8 Quick WordPress SEO Tips
Are you trying to increase traffic to your WordPress blog? If so, you should be learning everything you can about SEO. Healthy search engine rankings are vital to attracting visitors to your site. Because we know that your time is valuable, we’ve put together this list of 8 quick WordPress SEO tips. They’ll have your rankings rising in no time!
1. Create Great Content
While your content should absolutely be optimized for search engines, it should clearly be written for readers. There’s no replacement for great content. Even if you rank number one for every keyword you’re aiming for, no one will care if your WordPress blog’s posts aren’t clear, confident, and valuable.
It’s also very important for all of your content to be original and unique. Search engines not only hate plagiarized content, but duplicate content as well.
2. Give Backlinks
Most people focus on getting backlinks in order for their SEO efforts to be successful. However, giving backlinks to other sites via your WordPress blog is also very important.
Search engines love links. You can raise your rankings just by linking to relevant content within each and every post. Additionally, it’s possible to supercharge your rankings by giving yourself backlinks. Every time you publish a new post, be sure to update relevant archived posts to include a link to the new content.
3. Name Your Images Wisely
Many people upload images to WordPress directly from their computers and fail to give them unique and original names. Trust us, a picture named “IMG_456.jpg” has never boosted anyone’s search engine rankings.
Take the time to thoughtfully name your photos, and also to fill out IMG ALT tags. Use keywords and keep your titles and tags descriptive yet concise.
4. Use Keywords In Permalinks
Similarly, take the time to create custom permalinks for all of your posts. Your permalinks should include keywords as well.
The easiest way to do this is to just use your post’s title as its permalink. Luckily, many good SEO plug-ins will help you automate the process of custom permalink creation. Really, there’s no excuse not to implement this tip.
5. Use An Optimized Theme
Not all WordPress templates are created equal when it comes to SEO. Even if you’re using a powerful WordPress SEO plug-in, you should still be using a theme that was designed with your search engine rankings in mind.
Fast themes are particularly important for SEO. Search engines hate webpages that take too long to load. Clunky themes with miles of code will push your rankings down instead of raising them up.
6. Use A Sitemap
One of the easiest ways to win points with search engines is to provide them with an XML sitemap. There are WordPress plug-ins available that specialize in sitemap creation, but most quality SEO WordPress plug-ins will do this for you.
A sitemap acts sort of like the table of contents in a book. It’s a static page that tells a search engine exactly how and when it should index your content.
7. Harness Social Media Power
Promoting your WordPress posts via social media not only drives traffic to your site, it also boosts your search engine rankings. Links are links, even if you create them yourself.
Certainly, a backlink on Twitter won’t give your SEO as much juice as a link from an authoritative site in your niche, but every little bit of link juice counts for something, right?
8. Avoid Black Hat Techniques
Shortcuts are always attractive, but they’re likely to cost you in the long-term. If you try to trick the search engines, they will figure it out sooner or later.
When they do, they will punish you and your WordPress site. How? By tanking your search engine rankings, of course.
