There are currently more than one billion active websites on the Internet with roughly 30% of them running on WordPress. At the same time, three-fourths of all Google users don’t bother going beyond the first page of search results at all. Put all of these figures together, and you’ll get a clearer picture of what you’ll be facing the moment you put your just-finished WordPress website out in the open. However, you can effortlessly beat the rest of the competition to a senseless pulp by applying these tips to boosting your search engine optimization (SEO) for your WordPress website:
Choose an SEO-friendly WordPress website theme.
It’s natural to choose an aesthetically pleasing theme for your WordPress website. However, looks alone can’t guarantee that your WordPress website would attract as many visitors as you may have hoped for.
You’ll thus want to choose not just any WordPress website theme that looks good but one that was made with SEO in mind. An SEO-friendly WordPress website theme should have clean codes (i.e., is easily readable, doesn’t have too many comments that do nothing and commands that aren’t useful, and is neatly structured) and loads fast.
Read: Top 7 SEO Friendly WordPress Themes that can’t be missed!
Optimize your WordPress website for mobile.
Nowadays, a lot of people browse the web using their mobile devices. However, if you’ve built your WordPress website without realizing that, you’re missing out on a lot of potential visitors who don’t have access to a desktop or laptop but carry their smartphone or tablet often wherever they go.
So aside from being pleasing to the eyes and is SEO friendly, you should also make sure that the WordPress theme you’ll be using has a responsive web design such that your website’s layout would remain readable even when accessed from mobile devices of various sizes.
Publish high-quality content regularly.
Boosting your WordPress website’s search rankings isn’t only about choosing an attractive, SEO-friendly, and responsive theme. It’s also about coming up with high-quality content that your visitors would love reading.
Ensure that everything you publish is entirely relevant and helpful to your website’s intended visitors. Your WordPress website content should also discuss a certain subject in a different manner compared with other websites operating under the same niche. Each of your content’s sentences should also be grammatically correct and of varying length and should have no spelling errors at all. Strike a balance between short- and long-form content. Don’t bore your website’s visitors with too many long posts.
Lastly, commit to a regular schedule of posting content in your WordPress website. You can do that manually if you prefer it that way. You can also set your posts to auto-publish on your website at certain dates and times in case you get sick or have to do something else besides writing content.
Anticipate what keywords your audience is typing into Google
Anticipate which keywords your WordPress website’s potential visitors are most likely to type when searching for content that caters to their needs.
Your WordPress website’s potential visitors would most likely find out about it or any of its published content by using certain keywords in Google Search. You should thus have the foresight to figure out what those keywords are based on the specific niche that you’re in. You’ll then have to choose which keywords you think can pull the greatest number of visitors to your WordPress website and place it strategically throughout any of your published content.
Just make sure, though, that the keyword itself would fit nicely along with the rest of your website content. Also, don’t use too many instances of the same keyword in your published content to prevent your website from being flagged as spam.
You can use a SEO management tool like SEMrush to research anchor texts and run a successful link building campaign.
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Include a few active and useful links when coming up with content
No matter how short or long your WordPress website content is, if it doesn’t have any outbound links at all, potential visitors might see it as a red flag that you are relying on pure conjecture when crafting content for your website instead of backing it up with research.
Thus, when writing content for your WordPress website, make sure to include at least one link to a content from a different website that has to do with the niche you’re in. The more links, the better – although you shouldn’t use too many lest you want your website to be accused of link spamming. Keep outbound links in your website content to a mere handful.
The links that you’ll be including in your website content should be of relevance to the subject you’re discussing and must be active as well. Check your website content periodically for any dead links that need instant replacing.
Make your WordPress website content shareable on social media.
You’ll want your WordPress website to rake in tons of visitors each day. You don’t have to do all the promotional legwork for your WordPress website all by yourself if you can let its visitors do it for you by way of social media.
Your WordPress website should thus support integration into various social media platforms. Don’t forget to include Facebook and Twitter integration in your WordPress website and Instagram as well if you often put out image-heavy content.
Consider installing SEO plugins on your WordPress website.
There’s a lot more you can do to boost the search rankings for your WordPress website aside from the ones listed above. However, some of these strategies, such as adding a sitemap to your website as well as customizing its page and post URLs, can be time consuming.
Thankfully, WordPress has several plugins in its directory that specifically cater to optimizing your website for SEO. Installing an SEO plugin in your WordPress website can significantly speed up the entire SEO process and frees you up of your valuable time that you can use to do other important stuff.
Final thoughts: 7 Tips to Boost the Search Rankings Today
Successfully setting up a website that runs on WordPress is a good idea – and even better than building one from scratch. However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg as you’ll also want people to visit your website and interact with it. For that to happen, your website should consistently appear on Google’s first page of search results. To accomplish that goal, you’ll have to boost the search rankings for your WordPress website by doing the above-listed tips. However, if you need more information because your SEO knowledge is limited, you may consult an SEO guide to assist you in achieving your SEO goals.
