WebRTC Expert Feature

August 10, 2018

5 Common WordPress SEO Issues and How to Fix Them




When you are working your WordPress site and not seeing the search results that you want, it can be frustrating to check the traffic metrics and see that it hasn’t moved even one notch. It is possible that some common WordPress SEO errors have been made.

If you’ve made some of the most common SEO errors on your WordPress site, these could be keeping you from showing up in the search results. Most of the time, there isn’t some big error that is looming over you, it is something simple that you can fix and move on to the next step of your SEO strategy.

Lack of On-Page Optimize

If your WordPress site doesn’t have proper on-page optimization, Google probably has no clue what your page is about so it couldn’t rank you if it wanted to. Not having the keywords that you want to rank for in places like your title tag, meta description and the body of your text can leave your post left in limbo. Google doesn’t know what to do with it because while it is super smart, it can’t read minds or determine writer intent.

If you want to make your on-page SEO easier, you should install a plugin like Yoast SEO so that you can have a checklist of items that you need to do on the page to be able to provide the best opportunity for your site to be on the first page. Even after you have gotten the hang of SEO, it is nice when you can have a checklist to go off of so you don’t forget anything.

Lack of Off-Page Optimization

While it is important that you take care of on-page factors so that you can rank in the search engines, you also need to pay attention to the off-page optimization. You need to be sending great ranking factors back to your site if you want to move up in the search engines.

There are plenty of ways to show Google that you are the go to site in your niche. Some of these ways include but are not limited to:

  • Press releases
  • Social bookmarking
  • In-context link
  • Directory links
  • Local citations

Having a strong backlink profile is important for anyone that wants to see their sites holding strong in the search engines.

There are many myths about link building, but what you should know is that real organic links are always going to be the best. If you are getting links from cheap sites where people are blasting your site with 1,000 profile links, that probably won’t do anything other than hurt your site in the search engines.

Slow Website

If your site is loading slow, your visitors are going to go. They are going to go to someone else’s page. Your competition’s page could be where they land and purchase. How impatient are people? People want their websites instantly.

If your site isn’t loading in 3 seconds or less, you are may find yourself staring at your search engine rankings in dismay. Officially, Google will start using site speed for mobile as a ranking factor in July of 2018, but many people already believe they have implemented it.

Unoptimized Alt Text

A part of on-page SEO but something many people forget is the alt tags. This is the alternative text that shows up whenever an image doesn’t load on your page. While you always hope that your image is going to load, if it doesn’t show up, you don’t want a blank space there and when you put alt text, you can have whatever text you want there describing what should be there. To best optimize this, you want to make sure that you include the keyword in the alt text.

Lack of Interlinking

How is your site linking structure? If you go to sites like Forbes, you will see interlinking all throughout their articles. Many articles for the top news sites look like they are half link and half normal text because of how many links they put throughout their content.

You will notice that the links they include are helpful within the content and not spammy or meant to be annoying. Interlinking within your site is a key part to sending link juice throughout your site and helping pages new and old on your site rank. It also gives for a better user experience when you are giving them more resources that they are looking for.

While you are doing all of the interlinking within your site, you can also do some linking out to high authority websites which is also good for SEO. When you link out to highly reputable sources from your content, Google sees that as a good thing and gives you a little bump.

Conclusion

If you are ready to start getting rankings with your WordPress site, make sure to fix your on-page issues first so that Google knows what you are trying to show them and where to rank you in the search engines. There are plenty of things that you can do to make your SEO better, but start with the most important things first.

When you are able to take care of your site’s SEO problems, make sure to give Google a little time to catch up with the changes in the search engines. They won’t know about it until their bot comes back to crawl your site.



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