Climbing up the search engine ranks is a challenging game, especially with thousands of websites fighting for that coveted first-page spot on search engines.
But for those who are up for the challenge, employing these strategies correctly will easily catapult you to the top. Before we get into the best strategies you can use for your WordPress website, let’s have a short refresher on what SEO is and why it matters.
What Is SEO and Why Does It Matter for WordPress Sites?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” and as implied by its name, it’s all about optimising your websites for search engines. These search engines use complex algorithms that determine the relevance and authority of your website, hence the importance of creating a website that’s optimised for them.
Websites also obtain most of their traffic from search engines. That’s why each website must establish an SEO strategy if it’s their goal to appear on the front page of search engine results.
Creating an SEO-friendly website is by no means easy, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to doing this. That’s why it consumes a lot of time and resources to identify which strategies work and which strategies don’t.
Strategies to Improve Your Site’s Engine Rankings
If you want to reach the top of search engine rankings, you’ll have to employ a few strategies. You can achieve this by optimizing your content, links, technical aspects, and analytics hence creating an effective SEO strategy that helps you to attain your SEO goals. Here’s how you can achieve them:
Step 1: Optimize Your Content
When creating a WordPress site, you first have to optimize your content. In the context of SEO, that means conducting keyword research. With the help of tools such as Google Keyword Planner and SEMRush, you can find keywords that are relevant to your content. However, there’s a thing called “keyword stuffing” and that’s something you’d want to avoid. It happens when you incorporate too much of the keywords into your content to the point that it no longer sounds natural.
Creating Original and Readable Content for Successful Link Building
Most importantly: be original. Knowing which keywords to use can be analyzed, but creating original content incorporating them is a whole different game. To create original content, you have to know what you’re writing about. Be an expert in your field. Provide fresh inputs that others haven’t, like sharing your personal, unique experiences. Rehashing information from other websites just won’t cut it anymore.
And if creating original content was difficult enough, you have to check if it’s understandable and readable. No one wants to read long, uninteresting articles. Find new ways to spice it up! There are a variety of tools online that can evaluate the readability of your content. The more readable, the better.
When you create quality and informative content, link building becomes a lot easier. Link building refers to the process of acquiring links from other websites to your own. This drives traffic and therefore, shows that your website is that of high authority.
Step 2: Expand Your Network
Expanding your network is always a great idea, especially when you’re in the link-building process. Identify other websites in your niche and request a link to your website. This is best practiced by sending out personalized emails and participating in online communities. Additionally, social bookmarking is an excellent practice to widening your network. Submitting your links to social bookmarking websites to build backlinks and consequently increase visibility.
Step 3: On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization entails the improvement of other elements of your WordPress website. First, take a look at your title tag. Does it accurately describe the content of your articles? And does it contain the necessary keywords? Your title matters because it’s what captures the attention of your audience.
Similarly, the meta description is another element that warrants focus like the title. Because it’s a short description of your website that pops up on search engine results, keeping it short and interesting entices your audience to visit your website.
Next, you shouldn’t forget your headings – that’s the H1, H2, and H3 headings that structure your content, making it more readable for your audience.Another component of WordPress websites that’s overlooked are your images. Your pictures must be optimized with alt tags and their file names descriptive in order for search engines to understand the content of your page.
Step 4: Technical Optimization
Of course, the technicalities of your website should be given attention. For example, creating a mobile-friendly website boosts your search engine rankings, especially with more users accessing the Internet from their mobile phones. Other factors you have to consider include your website’s speed and security. For the latter, it’s best to use HTTPS for secure connections.
Conclusion
You see, creating a SEO-friendly website isn’t exactly the easiest task because there’s no one solution that works. Rather, it’s a combination of all these approaches that can take you to the heights of the front page. By creating quality content, expanding your network, and optimizing all the elements of your webpage from the images to the user interface, you can easily achieve your goal of making it to the top.