How to Rank Higher in Search Engines
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 10:43 am
How to Rank Higher in Search Engines
WordPress was born ready for SEO , but after using several different themes or editing the code to give it a personal touch, you may break some of the features that make WordPress a search engine darling . These features that guide search engines around your WordPress site include permalinks , pings, and blog crawling. These features guide search spiders around your categories, pages, and posts to gather the data they need to identify and rank your site. Three questions of the hour:
How to keep your site friendly to the Googles of this world?
How do you ensure that you continue to rank #1 for your main keywords ?
How to move up one, two saudi arabia b2b leads
or more steps in search engine rankings ?
Here's how.
Contents hide
1 Keep your code clean
2 Content is king
3 Optimize for Search Engines, Write for Humans
4 Content always comes first
5 Use keywords in titles and links
6 Image SEO
7 Link Building
8 SEO Plugins
8.1 All in One SEO Pack
8.2 WordPress SEO by Yoast
9 Conclusion
9.1 Related publications:
Keep your code clean
Search engine spiders don’t read your site’s content visually, like you read a page from a physical book . They navigate and understand your site through code. If your code is flawless (or clean), your job is half done. On the other hand, if your WordPress site is littered with broken links and half-written code, Google’s bots will be furious and will punch you (and your rankings) in the face. There is a simple process known as site validation that helps determine whether your code is clean. Validation also involves using quality assurance tools called validators that check whether your WordPress site complies with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. These validators include:
Unicorn, which is the W3C's unified validator
MarkUp Validator, which is also called HTML Validator, and its main function is to validate web pages in XHTML, SVG, MathML and HTML formats.
In addition, there is a Link Checker that will help you nail down all the broken links ;
And CSS Validator, which checks your CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
W3C also has a Log Validator, which is a combination of MarkUp Validator, Link Checker, and CSS Validator. They also have a MobileOk Checker for your mobile site. All you need is your URL ( domain name ), and you will get a full report in a few minutes. If you decide to use Log Validator, you will have to download it. I always thought that ranking well in Google was something I could hack out of my sheets, but a quick check with these tools revealed a lot of problems in my code. I am still fixing them, so don’t waste time, get to it now.
Content is king
This should have been the first place, but I didn’t want to sound too cliché. You’ve probably heard the phrase “content is king” many times and maybe even vowed to kill the next person who uses it, but what do you know, content really is king. As we mentioned a few lines ago, search engines don’t “see” your WordPress site the way you do, spiders can only crawl or “read” your site. They look at your code, but more importantly, they read your content. Search engines like Google have special scripts , aka robots , called algorithms that read the content of your site to give you the ranking they want . These spiders collect all the information they need from your words, your web content, and the material on your WordPress site that tells, educates, explains, informs, and shares. Every word counts, so make sure you have quality web content and you’ll rank well.
Optimize for Search Engines, Write for Humans
How would you search for your favorite coffee brand online?
How do you find your favorite pair of Nikes?
Write your web content with the searcher in mind, who is also your customer. How do they find information online? It is not enough to have a great product; people need to find your product. When writing web content, consider the keywords/phrases that your target audience will use to find information. Highlight these keywords in your web content. Don’t overdo it, aim for ten (10) keywords per 500 words, which is the standard recommended by Google. So if you sell Cabernet wine, don’t just say “Cabernet wine,” say something more specific, something that a customer ready to buy would use, such as “a dry Cabernet Sauvignon wine from France” or something like that. Of course, you need to have that particular type of wine in your inventory.
]
Content always comes first
Search engine spiders don’t spend as much time on your site as you might think or even want. For the most part, these spiders just crawl through your site, scraping your content, ignoring your CSS and your superhuman HTML styling abilities. Don’t be discouraged, though, there are some things you can do about it. For starters, you can choose a good WordPress theme that places content near the top of the page, while keeping sidebars and footers at the bottom. This is because most search engines won’t crawl past the first third of the page. There are simply too many pages on the web to index, and one third of the page is enough to get an idea of what a site is about.
