So you have a beautiful WordPress website, and you are excited for people to see it. But the question is: how do you get people to visit it?
One of the best ways is to improve its search engine ranking to make it appear in the top search results. That is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. Here are 12 WordPress SEO tips that will make your website rank highly on search engines.
1. Pick a Good Web Hosting Company
Choosing a host for your WordPress site is one of the most important steps to having a high-ranking website. Good thing you don’t need to spend too much on hosting as there are many budget-friendly yet quality hosting providers out there.
For SEO purposes, you need to make sure your pages don’t take longer than 1.5 seconds to load. Don’t choose a host with slow servers and bad response times, otherwise, search engines will penalize your website. Site speed is one of the most important ranking factors on Google!
2. Write High-Quality Content
When it comes to WordPress Google search optimization, nothing can beat writing high-quality content. Although Google is only a search engine, it hates it when you provide your audience with low-quality content and will deduct ranking points.
So what makes for quality content in the eyes of Google and other search engines? Make sure the content is unique (not copied from other sites) and relevant to your audience. Google will definitely penalize you if you use plagiarised content. So, feel free to take inspiration from other sources but never copy!
3. Post Consistently
The content you post can only be relevant for so long, and search engines know this. This is why they place greater emphasis on newer content. So if you want your website to rank highly, you need to post consistently.
As long as the new content you post is unique and relevant, search engines will hold it in high regard, which means a better ranking.
4. Use On-Page SEO
Though on-page SEO is considered to be traditional, it is still one of the best WordPress SEO tips. For example, writing a custom meta description can do wonders for your SEO efforts.
Don’t be put off from doing it just because search engines like Google can automatically generate one for you. (It will base the meta description on your keywords). It doesn’t hurt to write your very own keyword-rich version.
5. Change Your Permalinks
When it comes to WordPress SEO optimization, you can’t do without optimizing your permalinks. Each of your webpages has a URL, and that is what is known as a permalink.
When someone wants to access a particular webpage that is what they will enter in the browser’s address bar. It is a good idea to edit them to make them easier for search engines to index. It will also make them easier for people to enter in the address bar or link out to.
An example of a bad permalink would be: www.mywordpresswebsite.com/?p=3536 (this is probably what WordPress will use as a default permalink)
An example of a good permalink would be: www.mywordpresswebsite.com/this-is-much-better
6. Optimize Your Website for Speed
Optimizing your website’s performance is one of the top WordPress SEO tips. As mentioned earlier, this is because search engines penalize slow websites (sadly, they don’t reward fast ones either).
Plus, the more people visit your website, the more search engines will deem them relevant and award them some points. According to HubSpot, 42% of people expect your web pages to take two seconds or less to load. So if you have a slow website, it might be time to do something about it.
7. Make Your Website Responsive
In 2015, Google released an update for its search engine algorithm that rewarded websites that were mobile-optimized. It was given the name Mobilegeddon by webmasters and web-developers.
This is because a responsive WordPress website provides the best experience for mobile users, and Google recognized this. With the rise of mobile browsing, this was a smart move (by 2018, 52.2% of web traffic was coming from mobile devices).
8. Use Internal and External Links
When Google bots scan your content, they will pay attention to relevancy. Having internal links (links that take users to related parts of your website) increases the relevancy of your content. Look at the analytics of your website to determine which of your website pages are visited the most and link to them.
External links also make your content more relevant in the eyes of search engines. So if you’re writing a blog post that includes an important statistic from a high-authority website, link to the source.
9. Remove or Fix All Broken Links in Your Content
From time to time, it is a good idea to analyze your website to make sure the content contains no dead links. For example, if you have an internal or external link within your blog post that leads to a page or website that no longer exists, you have a broken link. Google will penalize your website because of this. Make sure that you remove or fix all broken links.
11. Utilize SEO Plugins
When it comes to SEO in WordPress, there are a number of good plugins at your disposal. Most of these plugins, like Yoast SEO, enhance your on-page SEO in terms of things like keywords, meta description, titles, links, and word count.
So if you are not sure what you can do to improve your on-page SEO game, be sure to give SEO plugins a try.
12. Add Social Media Sharing Buttons
Search engines have ways to tell whether your audience is reacting to your web pages. One of these ways is through social media; so the more people that share your posts and like them, the better.
It means there is something relevant in the content that people should see, and this can increase your search engine ranking. So make sure you include social media buttons so people can share the content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
WordPress SEO is Important!
Now that you know some WordPress SEO tips, you can make sure your website ranks highly.
As you can see, you don’t even have to spend money to make your website appear among the top results.
So analyze your WordPress website, and see where you can use a few of these tips. This will give your website traffic a significant boost.
