WordPress SEO Consultant
Optimize your WordPress Site, Drive Organic Search Traffic & Grow Your Business
SEO For Your WordPress Site
Do you want to get your WordPress site optimized? Your website is not ranking on the first page of Google? Installed SEO plugins (Yoast SEO or Rank Math) but not seeing any increase in traffic?
Then you need to work with a WordPress SEO expert who can help you rank your website in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and many more.
For 10+ years I’ve been providing SEO service for startups and small-medium businesses main for the ones from Malaysia. The latest figure shows that WordPress is now used on 42.4% of all websites. Moreover, when we look at the CMS alone, WordPress has close to 65% market share.
From the studies, we know that WordPress is one of the most popular CMS (Content Management Systems) on the Internet. And the best part is that there are few SEO plugins to automate some time-consuming on-page SEO tasks.
Although there is a handful of SEO plugins, only two of them are popular in this content management system.
- Yoast SEO
- RankMath
But do you think installing an SEO plugin on your site is enough to generate search traffic?
No.
You need to understand that plugins in WordPress are meant to make your work easier. As for the SEO plugins, they only assist you in making your site SEO ready where you allow search engine bots to crawl and index your web pages on search results.
If your WordPress website is not driving enough traffic and you’re not ranking for targeted keywords or terms, then you need to work with an experienced WordPress SEO consultant.
Optimize your WordPress or WooCommerce site with Naven Pillai
I’ve worked with Welnuts, an online kacang putih snack store. I helped them to grow their organic search traffic by 300%. These are the exact steps I’ve used to optimize their WooCommerce site:
Step 1: Complete SEO Audit
First thing first, before implementing any SEO strategies for my clients, it is a must to conduct an in-depth site audit to find out any SEO related errors and get them fixed. For the online snack store, I conducted an SEO audit and fixed all their errors from on-page to technical SEO. The Google Search Console was inspected, and all the errors shown on the tool was fixed.
Step 2: SEO Plan
Once all the identified issues during the site audit get resolved, I worked on the SEO plan for the WooCommerce store by analyzing both Google Search Console and Google Analytics (luckily, they’ve integrated them).
Step 3: On-Page SEO
The next thing is to look at their on-page optimization. As part of the SEO plan, the product pages went through a complete overhaul from the content rewriting to implementing a powerful internal linking structure. And thanks to Yoast SEO plugin, it was relatively easier to modify the titles, meta descriptions and URLs of the pages to look relevant and captivating. I just wanted to give the best experience for the people visiting the online store.
Step 4: Link Building
The next task is to strengthen the brand and gain more exposure for the online store. And it was done through a small scale link building strategy. The main aim was to acquire authoritative links without spending a fortune (you know link building is expensive and time-consuming nowadays). And I manage to get quality links through blogging outreach and sponsored reviews.
I’m still working with their SEO efforts as it has been only 3 months since I started optimizing their online store. The site is still growing in terms of ranking and traffic.
Everything You Need to Know About WordPress SEO Services
When we talk about WordPress SEO, there is no difference in the optimization process. The only difference is the platform that is used to develop and manage the site. In this case, WordPress is easy to use, flexible, fast and convenient Content Management System (CMS) for startups and small-medium businesses to build their website. And that’s one of the reasons WordPress has the highest market share in the CMS platform.
As the need for businesses to digitalize the business has increased over the years, a lot of businesses are online today and looking for ways to increase traffic to their site to sell their products and services. Although a lot of businesses are focused on social media marketing today, the need for SEO has been increasing as well.
Before hiring a WordPress SEO consultant like me, you need to know the basics of SEO and the general things included in WordPress SEO services.
WordPress SEO service providers will include the followings:
- Perform keyword research for your business
- Optimize your content for targeted keywords
- Modify titles and meta descriptions
- Optimize URL structures
- Integrate Google Search Console, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
- Optimize images with ALT tags
- Identify keywords cannibalization
- Improve page loading speed
- Create a robust internal linking structure
- Install and configure important plugins for SEO such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math, WP Cache and more.
Optimizing WordPress Sites with SEO Plugins
Did you know that each SEO plugin has different purposes and functions?
Choosing the right SEO plugin and configuring them to your WordPress site is essential. When you work with me, it doesn’t matter what SEO plugin you’ve installed on your site, I will configure it and get it aligned with your SEO goals.
I’ll make sure your site achieves its best performance in terms of SEO and produce value to your visitors by getting good scores from the SEO plugins (although I don’t fancy getting a high score from SEO plugins, it’s a good indication).
