WordPress is an excellent option if you are looking for a content management system (CMS) to build your business website. Many businesses use WordPress because of its easy-to-use tools, affordability, and variety of business themes and plugins that can improve a website’s appearance and performance.
However, to maximize your WordPress usage, you need to improve your site’s SEO and make it work with the CMS. Doing so can increase your website’s online visibility and improve its rankings, which can help increase your website traffic, conversion rates and revenue.
Hiring a company that offers professional SEO services will give you the best results. Nevertheless, you can optimize your website yourself by following SEO best practices for WordPress websites. Here are a few things you should consider to improve your website’s SEO using WordPress.
Make sure your website is visible to search engines
By default, WordPress enables a setting that lets site owners discourage search engines from indexing their sites. This feature is useful during the development phase because it prevents search engines from indexing your unfinished or unpolished site. However, once your site is ready for the public, it is crucial to ensure that this setting is disabled.
Leaving it enabled will keep your site hidden from search engines, so even when it’s well-optimized, it won’t show up in search results. Fortunately, it’s easy to disable this feature. Simply navigate to your WordPress dashboard, go to “Settings”, then “Reading” and uncheck the “Dissuade search engines from indexing this site” box.
Install an SSL certificate
Having a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is essential to improving your site’s SEO performance and security. SSL certificates encrypt data transmitted between your website and its visitors, ensuring that sensitive information such as passwords and credit card information is protected from potential hackers. Google prioritizes website security in its ranking algorithm, and installing an SSL certificate can positively impact your website’s visibility in search results.
To install an SSL certificate, you must first obtain one. But if you use WordPress to host your site, you don’t need to get one. WordPress.com hosted sites come with SSLs for free and are automatically installed on their respective sites. If you don’t host your site on WordPress, you can purchase an SSL certificate from a trusted certificate authority.
Once you have the certificate, you can install it through your hosting provider’s control panel, which is typically found under the security or SSL/TLS settings. After installation, ensure that all traffic to your website is redirected from HTTP to HTTPS. This can be achieved by updating your WordPress settings and modifying your .htaccess file.
Exclude low value content from indexing
Excluding low-value content from indexing is an important practice for maintaining a high-quality website in the eyes of search engines. Low-value content includes pages that do not contribute to the overall value of your site, such as admin pages, duplicate content, tag archives, and thin content pages. By preventing search engines from indexing these pages, you ensure they focus on your high-value content and improve your site’s overall SEO performance.
An effective way to handle this is by using a robots.txt file. Located in the root directory of your WordPress site, this file tells search engine crawlers which pages or files they should not access. For example, you can use the robots.txt file to block access to your wp-admin directory or other sections not intended for public viewing. Proper configuration of this file can prevent search engines from wasting their crawl budget on irrelevant parts of your site. Additionally, it’s important to audit your content regularly to identify and address low-value pages. This can involve consolidating or removing thin content, improving the quality of outdated posts, and ensuring that your content provides real value to your audience.
Create SEO friendly permalinks
Permalinks or permanent URLs are the URLs used to link to specific pages or posts on your website. Well-structured permalinks not only improve the user experience, but also contribute to better search engine rankings by providing clear and descriptive URLs.
By default, WordPress generates permalinks that include query strings and post IDs, which can be less informative and not very SEO friendly. To improve this, you should adjust your permalinks to include relevant keywords and a clear hierarchy. Navigate to your WordPress dashboard, go to “Settings” and then “Permalinks” to choose a more descriptive permalink structure. The “Post Name” option is often recommended as it includes the title of the post or page, making it easier for both search engines and users to understand what the content is about.
Incorporating relevant keywords into your permalinks can further boost your SEO efforts. For example, if you are writing a blog post about SEO best practices, a permalink like: yourdomain.com/seo-best-practices is more descriptive and keyword rich than yourdomain.com/?p=123. This helps search engines better understand the topic of your content and improves the likelihood that your pages will rank for relevant search queries.
Use an SEO friendly theme
Choosing an SEO-friendly theme for your WordPress site is essential because it forms the basis for optimizing your site’s performance and improving search engine rankings. An SEO-friendly theme has qualities that search engines, especially Google, prioritize. These qualities include fast-loading sites, mobile responsiveness, clean semantics and coding, as well as customization options.
To find SEO-friendly themes on WordPress, start by exploring the official WordPress theme repository. Look for themes that are highly rated and have good user reviews, as these often indicate higher quality and better performance. Also, check the themes’ respective documentation and support options to ensure that when you choose a theme, it meets your SEO needs and that you can get help if needed.
Applying SEO best practices to your WordPress site is essential to achieving optimal search engine visibility. With these strategies, you can ensure that your website is well-optimized to thrive in search engine results, drive organic traffic, engage users, and increase conversions and sales as a result.
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