The more visitors your website receives, the better your company will perform. Every person who arrives on a site has the potential to convert for your business in some way, which is why it is so important to drive traffic to a website. One method of driving traffic is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is effective for all types of websites, including WordPress sites. As a digital marketing company and web developer, today we wanted to share our insights on how to achieve higher SEO rankings for your WordPress website.
The higher page rank in search engine results is directly related to the amount of organic traffic the site will earn. In addition, sites that score high seem more credible and reliable to consumers, which is why so many companies place a premium on SEO.
Is SEO different on WordPress websites?
WordPress is very popular as both a Content Management System (CMS) and a blog hosting service. The CMS is open source and available through WordPress.org, while the blog hosting service is located at WordPress.com.
The Content Management System allows a site owner to manage a website through a very friendly, clear user interface. WordPress is one of the most popular CMSs, as it powers about a quarter of all websites on the Internet.
It is important to understand that there are differences between a WordPress site and a static HTML site. Primarily, a static site has more design and development options, while a WordPress site is more fixed in terms of options based on templates and plugins. There are many options and options to customize, but not nearly as much as a static site.
SEO is slightly different on a WordPress site compared to a static HTML site simply because of the framework. The CMS handles page creation and interface aspects without the need for a web developer, but that also limits the ability to manually update the code to maximize SEO.
Tips for higher SEO rankings
These tips are specific to WordPress sites and complement fairly standard SEO techniques such as keyword usage, using internal and external links, writing high-quality content, and keeping content up to date or offering it regularly of new content. More in-depth articles on these topics can be found on the Lounge Lizard Blog.
Use a good hosting company – Web hosting plays an important role in SEO, mainly because of the speed of the site, but also because of factors such as distance, security and downtime. Site speed is a ranking factor for Google, so it’s important for ranking and user experience to use a host that can provide high speed with little or no downtime. In some cases, small providers have limited servers or servers that are not near a company’s main customers. This extends the time for sending and receiving data. Shaving even a second of the website loading times is important. A site must also use HTTPS, which is also a factor for Google. Some hosts provide the certificate for free.
Theme selection – WordPress uses themes for the layout and appearance of a website. Selecting a theme that is SEO friendly provides useful features to enhance SEO efforts, such as offering new header tag options. There can be major differences between themes, and those targeting SEO will be optimized in ways that web crawlers can more effectively assess content, keywords and metadata.
Use an SEO plugin – There are tons of great plugins available for WordPress sites. SEO plugins, such as the Yoast SEO plugin, are an easy way to add important features to a site that will improve SEO relatively painlessly. The best plugins also provide customer support, making them relatively plug and play.
Set Permalinks to Post Name – WordPress uses a standard permalink structure that is not descriptive. Why this is important is that when search engines crawl a site, the permanent URLs (permalinks) are read by the crawler. The more descriptive a link is, the easier it is to understand and categorize content. By switching to Message Name, the link will point to what should be a very descriptive name of the actual message. This can be accomplished under Settings> Permalink.
Use header tags – When creating content, make sure to use header tags not only to split groups of text for measurements, but also for web crawlers. People use headlines to identify areas of interest. Crawlers use them to better understand.
