You’ve built your WordPress site. Now you need to get people to visit it. That’s where SEO comes in. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell something or give it away for free. All your efforts will go unnoticed if you’re lacking the traffic you need. If you’re trying to grab some more visitors, there are plenty of things you can do to give yourself a significant SEO boost.
Why You Need Great SEO
If you don’t have great SEO, people are going to have to dig to find you. Even less promising is relying on word of mouth or shared posts to expand your reach. The reality of the matter is that people almost always use a search engine to find what they’re looking for, and if you don’t show up in the results, it appears as though you don’t exist.
Chances are that there’s already a WordPress website that is similar to yours. Without great SEO, people will keep visiting your competitor. Using the proper SEO techniques to outrank them might be the only thing that gives you the room you need to shine – even if your website is amazing.
Start With Your Theme
Theme and speed go hand in hand, and speed is SEO’s best friend. If your site is slower to load, Google will ding you for that. It helps to choose a theme for your WordPress site that’s as simple as possible. The fewer frills within the theme, the quicker the loading times will be. The same goes for plugins. Make sure you get rid of any plugins you aren’t using, and see if any of the plugins you’re currently using can be switched out for a single plugin that serves multiple purposes. Even shaving mere milliseconds off your loading time can help.
The Perfect Host
If your host doesn’t perform well, your site won’t perform well. If your host isn’t secure, your site isn’t secure. So much of what you need comes directly from your host. Choosing one that’s secure, efficient, and fast will improve Google’s opinion of you. If you’re currently using a host that’s underperforming, it might be time to switch. Opting for WordPress specific hosting will do the most good.
Craft Smart Content
Google loves content. Your content is what Google will use to determine how much value your site provides. Creating original content and regularly updating your blog is a way to maintain great standing, but the content itself is only half the battle. You need to be sure to include enough relevant keywords within your content to help Google determine exactly what you do and who you serve.
To do this, you can use SEO tool plugins that will essentially proofread your posts for SEO. These tools check for things like keyword saturation, post length, and vocabulary. Think of them like Grammarly for SEO. You can use these tools to help you create content on your own or provide them for your SEO copywriter.
Build A Sitemap
Sitemaps are like the appendix of your website. It lists everything on your website in order of importance. If your navigation is easy to use, your visitors probably won’t even notice your sitemap. Google’s crawler will, and that’s what counts. When Google is combing over your website, your sitemap will give the search engine a condensed view of what you offer and how your offerings correlate. If you have a wealth of information and a variety of content, it’s easy for Google to understand your value.
Prioritize Mobile Viewing
More than half of the people visiting any given website are viewing it from a smartphone. Unfortunately, many websites are a nightmare to use on a smartphone. Excessive zooming in, zooming out, and rotating make a site difficult to use. Sites with elements that don’t even work add another dimension of difficulty. If you want to be successful, you need to roll out responsive design.
Google knocks sites without responsive design down the list because they understand that a wealth of traffic comes from people using mobile devices. Most WordPress themes have already been designed to incorporate responsive design. If yours hasn’t, you’ll need to switch or make adjustments.
Use Links
No man is an island, and no website should be an island either. If you aren’t connected to anything with links, Google will perceive you to be isolated. They won’t understand how you fit into the internet at large. Make sure to incorporate as many links as possible within your posts. Internal links to other parts of your website are just as important as outbound links that connect you to other websites. Trade blog posts with other websites that have a well established SEO foundation, and your own foundation will grow as a result. Building links that point to your website is one of the most important campaigns that you can do to build your organic traffic and presence. Using a tool like Linkio will help you get the right anchor texts and the right percentage to get over your competitors in a very fast time frame.
Too Busy To Make It Work?
Even if you’re using the easiest methods, WordPress SEO can still be a lot to handle. We’re here to lend a hand if you need us. We can do the easy stuff and the hard stuff – we’re experts with SEO. Contact us when you need an SEO boost.