Everyday Internet users make almost 4 billion searches on Google, which equates to 1,5 trillion searches per year! Moreover, Google represents only 65% of all web searches. And it becomes an important source of traffic. According to a BrightEdge Study, organic search drives 51% of all visitors to different websites.
Ok, even after this statistics, you may sceptically tell that traffic is not an equivalent to the revenue. In order to convince you otherwise, we provide you with an interesting bar chart, where was compared the ratio of traffic to revenue. See? Almost in all industries, organic search revenue share is the biggest.
So, today we will discuss how to SEO your WordPress site.
Basic settings
Reading option
First of all, check if your site is up to search engines. For this:
- go to Settings Tab in the admin panel
- click on Reading
- check Search engine visibility option (it needs to be unchecked)
Optimize URL Structures
Maby, you’ve noticed that sometimes the site URL may look as
http://example.com/archives/198.
It shows, that a permalink is not optimized. Therefore, users cannot understand from the URL, what about this page, because it is not related to the content.
We strongly advise you to use only SEO friendly permalinks:
https://supsystic.com/blog/how-to-create-a-social-network-powered-by-wordpress/
So, go to Settings -> Permalinks, and then check a Post name field.
Advanced settings
Images
People tend to forget about the image influence your site performance and SEO parameters. But it is really important how you handle your media files. By filling all necessary fields in images description you can add extra traffic from the different image search engines.
WooBeWoo Product Table plugin allows adding such attributes:
- caption text
- description
To add them navigate to the Main tab.
Sitemap
A sitemap (see the image below) is like a guide, where all your pages and other content are organized into a hierarchy. Firstly, it was made to help users navigate websites, but now the sitemap is used by search engine bots (crawlers). They quickly scan your site, understand the content, and then, use this information to rank websites.
You can use different plugins for sitemap creation.
Organize your content
There are two main options:
- Use heading tags
- Add keywords
Heading tags not only structure your article and provides visual benefits for users but also help crawlers to understand your content better.
Keywords are very important for SEO. It is expressions or distinct words which people type in search engines to find a defined sort of information. It is very important to use them naturally, and don’t overload your article.
Responsive design
More and more people use mobile phones or other devices for browsing. So, looking good for your websites on different screens is essential for having a high rank in search engines.
When you choose a plugin on WordPress, pay attention if it is responsive. All WooBeWoo plugins have this feature, so, feel free to use them.
Conclusion
This guide shows only the most important options to boost your SEO parameters. But remember, that there are a lot of different pitfalls, so, having a great SEO-specialists in your team will be an advantage.