A majority of websites on the internet utilize WordPress, a powerful, easy to use content management system (CMS). For businesses just starting out or without a large budget for website development, WordPress promises them the opportunity to create an attractive website without needing to know all the technical details. While WordPress promises to be SEO-friendly from the get go, it is common that after publishing, businesses’ websites don’t receive as much traffic as they expected. In truth, even though WordPress sites are inherently optimized for search engine optimization (SEO), there are still a few steps that need to be taken to ensure your website is reaching your target audience effectively. Let’s discuss some simple updates that can be made to make your business’s WordPress website more SEO-friendly. Pick a SEO-friendly Theme
First and foremost, choosing a WordPress theme for your website that is optimized for SEO is one of the easiest ways to improve your WordPress website’s SEO ranking. This is the fun part! Browse through all available themes and choose one that best fits your business. Remember to find a theme that is eye-catching as websites that are not attractive tend to have a higher bounce rate and that can negatively affect your ranking on Google. Also, it is best to go with a website theme that has been optimized for speed. How long it takes your website to load is another factor that is taken into consideration when ranking your website in the search results. Check the theme’s speed score with Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool before making your final decision. The WordPress theme you choose should also be designed with SEO in mind, meaning that it should be easily crawlable by search engines so that they can get a sense of your content and show your site during relevant searches. Finally, the theme of your website should be fully responsive as most people access the web from a variety of devices, your website should display well on all screen sizes. Create Optimized Links When naming and creating the pages on your WordPress website it is important to include keywords related to your content within them. This is not only aesthetically pleasing, it is also important as search engines will use them to further understand the content on your business’s website. You should also choose if your website will use www or not. While it does not affect SEO, choosing to leave off the www looks cleaner. Optimize Your Website’s Images Optimizing the images on your website is just as important as optimizing your content. When adding images to your website be cognizant of how you are naming the files. The file names should accurately describe the contents of the image. It is not recommended to stuff keywords into the image file names. In addition to a title, each image should have an alt tag. This is alternative text in the code of your website that search engines use to get a sense of the image. The alt text should match the title of the image. Write High Quality Content Content is key when it comes to all types of SEO. Your website content should be clear, easy to understand and contain information that your target audience will find valuable. Your goal should be to create content that cannot be found on other sources on the internet. The more original and valuable your content is, the easier it will be to obtain high quality backlinks. Use Header Tags Properly Headers tags are used to help format your website content and help both users and search engines navigate your web page. Using the correct header tags in the correct locations in your article is crucial. H1 tag, is the largest header tag and should only be used for the title of your content as it is not the best strategy to use it multiple places on the same page. Think of H2 tags as section headers that help break your website content down into smaller chapters. H3 tags are used to identify sub-sections and are only used if it makes sense to break your article down even further after H2 tags. Same goes for H4 tags and any other tags that follow. Header tags are beneficial for SEO as you can include keywords within them. They also help make your content more digestible to website visitors than just one large block of text. The easier your content is to read, the more likely users are to engage. Build a Network of Quality Backlinks Having high quality backlinks is one of the most effective ways to bolster the SEO ranking of your WordPress website. When your website contains useful content, reputable sources on the web will want to link your site. As you gain backlinks, your website will gain credibility on the subject which in turn will improve your SEO ranking on that specific topic. Incorporate SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Encryption Another simple way to improve your business website’s SEO ranking is to make sure your website is secure, especially if you are collecting sensitive information from website visitors. One way to secure your website is by obtaining a SSL certificate. SSL certificates are available from multiple sources, but no matter where you get it from you are sure to see an improvement in your SEO ranking.
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