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Among many ways you can drive traffic to your website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains the most efficient and effective channel. And WordPress SEO is key to ranking sites built on that content management system (CMS).
If you have a healthy amount of organic traffic on your website, you can thank SEO for it.
But What Exactly is SEO?
SEO is the practice of optimizing a website to perform well on Google and other search engines.
Each search engine uses its own algorithm comprised of many hundreds of “factors.” You’ll need to align your website and content with these algorithms to increase traffic.
How to Boost WordPress SEO For Your Website
Most people would be overwhelmed by attempting to analyze and study ALL of these SEO ranking factors. But if you use WordPress, you don’t really need to worry about it.
There are 8 important ways to boost your WordPress SEO without all of the headaches, and here they are:
WordPress SEO Tip #1: Perfect Your Web Design
Your web design plays a significant role in SEO.
When creating a new website, you need to take a large number of factors into consideration to build it in the best way possible. From optimizing the on-page elements to reducing the loading time, these factors all play key roles in driving organic traffic.
Did you know that 90% of web users access the internet through their mobile phones? If you do not optimize your web page for mobile, then you are missing out.
Similarly, if your website takes too long to load, then your bounce rates will skyrocket, thus affecting the SEO of your website.
Developing a perfect web design can be challenging especially if you don’t know where to start. If you’re in NYC, then you can just search for “web design NYC” on Google and you’ll get connected to professionals. Web designers are available anywhere so you can just tailor fit your search to your area.
These professionals have been in the field for a long time. They know the tips and tricks to make a web design that suits your goals and needs. Hiring them will be a great investment for your company.
WordPress SEO Tip #2: Get An SEO Plugin
WordPress is the savior for people who want to create their websites.
Why?
Because you can add features to your web page without spending hours of your time coding. WordPress itself refers to these user-centric features as add-ons. There are various add-ons available in WordPress, hence, making it easy for you to customize your website.
The best part about these add-ons is that you need zero coding knowledge to incorporate them into your website.
Yoast SEO is a popular SEO plugin with a solid feature set. For example, it can analyze the readability of your copy. It also aids in setting up URLs, meta descriptions, and titles quickly and easily.
What is the point of having exciting content on your website if your audience cannot easily navigate through it?
Easily navigable websites and user-friendly interfaces can be beneficial in boosting SEO performance. If you can keep the navigation as easy to use as possible, you should enjoy a lower overall bounce rate. And bounce rate is an important factor in both ranking and visitor engagement.
In addition, you should absolutely generate XML sitemaps for the website (which your SEO plugin mentioned above should be able to do on your behalf, presuming you choose a good plugin).
Sitemaps are nothing but a list of content in your website that is organized in a hierarchy. Introducing hierarchy can help the reader understand what to do and how to navigate.
In addition, sitemaps help search engine crawlers find and index your content. Crawlers (a.k.a. “spiders”) are search engine robots that help rank your website. Sitemaps thus provide a technical advantage.
WordPress SEO Tip #4: Don’t Forget The Keywords
How does a website design company make sure that your website is search engine optimized?
They use keywords.
But don’t just stuff a bunch of keywords onto the website haphazardly. That won’t get you anywhere.
Instead, create good quality content and sprinkle in keywords judiciously, and your content should be able to rank and hopefully convert as well.
Be sure not to overdo it. If you jam a bunch of keywords into all of your content it will sound unnatural, maybe even mechanical.
Maybe search engines will love it, or maybe they’ll think you’re a spammer. Either way, your audience will not. If you produce content to please only the search engines, then you are making a big mistake that isn’t even a lock to work.
Strike a balance between creating content that your audience and search engines love. This is the best way to generate the results you desire for the website.
WordPress SEO Tip #5: Use Header Tags
Do you remember the sitemap we used to help crawlers understand the organization of your website?
What about the organization of individual articles?
Introducing: Header Tags
Header tags are used to bring structure to pages and posts. They help your audience understand the content better.
But not only the readers. Header tags are very useful for search engine crawlers.
Header tags are available in Google Docs, PDFs, and WordPress as well. By using header tags, you’ll be making your content more presentable and more likely to rank / drive traffic.
WordPress SEO Tip #6: Block Spam
Have you ever visited a website and hit the back button within a few seconds because of spam advertisements?
If you say yes, then you know how irritating spammy ads and poorly crafted content can be.
Spam advertisements increase bounce rates and can hurt your organic rankings. This is not the only disadvantage. If your website has spam ads in excess, it is likely to be penalized even if your content is of the highest quality.
WordPress has an option in their settings to manually approve comments that appear on your website. Switch on this option, and your website will be protected from spam comments.
WordPress SEO Tip #7: Optimize Your Images
Just like your text, it is also crucial to optimize the images.
Be sure to crop and compress all images to ensure it does not affect overall load times and performance.
You should also use images of very high quality, because this will improve the overall appearance of the content. Poor quality images can fail to attract your audience and can decrease the quality of your content.
You can optimize images even better and more thoroughly by using keyword rich, relevant alt-texts. Alt-texts are what helps the search engines categorize your images.
By using relevant pictures and the right alt-texts, you can really boost your SEO performance in short order.
WordPress SEO Tip #8: Take Advantage of Social Media
Imagine someone stumbled upon your website. They read it, liked it, and wanted their friends to see it. So they decide to search for share options, which aren’t there. Unfortunately, they leave the website disappointed.
Do you see what happened here? Do you know what you missed out on?
The above scenario happens when you do not leverage the power of social media channels. You lose out on potential new readers, leads, and sales.
Incorporate social media sharing options on your website, and you can avoid missing out. Take note that Google considers how much your content gets shared when it ranks your website. The more your content is shared, the better it will rank on the various search engines.
Conclusion
Some key takeaways to keep in mind:
- Create a web design that is attractive and SEO optimized
- Take advantage of SEO add-ons
- Focus on writing engaging headings and use the right keywords, judiciously
- Optimize images and enable social media sharing
These techniques alone will not do the trick. It is vital to measure the performance of your website after using these tactics.
You can use Google Analytics to measure the performance of your website. Formulate your strategy based on the Google Analytics data and reports, and you will see results in no time.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Daniel Martin
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