Improving your WordPress SEO (Search Engine Optimisation is critical for obtaining more traffic to your site. Unfortunately, most WordPress SEO guides are usually too technical for new users to get started. If you are wanting more traffic to your website then you need to be aware of the best SEO practices for your website.
To get more visitors to your blog, it is important to boost your WordPress SEO ( Search Engine Optimization). Unfortunately, to get started, most WordPress SEO guides are typically too technical for new users. If you want more website traffic, then you need to be aware of your website ‘s best SEO practises.
Fortunately we’ve put together a useful infographic explaining the how to optimise your WordPress website for SEO.
WordPress is currently considered as one of the largest and most popular website host as well as content management system as far as SEO is concerned. It powers a range of webs from small blogs to giant business websites. However, being part and member of this successful website host is not enough. There is need to elevate your WordPress site for SEO so as you can experience more traffic on your website. SEO is an acronym of search engine optimisation. It refers to what extend is ones content visible, recognisable and accessible by internet browsers such as Firefox, chrome, opera and others. Although WordPress as a host has inbuilt tools and features that takes care of this, individually there is a role to play for maximum optimisation. This article is designed specifically to point out basic but crucial ways of ensuring your WordPress site is sufficiently optimised.
1. Focus on permalink structure
Some of the links used to the web and its content remain static even during content or blog update. Thus the term permalink or permanent. This implies a lot of expertise should be invested in the process of their formulation since it’s a one-time task. The Errors should be avoided as much as possible. The permalink should be simple, professional, and short, and SEO friendly. This not only does it ensure that search engines identifies it but also the users find it easy to share. Lastly, a well-structured permalink guarantees the highest ranking.
2. Start doing internal linking
It is a good idea to link posts and pages to one another on the website. Apart from just helping in visitor navigation through the pages on the website, the internal links allow “spiders” or what can be termed as web page readers to find and display all available pages on a website. They form the “routes” through which the spiders reach the contents.
3. Check out site visibility option
When your site does not pop up in the event of looking for it, it does not come as a surprise. The issue may be related to your host’s -WordPress- built-in options or settings. If this option is chosen either mistakenly or otherwise, the search engines will hold your website invisible. Therefore it is advisable to monitor this option frequently to ensure your website is available to the public and not private. This should ensure that the box against the statement “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” under admins area and settings remains unchecked at all times.
4. Improve site speed
It is important to consider how long searchers visiting your website take to access the information. Websites that take ages to load and present information are a discouragement. To ensure your website is faster with a reduced load on the server, use of a caching plugin is recommended. The success is realised through caching of static as well as dynamic website content. Examples of WordPress cash plugins include W3 Total and WP Super caches. In addition to caching of the page and web content, the as well cache the browsers, database and many other features that contribute to loading of the server.
5. Tighten your site security
Some engines and browsers will elude and warn visitors to insecure websites. You owe it to you when your site is listed as one of the vulnerable pages. Simply ensure that you use the SSL certificate to move data, regularly update the security software of the website, ensure that nobody can upload files to your website, among others, to achieve and improve the security of your site.
6. Nofollow external links
These are those links that act as warnings to search engine bots not to consider or follow the links. The result of their action is decreased ranking of the page(s). Avoid them since they have no SEO importance on your site.
7. Add xml setup
SEO engines find it cumbersome on their own to find and locate all of the pages on the website. A formatted file known as XML is applied to eliminate this cumbersomeness and ease its function, in that it is submitted to Google, among other search engines. The file contains details and a list of all the pages on the website that are open.
8. Fix broken links
It is a common occurrence that when people visitor the web and happen to click on a link they end up on a page showing 404 or the page could not be found. That is a clear indication of a broken link (s).The breakages result from designers deleting or using a wrong URL as part of a text link. Also, this can be due to the change of a URL address with failure to update it. This is can simply be solved by the use a broken link checker, a providence of WordPress as a host to its clients. Fixing broken links thus ensures that when searcher clink on the links they find and land on the intended pages.
9. Use ssl /https
SSL and https are acronyms for secure sockets layer and hypertext transfer protocol respectively. Those websites that use these mechanisms to transfer their data are secure and highly preferred by search engines. Thus applying them on your site ensures naturally increased and boosted rankings.
Contact us at Finsbury Media to learn how we can help you with your website.