Website Promotion on WordPress

Today, one of the most popular engines is WordPress. Initially, it was focused on information portals and blogs. But the practice of using this system has shown that WordPress is also well suited for commercial projects. Statistics show that almost a third of all Internet resources are created on this CMS. But one platform is not enough for a site to rank well in search engines and increase its traffic. This article will discuss what needs to be done for proper optimization of sites on WordPress.

Features of SEO promotion of a website on CMS WordPress

Among the basic features of WordPress, experts name free access, open source code, and the presence of a huge number of plugins, which, if configured, can radically change the site itself.

But to achieve good results in WordPress SEO, it is worth thinking about this at the stage of project development. It is necessary to pay attention to the choice:

• domain name . It is desirable that this be a word that reflects the topic of the niche in which the company operates;

• hosting provider . If the platform has a lot of advertising or the server is located in another country, this can reduce the site loading speed and have a negative impact on promotion.

Perhaps the most important feature of this CMS is that you can choose an SEO-friendly theme for design. And then in the long term, there will be practically no problems with adaptive layout, loading speed, image compression, and others. And it will be easy for a promotion specialist to do promotion.

How to optimize a WordPress website?

In addition to the basic functions that the CMS provides for optimization, you can develop a WordPress SEO strategy and achieve traffic attraction to the site, improving ranking with the help of additional tools.

Installing WordPress Plugins for SEO

If you decide to thoroughly engage in website promotion, you cannot do without special tools. One of the most convenient is Yoast SEO. With its help, you can make the necessary changes to meta tags, create an XML map, find and correct errors from the admin panel.

Another popular plugin is All in One SEO Pack. It integrates well with Google Analytics, you can set up automatic optimization of headers, notify search engines about changes on the site. There are additional useful functions for promoting online stores.

We can also remember about:

• The SEO Framework;
• Redirection;
• AMP on WordPress;
• MetaSlider and others.

With these extensions, optimizing your WordPress site is a very real task.

Research and Keyword Selection

SEO for a WordPress site is impossible without high-quality keyword research. With the help of various tools, you can perform their research and select new ones. The main works that this CMS allows you to perform:

• search for those words and phrases that can generate a large volume of traffic;
• researching competitive resources to determine what keywords they use in promotion;
• identifying keywords with the least competition and compiling a list for promoting your portal.

After this, further search engine optimization of WordPress sites becomes available.

Optimizing Meta Description

As you know, the meta description is scanned by search bots and significantly affects the positions in search results. To optimize this element, you can use installed plugins for WordPress. The functionality of Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack allows you to set up a global template for meta descriptions or add them to each page separately. In the first case, you need to act carefully and use it only for similar blocks, and then with the use of variables in the template. This will help to avoid duplicating meta descriptions and blocking by search engines. In the second case, you can edit the meta description so that it is optimized.

Website content optimization

WordPress SEO functionality allows you to place materials so that they are read by search algorithms as quickly as possible. To do this, we recommend:

• if the text is written in the Word editor, before placing it on the page, clear the original formatting and set the necessary parameters directly in WordPress;
• carefully fill in the meta tags – title, description, keywords;
• divide the text into small paragraphs, add headings h1, h2, h3, images;
• track how keywords are used.

And most importantly, if the content is interesting and useful, then promoting a WordPress site will be easy.

Adding a site to Google Search Console

As you know, this tool helps to increase visibility in search engines and improve website promotion on WordPress. Google Search Console helps to determine the position in the search engine, see possible errors. The reports will show:

• what is the traffic from search engine;
• what resources have links to your WordPress site;
• are there any problems with indexing. In parallel, you can send a request for re-indexing of the updated parts.

You can also set up notifications about spam and other technical problems.

Adding your site to Google Search Console is easy, the main thing is to verify your rights to its ownership. The easiest way to do this is with an HTML tag or via an HTML file.

Google Analytics Integration

This is another tool that can be connected if you plan to SEO-promote your WordPress site. It will allow you to:

• track user reactions to new content;
• analyze conversion rates;
• connect other tools – Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, etc.;
• find out which promotion channels are more effective and which are not;
• analyze the use of keywords.

