Who would have thought that WordPress-based sites would become such a hotbed for SEO tricksters? These days, it seems like every new website launched is crawling with sneaky backlink-building duplicates, keyword stuffing, and shady schema markups. But don’t let this put you off using WordPress as a basis for your websites moving forward.
After all, the platform is still an excellent choice for SEO and content marketing; it’s just that you need to know how to do WP SEO in a white hat way.
This article will help you get started with some of the best white hat WordPress SEO techniques that are sure to give your blog a huge boost in visibility while keeping Google happy at the same time.
1. Use a Responsive WordPress Theme
Google is getting cleverer all the time and it’s not just content that’s being analyzed – user experience and site speed are also important factors in deciding how high your posts show up in SERPs. That means that if you’re running an old, clunky WordPress theme that’s not responsive, you’re not only taking a hit on your SEO, but you’re also losing out on an awful lot of traffic that would otherwise have made its way to your site.
There’s a reason why blogging platforms like WordPress are so popular: they are easy to use, cheap, and have a ton of plugins available to extend their functionality. Make sure you’re using a top-quality responsive WordPress theme, preferably one with a minimalistic design that doesn’t include any superfluous content.
2. Write Quality Content and Don’t Forget Your Meta Descriptions
WordPress SEO doesn’t mean keyword stuffing and backlink schemes. It’s about creating compelling blog posts that drive traffic to your site and encouraging your readers to share those posts with their friends and followers. To do that, you need to write content that both your readers and Google will love. That means choosing keywords that are relevant to your target audience and your business while also keeping readers engaged by avoiding over-optimization.
With your meta descriptions, you want to create a short summary of your post that accurately represents what readers will find inside. Finding the right balance of keywords and engagement will take a lot of trial and error, especially when you’re starting out, but with practice, you’ll get there. But to make things a little easier, you can use a tool like Yoast SEO. It’s one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress and it makes choosing your keywords and creating appropriate meta descriptions a breeze.
Most importantly the content must be plagiarism free. Always check your content using a an online plagiarism checker to make sure that your content is unique and not copied from any other source.
3. Create Solid Editorial Calendar Based on Research
If you want to take your blog from average to outstanding, you need to get serious about your publishing schedule. The best WordPress SEO practices will depend on setting up an editorial calendar, organizing your posts into appropriate categories, and using a couple of different tools to boost your productivity.
For example, if you’re writing content for your blog as well as other websites, you can use tools like IFTTT, Zapier, and Automate to connect your WordPress account to Google Sheets and other productivity apps so you can manage all your content in one place. Alternatively, you can use a standalone WordPress editorial calendar like Editorial or the classic WordPress Calendar plugin.
You can hire professionals to manage your content calendar or you can use a tool like HireWriters to find writers who can create your posts for you.
4. Don’t Forget About Videos in Your SEO Strategy
We all love a great blog post, but readers these days are less likely to stay put while they’re reading and more likely to move on to something else unless your content really grabs them. That’s where video comes in. It’s not only a great way to expand your SEO efforts but it’s also an excellent way to keep readers hooked and coming back for more.
That’s why you should be thinking about including videos in your WordPress SEO strategy. If you don’t have the time or skill set to create your own videos, you can always outsource the work to a company like Video Production Companies, which will create original content for you at a reasonable price.
However, you want to make sure that your video titles and descriptions contain the right keywords to help your posts rank higher. You can do this by using a video plugin like Video SEO Booster or VidIQ.
5. A Little Hummingbird Magic
If you’re serious about building an online business and increasing your revenue, you need to focus not only on your short-term goals but also on the future. To do that, you need to focus on long-term WordPress SEO practices.
That means thinking about what Google will want in 5 years’ time and how you can prepare yourself today so that your site is still ranking well when the Hummingbird algorithm is in full swing. One of the best ways to prepare for the future is to create evergreen content. That’s content that doesn’t focus on a specific trend or event but that is relevant for years to come.
To do this, you can use tools like Ubersuggest to find long-tail keywords that you can incorporate into your posts or guest posts. You can also use tools like Long Tail Pro to identify keyword phrases that have a lot of potential for your site.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of ways you can optimize your WordPress SEO efforts without having to resort to shady techniques. To make sure you stay one step ahead of your competitors and that your site continues to rank well in years to come, you need to focus on creating high-quality posts that entice your readers to stay on your site for as long as possible.
You also need to ensure that your content is optimized for search engines so that as many people as possible can find your content and visit your website. With these white hat WordPress SEO techniques, you can do just that and more.
Author Bio
George Adams is an enthusiast writer for Prepostseo. In an effort to make an impact through his writing, he chose to blog during his days as a student, and now he’s published more than 200 guest posts on Digital marketing and E-commerce. In addition to writing informative content he also provides services in technical writing for software products and solutions.
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