WordPress powers over 41% of all accessible websites, and the leading e-commerce websites using this platform know what sets WordPress apart from the competition. The rules for successful WordPress SEO in 2024 are set to change; use this guide to keep up and rank like never before.
What is WordPress SEO?
SEO is all about getting websites to rank higher in search results pages with targeted content and fine-tuned pages. What you might not already know is that WordPress is one of the best platforms for SEO, whether you’re a beginner or someone intimately familiar with the WordPress backend. Here’s why:
- Native integration with some of the best SEO plugins on the market
- In-built support for technical SEO features like automatic XML sitemap generation to help speed up search engine indexing.
- WordPress helps you create SEO-oriented permalinks that are relevant to your website’s content, helping both users and search engines navigate it.
Let’s break down the fundamentals of WordPress SEO in 2024
- Keywords: Great keyword research is the foundation of your SEO. At this stage, your goal should be understanding how your audience searches. What kind of terms do they use? Are they phrased as questions or descriptions? To that end, you should also analyze what keywords your competitors are ranking for.
- Effective WordPress SEO optimizes page rankings through keyword gap analysis, which determines the valuable terms your competitors are outranking your site for. This analysis helps businesses understand which keywords they should focus on to rank better that they might not have otherwise considered.
- Structure: The overall architecture of your website can have a sizable impact on how you approach WordPress SEO in 2024.
- If you have a blog with many different author and category pages, you’ll want to make sure those pages are marked as no-index to avoid being flagged for duplicate content.
- Add alt-text and file names (preferably including keywords) to all product/category/blog images on your WordPress website to optimize them. This action helps your website perform better and makes navigation more accessible for the average user.
- Use subcategories to divide related pages in your website architecture. This structure also helps avoid duplication further down the line as you add more content.
Crafting Content That Ranks
Content optimization and WordPress SEO go hand-in-hand; quality content is king for WordPress SEO in 2024. New features like Google Snippets and apps like Co-Pilot that can crawl the web in milliseconds to find high-quality answers open up an exciting opportunity for WordPress websites like yours. You can feature your website in these answers by crafting reliable, authoritative, and trustworthy content.
Linking
Building on our point about structure, linking also plays a significant role in WordPress SEO in 2024. Maintaining strong internal links between related pages will help your visitors navigate your website and eventually convert while helping search engines understand your website’s structure.
Similarly, external links are a valuable way of obtaining backlinks from other, more authoritative websites, driving more traffic to yours and increasing your content’s reputation. You should also attempt to link to other reputable websites in your posts. This linking can be done through statistics and citations.
Quality Control
Thorough research needs to be your anchor for WordPress SEO in 2024, whether in keywords or your blog topics. Your goal should be to eliminate the fluff from your content and focus on creating accurate, info-dense posts. This can include:
- Citing sources where possible.
- Use mixed media, such as videos and pictures, in your posts.
- Optimizing all pictures with alt-text.
- Forming a connection with your readers.
Optimizing Local WordPress SEO
Local SEO aims to answer the ‘near me’ questions, cornering audiences in a given region. In practice, this means pushing your business listing higher up in Google’s Map Pack. Local SEO started picking up steam not too long ago, and it has become an absolute juggernaut that you just can’t leave behind in your WordPress SEO strategy for 2024. Currently, around 1/3rd of online shoppers go online to find nearby businesses.
Popularity isn’t the only reason you should care about local SEO for your WordPress website. While the two might sound distinct, global SEO can positively impact local SEO and vice-versa, driving online and offline traffic. Here’s how you can capitalize on that:
Create a Listing:Content optimization and WordPress SEO will only take you so far with Local SEO if you don’t have a Google Business Profile (GBP). GBP will allow you to manage your local presence on Google, including customer engagement (Q&As), live chat messaging, images, posts, and reviews.
Localized Keywords:If yourWordPress SEO in 2024 strategy is about increasing local rankings then your keywords should follow suit. Target local keywords that include the name of a city/region to help your store and website rank well for local searchers. For example, go for “website service in Texas” instead of “website service in USA.”
Get Featured:Try to get your business cited in local directories and social media. These listings build your local authority with Google and can be a great way to improve your ranking. Getting featured in local listings like “Top 5 website service in Texas” is another easy way of getting your business increased local exposure. Use Google to find websites that publish lists in your area and build a relationship with the editors to get your business featured.
Rank Higher With Technical SEO in 2024
Performance optimization with WordPress SEO is all about getting technical. Here’s some ways you can amp up your WordPress SEO.
Go Mobile-friendly:Almost 60% of all web traffic now comes from mobile users. To make the mobile version of your WordPress website more SEO-oriented in 2024, make sure your pages load as fast as possible on mobile. Additionally, consider taking the time to create a mobile-friendly menu system if you don’t already have one, your future customers will thank you.
Pick a Theme:Picking an SEO-friendly WordPress theme can do much of the heavy lifting for you in terms of website performance.
In summary, creating an optimized plan for WordPress SEO is all about mastering the basics. Once you’ve got a site structure and keyword research down, find the SEO plugin that best suits your budget and requirements. Employing WordPress SEO services for your website SEO can help you ease the stress of performing and tracking SEO metrics constantly.
