 2025 Wordpress SEO Expert · All Rights Reserved · Site by Peter Mahoney