Published on March 16th, 2018 | by Guest

3 Quick ways to improve your WordPress SEO

Millions of people worldwide use WordPress for their blogs, websites, and even online stores. There’s no doubt that it’s a great CMS; the numbers speak for themselves, however, their ‘out-of-the-box’ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not a quick, or even good, solution to apply to your SEO strategy. Although there are plenty of ways to drive and encourage traffic to your website, we all know that SEO is the most important, more so because it produces actual results.

What we’re really saying here is, don’t rely on WordPress’s SEO to get your website to the top of Google’s search engine ranking. We’ve put together 3 quick and effective ways for you to improve your WordPress SEO, without too much effort.

1. Choose the best WordPress Web Host

Now, you’re probably wondering, what does your web hosting provider have to do with increasing your WordPress SEO? Google takes into account many factors when calculating your website’s position on their search engine results page (SERP); one of those factors being the speed of your website. Your web host, when it comes right down to it, determines the downtime of your website, and the speed in which your website loads.

It’s really important to check out the uptime and potential server speed from your web host; most web hosting providers offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee, giving you the reassurance that you require. However, it’s not as simple as finding a web host that provides a guarantee; there are other factors included, too, such as their reputation, customer support, and features. You’re going to need a web host that gives you access to 1-click installs, such as, WordPress, to ensure that you can gain easy access to your website, and your web host’s control panel at the same time.

Being smart about your choices will return great results; look for a web host who offers specific WordPress hosting plans, as well as speed and consistent high performance.

2. Use a reputable SEO plugin

I can’t put into words how great WordPress Plugins are; software that can simply boost the usability of your website at the click of a button – but, don’t go overboard. There are A LOT of plugins available for WordPress, and as tempting as it may be to install every plugin going, that’s not the trick here. Using a recognised and reputable SEO plugin can certainly help your SERP ranking, such as, Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO has been branded the number 1 WordPress SEO plugin, and there’s plenty of reasons for this. If you’re new to WordPress and/or SEO, there’s a lot of terminology that won’t make sense. Yoast SEO pretty much deals with all the jargon for you and performs all the tedious tasks to ensure your website gets seen. From Sitemaps and breadcrumbs, to meta descriptions and oodles of features, Yoast SEO integrates and manages your WordPress website with Google to the best of it’s ability. It even goes as far as providing you with all the tools you need when writing content for your website; is it SEO friendly? Does it conform to SEO standards? How will your page look on Google?

Yoast SEO is free to download, with premium options available. It’s updated regularly and has over 5 million active installations. It’s most certainly a quick and easy way to improve your WordPress SEO.

2. Use a responsive design or template

If you decide to use one of WordPress’s templates, of which there are literally thousands, you’re going to want to make sure that it’s responsive. How often do you browse the internet on your mobile phone? Probably quite a lot! So, would you be happy if you were using your smart phone, and came across a website that wasn’t optimised for your screen size? Of course not, and neither would Google!

Another one of Google’s ranking factors is responsive design; creating a website that will look great on both desktop and mobile is essential in 2018. Whether you’re using a computer, phone, or tablet, your website design or WordPress template must be responsive. Most WordPress themes are, which is great, as it saves trawling through thousands of designs to find one that’s suitable.

Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, WordPress is a great platform to use to create a new blog, website, or even run your own business. There are plenty of tools available to get you started, and simple tips and tricks to ensure that your WordPress SEO is up to scratch. It may seem daunting at first, but, there’s an abundant amount of information available on the internet to guide you along your way.

Tags: improve, quick, SEO, ways, WordPress