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Tag: Technical SEO

  • 14-Step Technical WordPress SEO Framework (Proven Checklist)

    Do you need a technical search engine optimization (SEO) checklist?

    Optimizing your site for search engines can be a challenge if you’re not sure what to look for. Many website owners will ensure basic SEO practices but overlook technical elements.

    In this article, we will show a WordPress technical SEO framework and share a checklist you can use for your business.

    WordPress technical SEO framework checklist

    Why Do You Need a WordPress Technical SEO Framework?

    Technical SEO is a key component of your WordPress SEO strategy. You could be creating the world’s best content, but if search engines can’t find and understand your content, then all your efforts are wasted.

    That’s why it is important to have a WordPress technical SEO framework.

    Our WordPress SEO framework checklist will ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your content. Plus, you can also evaluate other technical aspects of your WordPress website that might be preventing you from achieving higher rankings.

    For example, your website might be taking a long time to load. This would result in poor rankings since the page load time is a ranking factor.

    Similarly, you might have mistakenly added nofollow tags and prevented search engines from crawling and indexing your content.

    How to Evaluate Technical SEO in WordPress

    There are many SEO tools that let you conduct SEO audits and find out if your site is technically optimized. However, not all tools will show details inside your WordPress dashboard.

    The easiest way to evaluate technical SEO for your WordPress site is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It is the best WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.

    It offers a free SEO Analysis tool that you can use to conduct a technical SEO audit. The tool is available in the AIOSEO Lite version, which you can use for free. There are also premium AIOSEO plans that offer more features like schema markups, sitemaps, redirection manager, and more.

    First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

    Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress admin panel. Under the ‘SEO Audit Checklist’, you’ll see an overall score for your website.

    SEO analysis

    Next, you can scroll down to the Advanced SEO and Performance sections.

    Here, the plugin will evaluate the technical SEO aspects of your website based on different parameters and ranking signals. It will then highlight missing elements and critical issues that could stop your site from ranking higher.

    View advanced SEO and performance

    You can use AIOSEO to continuously monitor your site’s technical SEO and fix issues. Similarly, you can also perform a competitor analysis and see what they’re doing differently for their technical SEO optimization.

    That said, let’s look at our WordPress SEO framework checklist that you can use to ensure higher rankings and organic traffic. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section:

    1. Ensure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines

    The first thing you need to check is whether search engines are able to find your WordPress site.

    You can simply enter site:example.com in the search engine and see if your website appears in the search results. Just replace ‘example.com’ with your own domain.

    Perform site search

    If your site isn’t showing up, then you can check the visibility settings in WordPress.

    Go ahead and visit the Settings » Reading page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, scroll down to the Search engine visibility setting and be sure the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is unchecked.

    Search Engine Visibility Setting in WordPress

    This option is usually enabled if your website is under construction or is put in maintenance mode.

    2. Uncover Crawling and Indexing Issues

    If your website is visible to search engines, then it is important to check that your content is crawled and indexed.

    Crawling is the process where Google, Bing, and other search engines discover and understand your website. Indexing is the process where search engines collect and store information about your website.

    A simple way of checking crawling and indexing issues is using webmaster tools. For example, Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that shows your site’s performance on search results, helps uncover bugs, and allows you to submit your site to Google.

    If you haven’t connected to the webmaster tool, then see our guide on how to add a WordPress site to Google Search Console.

    In Google Search Console, you can head to the ‘Pages’ report. Here, you’ll see pages that are indexed and not indexed.

    Page indexing in search console

    Next, you can scroll down to the ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’ report.

    Google Search Console will show you crawling and indexing errors on your website and which pages are affected by them. You can then resolve these issues, so your web pages can appear in Google search results.

    Why pages are not indexed

    Besides that, you can also check indexing and crawling issues for individual URLs.

    Simply enter the page link in the URL inspection tool at the top. Google Search Console will then show you a report on whether the URL is indexed and on Google.

    URL inspection tool

    If it is not, then you’ll see a ‘URL is not on Google’ message. To fix this, you can click the ‘Request Indexing’ button so Google can crawl and index your page.

    3. Make Sure Your Website is Secure with HTTPS

    Another important thing to check from a technical SEO framework standpoint is whether your website is secure or not.

    Google and other search engines will give preference to sites that use HTTPS over those that use HTTP. To secure your site, you will need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection between your website server and the user’s browser.

