Let's imagine you own a project management software solutions business. You want to position yourself as a trustful advisor for your audience so you write industry-related content on your WordPress blog. If people search for "Best Project Management Software in 2021", you want your blog post to appear on the first page of the search engine results.
How do you do that? With a little energy and a few resources invested in this area, you can increase the chances that your website appears at the top of a search engine results page (SERP).
What does SEO mean and why is it important?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the action of boosting your website's organic traffic on search engines like Google. By increasing your ranking and visibility, your content has better chances of appearing on the top of the SERP that you've optimized it for.
“On a broad scale, I see SEO becoming a normalized marketing tactic, the same way TV, radio, and print are traditionally thought of as marketing tactics.” – Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager, Bing
Optimizing your WordPress website means that you increase the odds of attracting visitors that are actively searching for products similar to yours. In the long term, this translates to more qualified prospects and improved sales pipelines.
If you want to position your WordPress website as a reliable source of information, creating organic, ranking content is a top priority. Improving your SEO will benefit your traffic, drive more conversions, and help you build long-term business relationships.
6 Ways to Improve Your WordPress SEO
- Install an SEO plugin
As with any other content management system, WordPress plugins enhance the functionality of a website by providing access to more advanced features and settings. These plugins don't come with the standard version of the software and you can find the best fit for your needs by searching the WordPress plugin library.
There are many SEO plugins recommended by users, such as Yoast SEO, SEOPress, or Slim SEO, but you can always try other options and see which is the one that suits your demands.
- Don't forget about categories and tags
Tags and categories support your SEO efforts by allowing search engines to understand the structure of your website and the way content is organized throughout your site. Separating your posts and pages and organizing them into specific groups also improves the user experience as it provides your audience with a more accessible way to reach your content.
Categories
You can broadly group your content in the form of categories. For instance, if your main product is project management (PM) software, then you may use categories like "software", "project management", or "management software".
Tags
Tags provide more specific information through keywords and are generally more descriptive. Think about your PM software website, what tags could you use to describe what a specific post is about? Keywords like "web-based", "scheduling", or "budgeting" could be used as tags to enhance and support your SEO efforts.
- Is your website visible on search engines?
Believe it or not, WordPress actually has a feature that allows users to hide their site from search engines. This might sound basic—however, check out this feature and make sure it's not set on hide unless you are building or updating your website and you purposely want to keep it hidden during the process.
- Use internal links
Internally linking your WordPress site will boost your website's authority and your SEO strategies. The number of internal links that you integrate into your content, pages, and blog is directly proportional to the way many search engines determine your website authority.
- Leverage standard security technology
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology controls encrypted links between servers and browsers, ensuring that the data shared between websites and visitors remains secure.
Standard security technology allows customers to complete order forms and provide credit card information in a safe environment, without the interference of hackers.
This will improve your website's ranking as search engine algorithms look for secure and encrypted connections.
Fortunately, WordPress.com automatically adds SSL to your website so you don't have to worry about this. However, if you're using Wordpress.org, you are required to manually install SSL plugins to ensure that your website is encrypted.
“Successful SEO is not about tricking Google. It’s about PARTNERING with Google to provide the best search results for Google’s users.” – Phil Frost, Main Street ROI
- Modify permalinks
Permalinks are permanent URLs that lead to a specific page or blog post on your website and let visitors know exactly what they are clicking on. Why is this relevant to SEO?
Search engines use permalinks to determine whether your website has suitable answers to specific searches. That's why changing permalinks to include accurate descriptions of your content can improve your SEO rankings and also enhance the user experience.
Improving your WordPress website's SEO is not rocket science. You can use the tips highlighted in this article or leverage other strategies to improve your website's ranking on search engines. By doing this, you'll get more out of your site, increase your traffic and your conversions.
Optasy can fuel your web project with advanced tools that support your business now and in the future. Check out how you can enhance your WordPress website's functionality and capabilities in just a few clicks. Optasy will do the rest for you!
Photo credit: Merakist on Unsplash.
