WordPress is one of the most powerful content management systems (CMS) having a market share of 62.4% among websites that use a CMS. Several WordPress websites compete with each other to get high rankings on Google and other search engines.
Being a WordPress website owner, it is difficult to acquire natural organic traffic to your site due to high competition. So, here are some WordPress SEO hacks to help you win this race.
Let’s begin.
Hack #1 – Install WebP Converter Plugin to Optimize Images
Site speed is crucial to improve UX and Google promotes sites that offer a good user experience. Moreover, Google has said that it will launch the Page Experience Update in 2021 that will impact sites that don’t offer an impressive UX. One of the best ways to improve page experience is by optimizing all the images on your site.
WebP Converter Plugin is used to convert your standard format images to WebP images. WebP images help in reducing the load on the website, thereby boosting up the overall speed.
Here are the top features of WebP Converter Plugin:
- It is easy and quick to use.
- When you install this plugin, you can convert all your previous standard size images to less-weighted WebP images in a single click.
- All the image files uploaded after installing and activating this plugin will be directly converted into WebP format, thereby saving your time.
- WebP plugin does not change the original image URLs, eliminating the problem of saving the HTML code to the cache.
- The name of the images does not change and include WebP extension. It avoids losing track of more than one URL to a file.
Hack #2 – Select The Fastest WordPress Theme
The theme of your site is another crucial element that impacts site speed. Use the Google Page Speed Insights tool to check the current speed of your site.
The tool will also let you check if your site has Core Web Vitals issues. If your site has issues like LCP, FCP, CLS, that are related to the Core Web Vitals, then you should definitely consider changing the theme of the website.
Neve and Astra are two of the fastest WordPress themes, but you must select a theme depending on your exact business needs.
Hack #3 – Add Voice Search Ability To Your Pages
We are living in the age of voice search. If you use a voice search plugin to help users to search using their voices, then it can have a positive impact on the UX.
You can consider using the Universal Voice Search plugin for this task. The plugin supports around 130 languages and helps users hailing from different linguistic backgrounds search using their voice.
Nowadays, the usage of smartphones’ has increased exponentially. And it has taken over laptops and computers; a long back. Universal Voice Search allows mobile users to voice search by using a microphone button.
The plugin offers support for all the popular web browsers like macOS, iOS, Windows, Safari, Firefox, MS Edge, and Linux. Undoubtedly services like these don’t come for free. Adding this plugin to include “speech to text” will require taking a valid licensed key if you wish to run it on all the aforementioned platforms. The free version supports only the Chrome browser.
Hack #4 – Choose An SEO Friendly Permalink Structure
Page URL is an important ranking factor. You should have an SEO friendly URL structure having your target keywords in it.
WordPress offers permalinks by default, but those aren’t the ones you should rely upon. WordPress’s default system for giving permalinks does not put any effort or intuitive thinking and includes page name or post heading, and date in the page URL.
If you do not have an SEO friendly URL structure or have dates in your URL, then consider changing your permalinks. However, this process needs to be done cautiously because 301 redirects are needed from the old URL to the new URL.
The ideal permalink structure should be /%postname%/. Here is how you can change the permalink structure of your site:
Step 1 – Login to your WordPress website.
Step 2 – Go to the settings section, present on the left-hand side.
Step 3 – Go to Permalinks.
Step 4 – Select the post name.
Step 5 – Save the changes you made.
Step 6 – You can use Yoast Permalink Helper to generate the unique and correct redirect code.
Step 7 – Copy the code generated and past in the backend (.htaccess) of your WordPress website.
Hack #5 – Create Pillar Content
Content plays a primary role to strengthen the important pages on your site and help them rank higher on the SERPs. It is well understood that you won’t reap the full benefits from SEO without having quality content on your website.
Here are the top benefits of creating pillar content.
- Quality content helps in generating higher click-through rates (CTR). Google perceives CTR as an essential parameter to measure engagement and promotes sites with better CTRs.
