5 Ways to Improve SEO on WordPress Websites

In 2019, WordPress powers 34% of the entire internet, and is the basis of businesses big and small, from the mom and pop diner on the corner of your block to Tech Crunch. Whatever your size, you want to show up when people search for services online. Luckily, the innate search engine optimization (SEO) features of WordPress go a long way towards making this happen; responsive design, optimized page loading and a rafter of SEO plugins can all help you make your site more visible to search crawlers. Here are five of the best hacks that WordPress users can take advantage of to boost their SEO.

Plugins

One of the things users most love about WordPress is its incredible selection of open-source user-friendly plugins. This is no exception when it comes to SEO. Whether you need to implement browser caching or analyze your on-page content, there’s a plugin out there that can help you with it. There’s a balance to be found here; plugins are great, but having too many active ones can slow your site down, resulting in ranking penalties. If you’re a plugin fiend, then it’s probably worth deleting any inactive applications to free up bandwidth for your site.

Guest posting

Guest posting is a great way of generating backlinks to your website and content, but it can be hard for the average WordPress website user to find publishing opportunities. Many turn to the professional blogger outreach services offered by Click Intelligence. But it’s not impossible for smaller businesses to do some guest posting.
One tried and tested tactic is exploiting market overlaps to create content with a unique value proposition. If you run your own gardening business, you could approach a respected food blogger with an authoritative website to pitch a joint advice piece on creating the perfect herb garden, combining your niches. The published version would feature an inbound link to your homepage, sending it up the search rankings.

On-page content

As Bill Gates predicted, content is still king. That’s not changing anytime soon. Whatever your business, you’re in a position to share some unique expertise via your site content. Do your keyword research to target consumers’ early informational searches. The sooner you can get them into the pipeline the better. Better still if you can match searcher intention with the information on your page. Whatever your hosting provider, there’s nothing better than evergreen content. If you can create an original survey, infographic, or video, this can net you new traffic for years to come.

Press releases

It’s hard to overestimate the impact of a good press release. Even if this generates only one share from a media organization, you’re earning a backlink with ridiculous equity. You’re also starting an online conversation around your brand. This can be as true of local press as national media, although naturally the latter carries a bit more weight. A good press release will share a genuinely newsworthy topic under an engaging headline, keeping the text factual, short, and purposeful.

Google My Business

Whatever your platform, whether you sell online or in-store, wherever you’re located, Google My Business needs to be a number one priority. This is the most important ranking factor for Google local searches. If you want to finish inside the local pack, you need to maintain an active business listing, generating reviews and responding to these on a regular basis. Keep your information up-to-date and refresh your images from time-to-time.