You can connect Google Analytics by going to its home page, registering, and getting a tracking code that looks something like this.

It should be added to WordPress directly in the header.php file. This can be done even more easily using the Analytics Code Integration plugin.

You will start receiving statistics within 12-24 hours.

Adding a Sitemap to Google

Good indexing by search engines is impossible without creating a site address map and adding it to the system. The easiest way to do this is with Google XML Sitemaps.

To do this, add the following functions:

• enable automatic search engine notification about new content;
• add a link to sitemap.xml to the robots.txt file;
• set up automatic compression.

Promotion of the WordPress site will require a specialist to configure which types of pages should be displayed in the map. Thus, you can choose those that are planned to be promoted in the future. At the same time, it is necessary to close archives, comments, service sections from indexing.

Website optimization for mobile devices

It is no secret that the number of users using smartphones, tablets and other gadgets is growing every day. In addition, mobile versions are indexed in Google in priority order. To optimize a WordPress site, you can check the content using the Mobile Friendly algorithm, which is accessible through Google Search Console.

And don’t forget that some WordPress themes or plugins don’t adapt well to mobile devices, so you’ll need to test them before updating.

Speed ​​up website loading

Another reason for the decrease in traffic is the low loading speed. Users do not want to wait until the page opens completely, and it will be ranked worse in search engines. Therefore, website promotion on WordPress requires mandatory measurement of loading speed and, if low indicators are obtained, work to increase the speed.

Experts recommend doing the following to speed up the work:

• when making any changes, monitor the download speed, and if it drops, correct the errors that led to this;

• at the project development stage, choose fast hosting. On virtual hosting, you can subsequently speed up the WordPress site by caching, compressing images, and disabling unnecessary plugins. If VPS or a dedicated server is initially selected, the administrator will have access to more functions and will be able to use server caching technology;

• specify the location of the server, its capacity and software parameters. The speed of work will depend on these details;

• use adaptive themes and compressed images. Options with a large set of functions can significantly slow down the work, so for subsequent optimization of the site it is recommended to use simple themes and add the necessary functions using plugins.

It is also important not to overdo it with plugins, since most of them create additional load on the server and, accordingly, reduce performance. If you notice something like this, it is advisable to disable each service one by one and measure the speed. This way you can find the one that slows down the work. Then you decide whether it is needed.

Use CDN

This method of speeding up a website is popular all over the world. If you connect a resource to a network of servers, part of the content will be cached on each of them. This makes it possible to provide access to the content through the server closest to the user.

Connection to the CDN system is provided by many providers. The largest of them are Cloudflare, Google Cloud CDN, Amazon CloudFront.

Enable caching

As we have already said, website promotion on WordPress requires increasing the loading speed. For this platform, it is important to try to reduce the load on the server. This can be done by enabling browser or server caching.

In the first case, a copy of the page and individual images are saved in the visitor’s browser and loaded from the cache upon return. In the second option, individual elements remain on the server, which also speeds up reloading.

To enable caching on a WordPress site, it is most convenient to install the appropriate plugin. Among the most popular are WP Super Cache, LiteSpeed ​​Cache, WP Fastest Cache, Hummingbird and others.

Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

The WordPress library of useful utilities contains a variety of modules and plugins that will help optimize the site. Most often, All in One SEO and Yoast SEO are used for this purpose. They are selected based on the CMS version used, loading speed, overall structure, number of indexed pages, and content features.

Yoast SEO

This is one of the most advanced plugins. With its help, SEO promotion of WordPress site will reach a new level. It has the following main functions:

• XML map generation;
• Setting up a robots.txt file;
• breadcrumb control;
• additional analysis of content, keywords from the perspective of SEO promotion;
• visualization of the appearance of snippets in search engines and social networks.

The paid version allows you to use preview, redirect manager and other useful features.

A little about setting up Yoast SEO

Before you start installing the WordPress SEO plugin, make sure that other SEO utilities are inactive. If everything is OK, you can go to the administrative section. There, the service will offer to go through a standard setup consisting of ten points. We agree and begin.

The first step is to decide whether you want to subscribe to the newsletter from the plugin creators.