    You can check this by looking for the padlock sign in your browser’s search bar at the top.

    Look for padlock sign

    Most WordPress hosting companies now offer free SSL with all their plans. You can ask your host to see if they offer that.

    For more details, please see our guide on how to move your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS.

    Broken links are bad for your website’s SEO framework, and it negatively impacts your user experience. These are links that no longer exist and will return a 404 error.

    Since search engine crawlers find different pages on your website by following internal links. A broken link can stop them from discovering new content. As a result, your page might not get indexed in the search results.

    Similarly, if a visitor clicks on a link and is unable to find a page they’re looking for, then they might exit your website.

    The MonsterInsights custom 404 error design

    With All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily find and fix broken links on your WordPress website.

    It offers a powerful redirection manager that helps track 404 errors on your website and lets you set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links.

    404 error logs in AIOSEO

    To learn more, you can follow our detailed guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

    5. Look for Duplicate Versions of Your Site

    It is important that Google and other search engines only index one version of your website.

    Your website can have different versions, but they should all point to one version. For example, you can have a site that has www and non-www version or HTTP and HTTPS version:

    https://www.example.com
https://example.com
http://www.example.com
http://example.com

    Whether you choose a www or non-www version, all the URLs should redirect to the primary WordPress URL. Otherwise, Google will consider each version as a different website.

    This can negatively impact your overall SEO rankings. Search engines won’t know which version to index, and it could cause duplicate content issues.

    You can check the primary URL for your site by going to Settings » General from the WordPress dashboard. Next, look at the web address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.

    Look for primary URL

    With AIOSEO, you can automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, so search engines will know your preference.

    6. Use SEO-Friendly URL Structures

    After setting a primary URL for search engines to index, you can now check the URL structure of your website.

    URL structure plays an important role in your SEO. Having an SEO-friendly URL structure will help Google, Bing, and other search engines easily crawl your pages and understand your content.

    Here’s an example of a bad URL structure:

    https://www.example.com/category.php?id=42012

    Instead, you should be using URLs that describe the content, like:

    https://www.example.com/blog/how-to-start-a-wordpress-website

    You can create SEO-friendly URLs by making sure that they are short and descriptive. Besides that, don’t forget to include a keyword in the permalinks, use hyphens to separate words, keep all the words in lowercase, and don’t use stop words.

    Pro Tip: Don’t include numbers in your URL slugs, either. That way, you can update your content in the future

    7. Ensure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

    The next item in the technical SEO framework checklist is to ensure your WordPress site is mobile responsive.

    With Google now going mobile-first, it will now index your site’s mobile version instead of the desktop version.

    You can check your site’s mobile responsiveness by using the free Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

    Mobile friendly test

    Simply enter your website URL and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

    The tool will then show results for your website. You can see if it is mobile-ready or not.

    See mobile friendly test tool results

    If your site is not mobile-friendly, then you can start by changing to a responsive WordPress theme.

    You can also follow our guide on how to change your WordPress theme without losing any data or traffic.

    8. Check Your Website Speed and Improve Performance

    Your website speed is also a critical part of your WordPress technical SEO framework. Google uses page load speed as a ranking factor and will rank fast-loading sites higher compared to slow-performing websites.

    You can check website load time by running a site speed test. For instance, you can use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin that shows a site speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.

    You’ll first need to install Google Analytics to your WordPress site using MonsterInsights.

    After that, you can head to the Insights » Reports page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, you can go to the ‘Site Speed’ tab. Here, you’ll see an overall score for your website speed for desktop and mobile.

    Site speed report

    The report will also show other metrics that are important for measuring your website speed.

    If you scroll down, then MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals for each metric you should target.

    Recommendations for improving speed

    To improve website load time, you can see our ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

    A quick tip that you can use to improve your website speed is minifying your CSS and JavaScript files.

    The term minified means reducing the size of website files by removing white spaces, lines, and unnecessary characters. When a user visits your website, different files are sent to the user’s browser, which includes CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.

    By reducing the file size, you can significantly improve website speed and performance. There are many WordPress plugins and hosting services that allow you to minify CSS and JavaScript files, like WP Rocket and SiteGround.

    For more details, you can check out our guide on how to minify CSS and JavaScript files in WordPress.

