Increase SEO with WordPress

Fully learning SEO involves a lot of learning, I took an eCourse online through Coursera and it was free and awesome, and I learned a lot, but I’ve got you covered on some basics!

There are four essential components in SEO. These can be broken up into further bullet points, which I will do for you here.

1. Social
2. Link Building
3. KeyWord Research
4. Accessibility

I will touch on each of these in hopefully enough detail to get you off to an awesome start with optimizing your website so you can start seeing some traffic!

Improving SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your WordPress website involves a combination of technical optimizations, high-quality content creation, and strategic promotion. And the best thing about WordPress is that you can retroactively tag old posts to optimize them long after you first wrote them.

Here are some steps you can take to increase SEO with WordPress:

• Choose a SEO-friendly theme: Select a well-coded and responsive theme that is optimized for SEO. A clean, fast-loading design can positively impact your website’s search engine rankings.
  
• Optimize Permalinks: Use descriptive and keyword-rich URLs for your posts and pages. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Permalinks and choose a structure that includes the post name or category.
  
• Install an SEO Plugin: Use an SEO plugin like All in One SEO Pack (there are others… Yoast is one). These plugins provide tools to optimize your content, meta tags, and more.
  
• Keyword Research: Identify relevant keywords for your content using tools like Google Keyword Planner, or SEMrush. Use these keywords naturally in your content. You can also ask for keywords from AI, which I had done. There’s no one path to take to the perfect key words.
  
• Quality Content: Create high-quality, valuable, and engaging content that answers users’ queries. So this one is the hardest for me. The natural vibe I get on my blog is that I’m talking to myself…. I feel as though I’ve been talking to myself for years, because when you’re starting, you’re not necessarily engaging with others at all…. get used to the sound of your own voice in your headm and make that voice positive so you can press on. Google rewards websites that offer valuable information…. I haven’t reaped these rewards yet, so do as I say, not as I do? lol
  
• Optimize Images: Compress images to reduce loading times and use descriptive alt tags to help search engines understand the content of the images. For this one, I also tend to not just use photos. Alex is a creator of web-comic content and does custom art through instagram, so we like to use that art here. I also do some freelance Print-on-demand graphic design and find myself loving the look of the smaller size graphic designs, over the larger file size of high-res photos, and I don’t ‘feel’ like I’m sacrificing anything by taking this route.
  
• Internal Linking: Link to other relevant pages within your website. This helps search engines understand your site structure and content hierarchy. I haven’t done this… not well anyways. It’s a work-in-progress, especially since I have so much content to go back through. Many things I wrote six-years ago are barely even familiar anymore… (thanks so my sweet babies for the lack of sleep that trashed both my long and short-term memory…. at least they’re adorable, that’s something).
  
• External Linking: Link to reputable and relevant external websites. Don’t link your site to insane youtube videos…. you can enjoy this stuff on your own time, but your website audience doesn’t need to know all of your views….. Linking to reputable sites adds credibility to your content and improves user experience.
  
• Mobile-Friendly Design: Ensure your website is mobile-responsive, as mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor for search engines. This is as easy as hopping on your iPad and iPhone and making sure things are visible, scrollable and not annoying.
  
• Page Speed Optimization: Use caching plugins, optimize images, and enable browser caching to improve page loading speed.
  
• Secure Your Site: Implement an SSL certificate (https) to ensure your website is secure. Secure sites are given a slight ranking boost by search engines. This is so important. At least 50 entities a week try and infiltrate our site, (and I have no idea why…. ) protect your S%&t.
  
• Submit XML Sitemap: Create and submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console. This helps search engines index your content more efficiently.
  
• Schema Markup: Implement schema markup to provide additional context to search engines about your content. This can enhance your search result appearance with rich snippets.
  
• Regular Updates: Keep your WordPress core, themes, and plugins updated to ensure optimal performance and security.
  
• Social Sharing: Encourage social sharing of your content to increase its visibility and potentially gain more backlinks.
  
• Avoid Duplicate Content: Prevent duplicate content issues by using canonical URLs and avoiding duplicate meta descriptions and titles.
  
• Engage with Comments: Respond to comments on your blog posts to increase user engagement and potentially lengthen time spent on your site.
  
• Promote Backlinks: Outreach to relevant websites and request backlinks to your content. High-quality backlinks can significantly improve your SEO.
  

Remember that SEO is a process, and results aren’t immediate. Stay consistent and diligent with producing quality content, and a user-centric interface are key factors to successful SEO.