To build a WordPress website for an executive that performs well in Google search results, follow these steps:
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If possible, get a URL that ends with .com, with the executive's name without dashes. For example, JohnSmith.com is better than John-Smith.com. If .com is not available, use .net.
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Choose a fast and lightweight theme: A slow-loading theme can hurt your search rankings because fast sites tend to rank better in Google. Look for themes that are optimized for speed and have good reviews from users. Wordpress and other sites have many free themes. Themes with a lot of bells and whistles tend to be slower.
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Use a keyword-rich website title for the home page that includes the name of the executive as the first words of the title.
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When creating posts and pages, be sure to use the first and last name of the executive occasionally in the body text. This will help Google understand what your content is about and make it more likely to show up in search results.
- Do not re-use the executives' biography for the new site. Instead, create a brand new biography that has never been published before. This fresh, new, biography should help the site rank better than duplicating one that Google has already seen.
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Optimize your images: Large images can slow down your site, which can lead to lower rankings, so it's important to optimize them for the web. A common mistake is to make the file size of the "hero" image, the large one at the top of many web designs, too big. Aim for a hero image of less than 100KB if you can. Also, make sure your images are set to "lazy load".
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Use a caching plugin: Caching plugins store a static version of your site and serve it to visitors, which can greatly improve the speed of your site. Some popular caching plugins for WordPress include W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.
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Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN is a network of servers that delivers your site's static content (such as images, CSS, and JavaScript files) to users based on their geographic location. This can help reduce the load on your server and improve the speed of your site. Cloudflare is a well-known CDN, but many web hosting providers already have a CDN built in.
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Enable Gzip compression: Gzip compression reduces the size of your site's files, which can help improve the speed of your site. You can enable Gzip compression through your server's control panel or a plugin like W3 Total Cache or Autoptimize.
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Use a mobile-responsive design: With more and more people accessing the web on their smartphones and tablets, it's important to make sure your site is mobile-friendly. Google favors mobile-responsive sites in its search results, so be sure to choose a responsive theme or use a plugin like WPtouch or Jetpack to make your site mobile-friendly. It's a good idea to run Page Speed Insights on the site once in a while to ensure it is friendly for mobile use.
- Add "Person" schema to the home page of the executives' website. Within the schema, use "SameAs" to include links to the executives' LinkedIn profile, Twitter, Crunchbase, and other social profiles. This helps Google understand that those sites are associated with the executive. It can also help fill out the Knowledge Panel of the executive in Google search results.
- Install the Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin and configure it. You can use Yoast to set up Person schema (see above).
- Developers often add the NoIndex tag to a website when in development so that Google will ignore the live site until it's ready. Make sure you turn off NoIndex when the site goes live or Google will never cache your site (it won't appear in search results).
- Once the new site goes live, link to it from the executives' LinkedIn profile and, if possible, from the corporate About page for the executive. Google will crawl the link from the corporate site to find the new executive website. It will also associate the new site with the executives' corporate site biography.
By following the above tips, you can improve the performance of your WordPress site in Google search results. In our experience, following the steps above will almost guarantee a high ranking for the new executive website.
If you are developing only a biography page for an executive, see this guide.
