So, you want to learn how to do a correct SEO on a WordPress website. Well, by choosing WordPress, you are already on the right path. Yes, WordPress is a great CMS for doing SEO. Did you know that actually 28% of the websites on the surface web are made with WordPress? WordPress is made with clean code, and so are the vast majority of the themes available. In this post, we are going to give you some basic advices to improve your position on Google SERP.
A well done SEO, paying attention to details, can take a lot of benefits to your website, including a higher income from ads, better and higher lead generation, and more sales.
How Google works
We all know Google has got an algorithm and a set of rules that every website should abide by in order not to get excluded from the SERP. Actually, Google’s goal is giving the best results possible for any search, and therefore its algorithm is updated very frequently, and it can be very hard to keep its pace. This is the main reason why you should hire an SEO agent in the first place, even though WordPress SEO may seem a piece of cake.
Paying attention to Google algorithm does not just mean doing whatever it takes to get on the top page, but also means not doing those thing that might penalize your website.
WordPress SEO plugins
The first step to boost your WordPress SEO is installing a plugin that checks all those aspects you would not even notice, such as the presence of a sitemap, meta-tags, Google Search Console errors and so on. There are many WordPress SEO plugins, but the most popular is Yoast SEO, which does all these things and it has got interesting features in its premium version.
Most important thing, it gives you some guide lines while writing a post about key-factors that may improve the position of the post on Google, for example: is the keyword included in the title? Is it present in the first paragraph? Are there any h2 or h3 tags? Are there any links? Internal or external? Are there any images? Do they have the alt attribute? Does the alt attribute contain the keyword?
As you can see, a lot of things must be considered when writing a post, but with Yoast SEO you can get a valid help.
Create genuine and interesting posts
Do not publish anything just to fill the blank spaces on your website, instead, focus on creating engaging content studying what are the most common issues your target wants to solve and give them a solution. Just make sure the posts are well-written and genuine: Google does not like duplicated content!
In order to make sure you always have fresh content, plan an editorial calendar with the topics you want to write about and do not forget to have a look at trends, so you can keep the pace up.
And now the big question: how long should a post be? The answer is complex, as usual, but we can resume it in: “it depends”. For Google 300 words are fine, but in the real world, they are probably insufficient to guarantee quality in your content. However, everything depends on the target, the subject, and many other parameters we cannot actually imagine.
Make your website responsive
Most of the traffic on the internet does not come from computer anymore, but from mobile devices: keeping the loading speed high and a good interface event with the lowest screen resolution will make your website more appealing to Google’s eyes, which will show your website in their SERP on both desktop and mobile devices. The best advice we can give you to speed your website up, is using a caching plugin, which makes the user save a lot of waiting time.
Stay up-to-date
It is critical that you always keep an eye on the status of your WordPress website and listen to your SEO agent advices. WordPress SEO should be taken seriously and with awareness of its potential.
