WordPress is one of the most widely used platforms but the least mastered, I guess that goes hand-in-hand. The more people use it, the more problems. Anyway, if you’re using WordPress you might struggle at first but it becomes easy to build a website after a while.
WordPress comes with a variety of cool themes, giving you the ability to make a professional-looking blog all the way to a product-based website.
You also have an open-source market for all the plugins you need. That theme you downloaded doesn’t have a social media bar, no problem; just add a plugin to make it so!
But, can you rely on WordPress and all its tools and plugins to give you quality SEO?
Well, yes and no. You do have some pretty neat tools like Yoast and SEMRUSH. However, there are also some other elements you want to consider for local business SEO for WordPress.
Tips for Local WordPress SEO
Choosing Your WordPress Theme
Is your business a bakery, a photography studio, or a simple health and diet blog?
When you search for a theme don’t just think aesthetic, think about the layout and how it’ll serve your customers. That blog theme you chose might look great but if it doesn’t show the price of your product, you’re in deep trouble.
SEO WordPress Plugins
Yoast is an all-in-one SEO plugin that allows you to enter meta tags and descriptions. The plugin will also analyze your words to display proper keyword density and readability.
EWWW Image Optimizer is a great way to gain some speed on your site. This little plugin goes through your website and automatically optimizes your images for faster load speed.
WP Super Cache is a plugin that generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress site. After an HTML file is generated, your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the heavier expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
Google Sitelink Search Box
It should be noted that this is only good for websites that have a lot of pages, making a search box necessary.
People searching will usually use navigational searches for a product or a brand name. After that, they do another search on the company’s website. Using site links search box markup in your content lets the user perform the second search without leaving the original search results, making the experience easier for the user.
Structured Snippets
You might be asking yourself, “what’s a structured snippet?” They’re simply extensions that highlight specific aspects of your service or product or easier display directly on Google search results. They display under your text ad on search. As a fun example, type “Distance from the Earth to the moon” in Google and see what displays first. You’ll see a snippet that displays 238,900 miles in large bold letters.
SEO Content
In WordPress, Yoast will get you started but you must create relevant content that speaks to your audience in an engaging tone. Featuring keywords in your H tags and having synonyms based around your topic (supporting keywords that provide an in-depth understanding of your topic) will help you rank your WordPress site. For example, if you’re reviewing a movie, you would want to include who the director was, actors, dates, etc. These terms help Google find the exact topic of your content.
Local business SEO with WordPress is a simple matter of learning the platform. Testing on other sites and learning these tools will help you develop a site that’s SEO and user-friendly.
