WordPress today, is seen as the go-to by many who are aspiring to build their own website. Besides being easy to use, it has ample plugins for choice, extensive collection of themes and widgets. It is the most sought after content management system (CMS) by users wanting to publish their content online or wishing to start their own blog. However, most of these websites get drowned, landing at the bottom of the huge sea that is named ‘search engine’. Unless your website gets highly ranked on search engines, getting traffic driven to your website would seem like a mountainous task. If your objective is to make your content reach large masses then building a WordPress website that is SEO friendly should be your priority. What more, unlike what many believe, it is a very easy feat to achieve.
Let us take you through this breezy task so that you can build a great website that might potentially rule the web world.
# Domain Name
Domain name need not be keyword “rich”. Keep it simple, but relevant. Over-stuffing domain name will not reap any benefits with search engines getting smarter by the day. Include keywords effectively and skillfully and in a way that wouldn’t make the domain name appear too long.
# Permalinks or URL optimization
The default permalink (permanent link) provided by WordPress isn’t very friendly with the search engines. While building your website make sure you change the structure of the permalink. Also you should preferably keep the length short of the permalink or URL. Keywords play a key role in case of permalinks too. Try and place the keywords in the initial part of the URL. Avoid using numbers in permalinks since they are weighed less by search engines.
# Tags and Meta Description Optimization
Optimizing tags is another SEO method that can help your website rank high on the search engine result page (SERP). Title tags that appear as the bold blue links on SERP give an idea about the content on your website. These are extremely important since users will decide whether to visit your website by seeing if the title is relevant to the subject they have searched. An ideal title tag should include first a primary keyword followed by a secondary keyword and then your brand name.
Meta description gives a summary about your website content page. Having to-the-point description helps search engines know whether your website has the relevant content that a user is searching. This will in turn raise your search engine page rankings.
# Website speed
Search engine rankings are also highly dependent on the loading time of your website pages. This is where the extensively available WordPress plugins come in handy. Using these plugins you can speed up your website optimizing conversions. Some of the recommended WordPress plugins are Cache Enabler, WP Fastest Cache and WP Super Cache.
It might seem that after all WordPress isn’t the best option for building a website and publishing content. But, rest assured that it is the Best since WordPress is the easiest platforms for beginners and can be optimized for search engines effectively.
Monika Dugal - An intuitive, strategic, business savvy senior sales and marketing executive with over 15 years of experience in Enterprise C-Level Sales, New Business Development and Project Management.