Even if two sites are using the same SEO plugin, the process of optimizing them will vary. But in general, I will work on the following SEO tasks:
- Understand your business nature and target audience
- Evaluate your WordPress theme and the plugins you’ve installed to your site (I don’t want to conflict between plugins)
- Make recommendations on the most suitable plugins to install for your site (to make your website fast, smooth and SEO-friendly)
- Configure Google Search Console and Google Analytics with your site (if you haven’t integrated them)
- Evaluate the sitemap of your site (generated by SEO plugin of your choice)
- Make changes to .htaccess, robots.txt or even hreflang tags (if you have multiple versions of the site using different languages)
With almost 10 years of experience as an SEO consultant, you can stay assured of my WordPress SEO service. I will optimize your website, not for the sake of getting it optimized, but to fulfil the search intent of your potential customers. If I find the SEO plugin is not compliant with our SEO goal, I will immediately remove it and work on alternate solutions. We will only focus on using plugins that will help us run a successful SEO campaign.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for WordPress
Most WordPress SEO consultants rely heavily on SEO plugins as they believe those plugins can make your site rank high on search result pages easily. But, that’s not the case. As I’ve mentioned earlier, plugins are meant to make your work easier and you still need to implement all the necessary SEO strategies to generate quality organic traffic.
And that’s why I use third-party SEO tools to access and evaluate the SEO performance of your website. It is extremely important to know how your site is performing on the search result pages so that we can consistently improve them to perform better.
And that’s why SEO for WordPress includes:
- Analyze and fix technical errors
- Evaluate the current SEO performance
- Configure robots.txt and assigns crawling rules
- Perform in-depth keyword analysis based on search intent
- Optimize pages based on targeted keywords or keyphrases
- Develop content that satisfies the “search intent” of your visitors
- Analyze inbound and outbound links
- Make sure all on-page SEO rules are applied to all pages
- Optimize image with the right image name and alt attributes
- Optimize website speed and performance
We still need to focus on the essential SEO factors for WordPress SEO. It includes:
Generate List of Relevant Keywords / Phrases
Without a list of relevant keywords/phrases, your SEO campaign is bound to fail. It is important to choose the right keywords to optimize for all the valuable pages on your site. That’s why we need to make sure the choice of keywords brings in the right audience to the site.
I don’t rely on one tool to perform keyword research. I will use multiple keyword research tools and collect all the necessary data. The obtained data is carefully evaluated in reference to Google Search Console’s Search Queries.
Although tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest and Google Keyword Planner helps with keyword research, there is a certain degree of errors in terms of the average monthly volume of keywords. Even Google Keyword Planner tend to round up the exact search volume.
We can only use these tools as a reference and estimate the expected search volumes. I’ve seen clients getting thousands of clicks for search terms with 30-50 monthly search volume. So, the list of keywords/phrases is generated mainly based on the search intent as it matters the most for SEO in 2022.
On-page & Technical Optimization for WordPress
On-page SEO for WordPress is the same as the ones for non-WordPress websites. The SEO plugins provide indicators to effectively implement on-page optimization. As part of the overall SEO strategy, on-page optimization includes:
- Editing of titles and descriptions
- Implement canonical tags to avoid duplicate pages (especially for eCommerce websites)
- Deindex irrelevant pages from SERPs
- Strategically include keywords in titles, descriptions, headers (H1, H2, H3) and content.
- Optimize URLs
- Build an internal linking structure between important pages on the site
- Focus on improving web loading speed and maintaining good scores in core web vital
- Add Structured Data wherever necessary (important for FAQs)
- Add videos to improve dwell time (if possible)
Content Optimization for WordPress
Did you know that quality content is as important as the technical SEO you implement to your WordPress site?
I prioritize content quality above all for SEO. We are not talking about using superior grammar in your content. Quality content in the context of SEO is how it offers information and engages with your target audience. And that’s why EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) helps in improving search rankings in Google.
When I work on my client’s content, I make sure the content goes through multiple reviews and optimization processes manually to focus on the quality of content published on the site. I don’t rely on SEO plugins to get this done.
The manual content review process makes sure the content is optimized for the targeted keywords or search terms without affecting the quality. And I always make sure the content covers everything about the specific topic it focuses on.
Working with an experienced WordPress SEO consultant will help you publish content with useful and insightful information for your website visitors.
High-Quality Content Creation
As mentioned earlier, quality content that satisfies your target audience search intent will help your web pages rank higher on search engines.
The quality content development for your WordPress site will include:
- Analyze your Google Search Console to find the content gap
- Improve the quality of content that is ranking on the 2nd, 3rd page of Google
- Evaluate your content performance using third-party content analysis tools (Clearscope or Surfer SEO)
- Get your content re-written and aligned with your niche
- Create powerful internal links between your site content
- Include relevant and high-quality external links within your content
Once the content for your site is written, it goes through grammar and spelling checks. The content will be uploaded to your WordPress site once it is approved. The content is made sure to meet all the important on-page elements.
