With more than 60 million websites using WordPress, it might come as a surprise to some that it dates back to 2003, thus making it older than both Facebook and Twitter. Initially developed as a blog-publishing system by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. However, over time, it quickly escalated where it was started being used media galleries, forums, online stores, and even LMS (Learning Management System).
As a free and open-source CMS (content management system), there is no doubt that many would like to know how to perform the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for their WordPress Clients. So without any further a due, let’s dive deep into them and see for ourselves how we can rank higher when using WordPress clients:
Tips to Rank Higher
Optimize Your Media
With the internet exploding with content, we find many forms of media being circulated across the global network, including audio, video, and written content. For WordPress, you can optimize your images by resizing them to load faster, add alternative text infused with keywords & tags, and use the correct file format for them.
As far as written content goes, you need to utilize key phrases and keywords throughout your content in an intelligent manner with no black hat practices. Using the right SEO plugins can also help you immensely, we recommend Yoast SEO off the bat! For videos, make sure to use the right keywords in their descriptions.
Use of Links & Anchor Text
Links optimization and their usage can help you get the most out of your posts and content on WordPress. Both internal and external linking is crucial for your visitors to navigate. For best results, keep your links short and concise to the point where they don’t extend too long and reach beyond the URL field of vision itself. Pretty Link plugin is an excellent solution for this problem as it helps you create better links.
Keep your external links as no-follow, no-opener & new window. For the anchor text, make sure they sound natural, relevant to your message, engaging for your audience, and competently distribute them throughout your post.
SEO Plugins
Since search engines are undoubtedly the most significant drivers for traffic on your website, it is needless to say that to rank higher; you need to invest in the right SEO plugins for your WordPress virtual real estate. However, picking one plugin will help you avoid conflict that can be caused if you use more of them like All in One SEO or SEOPress side by side.
SEO Plugins are your best pals since they offer you optimized titles and descriptions for your posts. Some of them also create an XML sitemap that makes crawling easier for search engines. However, for best content analysis, SEMRush is nigh incomparable.
Keywords Research
There is a Keyword Research Tool plugin specifically designed for WordPress that can help you get your game right. It can allow you to enter your focus keyword, automatically generate a list of suggested keywords, most relevant keywords, and target multiple relevant keywords. Keyword research is essential to rank higher as it helps in link building and even content marketing.
With proper keyword research, you can target profitable niches, find related markets, and promote your products and services. They help you zoom-in on people entering relatable queries online and with long-tail keywords, you can aim at specific terms and solutions for a very specific set of audiences.
Improve Website Speed & Performance
Loading times, as well as user-friendliness of your website both, are crucial factors that affect your overall search engine rankings. To improve your website speed, try to use optimized images (right files + right sizes), increase server response time, leverage browser caching, reduce redirects, and manage conflicts between developer languages.
For your website performance, make sure it is mobile-friendly, implement a CDN (content delivery network), utilize asynchronous loading for JavaScript. At times cloud-based monitoring can also help identify traffic issues. You can also use Minification techniques to reduce or eliminate unnecessary characters within a file such as CSS, JS, and HTML, to name a few. Improvement in performance also reminds of the best dissertation writing services that can help students to achieve better grades.
User-Friendly Permalinks
For any WordPress blog, the critical parameter is the permalink. Permalink is a unique URL or web address that makes any webpage on the internet easier to find. Permalinks take you directly to the page. However, the default settings for permalinks are not optimized for online users and search engines crawling for your WordPress client.
Hence you need to set their structures right and should further set the permalinks for every piece of your content individually. Setting your permalinks to “Post name” option is the right choice as it offers you a 100% freedom to do whatever you want with it.
Conclusion
WordPress is exciting and easy to learn; there are various tools and plugins that you can experiment with. Spending more time and learning the nitty-gritty details of how their tool works can offer you various options to play with to improve your overall rankings on the search engine. Much of it self-explanatory and in fact offers you friendly user experience. Plus you can always use the internet to find answers to your queries if you ever get side-tracked. Here is us wishing you all the best for your future endeavors. Cheers!