What is the best software for SEO?

“What’s the best website platform for SEO?” 

It’s a question I hear constantly—and today, I want to bust the myth. 

Most modern website platforms already support good SEO. 

So if you’re spending hours comparing tools hoping one will magically get you to page one... you’re focusing on the wrong thing. 

In this episode, I’m breaking down what actually matters for SEO —and why your content and structure are doing more heavy lifting than your tech stack. 

I’ll also share the common mistake I see website owners make that undoes their SEO efforts—regardless of what platform they’re using. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Busting The Platform-For-SEO Myth
• 2:37 What Software Must Support
• 5:20 Keywords, H1s, And Page Focus
• 9:10 Internal Links And Alt Text
• 12:40 Depth, Blogging, And Consistency

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:42

So, what's the best platform for SEO or search engine optimization? It's a question I hear a lot. And today I want to bust this myth. It's something I talk about on social media a lot when people ask this question. Most modern website platforms already support good search engine optimization. So if you're spending hours comparing tools, hoping one will magically get you to page one on Google, you're focusing on the wrong thing. In this episode, I'm breaking down what actually matters for SEO and why your content and structure are more likely to do the heavy lifting than your tech stack. I'll also share the common mistake I see website owners make that undoes their SEO efforts, regardless of what platform they're using. So let's dive in. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. So let's talk first about the real role of software in search engine optimization. SEO is no longer platform dependent like it was 10 years ago or so. Most modern platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Go High Level, Kajabi, Squarespace, ShowIt are technically SEO friendly. The platform is just a container. It's what you put into it that actually really matters. So the platforms in general should be supporting the following things. And I have not seen one in modern days that doesn't support this. You need to be able to have custom page titles and descriptions and meta descriptions, that is. You need to have clean URLs that you can put in. So ones without some weird numbers or weird stuff at the end. You can just put words basically at the end. You need to be able to have alt text for your images. You need to be able to have mobile responsiveness, and you need to have fast page speeds and good security. So if your software checks these boxes, then you're good with what you have as far as search engine optimization goes. So then what actually does matter for SEO? What moves that needle? What gets you higher in Google and other search engines? We need to have clear keyword aligned page titles and H1s. Now, so what's that? What does that mean? Let's break that down. So keyword aligned page titles. So when I say that, I mean what are the words that your customers are using to find your services? What words do they use when they describe their pain points or their needs? And so we want to have those as the page titles. And the H1s or heading ones, those are that's the bold heading that you would have at the top. And you need to use your software to select heading one for that. So you need to reiterate or maybe restate that page title, uh, maybe in a slightly different manner than what you have in your page title. You can also have it still be the same. So those need to really focus on one key topic, and focusing on one key topic per page is very, very key. And then we want to have helpful structured content that answers these questions within the body of that page. So what pain point are you answering? What service are you providing that helps them? And then we want to have internal links between related pages. So say you have a page about a service you have, um, and you have a blog post talking about how you helped a client with that. We'll go link to that on that service page, or and vice versa. So having those internal linkings helps the search engines see the structure website for one, and also helps link to other pages that have similar keywords that help reinforce that main point there. And then we want to have descriptive names on the images as well as the alt text. The alt text stands for alternative text, so it's the text that describes what your image is. So if your image is a banner image that talks about what your service title is, use that, your service title as your alt text. If you have an image of maybe it's a stock image of a person frustrated on a computer, let's say that should be your alt text for that one. Or because you do want to use it in a way that's also ADA compliant or American Disabilities Act compliant, you need to describe the image as well. But we can put your keywords in at the same time. And then we need to have consistency across our pages. We need to have this consistent structure where we're focusing on one main topic and then supporting the topic. It's like we're talking to an English teacher or somebody in uh your school system, you know, back when you're in school and you wrote papers for your teachers. We need to have a one topic per page on your website, just like you'd have one topic per um report that you might write. And we want to have some depth over time, some more pages, have a uh not a shallow website. So a shallow website would be maybe four or five pages. Now, if you're just starting out four or five pages, it's great. But that's one of the reasons why I encourage each of us to have a blog, even if you only have it published once a month, that starts building more depth into your website, more interesting things for Google, Bing, and the major search engines to find. And it makes you look like you're updating your site constantly and care about the content on your site. So it shows Google and Bing and the other search engines that you care about your website and you find it important and they pay a little bit more attention. So, what's the big mistake I see a lot? Thinking that changing platforms will fix your search engine optimization, and it won't unless you also fix the content and structure that the search engines are indexing. So that's the