If you are the person who is publishing content on your site but not getting search traffic on it, then I guess you need to rethink about SEO of your site. Today, competition is very high, and there are many publishers who are already producing good content.
So, it is also important to focus on search engine optimization. Do as best as possible, maybe you do not get an immediate result but if you do it well and publish good quality content on regular basis then you may get the result.
Let’s see an example
You have published two pieces of content:
First: Good content without SEO optimization.
Second: Good Content with SEO Optimized.
What you expect is where will you get a better result. I think your answer is Second, right?
I also think the same answer. Sometimes exceptions may be there and may depend on many factors but content optimization is important.
In this article, I am discussing 18 tips that may help you. So let’s start from the basics.
1- Responsive Website
In today’s content marketing world, it is very important that your site is responsive. If your site is good enough for desktops or laptops only, that is not enough. Your site must be responsive for all the devices which users use to visit your site like Mobile, Tablet, Computer, laptops, etc.
You should make sure that your site is responsive. There are many good WordPress themes available, which are responsive and have many good features. You may purchase any good and secure theme suitable for your site.
WordPress Theme: Ultimate Guide to Select a Perfect Theme
2- Page Speed
What if you visit a website that loads in 4 seconds or more? And What if you open a website, that loads in 2 seconds?
I think you would like, which one loading fast. Normally, it is for everyone, nobody would like a slow website. The search engine also doesn’t like slow speeds. That’s why search engines prefer fast-loading websites and give preferences to them.
Now Google has implemented Core Web Vitals and you should optimize your site according to that parameter. So that you can get the advantage of the benefits.
Improve your site speed if it is slow. The speed of your site will depend on many factors. First and most important, you need to have a good hosting service because speed will depend a lot on hosting.
Second, you need to optimize your site well, so that your page can load fast. Third, you can add a Content Delivery network also to give some boost to your site. There are many more things that you can do to boost your site performance.
Hosting: 11 Tips to Select The Best WordPress Hosting Plan
3- Quality Content
Writing quality content should be your priority. Ultimately, there is content, that users going to read on your site. If your users don’t like your content, whatever SEO you do, there are no benefits to it.
But in case you are writing and publishing good content for users, then you would get good results. Search engines always prefer good content. Content should be:
- Easy
- Informative
- Relevant
- Good Structured
- Unique
The content should be engaging and informative. If users like your content, then chances are there that users come back again to your site.
How to Write an Awesome Blog Post – 7 Tips for beginners
4- Social Media
Many people may debate on it whether social media signals may work or may not work to improve SEO ranking. But I would recommend using social media. Is there any loss if you utilize social media to promote your posts and site?
I don’t think so.
Like me, many other bloggers would recommend you have social media profile and promote your posts and send social signals to Google and other search engines. Somewhere, it works.
In many cases, it has been seen that if the social activity of a site is high, there is a chance to improve its organic traffic.
So, Always encourage yourself to share your posts on social media and do other positive inputs.
5- Add Video and Other Media Files
Like the image, you may also consider including video and other media files in your post. First, it will have more user engagement items in your posts and second search engines will also notice that you are having something extra in your post.
You add only relevant content. Whether it is video or infographics or something else, it should be useful to users.
6- Permalink
Being a site owner, you should never miss to setup a permalink structure. You can set up this from the setting area in WordPress. Normally, the Post name is recommended as a permalink structure. I am also using the same for this website.
Permalink plays a very important role, and you should keep it short, simple, informative, and relevant. You should include a keyword in the URL.
One more thing I would recommend is that you should not change your post URL after publishing the post. If in any case, you change Post URLs, then redirect your post to a new URL.
What is Permalink in WordPress? Why is it Important?
7- Table of Content
If you have added a Table of Content (TOC) to your WordPress site, It is really going to benefit. It always has a better user experience. If there is a table of content, users can switch to a particular point and read the content as per their choice.
Suppose you have published a post with a 3000-word count and there are 10 headings and subheadings. Now if you have TOC, the user can see all the points in the Table of content. If the user wants to go first to a particular point, they can navigate to it.
Mainly there are two benefits of having a table of content:
- Better user experience
- Better for SEO ranking
If there is anything good for your users, it has a positive impact on SEO. And Search engines know it well.
8- Sitemap
Setup of Sitemap and submission of it to search engines is very important. Sitemap helps Search engines like Google crawl your site in a better way. You can generate a Sitemap of your site very easily.
I guess you are using an SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math. These are the most popular plugins. You may see a sitemap option in the plugin setting section.
You need to submit a sitemap of your site to the Google search console. So that Google can understand your site structure well and may crawl your site in better ways.
