You already installed your WordPress, configured the theme and has been publishing content regularly. But so far, nothing appears on the first page of Google. This can happen for several reasons, and in this article we will focus on the necessary work on your website’s SEO.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or in Portuguese, Search Engine Optimization, is a strategy that, as the name says, serves to optimize your content to meet the ranking criteria necessary to obtain good results in the main search engines.
Although the content presented in this post is useful for all audiences, the focus will be on the novice audience, and so we will not go too deep into each of the topics.
Above all, to obtain a good positioning in search engine rankings, your content must be very well written, and aligned with a specific niche or objective, so that your content meets the expectations of the public.
Search for keywords related to your content
There is no point in creating content by answering a question people are not looking for answers to in search engines. Therefore, the ideal is to conduct a keyword search to focus on the main doubts of an audience, thus increasing your chance of being found and the relevance of your content.
There are several services that can assist you in this process:
- Ubersuggest: This is a free tool created by Neil Patel, a renowned SEO professional. That will help you to analyze certain keywords, checking the amount of searches, the difficulty to rank, related keyword ideas, and other tools;
- Answer The Public: Through this service, you can define a language and content, and an infinite number of search terms will be suggested, which can give you several ideas for content;
- Google Keyword Planner: This keyword planner is very good mainly because it is run by the same company responsible for the largest search engine in the world: Google. Through this tool it is possible to see the average monthly searches for a given keyword, in addition to the level of competition and even price to advertise through Google Adwords.
Optimize your website speed
Speed ​​is not the only priority for analyzing a website’s SEO, but it is undoubtedly one of the most important. If a site takes a long time to load, the probability of the reader leaving the page is very high, in addition to directly influencing the ranking in search engines.
By default, WordPress works with dynamic content, making a request to the bank each time a new user accesses a content. In addition to making your server work to display the same content over and over again, this can make your website load time longer than it should.
The solution to this is to use a cache plugin, which stores a static version of your pages to display to the user. There are several plugins for this, such as WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache, just to name a few. Make your tests and see which one does better in your hosting.
To give you a base, here are some great tools to test your website’s performance: Google PageSpeed ​​Insights, GTmetrix and Pingdom Website Speed ​​Test.
Optimize your website images
Your website images are just as important as your text. Content with quality images to illustrate the message being conveyed is much more likely to generate engagement than content with pure text.
A plugin for image optimization like EWWW Image Optimizer will help you to reduce the size of your images, in addition to converting them to more modern formats like Webp, which are much better viewed by Google and other search engines.
In addition, always add the keywords of your content in the file name of the image, description and alternative text, since Google also checks this data.
Use a CDN
Your website is hosted in a specific geographic location, and the further away your user is from that location, the greater the variation in their load time. To ensure that users have quick access regardless of their geographical position in the world, there is a service called CDN (Content Distribution Network).
What a CDN does is basically replicate static copies of your website’s content on servers spread around the world, making access faster regardless of location.
Cloudflare is the most popular company in this segment, as it offers a quality CDN free of charge. In addition to the CDN, they have several other services, such as free SSL, protection against brute force attacks and several other features.
Configure your permalinks
By default, WordPress comes with a permalink structure where the year, month and even day before the post name is inserted in the URL. Although useful in some cases, especially when dealing with news, on most occasions this is simply not the best approach.
For a more friendly URL, go to Settings -> Permanent Links and within Common settings, select the option Post name. This will make your URLs human-readable and assist in acquiring visits.
Also, don’t forget to set up a personalized permalink on each post you write, trying to make the URL shorter and with a greater focus on the keywords in your content.
Use an SEO plugin
Although WordPress is great in a native way, some functions that help a lot in SEO strategy are not easily configurable, so installing a plugin for this purpose can help a lot.
Although it does not directly affect the ranking of your site, the SEO plugin will help you identify points in your content to make them more friendly to searchers, indicating the ideal number of words, subtitles and keyword repetitions, in addition to several other tips.
The SEO plugin we use here at Diolinux is Rank Math SEO, as it is very complete, with a great tool for analyzing the texts we write, in addition to having a built-in link redirection function, complete website analysis and even support for Google Webmasters.
Another great option is Yoast SEO, the largest SEO plugin on the market, which has a very solid base, currently completing 10 years in the market. It also has several features such as keyword optimization, readability analysis and a few more tools in its paid version.
Create a sitemap
The sitemap is a series of files that inform searchers about the structure of your site, in addition to informing whenever there is an update on the pages, as in the case of a new post.
It is extremely important for search engines to index your content correctly, especially if your site has many pages, such as e-commerce, news portals or some blogs.
It is possible to create a sitemap manually using the XML format, but the most recommended way is through plugins, as they will be updated automatically as new pages appear on your site. The main SEO plugins like Rank Math SEO and Yoast SEO already have this functionality.
Use Google services
Nothing better to rank on the Google search engine, than using its services, right? Although not mandatory, they are great free tools that you shouldn’t give up.
Through Google Search Console, you can check various metrics of your site, such as ease of use on mobile devices, external links, support for AMP technology and add the sitemap generated by the SEO plugin.
Google Analytics is used to analyze the accesses that your site receives, and through it it is possible to know exactly which pages are most accessed, through which device, operating system and even the origin of the user.
Work link building
Link building is an SEO strategy in which a structure of internal and external references (links) is set up to demonstrate to search engines that your site has relevance in a given subject.
External links must be made in an organic and natural way, as Google can identify when it is abusing this strategy and may, in some cases, end up penalizing your ranking.
Always add internal links to your content leading to other articles on your own site, as long as it is relevant to current content. Don’t forget to add some external links as well, taking care to direct to quality sources.
SEO is a daily struggle
Working with WordPress and SEO takes a lot of effort, but it can be very rewarding. In addition to the platform being extremely malleable for various purposes, it is possible to achieve sensational results through it.
Did you already know these tips? Do you have any strategies you use to share? Leave it in the comments!
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