    9. Improve Your Internal Linking Structure and Remove Orphaned Pages

    Internal links play an important role in your website’s technical SEO framework. Search engines reward websites that have a proper internal linking structure without too many orphaned pages.

    AIOSEO has a powerful SEO Link Assistant feature that makes it easy for you to discover link opportunities and even automate the process for you.

    It is the best internal linking plugin for WordPress that crawls the links on your WordPress website and provides a detailed report. You can see the number of internal links, outbound links, and affiliate links for each post and page.

    AIOSEO Link assistant dashboard

    You can see all the link suggestions in one place, and it can even automatically go back and add internal links in your older posts with a single click.

    Find internal link opportunities and orphaned pages

    10. Generate XML Sitemaps and Submit Them to Search Engines

    Another important part of technical SEO framework is making it easier for search engines to find your content. One of the ways you can do that is by creating an XML sitemap.

    It tells search engines about the important pages on your website. This way, search engine bots can crawl your site faster and index your content. While a sitemap won’t boost your rankings, it will improve the overall crawling and indexing process.

    You can create and customize the sitemap using AIOSEO. The plugin will automatically generate a sitemap upon activation. Besides, it also lets you create a video sitemap, a news sitemap, an HTML sitemap, and an RSS sitemap.

    AIOSEO sitemap options

    Once you’ve created a sitemap, you can then submit it to different search engines using their webmaster tools.

    For instance, Google Search Console gives the option to enter the sitemap URL and submit it to the search engine. To learn more, you can see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.

    Submit sitemap to Google

    Similarly, you can also add your site to Bing Webmaster Tool and then submit an XML sitemap to improve crawling and indexing.

    11. Use Schema Markup for Rich Snippets

    The next technical SEO framework item you should check is schema markup. It helps search engines understand your content better and how it will appear on the search results.

    You can use schema markup for recipes, reviews, events, organizations, FAQs, blog posts, product pages, multiple locations for local businesses, and more.

    Search engines can use this information and display rich results. It also helps capture Google featured snippets, which can increase organic clicks and traffic.

    For example, here’s how Google shows recipes, ingredients, ratings, cooking time, and other information for blog posts that use a recipe schema markup.

    Recipe schema markup

    You can easily add a schema markup in WordPress and WooCommerce using AIOSEO.

    The plugin lets you choose the schema type depending on your content, and it takes care of the rest.

    Schema markup settings in AIOSEO

    With AIOSEO, you can also add completely custom schema markups based on your needs using the WordPress custom schema generator feature. This can help you get star ratings, and other rich snippets in Google.

    AIOSEO Custom Schema Generator for WordPress

    12. Optimize Your Robots.txt File for SEO

    Robots.txt is a text file that specifies instructions for search engine bots on how to crawl your website. You can tell which pages to crawl and which pages to skip while crawling.

    Here’s what a robots.txt file would look like for a WordPress site:

    User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /readme.html
Disallow: /refer/
 
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml

    Adding a robots.txt file helps save the crawl quota. A search engine crawler will crawl a certain number of pages during a session. If they don’t finish crawling all the pages on your site, they will resume crawling in the next session.

    This can slow down the indexing of your content, and it will appear in search results after some delay. That’s why optimizing the robots.txt file is an important component of the technical SEO framework.

    You can disallow pages unnecessary pages like the WordPress admin area, theme folder, plugin files, and more. This way, you get to save the crawl quota and allow search engine bots to crawl even more pages.

    On the other hand, you can add sitemaps and other important pages to robots.txt. This way, search engines will crawl and index them as quickly as possible.

    A simple way of optimizing the robots.txt file is by using AIOSEO. You can enable custom robots.txt using the plugin and add rules to allow or disallow search engines to crawl.

    Optimize robots txt file

    To learn more, please see our guide on how to optimize your WordPress robots.txt for SEO.

    13. Make Sure Google Doesn’t Flag Your Site for Malware

    Another important technical SEO checklist item is to ensure your site isn’t flagged by Google for malware or unwanted software.

    If your website is a security risk for users, then Google will show the following warning message:

    Google safe browsing malware warning

    This can be really bad for your WordPress SEO. It will keep people away from visiting your website, and impact your rankings, and overall website traffic.

    To scan for malicious files on your website, you can use a WordPress security scanner. At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. It checks for vulnerabilities like malware, spam injection, malicious code, and helps clean up the website.

