Everything You Need To Know About WordPress SEO
Are you looking for ways to optimize your WordPress website for search engines? Well, you are in luck. We are glad you found this post. In this piece, we will share with you some tips that will help your site rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs). These tips are time-tested, and search engine optimization pros from all over the world are applying them. Here they are:
Improve The Speed Of Your Site
Google algorithms are designed to favor fast websites. If your site is slow, you can be sure that it will never appear on the first page of Google results. It could even be penalized. Speeding up your site will help improve its rankings. Here are tips that can help you improve your site’s speed.
- Work with a reputable hosting company—one that has a reputation for excellent performance and reliable support (We prefer WP Engine for our hosting.)
- Compress any huge image files on your website(We use Imagify)
- You can also increase the speed of your site by installing caching plugins. (We prefer WP Rocket)
Fortunately, you can give us an opportunity to help you increase the speed of your website by fixing any problems for you.
Pick the Right Theme
The theme you pick will not only determine your site’s appearance and layout but will also affect its ranking. For this reason, make sure you choose the right theme. The right theme should enable your site to load faster. It should also be mobile-friendly. Thankfully, there are hundreds of SEO-friendly themes, both free and premium, which you can use. You can get in touch with our experts to ensure you pick the right theme for your site.
We tend to love the Genesis Framework and then build out a custom template for each client. When a budget build is in order, or when someone wants to build their own, we will turn to Elementor or Enfold themes.
Optimize Your Permalinks
Default WordPress permalinks aren’t optimized at all, and they can negatively affect your ranking. Make sure you optimize your site’s permalinks. Optimized permalinks will allow your visitors to get a brief picture of what your post is about without looking at the content. They will also help you keep things organized and make it easy for you to share content on social media. Most importantly, they will allow Google to discover your post and convince Google’s algorithms that your site deserves a top position. If you suspect this could be the problem affecting your website, we can gladly help you out.
Install an XML Sitemap Plugin
If you want to rank higher on Google, you need to ensure that Google can find all the important pages of your website. But let’s face it; sometimes your pages may not have any internal links pointing to them, and this makes it hard for Google to find them. You can avoid this problem by installing an XML sitemap plugin. An XML sitemap plugin will make sure Google finds all your important pages. It also helps the search engine understand your site’s structure. We prefer the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.
Internal and External Links
Internal links, also commonly referred to as inbound links, are hyperlinks that direct your visitors to other pages or posts on your website. External links, or outbound links, are hyperlinks that direct visitors to other authority websites that provide useful information. Internal links will help Google crawlers understand the hierarchy on your site. They will also help you to keep visitors on your site. The more they stay, the more Google will fall in love with your site, and the higher you will rank on the search engine results.
External links will also help you boost your domain authority, which will, in turn, help improve your ranking on Google. Be careful when linking your content to external sources and ensure all the sources you link to can be trusted. Linking to untrusted or useless sites can lead to penalties. You can engage us to write content and fix the links for you.
Delete and Redirect Thin Content
Does your site contain content that’s under 300 words? Well, here is what you should know: The content does not provide clear value to searchers, and it may negatively affect your ranking. For this reason, make sure you get rid of this content on your site, or better yet… Expand it!
Integrate Social Media Sharing Buttons in Your Content
Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms may help determine if your users love your content or not. If your post is shared by hundreds of users on social media, Google will note that your content is exciting and will give it priority in SERPS. Make sure you integrate social media sharing buttons in your content. This will encourage the target readers to share your content on social media, which will, in turn, improve the ranking of your website.
Go For a Mobile Friendly Design
Over half of internet users access the internet using mobile. This number is only going to continue increasing as phones become cheaper and better. Google knows this, and that’s why they recently introduced an algorithm that favors the mobile-friendly website.
What does this mean for you? If you want your site to rank higher on Google, you need to ensure its mobile mobile-friendly. And how will you make it mobile-friendly? The answer is simple: Make sure you choose a mobile-friendly design. If you need expert help, we are always ready to serve you.
Add Fresh New Content Frequently
Google algorithms love fresh content. If you want to be on the right side, you need to publish new posts frequently. Posting frequently does not mean posting anything that comes to your mind. Everything you post should be relevant and provide value to the searchers. We have a team of content writers to provide fresh content for your website.
Optimize Your Images
Images are critical. They will help add visual appeal to your site and enable you to capture your visitor’s attention. But did you know that images can also have an impact on your ranking? If not optimized, images can slow your website. It is crucial to ensure all the photos on your site are optimized. How? Our experts have what it takes to handle all that as you focus on other aspects of your business.
Install an SEO Plugin
Invest in a good SEO plugin. A search engine optimization plugin will eliminate dormant, useless, and duplicate content issues from your site. It will also provide you with insight to come up with better page titles, meta descriptions, keywords, and tags. There are hundreds of useful plugins out there that you can use.
Done for you WordPress SEO
Appearing on Google’s top search results is not easy. It can be difficult for starters and may sometimes feel impossible. But don’t fret. The tips with have shared above will help improve the ranking of your website. If you need help with one or all the aspects of WordPress SEO, our experts can handle the task for you at affordable rates.
The methods of search engine optimization are constantly changing as Google and other search engines modify their programs to better match searched phrases with content people want to look at. For that reason, Performance Driven Marketing’s internet marketing team constantly keeps up with online search engine forums, trends, and new search engine releases to make sure that we are always doing what is most effective for our clients.
