Search engine optimization or SEO is a big part of creating and maintaining a strong web presence. The majority of today’s internet traffic and new visitors come from search engines. Not implementing the right SEO strategy would be a mistake.

seo tips boost wordpress site performance

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SEO is also something that works best when done organically. Older tricks such as keyword stuffing and spamming your site with keyword-heavy content no longer works. In fact, this type of tactic will only get your site penalised. If you are serious about boosting your site’s SEO performance, here are the tips you should try.

Cover the Basics

Many site owners and online businesses make the mistake of implementing advanced SEO strategies without covering the essentials first. You can’t expect your site to have good SEO performance and search engine rankings without some basic elements.

For starters, install a valid SSL certificate and switch to HTTPS. Search engines value secure sites more than unsecured ones, so you will get a substantial boost in SEO performance with the implementation of SSL. You should also be consistent with the main URL you use across the site. Decide whether you want to use www and be consistent about it.

Internal navigation and a clear XML sitemap are the next things to tackle. Your site navigation needs to be consistent across the board. This isn’t just good practice for SEO; it is a must for maintaining a consistent user experience. Don’t forget to use the preferred URL (HTTPS and with or without www) when linking to internal pages.

One last detail a lot of site owners often neglect is a trailing slash. It is such a minute thing that you may consider it unimportant. Unfortunately, this too can influence your site’s SEO performance.

Go Local

Local SEO is a hot topic in internet marketing these days, but you don’t have to go local to be successful. It is the concept behind local SEO that’s actually interesting. Investing more time into fine-tuning the keywords you target and the audience segments you want to reach can greatly boost your return on investment as far as SEO goes.

The same approach can be implemented in other parts of your internet marketing too. When trying to reach customers in Dubai, for example, you can actually benefit so much from the local knowledge and insights you can get from a digital marketing Dubai company. You will be able to target specific audience groups and increase conversion like never before.

Take Advantage of the Best Plugins

One of the things that make WordPress a very flexible platform is the vast number of plugins available to you as a site owner. Some of the notable SEO plugins include WordPress SEO by Yoast and the Google Keyword Planner. The latter actually lets you understand your target audience more by studying keywords and popular searches.

You also have plenty of management tools in your arsenal. Broken Link Checker and LinkPatrol are a couple you should look into if you want to make the task of maintaining your site’s SEO performance more manageable. This, along with the previous tips we covered earlier in this article, will take your WordPress site’s SEO performance to the next level.