- Relevant and user-intent focused content can help you acquire links naturally. Domain having quality natural links rank higher in Google.
- Any piece of content becomes SEO friendly only if it incorporates your primary, secondary, and LSI keywords naturally in it. Pillar content helps you do that and strengthens the main money page of your WordPress website.
- Pillar content also enhances user engagement and improves the probability of conversions.
- It will help to lower bounce rates and increase the overall session duration. When you improve the engagement metrics of your site, it automatically helps you to improve your SEO score.
Hack #6 – Delete Tons of Spam Comments In Seconds
It is recommended to avoid spam comments on your website because it negatively impacts UX. All you need to do is to visit page preferences and turn comment moderation on.
You can also seek help from useful anti-spamming WordPress Plugins like Akismet. This plugin effectively identifies spam comments, making it easy for you to delete the cluster in one go. It does not ask for your manual efforts to identify spam comments and delete them individually.
Also, you should check the source codes of your website and ensure all the links posted in your websites’ comments section are “no-follow” by default. This is one of the best ways to restrict individuals from spamming the comment section.
Hack #7 – Add Rich Snippets to Increase Clickthrough Rate
Rich snippets help users and search engines to understand the content better. They also compel searchers to click on your site in the search results. Clicks lead to better CTRs and optimize your website for better UX. You can consider following a few tips to optimize your snippets to improve CTRs.
There are three forms of widely used rich snippets available, JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa. You can select the best fit as per your requirements amongst these three.
Hack #8 – Install The SEO Yoast Plugin
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular and useful SEO plugins for WordPress sites. It helps you to write SEO friendly content. You can easily check whether your pages are SEO friendly and match the user intent for your target keyword. It lets you edit your meta descriptions and social schema markup while automatically generating XML sitemaps.
Yoast SEO plugin allows you to focus on setting up useful permalinks, check the density of your focused keyword in the entire piece of content, including title tags, increase CTRs by helping you prepare compelling meta descriptions, and lets you add ALT text to all your media files.
Hack #9 – Add Relevant Alt Text To All The Images On Your Website
Alt text helps the visitors who are unable to see the images on your site. Alt text is a description of your image, and visually impaired people can read the alt text using screen readers to understand the contents of your images.
Besides, Google also uses alt text to understand what the image is about. Adding alt text to your WordPress website is extremely simple. All you need to do is select any image in your media gallery, click alt text block, fill in the text, and save the changes.
Hack #10 – Apply The Power of Killer Copywriting To Prepare Titles And Descriptions
Title and description tags play a significant role in improving the organic visibility of your site. To create catchy yet relevant titles, it is vital to perform keyword research.
Firstly, use a tool like Ubersuggest and Answer The Public to find the best keywords for your content. Then, use copywriting tactics to build impressive and catchy titles for your blogs that compel viewers to click on it. Make sure to take the help of a copy editor to correct the errors in punctuation and to rephrase the words so that it stays in sync with your brand. Most of us are unaware of the difference between a copywriter and a copyeditor. Remember, bigger brands always have the best content copywriters and editors in their team so that the page titles stand out in the search results.
As a piece of advice, always start your title and descriptions using your target keyword because it raises the page relevancy for that keyword in the eyes of the search engines.
Hack #11 – Make Your Videos HTML Compatible
We should not forget videos because video SEO is the way to go forward. To make your videos HTML compatible, you need to install Video Embed And Thumbnail Generator plugin.
The plugin allows you to embed YouTube videos easily. You only have to select a thumbnail for your video and click on the “insert into post” button. Lastly, it will give you a unique embed code that you need to copy and then paste it to the backend of the page or post, where you wish to add the video.
Conclusion
Boosting your organic site rankings is a time-consuming process. You should have patience and apply constant efforts to get the desired results. You need to keep one thing in mind that your competitors are also optimizing their websites to rank high on SERPs, so you need to follow some tried and tested WordPress hacks to take the lead. Follow the best WordPress hacks mentioned in this article to supercharge your SEO strategy.
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