When creating a WordPress site, you want to ensure that you will get as many eyes as possible on it. It doesn’t matter whether your site’s purpose is to sell products or services, inform readers, or promote your work, the more visitors you get, the easier you will achieve your goals.
Have no idea how to get started? Firstly, understand that search engine rankings are the most vital component of the long-term success of your site. Having a WordPress SEO-friendly site means creating it in a way that it will be optimized for conversions.
It isn’t rocket science and also doesn’t involve you going above and beyond to get good SEO. There are just a few simple principles that you must follow to make your site’s ranking work in your favor.
Here are 8 ways to create an SEO-friendly WordPress site:
1. Choose Your Web Host Wisely
The last thing you would want is to get your SEO affected by hosting issues because they definitely can. First thing first, the most basic way of creating an SEO-friendly WordPress site is to make sure that your site will load fast. Site speed, uptimes, and security are very important site components for Google.
Search engines place huge importance on page load times with every update so a page that loads in more than 1.5 seconds is by far SEO-friendly. Moreover, there is no more certain way to scare potential visitors away from your site than with a malware warning that pops up when they try to enter your site.
Thus, when choosing your web host, keep in mind that the two most important ranking factors that will work in your favor are performance and security.
2. Offer A Good Online Experience
One of the best ways to convince Google to give your site a boost in the SERPs is to offer your visitors a great online experience. And one of the most important things that can help you do so is to choose a responsive theme. The theme you choose for your website can have a huge impact on your site speed, security, and how it is optimized for mobile devices.
Many people wrongly think that a complex theme will make their website unique and more appealing, when, in fact, they are destroying its SEO potential right from the beginning.
Instead, you should go for a simple and responsive design that will place everything on your website in a very easy-to-use way that will also suit perfectly for mobile use too.
We are talking an adjusted layout, menu items, and images that will nicely be displayed on all types of devices, be it a computer desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.
When you pick a responsive theme, you ensure that Google will work in your favor by promoting your website to the internet users as a mobile-friendly one.
3. Choose A Valuable Domain Name
Choosing a domain name for your WordPress site is a huge decision that can have a huge impact on its SEO potential. There are various things to keep in mind when choosing a name and, surprising as it may be, choosing valuable keywords isn’t the most important of them.
In fact, some people wrongly mainly focus their choice on finding keyword-rich domain names which often leads to names that are too long to be relevant for SEO.
Also, by neglecting all branding concerns, it will affect its impact on its audience. You shouldn’t hesitate to use your brand name in the domain name you choose because it will help you create distinction in the crowded digital world that exists these days.
Another important aspect to consider is to not use EMDs (exact match domains) for your domain name. What are EMDs? They are those names that use a phrase made with keywords.
If you go on Google’s search bar and search for such keyword phrases, the first results you will get won’t be reputable brands but shady and spammy websites that are very likely to install malware on your device.
In 2012, there has been an algorithm change made by Google that aims to reduce such low-quality exact match domains in search results to protect internet users from such shady websites. Thus, choosing EMDs for your domain name will only keep potential visitors away from your website and will make Google work against you.
4. Get Relevant Keywords into Your Titles
One of the most vital pieces of SEO for your WordPress site page is your post titles. Why is that? Thanks to your post titles, your site visitors and search engines will know what they should expect to find in your site content. While when choosing your domain name, you should avoid relying on keyword-rich names, for your titles, it is imperative to get relevant keywords into them.
When internet users launch their search with certain keywords, the blog posts’ titles that appear in the search results are the first things that catch their attention. Thus, a well-written title is the most powerful tool you have to convince them to click on your post.
Yet, apart from attracting your audience, well-written titles are vital to rank well in the SERPs. Here, we are talking about title SEO optimization which includes practices such as choosing the right length for your title (60 characters maximum), choosing a unique and clear title, using relevant keywords, and even using your brand name in your title tag.
5. Have A Structured XML Sitemap
Now it is time to get a little techy about your site’s SEO. However, don’t worry because it is easier than you may think. You don’t have to be an expert at coding, all you have to do is to make some clicks on your website. An XML sitemap is one of the best SEO techniques that can deliver you high value for very low effort.
Your site map is only a list that contains your website’s URLs. It is extremely important to make what is on your website easy to read by crawlers and ensure they index it. For example, a site that doesn’t have a sitemap will make the crawlers see it as containing duplicate content and that will definitely affect its SEO.
Simply put, a well-structured XML site map will tell Google the kind of content and information that exists on your site, when and how often you update it, and how relevant it is. All these will improve your chances to gain instant indexation for dynamically-generated pages.
6. Encourage Conversation
Another great way to boost your WordPress site’s SEO is to encourage your visitors to leave comments. It isn’t a rocket science to know that people commenting on your blog means brand popularity and user engagement.
Each new comment left on your blog can add value to your ranking because it will add an additional keyword naturally included in the comment which will result in improved keyword frequency.
Comments can do wonder for your website’s ranking in so many ways. It will search engines see your page as fresh and can encourage readers to share your piece of content because readers are more like to share something they get the chance to truly engage with.
Encouraging site visitors to leave comments is vital. But how do you do it?
First of all, you need to start by publishing really good content that will keep the reader’s interest until the end. Secondly, at the end of each blog you post, you must ask a question that engages them to have a further thought whether it is a question for you or feedback. You can, for example, ask your visitors to tell you their opinion, whether they agree or not.
7. Name Your Categories Right
Most people have no idea what a huge impact site structure can have on Google SEO. Surprising as it may be, it seems that blog category pages can have a bigger impact than individual pages or blogs because they are the ones that direct internet searchers in very specific directions.
Do you really think that your site visitors will spend hours to search for a blog post by scrolling through the archives? Most likely not! They will just leave your site and go to another one that shows them exactly where they can find what they are looking for.
Blog categories have four benefits that will work in your favor including site usability, improved SEO, avoid competing with your own content, and category pages ranking on Google.
So, if you want to boost your website’s SEO potential, don’t just create the “Uncategorized” category and post all your blogs there. Create a blog well-defined structure by using blog categories and maintaining this structure.
8. Publish Quality Content
Last but definitely not least, good SEO is all about creating and publishing quality content that will engage real people not only crawlers.
When creating content for your website, you need to go beyond the keywords, title tags, or any other SEO practices that aim to make the search engines work in your favor. Your content must be created for real readers that can be engaged to read and share it.
- First of all, make sure your content is readable and includes a few qualities such as clarity, logic, and simplicity.
- Secondly, you might want to include some visuals in it because according to many articles that contain visuals are more likely to get more views than those which don’t.
- Lastly, return to the very basic SEO principle and optimize your content with targeted keywords.
It takes only a few SEO principles and practices to create an SEO-friendly website. A responsive design, readability, accessibility, and quality content are top conversion rate factors that you must keep in mind when creating your WordPress site.
Author Bio:
Helene Cue is a writer and very experienced content marketing specialist at BestEssay.Education. She has an MBA in marketing and a personal blog where she shares her knowledge with her audience.