This year Google has constantly been pushing rollouts every month, mostly unannounced.
Reports say that many some websites faced 20%-40% drops in traffic after these rollouts. Despite of these rollouts, some people have experienced increase in keyword rankings and indexed sites which previously have been penalized.
Google is seen to change, modify and include SEO rules this time. In this post we will discuss some of the old/new SEO rules for your WordPress site which will help it to stay clear of further penalties and boost ranking.
Setup Friendly Permalinks:
By default, WordPress creates weird permalinks (URL structure) which looks very untidy. The default structure contains day and name of the post in the URL.
It looks like
http://website.com/2017/03/03/my-first-post/
Google likes SEO friendly URL’s, URL which contain title or keywords in the post (not too long, 50-60 Characters).
So to make change to your URL’s, go to Settings>Permalinks, and change common settings to Post Name and hit Save Changes.
After saving changes, url will look like this
http://website.com/my-first-post/
If you are changing the permalink structure on an older site, make sure to 301 redirect all previous URLs to the new permalink. It can be done by editing the .htaccess file or using a plugin such as Change Permalink Helper.
Header Tags Hierarchy:
Google bot checks header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc) to determine relevancy of your site content. General best practice is to have a single H1 tag per page or post and then multiple H2, H3, etc tags underneath that. Assume it as Hierarchy of Importance. H1 being most important(title of page/post) and should contain focus keyword. Additional headers(H2, H3) could also include your keyword or long-tail variations of your keyword. Headers are used to split up your content, which makes it easier for visitors to read.
Utilize Social Signals:
Social signals have potential to boost up rankings of your site. Social signals such as Tweets, shades, upvotes on social media can significantly contribute to your posts to rank up.
However it can temporarily affect rankings in serp. As soon as trend settles down, rank tend to fluctuate and post settles down to where it actually rank long term. Good thing is that those social interactions will still be counted as votes for you.
In a WordPress website, wordpress social media plugin helps your visitors to share your content on their social media profiles.
More the content gets shared on social media, more be the number of social votes for your content.
Keep these WordPress factors checked and stay prepared to rank good in 2017.
