Does the majority of your website’s traffic come from Google searches? Do you want to get more traffic to your website? If your answer is yes, Search Engine Optimization should be at the top of your priority list. In this article, we’ll go over 5 easy ways to improve your WordPress SEO.
1. Set Your Permalink Structure
With a fresh copy of WordPress installed, permalinks are messy — and not user-friendly. Updating the permalink structure can make them more human-readable. Furthermore, Google favors links that include a title and/or keywords.
The default link structure in WordPress includes the day and the name – and looks like this:
https://example.com/2021/04/06/sample-post/
The best permalink structure is the simplest, and looks like this:
https://example.com/sample-post/
As you can see, the day and name permalink could easily get very long with a longer title.
To change your WordPress Permalink Structure, login to your WordPress Admin and click on Settings → Permalinks.
2. Install A Dedicated SEO Plugin
By Installing a WordPress SEO Plugin, you can boost your SEO ranking with ease. Whether you are brand new to SEO or a seasoned expert — All In One SEO and Yoast SEO are the best choices for SEO plugins. These plugins include everything from generating site maps to visualizing how your Google Search results will look.
3. Install A SSL Certificate On Your Website
Google has officially stated that SSL Certificates play a factor in website ranking. This means that websites that have SSL installed will have a higher ranking advantage over websites that do not. All BlackSun hosting plans come with a free SSL certificate. To use your SSL certificate, you need to force HTTPS. The two main ways to force SSL are:
- Really Simple SSL — this option enables HTTPS with one click.
- Force HTTPS using your .htaccess
To force HTTPS using your .htaccess, open the .htaccess file in the root of your WordPress installation using the cPanel File Manager.
Paste the following lines of code at the end of your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
4. Speed Up Your Website
Website speed is extremely important. Having a slow website negatively impacts your SEO ranks, and not only that – it also impacts how users interact with your website. If you run an e-commerce shop, a slow load time can have a negative impact on your conversions. Thankfully, speeding up your WordPress website does not take too much effort.
The following steps can be taken to speed up your website:
Optimize Your Images
- Compress your images using an online compression tool such as TinyJPG.
- Use an image optimization plugin such as Smush – not only does this optimize and compress images, it makes use of modern practices like lazy loading.
Use A CDN
Using a Content Delivery Network can help speed up your website by storing your website on servers across the globe and serving it to the user based on the closest server to their location. Cloudflare is a great choice for a free CDN provider. If you need a CDN solution with added security — BlackShield offers both security and CDN in one.
Install A Caching Plugin
Caching is a process that generates static HTML versions of your website instead of PHP, therefore allowing your website to load up to 2-5x faster. Moreover, caching decreases resource usage on your website and increases load speeds. Some of the most popular free caching plugins are W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.
Choose A Good Host
Often times a misconfigured server can result in a slower website. This is why choosing a good host is an important step in speeding up your website. Some hosts do not configure their servers specifically to WordPress. If you’re experiencing slow load times on your current host, we recommend taking a look at our WordPress Premium Hosting.
5. Translate Your Website
In 2015, Neil Patel translated his website into 82 different languages and increased his website traffic by 47%… in other words, adding translations to your website can have a huge impact on your SEO ranking and traffic. Some frequently used WordPress plugins that can help to translate your website are GTranslate and WPML.