We all want more eyeballs on our websites. More eyeballs mean another chance to sell the latest thing we recently added to our online shop, and more sales mean that we can pay the mortgage. Today’s post includes 10 SEO tips for WordPress that you can use to improve your site SEO and ultimately get more traffic back to your website. It’s ultimately what we all want and need.
Watch the video below to see the 10 tips I recommend:
Tip #1 – Make your URLs easy for Google to read.
This is actually pretty easy to do in WordPress.
When you first create a draft of your blog post, go in and change your permalink right away to something short and sweet. Make sure that you’re using your keywords in the permalink with dashes between each of the words.
So instead of writing “seotipswordpress” you would write it out like this: “seo-tips-wordpress”.
This will make it easy for Google to read what your post is all about and help your SEO.
You’ll only want to change the permalinks of posts that you’ve yet to publish so you don’t create any broken links.
Tip # 2 – Use the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress website.
This plugin makes it SUPER easy to focus on your SEO for each post and page on your website. Once you’ve installed the plugin, it will add a special Yoast section below each post and page when you’re in the edit mode. All you have to do is go through the suggestions to improve your post and get the color to change from red to green.
Just by following the steps that Yoast suggests, you’ll take your SEO a LONG way.
Tip #3 – Write lengthier blog posts.
Not only do longer posts help your audience by giving them a TON of value, but Google also is in favor of longer posts.
The Yoast SEO plugin suggests having at least 300 words in your posts. My posts typically consist of 1500 words and even though that seems like it would be really lengthy, it’s really not that long when you look at it in context.
To help your audience members who are prone to scanning posts, use headers and photos to break heavier chunks of text apart to make your posts more readable.
Tip #4 – Be consistent with posting on your blog.
I completely understand how difficult it is to post consistently. I struggle with this from time-to-time myself. With my recent cross-country move, I had to put blogging on the back burner for a couple of months. So, I definitely get it.
BUT the thing is… Google is searching the interwebs to see who is posting awesome content on the regular. If Google crawls your site and sees that you haven’t updated in a while, then it will seem like you’re on a long-term hiatus, or that your blog doesn’t have any new, relevant content.
My best tip here is to pick a schedule and stick to it! Choose what will work best for you and your lifestyle and don’t feel guilty when you fall off the blogging wagon. Just jump right back in with your content and keep going.
Tip #5 – Add info to the alt text of your photos.
The alt text was originally created to help people who are unable to see by reading the content of a photo to them.
The truth is that Google has a hard time reading what is in your photos too. So you just have to tell Google what’s in your photos and why the photos are relevant to your post. The alt text is also what Pinterest pulls into the description of your pins, so this will help your Pinterest marketing quite a bit!
Tip #6 – Add a YouTube video if you can.
This is my new favorite SEO tip. :)
And it’s absolutely recommended by my favorite mentors who are experts on YouTube. They will tell you from first-hand experience that adding a YouTube video to their posts has made all the difference when being found online.
If you’re down with being on video, then try your hand at making a video to go along with each of your blog posts. Just make sure that your keywords and tags match up.
Not so sure how to edit those videos? Check out my Screenflow tutorial here.
Tip #7 – Use internal and external links in your posts.
Internal links point to other relevant content on your own site or blog. This helps to keep your audience on your website longer (this is called dwell time). The longer someone stays on your site, the better your SEO will be in the eyes of Google.
External links are great to point to other really valuable pieces of content online. By linking to valuable content that helps your audience, your audience will trust you more and go to your site more often. And you’ll be rewarded by search engines.
Tip #8 – Make sure your site is mobile friendly.
For WordPress, I use my favorite plugin, Beaver Builder*, to make sure my site is easy to view across all platforms. This tool makes it really easy to do this without all the code. If you’d like to find out a little bit more about Beaver Builder, you can check out my other posts here.
Tip #9 – Take some time and work on the SEO in places where you might not ordinarily think to do it.
For example, your blog categories or your products. Go through each of these and add a description and choose a keyword that will help people to stumble upon this content when they’re searching online.
Tip #10 – Make sure your site loads as fast as possible.
This means making sure to load images that have been optimized for the web. (Try to keep your image files small, like 300 or 500 kb).
And also check into deleting plugins that you’re not using and that aren’t necessary, and deleting old themes or pages that are no longer relevant. These things just take up space and slow your site down. If worst comes to worst, the best thing you can usually do is move your hosting to a company that will support your needs. I recommend Flywheel, at getflywheel.com*.
With these 10 SEO tips, you can get more traffic to your website and more eyes on your content and ultimately your products/services. It can be a lot of work to make sure that you’re hitting each of these marks every single time but it will be so worth it in the long end. Is there anything here that you haven’t tried but you’d like to try moving forward? Write what you’re going to try in the comment section below!
*Some links in this post are affiliate links meaning that I get a small kickback from you signing up using this link. This won’t cost you anything more but helps me to create more free content for you just like this post. I always recommend the products, services, and software that I absolutely adore and have used myself.
Awesome tips, Amanda! I always learn something new from you:) I do a few of these things already, but I need to start adding you tube videos and making sure I have alt tags and optimizing my permalinks. Thank you!!