11 Tips To Improve Your WordPress SEO Website Rankings
“The requisite element of your WordPress website is Search Engine Optimization or SEO that helps to boost the rankings of your web pages organically.”
WordPress- A Brief Introduction
WordPress is a global professional website building platform with a top-notch Content Management System (CMS). You can create, organize and host your website with its free software with multiple robust features like plugin architecture, customizable template designs, themes, media galleries, etc. It can be your one-stop shop for all eCommerce-related purposes too.
WordPress is popular among organizations of all levels worldwide. It is written in PHP scripting language where the data is stored primarily on MySQL. WordPress serves a variety of purposes. It can be used for blogging, business, galleries, membership websites, forums, events websites, e-learning online marketplaces and so much more.
Many WordPress development companies in India can fuel your business with a professional team and resources that you can hire.
SEO — The Powerhouse
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the powerhouse of organically searched websites that helps to increase the visibility rate of all the website’s contents and website rankings on search engines results like Google, Bing, Mozilla, etc. An optimized SEO website enjoys high web traffic with better user engagement. It, therefore, improves sales and revenue with a better chance of a conversion.
SEO is a cost-effective way of generating new business and establishing brand awareness on the SERPs. It is a crucial aspect of digital marketing campaigns. Every search engine has a different set of algorithms that analyzes data that is being collected by the search engine spiders before generating the information on the search result pages.
You can opt to hire any top SEO services in India that have an expert eye and will help you throughout the process coming from a professional experience.
Top Practices to Implement for WordPress SEO
It is essential to optimize your WordPress website for a better Search Engine Result Ranking. Here are some of the best practices for WordPress SEO that is recommended for you below-
Selecting a Reliable Hosting Provider
Choosing a reliable web hosting provider is crucial for your website’s performance and security. They also enhance the user experience, which thereby improves the SEO. You need to look for some important points before choosing a hosting provider. They are -
- Security services are up to date, have website firewalls, and have regular backups.
- There should be guaranteed uptime where your website should only be offline less than 0.1% of the time.
- Have a greater bandwidth, and storage capacity and should look out for expansion.
- Is easy to use and the control panel is user-friendly too for seamless hosting.
- The hosting provider’s services should be equivalent to your budget and quality-driven too.
Choosing SEO Compatible Themes
Users must select the right theme for their websites for optimum search engine optimization or SEO results. It is always advisable to not choose overloaded WordPress themes which might take a longer time to load and hamper your WordPress SEO.
It is also recommended not to choose unnecessary bloat plugins and visual elements in your theme. You can go to various page speed tests to help you get a better understanding of your selected theme. This will also help your website by optimizing the website’s performance and help you make informed decisions.
Always use SSL with your Domain
Secure Sockets Layer or SSL is a security technology that encrypts the connection between the browser and the website. It also prevents any kind of unauthorized access to sensitive information from third parties like any kind of payment details of the customer etc.
A domain that is SSL certified is identified with a padlock icon that appears next to the address bar before the starting of the URL. This will keep your landing page fluid and influence your web traffic.
Selecting the Correct Domain
It is always advisable to choose a domain name with a non-www address for your website. You can easily change the domain address by visiting the General Section in the Settings option in your WordPress account. It is also required that business owners should select a domain name according to the products, services, and content that they want to display and produce for their users.
Inserting Focus Keyword
While publishing content, it is very important to include focus keywords. Though it sounds old school, it is a very important aspect and is always recommended to all the users. Some of the major search engines like Bing, and Yahoo depend on focus keywords while generating the search results. Though Google is an exception regarding this matter, you must use keywords for optimized SEO results.
Business owners and entrepreneurs should always keep this in mind while uploading content online to achieve a sufficient density of visibility and incoming web traffic. You can also implement focus keywords in the URLs to increase your Google rankings.
Increasing Website Speed
The loading speed of any website is an integral part of SEO. Most search engines consider the website’s loading speed while displaying the results. Therefore, it is crucial to optimize your website’s performance to the maximum possible limit.
There are also multiple plugins available in the market which can help you to boost your website’s loading speed. The page loading speed and time influence the SEO, provide a greater visibility rate and drive more web traffic.
Creating Sitemaps
The sitemaps ensure that the search engines can find and scan your website by enlisting the most relevant pages of your website. Sitemaps help in browsing websites effortlessly as they analyze the structures of the website.
WordPress can easily add sitemaps for your websites as the WordPress SEO section supports the plugins in the WordPress Dashboard.
Set Appropriate URL Slug
A shorter and cleaner URL ranks higher in the Google search results. Studies show that it is 250% more likely for organic users to visit websites with much shorter URLs. WordPress SEO Features can automatically generate unique shorter URLs for your web pages. The slug can be edited as per your requirements. It is always recommended to all WordPress users to use focus keywords in the URLs.
Small Size Images
It is very important to check the size of the image on your web pages as it affects the loading time of your website. It is a very integral part of the WordPress SEO to reduce the loading time. It is seen that larger picture sizes tend to increase the page loading time of your website.
Therefore, it is recommended that you must post smaller-sized images keeping intact the quality of the image. This will rather improve your WordPress SEO results significantly.
Monitoring Bad Links
You need to keep in check the internal and external links of your websites which is a very crucial part of your SEO. Regular monitoring helps in locating the invalid links or the unavailable links over time. This will harm the SEO rankings of your online content that is already published on the websites.
You can easily deploy various third-party plugins that will initiate the automated process of searching the bad like from your website.
Application of AMP Plugin
Accelerated Mobile Page or AMP plugin of Google is an open-source initiative designed to reduce the website loading time, especially on mobile devices. You can easily utilize the AMP to design optimized web pages that can operate seamlessly on smartphones. Google mostly gives more preference to the website which have AMP.
Therefore, it becomes crucial for website development companies or WordPress development companies in India to exclusively add the AMP plugin for enhanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Conclusion
We can understand that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of the WordPress website-building process. These practices as stated above will only improve your website’s SEO rankings on Google SERPs, drive more web traffic, enhance the visibility of your web pages, and boost your sales and revenue too.
Some common SEO practices include optimizing the title tags, header tags, meta descriptions, shorter URLs, permalinks, leveraging the contents of your websites with a fluid user interface (UI), and user experience (UX). But these aforementioned practices are more practical and exceptionally will improve your WordPress SEO ranking apart from the common practices.