SEO plays a huge part in getting your website to rank in search engines and even though it might seem quite daunting and difficult it doesn’t actually have to be so.
In fact, if you use these simple hacks that I will provide then you are able to slowly but surely notice your rankings increase in all the major search engines.
Best of all these techniques only take a short amount of time and in the long run, can provide you with free traffic for years and years to come.
Which in turn could mean loyal fans and potential customers for you and your business.
Install The Right Plugins
Before you even begin creating content for your website take the time to install the right plugins for your WordPress website.
By installing them first you are able to begin benefiting from their abilities to not only speed up your website but also index it within the search engines.
Here is a list of the top plugins that I use for SEO on my WordPress website
Rank Math SEO – Optimizes your posts and pages for the Search Engines
Image optimization service by Optimole – Compresses and optimizes your images
Accelerated Mobile Pages – Creates a basic website for mobile devices
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP) – Tracks the number of people coming to your website
Really Simple SSL – if you have recently purchased a domain with hosting you are most likely eligible for a Secure website. Very much assists with getting a higher ranking in google.
WP Fastest Cache – Compresses and speeds up your website
This is the list of plug-ins I use on every single one of my websites that I build.
Together they work incredibly well and if you use them you will find that they will significantly increase your search engine ranking.
If you require more information about each plugin I will create separate pages for each one of the ones mentioned so keep coming back for that info.
Keyword Research
Researching keywords plays a huge part in identifying what you should be writing about to get the highest potential traffic from the search engines.
After all, there is no point writing articles that people are not looking for as you barely ever will receive any proper visitors.
Luckily this doesn’t mean you don’t have to write about things you’re not interested in.
If you do the keyword research prior to creating your articles, then you can find keyword variations that will provide you with much higher visitors and even allow you to compete with fewer websites on the web.
For keyword research, I use ubersuggest as it is a free and very powerful tool for not only keyword research but also discover related articles that can give you inspiration for your own content.
Headings
Headings are very important in getting people to your website.
After all, the first interaction someone might have with your website is when they first see your article in the search engines. Seeing as there are many other articles in the search engines how will you stand out?
To make sure that your heading stand out try incorporating dates such as the year we are currently in, or a number such as 15 reasons why and a captivating and enticing sentence.
Titles between 50 and 60 words so it does not get cut off by the search engines.
A simple tip you can use to write highly engaging headings is to look at other top performing articles in the search engines and try and copy what they have written.
Also when using Ubersuggest you can see the most engaging articles for the keywords you are researching. You can simply rewrite those as well and get a huge boost in your search engine click-throughs.
Finally, make sure to have your keyword somewhere close to the beginning of the heading so that people can easily identify what you are writing about from the start.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are also some of the first things that you will notice when browsing through the search engines. It is a unique description that breaks down the contents of the page that you will be visiting.
What you should include in this description is a short condensation of the content of your page, a call to action and again write something that entices people to come to your page to read more.
The meta description should be no more than 160 words as if you do use more it will get cut off by the search engines and in doing so not displayed fully.
Make sure to use the keywords you have selected in this section to confirm that your content is right for the visitors.
Table of Contents
When you read a book you tend to have a table of contents at the very beginning of the book which makes it easy to identify the points of interests and also to help break up the story into chapters.
This, in turn, makes it quite easy to read the book as you can navigate directly to where you want to.
That is why you should also consider using a table of contents on your personal website to make it easier for people to find the right content that they are interested in without having the need to scroll and find it themselves.
This gives people a better experience when on your website and because of this increases your rankings in Google as well.
Luckily there are plenty of table of contents plugins available for WordPress which make it super simple to create beautiful and customisable able tables of content.
For example, on my website, I use Elementor to design my website and it comes with a table of contents inbuilt into it. Best of all it’s automated so I can place it at the beginning of my page and it will automatically add any headings to the table of contents.
Content
Contents, in my opinion, is still king. Even if there are billions of websites out there, your content can stand out and be better than others.
How do you do this? Well, you can create content from your point of view. Use your knowledge and experience to write interesting, engaging content that will have your visitors wanting to read more.
Some people will like your content and others won’t. But you are not here to keep everyone happy.
Some people will understand your explanation better than another way of explaining.
Another reason is that you could possibly be providing more content than others on the Internet.
Or even people might just come back to your website for your personality.
The most important thing you can do is consistently put out content that is up-to-date, very helpful and engaging.
Again you’re not catering to everyone, you are catering to a percentage of people that will connect with your information and by providing them with regular updates will continually come back for more.
One thing to keep in mind is to keep using keywords throughout your content, but don’t spam. You don’t want to have the keyword as every third or fourth word and neither does Google or any other search engine.
If you do it that way you will get penalised and lose potential traffic.
Also the more you can write in an article the better it is. The least amount I would recommend these days is 600 words. If you can write upwards of 2000 that is excellent.
People want a one-stop-shop for all the problems, not a constant click through to the next page to find more information.
The best thing is you can combine multiple keywords in one article and expand your articles quite’s well in doing so.
This is perfect for SEO as it means that your article has plenty of relevant information about a specific topic.
Using the rank math SEO plugin you will get an insight of all the information that you should do to get a higher ranking in the search engines.
Turn your content into a Video
You might not be big on creating videos but these days people love watching them.
In fact, Youtube is a search engine and in many instances, you can get all the information you require quickly just by watching a short video.
By turning your article into a video you not only provide people with multiple options to consume your content but also increase your search engine positioning because not only do you have an article but now you also have a video.
If you search in Google there will be a section for the related videos on the front results page which is great because that is a provides another way to reach people with your content.
Luckily for you, there are plenty of amazing plugins, and applications to create simple and effective videos.
If you are afraid of being in front of the camera you can just do narration and screen capture or just use captions. Here is a list of my favourites online apps for creating videos.
Filmora
Inshot
Alt Tags for your images
If you are creating an article made to keep it engaging is to fill it with videos or images.
People can get a lot of information from looking at a picture that would usually require hundreds of words to describe.
Use images quite regularly on your pages to break up the content and make your pages look less daunting to possible visitors.
Another benefits to having images is that people can share them with others providing you with another possibility for gaining new unique visitors from people sharing your content.
For seo purposes you should consider their compressing and optimising your images but also providing alt tags to give an idea to the search engines what kind of content your image should be categorised under.
This is a perfect situation where you can include keywords in your alt tags to help categorise those images in specific keyword searches.
In WordPress it is very simple to add alt tags by simply clicking the image and filling out the description in the alt tag section provided.
Conclusion
There are plenty more ways to optimise your pages but if you use these simple techniques provided you will already be on the way to climbing up in the search engines.
Best of all if you learn them now and incorporate them in your content as you go then they can literally take only moments each time but in the long run, can provide you with hundreds if not thousands of potential new unique visitors to your website.
If you enjoyed this article and found it helpful please share it with others as they might get something out of it as well.
If you have any questions please feel free to write in the comments below I will add set every single comment.
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