You’ve devoted valuable time and creative energy into building a beautiful website. But while attractive, eye-catching designs and quality media are important; this alone will not make your site show up on popular search engines. For this, you need effective SEO. Fortunately, SEO on WordPress is relatively easy to learn and implement. With a little work and planning, you can optimize your site to show up on Google and other popular search engines. Check out the following eight tips to maximize the effectiveness of SEO on your WordPress site.
Table of Contents
1. Provide Content Which Is Unique, Engaging, and Useful
Review any source and they all will tell you that providing quality, engaging content is the best way to optimize SEO for your website.
In short, provide content people want to read. The content should be helpful, unique, informative, and engaging. When people do a search, they are most likely looking for information. Provide that information in an easy to understand and engaging way, and you will be far ahead of your competition.
Content should be consistently and regularly updated. One of the best ways to gain priority in Google’s SERPs is to consistently post quality content.
When posting content, make sure your first few paragraphs clearly explain what will be discussed in the article. This is important since Google gives added weight to the first few paragraphs of your post when indexing your page.
2. Set Your Permalinks
Permalinks are the URLs of your website pages. They are what users type into the address bar in order to go directly to your specific page. WordPress provides a default permalink, but it is best to change this name to something which describes your page or post. For example, you might choose to name the permalink the same name as the title of your post, provided the title isn’t excessively long or convoluted.
3. Create a Google XML Sitemap
If you want your web pages to be indexed by Google, you must provide a sitemap. Fortunately, creating one is easy. The WordPress plugin, XML Sitemaps will create a sitemap which will allow your website to be indexed by top search engines including Google.
4. Don’t Forget About Your Media
While creating a great looking site with eye-catching media is important, optimizing your media for SEO is equally important. When you upload an image to your site, don’t just use the default name assigned. You can change the image title, alt text, and image description, as well as add an image caption. Remember that search engines don’t see your images the way our eyes do and only evaluate your text, especially the alt text. So name your media with a descriptive title and accurately describe it with quality keywords. This will give you a competitive advantage over the many content creators who skip over media optimization in SEO.
One of the best ways to get more traffic to your site is to make your content easily shareable. Put sharing buttons on your pages in order to make sharing on social media easy. A post shared by someone on social media is likely to be read by their friends, who in turn may also share your content with their friends.
6. Utilize Available SEO Plugins
There are many SEO related plugins available for WordPress websites, too many to mention in this short article. Regardless of the SEO task, there is likely a plugin available to assist you. Plugins can help you with everything from writing Meta titles and descriptions, to creating sitemaps and providing important analytical information about your readers. Plugins make your life easier so make sure to use them to their full advantage. My favorite is Yoast SEO.
7. Use Google Analytics
Google Analytics is probably the single most important analytical tool at your disposal. Best of all, it is totally free. Google Analytics is especially helpful in seeing how well your site is reaching your target audience. This is a tool you can’t afford to be without.
8. Provide Relevant Interlinks to Posts on Your Site
When possible, make sure your posts contain links to similar content on your site. Just make sure the links are relevant to the post’s primary topic. A link to a relevant article or page can help drive traffic to your site, as well as provide more quality information to your readers.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that even the best website will not be found without effective SEO. Follow the tips above and you will be well on your way to having your website show up and get found on the most popular search engines.
About The Author:
Matt Ramage has been building and marketing websites for over 20 years. He loves helping businesses improve their user experience and searchability on the Internet. His agency, Emarketed, is located in Los Angeles, California but his team is global.
We love to create awesome websites for small businesses! It is our passion and goal to help as much as possible people with a beautiful online presentation that represents who they are and what they stand for.