Best WordPress SEO Tips
WordPress Search Engine Optimization or SEO is all about getting your site to rank highly in search engine results.
WordPress.org: A dedicated WordPress section on Official WordPress website. The website is not frequently updated but it’s worth mentioning. Awwwards: Awwwards are the Website Awards that recognize and promote the talent and effort of the best developers, designers and web agencies in the world. It has a dedicated section on Best Handpicked. The Best WordPress Sites. One factor that makes a Wordress site referred to as the “Best WordPress Sites Ever” is the use of themes. Themes are very important, with the proper selection of themes, you can create the best WordPress site. A site that has nice, neat.
To be able to blog successfully and create WordPress sites that perform well in search engine results you need to ensure that your site is optimized for specific keywords or phrases. For example if your site is about dog baskets you need to design your site so that when a user types terms like “dog baskets” into search engines like Google, your site appears as one of the first results.
You need to do more than just producing great creative writing on your favorite subjects to rank well in search engine results.
You need to use a range of different tactics for search engine optimization to improve your site’s performance. Almost everything in your blog can be optimized to increase its performance and visibility in search engines.
SEO Use of Tags
By using tags, you are able to increase ranking of blog posts for particular keywords. Through this, both search engines and humans will be able to easily find useful information in your blog.
Every time when writing a post, add tags. These can be accessed through the field named “Post Tags”. Use a comma to separate each tag. Don’t be too general. Use specific phrases and words that you are targeting. It is wiser to choose a few (2-4), keyword rich tags per post. If you use too many tags on an individual post you end up with too many terms that have little or no SEO value.
Use customized permalinks
A permalink defines the permanent URL in a WordPress blog entry. You can change the default permalink structure such that it includes keywords in the titles of your posts. To be able to do this, go to “Settings” and then “Permalinks”. Click on “Custom Structure” then enter “/%postname%/”.
It is often advised by the official that you should open the structure of the permalink with a structure tag that is numeric. For instance, write “%year%” for the year. This will help WordPress to distinguish between static pages and posts more easily. For those who want to include the date, the structure of the permalink will look like http://blogname/%year%/%postname%.
This is a matter of choice, but I find that my posts without a date rank better than those with so I would advise using the /%postname%/ permalink structure.
Sitemaps for SEO
An XML sitemap contains a list of pages contained in a site. Sitemaps help search engines to crawl your site better. It will then be able to find posts that it could not have otherwise found. Through a sitemap, the search engines can also be alerted whenever you put new content on the blog.
Sitemaps Plug-ins
WordPress Plug-ins like Google XML Sitemaps are available for free and make the Sitemap creation automatic. Download Google XML Sitemaps a great plug-in with all the features you need to automatically create your WordPress sitemap and improve your SEO. To upload this plugin to your blog, use the “Plugins” section in your Dashboard. Carefully follow the instructions in the plug-in so as to build your Sitemap.
Keyword density
Make the article sound natural and not “spammy” by writing without worrying much about the keyword density. Too high a keyword density is unnatural so aim to have a keyword density that reads naturally and not as if someone has tried to stuff as many keywords on the page as possible. Keyword stuffing used to work in the past, but not anymore and your site could be penalised by the search engines if your content contains too many keywords.
Optimize Posts
Just as standard SEO techniques will work for HTML based websites, so will they work for WordPress sites and blogs. You can optimize your posts through targeting keywords in crucial places of the blog entries.
Important areas to put the keywords include the title of the post, headings or subtitles in the post and also the anchor text of links. Make sure that your keywords are relevant to the blog topic.
Internal links
Link internally across your site. Blog posts in WordPress should not be left standing alone. Link them to other categories, tags or relevant posts within every post. Use the keywords as anchor texts. Internal links will help people to explore your site more. It will also help your site’s SEO.
Regards
David Francis
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Building a WordPress website from scratch isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Nor is overhauling an existing site. To make the process a little easier and give you some inspiration, we’ve pulled together 10 great sample WordPress sites to help you see what WordPress can do.
And to make things even easier, we also dug into the code to find exactly which theme each of these sample WordPress sites is using when applicable (some of these use custom coded themes).Ready to get inspired? Let’s dive in.
Ten great sample WordPress sites to get you inspired
1. Academy Self Defense
Academy Self Defense is a website dedicated to helping both men and women acquire self defense awareness and buy different self defense, fitness and fighting trainings.
Here’s what we like:
- Gives readers exact schedule, prices and details about courses.
- Big, easy-to-read text makes scanning the pages easy. I recommend at least 16px for body text and 22px for heading text!
- Showcases user-generated photos of the trainings to entice website visitors to buy a package. User-generated content (UGC) is a key to increased conversions!
