WordPress SEO: How to rank higher on Google
When it comes to managing your content, WordPress is one of the best systems around. Whether you’re looking for straightforward performance metrics or an easy CMS, this is one of the more useful ways to implement SEO straight into a website structure.
In this guide, we’ll look at some of the best practices and tactics you can use to optimise your WordPress SEO. Whether you’re just starting out on the system, or need some inspiration to help boost rankings, and sales or generally improve your website – these tips can help.
But first, the basics.
Starting out with WordPress SEO
Before implementing any SEO changes, you first need to make sure you’re in good standing.
First, check that your website is using a server with the most updated software, or is utilising a web host operating at top performance. To get you started, a few questions to ask might include:
- What hardware and software are your sites running?
- What is your hosting plan?
- Are you using a budget-shared hosting provider?
- Have you got a dedicated hosting plan at another well-known web host that compliments its servers with WordPress?
To get these answers – and discover what’s happening under the lid of your website, your first port of call should be the Site Health section in WordPress or install the Health Check plugin. With this plugin, you’ll get tons of technical information and can use it to help improve your website with a little outside help.
Once you’ve done a health check, it’s time to work on those technical tweaks.
Technical WordPress SEO
Although WordPress is known for its ‘set-up and go’ format, you still need to ensure you’ve got all the technical groundwork in place to support your content. First, check that you’ve got a quality hosting provider, so your website loads fast and is always optimised for search engine crawling.
To guarantee that your website doesn’t go unmissed, submit an XML sitemap directly to Google for easier crawling – WordPress has native ones that you can use for visibility. For added WordPress security, your SSL certificate should also be up-to-date, as it encrypts data and shows Google that your website is safe for visitors.
Another factor to consider is website speed and mobile-friendly, to improve user experience across platforms. This not only attributed to your ranking factor but can reduce bounce rates, with issues causing slow loads often spotted during a technical SEO audit.
Now you can focus on creating useful, engaging and informative content to fill your site!
Optimising your content for WordPress
First stop on your WordPress SEO strategy is carrying out proper keyword research. This can help you identify relevant keywords with search volume to target in your content., which can later be tracked by Google Analytics. This platform can help you measure the impact of those changes, seeing what works, and what should be improved.
As well as creating useful content in itself, you can also do the following to optimise our SEO efforts:
- On-Page Optimisation: Include your target keywords naturally in titles, headers, meta descriptions, and content.
- Image Optimisation: Make sure you use filenames that are relevant to the image, provide descriptive alt text, and compress images for faster loading.
- Internal Linking: Linking is crucial, so make sure to point to other relevant pages on your website to improve user experience and improve site structure for search engines.
- Schema Markup: Implement smart schema markup for richer search results and improve click-through rates all round.
To speed up some tasks, consider SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to auto-run the fiddly bits while you focus on the bigger picture.
Ongoing WordPress activity
Once you’re all set up, make sure you continue to use analytics tools to track things like:
- Your website’s traffic
- Conversions
- Rankings
- Site seed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Bounce rate
- Demographic
- Areas for improvement
If Local SEO is applicable, then optimising your website for local searches is a logical next step, as well as promoting your content on social media to build backlinks and increase authority throughout. Appearing for local searches is great for business, as you appeal to users near you who want the services that you offer.
Getting yourself out there on all platforms, with local search and social media being two good examples, drastically improves your visibility and the level of engagement with your content- this in turn has a positive effect on SEO and the amount of conversions you get.
WordPress truly is the tool for everyone
WordPress is a great tool for starter SEOs and seasoned pros alike, giving you more power in controlling your website’s reach and overall visibility. Bringing organic traffic to your website, building trust with your audience, and reaching your online goals can be achieved by trying the various strategies listed here – but SEO is an ongoing process.
With time and effort, WordPress SEO can help you build a great online presence and draw substantial traffic.
If you’d like some help getting your WordPress SEO started, our experts can help.
FAQs
Answered by Amy Leach
What are the alternatives to WordPress?
1. There are many different variations and choices outside of WordPress. Wix is another common alternative and for ecommerce there is Shopify.
Does Google prefer WordPress websites?
5. Google doesn’t have a preference over certain CMS. WordPress is great for creating custom websites but the freedom of this can come with problems.
