SEO is a key part of ensuring search engines find and rank a website.
Optimising your site yourself is often time consuming and confusing. WordPress has many built-in features along with add-ons such as different themes and plugins to better manage your website’s SEO.
WordPress has set itself apart as one of the best content management platforms for SEO. Simply using the CMS could help boost your site’s ranking.
Customised Permalinks
WordPress allows the user to change the permalink structure of post and page URLs. Search engines love links that contain the keywords or phrases you want to target. Instead of having a link with seemingly random numbers and letters, your permalink structure could contain part or all of your post’s title. This helps boosts your rank and allows visitors to find your site easier.
Takeaway: Take the time to edit the default permalink structure to show your post titles. A developer can set this up for you if you’re not sure how or want them highly customised.
RSS Feeds
RSS feeds and other feed types are built-in to WordPress. These feeds allow a site’s content to be picked up by feed readers easily. The feeds could be used by visitors to keep updated on a site’s latest content or the feed may be posted on another site with links back to the original site. Site owners can submit their feed to numerous feed services to increase traffic. The SEO benefit is a site builds traffic and loyal followers, both of which Google factors in when ranking a site.
Takeaway: Take advantage of the built-in feeds to submit to feed services. They’re an easy way to market your site and improve your rank without dealing with extra code yourself.
Clean Code
By default, WordPress uses clean code that makes it easier for search engines to read a site. This code also makes it easier for search engines to determine if any malicious code is present. Adding customised themes and plugins can complicate things, but with the right developer, the code is still clean and optimised for search engines.
Takeaway: Consider hiring a developer if you want to add in customised themes and plugins. A developer will be able to clean up the code to make the most of WordPress’s SEO benefits.
Optimised Themes
While WordPress already boosts a website’s SEO, some themes are designed to further optimise a site. These themes may focus on more optimised layouts, better metadata, proper headers, built-in plugins and more. Many themes are also responsive. Mobile friendly sites rank higher when users search on a mobile device. Using a responsive design helps a site comply with Google’s new mobile ranking guidelines. Thousands of themes are available and developers can create a custom theme with even more SEO benefits built-in.
Takeaway: Combining an optimised theme with WordPress makes SEO even easier. Developers can ensure you have the right theme to make your site more SEO friendly.
SEO Plugins
SEO plugins are one of WordPress’s most powerful features for optimising a site. Hundreds of free and premium plugins are available to further optimise SEO on posts and pages. For instance, the popular WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin gives you an SEO section to fill out with a keyword, SEO title and meta description. It also shows you if you’ve used the keyword in all the right places. Think of these plugins as a guided SEO tool to ensure your posts are as optimised as possible.
Takeaway: Choose an SEO plugin to use for your website. The built-in SEO features are great, but a focused plugin helps even more. Ask your developer to install or develop an SEO plugin for you.
Add Content Easily
Regular content is an easy way to optimise a site. Many platforms make it difficult to add and format content properly for search engines. For instance, using H2 header tags in your content is better for SEO. The WordPress post editor has that feature built-in without the user having to add in any code. Plus, the ease of using the editor and posting content makes it easier for users to add content regularly and keep their site fresh in the eyes of search engines.
Takeaway: WordPress is a popular CMS because it’s so easy to manage content. Add content on a regular schedule to further improve your ranking.
Conclusion
WordPress is an SEO rich platform. The right developer can ensure the code is clean and all settings are in place to make the most of these features. Unlike many other platforms, you don’t have to be an SEO expert to optimise every post and page.
Stop making SEO so difficult. Contact StuartMedia today to find out how WordPress will do the hard work for you.
Image: Harsh Agrawal
