If you’re doing nothing – or next to nothing – about optimizing your pages for search you’re really missing out on making it more likely to be found on Google and other search engines.

This doesn’t make a lot of sense. After all you built your site and now no one is coming to it. The business tool you dreamed of is not happening.

I’ve been working with the new, sizzling hot SEO plugin , RankMath. Now let me tell you a secret.

I don’t like to do SEO. I find it tedious, boring and robotic. And I don’t like writing for search engines and I don’t. I write for people.

But here’s the thing. SEO works.

That may not come as a surprise.

You don’t have to be a SEO guru and you don’t have to pay big bucks if you’ll do the no-brainer things for any page you’ve never done much – or anything for – when it comes to improving search rankings.

There are 4 things you MUST do no matter which SEO plugin you use. That means Yoast, All In One SEO and all the rest including RankMath.

These are simple things to do and they do not require you to change the copy of a page.

Here’s the proof that just by spending 5 – 10 minutes on a page doing Brain Dead SEO I’ve increased impressions and clicks for my site in the past 3 months!!

This article is not about what keywords you should use to optimize a page for. That’s a different article. Keyword research is more complicated than what I am about to tell you. While my advice can apply to new content I’m really thinking of content you’ve already published and have never done much – if any – SEO work on.

Here’s My Prescription For Brain Dead SEO

You Need Not Optimize Every Page.

Choose the 5 most important pages on your site to work on. Those are the ones you want to improve search rankings. After you get the hang of this you can expand this process to other pages. But for now, no more than 5 pages.

Now, go pick the first page to work on. Remember you need not optimize the entire site. It is just a single page that you focus on.

Except for Thing 1 below you can do this in any order.

Thing 1: Choose A Keyword Phrase For The Page

Think of the words that someone might use to find the page. Remember, we’re not doing keyword research. We’re just using our imagination. You should have a pretty good idea of what someone would type into the search box for this but DO NOT think what you would type in. That’ may sound a little tricky. Use the words that others would use to find the page. Just the basics.

Also, do not use only one or two words. You will never rank for that. Think of a Phrase that is specific for the page. The more specific your phrase is, the better.

No matter which plugin you use every page has a place to enter your Keyword Phrase. Once that’s done you are on your way!

I’ll use this page as my working example. The keyword phrase I’m using is “simple things to do to improve page ranking.” Notice I’m not using “Brain Dead SEO” because no one is likely to be searching for that.

Step 2: Apply The Keyword Phrase To Your SEO Title

What’s an SEO Title?

A SEO Title shows up in the tab of any browser. It is known to be a very rich signal to Google as to wha the page is about. Google puts a lot of weight behind your SEO Title.

This is one of the simplest things to do.

In this example I’m using RankMath to add the keyword phrase as my SEO Title.

I like to use Title Casing for my SEO Title because it is what users will see and click on while using Google.

Note: Like most SEO plugins they will work with Gutenberg or the Classic Editor. I’m using the Classic Editor for this example.

Step 3: Use The Keyword Phrase In The URL Of The Page

You don’t even need an SEO Plugin for this one.

Here I’m adding the keyphrase into my url. WordPress will automatically remove superfluous words like “the”, “or”, “a” and others in the url. It will also convert everything to lowercase.

Will this mess up your links? After all you are changing the text in your URL. No, this will not be a problem. WordPress will automatically take care of this through its built-in redirection capability.

Step 3: Use The Keyword Phrase In Your Meta Description

Meta descriptions are a sentence or two that is hidden in the code of every web page. While you and your users won’t see it (unless they look at the page’s source code) it is there and it is information that Google reads. Plus, it is frequently used to display what your page is about in Google.

I used “Here are some simple things to do to improve page ranking in the search engine results pages.” which includes my keyword phrase.

Is That All There Is To It?

Yes and no.

It’s yes if you’re doing Brain Dead SEO because no matter which plugin your use you will see you’ve improved your page’s SEO markedly.

If you are using Yoast you may not get the Green Light indicator to go off but you’ll at least get the Yellow to light up. RankMath uses a scale from 0 – 100 (in addition to a color indicator) and you’re likely to be in 60s just by doing the things I discussed above.

Just these simple things

• Add your keyword phrase to the SEO Title
• Make sure your keywords are in the url
• Use your keywords in the Meta Description

will improve your rankings. How do I know? Because it’s what I’ve done for the past few months and I see the results.

image of Search Console

But there are more steps to take if you’re ambitious and ready dive in. Here are some of them.

• add your keyword phrase to your copy
• use your keyword phrase in at least one sub heading
• your copy should be at least 750 words
• use the keywords phrase in the alt description of one image in your page

Add End

It takes time to improve your rankings but you will see that if start just by doing Brain Dead SEO you will move up and get more clicks every day from Google.