When it comes to search engine optimization, it has never had a clear-cut definition. Based on the changing algorithms of the search engines and the ever-evolving technological possibilities, SEO is changing from time to time. There are many aspects to consider while you are trying to optimize your website for search engines. For example, page speed is one of the most important concepts when it comes to usability and SEO values. Similarly, design, accessibility, and readability of a website are also crucial in determining search engine ranking and conversion rates

It is nobody’s fault if your SEO consultant does not tell it to that the concept of SEO and practices are ever evolving. Making your WordPress site SEO-friendly means that you need to get it optimized for the conversions. There are a few important things to consider in this regard.

The primary aims of an SEO friendly WordPress design

These include:

• Aiming at a particular and targeted audience
• Retaining the visitors long enough to read thoroughly
• Evoking a desire to take action in your favor

The primary thing to keep in mind before starting to design a WordPress site to be SEO friendly is that “content is paramount.” Everything else you do is to essentially make your site more appealing and user-friendly to people and search engines.

To ensure SEO value for the new search engine crawlers, the content on your website should be relevant, informative, and engaging.

Here are some design and development techniques to practice during SEO friendly WordPress designing.

1. Speeding up WordPress

Before planning to do anything on your website, you should make a comprehensive plan. Always ask the question as to “what is the most important aspect you should put at the first point?”

There are many WordPress plugins available to help you out with this task. Once you complete this analysis, you can take steps to make your site optimally fast by adding .htaccess speed hacks and also subscribing for CDN.

WordPress speed is one thing which makes your site more user-friendly, usable, and hold the visitors to stay longer and in turn enhance conversion rates.

2. Optimizing site architecture

Site architecture is also called information architecture, which is something you need to plan well before starting to create your very first content. Consider which categories you need to have, and while categorizing, try to set it below ten.

For each post you put under any category on a WordPress site, you must assign at least three to four tags. For example, this particular post your are reading now is tagged under search engine optimization, WordPress design, SEO best practices and so on. The objective of optimized information architecture is to set a properly categorized symmetrical pyramid through which the content is distributed evenly across the website.

That means that every page should be easily accessible through a single URL. WordPress now uses taxonomies and archives. There are WordPress SEO plugins which you can use to define the canonical pages instantly and also those which you do not want to search engines to index.

3. Optimize the tags too

The designers use meta tags to label the web pages. These tags help search engines to determine what your website is all about. Meta tags are good pointers for the search engines as well as the users alike. It is always ideal to include the keywords correctly in the meta tags, title tags, description tag, and alt tags to ensure the desired SEO value.

• Title tags

Apart from keywords, you should always try to include branding ideally towards the tail end of the title tags. Try to set your title tags in maximum 70 characters. You can also think of going over 70 characters if that is necessary to explain what your site is all about.

• Header tags

The header tags (usually H1, H2 to H6) are not as relevant now. However, these are vital to maintaining the content hierarchy. Header tags will help the users to read and understand your content easily.

• Meta description

Meta descriptions are used by the search engines to craft the result pages logically. It is also a great tool for the site makers to create a good first impression to the search engines. It is ideal to make the meta descriptions the most relevant to your site title and content of the page. The suggested character count for meta description is 154.

• Image attributes

There may be many images on your web pages. Crawlers cannot read these images, so for easier understanding, you need to use alt text tags and image file names correctly. Appropriate captions also need to be given to the images.

4. Linking to related posts

When it comes to the internet, relationships matter a lot. Links to your website and back decide the worthiness and value of your pages. However, these should be quality links and provide the crawlers enough information about the acceptance and dignity of your content. So, WordPress site owners should ensure that the website is well linked internally and externally.

There are plenty of plugins available to be used in WordPress development to help in linking. Some of the best-rated plug-ins to find the related posts in WordPress SEO are:

• WordPress Related Posts
• Related Posts for WordPress
• Manual Related Posts
• ELI’s Related Posts Footer Links and Widget

5. Using all-purpose WordPress SEO plugins

There are many general plug-ins available for WordPress SEO. Yoast is one of the most popularly used plugins. The best WordPress SEO plugins can take care of SEO activities like:

• Web and page analysis
• Technical SEO
• On-page and Off-page optimization
• Meta descriptions
• Link elements
• Sitemaps
• RSS feed optimization
• Breadcrumbs
• Social media integration

Now, with all the basic of WordPress web design covered as done by SEO agency experts, you can also handle web development much effectively. A beautiful design can surely help in creating a welcoming ambiance for the users of your site.

