If you’ve ever set up a WordPress site, you now that getting it off the ground is quite straightforward. However, optimizing it for SEO is tough. If you want to rank better than other sites in your field, there are some smart strategies you simply have to follow. Here are eight of them you definitely need to take a closer look at.
Choose the right web host
Search engines such as Google now use improved algorithms and pay attention to every detail when determining rankings. One of the things they take into consideration is the amount of time it takes to load your website. If you feel like your website could be loading faster, it means it’s time to contact your host and ask them why your website isn’t performing well. In case they don’t provide you with an answer, it might be a good idea to start looking for a better host.
Link to your old posts
Internal linking has always been one of the best ways to give your SEO a boost. This, of course, also applies to WordPress websites and linking to your old posts makes a lot of sense. The best part of it is that you get to improve your ranking while reviving your old content along the way. Just make sure you link to old posts that are actually relevant for your new posts and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
The Importance of SEO For Your Website
Block spam comments
Spam comments don’t just annoy users but they also confuse search engines. In other words, search engines don’t like spam comments and penalize websites that don’t delete or block them. Luckily, you can stop spammers from doing bad stuff on your site by using Akismet and Cookies for Comments. Another good idea is to install Unlimited Unfollow and set all links in comments as “nofollow.”
Optimize all images
As mentioned earlier, speed is one of the key factors search engines take into account when ranking websites. Website speed is influenced by a lot of things and the size of images included in your pages is one of them. Optimizing images by compressing and resizing them isn’t tough and it’s guaranteed to make pages load way faster and boost your SEO. If you don’t have access to the software you can do this with, there are online compressing and resizing tools you can use.
Include social media sharing buttons
Search engines turn to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to determine what kind of reactions a website is getting. They pay a lot of attention to the number of likes and shares your posts get and rank you accordingly. Therefore, getting your posts on social media and encouraging people to like and share them is extremely important. Luckily, including social media sharing buttons into a WordPress site isn’t tough.
Tweak your post titles
Post titles still have a huge impact on how your website ranks in search engine result pages. It’s imperative to research your keywords and try to include as many of them as you can in your post titles. Opting for low-competition keywords is a great idea as it gets you a bigger chance to rank well. Just make sure you create a balance between low-competition keywords and those high global or local monthly search volumes.
Think white label
SEO has become a key part of marketing and there are experts who can help you boost it. These people know absolutely everything about search engines and will guide you through the entire process. That said, make sure you opt for white label SEO practices, as only in this way you’ll see your ranking and organic traffic boosted organically, completely eliminating the risk of your site being penalized and/or deindexed.
Fix broken links
When there are broken links included in your posts, search engines will assume that your website isn’t properly maintained and they’ll rank it lower than other sites that use the same keywords. Not to mention that they might recognize it as an abandoned website and rank it even worse. To avoid this, install the Broken Link Checker WordPress plugin and handle all broken links in your posts. This plugin can even send you an email whenever a broken link is detected.
SEO is one of the most talked-about topics in the world of marketing and ignoring it is never a good idea. Whether you’ve just set up your WordPress site or you’ve been running one for years, following the eight strategies covered in this post is the best way to give your SEO efforts a boost.