WordPress may be easy to use and SEO-friendly but to appear at the top of the search results you need to implement SEO. This will help you to rank higher in the search results and get more traffic and conversions.
If your content is not optimised then your website will not appear in the search results when people search for businesses like yours. You will lose out on all the traffic. Therefore you should optimise your website to get maximum search traffic.
A conversion happens when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a form, downloads and more. When your users are served best for their needs it will help to build trust and the users will convert. You should optimise your website to increase your conversions.
To get the best results you need to follow WordPress SEO best practices. WordPress makes it easy to implement SEO best practices. These best practices are followed by all ethical SEO services in India.
WordPress SEO best practices
- Go to the Visibility setting and ensure that the box is unchecked if you want the search engines to index your website. For your page to rank Google has to index it.
- Set up the permalinks and keep them short so that they do not get truncated by search engines. Choose the Post Name option in WordPress as it is the most SEO-friendly format.
- Most WordPress themes are responsive and mobile-friendly. Before choosing a theme check its performance. If it has features which you are not going to use then it is not suitable for your website. Unnecessary features and code will slow down your website.
- In WordPress, you can sort your blog posts into categories and tags. This makes managing the content by topic easier. It also helps the users to find content easily. Categories are meant for broad groupings and tags are meant for more specific keywords that describe the content of the page.
- An XML sitemap lists all your important pages and helps search engines discover them. WordPress automatically creates a sitemap.
- If some of your pages do not offer any value to the searchers then you need not index them. The format-based archives and the tag pages need not be indexed.
- Search engines assign a score to each page on your website known as page authority. Build internal links to link your blog posts to the other posts on your website. You should interlink your posts whenever possible because this will help to improve the authority of individual pages.
- In WordPress, every page or post requires a title. Your title should accurately describe what the page is about and entice the users to click on them. Your titles should be click-worthy.
- Headers allow the search engines and the users to understand the hierarchy of your content. Use the WYSIWYG editor in WordPress to add the headers. Most WordPress themes use H1 as the post title therefore you should use H2-H6 in your content. You can hire WordPress SEO Services to optimise your website.
- Use schema markup to make your listing stand out in the search results. By using schema markup you can get Rich Snippets in Google. Schema markup is an HTML code that you can add to your content to make the search engines better understand your content.
- Comments indicate user engagement on your website. Engaged user means more links to your website and more traffic. You should ensure that the comments are real and not spam.
- If you are using the Post Name URL format then you should put your pages into subfolders.
- The Alt-text is used to tell the search engine about the image and they can help the image rank on Google Images. Add Alt-text to all your images.
- Write meta descriptions that support the title and entice the people to click on them. Use an active voice in the meta descriptions.
- You should improve the speed of your website by minifying the code, using browser caching and reducing the file size of the image.