    You can also take a look at our guide on how to fix ‘this site ahead contains harmful programs’ error in WordPress, if Google flags your site for malware.

    14. Use Server Side Rendering vs Client Side Rendering

    Another technical SEO best practice is ensuring that your site’s JavaScript renders on the server side and not on the client side.

    Server-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render on the website server. While client-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render in the user’s browser.

    Client-side rendering is bad for your site’s user experience and SEO. All the burden of loading your site quickly falls on the visitor. Plus, search engine bots use JavaScript resources for crawling and indexing your content. This could result in JavaScript content being missed by crawlers and not included in the search engine index.

    With server-side rendering, your website server ensures everything loads quickly. This way, you get a better user experience, faster page load speed, and reduce any risk of content being missed from indexing.

    One way of ensuring that JavaScript is rendering on your site’s server is by running a site speed test. If your website speed is low, then it could be because of this issue. You can also look at crawled pages in Google Search Console and see if Google missed any content while crawling. If it did, then it could be because of JaveScript-related SEO issues.

    That’s it. You’ve made it to the end of the list. You don’t need to go through each and every point in the technical SEO framework at once. Simply go one step at a time and work your way through the list.

    We hope this article helped you learn about WordPress technical SEO framework. You may also want to see our comparison of the best keyword research tools, and our proven tips on how to increase your blog traffic.

    If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

    The post 14-Step Technical WordPress SEO Framework (Proven Checklist) first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • How to speed up your WordPress website: 12 tips to start optimizing website for speed

    We’ve said this time and time again: a fast website is necessary for SEO. In a sea of similarly good (or not-so-good) results, Google will favor fast pages that can deliver a good user experience to searchers. If your goal is to attain higher rankings and drive organic traffic from Google, you need to speed up your WordPress website. In this post, we’ll discuss tips to help you improve your website performance to get that spot in the search results!

    Table of contents

    Fast websites perform better on Google

    Fast websites tend to outperform slow ones on Google because of one good reason – good user experience, and this aligns with Google’s mission. Google wants to deliver the best results and the best experience for their users. Hence, they want to show users web pages that will answer their search queries and provide a good experience. That’s also why page experience is now a ranking factor in Google.

    This makes perfect sense when you put it in context. We’ve all had moments where we click on a link only to hit the back button because it takes so long for the page to load. And when we leave a page (or bounce off a page) like that, we’re way less likely to visit the website again because we know there are better, faster pages to browse. So website performance not only affects user experience but also greatly shapes how visitors judge the quality of your business.

    That’s why speeding up your WordPress website is beneficial in many ways. A fast site makes your users happy, they’ll engage and buy more on your site. Ultimately, that’ll make you happy. Apart from that, It also makes search engines happy because it’s easier for them to crawl and index your site, thus reducing the resources and electricity they need to spend on those processes.

    Don’t I need to focus on Core Web Vitals for SEO?

    Yes, we hear you! It’s true that Core Web Vitals is an important part of the page experience ranking factor, and passing Core Web Vitals is essential for higher rankings. Metrics in Core Web Vitals directly measure your page speed, so improving your Core Web Vital scores may result in higher rankings, provided that you have good content already.

    While metrics in Core Web Vitals measure the performance of a page, they don’t tell the whole story about your website performance. And Core Web Vitals only measure performance on a page level. So on a site level, you may have pages that pass Core Web Vitals and slower ones in the mix.

    By making various improvements to your website performance, you can ensure that your visitors will get the most out of your website regardless of the page they land on. Besides, adopting website optimization best practices also directly benefits your Core Web Vitals and helps to reduce the time spent optimizing pages for speed. 

    This post is about general guidelines and best practices that will help you speed up your WordPress website. But if you specifically care about getting better CWV scores, check out 5 tips to improve your Core Web Vitals. You will also find a few similar pieces of advice in this post.

    How to speed up your WordPress website

    Now, WordPress is a simple platform at a first glance, but it’s quite complex under the hood. There are lots of different moving parts, with lots of databases to pull data from when you need to show a page to a user. And when you add lots of pages, media content and install lots of plugins and widgets, your site performance might start to drop. 

    Fortunately, WordPress is very versatile so there are many things you can do to optimize your performance. Let’s go over some of the tips to help you speed up your site.

