What is search engine optimization? It is essentially the process to have more visitors visit a website by making sure the site ends up high on search engine results page.
There are several parameters to be met with before a website is ranked high which makes it to the first page of the search engines. With a WordPress website though, your website has greater chances of getting improved rankings by search engines.
Selection of theme to optimize your WordPress website’s SEO is also more important than you might think. A well-designed theme would have clean code that search engines love. There are thousands of WordPress themes for free download out there, and not all themes are created equally but you have to back it up with SEO friendly WordPress themes.
Let’s look at a few important elements of getting search engine optimization for WordPress website right.
1.Page Titles
Search engines pick up on the headings and page titles. Both of them need to match so the search engines know that the content in the webpage is legitimate. A good page title must have the keywords and it must be enough to draw a user’s attention to click on it.
Page title makes search engines be sure of what the topic of your content is. Whenever a keyword is being searched, with the right page title, which contains that keyword, your website will rank high and show up on the results page.
2.Meta Description
A Meta description is a 160-character summary about the content on your webpage. Search engines sometimes pick up on this summary to link the search keyword and the content in websites to show your site in its result pages. This is why Meta description is very important.
Keep it short, precise and with the appropriate keywords. With the right plugins on WordPress, you can find that writing Meta description is easy.
3.Page Names
Page names serve a very important purpose in the search engine optimisation of a WordPress website. It is a way of locating a page in the system by the search engines.
Make sure all the titles in your webpage have the right keywords so the website is picked up these search engines. Whatever people are searching should match with your page name and its content for maximum optimisation.
4.Headlines
Just like page titles, headlines are also extremely important for search engine optimisation. There are plugins in WordPress that alert you when your headlines don’t have the right keywords and if they keywords are placed correctly or not.
This is crucial because search engines match the headlines, page titles and the keywords with what real people search online. If you want your website to show up on their results page, make sure your H1, H2 and H3 are in sync with your keywords and the content of the webpage.
5.Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is when multiple URLs have the same content, which makes it confusing for search engines to rank the websites. This leads to websites getting poor rankings and not showing up in search results page.
Avoid duplicate content on your website and if you do have different links leading to the same content, make sure you create a redirection path so they all lead to one website.
In short, be mindful of how your content can make or break your website’s SEO rankings and use WordPress plugins so your website shows up on search engine results page.