How Can SEO Enhance Your WordPress Website Growth? 

Are you looking to improve the SEO for your WordPress website? Many WordPress users are trying to improve their pages’ performance or choose a good WordPress theme to improve SEO (Search Engine 0ptimization).  64% of all websites use the well-known content management tool WordPress, accounting for roughly 40.6 percent of all web pages. Some of the most prominent organizations in the world use websites built on WordPress, for eg; The Rolling Stones, The Walt Disney Company, The New York Times, BBC America, Sony Music, TechCrunch, and many more. With the help of a WordPress SEO expert you can do similar and improve your presence on the primary Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This easy to digest guide also provides lots of helpful hints and tips on how SEO can enhance WordPress website growth.

What is SEO? 

SEO is short for search engine optimization. When someone helps a website or piece of content get a better ranking on Google, it’s called SEO. 

SEO is very different from paid advertising because it involves “natural” rankings, which means that you don’t have to pay to show up in that space. A search engine optimization is a process of making online content better so that search engines like Google will show it near the top of the page when someone searches for it. This is called “search engine optimization.” 

Take a look at the following. It’s likely that when someone searches for “chai latte” on Google, they want to find a recipe, the ingredients, and how to make it. If you wrote a blog post about chai latte, you’d want your recipe to be found. To make sure it is found, you must be ranked higher than all the other websites that have chai latte recipes on them. SEO marketing isn’t easy, but that’s why it’s important to do it right. 

Let’s go even further: Search engines like Google are where most people start when they search for things online. There is no doubt about it: 75% of those searches start with Google. 

Successful SEO is not about tricking Google. It’s about PARTNERING with Google to provide the best search results for Google’s users. – Phil Frost 

Why is SEO important? 

Do you have any ways of getting people to your site? 

You should be concerned about SEO if you want people to find you through a Google search. If you can’t be found, you won’t be able to get new business. 

It’s worth mentioning that a search engine is the starting point for 93 percent of all Internet encounters. When a search is performed, what happens next? If you click on the first result on Google, it has a 33% chance of being clicked. 

A large number of people begin their searches on the first page of results. If you aren’t there, you’ve just lost a third of them. Most people don’t even bother to look past the first page of search results. 

Because other websites are working hard to improve their SEO, they are more likely to show up on Google than yours. 

Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first. – Wendy Piersall 

Now, let’s look into some of the SEO techniques that can help you improve your SEO. 

Choose your Web Hosting Carefully 

The first and most important thing you can do to improve your WordPress SEO is to choose the best web hosting service for your site. 

In order to establish any form of website, one will need to have web hosting (business, portfolio, blogging, eCommerce). An area on the server where your website’s code and all of its files are kept is called a “server.” 

When you host your website, it affects how well your site works, which affects how well it does in search engines. As a result, while selecting a web hosting business, you should proceed with extreme caution. When it comes to picking web hosting for your website, there are various essential variables to consider. 

Factors you should consider when you are choosing web hosting for your website, include:

• Speed 
• Security 
• Customer service 24*7 
• User-friendly interface 
• Feature add ons  
• Tech support 
• Tech specs 

Always use SSL Domain 

When you use SSL, a security protocol, your browser and the server to which you are connecting are protected by an encryption code. This adds another level of security to your WordPress site. 

Padlock icons show up in the address bar of web browsers that use SSL encryption. The trustworthiness of your website will go up because of this. This is especially important if you are using WordPress to operate an online business that deals with sensitive payment information such as credit card information. Let’s Encrypt is a service that offers a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website as a benefit of signing up. For more information, check out our tutorial on how to get a free SSL certificate for your website. 

For a premium wildcard SSL certificate or a standard SSL certificate with a security guarantee, Domain.com is a good place to start. 

For example, they offer SSL certificates that come with at least $10,000 in safety guarantees and at least $1,75 million in safety guarantees. You also get a TrustLogo site seal that you can put on your website.

Submit an XML Sitemap for Crawlers 

In addition to adding the domain, another important thing to do is send the site’s XML sitemaps to Google’s search engine. There are XML sitemaps, which are files that list the URLs of all the pages on a website so that search engines can find them. 

XML sitemaps don’t have an effect on how well a website is ranked, but they can help Google get to a website more quickly. As a bonus, they tell the search engine which pages are the most important and which should not be included in the search results. 

WordPress 5.5 and later versions have an XML sitemap generator built-in. Users can get to it by adding /wp-sitemap.xml to the end of their domain name. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to change this file. 

After you’ve made a sitemap, open Google Search Console and click on the Sitemaps option in the left-hand menu. Enter the URL for the file and then click Submit to send it to us. A message will say that Google will check it out on a regular basis and let you know if there are problems. 

Be Mobile Friendly 

Have you ever glanced at a website on your phone and discovered that half of it is cut off, the buttons too small to click, or the navigation bar is missing? Isn’t it inconvenient? That is why it is critical to have a mobile-friendly website. The majority of Google users access the service via a smartphone or tablet. As a result, Google now indexes and ranks pages based on their responsiveness to mobile devices. This implies that you must ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and simple to read and utilize. 

Your site may appear amazing on a PC, but not on a smartphone. Also, make sure material is readable on small displays, and navigation buttons are easily accessible. 

This is a grid-based layout that can be modified to accommodate any screen size, from computer to tablet to phone. Google’s mobile-friendly tool can check this for free. 

WordPress has many mobile-friendly plugins. These SEO plugins help you optimise your site for mobile devices and make mobile sliders operate better. 

Enhance the Performance of Your Website 

Site speed is essential to having a good web experience. Indeed, the longer it takes for a website to load, the greater the number of people who leave the page. You should make certain that your website is easy to navigate and loads quickly. 

