WordPress makes it easy to have a website. It doesn’t require complex coding so it’s affordable for small and new businesses. You can customize it to fit your brand. And it’s versatile without the hassle, thanks in large part to the many plugins. With a bit of work and some strategic tweaking, your WordPress website can also be optimized for search engines.
MGR Consulting Group provides a team of true WordPress Expert Developers. The difference between an average (and free) WordPress website or blog and a custom developed WordPress website could be several thousand dollars in lost revenue per month. Don’t be fooled by other Internet promotions offering you a free website for just a “low” monthly hosting fee. If like WordPress as much as we do and are ready to create a solid website or blog to help you generate constant leads and revenues for your business, we are willing to work with you.
How about making sure that your WordPress website is also Search Engine friendly? Here are seven essential SEO tips for WordPress sites you can apply today.
- Use plugins that enable faster WordPress site loading.
No one likes slow websites. Not you—and not your users. So why settle for a WordPress site that takes its sweet time loading? Speed has an impact on your search engine ranking. Studies have found that users will abandon pages that take more than 3 seconds to load while some users expect websites to load in under 2 seconds.
Apart from using themes that make loading times better, like Genesis, you may want to install plugins that boost speed. Plugins such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache are worth looking into.
Yet, despite all the available plugins, nothing beats using a host that utilizes servers especially optimized for WordPress like our Team at MGR does.
- Identify plugins that could be slowing your WordPress site down.
Also related to page speed, some social-sharing plugins might be slowing down your WordPress site. Smashing Magazine suggests embedding social buttons instead into your theme’s source code.
- Never just rely on plugins that enable SEO.
SEO plugins are helpful in making your WordPress site more SEO-friendly. But once installed, it doesn’t automatically optimize your site. It simply sets up the site with SEO tools so you can optimize it. In other words, just because you install an “SEO Plugin” that doesn’t mean that your website will be optimized for Search Engines unless you join an ongoing SEO Program or agency to do that for you. Remember, SEO is always work in progress, not a “set it and forget it” exercise.
- Change your permalink structure.
The default permalink structure on WordPress is not optimized. You will have to change it so it’s user-friendly, and therefore, search engine-friendly. The default permalink is not exactly ideal for users: http:mywordpressrocks.com/?p=N
- Use strategic titles.
Ideally, you’ll want to have your keywords at the beginning of your page title. Search engines put more weight on early words and your users are more likely to click when the keywords are at the start of the page title.
- Write your own meta descriptions.
It’s a drag to work on your meta descriptions but not when you start getting the kind of traffic that boosts business and your brand. SEO plugins for WordPress automate meta description with the first sentence of the post, which mostly has nothing to do with the topic. So you need to write a meta description that will entice your users to click; and use your target keywords.
- Create engaging and valuable content.
Finally, after all the plugins and the manual work, don’t forget to give your users incredible content. High-quality content can create dramatic results for your search ranking.
If you need help with your WordPress website or making sure that your business is ranked properly on Google and other search engines, feel free to reach out to our Team. We even have a very low priced MGR Website Analysis in place to let you know what your websites weakest points are even BEFORE you sign up for any of our programs.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR).