The second step is to select the project status. This step consists of three sub-items:

• if the site is already fully functional, then you need to check the box next to Production;
• If this is a copy of an existing project, then you must check the Staging box;
• If the project is intended for local use, it is marked as Development.

The third and fourth steps are choosing the type of site and specifying some personal information. All this is necessary so that the plugin knows in which parts the optimization is carried out.

Once you’ve finished with the information, it’s important to notify the plugin about the social media profiles you have. Step fifthis ​​setting up indexing parameters. Here you can leave everything as the utility suggests. Step sixth is to specify how many authors are in the project. Step seventh will allow you to synchronize the site with existing accounts in Google Search Console.

After this, detailed adjustment of the plugin begins. First of all, we deal with the title and description, this is one of the most important parts of each page. We also go to the special Features section, and from there to Advanced settings. There we allow setting titles and meta tags for each page separately. And, of course, we decide which parts are best to close indexing.

Another useful function is generating a site map. Sections are included automatically, you just need to mark the necessary ones. To configure, go to the “XML map” section. This way, we indicate the optimal path by site categories.

All in One SEO Pack

This plugin is the second most used plugin in the world for WordPress SEO. Among its features are the following:

• Using AMP mobile page speed enhancement technology;
• integration with Google Analytics;
• implementation of Schema.org markup and redirect setup.

One of the most important advantages of this plugin is that it automatically sends notifications to the search engine about changes on pages.

A little bit about setting up All in One SEO

To effectively use the capabilities of this professional WordPress SEO tool, you need to eliminate duplicates. To do this, check the following two items: “Canonical URLs” and “Disable pagination for canonical URLs”. If you do not do this, duplicate pages will start appearing in the search results, which will lead to traffic dissipation and a decrease in the search engine rating.

Having finished with the duplicates, we note the following points:

• “Disable use of default headers”;
• “Enable use of Schema.org markup.”

Now let’s move on to the main page. The first thing you need to do here is set the title and description. These two points are very important for the future of the entire WordPress site and for ranking in search engines. Firstly, the title and meta tags determine the topic of the project. Secondly, the description helps a potential client decide whether he has come to the right place.

Meta tags on WordPress need to be carefully worked out, you need to pay attention to the topic, and most importantly – fit into 60 characters. You also need to come up with a short description that does not exceed 150 characters.

Having finished with this, we begin working with the headings. First, you need to enable the rewrite function, which will allow you to set a separate name for each page of the site. Then you should mark the capitalization of tags, so that all headings begin with capital letters. It is better to leave their format standard, otherwise the name of the site will be added to the article title, due to which the overall title may exceed the limit of 60 characters.

Also in the settings of this plugin you can specify interaction with social networks, set instructions for search robots and limit indexing to certain pages.

SEO Framework

This is one of the modern plugins for WordPress, which is actively used in the segment of the World Wide Web. It is possible to set up optimization of individual pages, improve the appearance of the site in social networks and search engines. Framework integrates well and will allow you to disable indexing of unfilled categories.

P2Location Redirection

The plugin is best suited for setting up redirects. It supports both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols. This tool has proven to be the best at directing the user to the correct language version based on their location.

Google XML Sitemaps

This tool works well on WordPress and allows you to easily create an XML sitemap that includes pages with not only text content, but also videos and images.

The created map is linked via Google Search Console.

YARPP

As you know, the bounce rate and the time the user spends on the portal pages are important for search algorithms. To set up cross-links, you need to find similar ones. This plugin will do a great job of it.

Rank Math

A worthy alternative to Yoast SEO is Rank Math. It allows you to easily add meta tags — titles, descriptions, and keywords. This tool has features for previewing pages, creating a sitemap, setting up redirects, and connecting to Google Search Console.

Conclusion

Finally, we would like to emphasize that website promotion on WordPress is a rather serious task that requires knowledge of many details, a comprehensive approach, and a clear strategy. The creators of tools for the correct functioning of the platform offer a variety of services, but their competent combination and consistent use is best left to professionals. Partnering with the best digital marketing agency and top web design companies can ensure that your WordPress site is promoted effectively, leveraging expert strategies and superior design to achieve optimal results.