SEO is one of those terms that floats around the online world constantly, and most people nod along as if they know exactly what it means. I did it for ages. I’d read blog posts that mentioned SEO, think ‘yes, yes, I need to do that’, and then carry on without actually understanding what it was or what I was supposed to do about it.
It wasn’t until I stopped treating it like a mysterious technical process and started thinking of it as a simple question that it clicked. The question is this: how does Google decide which page to show someone when they type something into the search bar?
Once you understand the answer to that, SEO stops being intimidating and starts being something you can actually act on. And that’s exactly what this post is going to give you: a plain English explanation of what SEO is, followed by five practical things you can do on your WordPress site this week to start getting found.
No jargon. No guru promises. Just what it is and what to do.
What SEO Actually Means
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Which doesn’t help much if you don’t already know what it means. So here’s the plain English version.
Google’s job is to send people to the most helpful, trustworthy, relevant page for whatever they searched for. That’s it. Every decision Google makes, every algorithm update, every tweak to how results are ranked, is in service of that one goal. They want the person who typed something into the search bar to find exactly what they were looking for.
Your job, as a website owner, is to make your pages as easy as possible for Google to understand, trust, and recommend. That’s all SEO is. It’s not tricks, it’s not gaming the system, it’s not stuffing your posts with keywords until they’re unreadable. It’s making sure that when you write a helpful post about something, Google can find it, understand what it’s about, and feel confident sending people there.
Think of it like a library. Google is the librarian. Your website is a book on the shelf. A well-organised book with a clear title, logical chapters, and content that actually delivers on what the cover promises will get recommended. A book with a misleading title and confusing chapters will get left on the shelf.
How Google Decides What to Show People
Google uses a huge number of signals to decide which pages to rank and in what order. Most of them come down to four things: intent, relevance, trust, and usability.
Intent means: does your page actually answer what the person was looking for? If someone searches for ‘how to start a blog for beginners’ and your post is a general overview of blogging history, it doesn’t match their intent. Google is very good at spotting this.
Relevance means: does your content cover the topic properly? A post that skims the surface with three short paragraphs is less likely to rank than one that covers the subject thoroughly and helpfully, even if it’s not the longest post in the world.
Trust means: does your site look like a real, reliable resource? This is where things like having an About page, getting links from other reputable sites, and publishing consistently all play a quiet role. A brand new site with one post won’t rank as well as an established site with fifty posts and a clear focus, but that’s not a reason to delay. It’s a reason to start now.
Usability means: is your site easy to use? Does it load quickly? Does it work on mobile? Is the text readable? Google pays attention to these things because they affect whether a visitor actually gets a good experience once they click through.
What You Can Safely Ignore (At Least for Now)
Before we get to the practical steps, I want to clear something up, because the world of SEO advice is full of things that sound important but will distract you at this stage.
You don’t need to obsess over keyword density. The old advice about using your keyword a certain number of times per post is outdated. Write naturally, use your keyword where it makes sense, and focus on being genuinely helpful.
You don’t need to buy links or use any service that promises to ‘boost your SEO’. These tactics can actually harm your site and they’re not what Google is looking for.
You don’t need expensive SEO tools at this stage. There are free tools that will give you everything you need when you’re starting out, and I’ll mention a couple of them below.
And you don’t need to publish every day. Consistency matters more than volume. One well-written, helpful post a week will serve you better than seven rushed ones.
👇 Pause and Think Before you read the action steps below, have a quick think about this: when you imagine “doing SEO”, what feels most daunting? Is it the idea of keywords, or is it the more technical stuff like site speed? Keep that in mind as you read on. Are you more worried about the keywords side of SEO, or the more technical bits like speed and mobile? Leave a comment at the end. I’d genuinely love to know.
Five SEO Actions You Can Take on Your WordPress Site This Week
These are not advanced tactics. They’re the foundations, the things that make a real difference for a beginner site and that every more advanced SEO strategy builds on. Do these well and you’ll be ahead of a surprising number of websites already out there.
1. Write a Clear, Descriptive Title for Every Post
Your post title is one of the most important signals you send to Google. It tells the search engine what your page is about, and it’s the first thing a real person sees in the search results when deciding whether to click.
A good title includes the main topic or keyword, is clear about what the reader will get, and ideally creates a little curiosity or urgency. ‘How to Start a Blog on Your Website (And Make It Look Trustworthy)’ is a better title than ‘Starting a Blog’. Both are about the same thing, but one tells you exactly what you’ll get.
In WordPress, your post title becomes your page title automatically, which is what shows up in Google. You can also edit the SEO title separately using a plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math, both of which are free and widely used. These plugins also let you write a meta description, which is the short summary that appears under your title in search results.