The good news is that most modern WordPress hosting platforms are fast enough to host the most simple sites.

However, if you notice that you’re moving too slowly, you can do the following to speed things up: 

• You can use a plugin to make graphics and other content that takes a lot of time to load only when a person scrolls down the page. At the start of a user’s session, your web page will not have to load everything all at once, which will save you time. 
• Use a content distribution network (CDN). CDNs, or content delivery networks, like Cloudflare, let you load your content from other servers at different times. This reduces the stress on your server, which should make your site load faster. 
• Compress your images. 
• If your site still takes a long time to load, even after these steps, you may need to increase your web hosting. 

Create Permalinks that are SEO-Friendly 

Another good way to improve your SEO on WordPress is to make your permalinks SEO-friendly. 

Permalinks (Permanent Links) are the URLs of your WordPress website’s posts and pages. They are just the URLs. When visitors and search engines visit your site, URLs serve as a guide to help them understand and index its content. That alone shows why it’s important to pay attention to your permalink structure. 

By default, your WordPress site has a messy URL structure. However, WordPress has a lot of different ways to make your URL, so there’s no need to be worried. 

To build an SEO-friendly URL, log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Settings >> Permalinks. Then, under Common settings, select the Post name option. Finally, click on the Save Changes button to apply your changes. 

Use SEO-Friendly Themes 

A theme that is SEO-friendly is more than just pretty to look at. It also helps users have a good experience and help search engines find the site’s content. 

To find a WordPress theme that is good for SEO, look for the following things: 

• Responsive: Google places a lot of emphasis on mobile-friendly websites in their search engine results pages (SERPs). This should be a top priority. There is a term called “responsive,” which means that the theme can change its size to fit on a computer, tablet, or phone screen. 
• Light and quick: The theme should have only the most important parts and no boilerplate code to make it load quickly. 
• WordPress-compliant: It follows the most recent WordPress coding standards to avoid mistakes, keep the code easy to read, and keep websites accessible to everyone. 
• Updated all the time: At some point, the theme’s developers should keep an eye on it. They should also fix any problems with performance or security. 

SEO-Friendly Plugins 

Today, making a WordPress website is as easy as making cup noodles. You can do it quickly and easily. Plugins are add-ons to a website that help it get more traffic from Google, which is why it’s best to use SEO-friendly plugins.

There are a lot of different kinds of SEO plugins for WordPress, but there are a few that are better than the rest:

• Yoast SEO 
• Rank Math  
• All in one SEO 

Add Alt Text to Images 

The alt text is significant because it shows up on Google Images and tells Google what the photos are about. 

• Visitors who are visually impaired and use screen readers will find it easier to use this site. 
• If a picture on the page is broken, it is replaced with one that is better. 
• In WordPress, when you upload an image, fill in the “alt text” field. This text will be the alt text for the image. 

 Keep it short and descriptive at the same time. 

Verify with Google Search Console 

Google Search Console is an important tool for improving the performance of your website, even if you use WordPress. It’s an analytics tool that lets you see how many people come and go from your site, as well as how well your site is doing. 

Google Search Console shows how Google sees the activity on your website, which allows authors to make the most of their promotional efforts in order to reach more people and improve their SEO. 

Once your site has been verified by Google Search Console, you may also enable Google Information to acquire even more detailed data about your site’s performance. 

Do the Schema Markup for your website 

Making schema markup easy is one of the best things about WordPress, and when it’s used with an SEO plugin, it’s even better. 

Structured data, or schema markup, can help with your SEO efforts by giving your content and data a sense of where it comes from. XML sitemaps tell search engines that you’ve added new content, but markups help them understand and show it in new and interesting ways, which makes the searcher’s experience better. 

Keyword Research 

Keywords are still useful even if they are no longer used to stuff content. People still use it. Google’s ranking system still uses keywords. Start at the top to understand why SEO is vital. So, you may need to hire SEO experts. 

There are additional powerful keyword research tools available. Tools like SEMRush, Ubersuggest, keywordtool.io, Google Trends, and even Google’s keyword planner are great for SEO research. They do the work for you and offer you an overview of what people want and what’s going on. Keyword research reveals what individuals seek when searching for goods or services. 

Long-tail keywords are preferred nowadays due to voice search. Today, we leverage long-tail keywords to boost conversion rates. People that are looking for something specific employ this method. 

The shift toward long-tail keywords will be even more essential to SEO success in 2018. Why? Because of voice search.— Jeff Keleher 

Core Web Vital 

These are a subsection of Web Vitals relevant for all web sites, should be measured by all site owners, and displayed in all Google tools, such as Chrome and Search, as part of the overall Web Vitals score. It’s important to stress that each Core Web Vital represents a distinct aspect of the user experience, can be quantified in the field, and proves the practical significance of a user-centered outcome in real-life situations. 

The most important web metrics will change over time. The 2020 benchmark evaluates three aspects of the user experience: loading time, interaction, and visual stability, among other things. It takes into account the following metrics: 

LCP (Largest Contentful Painting): The loading performance is measured and reported. The LCP event should occur within 2.5 seconds of the page’s set up in order to provide a favourable user experience. 

FID (First Input Delay): The interaction is measured. Pages with a FID of less than 100 milliseconds should be considered to provide a positive user experience. 

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): It is necessary to determine visual stability. Pages with a CLS value of 0.1 or less are more likely to provide a satisfactory user experience. 

Conclusion

WordPress is a fantastic platform in terms of search engine optimization. But simply using WordPress for your website will not be sufficient. 

There is a lot of competition out there, and to stay on top of the game, you must employ the best SEO tactics that have been discussed in the past.

In conjunction with high-quality content, you should prioritize these WordPress SEO tactics, and you should have no issue getting your website to appear in search engine results.