    1. Choose a great hosting provider and a good hosting plan

    Let’s start from the top, having a good hosting provider is crucial for ensuring your website performance. That’s because all your files and databases are stored on their server, which will be called upon when a user requests a page.

    We have a dedicated guide on choosing the right host for your WordPress site. Check it out if you want a more comprehensive read. But we’ll mention some important points in this section.

    A good host will have fast and stable servers. Stable means they have good “uptime”, which essentially means their server is always up and running, ensuring that your website is always accessible. On the other hand, a “fast” server refers to the specification of the computers/machine on which your website lives. 

    Good hosting providers also offer scalability to handle traffic spikes. A good host will have the resources to accommodate the increased load and ensure that your website remains up and running. 

    Next to that, customer support quality is another important factor to consider when choosing a host. A good host should provide technical support, which can be invaluable when you encounter any issues with your website. A knowledgeable support team can also help you resolve problems quickly, so you can get back to business as usual.

    Another thing to consider is the server location relative to your users. If the server is fast, but it’s located far away from your users, then they might still experience slow-loading pages.

    If you’re looking for the best fit when it comes to hostings, we’ve vetted some top-notch hosting companies to help you out.

    2. Update your PHP to a newer version

    Updating your PHP to a new version is a simple thing to do that often gets overlooked. PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, is a popular open-source server-side scripting language widely used for creating dynamic and interactive websites. By using PHP, web developers can build robust, feature-rich websites that can dynamically change based on user interactions, database information, and more

    Updating your PHP to the newest version will greatly increase your website performance. You will get:

    • Improved performance, resulting in faster processing time and reduced resource usage.
    • Better memory management, which can reduce the amount of memory needed to run your WordPress site, resulting in faster page load times.
    • Faster request processing, as new versions of PHP are able to process requests more quickly, leading to faster page load times.
    • Some newer versions of PHP also have improved caching capabilities, allowing for faster page load times and reduced server resource usage.

    You can check out endoflife.date to see which PHP version is in development and which version isn’t supported anymore.

    Since it’s a server-side scripting language, many hosting providers offer PHP support as part of their hosting packages. If you’re looking to update your PHP, check with your host to see if they can help you with that.

    It is important to note that updating PHP can cause compatibility issues with your WordPress plugins and themes. A compatibility issue can cause the website to break, so it is important to make a backup before updating and to test the website after updating to make sure everything works as expected.

    3. Update your WordPress version is an easy fix

    Advice as old as time! But it does work so we can’t go without mentioning it. You can gain a nice speed boost just by updating your WordPress website to a newer version. You get the latest performance improvements and lots of other optimizations. What’s not to like about that!

    WordPress 6.1, for instance, got a bunch of performance improvements under the hood, such as better database performance and better handling of media delivery. On the front end, this results in faster load time for both new and returning visitors.

    Additionally, updating to a new WordPress version allows you to run a newer version of PHP, which also gives you all the more performance improvements.

    To be cautious, one piece of advice we have is to test an update on a staging environment before you update your live website. See if the update causes issues, check if there are any plugin conflicts, and make sure everything works as intended. You can check the WordPress.org forum or Twitter to see if the update causes issues for others.

    4. Implement a caching solution

    Caching is an important part of the performance equation. It’s a simple solution that can speed up your WordPress website and make your pages load faster, especially for returning visitors.

    Caching refers to the process of storing frequently accessed data in a temporary storage area. Rather than being fetched from the server each time the data is requested, it can be quickly retrieved from the cache when needed.  

    This helps to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the server and your visitor’s browser, resulting in faster page load times and improved overall website performance. So every time a visitor access a recently-viewed page, the page will be served from the cache instead of having to request all the elements like HTML and images from various databases.

    You can rely on caching plugins to do the work for you. For the most part, they’re quite easy to use. Be careful when installing multiple caching or optimization plugins though. They can get in each other’s way, and slow down your site!

    Some of our recommendations for caching plugins:

    • WP Rocket – Very powerful, and one of the best options to make your site faster. Designed to be simple. No free option.
    • W3 Total Cache – Extremely powerful, and extremely flexible. Designed to be comprehensive. Hundreds of checkboxes and options.
    • NitroPack – Full page caching with some really clever, cutting-edge performance optimization techniques. Tons of impressive bells and whistles, though the pricing model scales with pageviews.
    • WP-Optimize – A good middle ground, with basic full-page caching, and some sophisticated database + media optimization tools.
    • WP Super Cache – A basic solution that offers full page caching, but lacks other/advanced optimization techniques.