Setting up SEO Tools
As part of my WordPress SEO service, I will assist you to set up all the common SEO tools that are important for your site.
Following are some of the things I will help you integrate for your WordPress site:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- GTM (Google Tag Manager)
- Other Google related products such as Google Optimize, Google Ads Conversion and more
I can also help you integrate other SEO tools for your site if required.
SEO Consulting for Woocommerce
As an experienced WordPress SEO Consultant, I also provide SEO services for online stores with Woocommerce setup. If you’re looking to get your Woocommerce site completely optimized for search engines, I can provide the best solution by starting with a thorough SEO audit catered exclusively for eCommerce websites.
It is important to get your product listings, categories and content optimized to drive targeted customers to your online store. If you want to drive organic search traffic consistently to your online store, then your need to have a solid SEO action plan in place.
My Woocommerce SEO consultation service includes:
- Product listing optimization
- Configure URLs of products, categories, pages and blog posts
- Find and fix canonical issues with multiple products
- Implement product structured data (SCHEMA)
- Optimize your online store completely in terms of on-page, of-page and technical SEO for better rankings and increased organic traffic
Why Work with Naven Pillai?
Because I have 10+ years of experience as a freelance WordPress SEO consultant who identifies and fixes SEO errors and improve your organic traffic and search rankings.
As of 2022, I’ve optimized 120+ WordPress sites and helped them to increase an average of 200% in organic search traffic within 9-12 months of hiring me as their SEO consultant.
I’m also recognized as one of the most experienced SEO consultants in Malaysia who works with startups and small-medium businesses.
My SEO portfolio consists of 95% WordPress & Woocommerce sites. I’ve majorly worked on WordPress sites and helped my clients achieve great results in terms of traffic, conversions, sales that resulted in positive ROI.
Tools I Use to Optimize WordPress Sites
There are thousands of SEO tools in the market that can help you optimize your WordPress sites for search engines. You need to clearly understand that SEO tools and plugins have their limitations and it is not enough to rank your sites.
You can only optimize certain elements of SEO using plugins. For example, when you use Yoast SEO plugin, you’ll be able to configure your website based on the scoring system (traffic light scoring system). These plugins only work on the basic part of SEO. You still need to manually analyze the user intent, content relevance, depth of the topic covered and many more.
There are two commonly used SEO plugins:
Yoast SEO
Yoast is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress sites. Currently, they have close to 5 million active installations. The Free version comes with simple configurations while the Paid version offers features like internal linking suggestions and redirect manager.
You can easily identify and resolve basic SEO issues like duplicate content, URL structure, canonical tags and many more. It also helps you to control the architecture of your website from search engines bots crawling to indexing.
Yoast SEO plugin also helps in generating sitemaps, search console integration and content analysis (though you can’t follow it 100% for content evaluation).
Rank Math
Rank Math is new to the WordPress SEO game. Although this SEO plugin was founded in 2018, it has more than 1 million active installations. Being one of the main contenders of Yoast SEO plugin, Rank Math is being used by beginner SEO specialists as it offers more functionalities.
It has more added features to build structure data, conduct detailed content analysis, and integrate Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Both SEO plugins offer to get your basic optimizations in place easily. As I’ve mentioned earlier, if you feel excited about getting high scores with the plugins and don’t focus on other SEO inputs, you’ll be left in the dust.
Other than these SEO plugins, I use a combination of other SEO tools to execute robust SEO strategies that focus on results.
- SEMRush: For keyword research, backlink profile audit and keywords rank tracking
- Google Search Console: For indexing, URL inspection, crawling check, submit sitemaps, check for security issues, check on core web vitals, and many more
- Google Analytics: For measuring the traffic, bounce rate, dwell time, user behaviour and conversions
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: For advanced SEO audit
How Much Does WordPress SEO Cost in Malaysia?
How Much Does WordPress SEO Cost in Malaysia?
Because I’m focused on delivering results for my clients (organic search traffic and search rankings) that offers a great return on investment in the long run, my WordPress SEO consultation is not cheap like other SEO service providers in Malaysia.
I am aware that there are freelancers and agencies in Malaysia that can offer SEO services as low as RM1,000 and promise you results. Let me get this straight, you can’t move the needle in terms of SEO with RM1,000 monthly retainer. I’ll be transparent with the cost involved in offering SEO service that can help your business get in front of your target audience and generate quality organic traffic.
- SEO Audit: RM2,000 (approximately RM200-RM250 per hour)
- Content Creation: I outsource the content creation part to experienced freelance writers who are experts on the niche I’m working on. 2000+ words content will cost RM600 – RM700 (I’m not talking about generic content that you purchase from content mills)
- Manual Outreach (Link Building): Building links through manual outreach is not easy as it used to be. Outreach emails are sent to blogs/sites and some niches are hard. It costs around RM400-RM600 per link.
