Your website is a key tool to gain new leads and raise awareness of your brand. No matter what industry you’re in, or how long ago you launched your website, an understanding of how to optimise your WordPress website for search engines will help increase traffic and grow the number of visitors.

An SEO-friendly website will make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website through page titles, meta descriptions, headings, links and keywords – just to name a few.

In this post, we’ll cover basic tips on how to optimise your WordPress website so that you can rank higher in search results and bring targeted traffic to your site.

1. Add a tagline

Your site’s title and tagline provide an introduction to your content and is an opportunity to add relevant keywords. In many WordPress themes, these elements appear at the top of every page – often within the header so has prominence within your site.

The title is typically the name of your site, while the tagline is a short descriptive sentence underneath. Search engines pay attention to titles and taglines which makes them relevant for SEO purposes to communicate your focus or niche.

2. SEO-friendly WordPress slugs

A WordPress slug identifies a particular page on a website in an easy to read form. Itis a few words chosen to describe a post, page, category, or tag which appear as part of the URL directing visitors to that content.

The ideal length of a slug is 3 to 5 words with hyphens to separate each word.  The words chosen should be relevant to your content and include your target keywords, where possible.

3. Write regular blog posts

Blog posts are a powerful and easy way to rank for specific keywords, especially if they are relevant and linkable. The more your blog post satisfies the needs of your target audience, the better rankings you’ll end up with as more people will stay on your site for longer and visit more frequently.

With a regular blog, you can target certain keywords that you may not naturally be able to place within the main body of your website. By building a blog content strategy around your keywords, it can help you organically bring in targeting traffic rather than rely on pay-per-click methods.

4. Keywords included in your h1 title and title tag

The title of the page, also known as SEO title or title tag, appears on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a given result, and are more important for SEO and social sharing than the H1 title.

The H1 title is the title you use for your blog post to let visitors and search engine crawlers understand the main topic of that page. Including the keyword you want to rank for in both the H1 title and SEO title will improve your chance of ranking higher.

5. Write compelling meta descriptions

Optimising your meta descriptions is another easy way to improve your site’s SEO. The meta description for your site is the 160 character snippet that summarises a page’s content. This is the text found underneath your site’s title when you look at search results.

Not only does the meta description help from an SEO perspective but it also entices the reader to click on your link rather than those of your competitors.

6. Improve page loading times

The speed at which your pages load plays a vital role in whether a visitor will continue to your site and visit again in the future. A fast loading time will increase the possibilities of them converting to a sale, whereas if they have to wait for over 3 seconds for it to load they are more likely to abandon your site and go to a competitor.

When the loading time of your website is too slow, it will frustrate the user and leave a negative first impression of your business. Search engines will also penalise slow loading sites, making it an area you don’t want to ignore.

These are just a few simple ways to optimise your WordPress website and rank highly in search engines. However, there’s much more to be considered when it comes to improving your search visibility. WP Tech Support cancarry out an initial SEO audit on your website and deliver the necessary work to improve your ranking, including speeding up a sluggish site.

Our great value monthly plans are a cost effective way to maintain a well optimised site that meets the ranking factors considered by search engines. Let us take care of your website while you take care of your business.