When you begin developing a website, you’re first going to need to choose a good content management system. Many people will stick with WordPress. After all, this is one of the easiest CMS platforms to use. WordPress is convenient, easy to understand and lightning fast. Just remember that it might not be SEO friendly from the very beginning. If you want to guarantee that you’re able to rank your website near the top of Google’s results, you’re going to want to make your WordPress site SEO friendly. Within this in-depth guide, you’re going to learn how to do just that.
Choose The Right Theme
Before doing anything, you’re going to want to get rid of the basic WordPress theme. The ones that come with the software might look good, but they’re most likely not going to be search engine friendly. If you want to ensure that your site is able to rank, you’re going to need to switch to a theme that is indeed SEO friendly. There are plenty of them out there. Do your research and choose a theme that will empower your site and help it climb up Google’s ladder.
Using The Right Permalinks
When you first install WordPress, you’re going to be provided with a default permalink structure. Take a look at it and you’ll know right away that the structure is not going to be SEO friendly. This is something that you’re going to want to change immediately. Thankfully, you’ll be able to make the switch pretty easily. Just enter the settings and make sure that you switch to SEO friendly permalinks.
Title And Meta Description
While you’re at it, you’re going to need to make sure that your site has the appropriate title and meta descriptions for each page. If you stick with the basic WordPress setup, you will not be able to configure meta descriptions. Therefore, you’re going to need to install a good plugin. The All In One SEO plugin is the one that most people utilize. It will make your WordPress site SEO friendly in most regards. After that, you’ll need to make sure that each and every one of your pages and posts has a relevant title and meta description. For good measure, be sure to stick your keyword in there!
Keep It Fast
There is a good chance that you’re going to need to install three or four plugins to your WordPress site. This is fine, but it is going to slow things down. And, you should already know that a slow loading speed is going to look bad in the eyes of Google. To avoid problems, you need to make sure that your WordPress site loads as quickly as possible. There are plenty of ways to speed up a WordPress blog. Using WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache can help. Increasing your WordPress site’s speed and taking advantage of traffic masters will make a huge difference in the long run.
Use Relevant Keywords And Key Phrases
Utilizing targeted and relevant keywords are a necessity for your website to rank high in the top search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo and AOL. Without these keywords and proper placement of these keywords, your ranking goals will never be met. There are several different types of software and programs available that will help you find keywords that are relevant to your website.
It is crucial to place the relevant keywords in the URL of your website. If you are utilizing a variety of targeted keywords in the URL, you should separate the words with dashes. The keywords should also be embedded in al anchor texts that are utilized to describe your domain name, Meta tags, title and links.
Using Header Tags
WordPress is pretty good in this area. The software gives user the ability to quickly and easily add different header tags to their posts and pages. You’re definitely going to want to take advantage of this. Whenever you compose a new post or page for your site, you need to make sure that you’re using header tags. Go ahead and stick a keyword in these tags. This will make a big difference. And of course, it’ll help to ensure that your site ranks for your specific keywords.
Image Tags
While you’re at it, you should take advantage of WordPress and image tags. This software makes it easy to adjust those image tags without too much trouble. Just make sure that they’re set properly and Google will rank your website accordingly!