The more optimized your WordPress content, the more likely search engines and, consequently, users will find it. So why not go beyond <title> and <description> tags to boost traffic and get your website in front of more eyes?
In this article, you’ll find the list of easy-to-implement tricks for driving traffic with WordPress content optimization.
1) Increase Your Website Speed
Back in 2018, Google announced that site speed is a determining ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches. A slow website equals frustrated users and high bounce rates, influencing your overall positions in SERP.
What can you do to improve load time and site speed?
First, test it to see if the speed is slow. Tools like Pingdom, GTmetrix, or PageSpeed Insights will help with that. Just enter your URL, and you’ll get the full report with the recommendations to implement for improving your page speed:
Or, you can go even further and bring your website through all the possible WordPress-specific optimizations that improve its load time.
2) Optimize Content for Mobile
With 4.2 billion unique mobile users worldwide, it makes sense that you should have an optimized mobile version of your WordPress website to reach them. And since many site owners continue ignoring mobile optimization, it’s your chance to win more traffic for your website.
How to check if your website is mobile-friendly:
Use the site tester by Google. In case something is missing, you’ll get the recommendations on what to improve.
To optimize your WordPress website for mobile, ensure you use mobile-friendly or responsive WordPress themes. Also, say no to big graphics because they can weigh down a site.
This is particularly true for e-commerce websites that feature a lot of product images. Most users will leave your page if it’s been loading for more than 3-5 seconds.
Besides minimizing the size of graphics on your WordPress website, make sure to optimize the text. Avoid long sentences, add spaces between paragraphs, and use skimmable fonts to enable users to read.
3) Remember About SEO
Let’s leave alone all the stuff with <title>, <description>, and <alt> image tags for better SEO. I’m sure you already know it, as well as the role of focus keywords to add there.
In 2020, it’s not enough to please Google and make it lead your website to SERP. Now you need to focus on search intent and optimizing your content for featured snippets.
When targeting keywords with user search intent in mind, you help search engines understand your WordPress content and rank it accordingly. Please focus on one keyword per article and choose low difficulty keywords (the ones with decent traffic volume but low competition) for your content.
Tools like AdWords Keyword Tool or Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer will help to find out keyword difficulties.
To make the most of your target keyword, make sure to add it to the H1 tag, and at least one H2 tag, and to the first 100 words of your content. Also, mention it a few times through the text – beware of keyword stuffing! – and include it to the URL of your WordPress page.
Now, for featured snippets.
Known as Position Zero in Google, they appear in SERP before the first position in the form of a box with a paragraph, an image, a numbered/bulleted list, a video, or a table. Here is what they look like:
With tons of guides and tips on optimizing content for snippets available, one little trick can help you enhance yours for Google: Add an <div> element with an id attribute (like <div id=”featured-snippet”>text</div> to it.
4) Optimize for Voice Search
Nearly 50% of users search with voice today. Make sure they’ll find your content:
- Target long-tail keywords and optimize your content for them. These keywords are more like real speech people use when searching for something in Google. Use People Also Ask, Google Suggest, Quora, Answer The Public, or any other tool to come up with as many keyword variations as possible, or consider Google Search Console to see the actual queries that bring users to your website.
- Create a FAQ page at your WordPress website. Given that the top three keywords in voice search phrases are “how,” “what,” and “best,” focus on corresponding long-tail key phrases and write the answers as naturally as possible.
- Optimize your website for local SEO. Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing with details such as your industry, address, business hours, phone numbers, and more. It will increase your chances to appear in results when a corresponding voice search query appears.
- Submit a site map to Search Console. Structure your microdata correctly and create markups to help Google crawl your pages and understand what your content means. The Structured Data Markup Helper will walk you through this process.
The Yoast plugin can generate a site map file for you too. Or, feel free to follow this ultimate guide to submitting your site map to Search Console.
5) Optimize URLs
The URLs of your pages need to be short, descriptive, and include your target keyword. For that, make sure to change the default permalink structure when editing your content on the admin panel:
Don’t add any special characters or dates to URLs so that they won’t look unnecessarily long.
6) Organize Content into Clusters
First, ensure that you have a proper content hierarchy on the website. It needs to be easy for visitors to find and navigate, and it needs to be easy for Google to understand the relations between all the pages.
The best option would be to use your header and sidebars to emphasize your core pages.
Also, consider creating topic clusters on your WordPress blog for more traffic. A cluster is a group of interlinked pages built around one content piece. Rules to follow:
- Create a pillar content piece targeting a high search volume keyword.
- Create a few related content pieces, each with a more specific, smaller search volume keyword.
- Link pillar content to related pages and vice versa.
A great example of topic clusters is Bid4Papers’ guide to personal essay writing: A pillar page links to five narrowly defined sub-topics, and each sub-content piece links to a pillar one.
You can publish a pillar page as a long blog post and add subtopics as separate pages, as aforementioned Bid4Papers did. Or, place a pillar page to your root domain and make subtopics its subdomains. Example: Moz’s guide to SEO.
You can also place a pillar content to the root domain but supporting articles – to your blog.
And don’t be afraid of optimizing and relaunching your old content. Also, determine the optimal content length for your pages to perform better.
Takeaways
From year to year, search engines become smarter, and the battle for traffic – tougher. Every detail of your WordPress content counts, as it can influence the overall work results of your platform. Help it to drive more traffic:
- Optimize it for better load time and site speed.
- Make sure it’s mobile-friendly.
- Check and improve its SEO metrics.
- Optimize its content for voice search.
- Design the URLs of your WordPress pages.
- Organize content into clusters and support a proper content hierarchy at your website.
How often do you conduct a content audit of your WordPress website? Do you have any tricks on optimizing its pages for more traffic? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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