WordPress SEO

Everyone is looking to be at the top of Google Rankings. And while you may not get the top spot, there are some best practices we can implement to improve our chances of landing higher on search results.

The following items are in no particular order:

Search Engines Prefer Fast Pages

All things being equal except speed, with two identical pages, search engines would most likely rank the faster one first. You should take great lengths to make your site as user friendly as possible. Search engines want to serve pages that their users will enjoy and find relevant.

See how to speed up WordPress.

Install An SEO Plugin

There’s not much I could write that these plugins don’t cover. Install a well-known and trusted SEO plugin like Yoast or All-In-One-SEO. These plugins allow you to set all kinds of SEO related parameters and will guide you on best practices. Follow the prompts they give!

Include Open Graph Meta Tags

Shared content is popular content. These meta tags provide information such as the title, description, image, and type of content, helping to ensure that the shared content is presented attractively and consistently across different platforms.

Use Internal Links

Use internal links to link to pages in your site, with the text used for the link containing keywords that you want to rank for.

Technical On-Site SEO

This is the stuff that you can control on site. Have alt text for every image, be accessible to people with disabilities, use heading elements in the correct order, use semantic HTML, don’t link to 404 pages, don’t orphan pages, etc, etc, etc. A popular tool to check your technical SEO on is ahrefs.

Run an ahrefs report on your website – you’ll be amazed at how many things it will find! Then fix them.

Acquire Backlinks

Acquiring backlinks (links to your site) plays a huge role in where your site ranks. In a slimmed down explanation, the more quality sites that link to your web pages, the higher your site will rank.

You can engage in partnerships with other similar sites to get backlinks. You can also make your own backlinks! You can create videos on YouTube and link to your site. You can answer questions on forums and include links to your site. You can link to your site on social media and reviews platforms. Anywhere (that has a good reputation) that you can link to your site, you should!

Use Rich Snippets

Using rich snippets, you can show extra information with your search results in googles. These include breadcrumbs, website info, reviews, recipes, events, products, faq’s, how-to’s, etc. Using these to your advantage gives you a leg-up on the competitors who aren’t using them.

Be Patient

It takes time for search engines to process your changes and adjust your rankings. Just keep doing the right things and you will move on up!

Previous: WordPress Security