Author Bio: Tim Cook is an SEO expert and WordPress web development consultant, who is working as a freelancer and also writes a lot of blog posts for SEO aspirants

Judging by the parameters of simplicity and effectiveness, WordPress is by far the best Content Management System that you will come across. Naturally, its popularity is very high and keeps on increasing by the day. Out of 10 million top websites of the world, about 25% sites are set up on WordPress because of its ability to support and take forward SEO campaigns in a way that no other CMS can. The versatility of WordPress is fantastic, and it provides almost infinite opportunities for adaptation for users. The platform is so easy to use that anyone who has no knowledge of coding and even ignorant of other technical details can start using it without any difficulties.

However, this might lead to committing excesses with the system that can be detrimental to SEO campaign.  You might think that the all-powerful WordPress plugins would be enough to drive the optimisation process on its own and you can do well without the help of SEO consultant. This approach is entirely wrong and stems from an incomplete understanding of WordPress. These and some other similar misinformation and myths surrounding WordPress are clarified in this article that will help you to make better use of WordPress plugins for search engine optimisation.

WordPress facilitates search engine optimisation

Let it be clear from the beginning that WordPress is not magic that you can close your eyes and let it do all the work of optimisation for you. The platform assists you to take forward your SEO campaign through better optimisation, but the brain required to drive it must be yours or that of the professional at Perth SEO service that you hire.  You can compare the WordPress platform to a boat that keeps you afloat and helps you steer through the water provided you are capable rowing the boat.

It is a search engine platform in a friendly way, but you must never make the mistake of thinking it as search engine optimised.  You can utilise the facilities and features of the platform to complete the optimisation tasks efficiently, but the platform does not come readily optimised for search engines.  You get the advantage of working on a platform that supports SEO effectively and makes things easy for you but the best results, you must put in your hard work and brains into it.

For efficient use of WordPress plugins be guided by an SEO Consultant

It will be grossly wrong to think that WordPress plugins are all powerful and do everything related to search engine optimisation so that you can do without the services of SEO consultant. Despite the high capabilities of WordPress plugins, it needs someone well conversant with SEO to use it correctly to take forward the SEO campaign.  The expert knows best how to align SEO with your marketing goals. He has a good understanding of organic search and knows how to avoid the pitfalls of the wrong implementation of SEO strategies. He knows which plugins to use for realising the marketing goals more efficiently.

Slow websites can negatively affect search rankings. Some plugins can slow down the website that the consultant knows about and can use this knowledge in selecting the right WordPress plugins. There are issues related to site code whenever you upgrade WordPress or plugins, and only the consultant has the experience of addressing it properly.

Choose the best WordPress plugins

Not all plugins might be suitable for your SEO needs, and you must carefully judge its applicability and allied aspects so that you do not regret later. Once again, the guidance of SEO consultant can come handy.  There are four points to consider when selecting plugins.

• Every site has its own set of functionality that the plugin must support. It must also be compatible with the technology used for the website as of now and also in future.
• Evaluate the kind of support you would receive from the plugin developers.
• Gauge how much popular the plugin is because more users mean more user experience that you can get a share of in case of trouble shooting. Popular WordPress plugins offer better user experience.
• Rely on renowned vendors when buying plugins because they provide comprehensive upgrading services so that the plugins ready for future use. This is the highpoint of using WordPress plugins.

Make good use of WordPress widgets

While optimising websites for search engines is the first agenda in marketing, proper content promotion is equally important because it aids the SEO cause. The success of SEO campaign depends on how well you can meet user expectation and provide them with the best user experience. To facilitate better user experience, you must present the most relevant content in a tailor-made manner so that the focus is entirely on the content that appears on the page. To achieve this goal, make use of WordPress widgets that allow you to get closer to the audience by applying a social layer to the campaign.  WordPress platforms have inbuilt RSS widgets that you can use to display RSS feeds.

Get WordPress plugins for RSS

There is no doubt that your SEO campaign gains more mileage from the use of RSS feeds and since the facility exists in WordPress, just activate it by installing suitable WordPress plugin.  The plugins allow better control in using RSS feeds more efficiently as you can manage multiple feeds with some plugins and you can even import complete content from some external RSS feed.  Some plugins allow viewers to subscribe to some particular content while some others help you to activate the RSS feeds on the specific pages or post by importing it.

WordPress plugins open up a whole new world of opportunities for search engine optimisation. Try to gain knowledge about the plugins that keep on evolving to meet the growing expectations of users. How well the search optimisation works for you depends to a large extent on your ability to use the right one in the right way under the professional guidance of SEO experts.

About the Author: William Border is an SEO consultant who has worked for a little more than a decade in the field.  After spending some time with a renowned Perth SEO service, he now heads a firm that works in areas of digital analysis and e-commerce.