In the last few weeks, have you received the kind of traffic that you would like on your WordPress website? These days, the whole world seems to be raving on about the concept of search engine optimisation but no one ever quite tells you how to get it right. So while you’re stuck here using keywords and other key titles and meta descriptions, are you really getting it right or are you just shooting blanks in the dark? Let’s take a look at a few simple ways to improve and optimise the SEO on your website for enhanced results.

1) Theme it Just Right:

When choosing a new theme for your WordPress website, it is very easy to get carried away with all the options that are available at your fingertips. Chances are that you may even spend hours trying on all kinds of themes and still be confused. You must even be thinking that themes are primarily focused on visual appeal. So what does your WordPress website theme have to do with your SEO?

While many themes are beautiful and picturesque, you need to focus on specific SEO friendly themes for your website. These themes will help you get the most out of your website and allow you to implement your search engine optimization better than ever. Consider themes like:

• Astra
• BMH Magazine
• TheGem
• OceanWP

These themes are SEO friendly and will help you get effective results in like with your traffic goals.

2) Choose Your Domain Wisely:

In the older days, having a preceding www was something that came with your website but that is not the case anymore. While www is always a good option for a flourished and distinguished look, there is no real upside to having it.

To make things clearer for you, having a www will not necessarily impact your SEO and this is entirely your choice.

3) Your Permalink is Your First Impression:

There is more to keeping a Permalink SEO friendly than what is obvious. Even if you factor out the SEO advantage of it, keeping a simple and readable Permalink is a no brainer. People first come across your website URL. If this URL is just a random set of digits, the trust factor isn’t established very well. On the other hand, by having an SEO friendly, readable URL Permalink, you get an optimised sophisticated look.

4) Breadcrumbs are Important:

Most people aren’t very familiar with the concept of Breadcrumbs but they are a major help when you’re trying to SEO optimise your website. Under the navigation bar, you will find Breadcrumbs that quite literally leave the viewer with a trail of your website. Implementing these is made super simple with the Yoast Plugin for your website.

5) Consider Commenting:

It is entirely up to you whether you want to grant commenting access to people for your website or not. Allowing commenting can be a major upside but this all really depends on the nature of your comments. If your website comments are already enabled/disabled you might want to keep it that way.

Remember two things:

• Commenting helps you with rankings and can boost your website.
• Spam commenting with grammatical errors is hazardous to your rankings and impacts your website negatively.

6) No Space for Robots.txt files:

If your robots.txt file is a mess, your site may just be non-existent for search engines out there. You don’t want all pages to access this file and pages like Archive or Tags need to be disallowed for the same.

Cross-check your robots.txt file and make sure that it is not coming in the way of all the hard work that you’ve been putting into your WordPress Website.

7) Don’t Forget the Plugins:

Plugins are great and fun, agreed. But too many plugins are no different than too many cooks who spoil the broth. Having effective plugins is necessary that can really impact your website in the long run. On the other hand, having too many plugins will cause delay and code bloat which will diminish your overall user experience. Check out some effective SEO friendly plugins for your WordPress like:

• Really Simple SSL
• Monster insights
• Yoast

Conclusion:

At the end of the day, there are a lot of things to consider when improving your website in terms of SEO. The best way to go about this is by keeping a checklist and updating it regularly to avoid missing out on critical steps. That being said, receiving traffic on your website is a patience game and could take a while, but sit tight and don’t give up.