9- Meta Title and Description
Title and description are key factors to improve your SEO. Whenever we search for something on google, some results appear. All these results mainly have three things Title, Descriptions, and URL.
Normally, users click on those results which attract more and look relevant. You must write your best meta title and meta description of your posts. There are characters limitation for the title and description.
In the current scenario, you should write your post’s title within 60 characters and the post’s description within 160 characters. You should include your keyword in the post’s title and the post’s description as well.
How to Create the Best Headline for the Blog Post? 9 Tips
What is Meta Description and Why is it Important for You?
10- Image Name and Alt text
You should write the image name and alt text carefully. It shows how relevant your image is. If possible include a keyword in the image name and alt text. You can easily, manage alt text of images from the media library.
Ideally, users should be light images and in the right format. If you have a heavy image to upload, it is better you compress the image and reduce its size. Optimize all your images, because heavy image size may take more time to load and it may impact your user.
How to Optimize and Add SEO-Friendly Image? 8 Tips to Know
How to Find Image URLs in WordPress?
How to Add Image Caption in WordPress?
11- Internal Links and External Links
Internal linking and external linking are great ways to improve SEO ranking. It improves your SEO by sending Google a positive signal that you are having some extra information apart from your content.
But in this case, you have to be very careful while doing internal linking and or external linking. Internal linking is basically, inking to your own article within the content. It will help you because users may spend more time on your site by clicking on internal links.
You should Link out some good external sites that are trustworthy and good for your user. Whether you are adding internal Links or external links, avoid doing any spamming activity.
12- Disavow Spam Links
If you facing the impact of negative SEO, and your site is having so many bad backlinks. Fortunately, you have the option to disavow spam links. However, you have to be very careful, while removing spam links.
If you will not do it properly, your SEO ranking may be down. So whenever, you use this tool, you must read and understand the positive and negative sides of it.
If you have any doubts while doing it, I would recommend don’t do it alone. The good way is to take the help of your friend or an expert.
13- SSL Certificate
SSL certificate is important for SEO ranking purposes and Security as well. If you are having a site, you must have installed an SSL certificate. Most of the good hosting providers provide free SSL to its customer.
What is an SSL Certificate? What are the Benefits of SSL?
14- Content-Length
Content length plays a very important role in SEO. many expert bloggers would suggest you write lengthy content. And somewhere it is right also. If you will do some research on Google, you will see that most of the blog post which ranks on the first page are lengthy.
It clearly shows that word count matters a lot for ranking. But it doesn’t mean, you write anything and fill in any stuff to make your content long. Google is very smart and it is tough to make a fool of.
You should write your blog post naturally, and write best for your users. You can do one more thing:
You can research your keyword and blog post length on a particular topic. It may help you to find out the ideal word count for your topic.
15- Easy to Read and User-Friendly Content
What if I write an article of 5000 words count, but it is complicated and most people do not understand it? Content should be very easy to read and user-friendly. So that users can read and understand it without effort.
16- Update Your Content Regularly
To improve your SEO ranking, you should work more and more on your content. You should update your old blog posts on regular basis. Google prefers fresh content and if you keep updating your old blog posts from time to time, may improve your ranking.
But I would recommend don’t overdo it. Do it when it is required and relevant. You should never try to do any spam kind of activity to just get ranking. Google algorithm works very smartly, and any kind of spamming may be a setback for you.
17- Mobile Friendly
For SEO ranking and for users, from both points of view, your site should be mobile-friendly. Mobile users are huge worldwide, and Google understands it very well. That’s why Google prefers mobile-friendly sites.
Make sure that you are using a mobile-friendly and responsive theme. To enhance the performance of your site, you can add AMP on your site. However, before you install and activate AMP, you should know whether is suitable for you or not.
There are certain pros and cons of AMP. So you should go through it before you apply it on your site.
18- Keyword & Keyword Density
The placement of keywords and keyword density should be in properly way. Normally, you should keep a keyword in the Title, Description, URL, first paragraph, and last paragraph, in some of your subheadings and main content as well.
However, it is up to you to place keywords where they best suit your content.
But avoid stuffing keywords to get a better ranking. Be natural and write your content for your users, and put keywords where it is required. If you have installed any SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank math, you may see the keyword density level.
Conclusion
Writing SEO-optimized content is not rocket science but there is huge competition outside. And we need to be very active and responsive. There are many factors that affect SEO ranking.
Knowing and maintaining each factor is not easy for everyone. Your main focus should be “Write the best content for your users”. The rest of everything is just to make it better and better.
Learn as much as possible, because many things change rapidly, and keeping yourself updated is important.
What is a Permalink in WordPress? Why is it Important?
