Any website that wants to increase the number of visitors must invest heavily in SEO. When your SEO is strong, it helps search engines read and comprehends your website’s content. The positioning of your website on search result pages can thus, be enhanced.
If your SEO is strong enough, you have a better chance of appearing on the crucial first page of Google results, wherein most consumers start (and end) their web searches.
This procedure blends science and art. There isn’t a single secret to ranking at the top of the search results, but there are several things to raise your chances of appearing on Google’s first page.
While some SEO tactics may only require a simple site upkeep, others demand careful consideration for all the pages, titles, and articles. WordPress SEO may seem complicated, but it’s easy if you’re prepared to do a little work.
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Select a Quick Web Host
You want people to visit the website, have fun while there, and be able to effortlessly access and share your content. Google does as well. Websites having all of these checkmarks will also receive higher rankings.
Since the speed or load time of your website is essential for ensuring that you provide a positive user experience, you must select a hosting service with quick speeds.
After all, even 400 milliseconds of page loading latency annoys internet users. Only hosting enables your WordPress website to go live on the web.
Websites are maintained on computers known as servers that are controlled by web hosting firms. When a user wants to visit your website, a server will be used by your web hosting business to link it to their computer.
You’ll also want a host with an uptime of about 100%.Uptime monitors the duration of a hosting provider’s operations, and therefore, the duration of your website’s operations.
If your website is frequently down and inaccessible, Google will penalize you.
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Review the Website’s Performance
A web host is just one component of a much larger puzzle that makes up site performance.
Your theme, the use of plugins, and even the size of the images can have an impact.
One of the simplest methods to evaluate the performance of your website is to open the WordPress dashboard and navigate to Tools > Site Health.
This page assesses your website’s usability and security and provides recommendations for improvements.
If you understand what each tip entails, you could disagree with some of the suggestions given by this program.
Next, use Google’s Page speed Insights tool to evaluate each page on your website.
If you’re running a blog without using specialist code on certain pages, the majority of your pages should score similarly.
After you’ve done the analysis, scroll down to the Opportunities section and check for any areas you may improve in.
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Use SSL to protect your website
In the past, you would notice a little SSL lock indication in your browser when banking or purchasing online. But today, the majority of websites have SSL certificates.
One contributing aspect is the growing awareness of internet security, but Google is also to blame. The most popular search engine in the world now provides websites that support SSL encryption a ranking advantage over websites that do not support SSL, and it may even penalize non-SSL websites.
You no longer even have to pay for SSL because the Let’s Encrypt certificate authority now freely distributes certificates. The majority of site hosts provide automatic SSL installation services, which often include free Let’s Encrypt integration.
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Secure your website generally
One aspect of more thorough attention to site security is adding SSL.
Your search engine rankings may suffer if your website is compromised.
Basic precautions for site security include logging into WordPress with a strong password.
The WordPress fail2ban plugin should also be enabled, typically included with a new WordPress installation. This plugin stops login brute force attempts. Additionally, enable Akismet, a default plugin that guards against comment spam, which can harm search engine rankings.
In addition, you should frequently update PHP on your server and maintain WordPress and your plugins up to date. You should also delete any new WordPress themes. Depending on your hosting package, your web provider might handle some critical updates automatically.
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Verify the Site Hierarchy
The structure of your website can also have a significant impact on SEO.
It would help if you generally had a homepage with an easily navigable menu, a list of categories (we’ll get to that) for topical site navigation, and then your static pages and articles. This is the site architecture that Yoast, a well-known WordPress SEO plugin, suggests.
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Improve the page’s title, slogan, and permalinks
Here, be sure to use a descriptive site title that clarifies what your website’s primary emphasis is. Additionally, you should offer your website a keyword-rich, descriptive tagline. Since they help convey what your site is about, search engines will consider your title and tagline when ranking.
Next, choose the Post name radio button under Settings > Permalinks.
This generates URLs based on the names of your blog posts and pages.
WordPress, by default, employs a numeric URL format, which is less SEO-friendly than descriptive URLs.
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Create a compelling meta description
You often see a paragraph of text beneath the website title whenever search results for a particular website appear. Although Google can automatically construct this snippet, it’s best to write your own.
It’s better to use an SEO WordPress plugin to handle this. Yoast and All-in-One SEO Pack are the two best options, and both players are well-liked and include a free version.
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Improve posts’ keyword density
The foundation of SEO is its use of keywords. These are the phrases that directly relate to the posts, pages, or websites that you have.
When writing about soccer, for instance, you might use the terms “soccer,” “football,” and “world cup.” The titles of your static pages and blog posts should include keywords, and these terms should also frequently appear in the body of your content. Using keywords as the anchor text for links in your post is also a good idea.
Because keywords can easily be overused, using them effectively is unquestionably more art than science.
Additionally, it would help if you stayed in your lane and only search for keywords that had something to do with your website’s subject. That’s not to say you can’t occasionally be imaginative or veer off-topic, but do your best to keep on topic.
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Include Just One H1 Per Post
The only place an H1 heading, the largest headline you may create, should be used is in the post or page title. Following that, use H2, H3, and H4. A page or post’s H1 heading tells Google what the page or post is about.
Since only the article title is set as an H1 by default, makes this simple. Using the default editing tools, you cannot add an H1 within the post’s body. However, you may edit your HTML content and add h1 and / h1 tags everywhere.
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Prevent Reusing Content
It is another significant sign of uncertainty if you address the exact same topic or the same keywords on many posts or pages. It’s a frequent fallacy that targeting the same keyword across several pages would raise your position in the keyword search results.
By competing with yourself on a particular subject, a practice known as keyword cannibalization, you lower the calibre and authority of your website. This frequently causes your website to drop in the ranks.
A single post should be chosen, and it should then be updated as necessary.
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Understand Categories and Tags
WordPress offers categories and tags, which can also facilitate the understanding of your material by Google. It can be difficult to understand the distinction, but generally, you want to use categories for your site’s core subjects and tags for more specific information.
For instance, a site that reviews books would utilize categories like Young Adult, Literature, Translations, and Science Fiction. The book titles, authors’ names, publishing companies, and other information particular to that post would then be included in the tags.
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Include both internal and external links
There are two kinds of links on a website: internal links that go to the material on your site and external links that go to other websites. Both are beneficial for SEO.
These days, SEO professionals favour internal links and advise employing no follow tags to reduce the number of external connections. A no follow tag instructs Google not to consider a certain link as a recommendation for the trustworthiness of a third-party website. When it makes sense, link to both internal and external pages, and use descriptive text when linking to external pages. You should be alright if you heed this simple suggestion.
CONCLUSION:
It would help if you work up on your way to a better position on Google and other search engines with the correct use of keywords, linking, categories, tags, and meta descriptions, as well as plugins like Yoast and good website upkeep. With these foundational concepts, you have only begun to explore SEO. You can develop your knowledge of more subtle SEO techniques over time and your writing skills for titles, taglines, and meta descriptions.