There is no shortage of WordPress plugins and themes that promise to increase the search engine visibility of your WordPress site. Certainly, when it comes to improving your search engine visibility there are a number of things that you need to take into consideration and there are plugins that can improve the visibility of your website. We’ve put together a list of our top tips for improving your WordPress SEO in 2019.
- Use Effective Alt Tags
Did you know that Google can’t actually read the contents of an image unless you are describing it? The purpose of ALT tags in SEO is to describe to Google how an image is relevant to the content and what the image displays. Make sure that you are replacing the standard names for your image with names that Google can easily make sense of and optimise the accompanying ALT tag for clarity.
- Use Easy to Understand Permalinks
Make sure that the URL structure of your website is easy for Google and your users to understand. For example, it’s important to avoid prepositions such as “the”, “a”, or “on” for the sake of brevity and clarity. Your URL should adequately describe what users and search engines can expect to find on your page. It’s important that your structure is consistent across all of your pages and posts.
- Utilise Your Sitemap
Most SEO plugins will be able to generate a sitemap in XML format. By doing this, you are making life a lot easier for Google and therefore going to improve your index speed and index rate. It’s important that you are including all of the most important pages and posts in your sitemap and then submitting them in Google Search Console so that google is aware of any changes that you have made. Google (and other search engines) will periodically scan for new pages on your website, however, if you want to speed up the index rate of a page, you can index pages separately in search console.
- Avoid Adobe Flash
There are thousands of WordPress templates that are fast and uncluttered right out of the box. Making your website look unique and perform well is a relatively straight forward task. Unfortunately, there are still a number of templates that use Adobe Flash. While Adobe has its merits from a design point of view, it is not visible to search engines. Importantly, it’s also very difficult for mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads.
- Be Strategic with Your Keyword Selection
Not all keywords are created equally. Just because a keyword has a high search volume doesn’t necessarily mean it is going to drive high-value traffic to your website. It’s important to select keywords that are inline with your conversion goals. For instance, if you are a local business who is looking to attract new customers, target keywords that include your location. Your keyword strategy is arguably the most important aspect of an effective SEO strategy – choose them carefully.
Conclusion
SEO is a process that requires ongoing efforts and tweaks. It’s unlikely that you will get your SEO just right on your first attempt, the most important thing you can do is keep learning and making appropriate changes in-line with the data accrued through Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
