SEO optimization of WordPress: how to come out on top in Google with a good SEO

SEO optimization refers to a variety of measures and strategies that are taken to rank a site on the first page or ideally in the first place in Google search results Many people automatically accept that this is something valuable and important. This is indeed the case, but with some key elements.

The benefits of having the site first in the search results are obvious. More people will visit your site, ie. you will have more traffic. It is assumed that more traffic will lead to more orders, sales, revenue, customers, business, etc. depending on the type of site and your field of activity. Whether this will really be the case, however, will depend on the site itself.

It should also be borne in mind that the vast majority of users do not bother to view search results after the first page. This means that ranking outside the first page is irrelevant. Just under 5% of Internet users click on the second page of Google search results.

Where exactly on the first page is our site is also very important. There is a lot of research on the subject that show that 30-40% of users click on the first search result. Then the values plummet: about 15% for second place, about 10% for third place, and so on.

What is Google's interest?

Google has a market value of billions of dollars on the stock market. The main part of the company's business is the sale of advertising - the ads you see above your search results. Every time you click on one of these ads, the respective advertiser pays Google a few pennies, and sometimes even a few levs. Given the huge number of users around the world, it is clear that the company generates very high revenues. The more often and more people use the leading search engine, the more revenue will be generated. That's why Google strives to offer the best search results. Imagine the opposite situation: Google gives bad search results, people stop using the search engine and accordingly stop clicking on the ads. In the most extreme scenario, Google will go bankrupt.

How the search algorithm works

People at Google are proud of their search engine, claiming that the search algorithm takes into account more than 200 factors when ranking a site in search results. The algorithm itself is kept strictly secret. The reason is to prevent bad or "spam" sites from ranking high. The aim is to rank first useful websites that provide adequate answers to user searches.

However, a large circle of SEO experts are constantly doing their own research and experimentation. Thus, the main factors for high ranking are known.

At the same time, the search engine is a complex algorithm that often works very well, but sometimes it doesn't. This way, good sites can stay behind and have no visitors, and sites with low-quality materials and texts can move up in search results.

On the other hand, a certain circle of SEO experts are constantly inventing new techniques to climb low-quality sites high in search results. Google, on the other hand, is constantly improving its algorithm to reduce and eliminate these workarounds. In the last year, this has been particularly dramatic as there has been a lot of confusion in search results.

Patience!

From the moment you build your site, it will take a few weeks for it to appear in Google search results and its position to be established in one place. For example, today it may be on the third page, tomorrow on the seventh and in a week it may be on the second.

Google has a bot program that crawls all sites on the Internet, ie. your site will be visited by the google bot at a certain time interval. For sites that update frequently, this can be 1-2 days or hours or even minutes. For example, news sites are constantly updated. For sites where new texts rarely appear, this frequency can be significantly higher and take up to a week or two. This means that when you make changes to your site, they will not be registered by Google immediately. You will have to wait until you notice their effect.

Text

The Google robot eventually works mainly with text and to some extent with images. Your site must have enough items text to rank in good positions. You often see sites that have a lot of photos and almost no text. It is difficult to expect good detection of the site in such cases. Therefore, describe in detail in the form of a text your company and what exactly it does. The more texts, the better. Remember, however, that the text is meaningful and informative for the people - your potential customers. Otherwise, they will easily find your site, but will not linger on it to buy or call you.

IMPORTANT: Do not use ready-made, copied 1: 1 text from other sites! Even if we put ethical issues aside: Google detects such duplicates and penalizes sites that use stolen text. If you have to use foreign texts, make sure to interpret, edit and expand them, ie. to give them individuality and so in the end to make your own work.

Images

Images are also recognized by Google. Put images in your articles! It is good to use your own pictures, but there is no problem to take images from the Internet (as long as they are free). Rename the file according to the topic you are writing about. Set the "Alt Text" field when uploading the image also according to what the article is about.

Yoast plugin

Be sure to install the Yoast SEO plugin. With its help you will be able to make some very important SEO settings. Pay special attention to the settings of the home page in the plugin and respectively to the general settings of WordPress ("title" and "short description"

Sitemap in the Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is a free service that informs you about the status of your sites. Register and add your site to your account. You will then be able to upload your sitemap. This is a kind of map of your site. If you have installed the SEO plugin above, it has already created it.

Social networks

Among other things, Google monitors social networks. So, create an Instagram account as well as Facebook. Share them with your friends. It's nice to also have a YouTube channel and upload a video. Don't forget to put links in your accounts in these places.

Bonus 1: Optimize the loading speed of WordPress.

One of the criteria that Google ranks sites is how fast your site loads. Very slow loading sites are "punished" with low positions. Separately, there are studies that show the following: the faster the site loads, the longer people stay on the site. In online stores, a connection has been established between the turnover of the store and the loading speed of the site. In WordPress, a number of optimizations can be made to significantly speed up the loading speed

Bonus 2: Link building

The most difficult criteria by which Google ranks sites is the number andLink Building to them. Each link is a kind of "vote of confidence" for your site. Until years ago, this was abused a lot - low-quality meaningless sites full of ads ranked high. The reason was that a huge number of artificial links were created for them. Google has changed its algorithm to cut off most of these abuses.

NOTE: You have to act very carefully. If you don't know what you're doing, you're likely to seriously damage your site in terms of its ranking in Google search results.

The most sensible approach is to establish personal contacts with site owners in your field. This way, they will be happy to help both you and your readers by creating links to your site. This is especially true if you provide valuable materials to your site.