It’s all very well having an attractive and engaging website but if you’re the only one who visits it how are you going to monetise it? In today’s 5 Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website post, I’ll share why SEO optimization is so important if you want to grow a successful online business.
Driving a steady stream of targeted traffic should be your key priority. However, paying for traffic by placing ads on social media and other platforms can be expensive and beyond the budgets of many smaller businesses. The good news is that you can get highly qualified and free traffic from search engines. Moreover, search engine traffic is the best source of targeted traffic because people are searching for specific things.
Let’s Look at 5 Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website
1. Select a Fast-Loading Theme
Choosing a fast-loading theme is essential. Google loves them and rewards sites that are fast-loading. Internet users’ attention spans are so limited these days that if your web page doesn’t immediately appear they head off to another site and you lose a potential customer. Please don’t underestimate the importance of this. There are literally thousands of themes to choose from in WordPress.org so you won’t be stuck for choice.
2. Add a Sitemap
What is a sitemap? Essentially a site map is an index of the pages of a website within a domain. By providing this you are helping the search engines to crawl your website content quicker so that they can add it to their database. The result being that the sooner they crawl your content, the faster your site will appear on the search engine pages.
3. Install a Caching Plugin
What does a caching plugin do? Effectively, it creates a static HTML file version of your web page that it displays to your site visitors. This means that when a visitor makes a return visit to your site to view that page again, they will see a cached version. So, your web server won’t have to serve up all your website files to each visitor. The positive aspect of this is that these static HTML files are lightweight, and this in turn allows your site to load faster on your visitor’s browser.
4. Use Human-Readable Permalinks
What is a permalink? The permalink is the full URL you see – and use – for any page that appears on your website, be it a post or any other type of content. It’s called this because it’s a permanent link. Permalinks are a vital part of your website as search engines use these URLS to index your site. In addition, visitors use them to visit your site. The SEO-friendly configuration recommended by search engines are those that make it simple for users, and search engines, to recognise what your content is about. The simpler the better because a long indecipherable link is a lot less likely to be shared. Generally, by default, WordPress doesn’t use a structure that’s SEO-friendly. So, it’s advisable to change your permalinks to contain relevant words related to your content. This will equip search engines and users with more information about the pages they are visiting.
5. Install an Effective SEO Plugin
Now the core WordPress software is optimized for SEO. However, you should not rely on this alone. By installing SEO plugins, your website has a better chance of ranking higher on Google and other search engines.
Yoast and All in One SEO are two of the most popular SEO plugins out there. Each has its own features and benefits. Choose which one meets your specific requirements. Then install it, configure it appropriately and you’ll be well on your way to achieving a fully functioning SEO-optimized website.
Yoast SEO
Within the WordPress community, Yoast comes highly recommended. In fact, many website owners say this easy-to-understand plugin is a must-have for any WordPress site. The great news is that there is a comprehensive free version available that is regularly updated. However, you can upgrade to their premium version if you want more functionality.
I use the free version and find it extremely user-friendly and informative. It helps you configure your website in a way that makes it easy for your site to be crawled by search engines. Also, it gives you pointers for improving and tweaking your copy to ensure that search engines love it! Another bonus is that it provides you with detailed and highly actionable suggestions in real time. In addition to helping you create SEO-optimized titles, metadata, URL slugs, and a lot more.
The Yoast community is an active and supportive hub and a good place to go if you’re struggling to figure out technical terms you’ll come across on the plugin’s settings. There’s always someone keen to help and share suggestions and solutions.
All in One SEO
Close behind Yoast in the popularity stakes is All in One SEO. This easy-to-use plugin offers slightly less functionality than Yoast. However, it provides extensive documentation to help you get to grips with it. So, whether you’re a novice or an advanced WordPress user, you can quickly learn how to access all its features. Furthermore, it allows users to decide which features they want to activate. For example, you can choose to activate XML sitemaps, social meta, robots.txt, file editor, bad bot blocker and so on.
Both plugins are beneficial for boosting your on-site and on-page SEO. However, you still need to pay attention to the off-site SEO factors if you want to ensure your website ranks efficiently for the long-term.
I hope you found my 5 Easy Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website post useful and going forward you can implement them to increase your traffic and boost your conversions, resulting in more profits.
To Your Success!
