Choosing a site management engine, SEO specialists most often give preference to the WordPress CMS because it is the most convenient, popular, and comes with a big pack of plugins and extra tools. In this post, we will take look at how to promote a website on this CMS in the most effective way. Since every engine requires a special approach, WordPress is not an exception. With a set of pre-built tools and assets, you will market your business more successfully. So let’s reveal what it has for you.
Step 1 – Template Optimization
The WordPress engine is absolutely not optimized by SEO by default. So you need to start your SEO works with this. Any free template has a huge amount of useless stuff, which you need to get rid of as quickly as possible:
- Hidden links — As a rule, they are placed at the very bottom of the site (on the footer part). Each link takes part in the site’s weight, which may make promotion difficult if you don’t get rid of them. Search engines do not like hidden links, which can make the resource be considered poor quality. If you cannot visually recognize the links, you can use special plugins, programs, and online services for this purpose. It is very difficult to get rid of such links since many of them are protected by a special code;
- Duplicate pages/ plagiarized content — The engine constantly creates duplicate pages, which can also adversely affect the site promotion. Search engines do not care what is the reason for the duplication; they just give a lower rank to an online resource. You need to get rid of all these as soon as possible so as not to ruin the site at the initial stage of development;
- Incorrect tag layout for H1, H2, H3 — Headings are of great importance for search engines, so their misuse is unacceptable. Most WordPress templates have H2 tag spam. This can lead to a decrease in its significance and even to sanction.
It is highly recommended that you perform the above steps and run the basic site testing on the test environment. Make sure that you release the project to the prod only after the test is successfully passed.
Step 2 – Installing the Necessary Plugins for Promotion
Due to the high popularity of WordPress, you can find multiple plugins for just anything. For example, there is Yoast vs All in One SEO that is well-loved by webmasters for their extreme flexibility and stable support. Let’s analyze the most important modules that are necessary for your site promotion and stable functioning:
- Yoast — Search engines give preference to links defining the name and location of the page. So instead of decoding impossible-to-read URLs, search engines just follow the link route inside the content tree. And the Yoast plugin makes it possible;
- All in One SEO Pack — The presence of meta tags and metadata on pages is extremely important. With the All in One SEO Pack, you will be able to easily identify what pages lack the data, such as title, description, and keywords;
- Akismet — As soon as the site is indexed, spam will constantly appear on it. Attackers do this with the help of special programs, so the site can be spammed dozens of times a day. Do not want this to happen to you? Then make sure there is a dedicated plugin to block it;
- GoogleXMLSitemaps — The solution allows you to create and instantly update a site map, which is so necessary to speed up indexing and proper ranking your online resource.
Of course, some plugins can be replaced by manually editing the PHP code. But such an approach will require a lot of time and effort on your end.
Step 3 – Promotion to the Top
The process of WP site promotion to the top is not very different from the site promotion on any other engine. You must perform the same actions: ensure SEO-optimization of the text, purchase of links, backlinking, improvement of behavioral factors, etc. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Post only quality, error-free, and 100% original content;
- Ensure proper content formatting with paragraphs, lists, images, etc;
- Make your site mobile-friendly;
- Take care of site load speed;
- Optimize all media assets to the web;
- Plan interlinking strategy;
- Make sure that trusted sites add a link to your online resource regularly.
If you properly perform all the actions, your site traffic can grow by 10 or even 100 times.
Step 4 – Posting Content
When posting an article on the site, you must follow the basic recommendations:
- It is advisable not to copy content from the article and Word to the WordPress editor since the engine creates extra code in this case. It is necessary to get rid of all unnecessary tags.
- The main image of the article should not contain a link to the page. On many blogs, clicking on the thumbnail can open the article completely. It is not worth doing that since the weight of the page will be immediately divided into 3.
- When adding the main picture to the article, it is necessary to use the “Thumbnail” function. Adding an image without this function will not allow you to track all the main pictures.
Any Actions to Be Taken Now?
Before you start promoting your WordPress site, you need to work hard on its “pre-optimization” and the proper set up of the CMS system. Search engines are very demanding, and any hidden link, plagiarized content, a poor page structure can negatively affect the promotion of the site.
