A good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most important factors that will give you a quick-loading site that’s liked by your site visitors as well as Google as allow your website rank higher in google search and so will be easy to find.
Set up and integrate Google
What Google analytic is and how it works has been demonstrated in detail in previous section “Choice of Plugins”. By installing google analytic on your website, it gives you a special tracking code which should be inserted into your website that helps with tracking data in relation to your website traffic. This code will track where your website visitors coming from. Furthermore, it shows which ad or platform generating most of the least traffic, if you have some sort of digital marketing to promote yourself or your business for instance through social media.
It also shows what pages have been visited most and on which pages visitors bouncing off so that you know where it needs to improve in order to keep your visitors on your website. And also, it shows some data and statistics about who the visitors are in terms of their age range or gender so that enables you to target the best majority demographic and hopefully grow your website.
As mentioned before, one method would be manually to insert the Google Analytics Global Site Tag (tracking code in your WordPress site theme’s header. You will be offered that tracking code when you sign up with Google Analytics. in your WordPress theme site header
Another method is using Google Analytics plugins.
To optimise my website, I have set up and integrated Google via installing MonsterInsights plugins.
The reason I chose using this plugin rather than inserting a Tracking Code into my website is firstly If I change my theme, I do not have to connect my website to Google Analytic again. And most importantly I can see my website analytics report right inside my WordPress dashboard with actionable insights and analytics reports so I do not have to go to my Google Analytics to check the reports.
It has been done in just four steps:
- Create a Google Analytics Account via google analytic website.
- Install Google Analytics plugins, MonsterInsights to my WordPress site.
- Allow plugins to access my Google Account and finalize Authentication and then link the plugin to my Google Analytics Account
- View my Data
Install Google XML Sitemap plugin
It creates XML sitemaps which will Providing search engines like Google links to all the pages on your site in a sitemap and index your site content faster and better and therefore improve your site SEO.
It makes it easier for the crawlers to see the structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. However, by installing Yoast there is no need for Google XML as Yoast also provide the site map.
Install an SEO plugin
It does Optimize your site for search engines and helps your site content rank high in search engines and Google searches and therefore attract traffic.
It provides users a broad range of options regarding link canonicalization, page titles, meta description, keywords optimization, no indexing categories, tags and archives, Google Plus authorship, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools verification.
It also provides insight as where you need to improve your website specifically in terms of using the right content and keywords in order to achieve a better ranking in google search.
Install a caching plugin to speed up the website
Caching plugins does cache static and dynamic content to reduce the load on your web and so make your website faster and so given a higher rank from search engine and finally improve user experience.
Most caching plugins decrease the page loading times.
The one which is highly recommended for WordPress is ‘W3 Total Cache’ as it is feature-rich with page caching, browser caching, object caching, database caching and minification options.
Install an Anti-Spam plugin to block spam comments
It is important to protect your site from spam comments and as they do not add any value to your content and also if you get spam in your website as there’s a chance that the page will be flagged as spam by search engines and your site will get penalized.
Therefore, It is recommended to use Akismet Anti-Spam, which enable you to filter comments for your blog and so prevent spammers on your website. What it does is to check your comments and contact form submissions against global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious content.
Install Keyword tool:
It provides keyword suggestions related to your topic to improve the visibility of your content in search.
Using the rich content:
Pages on your site need to have decent content, nor short nor too long. The content of the website should wisely be written including the sufficient amount of related keywords. the keyword plugin mentioned earlier would help for the content optimization.
It is also recommended to avoid unclear content and using too many links and the flat page structure. In addition, avoid long WordPress side menus on every page and instead use tags and cross page links wisely and not excessively.
In the content paragraphs should not be very long and likewise sentences should not be very long and not more than 20 words.
Additionally, the words used in sentences should not be very difficult which all contribute to improve readability. It also is recommended to use sufficient variety in your sentences and sufficient active voice and transition words.
The keyword also should use in SEO title. As for the text especially in home page, it is recommended to have minimum 900 words.
In addition, as per SEO and accessibility consideration, it is recommended to use alt attribute to reflect the topic of your text content.
It is also recommended to keep your content short and not to repeat it the content.
In addition, it is not recommended to have keywords in your title tag or using bold keywords in your text or repeat your keywords all over your page in <H1> tags or in your navigation.
Other strategy is to use video and social media to get people to visit your site and keep coming back.
One of the important factors impact on search engines and visitors of your website is that contents of your website updated once in a while. It can be a new blog for instance.
Integrate a blog into your site:
It is beneficial to add a blog into your website. Adding a blog post every month or so which bring traffic to your website and engage visitors and encourage them to come back to check on new blogs or even you can consider sending new blog news, preview or summary to subscriber through subscription.
Using HTTPS on your site
An HTTPS connection is a more secure way of browsing the web. Many services now have HTTPS as a requirement. Many search engines will add a penalty to web sites that don’t use HTTPS, thus making it harder to reach the best spots in search results.
HTTPS allows you to take advantage of new features that can increase site speed, improve search rankings.
Change the default permalinks structure
Changing the default permalinks for posts and choosing the structure that makes it search engine friendly. You can ensure to add some keywords as well.
Choice of Web Host and the impact on SEO and Site performance
Speed optimization considered as one of the important factors impact on SEO as well as site performance. Therefore, it is important to consider the loading time for your site which is also a very important ranking factor for Google. So that you need to ensure the site will load fast which means site load in under 1.5 seconds.
Therefore, it is very important to pick a good web host company with faster load time and a better google ranking and consistent uptimes.
I have chosen HostPapa as their prices are relatively competitive considering what they offer with free SSL certificate and with their 24/7 support via email, phone and live chat. I am really impressed with their great customer service and sorting out my issues so far.
In addition, Consistent uptimes is very important which HostPapa avoid downtime with 99.9 percent uptime.
Add search engine value to your text link
It is important to create relevant links within the text in your blog content including the name of the destination rather than simply put “click here” for instance as it just includes the attached URL which does not have any search engine value.
Therefore, it is recommended to improve search engine optimization of your site by using meaningful text link which also can play an important role in terms of accessibility for users who use screen readers. In addition, having cross link within the content would enhance the SEO.
Use header tags for your site content
It is recommended to always use H1 and H2 header tags throughout the website. What it does is makes your content more readable and easier for humans to understand. In addition, Header tags are also a great way to show the structure of your content and emphasize your key points.
And finally, using header tags in the body of your site content helps Google search rank. It is recommended to consider H1 just for the main title in the content and for other titles should have lower heading level.
Having a content with organized structure with Headings in order of importance makes the content of the website easier to read for visitors as well as easier to understand for the crawlers.
Using optimized media (images/Audio/Video) on your site
Images on the website needs to be optimized by compressing and resizing which reduce the resolutions and sizes of the images and therefore decreasing the page sizes and reducing the loading time to great extent which improves your website performance.
In addition, it would be beneficial to include additional keywords through alt tags in your website pages and your blog post. For audio file use MP3, or M4a to bring the size down.
As for Video the best approach is to put it out the raw file, uncompressed and then when uploaded to Vimeo it will encode it.
However, it should be noted that as Vimeo encode the video uploaded there is no need to compress the video file before uploading to Vimeo as it will reencoded which deteriorate the video quality.
Therefore, a 1280×720 Mp4 file or full HD 1920×1080 is a good size.