One of the main reasons for WordPress popularity is that it is significantly SEO-friendly, and different embedded features, as well as numerous plugins, confirm this fact.
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Nevertheless, after site development, many people wonder how to improve Google ranking WordPress as it is impossible to gain the top ranks just simply creating your site with the help of WordPress. To succeed, you should know how to use SEO on WordPress and make efforts to improve your website’s rankings on Google or any other search engine. Any CMS is not a magic tool using which you can rank well without any further effort. To get effective results, you should get familiar with SEO tactics and their right usage while CMS, like WordPress, makes it easier for beginners to implement this knowledge.
By the way, if you are just in the initial stages of your site development and have a lack of time or generally prefer to rely on the experts’ help there are many WordPress development companies. Go to the SuperbCompanies and find the best ones for your needs.
There is a WordPress SEO checklist that contains the best tips that will help you understand how to improve SEO WordPress and how to increase blog traffic WordPress:
Keywords research and long-tail keywords targeting
Speaking about traffic growth, we cannot avoid the topic of keywords usage. Keywords are indeed a powerful tool for site optimization. Conducting keyword research, you can better understand your target auditory’s needs, generate the right content that your customers really need, and increase your website traffic.
Tools that can significantly simplify your keywords selection are Google Keyword Planner, KWFinde, Keywords Everywhere, and many others. They provide you with an opportunity to get information about the chosen keywords and their competition level. In such a way, you can quickly and easily pick up the most effective keywords and create proper content using them.
If you deal with a rather competitive niche, ranking on the top searching result pages with the main keywords can be pretty challenging. Many of them can be already conquered by business sharks, who have kept up their positions for a long time. In this situation, you should venture outside the box and apply to long–tail keywords, targeting smaller but rather specific keywords.
Valuable content
High–quality content is a must if you want to improve your traffic and ranking. That is why you should create valuable, comprehensive, and engaging content. For this purpose, you should thoroughly study your target audience’s needs, intentions, interests, and expectations. Besides, longer content generally ranks better in search engines. Recent research has shown that top rank content usually contains about two thousand words. It doesn’t mean that every post that you publish must be rather long, but you should take this fact into consideration. When it comes to content, it is also essential to update it as often as needed to keep it relevant.
Images optimization
Images can improve your content quality, making it more readable, and keeping your readers engaged. Still, using images, you must keep in mind a few things that can significantly optimize your site: title text, alt text, and file name. All of them must include not only image descriptions but also corresponding keywords.
Meta description optimization
To say the truth, meta descriptions have nothing in common with ranking. But, your click–through ratio (CTR) is dependent heavily on a meta description. Google, in its turn, can rank your site higher, considering your content more relevant if you have high CTR. To take advantage of the meta description, you should insert your main keywords in it. Google highlights these keywords in bold, catching users‘ attention to them. However, sometimes Google can automatically change meta descriptions.
Heads optimization
Google tracks HTML header tags such as H1, H2, H3, etc. in order to define the relevancy of your content. It is strongly recommended to have only one H1 tag per page. The H1 tag is used for the most important header, which must include your main keyword. H2, H3, and other tags are used for the subsequent subheads. Hierarchy, in this case, is important. Using these tags properly, you structure your content, making it more readable.
Internal linking
Using internal links, you can establish relevance between different pages of your site. Internal links are important not only for SEO, but they also help users navigate within your website, increase time spent on your website, structure website information, and spread authority throughout the website. It is recommended to use at least three internal links, but you can increase their number depending on the content length. All links can be easily incorporated through WordPress.
Getting rid of broken links
If your website contains a great number of broken links, it can not only deeply disappoint your readers but affect your rankings. Besides, broken links perplex your site crawling by Google bots. The easiest way to detect and fix all existing broken links is to leverage Google Search Console.
SEO–friendly URL
Try to make your URLs as short as possible, not showing numerous categories and directories. Use only your main keyword, and delete everything else. Long URLs actually do not have a great impact on rankings, still, they can lower your CTR, making your links look like spam. So to be SEO–friendly, your URL must include the main keyword and be short and readable. By the way, URLs can be easily updated through WordPress. Find out how to create an SEO-friendly URL here.
Sitemap submission to Google Search Console
Different search engines use sitemaps to identify websites‘ structure as well as provide effective crawling. The sitemap is not compulsory, but creating it, you gain access to additional reporting data. You can create your sitemap file using the Yoast SEO plugin. After that, you can submit this file to Google Search Console to get additional information about your website status.
Regular conduction of SEO audits
The best way to ensure your website optimization and traffic growth is to conduct SEO audits regularly. SeoSiteCheckup is one of the most effective tools that can help you to settle this issue. It performs more than fifty checks providing you with all corresponding information.
SEO Testing
Traffic growth and ranking improvement of your WordPress site require a ton of your attention, effort, and time. You must take into consideration numerous aspects and use various tools. Still, this work will undoubtedly bring visible results and benefits for your business.