Ever heard of search engine optimization? And how well do you receive traffic from Google search engine? This discussion is going to share tips with you to improve WordPress website visibility on Google search.
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How to Improve WordPress Website visibility on Google Search
Just like Google search engine, there are other many other popular ones too like Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex. You might want to check my previous guide on Search Engine Optimization for WordPress Blogs to help you top your SEO game.
However, if you have started SEO but willing to improve your website visibility on Google and other search engines, kindly follow the steps below.
Steps to Improve WordPress Website Visibility on Google Search
Add the Website As A Property
Having an SEO plugin on your WordPress website is not enough to improve your WordPress Website visibility on Google. In fact, you may have an SEO plugin on your blog and still receive no traffic at all. However, you may want to hire an SEO specialist to do this for you.
For a website to start receiving organic traffic from Google, the website needs to be recognized. As well, before a website could be recognized by Google, it has to be added as a property on Google search console. However, adding your website as a property on Google Webmasters is quite easy. All you have to do is to visit the Google Webmasters page and add a new property.
Further, select Website and add the URL with HTTP or HTTPS version as you want it to be seen on Google search results. If your website, does not have a valid SSL certificate, it is advisable to stick to HTTP. After entering the URL of the website you are adding as property, then submit and proceed to the next step.
Verify the Website Added as the Owner
You don’t just add websites as properties on Google webmasters, you also need to get them verified as the real owner of the website.
After submitting the URL of the website, you are to select one of the available methods of verifications. Most of the times, I consider using alternate tags. Immediately selecting this option, you will be provided with an HTML tag and all that is required is just to copy and paste on the <head> part of your website.
This option can be easily implemented from the WordPress backend if you understand your way around HTML and CSS codes. You only need to edit the header.php file from the theme editor page under Appearance and add the code you’ve copied. Don’t forget to save the page after editing.
However, if you don’t really understand much of these codes and you have plugins like Yoast SEO installed on your WordPress Website, you can easily add the code to the Google drop-in box and save.
Simply click on the SEO tab and then, webmaster tools as shown in the screenshot below.
After this, click on verify from the Google search console. If you have followed the steps well, your website should have been verified at this time.
Adding a website to other popular search engines like Bing follows almost the same process.
Create A Website Sitemap
Just as you already know that a good map will help you locate a place even if it’s your first time visiting. The same way, website sitemap helps Google and other search engines to locate your websites and its content. It is highly essential to submit a website sitemap for Google to easily crawl your webpages and render in search results.
Although, not submitting a sitemap doesn’t mean a website will not be crawled by Google crawlers. It only makes the crawling process faster and content delivery easier. Creating a website sitemap for your WordPress website is quite easier with a plugin like Yoast Premium Plugin if you have it already installed. If otherwise, go to Plugins >> Add new and search for Yoast SEO. Now install and activate.
To create a sitemap, click on open configuration wizard as highlighted in the screenshot below. Also, continue to follow the steps by clicking the next button. Continue with the steps until you have the finish button.
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- How to Add Table of Contents on WordPress Post and Page
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- 5 Best SEO Tips for New Blogs
Add Sitemap URL to Search Console
If you have followed the previous step properly, then you must have created your sitemap successfully. Now, the next thing to do is submit the sitemap.
How to Submit A Sitemap on Google Search Console?
From your Google webmasters console, click on Sitemaps, you will be required to provide the sitemap URL. Your website URL is automatically provided, all you need to do is add “sitemap_index.xml” without apostrophes as a suffix to it.
The sitemap submission page looks exactly as shown below.
After entering the suffix, remember to save and refresh for Google to start reading the sitemap. Within minutes, you will start seeing counts of the number of posts, images, categories, and authors Google can see from your website sitemap.
Add Meta Tags to Post Head
If your website has existing articles on it and you have not been adding meta tags to your previous post, then you need to edit every of your post you want to feature on Google search results. This is very important for your contents to be visible and be found by Google crawlers.
Even though Google search algorithm is ever-changing, the use of meta tags in articles has continued to play a vital role in featuring on Google search results. As big and tedious as you might think the term is, it is pretty easy to implement with an SEO plugin like Yoast Premium.
If you have it installed on your website, a set-up box is provided by Yoast under the editor for every post to provide the meta tags for your articles. Other things that you can easily set-up include SEO title and meta description.
Submit New URLs for Crawling
Since you have successfully submitted your sitemap to Google Webmasters, all new posts on your website are supposed to be crawled and discovered by Google automatically.
Although, sometimes, the process can be slow. But, if you want a faster process of crawling, then you can consider submitting your new URLs manually for crawling.
To do this, you need to click on “URL inspection” and enter the URL. If the URL is yet to be found, then proceed and click on submit for crawling. Submitting the same URL twice or more does not make the process faster than it is supposed.
Rinse and Repeat for Every New Article
To get a result you want, you don’t just do this for some time and stop later. You need consistency to get an amazing result. I understand this can be time-consuming and hard at the beginning, but, it really worth it in the end.
Also, See:
- 5 Best Ways to Learn Internet Marketing
- 6 Reasons Why You Should Consider WordPress for your Website Design
- How Website Development Companies find Projects
Here is the end of this post on how to improve WordPress website visibility on Google search. If you have found it helpful, kindly leave your comment below. Finally, don’t forget to share this post with friends, sharing is caring!
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