WordPress SEO Tips To Boost Search Traffic In 2013

9 Important wordpress SEO tips for 2013. Today WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform. Creating articles, adding custom designs and functionality thought different themes and plugins is real fun. But do you think this awesome blogging and CMS platform is just limited to it. Many bloggers say ” Google loves wordpress “, and many make thousands of dollars per month using it.

But above all, the most important thing is to promote your blog post. Unless you have readers and commentators, your blog is simply worthless. And if you don’t optimize your wordpress for SEO, then there is almost not guarantee that people will ever find your website.

In simple terms you must know few SEO basics for wordpress and also some advanced practices. So inorder to help you, in this article I will try to list out five of the most important points which will help you in ever-changing world of Google algorithmic updates. My tips will help you future proof your site from any kind of Panda, penguin or Zebra updates. I will also try to list out few of the most popular and best SEO wordpress plugins for 2013.

Perfect WordPress SEO Guide For 2013

It will be better if we start from the simple setups. Below I am going to list out few of the settings and practices which are usually ignored by bloggers and webmasters, but are very important in overall onpage SEO effort.

Permalink Structure

It’s always suggested by Google and other search engines to use easy to read or pretty URL as your permalink structure. Today even wordpress offers you the post name slag ” /%postname%/ “. According to me personally, there is three different best WordPress permalink structure.

1. /%postname%/%post_id%
2. /%category%/%postname%
3. /%postname%/%year%/%monthnum%

Among them, the perfect one would be using #1 and #2. Using the category name infront, can help you increase the keyword density in the link.

Steps :

• Move to your WP dashboard.
• Now click on settings.
• Finally select the ” Permalinks “.
• Now click on the ” Custom Structure “, if you want to use category link structure.

Please check out the above video provided by Google’s Matt Cutts. He will explain you the perfect link structure for your blog or website.

Write SEO Post Title

Try to write magnetic headlines which not only helps you attract more readers but also help you in Search engine optimization. It’s always suggested to put your key phrases in the front of the title and then craft the most attractive heading. This will help you get more visitors and will also get more better social appreciation.

Post SEO Meta Description

Meta tag description is used to describe the content to your first viewers in 160 words. By first viewer I mean, the googlers or the people who see your webpage on search engine result pages.

Though it might not be so much important for many common bloggers, but in reality it can surely increase or decrease your SERP and your click rates. You can check out this amazing post from Kissmetrics. Meta Description Magic which explains how to optimize your description tag in the most appropriate manner.

According to SEOmoz :

Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are webmasters opportunity to advertise content to searchers and let them know exactly what the given page has with regard to what they’re looking for.

Big SEO blogs like SEOmoz, Search engine land and other don’t use it, but occasionally provide it for important internal pages. Actually you should not consider meta description as a ranking factor, but you should see it as an important factor which can affect your conversion rates.

How To Setup Custom Meta Description

You can use few of the wordpress SEO plugin for this purpose. The best will be wordpress seo by yoast or all in one seo pack. They both allows you to add custom meta description and keyword tags per post and page basis.

Image SEO : Adding Alternate, Description & Captions

One of the biggest mistake made by bloggers, even today. Adding alternate tags to your images is really very easy and takes less than five seconds. Most probably you have to just copy and paste the main targeted keywords.

Remember that search engines don’t have emotions nor have any eyes to see the pictures. They can just follow what’s written in your HTML source.

Alt Tags :  Inorder to tell search bots that I have added an image and it matches my content, you have to add the Alternate text to it. If you are creating an image gallery then I will suggest you to add little bit of description per picture. Though it might not increase your word count, but will surely help you in your SEO.

Caption :  I don’t think it’s of any use. But you can use it if you want to improve your keyword density to certain level. Captions are also create method to explain, what your image is about to your readers.

But if you want to automate all this process then you can use a free plugin named SEO Friendly Images. It will automatically update all your pictures and will also make your post W3C/xHTML valid.

Internal Linking

Adding the related posts links at the bottom of your articles will not only help you improve your page-views and reduce your bounce rate, but will also help you rank your post on SERP. That’s because Google will find that you are providing more in-depth related contents to your readers, so inorder words you article is in-depth and is a useful resource for readers. So most probably to reward you might see some better position on search result pages.

You can also automate this process by using one of most popular plugin names Yet Another Related Post. Or you can simply check out my collection on best wordpress related post plugins for 2013.

Improve WordPress SEO With Social Media Integration

There is no need to tell the importance of social media in SEO field. Most probably in 2013, Google is going to integrate author rank, and then social media shares and activities will be the most important factor to rank any webpage on search engines.

So how to get ready for this change ?

The best way is to offer your readers with best options to share your content on social networking websites. You can use plugins like Jetpack >> sharedaddy to add social buttons in the bottom and above of your post. Also use Digg Digg to add floating buttons on the side of your content area. Or simply check out my post on best social media wordpress plugins.

Pageload Time Factor

Google has been considering the total page-load time as one of the important factor to analyze the webpage before ranking it on its search result pages. Their is almost no use of your blog if you can’t deliver its contents to visitors.

And today everyone knows that you are not the only one in the field, if your readers don’t get what they want, they will simply switch to different blog. Overall your website speed can affect your SEO, page-views and conversion.

So how to increase website speed ?

Simply check my blog post. I have already created an outstanding and very indepth article on how to improve website speed and how to optimize wordpress for better performance.

Here’s The Simple Checklist.

• Optimize your images and reduce its size with lossless compression technique.
• Minify your JavaScript and CSS files.
• Load JavaScript in the bottom of your page.
• Use CDN services. Use free CDN like Cloudflare, Google Libraries, CDNjs, Dropbox and Google drive.
• Use caching plugins like w3 total cache, wp super cache, quick cache.
• Try to use less number of plugins and delete those which is of no use.

Best WordPress SEO Content Writing

Usually while optimizing articles for search engines, bloggers and authors crosses many different limits. For example they might have high keyword density, which indicates the keyword stuffing and may lead to Panda penalty.

Or their might be too many spelling errors in your post, which makes it difficult for readers to read it. These all simply indicates that you are not focused on proving quality posts to your readers and thus you will surely see decline in your organic traffic.

So how to blog for SEO. According to me the best way is to write content for human beings. If you just keep writing your posts naturally and if you are focused on one particular topic, then you will surely use your keyword too many times. Also try to add LSI, Long tail keywords within the content and make sure to connect to different authority websites. This all indicates that your content is trying to provide genuine information.

Simple SEO content writing checklist.

• Dividing you article in different sub categories.
• Add related keywords in your sub headings.
• Try to use H2 and H3 for headline purpose.
• Keep your content short and simple.
• Use different images and videos to reduce bounce rate.
• Always add internal and outbound links.

Overall always try to use SEO plugins to guide you while optimizing you post. They will always help you with your keyword density check, internal and outbound links check, in analyzing H1,H2, H3 tags and many other different factors.

I have tried to create the most simple and easy wordpress SEO guide. If you think it was helpful to you, then please leave your suggestions.