SEO is the acronym of Search Engine Optimization. It is the procedure to optimize your site content and web pages for increasing website visibility for being highlighted on the first pages by search engines like Google.
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WordPress SEO:
Choosing an SEO-friendly and popular CMS platform like WordPress (WP) for launching your website is not enough to increase your WP site visibility or gain a good SEO rank.
In recent years, SEO has changed radically, and hence it is essential to keep your WordPress website updated with the latest SEO trends so that it grabs the maximum number of eyes.
For that, you need to have precise knowledge about WordPress SEO tactics and implement the same for increasing organic visibility and gaining better SEO ranks. If your website SEO is rock-solid, your WP website will land on Google’s first page, where most web searches are initiated and completed.
WordPress SEO is intricate; I have covered most of the WordPress SEO tips for increasing site rankings and boosting your organic traffic.
WordPress SEO Tips:
- Choose A Fast Web Host:
For a successful SEO crusade, a fast and trustworthy web hosting provider is pivotal in gaining a better position in search engines hostadvice. Google’s algorithms are all charged for giving the best user experience in terms of speed, and hence such websites are rewarded with better ranks than others.
Fast websites or fast page load speeds have experienced a better user experience and high conversion rates than slow sites facing high bounce ratios.
Research indicates that a delay by 1 second impacts the conversion rate by 7%, and hence select a web host with 100% uptime to keep your site running at all times. Bluehost is an ideal choice for your WordPress site.
- Check Your Site Performance:
The site performance of your WP website depends on multiple factors apart from the site speed. Your web design, themes used, plugins installed, images and videos, responsiveness to other devices, etc., and the list goes on. WordPress comprises inbuilt tools which help you to monitor your site performance. Some good ones include:
Google Pagespeed Insights – gives suggestions for making the page load faster by analysing content.
GTmetrix – analyses the site and reveals the culprits which slower the site
Check the site performance by using these tools and remove the obstacles to make it more user-friendly.
- Secure Your Website with SSL:
The more popular the CMS platform, the more favourite a hacking spot for cyber-criminals. One of the reasons why hackers hack WP sites is that they lack security. Let me tell you, securing your WP site is not that difficult as you presume.
Do you want to see an SSL padlock in your address bar and HTTPS in the URL site for customer trust and better SEO?
Purchase an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate for your WP site from Cheap SSL Shop, an authentic and trusted SSL certificate provider worldwide.
You can’t beat them when it comes to comparing the price factor, as they offer the cheapest SSL certificates of all global brands.
Example: Comodo SSL Certificates are available at a price ranging from $5/year to $120/year, depending on the security they provide.
Since all your client-server communications are encrypted with SSL security, Google prefers and ranks SSL sites better than non-SSL ones.
- Secure Your Website Holistically:
The more secure your site, the better chances of prevention it has against hackers. Apart from SSL security, your WordPress site requires other basic security measures like a strong and complex password for WordPress login.
WordPress plugins like Loginizer for preventing brute force attacks, anti-spam WordPress plugins like Titan Anti-spam & Security for preventing spammy emails, spammy comments, and intruder’s IP addresses should also be installed for securing the website.
Remember, a hacked site can hamper your SEO rank, so install all the necessary plugins to shield your website. Update them regularly and delete the unused ones to prevent security vulnerabilities.
- Check Your Site Hierarchy:
A site hierarchy is the hierarchical structure of pages on the website. In layman’s terms, it means the organizational structure of the website in order of importance, proper use of headings, menus and submenus and labels, etc.
If the site hierarchy is in order, the information is easily found by the user, but if it’s not, then the desired information or page will not be found.
- Check the General Settings:
Decide whether your site’s domain name should start with www or not. If yes, update the same in WordPress Address and Site Address.
Also, ensure that “Search Engine Visibility” is unticked in the Settings > Reading menu. This puts your WP site in the search engine’s index and hence increases the user’s site visibility.
- Optimize Page Title, Tagline, and Permalinks:
Ensure that your title tags include target keywords, which attracts Google and increases site visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). It increases click rates and attracts more users to your content.
Your tagline indicates your site content and brand products, so create an informative tagline with precise keywords.
Permalinks (complete URL) improve website visibility to users and search engines. They help predict your website content displayed on the pages, to the users, for grabbing their attention.
WordPress permalinks are complex by default, and hence I would suggest using name permalinks which are good for SEO.
WP default – https://xyz.com/2021/05/sample-post/
Post name permalinks – https://xyz.com/sample-post/
All these criteria are focused on SEOs for ranking purposes, ensuring that they are as per SEO standards.
- Target Long-Tail Keywords:
To reach the front page of Google by simply using targeted keywords in your WP website is a myth. Many sites have conquered that position with awesome content, titles, backlinks, and other SEO-friendly stuff, which cements their SEO position.
Use of long-tail keywords, i.e., specific keywords which users search for before making a purchase decision, are beneficial when used correctly. Use a good tool like Keyword Tool Dominator for searching long-tail keywords, paste them on your site to get a consistent flow of network traffic.
- Write a Solid Meta Description:
A meta description (text snippets visible below the site title) is a briefing of page content that is useful for search engines and users. An enthralling meta description has the potential to raise the CTR (click-through-rate) of organic searches. This, in turn, increases user visibility, network traffic, and CTR.
Your WordPress site should have a captivating meta description (50 – 160 words) with meta keywords, which are distinctive and pertinent to the contents on the page.
- Optimize Posts for Keywords:
Keywords pave the way for your content and permit users to reach your website via search engines. When used in all places like tags, titles, meta descriptions, and content, they help in enriching the website for SEO.
Example: If your website content covers summer clothes, then bathing suits, cotton t-shirts, linen shirts, shorts, etc., can be used as keywords.
But, excess of everything is bad, i.e., never do keyword stuffing, else you may have to bear penalty charges for the same.
- Only One H1 Per Post:
An HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tag that specifies the heading on the site page is H1. It is considered the most pivotal and largest heading on the website. Though H2, H3, H4, etc., follows, the focal point of all search engines is H1.
In WordPress, this is simply because the main title of the post is defined as H1 by default. You can edit the post, but it’s not feasible to insert <h1> tags everywhere on the website.
- Create an XML Sitemap:
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) Sitemaps are formatted files that are present on each website page. They make the task easy for Google to locate your website pages since search engines queue pages and websites. Crawling and indexing a website for finding the relevant content is possible with an XML sitemap.
Pages are easily found and ranked specifically if the AIOSEO WP plugin is installed on your website. This plugin automatically creates sitemaps and raises the SEO rankings.
- Build High-Quality Backlinks:
Linking your website to another famous site for appropriate content will help in making your website visible and popular. That’s the main reason why backlinks are contemplated to be SEO-friendly and a ranking factor too.
The % of quality links attached to your website is directly proportional to getting a high SEO rank.
Studies indicate that the best results on the 1st Google page comprise 38% of the backlinks, all taken from the 1st page.
- Avoid Duplicate Content:
Google hates duplicity, so using similar content or keywords on various pages of your website will hinder your SEO position and ranking. The impact of using duplicity of the content may display an opposite effect.
Duplicity confuses the search engines in the page selection criteria for ranking purposes. Also termed keyword cannibalization, there is a possibility that the original content may be shunned from being designated in the top searches, and a page with lesser priorities may be selected.
Wrapping Up:
Appropriate keywords, unique content, backlinks, long meta descriptions, relevant plugins, SSL certificate security, etc., will help you grab a good SEO rank. I hope the above-mentioned WordPress SEO tips suffice for search engines to cognizance your WP site and rate them to a top position.