2. Use Your Keyword Naturally in Your Headings
Google pays particular attention to your headings, the H1, H2, and H3 tags that structure your post. If your main keyword appears in at least one or two of these headings, it helps Google confirm what the page is about.
In WordPress, your post title is your H1, so you don’t need to add another one. Your H2s are your main section headings, and your H3s are sub-sections within those. When you write a post, think about whether each heading clearly reflects what that section covers. If your keyword or a related phrase fits naturally into a heading, use it. If it feels forced, don’t.
3. Add Internal Links Between Your Posts
An internal link is simply a link from one post on your site to another post on your site. These are surprisingly powerful for SEO, and they’re something most beginners underuse.
Internal links do two things. They help Google understand how your content is connected, which builds a picture of your site as a proper resource rather than a collection of unrelated pages. And they keep visitors on your site longer, moving from one post to the next, which Google also takes as a positive signal.
A practical habit to get into: whenever you publish a new post, go back to one or two older posts and add a link to the new one where it’s relevant. Over time this builds a web of connected content that benefits your whole site.
4. Add Alt Text to Your Images
Alt text is the short description you write for each image you upload. It serves two purposes: it helps visually impaired readers who use screen readers to understand what an image shows, and it gives Google additional context about the content of your page.
In WordPress, you can add alt text when you upload an image through the media library, or when you insert an image into a post. Click on the image and look for the Alt Text field on the right-hand side. Write a short, plain English description of what the image shows. If your keyword fits naturally, include it. If it doesn’t, just describe the image honestly.
5. Check That Your Site Loads on Mobile
This one costs you nothing and takes about two minutes. Go to your website on your phone. Read a post. Click on a menu item. Try to find your Contact page. If anything feels awkward, slow, or hard to read, that’s worth fixing.
Google uses what’s called mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily looks at the mobile version of your site when deciding how to rank it. A site that works beautifully on desktop but is a struggle on a phone will be held back in the search results.
Most modern WordPress themes are responsive, meaning they adjust automatically for different screen sizes. But it’s always worth checking, because theme settings, large images, or certain plugins can cause problems even on responsive themes.
A Word on Site Speed
Speed is one of those SEO factors that people either obsess over or completely ignore. The truth sits somewhere in the middle.
Google uses a set of measurements called Core Web Vitals to assess how fast and smooth a page feels to a real visitor. The main things it measures are how quickly the main content loads, how quickly the page responds when you click something, and whether the layout jumps around while the page is loading.
You don’t need to understand all the technical detail behind this. What you do need to know is that a slow site frustrates visitors and is penalised in search rankings. The good news is that for most WordPress sites, the biggest speed gains come from a few simple things: using a lightweight theme, not installing too many plugins, compressing your images before you upload them, and using a caching plugin.
A free tool called Google PageSpeed Insights (just search for it) will analyse any page on your site and give you a score out of 100 along with specific suggestions. It can feel a bit technical when you first look at it, but even implementing one or two of the top suggestions can make a meaningful difference.
How Long Before SEO Starts Working?
This is the question everyone wants answered, and the honest answer is: it depends, but probably longer than you’d like.
For a brand new site, it can take three to six months before you start seeing meaningful organic traffic from Google. That sounds discouraging, but it’s worth understanding why. Google needs time to find your site, crawl your pages, assess your content, and decide where to rank you relative to everything else on the internet. A new site with a small number of posts doesn’t have much history for Google to work with.
What this means in practice is that you should start doing the basics now and keep doing them consistently, even when it feels like nothing is happening. The sites that do well in search are almost always the ones that published steadily for a year or two before they saw the results. The work you do in month one is what pays off in month seven.
In the meantime, Pinterest can be a wonderful source of traffic for a blog like this one, because Pinterest works much more quickly than Google. A pin can drive visitors to a post within days of being published. That’s a topic for the next section of this series, so keep it in mind.
What Comes Next
You’ve now got your WordPress site set up, your blog structured, and a clear starting point for SEO. The next stage is getting traffic flowing, which is where the real momentum begins.
The posts coming up in this series cover generating traffic in more detail, including how to use Pinterest, social media, and your blog content to bring the right people to your site consistently. They build directly on everything you’ve done in this section, so you’re in a good position.
Before you go, I’d love to hear from you. Once you’ve had a read through: are you more worried about the keywords side of SEO, or the more technical bits like speed and mobile? There’s no wrong answer, and knowing where people are getting stuck helps me make the next posts more useful. Leave a comment below.