WordPress was born ready for SEO , but after using several different themes or editing the code to give it a personal touch, you may break some of the features that make WordPress a search engine darling . These features that guide search engines around your WordPress site include permalinks , pings, and blog crawling. These features guide search spiders around your categories, pages, and posts to gather the data they need to identify and rank your site. Three questions of the hour:
How to keep your site friendly to the Googles of this world?
How do you ensure that you continue to rank #1 for your main keywords ?
How to move up one, two saudi arabia b2b leads
or more steps in search engine rankings ?
Here's how.
Contents hide
1 Keep your code clean
2 Content is king
3 Optimize for Search Engines, Write for Humans
4 Content always comes first
5 Use keywords in titles and links
6 Image SEO
7 Link Building
8 SEO Plugins
8.1 All in One SEO Pack
8.2 WordPress SEO by Yoast
9 Conclusion
9.1 Related publications:
Keep your code clean
Search engine spiders don’t read your site’s content visually, like you read a page from a physical book . They navigate and understand your site through code. If your code is flawless (or clean), your job is half done. On the other hand, if your WordPress site is littered with broken links and half-written code, Google’s bots will be furious and will punch you (and your rankings) in the face. There is a simple process known as site validation that helps determine whether your code is clean. Validation also involves using quality assurance tools called validators that check whether your WordPress site complies with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C. These validators include:
Unicorn, which is the W3C's unified validator
MarkUp Validator, which is also called HTML Validator, and its main function is to validate web pages in XHTML, SVG, MathML and HTML formats.
In addition, there is a Link Checker that will help you nail down all the broken links ;
And CSS Validator, which checks your CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
W3C also has a Log Validator, which is a combination of MarkUp Validator, Link Checker, and CSS Validator. They also have a MobileOk Checker for your mobile site. All you need is your URL ( domain name ), and you will get a full report in a few minutes. If you decide to use Log Validator, you will have to download it. I always thought that ranking well in Google was something I could hack out of my sheets, but a quick check with these tools revealed a lot of problems in my code. I am still fixing them, so don’t waste time, get to it now.
Content is king
This should have been the first place, but I didn’t want to sound too cliché. You’ve probably heard the phrase “content is king” many times and maybe even vowed to kill the next person who uses it, but what do you know, content really is king. As we mentioned a few lines ago, search engines don’t “see” your WordPress site the way you do, spiders can only crawl or “read” your site. They look at your code, but more importantly, they read your content. Search engines like Google have special scripts , aka robots , called algorithms that read the content of your site to give you the ranking they want . These spiders collect all the information they need from your words, your web content, and the material on your WordPress site that tells, educates, explains, informs, and shares. Every word counts, so make sure you have quality web content and you’ll rank well.
Optimize for Search Engines, Write for Humans
How would you search for your favorite coffee brand online?
How do you find your favorite pair of Nikes?
Write your web content with the searcher in mind, who is also your customer. How do they find information online? It is not enough to have a great product; people need to find your product. When writing web content, consider the keywords/phrases that your target audience will use to find information. Highlight these keywords in your web content. Don’t overdo it, aim for ten (10) keywords per 500 words, which is the standard recommended by Google. So if you sell Cabernet wine, don’t just say “Cabernet wine,” say something more specific, something that a customer ready to buy would use, such as “a dry Cabernet Sauvignon wine from France” or something like that. Of course, you need to have that particular type of wine in your inventory.
]
Content always comes first
Search engine spiders don’t spend as much time on your site as you might think or even want. For the most part, these spiders just crawl through your site, scraping your content, ignoring your CSS and your superhuman HTML styling abilities. Don’t be discouraged, though, there are some things you can do about it. For starters, you can choose a good WordPress theme that places content near the top of the page, while keeping sidebars and footers at the bottom. This is because most search engines won’t crawl past the first third of the page. There are simply too many pages on the web to index, and one third of the page is enough to get an idea of what a site is about.