Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential element to any website online. By optimizing your site, you can provide a higher user experience quality and increase your Google search rankings. Contrary to popular belief, employing SEO hacks to increase your standings online is pretty simple.
Why is SEO important? Search engine optimization has become the foundation to outranking competitors while also decreasing your ad budget. This is because when SEO is done right, you can move your web pages up search engine positions, eliminating the need for paid Google AdWords.
This can save a business thousands of dollars a month, depending on the industry and niche keywords one needs to bid on. For example, healthcare topics are generally expensive, but if you are in the top three spots on page one Google, you don’t need to pay for ads to outrank yourself.
This is what makes search engine optimization vital. To help you move up the rankings and increase traffic and conversions, we compiled a few SEO hacks for your WordPress website. Let’s dive right in!
1. Create Long-Form Quality Content
Content is very much still king. The more content you have on page the better chance your page has of ranking higher. In fact, research found that long-form content of 2,000 to 2,500 plus words has a much better chance of ranking high on Google SERPs.
But don’t just write 2,000 plus words without having a plan. Your content needs to be aimed at the topic specific to that web page. This is because you need to fulfill searcher intent, something Google and other search engines use to decide what content and web pages to deliver to users.
2. Feel the Need for Website Speed
Increasing your WordPress website’s ranking in search engines also relates to user experience, a buzzword in common use today. User experience is how users interactwith a website, and one of the biggest aspects of delivering a strong user experience is site speed.
WordPress site speed optimization involves a number of variables, from image compression and video embedding to plugins that are not compatible and slow down a site. To make page speed a priority, you can run a page speed test for desktop and mobile.
Where site speed really matters is on mobile. More and more people are turning to mobile devices to perform searches, and ensuring your WordPress website is mobile optimized and SEO ready is very important to your search rankings.
3. Increase Readability for Increased Crawlability
Another powerful SEO hack you can easily employ is increasing website readability. This is very simple and something you can implement into your web pages and future blog posts today.
To increase readability on your WordPress website, you need to think about the organization of your text on-page. For example, breaking up long paragraphs into smaller ones that have two to three sentences only.
Using header and section tags properly is also an important aspect. Be sure to add at least three header tags, like h2 or h3 tags into your text to ensure it is easy for readers and web crawlers to understand your content and topic sections.
4. Check for 404 Errors and Redirect as Needed
One way to ruin user experience for visitors of your website is to have them click through to a page that no longer exists. When this happens a 404 error will appear, and your potential WordPress site visitors will leave your site for a competitor who has the content they are looking for.
This is not good, and easy to avoid. If your site is small, like under 20 pages, go through each page link and check for 404 errors. If your website is big, you will need to run a site crawl and identify any 404 errors and fix the issues. This is a very important SEO hack to be sure to implement.
5. Utilize the Power of Multimedia Content
Back to user experience, let’s talk about multimedia content. Multimedia content is text, images, gifs, videos, and more. By switching up the type of content you have on-page, the better user experience you will provide, increasing engagement.
Why is this an important SEO hack? When a visitor to your site engages in your content for an extended period of time, your metric for “time on page” goes up. This is a Google ranking factor, telling Google that the content on your WordPress website is engaging and of value for searchers.
Is Your WordPress Website Optimized?
The above SEO hacks are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to optimizing your website to increase your search rankings. They are, however, a few of the most important hacks, and easy to employ starting tomorrow. Increase your rankings and cut the ad budget in half. What is your top SEO hack?
