SEO Tips for WordPress

If your local business relies heavily on digital traffic, mastering the local SEO strategy is arguably the most critical item on your list. And if, like millions of other businesses, you use WordPress as your CMS system, it’s vital that Search Engine Optimisation is built with this in mind.

Your rankings are largely influenced by the value your users get from visiting your site.

Focus on the following features, and your traffic levels will climb in no time.

The Google algorithm is incredibly smart and designed to present its users with the best content based on their search terms.

Therefore, if your site doesn’t boast the quality content needed to back up the design features, the site cannot rank highly.

Writing SEO designed content is an important way to achieve high SEO rankings. Talk to us today about our copywriting services.

Incoming links are links from other websites to yours. These links are regarded as the most important SEO testimonial. When your content is well written and valuable to readers or provides an excellent service, these links will naturally appear.

It is a good idea to periodically check that all links either incoming or outgoing work correctly. There are many plugins that can check for broken links. It is good idea to install this type of plugin as this will strengthen your Search Engine presence.

Every website should be optimized to load as quickly as possible to help the odds of it ranking well in search engine results. Compressing large image files and generally cleaning up the site by removing unneeded plugins can have a positive effect.

If your site takes more than three seconds to load, you can expect it to be penalised.

Over half of all Google searches are conducted on handheld devices, and Google ranks sites based on responsive design.

Having a responsive site, will influence the way over half of your audience views it, and should be a standard component of any SEO plan.

The Google My Business model is one that helps rank local businesses on their location, customer reviews, and relevance to a local search. While this is an external feature, it should be considered essential for your ongoing WordPress SEO.

Create a page for your business, add as much detail as possible, and ask happy customers to leave a review. The results will start to show in no time.

The URL entered into the address bar doesn’t have a major impact on overall SEO. However, adding the location can be a useful way to boost your presence on local searches. For example, when choosing our Domain Name, using our location “Kimberley” has had a positive effect.

Again, it’s not only the Google reaction that needs to be considered. If it boosts the user experience, the additional effort is easily worthwhile.

Naming your images descriptively, makes “Google” happy.

You should use hyphens to separate your words, to help Google read them. I.e. flowers-in-vase.jpg is much easier to read than flowersinvase.jpg. Image names should be short.

Having at least one image in your post/page will double the shares on Twitter and Facebook.

90% of information transmitted to the brain, is visual.