stuff within the website. So let's talk about some quick wins for SEO without switching platforms. Let's say you're happy with your platform, but you're just worried about the search engine optimization about it. What can you do to improve it because you feel like you're stuck? First, do a quick headline audit. What is that main topic per page? Are you using keywords naturally? Are you speaking your customers' language? Are you speaking the things that they search? Uh, you may have to do some research on this to make sure that you are, whether it's talking to clients, whether it's um doing research in like forums or like Reddit or other things like that, Facebook groups. You may need to do some research. You may need to find where your people are and see what words they're using. And you want to make sure every page has a unique meta title and description. Now, the meta title is more used in search engine optimizations than the meta description is. So first focus on that and make sure it you know matches your keywords and your subject. And then what's that meta description for? I get that question a lot. So the meta description is more of like a short preview blurb that somebody would see when they search your subject and find your search result on uh the search results page. So it's a the little bit of chat text that's underneath the page title. So you want that to be engaging and drawing them in. You definitely want to reiterate some of those keywords, but really anymore, it's to reinforce what you're going to help them with on that page, not necessarily for search engines to pay attention to. They don't pay attention to that field quite as much as they used to, but they do take it into account a little bit, but more so as humans take that into account and skim that little bit of text and see what it is about to make sure they're going to be clicking on the page they expect to. And then we want to have alt text on your images, describing what they are on every single image. You should have this on every single image, even if it's a blank image that's just kind of creating a filler space, which is kind of an old way to create some space on your website, but some people still do this. So even if it's a blank one, describe what it is. And then I want you to review your home page. Clear on who you help and what you offer and why they should stay. Is that very clear? So none of this requires any new software, just better use of what you already have. And if you feel like and say, Oh, Carrie, I haven't done any of this to my website at all yet, then I challenge you after listening to this episode, pick your home page and let's say one or two more pages, and concentrate on those. And those other two pages, maybe that's your main service offering or your main product you want to sell, and focus on a couple. And then each month, focus on one or two more pages and work towards you know getting your whole website much better for search engine optimization and much better on your content. And you'll start seeing a good snowball effect. The more you improve, the more you're gonna get recognized by the major search engines, and you're gonna see some great improvement. So if you've been holding off and improving your site because you thought you needed better software for search engine optimization, let this episode be your green light. What you need isn't necessarily a new platform if it fills your other needs. You need a strategy that makes the most of the one you're on, and that's exactly what we talk about in the converting website course. You'll learn how to structure your pages, write better content, and build a site that attracts the right people and converts them. You can learn more at SmarterOnline Business.com forward slash TCW, or you can hop into our free Facebook group for SEO tips and support. And that's SmarterOnline Business.com forward slash Facebook. And both of those links are in our show notes. So let's talk about that last tip. I want you to audit your SEO signals. So here's a five-minute audit you can do today, and these will be in our show notes in case you're driving or you know working out or something. I don't want you to miss these. So I want you to first Google your business name. What shows? What name shows up? Do you show up on top? Another great thing to do is also to go to duckduckgo.com and also search your business name there because Google's a bit biased on based upon previous searches you've done. So you want to see what Google thinks when you search, but you also want to see what a non-biased search engine is thinks whenever you search your name. So also go to duckduckgo.com. And then do you have clear relevant titles in that search? So when you search your business name and your pages come up, do you have clear relevant titles there? And are your main pages linked together? Check a few of them. Are you linking some of your main pages together? And do your images have alt text? That's if you mouse over it, you should see some words that pop up. If you're not sure whether you have it on there, you can also look in the back end on your page or on your blog post to make sure you have alt text. And these small things build long-term momentum, and they are often overlooked, but they're really easy to do. And once you get in the habit of making sure you have one topic per page, making sure you have a headline that supports it and supporting paragraphs underneath and images that support it, you will get in the habit of doing a much better job of naturally doing search engine optimization on every single page, and then you can take it to the next level whenever you're ready. That's all we have for this week's episode of the Smarter Online Business Podcast. I hope this was super helpful and build some confidence in you and getting your search engine optimization better and helping you know that you don't have to change softwares in case that's the only thing you're really worried about, is your search engine optimization. And if you're not already on our newsletter, go on over to SmarterOnline Business.com forward slash newsletter, where you'll get tips like this in your inbox once a week, where we love to help our clients and our newsletter subscribers take that next step forward with their website and have it work more for them rather than against them. And we'll see you next week.