The Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide

March 3, 2016 SEO,Web traffic,Website Strategies

When embarking upon a new website project, among the very basic things that need to be figured out, is the choice of the content management system. While there are quite a few alternatives that can be considered, the WordPress platform is perhaps the most popular one and wordpress seo is most important to reach out to your audience.

Since it was launched in 2003, WordPress has found favor with developers all over the world for its many qualities and currently, the count of websites built around WordPress has exceeded an astounding 74 million, with many world-renowned sites like CNN, New York Times, Forbes, Samsung, Mashable, and eBay, among many others using it. With the boom in the amount of web content available, the need for WordPress SEO is all the more important to ensure website traffic.

SEO Concerns

There has always been a certain amount of reservation regarding wordpress seo friendliness. However, expert opinion has generally crystallized that it is indeed a very good CMS platform for SEO as it offers the user experience that is generally intuitive that makes it relatively easy to implement SEO best practices by anyone. Some tips for site owners working on WordPress to improve their SEO:

Optimize the Site URL for Easy Search

Site administrators should ensure that the URL is made up of actual words rather than a combination of meaningless alphabets and digits. It is generally a good idea to leave out filler words like “and,” “the,” “of,” etc. and instead separate the words with dashes. Since WordPress permits users to create rules for permalink creation, it is better to set it in such a way that it automatically takes the page or post name as the URL rather than an arbitrary sequence of letters and numbers. This rule setting can be easily executed by clicking on Settings and thereafter on Permalinks and switching the settings. When creating posts you can also create the custom permalinks. Fundamentally, site visitors should be able to make sense of the URL that should ideally contain one or two descriptive keywords. If the page contents are not adequately described by the name of the post, then the individual URL may be edited and the Meta title can be used instead.

Optimize the Page Meta Title

It is extremely important for the entire page Meta titles to be optimized to the extent possible. However, the optimization should still accurately describe the page contents. If this sounds complicated, you can breathe easy as there are a number of WordPress plugins to take care of it. A Yoast product, WordPress SEO, for example, enables a preview of the Meta title and also the creation of a Meta title that is SEO friendly and conforms to the length limitation.

Compose a Meta Description

The Meta description is the text that accompanies the names of the websites when they are listed on the search engine results page. It appears just below the main title and is a description that tells the reader whether the page is relevant to the search requirements of the reader. Ideally, the Meta description should contain one or more of the principal keywords and the character length, including spaces, should be between 145 and 158.

While Meta descriptions have no influence on the Google page ranks, they help to improve the click-through rates as the readers can figure out if the page is useful for their information query. The Meta description language should be succinct and reader-friendly. For example, the website of a provider of bulk email marketing services in Mumbai could have a Meta description that says exactly what he does and how much he charges for the service.

Employ Alt Tags

It is not possible for search engines to see images and the only way they can take into account the images is by reading the alternative text or tags. A good way of ensuring that Google is able to find the images on your website is by providing accurate tags. There are essentially two steps to optimize the images. The first is by changing the file name of the image to something meaningful, preferably with the inclusion of an important keyword, even before the image is uploaded. The second step is describing the image properly with alt text at the time of uploading the image to the website.

Generate XML Sitemaps

The function of an XML sitemap is to provide a quick and efficient way of direct communication with the search engine when there is a need to intimate them about any changes in the content or when new content has been added. This ensures that there is a faster indexing of the content allowing the search engines to locate the content faster. After creating the sitemap, it should be submitted to Google so that it is in a position to crawl through it and categorize the site according to its algorithms.

Set Undisputed URLs

Sometimes, there is a situation when there are several URLs pointing to the same content as happens with a product page with the items listed in a different order. This sort of a situation can be problematic because the different URLs result in the page being split up and the search engine could end up penalizing you for duplicate content. A useful and effective way out of this mess is by setting URLs that are canonical as by that process the search engine is pointed in only one way, i.e. towards the page that is “original”. Most of the good plugins for WordPress SEO will permit the setting of a canonical URL to solve the URL issue.

Set 301 Redirects

Whenever a page of the website is removed, the administrator should invariably set a 301 redirect to point it to the page next in relevance. Doing this will enable the website to leverage on the goodwill that had been acquired by the original page and help to keep users stuck to your website instead of getting frustrated by seeing an error page and going off elsewhere. This sort of a redirect becomes extremely vital when you are updating the website, changing from one content management system to another or even moving domains. The good thing is that you do not have to do the 301 redirects manually; there are a number of WordPress plugins that can assist you to do this quickly and efficiently.

Conclusion

By employing these simple tricks, you could increase the ranking and productivity of your web content exponentially, and enjoy much greater returns for a minimal amount of effort. Whether you are starting from scratch or already have a WordPress site, it is vital that these strategies are implemented so that you get the most out of every post you put up.