Peter Warwick-Mahoney - Wordpress SEO Expert

I’ve been working with the web and SEO for 22 years.

And my experience with WordPress pre-dates it even being called WordPress!

Over the years I’ve consistently seen that the #1 best way to attract and retain clients to your business is through SEO (search engine optimisation).

With my wealth of experience I can approach it just as it should be done; in line with industry best practice, using Google’s latest guidance and recommendations, and most of all strategic.

Why is SEO the best digital marketing you can do?

Unlike PPC (Adwords), where you pay by click, SEO done well builds on its success each month. The 15% extra clicks you got last month will compound with this month's success. And the way I work is a simple fixed price. So when you're pulling in 10,000 visits a month you'll pay the same you did at 500.

What is the best approach to SEO?

My WordPress SEO approach is entirely in line with Google and Bing's guidelines - I very much believe the best approach is to give them what they want by fulfilling their guidelines and recommendations.

What is a Google friendly approach to SEO?

The best SEO you can have is aligned to Google's ethos, their future direction and their guidelines and recommendations. When you adopt that strategy, changes to their algorithm (which usually send website owners into a tailspin) actually benefit you!

I offer two main services, a one-off complete SEO overhaul for WordPress, and also ongoing SEO WordPress campaigns.

Grow your business with SEO; grow it with me.

Peter WM

BERT is Google’s latest update

By Peter Warwick-Mahoney

There’s been a number of news stories about the BERT update from Google.

These were followed by a slew of other stories about how the previous ones were misleading.

Let’s explain.

BERT is Google's latest update Wordpress SEO Expert

If we go back several years to what was a very big announcement from Google – they turned on something they called RankBrain. At the time it was a new system and approach to search engine optimisation. They were using artificial intelligence to try to read webpages more like a human (actual visitors) would.

It was such a big deal because context suddenly became very important. The days of simply matching how many times you used certain keywords in your content against searches were over – it was crucial to write informative, useful content.

(That seems like a non-brainer anyway – content should always be useful and informative.)

But it was the beginning of the end for the concept of ‘how many keywords you can rank for’, or ‘just say this three times and you’ll rank really highly’.

In the years following Google has made all kinds of similar small updates to improve that system. They’re committed to returning useful well-written, informative results; and they’ve regularly made changes to their algorithm to further that aim.

The BERT SEO update

The BERT update really just pushes that to the next level. ‘Pattern matching’ for specific phrases isn’t enough anymore, not by a long shot.

Fortunately this is all in line with what I’ve been saying for years – don’t just write to specific words (whether they’re ‘long tail’ or something else, the concept of expecting a certain amount of repetition to rock your SEO isn’t valid) – rather write well thought out content that explains what you’re trying to say.

(This is why some of the recent news stories about BERT backtracked about how important it was – because while it is important – it’s just a continuation of the same direction Google’s been going for a long time.)

To give you an example. You’d think the key with my own site is to mention SEO a lot. That’s easy to do – but harder to do in a way that makes it clear to the reader that I’m an authority on the subject, and even harder to impart useful information that might entice people back to my blog.

Simply repeating keywords is essentially keyword stuffing and Google knows it.

My recommendation for writing content hasn’t changed. Write to your audience, not to search engines. If you’re writing an about page then write about what you do and how you help people. Useful, natural words and phrases will come out of that anyway.

Your visitors – and increasingly your search engine ranking – will thank you for it.

Why context matters so much for SEO

As search engines continue to prepare for voice search being used more often (voice searches are usually quite conversational in their wording) context becomes more important.

To give a really basically example, let’s think about a site that may have been a review for a florist. Even if the content said something negative, for example “What a rubbish florist”, previously it would have helped rank for the search query ‘florist’. Increasingly Google can understand the negativity there and is less likely to present that site to someone who clearly wants to find a reputable local florist.

That really is a very basic example, but context is so important.

What needs changing for your WordPress SEO

As a WordPress SEO expert every change and update to SEO algorithms always comes back to the same question, “How does this impact WordPress SEO?” The answer in this case is very little. Unlike structured data or other updates that necessitate coding changes to your site, this really is all about content.

Fortunately WordPress itself is all about content and the ease of editing or creating it – so that’s a real boon. It’s easy to edit your site’s content to make it as contextual, human readable and useful as possible.

But there is no immediate need to jump in add or remove any plugins or systems.

I have over 1500 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.