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WordPress SEO tactics that really work

As a website owner, you are (no doubt) always looking to increase traffic and revenue to your site. Becoming familiar with WordPress SEO tactics to enhance your website will see improvements in rankings, subscribers, and sales.

WordPress is pretty well-optimized as a content management system, giving a strong foundation to build upon. That being said, applying a few simple WordPress SEO tactics can boost the visibility of your website and get your content in front of more people.

Before you make any changes to your site, it’s a good idea to understand what’s going on behind the scenes of your website and moving forward from there.

WordPress SEO tactics 101

Hosting

A good web hosting service will help ensure your website loads quickly and is secure without any substantial downtime, as well as other advantages. Speed is a very important ranking factor for search engines, so you want to make sure your site loads fast. According to WordPress’ technical requirements page, the recommended hosting plan to run WordPress efficiently should include a modern version of PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, and HTTPS support.

You may need to upgrade your hosting environment to improve the performance and security of your site. We recommend upgrading to PHP 7.0 or higher to keep your website running efficiently.

SSL and HTTPS

If you still haven’t made the switch to HTTPS, you need to do so pronto. You can check whether you have it by looking for a green padlock in the URL bar. Having a valid SSL certificate not only demonstrates that your site is secure, but it also stops search engines from penalizing you.

As part of Google’s mission to make the internet safer, you will be rewarded with a better search engine ranking if you adopt SSL.

Permalink structure

WordPress uses permalinks for posts which aren’t typically SEO friendly. If you alter the permalink structure you can use it as an opportunity to include important keywords.

If you don’t change your settings from the default, all of your pages and posts will have URLs that don’t make sense and impact how users and search engines perceive the quality and relevance of your content.

Optimize titles and headings

Your subheadings, title, and meta description should reflect the topic of the specific post to make it easier for search engines and humans to grasp the topic quickly.

Often, the meta description and post title is the deciding factor for whether visitors click on your page in the search results above competitors. Writing compelling, informative descriptions for every page on your site gives you the opportunity to attract more visits.

Likewise, the page title you choose can be one of the most important factors for ranking well in search results. It is the first line people see in the search results, so it needs to describe what your page is about and encourage people to click through.

It is believed that search engines put more weight on the early words to rank well so try to get your keywords near the start of the title if you can.

Optimize images and media

Images and media should also be optimized to make sure search engines can understand them. Considering what you name your files and using alt tags will help improve your rankings as well as helping out readers who rely on assistive technologies, like screen readers.

Content quality

Well-written content is rewarded by Google. As Google strives to show its users the most relevant and useful information, you should keep publishing fresh content to show authority and provide helpful information to your visitors.

Whilst having lots of content on your site can be beneficial in terms of SEO, you need to be careful to avoid accidental duplicate content. This can easily occur by having two different URLs pointing to the same content. When this happens, search engines don’t know which of these URLs to rank higher, resulting in lower rankings for all of them.

Off-Page SEO

Check out this off-page SEO guide that covers all the latest tips, techniques, and strategies you need to rank #1.

Optimize your site structure

A solid site structure helps users and search engines navigate your site. Your site navigation menu should be clear, with categories and subcategories bringing order to chaos. Decluttering your homepage will make your site easier to understand and follow through your content logically.

Adding links within your content to other pages sets up a network of pages, which points users and search engines to related content. To avoid any confusion to humans or bots, make sure the link you use makes sense within the context of the page.

Speed up your website

Speed is an important WordPress SEO tactic. It’s frustrating waiting for a page to load and makes you less likely to engage with or share the content. If it takes a long time for your site to load, the overall user experience won’t be positive. Therefore, it’s crucial to measure your site speed and work through any bottlenecks.

Once you’ve identified what and where your bottlenecks are, the next challenge is to make tweaks to speed things up.

Website security

As WordPress powers approximately 33% of the web, it’s not surprising it’s a popular target for hackers. There are several things you can do to make your website more secure such as two-factor verification, firewalls, and layered security.

We strongly recommend regularly backing up your site in case it gets hacked or something else goes wrong when updating your site. You don’t want to be left in a position where you jeopardise your date and reputation.

Cater to your mobile visitors

Most of us spend time browsing on our phone so if you are only optimizing your website for desktop visitors, you are not optimizing for the majority of your visitors.

You should make sure that your site is fast, responsive (the design website adapts to the screen size your visitor is using) and mobile-friendly (i.e. – links are not too close together and are easily clickable with a consistent font).

Content marketing

Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand. You can’t rank well on a particular topic if you haven’t written about it on your website. People are looking for engaging, authoritative articles and spending more time reading longer-form content online. Writing high-quality content will help attract and retain an audience, particularly if you can become an expert in a niche area.

We’ll be writing a whole separate blog post on content marketing next week so make sure to check back for these useful tips.

SEO and content marketing never stop evolving, so it’s important to stay on top of the best practices to boost the visibility of your website.

Here at WP Tech Support we are well equipped with WordPress SEO tactics to boost traffic and revenue. We will carry out an initial SEO audit on your website and do all the necessary work to improve your search visibility.

Aside from SEO, our team of highly experienced WordPress developers will quickly fix any WordPress issue and get your site back up and running to how it should. We are available 24/7 and will quickly diagnose the problem so that you don’t have to worry about errors, broken code or display issues preventing you from giving clients the best service and securing a sale.

While the majority of our clients sign up for on-going WordPress maintenance, our emergency fix service is ideal for those who don’t have the budget available or the need for continuous support. It is particularly useful for startups who have pieced together a WordPress website themselves but are struggling to make it look as professional as it should.

Please get in touch if you need help with your WordPress website journey – whether that’s on and ongoing basis or a one-time fix.

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