When you make the most of WordPress, you can use its features and functions to guide a search engine to properly crawl your site via posts, categories, and pages. If you’re considering a WordPress website redesign or installation, we offer the following information. You probably know that WordPress is a fantastic platform for both blogs and websites-however, to reap the most WordPress benefits, there is much to take into account that may potentially jeopardize your search engine rankings. Let Boomtown walk you through maximizing your ranking potential with WordPress in terms of installation and WordPress’ SEO compatibility features.
Once you start using various WordPress themes and customizations, you risk losing some of the search engine friendly features. Here are a few suggestions to maintaining WordPress’s SEO-friendly nature:
Step #1: Carefully configure all WordPress SEO Plugins. In most cases, you’ll probably be using the “All in one SEO pack” to optimize your content and web pages. Ensure you go through plugin settings and check that everything is set up correctly. This step may come off as simple, but improper installation can result in pages not being indexed because settings were mis-configured. Clean your code and keep it clean. Make sure it’s validated-any errors may prevent search engine spiders from crawling your content correctly.
Step #2: Take the time to write unique descriptions. If you’ve installed SEO plugins for WordPress, don’t go with the automatic text snippets WordPress chooses for descriptions. Although this may seem potentially timesaving, it’s better to go in manually and provide each page a unique and specialized tag and description, even URL. This’ll increase relevancy, click through rate, and be beneficial to your SEO efforts. It’s worth taking the extra time to do so.
Step #3: Take care that none of your plugins are responsible for a lot of unnecessary JavaScript or CSS on any of your posts or pages. This is important because of Google’s latest update, Caffeine. Caffeine factors loading time into its ranking algorithm and slow loading WordPress pages that are full of improperly coded plugins cause problems.
Step #4: Check for duplicate content and use “no-index” and “no-follow” tags for outdated pages. If your WordPress website has hundreds of pages and archived, and all are being tagged and categorized, you’ll want to check to see if content has been made available on a single URL only. Google will penalize for duplicate content and that can cost you rankings. You’ll also want to crack down on security to avoid any possible hacks, which can be damaging to rankings-a worst-case scenario for SEO efforts. Use a security plugin such as WP Security Scan or consult an SEO company to recover lost rankings.
WordPress comes ready and willing to embrace search engines, and a little know how can take your website to the next level-and ensure it’s ranking competitively in the SERPS. Contact Boomtown to learn more about optimizing your WordPress website, redesigning your current website, designing a new WordPress website, or any other SEO queries.