The discussion about SEO being dead or alive is pointless. The strategy is well-alive and kicking. As long as you’re using the right methods, you’ll be getting more people on your website.
Do you know who says that SEO is dead? Those marketers who rely on outdated techniques, such as keyword stuffing, word spinning, and style that’s not suitable for the actual reader. Those strategies are dead, but SEO itself is not. It’s just changed. Today, you’re optimizing for the search engine while taking the audience as your priority.
It’s a complex process. We’ve come to a point when we no longer know what works and what doesn’t work. Google is very private about the way its algorithm works, and that complicates things.
If you’re trying to develop an SEO strategy that works, you should focus on proven techniques that yield good results. What do good results mean, anyway? It’s all about boosting the ranking of your pages. We’ll tell you how to do that with a WordPress site.
10 SEO Tips for Rank Boosting
-
Write High-Quality Posts and Don’t Save on Length
In the early days of SEO, 250 and 500 words were the golden standard for length. The rule was: don’t write long posts; the attention span of your audience is not impressive!
That rule is dead!
The attention span of the Internet user is still not impressive. They are distracted by too many things. It’s exactly why they want a detailed post that gives them a straightforward solution. They want to get as much information as possible in a single post. That’s why Google will rank long-form posts higher.
-
Create Something with Viral Potential
Can you create emotional and engaging content that gets the instant attention of your audience? It’s not easy to create viral content, since there are no definite rules on what gets popular in the online world. However, if you focus on delivering unique solutions written in an engaging manner, you’ll boost the virality potential of everything you publish.
Play with the format and include visuals. Try to trigger the emotions of your audience. Make them laugh or cry! If you awaken strong emotions, they will share your content. That’s good for SEO, since more people will search for the exact piece of content. Google will rank it, and the status of your entire website will improve.
-
Include the Authorship Markup
Even if you rely on anonymous writers from assignment help services, you still need real-”author” markup. Google appreciates authorship. If you keep publishing outstanding content under the same name, Google will appreciate the reputation. It will rank all your new pieces higher.
-
Improved User Experience Is Your Main Goal
Content mills used to work back in the days. It’s devastating to know that something like that worked, but it did. That’s no longer the case. Google got smarter and it keeps growing. If you post crap with the intention to build links and increase the number of pages at your site, the black-hat SEO strategies will backfire on you.
Focus on quality, and quality only. You want your visitors to get value out of each piece you publish. That’s how you get comments and shares. Make your website faster and easy to use. That’s important, too!
-
Mind the Broken Links
The search engine will label your site as improperly maintained if it has too many broken links. You can use a simple WordPress plugin, such as Broken Link Checker to find and fix dead links. This tool works for both inbound and outbound links.
-
Keep the Most Important Keywords in the First Third of the Text
When Google indexes a page, it considers the first few paragraphs as the most important ones. I guess we could say that it doesn’t have an impressive attention span.
Keep the beginnings clear and full of information. Include as many keywords as possible without sounding spammy.
-
Share Posts Frequently
You need an effective content schedule. If you leave your WordPress site unmaintained for a week or two, people will stop searching for it. The traffic rates will drop, so your rankings will be negatively affected.
Don’t allow that to happen!
Share at least one post per week and aim for more.
-
Suit Up for Mobile!
Did you know that most Google searches come from mobile devices? If your design is not mobile-responsive, the search engine won’t list it in its suggestions.
-
Write Good Headlines
Don’t try to “create suspension” with clickbait headlines. That’s not suspension; you’re just making your readers nervous by not delivering what you promised. You still want the titles to be attractive, so they will get the search engine user’s attention when listed among several other suggestions.
Top lists and how-to articles still work.
-
Maintain the Comment Section
You want to engage your audience in the comment section. That’s an important aspect of your SEO strategies. However, you don’t want any spammers there. Their comments annoy legit users and they don’t make your site look good.
Find the time to read the comments. Delete the spam and respond to those who asked something or made a good discussion point.
Do Your Work and the Results Will Follow
With the 10 tips above, we just scratched the surface of search engine optimization. It’s a complex endeavour that takes a lot of time and effort. Don’t expect instant results! Do you work on a long-term basis, and your rankings will steadily grow.
Comments are closed.