This article is about WordPress Blog SEO Optimization Techniques. The techniques I have used are equally important for all websites but I am writing this article for a WordPress blog. Therefore I have explained it from a WordPress point of view.
Table of contents
Introduction
If you are thinking I will explain a shortcut to becoming an SEO expert in the next 24 hours or I am sharing a shortcut idea of how to be on the first page of Google search, then you are in the wrong place. Any such ideas don’t exist at all. If you are not willing to produce awesome content, then you should forget about SEO. There are certain techniques of how to get a good ranking in search engine results but the most important thing is to retain that position.
The ideas I am sharing will surely improve your ranking but these techniques will really help if your content is liked by the readers. Yes, the user experience acts as the soul of SEO. How much will your SEO techniques live a healthy life depending solely on user experience and nothing else? Before publishing a blog post on any topic, think several times about how much value it gives to the reader. Moreover, how it can be made more and more interesting. But this does not mean that you should only take user experience into account and pay no attention to Search Engine Optimization. SEO does exist but its health depends on user experience.
A proper domain name for Blog gives good SEO results
This is very important that your domain should reflect your niche. Any domain with SEO in its domain name will have more power to win an SEO article than those which don’t have it. But you don’t need to worry about this. As I told you, user experience is most important. You can also have SEO in your domain name by directing all SEO articles to the SEO category or tag and making breadcrumbs on it, more about breadcrumbs later in this article. If you have not started your blog now, then you should take a domain that reflects your niche.
Website speed as a factor of SEO
The speed of the website is directly proportional to a good user experience. Fast-loading pages offer a good user experience and users are more likely to view other posts on your blog also. This will reduce your bounce rate which is a good metric for SEO measurements. Google has clearly stated that if two pages equate in other metrics, it will give importance to the one that loads faster. So, you should also take the speed metric into account for good SEO results. For achieving speed metrics, you should optimize your site for good speed and consider hosting it with good hosting service providers.
Suggested Reading: How to improve the speed of your website?
Keyword Research
This is the very first step of every good SEO strategy. This is a research of what is the intent of your users. What your users need and want. No SEO will be effective without keyword research. In keyword research, we find out what people fed into a search engine when they search for something. For example, I am writing on WordPress SEO. When I typed SEO in Google keyword planner, it gave me a result of up to one million searches performed on Google for SEO.
Then I typed WordPress SEO, and it gave me different results. WordPress SEO, SEO Optimization, and Blog SEO were prominent. Therefore I choose “WordPress Blog SEO Optimization” as the title of my post.
Now it has covered all the important keywords and I will be focusing on them throughout the article. The keywords I am focusing on should be present in the title (most important), permalink, and headings and should be spread over all my posts. Now that I have used this group of keywords in one article, I will avoid using the same set in other articles. This will help me get rid of duplicate content. Also if the same keyword is used in multiple blog posts then all those articles will be competing with one another and Google will also be confused about which article should be ranked.
Importance of Images for Blog SEO
Images are also important from an SEO point of view. It has two advantages. They give a good visual feeling to users and they can also give you organic traffic if they are also optimized for SEO. If all images are given proper alt, title, and caption attributes then they will also appear in search results if someone searches for images. Google is a general search engine that many people use for images search. It is therefore important to optimize your images also. This is very easy if you use WordPress CMS. You can provide an alt, title, and caption for each image while uploading it. If you have uploaded images without these attributes, I will strongly recommend revising all those images and setting their attributes. If your WordPress site is very large and you have uploaded a lot of images. There are many Plugins that will help you provide attributes for all of your uploaded images with just one click.
Structure of Site
The structure of a site is also important for good Blog SEO. If your blog structure is not good, both users and Google will not like it. If you have proper categories and tags for your site then users will easily navigate through your site. It is, therefore, important to pay due attention to improving the site structure. I will recommend making as minimum categories as possible and making articles related to one another through tags. Having 7 categories is ideal and you should not have more than 22 categories on your site. Categories and tags should be researched prior to starting a blog. For example, I have determined tags and categories for this site which reminds me of what I should write about.
Minimize Bounce Rate for Good SEO Results
The bounce rate is the percentage of users who read only one page on your blog. This value is very important for SEO. It should be between 25 and 40 and a bounce rate above 45 should be taken seriously. This can be achieved by providing user-friendly navigation and keeping your important articles in the most clickable and prominent places. Also, related articles should be offered to users after each post. Click here to know how to place related articles without Plugin and here to know about the ” Best related post Plugins”.
Increase CTR for good SEO Results
Click-through Rate (CTR) is the ratio of users who clicked on a particulate post or page to the total number of users who saw it in search results. If you have gotten a good position in search engine results and getting a low number of people arriving on your site, then the reasons are multiple. Some of the reasons may be,
1. Your site did not load
2. The title of the post was not attractive
3. The Meta Description of the post was not attractive
Suggested Reading: How to increase CTR and decrease bounce rate?
Use of Breadcrumbs for SEO Optimization
Breadcrumbs are navigation paths for your users. This is a very good idea for increasing user experience and ranking improvements. Google loves breadcrumbs. You can format breadcrumbs either by categories or tags which one you think will be more appropriate based on which one is used for relating similar contents. I have personally applied breadcrumbs and it gives an awesome result. Google replaces your post permalink with a shorter one which is best suited for mobile users.
Yoast SEO for WordPress Blogs
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization for WordPress, Yoast SEO comes first in mind. Yes, Yoast is the best SEO WordPress Plugin with tons of options even in its free install. The free version helps you optimize your blog post for a single focus keyword while the premium version allows you five keyword phrases and synonyms.
After installing and activating, a quick setup wizard helps you set up the Plugin. You can also add breadcrumbs under SEO> Search appearance. Just enable it and select the taxonomy based on which you want to format breadcrumbs. See the following figure for details
