It doesn’t matter how beautiful a company website is; if it isn’t SEO optimized, it won’t function at its full potential. The traffic will be low and as a result, the content you post won’t reach a large audience.
If you are selling products on the site, you will get customers sparingly because only a handful of people will know it exists. To increase Search Engine Results Page rankings, here are ten tips that work best on WordPress:
Set Permalinks
Permalinks are the link that appears as the URL of website pages. They are what others use to link certain pages relevant to their content when they quote a blogger or mention something he mentioned. Search engines also use permalinks to link website pages on their results page (SERP).
Each page is attributed to a default permalink but with WordPress, you can easily change it as per your requirements or preferences. To find these settings, you can head to settings and then click on the section written “permalinks.” You can change the permalinks to follow this syntax:
- www.websitename.com/write-page-title-here
Alternatively, they can follow this syntax:
- www.websitename.com/2020/01/write-page-title-here
The first option lets you write the website page title and the second one allows you to include the date for easier reference. If you are new to WordPress, you might need some time to get used to it.
During that period, if you are a student or a professional who’s studying part-time, don’t let your schoolwork suffer, but let PapersOwl handle your assignments related to thesis, dissertation, or essays. As you track the website’s SEO progress and redevelop the marketing campaign, get assignment help to ensure that your coursework doesn’t slack.
Use Google Analytics
Google Analytics is very popular amongst digital marketers and business owners that run their own sites and marketing campaigns. The online tool offers valuable insights about the website being reviewed for free of charge. Some of the insights it offers include letting you know the source of your traffic, the behavior of the audience interested in the site, etc.
Google Analytics basically lets you keep track of the traffic on the site you’re managing and that information can be used to redirect efforts efficiently. Other features of this tool include helping you find 404 error pages, combating referral spam and other useful functionalities.
Get SEO plugins
WordPress has a plethora of plugins and amongst those, there are various that cater to SEO needs. Those plugins include All in One SEO Plugin and the very popular Yoast SEO, and there are also many others you can choose from.
These plugins take care of the entire SEO side of running a site and they encourage website owners to use meta descriptions, titles, tags, keywords, and other tactics.
These plugins are specifically designed for WordPress, which means using them isn’t that complex. Part of the responsibilities of these plugins includes improving on-page SEO by showing a preview of the Google Search Result Snippet. They also create an XML sitemap for the website they are being used on, giving them comprehensive SEO cover.
Optimize Multimedia
The media you use on your site can make or break the SEO efforts you’re making. Taking careful note of the recommendations of posting images can help you rank higher on image searches. How should you post multimedia on the website you’re running? Consider tagging, renaming and captioning pictures when going to include them on a blog post or other page on the website.
When uploading a picture, keeping it with its complex name isn’t recommended and that’s why WordPress gives you a chance to change this before posting the picture.
WordPress gives you the option to rename the picture to a more understandable name that could also be a keyword to attract more traffic. You can also include a caption, description, and alt text to make it more SEO-friendly.
Create a Sitemap
Probably your site has hundreds of pages or is heading there and knowing where to find these pages will be extremely hard. To make it easy for Google to index them, all you still need to structure the website you’re running. Structuring the website includes creating a map that will outline the location of each and every page.
The kind of map that you will create is a sitemap that will tell Google where to find the different pages. The format of the sitemap should be XML, but with WordPress, you can use a plugin that will do it all for you. The name of the plugin is Google XML Sitemaps. It automatically created a sitemap of the WordPress site you’re managing.
Make the Content Easy to Share
The content you post might be inspiring and incite internet users to share it with their friends and family using social media profiles. The average internet user is active on one or all of social media platforms and because of that, your content should be shareable across all of them. That includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Whatsapp, Instagram, and others.
Taking the decision to make the content shareable will drive a lot of traffic to the site you’re managing. Once it is on social media, it’s easier for it to go viral because of the fast-paced environment on these platforms.
Above that, including social media sharing buttons on the company’s website will improve its credibility. That will do wonders for its Search Engine Results Page rankings of different search engines but mostly Google.
Correctly use Anchor Texts and Links
Linking is very important to accelerate your SEO efforts but proceed with caution when using anchor texts. Using naked URLs without keywords is definitely out of the question when link building, so choosing the appropriate anchor text is very important.
Another major don’t for anchor text is using phrases such as “click here for more information.” Primarily, an anchor text should be a preview of what’s expected instead of meaningless words. Failure to use anchor texts correctly, Google might penalize your site by bumping you down on Search Engine Results Page rankings.
Link building also doesn’t have to be external only; you can do it internally with previous posts. Internal links also boost all SEO strategies. However, in this regard, you should also be cautious, use internal links only when it is fitting to do so. Linking just for the sake of it will also lead to penalties, so ensure that the content between the pages is relevant.
Use SEO-friendly Themes
Most of the time, business owners and their HR software are prone to choose the most appealing theme for their website. Although a beautiful looking site is beneficial because customers will spend more time on it, the appearance shouldn’t be our primary objective. From the wide variety of WordPress themes available, choose one that will aid on-site SEO tactics.
The perfect theme that is optimized for SEO will load fast and have great code. How do you rate the code of a website? It should use meta title tags and headings appropriately and should have the correct use of canonical URL meta tags.
Most importantly, the code of the website should be neat with valid and proper HTML because Google bots will go through it to determine how good it is.
Use Correct Heading Tags
To support the SEO strategy you’re running, you need to use the appropriate heading tags. It may be overwhelming when you’re faced with the decision of choosing which tag to use since they range from H1 up until H6.
An easy explanation is that H1 tags are used for the blog post title. It should be clear and tell the readers what they can expect in the post. It should also be attractive to hook viewers that may be passing by.
The H2 tag is used for headings throughout the blog post and then H3 and H4 tags are designed for sub-headings, respectively. It is important to try and use tags correctly because it directly has an impact on the engagement levels of the targeted audience.
Produce High-quality Content
Setting up your entire WordPress site for SEO doesn’t mean anything when the content you post is irrelevant or of low-quality. You need to align all on-site SEO tactics with high-quality content.
If you really want to top the Search Engine Results Page rankings, you need to post engaging and authoritative content. Write unique content and avoid plagiarism at all costs. You can use a plagiarism checker to ensure that the content you’re posting is unique and won’t lead to long-term repercussions that will cost your SEO strategy.
Final Thoughts
These ten tips and techniques to improve Search Engine Results Page rankings on a WordPress site are practical and easy to implement but very effective. Using SEO plugins effectively is very important on WordPress because they can do all of the work for you.
