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SEO Tips

Tips For SEO Optimizing a WordPress Site

Posted by Kathy on
Tips For SEO Optimizing a WordPress Site

You want as many visitors as possible on your site, regardless if you aim to inform and entertain readers, promote your skills, sell products or services. Simply put, the more people come to your site, the easier it will be to build an audience in your target market that you can count on.

But where do you start? There are numerous ways of driving traffic to your website, and SEO or search engine optimization is one of the most effective. SEO is a collection of techniques and strategies that help web pages rank higher in the search engines. What more is that there are numerous ways to improve your website’s SEO, even if you are a novice and we are going to explore a number in this read:

Pick Your Hosting Provider Carefully

The web hosting provider you choose is crucial for search engine optimization. Since search engines put speed into consideration when ranking websites, an ideal host can boost your rankings in the SERPs. The host ideally affects the amount of downtime your website experiences and the distance between visitors and servers, both of which are site ranking factors.

If you have not published your WordPress site yet, you will want to pick one that is reliable and has a reputation for an excellent performance. Even for an existing one, you may want to consider switching if the current hosting provider does not meet these criteria.

Choose a Theme That is Optimized for Search Engines

The theme is one of the most crucial choices you will make for your website. It determines the appearance and layout of your site, give new functionality, and even plays a role in its SEO. Your theme, for example, can affect the website’s speed, which, as mentioned earlier, is important. How a theme was developed ideally matters as clean code provides the best chance in search engine results pages.

As such, you will want to go for a theme that is built with SEO in mind. Such themes are referred to as “SEO-friendly”. Ideally, search for a theme that has features specifically designed to enhance SEO like heading tag options. Luckily, numerous WordPress themes match these requirements.

Optimize For Mobile

When it comes to browsing, mobile is king. Most people browse on their smartphones and tablets more than on desktops, and this will only increase as phone and voice search becomes better.

Search engines know this and tend to reward mobile-friendly websites with better rankings. And this makes sense as Google’s primary goal is to give the best experience to end-users. So, it’s imperative to ensure your site is usable on mobile as well.

The easiest way to achieve this is by picking a mobile-friendly WordPress theme. However, if you do not wish to switch themes, you can use a professional web designer to make it happen.

Build Content Around Keywords

There is a good chance you have come across the concept of keywords. These are terms that describe your topic’s content. For instance, you might pick the keyword ‘marketing tips’ for a post that shares several options for marketing online or offline. By doing this, you are simply predicting that people will type this term into Googe, Bing, etc when looking for such information.

Picking a keyword for every post and using it in various sections is a common means of communicating your topic to crawlers and boosts the chances of showing your content in the relevant searches. However, you will want to be smart when implementing this. Avoid keyword stuffing or forcing the phrases in places where they sound unnatural.

Numerous SEO tools can help you get started, SEMrush being an excellent example. This tool helps you do keyword research, backlink analysis, track your rankings over time, and even analyze your site for search engine optimization issues.

Optimize Images

Images are essential for almost every site. They give context, and visual appeal, as well as help, break up text to make it more readable. As you might have already guessed, they can also boost your SEO efforts when optimized properly. For starters, the size and quality of the images can affect the loading speed of the site. Ideally, crawlers will access particular information attached to the images like alt text and filename when indexing the site.

Addressing these aspects can go a long way in boosting your SEO efforts. Ensure you optimize the images and other media to have the least impact on performance. Next, give every image a descriptive alt text and file name.

Conclusion

This is by no means a comprehensive read on WordPress SEO, but the tips mentioned above are some of the most effective. It is important that you implement them today to ensure you have better exposure and a chance of getting more visitors.

SEO Tips

What You Need To Know About Google BERT Update

Posted by Kathy on
What You Need To Know About Google BERT Update

Google is always surprising the SEO industry and its latest surprise has come in the form of BERT algorithm update. Google has recently announced this update and it is likely to impact 10% of all the searches.

There is nothing too technical about this update as it is a huge step forward in Google’s understanding of the intent of the search query. Google has always been at the forefront of Natural Language Processing and with this update, Google has become even better at understanding the nuances or context of the search query.

This update has received so much interest as Google quantifies it at the biggest leap forward in NLP in the past 5 years.

Google has identified it as an update that is designed to help it better understand search queries. Simply put, this algorithm will make Google better at identifying the context and certain nuances that will help it in ranking the most relevant stuff in its organic search results.

It is likely to have the most impact on the longtail searches as the context is much more important in longtail searches. Keep in mind that longtail searches account for more than 70% of the queries on search engines and with the increased use of voice for search, this percentage is likely to grow further.

In addition to 10% of all the searches, this update is also likely to affect the featured snippets across a variety of languages. Another important thing you need to know about this update is that it is not replacing any other element of the search algorithm and this update will be used in conjunction with existing elements of the search algorithm.

BERT Effect on SEO

When it comes to your SEO strategy because of this latest update, the consensus among experts is that you can’t really optimize for this update. This update is meant to make Google better at understanding the context of the queries which means if you already have content that is designed to answer specific questions asked by a searcher, you are good and are likely to benefit from this update.

It is going to hurt the rankings of content that is designed around a particular keyword or phrase and is not particularly designed to give the right answer to the searcher.

Since this update is meant for a better understanding of the user’s intent, it is most likely to have a huge impact on informational searches. In simple terms, it is likely to impact rankings for queries where the user is asking a question or a specific query. This is due to the reason that in most cases, these questions are ambiguous and not very clear as is the case with navigational searches or transactional searches. This brings Google one step closer to becoming an answer engine instead of remaining a search engine.

If you already have good content around a certain topic, you do not need to worry about this update as you already have everything needed to take advantage of this latest update. However, if you have designed your content around a particular keyword or a bunch of keywords, you need to start updating your content and prepare a content plan.

The first step in your SEO strategy should be to create content around a particular topic and not keywords. In fact, the popular keyword research methods are likely to be obsolete in the near future as Google and other search engines keep getting better at understanding the meaning or context of the content.

When you are creating content, make sure it covers a particular topic and it should also include answers for specific questions that are likely to be asked by your users. Make sure you give a specific answer to a specific question.

While long-form content has long been the favorite of content and search marketers, it is likely to lose its relative importance with this and other future updates. This doesn’t mean you need to give up on long-form content. The only thing you need to do is to slightly tweak your long-form content strategy to include specific answers to specific questions inside the long-form content pieces.

Overall, this update like all the past updates is a step in the direction of Google becoming an answer engine instead of remaining only a search engine. If you want to be prepared for this update and similar future updates, you just need to focus on creating content that serves your users instead of focusing only on search engine algorithms.