Here’s how you can leverage SEO for WordPress to rank at the top of Google’s SERPs .
Position yourself at the top of the most visited search engine pages in the world; there is certainly no magic formula to get there, admittedly; But continuous learning and organized, constant and stable work will surely lead you to this ultimate goal.
So you want as much visibility as possible on your site, whether your goal is to entertain and inform readers, promote your work, sell your items and services; the more visitors you get, the easier it will be to build an audience you can rely on.
Surely you have already dug all over the web looking for the best strategy or strategies, tools or methods to finally get there! But where to start ?
There are many ways to drive traffic to your WordPress site, but SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most effective. SEO is a set of strategies and techniques designed to help your pages rank higher in search engine results. This increases the visibility of your site and can help you take off.
Think about it. When you sit down to look for something on the internet, there is a place where you turn to a search engine. This means that for your site to get noticed, you need to make sure your site shows up in Google searches and similar engines. The most important thing is that your site appears as close to the top of the list as possible.
The best way to do this is through SEO, which is a wide variety of strategies and activities based on what we know about how search engines determine your rankings.
It will present more useful and relevant information to visitors since SEO tends to focus on producing quality content.
If you are new to SEO, don’t press the panic button. The creation of a WordPress site has already taken a big step because WordPress is a CMS (Content Management system) that will optimize your content for search engines.
Additionally, there are several easy and beginner-friendly ways to push a WordPress website to the top of the rankings.
When compiling this list of SEO strategies, we start with an assumption: you are busy. Therefore, these techniques are ones you can implement right now (no long-term commitment required).
Obviously, there are many other techniques out there, but this is a great place to start. And remember: you don’t have to use everything (though you certainly can); some should give your WordPress site a boost in the SERPs.
Additionally, we will focus on advice to Google, since Google is by far the most popular search engine and publishes so much information about its algorithms. That said, many of these strategies should also help you on other sites, such as search yahoo or Bing .
CHOOSE YOUR HOST WELL
Since Google takes speed into account when ranking websites, a good web host can help you get to the top of the SERPs.
Your host also affects your site’s downtime and the physical distance between servers and visitors, which are ranking factors.
Last but not least, since Google is giving HTTPS sites a little boost, you’ll want it too.
If you haven’t created your site yet, choose a reliable and reputable host. Even for an existing site, you may want to switch hosts if your current provider does not meet these criteria.
CHOOSE A SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED THEME
Your theme is one of the most important choices you will make on your WordPress site. It determines the look and design of your site, can provide new features and also plays a role in your SEO.
For example, your topic can affect your site speed, which (as we discussed) is vital. How a theme was developed is also important because clean code gives your site the best chance of SERP.
Therefore, when choosing a topic, you should opt for one that has SEO in mind. These themes are often referred to as “SEO friendly”. You can also look for a theme that offers features specifically designed to improve your SEO; such as new header tag options.
Luckily, there are plenty of themes available that fit the project.
There’s a plugin to help your site do almost everything, including higher search engine rankings. In fact, there are many plugins designed specifically to improve your site’s SEO.
These plugins can provide small specific functions, such as creating a sitemap (we’ll talk about that in a moment). For best results, you can also opt for a full-featured WordPress-compatible SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO which will add a comprehensive set of optimization-focused features to your site.
MODIFY YOUR “PERMALINK” STRUCTURE
Permalink is a permanent URL that points to individual posts, pages, and other content on your site. They are what people will use to refer and link to your site and how they look is important.
Some are number-based (like simple and numeric options); which is not ideal as they convey little useful information to search engines. Instead, it’s better to have the post name structure, as it clearly communicates what the linked content is about.
You can easily change your permalink structure (or create a custom one) by visiting your site’s backend and going to Settings > Permalink.
CREATE A SITEMAP
A sitemap is a list of all the pages and other content on your site, usually organized in a hierarchy. It provides a quick way to see how your site is organized and what it includes.
Although these sitemaps are designed to help users navigate websites; their main purpose now is to communicate information to search engine robots (also known as crawlers).
