While it’s true that WordPress is the best content management system for bloggers and niche website publishers; it’s not as search engine optimized as most people think right off the bat. There are important WordPress SEO strategies to implement and they are as follows:
Duplicate Content (Canonical) – this is an issue with any other content management system, website publishing platforms or even html website so it’s safe to say that duplicate content isn’t a WordPress issue. You might think that all your content are unique and even swear that you’re not plagiarizing someone else’s articles BUT Google sees the www and non-www version of your WordPress site differently hence if your website loads on both the www and non-www versions of your website, you have a problem with duplicate content.
Let alone, search engines will be forced to serve different versions of your website, which to them are all different websites. This tremendously affects your ranking as these different versions confuses Google as to what version to prioritize.
So your job is to choose between the www and the non-www version of your website and let the search engines know that this is your preferred version and you want all the traffic, link juice and ranking to this version of your website.
The solution is something called “canonicalization”, which is the process of choosing a preferred URL through a canonical 301 redirect and by doing so, your website would only load with one version of the URL and other versions will be redirected to your chosen URL.
Here’s how to define canonical URLS in WordPress:
First, you’ll have to tell WordPress how to serve your website which could either be www.yoursite.com or simply, yoursite.com. To do this, go to Settings >General, then change the URLs on the “WordPress Address” and “Site Address” fields. Save changes.
Keyword Research – Though a lot of bloggers and website publishers don’t want the hassles of researching keywords, it’s very important to write about the words your potential readers want to read and clearly, you won’t know what they want if you’re not doing keyword research.
Proper Use of Categories And Tags – Google is against excessive use of categories and tags so don’t overuse them but by all means use your tags and categories; they help search engines determine what your write-ups are about and by saying that, it wouldn’t hurt to use your keywords on tags and categories, just don’t keyword blast your tags and categories.
Speed Up Your WordPress Site – People wants everything fast, nowadays and the average load speed shouldn’t go over 30 seconds. WordPress site speed starts with choosing the right theme or framework. There are a lot of beautiful themes out there but a lot of them are way too slow. Thesis and Genesis are great platforms for speed and SEO
Concentrate on Delivering Value to the Web and Your Visitors – In every article you write, concentrate on delivering value. I realized that business isn’t about selling, it’s about building trust and confidence through great, valuable and useful content. Make it a point to ask yourself if whether or not you’re delivering value with whatever it is you’re sharing to your readers. Not all marketers will agree with this as most are driven by overnight riches online. Here’s what I found, you can’t build a high-trafficked, content-filled website overnight – Rome wasn’t built in a day! In the early days of your site/blog, don’t expect to make money right away, just build content – your site’s foundation, pile content after content and understand the fact that you’re in for the long haul. The more content you have, the more chances of ranking for a lot of keywords. It’s just like boxing or mixed martial arts, the more punches and kicks you throw, the more chances of eliminating your opponent.
Images & Videos – Images and videos are content too! If you think you can speak in front of a camera, then there’s a side benefit to it by driving traffic from YouTube. For images, always use alt tags and optimize them with your keywords, one keyword per image is enough, just to properly describe your image.
Use SEO Plugins – Two popular options are SEO by Yoast and WordPress All in One SEO. I like WordPress SEO better but it’s my preference. You can experiment with each of them and settle with one that address your needs.
