Many SEO marketers recommend WordPress SEO tips which aren’t necessarily approved by Google. They’re not necessarily forbidden by Google either, but we thought you might want to know which tips are officially approved by Google, so here are the top five Google-approved WordPress SEO tips:
WordPress SEO Tips #1—Use Meta Tags
Various plugins for WordPress let you add a meta description and meta keywords tag to your WordPress posts—Google says this is great, but it also offers a few warnings.
1. Don’t use keywords or content in your meta tags which don’t reflect the actual article.
2. Keep descriptions and keywords short.
3. Don’t assume that Google will necessarily use your descriptions or keywords.
If you haven’t used meta tags before, you’ll probably want to take the time to go back and add them to all of your previous posts. Remember that the text you enter in the meta description field will probably be the text which appears in search engine listings, so you want to make it short and enticing.
WordPress SEO Tips #2—Alt
Google wants you to label your images accurately using the alt tag. The alt tag was designed so that seeing-impaired people could read (or have read to them) a text description of any images on your page, but the primary use of the alt tag on the Internet today is for image search engines.
Labeling your images is a great way to back up the keyword phrase for that particular page. For example, if you write a page about cheesesteaks and you want to rank for the keyword cheesesteaks, put an image of a cheesesteak on your page and label it as a cheesesteak with the alt tag.
Google not only appreciates you labeling the image so it can use it on its image search engine, but it will also further convince Google that your post is about cheesesteaks.
WordPress SEO Tips #3—Post Often
Almost everyone says it, but it’s still true—the more you post, the higher you rank. You do have to post high-quality content, but as long as you post quality content, posting
Google is the world’s leading search engine because it makes its customers happy by pointing them to high-quality content. Therefore, nothing makes Google happier than seeing more high-quality content on the Internet. If you publish high-quality content often, Google will show its appreciation by linking to your content more often. All WordPress SEO tips boil down to this principle: make Google happy.
See what is quality content.
WordPress SEO Tips #4—Good Titles
The most important part of your page, from an SEO perspective, is the title. Look at any set of search results—the first thing you notice are the titles. You’re not going to click on any bad titles no matter how high they rank, so take a moment and make sure all of the pages on your site have good, strong titles.
Google pays close attention to titles—remember they make their money by hawking appealing content. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that your title should be keyword optimized. It’s far more important that you make people eagerly desire to click on your titles than it is that you rank for any particular term. The art is to try and combine both.
However, the last of our WordPress SEO tips will tell you how to sneak in your keyword phrase:
WordPress SEO Optimization Tips #5—URLs
Google pays more attention to the URL than most people do, so your URL is a great place to put your keyword phrase without it taking away from the appeal of your article.
Imagine your keyword phrase is something boring, such as “homemade footstools”. You probably can’t write an interesting headline using that keyword, but you can write an interesting headline without it—“How To Build a $5 Footstool In 5 Minutes At Home”—and then add the proper keyword phrase in the URL, “example.com/homemade-footstools–5-dollars–5-minutes”.
Don’t go overboard on the URL. People are less likely to share longer URLs than shorter URLs, and even Google will stop trying to parse really long URLs. But don’t worry about getting your keyword phrase into your title if you can get it into your URL using one of these WordPress SEO tips.