As the SEO audit is only performed at the beginning of the campaign, the cost can be divided into 12 months.
So, the total cost involved for a basic SEO campaign that targets 10 keywords/ search terms as following:
RM 2,000/12 + RM700 + RM600 = RM1,467
You need to know that the cost will vary depending on the niche. The cost for content creation and link building can increase if we are working on competitive niches like finance, real estate, SaaS, fitness, healthcare and aesthetics. The cost can go as high as RM3,000 to RM4,000 for these niches.
My WordPress SEO services start from RM2,500. And I only work with businesses that can commit at least 12 months to their SEO initiatives.
Let me show you a simple calculation with an example.
You choose to invest in SEO, and you’ve allocated RM2,500 x 12 = RM30,000
Let’s say you’re running an accounting firm that provides various finance-related services like bookkeeping, tax accounting, accounting audit and payroll processing. The average profit you make for the services is RM1,000 per client.
So, you need 30 additional clients to break even with your SEO investment. And it’s like 2 to 3 additional clients per month. When you work with the right SEO consultant, you’ll get more clients in the long run.
And remember. SEO is a continuous process.
Don’t take my word for it. See what my customers say.
An SEO consultant that cares about your business 💖
Whether you’re a startup, small-medium business or even a multi-million dollar company, you’ll get the same attention.
Let’s get started with your SEO campaign
Don’t you think this is the right time to generate more website traffic & improve your brand’s organic visibility?
How does your WordPress setup affect SEO?
WordPress is an open-source CMS (Content Management System) with thousands of free and paid themes and plugins.
But…
Did you know that installing a theme and sets of plugins can affect your site’s ability to rank on search engines?
I don’t mean to stop you from using WordPress. You need to understand the importance of choosing the right theme and plugins for your site to avoid search engine optimization issues.
Slow loading page and poor Core Web Vitals are the most common SEO issues you may face with wrong themes and plugins.
Google introduced Core Web Vitals in 2020 to analyze and evaluate how fast a web page loads and how quickly a user can interact. When your web pages are loading slowly, it indicates a poor user experience. Google avoid showing search results of web pages that offer a poor experience for the users.
Developers or marketer who have years of experience working on WordPress knows that themes and page builders like Divi, WP Bakery, Oxygen and even Elementor will show low score in Core Web Vitals.
Do you know why WordPress themes and Page builders slow down your website?
It’s because 90% of themes and page builders contain bloated codes that result in hundreds of CSS and JavaScript calls when the website loads. And this is the common reason for WordPress sites to have poor performance when it comes to page loading speed.
Getting a WordPress site optimized and SEO-ready is quite challenging because we need to get down to every tiny bit of issue with the codes to avoid code bloat whilst making sure the website does not break.
Is it difficult to optimize a WordPress site?
Well….
It depends.
There are so many factors we need to consider as SEO is a long-term process of building search visibility for your brand. And it takes time to enjoy the best results from your SEO efforts.
Once we conduct a comprehensive SEO audit for your WordPress site, we can determine the amount of work required to optimize your website. I will evaluate your site’s current performance in terms of rankings and organic traffic.
Some sites will have minor technical SEO issues that can be fixed quickly.
When you use custom themes, custom plugins with complex coding, it will be hard to optimize, and I will outsource to experienced developers to get the technical issues resolved.
Want to know how long it will take to optimize your website after the initial SEO audit, book a 30 minutes consultation today.
From my personal experience, WordPress websites often have simple issues that can be fixed quickly.
More than 85% of WordPress sites I’ve worked with have issues with their themes and outdated plugins.
What to expect from Naven Pillai’s SEO campaign?
With a customized, result-driven SEO marketing campaign you can see growth in keyword rankings and search traffic. The focus is to get visitors with the right search intent.
Naven Pillai’s SEO campaign consists of:
- Complete check on crawl errors and indexation issues
- Fixing all site warning that shows up on Google Search Console
- Each page on the site optimized correctly
- Create effective internal and external linking structure
- Create content that satisfies visitors’ search intent
- Improve website loading speed
- Increase impressions, clicks and CTR from search
- More revenue for the business
Want to start your SEO campaign?
I’m not a jack of all trades, I’m an SEO evangelist with over a decade of experience working with tons of businesses from different industries. Let me help you get your brand out there to thousands of people.
Why Naven Pillai is your ideal choice for WordPress SEO Consultant?
Naven Pillai is a highly experienced ad knowledgeable SEO consultant with over 10 years of experience. Naven has helped startups and small-medium businesses gain online visibility with SEO and Google Ads. Whether you’re looking for an SEO specialist for a small business or SEO consultant in Malaysia – Naven is the guy you want to work with.
Get all the benefits you’ll get from a high-end SEO campaign without spending a huge sum by working along with Naven Pillai.