Theme used:Neve
Price: Free
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
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2. Deus Performance
Deus Performance was created by two like-minded personal trainers (Ryan and Chris) to help others become the healthiest versions of themselves.
Here’s what we like:
- Personal stories and awesome client testimonials, including customer videos. Again, UGC plays a big role in converting customers!
- They show pictures of themselves on their homepage. By showing the people behind a brand, you build trust with your visitors.
- Their landing pages have multiple call to action buttons, show before and after photos of their clients, and prominently display their contact information for anyone who has questions before they buy.
Theme used:Hestia
Price: Free
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
3. Ceremony Coffee Roasters
Ceremony Coffee Roasters is a sleek, simple, modern WordPress website that sells coffee products, both wholesale and subscription.
Here’s what we like:
- They’re not afraid of white space. They have a very minimalistic design with bold, colorful images as the focal points. It almost reminds me of Apple.
- In between pages loading, they have little quotes pop up on screen like “Coffee should be something special.” A nice touch!
- They have very high-quality product images.
Theme used: Custom theme
4. Jacob McMillen
Jacob McMillen is a site about copywriting and content marketing. He gets clients through a well-designed WordPress website and form fields.
Here’s what we like:
- He uses his own copywriting abilities to sell his services on the site.
- Jacob displays case studies and real results from past clients, increasing his conversion rates.
- The site is consistent in design and color, and has a nice layer of minimalism to it.
Theme used: Divi
Price: $89 per year
5. Awesome Motive
Awesome Motive is the parent company behind loads of huge brands like WPBeginner and OptinMonster.
Here’s what we like:
- A cool pixel animation on the homepage of a small business growing through WordPress, email, and a graph (analytics?).
- A very clear value proposition: “Helping small businesses grow & compete with the big guys”.
- They show off how their products were featured in huge, trusted publications like Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur.
Theme used: Custom theme
6. The Cool Club
As far as minimal design goes, The Cool Club is one of the best samples WordPress sites we could find! It features beautifully designed card games and wall art. They draw from pop culture, such as Star Wars and deceased celebrities. It’s also an especially neat example because it’s using WordPress for the backend, with lots of JavaScript on top (kind of like TechCrunch)
Here’s what we like:
- Their design is very modern and minimalistic, with clean, organized formatting.
- They feature their best sellers on their homepage, and their shop page is easy to navigate using their clear navbar.
- They build trust with their customers by displaying “Secure Payment” and “Trust” badges.
Theme used: Custom theme
7. Amazonia Font
Amazonia Font was built to show off (and sell) the owner’s custom font library.
Here’s what we like:
- It’s an interactive site! You can navigate the fonts using the ⬅ and ➡ keys or by typing a letter in to see what it would look like in their font.
- The design is all on one page – there is no scrolling.
- The mobile version of the site works just as well as the desktop version – maybe even better!
Theme used: Custom theme
8. The Obama Foundation
Of all the sample WordPress sites on this list, this is the one with the brand you’re most likely to have heard of! The Obama Foundation is a Chicago-based nonprofit that oversees the Barack Obama Presidential Center and operates a scholarship.
Here’s what we like:
- Uses large, easy to read fonts like Maintree and Gotham SSM.
- It has a collapsed navigation menu on the left, which flies in when a user takes mouse over it.
- The site boasts a clean, simple, easy-to-navigate design.
Theme used: Custom theme
9. Recheckit
Recheckit is a website that works with eCommerce store owners to help come up with smart solutions that match their concept, product or service.
Here’s what we like:
- They highlight the pain point, share their approach to the problem, then share the results they’ve gotten for their customers right on the homepage.
- Their case studies are highlighted on the home page, which has been shown to build trust and increase conversions.
- They offer a flexible price model. You’re able to choose from fixed price, price-per-order, or a combination of the two! This strategy has been shown to increase conversions of the middle offer.
Theme used:Hestia
Price: Free
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
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10. Smart Chameleon
Smart Chameleon is a digital agency that creates “complex digital solutions” for their clients. In addition to the base theme that Smart Chameleon uses, they also use the Elementor page builder for most of the design work, and this is one of the best sample WordPress sites you’ll find using Elementor (that’s why it ranked #1 in the monthly Elementor showcase post!).
Here’s what we like:
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- It has a stylish design without sacrificing any functionality.
- The box around the Start A Project button does a great job of highlighting the primary CTA.
- The portfolio section includes a neat Flip Card approach.
Theme Used:Astra
Cost: Free, or $59 for Pro
Rating: 5/5 stars
And there you have it! That wraps up ten of our favorite sample WordPress sites. And if you’re looking for even more inspiration, as well as to see how a website builder stacks up, check out ten great Wix examples, as well.
Do you know any other great sample WordPress sites? Share them in the comments so everyone can check them out!