SEO has changed a lot over the years and so has our approach towards it. As they say, change is constant so is the flow of SEO. What remains constant is the set of basic principles which when applied can get your site at the top of the SERP.
Speaking of SEO, an efficient CMS is what is essential to run your site for long and the most prominent amongst all is none other than WordPress. It is an undeniable fact that a perfect blend of WordPress with SEO is the x-factor that can make your site successful.
SEO Tips for a WordPress Website
Here is a sought-after list of significant essential SEO tips that can help your site to rank better on Google.
Content Matters
Any site without content is devoid and of least significance to the audience and the readers who land on your page. Content is the king and is the foundation of digital marketing. Creating a great content is the first crucial step to creating a mark.
Post content that is relevant to your niche and most importantly, which offers something to your audience. It’s not the quantity but the quality that matters along with other key factors, which will be discussed in the next section.
Also, it doesn’t matter how many times you post but how often you post the content. It is advised to maintain consistency. It is not a good practice to post 4 to 5 articles in a week and not post at all in the upcoming ones.
Clear the Basics
Along with good content, one must also take care of other imperative factors such as meta tags, meta description, correct usage of anchor text, using header tags, customizing robot.txt, keywords, to name a few. Good news is CMSs like WordPress is packed with all these essential elements under one roof using some effective plugins.
Experts believe that when all these factors are under consideration and well-optimized. The site you are planning to boost is surely going to experience positive change in its ranking. While anchor text is responsible for some serious SEO magic. Customizing robot.text is also essential if you don’t want the bots to crawl certain pages of your site.
XML Sitemap
Firstly, XML Sitemap is nothing but a hypothetical map that helps Google to understand the structure of your site, which can make it effective for crawling. Creating this kind of map is super easy and to make it more convenient, WordPress offers many useful plugins e.g. Google XML sitemaps that tends to automatically generate sitemaps. You then have to submit the XML sitemaps to Google for the crawlers to start with their routine of crawling and indexing.
SEO Plugins
There are a bunch of extremely useful WordPress plugins that can handle all your essential SEO strategies. Two popular ones are:
- Yoast: The most favorite among SEO specialists. Yoast plugin takes care of many things that you are looking for to accentuate the performance of your site. You can easily add meta, plan your focus keywords, social SEO, and sitemap creation. It also lets you assess your content with its page analysis feature.
- OptinMonster: A staple SEO tool amongst e-mail marketers. This plugin lets you create beautiful popups and forms that can attract your readers and potential clients. In terms of E-mail marketing, this tool has made its presence clear in the digital marketing arena.
WordPress Themes
It is essential to have an SEO-friendly theme for greater interaction. So picking the right theme is instrumental in optimizing your site for SEO. Though beginners can opt for the standard ones available in the market. One can also develop his or her own theme to incorporate all essential SEO requirements.
Media Sharing and Optimization
Social media marketing is a crucial factor to let the world know about you. A good part of the online community participates in one or the other social media platforms. So it is best to be where your customers are. With that being said, just uploading an image or a video, for that matter, is not enough. But the steps you take to promote it and optimize properly is what is going to get you brownie points.
WordPress lets you optimize your media file with various options from tweaking title, caption, alt text and description. All you need to do is to explore and experiment with the essential SEO elements.
Opt for Responsive Design
Today, 90% of the surfing is done using handset devices and it’s thus it is highly recommended to make your site responsive to a better user experience. You can get your hands on a lot of free and premium responsive themes on the web.
Vouching for Permalink
Permalinks are nothing but the URL that the user types in the URL bar. It is basically the address of your page or the site which when kept short and crisp can improve the SEO meter. To make it more SEO-friendly, you can use keywords, preferably, in the initial 4-5 words.
Better Web Hosting
Once you are satisfied with the level of optimization, analyze the overall performance of your site. If there are loading issues and if your site takes time, it’s high time you switch to a better web host with better servers. If you are opting for a new, faster server, ensure its performance and reliability before switching.
Analyze using Google Analytics
Assessment of your site performance is one of the significant steps to get an idea of where your traffic is coming from. Which page retains your audience, the behavior of your visitors and all other attributes that can help you reach out to your target audience and this is achieved by a powerful tool called Google Analytics. Making efficient use of Google Analytics can help you achieve your goal with minimal efforts.
In Conclusion
To hit the SEO milestone, true dedication and effort need to be invested. One of the aspects that you definitely need is patience to make small changes and watch your site zoom up on the SEO path. It is also advised to keep a track and constantly re-evaluate your WordPress integrated site once you experiment with various techniques and essential SEO tools.
Rohit is a full-time digital marketer in the web design world. His passion is to bring together the creators of awesome design products to its consumers. He loves biking and all sort of electronic gadgets. In his spare time, he loves playing with his little niece.
