WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems on the Internet. WordPress makes it easy for individuals and businesses to create efficient websites without coding knowledge. From start to finish, WordPress makes the website set up process simple; giving you options to assign a professional domain to your website and add all the features you could need to showcase your offerings and convert sales.
If your WordPress website isn’t ranking as well as you’d hoped, we can help. The following six methods can help boost your SEO rankings and make your website more favourable to Google.
HTTPS
HTTPS is a confirmed Google ranking factor. Having an SSL certificate will ensure your website is secure and users know that their personal information is safe when using your website. Once your SSL has been installed, you can use a plug in such as Really Simple SSL to ensure that your website is always served from HTTPS and not HTTP.
URL Optimisation
WordPress already provides you with the functionality to optimise your URLs from the set-up stage, however, you can install further plugins for more advanced modifications and structural changes. Optimised URLs are one of the most important elements for SEO. Your URL structure tells Google everything they need to know about how your pages relate to each other and what each page is about. Your URL’s need to be descriptive but concise, containing a primary keyword in the URL if possible. Remember, it is a bot that crawls and ranks your website, not a human being – they can’t visually see what is on each page, the content your write and the URL you assign to said content helps them decipher the topic and relevancy for ranking.
Plugins
WordPress has a vast number of plugins to help you get the most out of your website. Some of their best plugins are to help diagnose and improve your SEO. Our favourite is Yoast SEO, we’ve been using this for years, but another good option is Rank Math – this plugin recommends potential changes you could make to improve the SEO of any page.
Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Your title tags and meta descriptions are what appear in the search engines for every single page of your website. It is these small snippets of text that encourage users to click through to your website instead of your competitors. You have to use these to your advantage, using enticing language as well as incorporating your keywords to please the search engines. Character limits are short, with a meta description having to be no more that 275 characters, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it compelling!
Good Content
First and foremost, any of the SEO tips we have shared so far will achieve nothing if your content isn’t good. Google wants to deliver the very best to their users, ensuring that the most relevant and high-quality result is returned for each search. Focus on your content and make sure any answers a user may have are answered. If you don’t have the knowledge, do your research or find someone else that does. Thin content does not perform well on Google, so don’t waste your time!
Analytics
No one knows your website like you do, apart from perhaps your analytics! Tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console know everything there is to know about your website including how users interact with your pages, pages that are under-performing and where your enquiries are coming from. Without Google Analytics (or an equivalent) installed it will be very difficult to understand what is working and what isn’t.
We hope you enjoyed our top SEO tips for WordPress websites and if you would like more advice or are looking to outsource your SEO for piece of mind, contact us now to find out more.