So you want your WordPress site to be successful. But have you taken all the right precautions to score well on the search engines?
Everything hinges on how you set up your WordPress site. Critical decisions must be made. The success of your site depends on it.
Search engines, especially Google, are choosy in deciding how to rank your site.
To influence the search engines, it’s critical to customize the settings on your WordPress site.
By taking precautions, you can power your WordPress site to more prominence, which will increase your chances for success.
Here are salient examples:
1. Make your attractive to search-engine spiders
You should be focused on making certain that search engines evaluate your site effectively with their spiders.
The spiders crawl your site. They’re designed to assess your site’s coding and content.
So in your site’s dashboard, go to “Settings >Reading.” Watch for the setting, “Search Engine Visibility” and the checkbox identified as “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.”
Very important: Make sure it’s unchecked and is permanently unchecked.
2. Insert relevant content
You must develop and publish compelling content to impress search engines, which influences people to visit your site.
Whether you’re providing products, services or information, your goal must be to develop trust. You must write with authority and provide value for your readers with actionable information.
You must also be consistent and constant in publishing information. In addition to the written word, illustrations or visuals are important. You can insert visuals including videos and infographics.
3. Use the right keywords
To attract visitors, you must strategically use keywords to attract them. But it’s important to use the right keywords.
The search engines, Google and Bing, provide tools to help you decide on which keywords to use. Consider Google’s Keyword Planner and Bing’s Keyword Research tools.
The keywords are best used in the body of your articles, header tags, page titles, meta descriptions and permalinks.
4. Use the ideal permalink structure
Depending on your site, you can choose from a potpourri of formats in permalinks. Some conspicuously show the keywords you select.
Others don’t. Bear in mind other formats fail to inform search engines.
You’ll be more successful if your permalinks have the title of your posts. Here’s how: Select Settings > Permalinks from the WordPress dashboard. Then, set up your site to use /%postname%/.
But don’t insert dates in permalinks or in your articles if at all possible – readers prefer timeless information, not date information.
Caution: If you want to change your permalink configuration in order to use post titles, you might experience broken important backlinks. Use this tool to redirect your links.
5. Take advantage of SEO plugins
You’ll notice, as a WordPress publisher, you can select SEO plugins. This is important because you’ll face tremendous competition for visitors. The plugins give you a leg up on the search engines.
They’ll allow you to establish the operational practicality of backlinks, analyze your content, fine-tune permalinks, and provide controls for navigation.
You might also consider other plugins such as All in One SEO Pack or Yoast SEO.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are relevant sources of information.
Tips for Your Site to Capitalize on SEO Trends — How to stay on top of your search-engine optimization game; plus, a helpful infographic: 16 SEO facts we struggle to understand.
Avoid Issues with Google: SEO Checklist for Safe Backlinks to Your Site — Google has been penalizing Web sites that might be unethical in link building for search-engine optimization. Why? Google wants authenticity and quality in its search results. It’s vital that you backlink with authoritative, credible sites. Some might be obvious to you, others might not. Here’s a safe list.
SEO and Other Strategic Tips for a No.1 Rated Blog — To own your blogging niche, you must understand the evolving process — important basics in search engine optimization (SEO) and other strategies. If you’ve been blogging for awhile, you know success doesn’t keep come automatically. Blogging is arduous work.
SEO — Google’s Tips to Increase Your Site’s Download Speed — How fast does your Web site download? Google announced that it determines site rankings, in part, by download speed.
“To become successful online, you only need to remember the following : Good Heart + Passion + Web Design + SEO + Digital Marketing + Dedication + Positiveness + Patience = Success”
-Dr. Christopher Dayagdag
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