How to Give Your WordPress Website an SEO Boost

Start with Keyword Research, Guided by a WordPress SEO Consultant

The first step in optimizing your online store is conducting keyword research. A WordPress SEO expert can help you here, guiding you through the process using tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush to identify relevant keywords for your site.

Keyword research is an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) that helps you understand the phrases and terms your target audience is searching for on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. 85% of all online searches are conducted on Google, making it a priority for any SEO strategy. 

Here are some ways you should use keyword research to optimize your website content:

#1 Identify Relevant Topics

Keyword research can help you identify the topics that your target audience is interested in and the questions they are asking. Use this information to create content that addresses their needs and provides valuable information.

#2 Incorporate Keywords Into Your Content

Once you have identified the keywords that are relevant to your business and audience, you should use them in your website content. However, avoid stuffing your content with keywords, as this can hurt your search engine rankings.

#3 Optimize Meta Tags

Meta tags are snippets of code that appear in the HTML of your website pages and provide information about your content to search engines. Use your target keywords in your meta tags, including the title tag, meta description, and header tags.

#4 Create Internal Links

Use your target keywords to create internal links between your website pages. This helps search engines understand the structure of your website and the relationships between your pages.

Optimize Your Product Pages

Product page SEO is crucial when it comes to improving your online store’s visibility. You can do this by:

• Using descriptive and keyword-rich product titles that accurately describe your products.
• Writing unique product descriptions that highlight your products’ key benefits and features.
• Including high-quality product images and videos that enhance the user experience and improve your products’ visibility in search results.
• Optimizing URLs and metatags with relevant keywords to help search engines understand what your products are about.

Create High-Quality, Helpful Content

High-quality and helpful content is crucial in improving your online store’s SEO. In addition to product pages, a WordPress SEO specialist can help you create blog posts, guides, and other content relevant to your products and industry. This content should be unique, provide value to your target audience, and be informed by keyword research.

When creating content for your online store, always follow Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines. These stand for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. Content should be written with the end-user in mind, rather than for the purpose of boosting search engine rankings.

Writing content that is actually relevant to and helpful for users has become even more important since Google’s Helpful Content update in August 2022. In Google’s words,

“[This is] part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results… The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”

Build High-Quality Backlinks with a WordPress SEO Agency

Backlinks are essential when it comes to improving your online store’s authority and visibility in search results. The problem, however, is that an effective link building strategy is very time-consuming and most businesses will not have the in-house resources to execute one. A WordPress SEO agency can help you build high-quality backlinks by:

• Reaching out to other websites in your industry or similar industries and requesting a link to your online store. 
• Writing guest posts on other websites and including a link back to your online store in your author bio. 
• Creating shareable content like how-to guides, infographics, and videos that other websites may want to link to. 

Optimize Site Speed

When it comes to SEO, page speed is a crucial factor to consider. If your website loads slowly, this can lead to a poor user experience, lower search engine rankings, and decreased traffic. Working with a WordPress SEO specialist, you should focus on optimizing your site speed through doing the following:

• Optimizing images using image compression tools to reduce the file size without sacrificing quality. 
• Using a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute your website’s content across multiple servers, thus reducing page load times. 
• Minimizing HTTP requests by combining or minifying CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the number of requests. 
• Enabling caching to reduce page load times by storing frequently accessed data.

Monitor Your Analytics

Monitoring your website’s SEO analytics is crucial in understanding performance and how your efforts are making an impact. There are several important website performance metrics to track, including:

• Traffic: How many visitors your website is receiving over a certain period. 
• Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who take action on your website, such as filling out a contact form or making a purchase. To squeeze the most value out of the traffic on your website, you should also invest in a conversion rate optimization strategy.
• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your website after only viewing one page, usually the homepage. 
• Average session duration: How long visitors are staying on your website, on average. 

By regularly monitoring and analyzing these metrics, you can identify areas of improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize SEO for your WooCommerce store. 

Utilise Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an essential tool when it comes to increasing your brand awareness and driving traffic. It’s important to create a social media strategy that aligns with your overall SEO goals, even if it does not necessarily have a direct effect on your search engine ranking. Some tips to keep in mind include:

• Create social media profiles for your online store and regularly share links to your products and website content. 
• Use relevant hashtags where applicable to increase the visibility of your brand and content on social media. 
• Engage with your followers and respond promptly to comments and messages. 
• Collaborate with influencers and other businesses in your industry to reach a wider audience. 

Implement Structured Data Markup

Structured data markup is a method of helping search engines get a better understanding of the content on your website. You can do this on your own or work with a WordPress SEO consultant. Implementing structured data markup can lead to improved search engine visibility and click-through rates. Some examples of structured data markup include:

• Product markup: This helps search engines understand your product pages better, including product name, description, and price. 
• Breadcrumb markup: This allows search engines to better understand your website’s structure and how different pages are related to one another. 
• Article markup: This helps the search engines understand the content on your website including the author, article title, and publishing date. 

Use Local SEO

If you have a physical storefront or offer services in a certain area, local SEO can be a very effective way to improve your online visibility. There are several ways to implement local SEO tactics, including:

• Creating a Google My Business profile and regularly updating it with accurate information. 
• Including location-specific keywords in your website’s content, meta tags, and URLs. 
• Building backlinks from local websites and directories. 
• Encouraging customer reviews on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp.

Importantly, however, local SEO is also important for businesses that don’t have a physical storefront because it allows them to target potential customers within a specific geographic area