    These plugin suggestions are derived from our top WordPress plugin recommendations post. There are a lot of good resources to help you build a better WordPress website on that page, so do check it out!

    5. Use a lightweight theme

    The theme you use greatly impacts how fast your pages load for users. Although WordPress offers a huge selection of themes to play around with, not all themes are created equally.

    Some themes are better coded than others. Themes with inefficient or poorly optimized code can slow down page load times and cause you headaches along the way.

    Some themes are much leaner than others. You might be drawn to themes with lots of bells and whistles, but be careful. Themes with many images, scripts, and other assets can increase the size of a page and make it slower to load. Sometimes, all you need is simplicity!

    For the most part, our advice is to pick a fast and lean theme that’s well-reviewed by the community. They’re your best bet in a sea of choices. Always check the ratings and reviews to see if you’re making the right choice. Even though you can change theme later on, it’s better to just stick with one for a while. That’ll save you troubles that may arise from switching themes.

    Apart from themes, many people like to use a page builder to design websites. It’s a great tool for beginners and experienced WordPress users alike. We have the same advice as with theme, that is to choose a popular and well-reviewed one. Some page builders are much lighter and more optimized for speed than others. Elementor, for instance, has done a bunch of work recently to speed up their builder.

    6. Deactivate and remove unused plugins

    WordPress is a wonderful platform thanks to its plugins and widgets, making it possible to extend a website in many ways. But it can be tempting to install a plugin for every little functionality that you want.

    Although plugins can make your life easier, using too many of them is bad for your performance. Since there are more functionalities to load, they make your page load slower.

    Really take a look at your plugin collection and asses which ones you need and which you don’t. And instead of using a plugin for every small functionality, use more versatile ones that can do multiple things you need.

    For the ones that you don’t need, don’t forget to deactivate and delete them from your site. That’ll remove the additional codes they add to your website. This is an easy fix that may be ignored by some. Besides, unused plugins can cause conflicts with other plugins, themes, and core WordPress functionality. By removing them, you reduce the risk of compatibility issues, which can improve the stability and performance of your site.

    7. Optimize your images: a quick fix to speed up your pages

    We’ve said this many times, heavy images are detrimental to your page speed. Although eye-catching, high-definition images are a joy to look at, they make your pages much heavier. This means there are more things to process and load, resulting in a slower load time. For instance, having a large, unoptimized hero image above the fold will definitely lead to a low LCP score in Core Web Vitals.

    You don’t actually need those high-resolution images. They only need to be sharp enough for everyone to easily make out what’s in them. There’s also a point of diminishing return where higher resolution doesn’t translate to better picture quality. The key is to find a sweet spot between resolution and quality.

    Before uploading images to your website, make sure to compress them to reduce the file size. This is especially important if you’re displaying many images on your website or if you’re running an ecommerce website with lots of product images.

    We recommend Compress JPEG & PNG images or Optimole to compress, optimize and manage your images. Squoosh.app is another great tool that we use to compress the social image of our posts, which is shown when our posts are shared on social media.

    Want to go in-depth into image optimization? Check out our comprehensive image SEO guide!

    8. Optimize your media delivery

    The way you serve media content to end users can greatly impact your page speed, too. It’s crucial that you optimize and make tweaks to how your website delivers media content.

    Lazy-loading is a popular technique that a lot of websites implement. It tells your user’s browser to load images only when they are needed, rather than loading them all at once when a page loads. Luckily WordPress does this natively so you can use that feature right out of the box. In addition, WordPress 6.1 also received a nice media delivery improvement, which is great for websites with lots of images. But even with all these features available, it’s still best to only add images when they are necessary.

    As for videos, they can be useful in driving search traffic to your website. But we strongly advise you not to host videos directly on your server. They are heavy and can take up a lot of your server storage. Self-hosted videos will also make pages load slower, which is not what you want for SEO.

    A better choice is to host videos on a video hosting platform like Youtube or Wistia and embed a link on your page. Next to that, make sure to use a process to show a preview image, and only load the video on interaction.

    We also have a solution for optimizing videos for SEO – our Yoast Video SEO plugin! It adds the necessary structured data to videos on your website so Google can show them in rich snippets. The plugin will also supercharge your videos so they load more efficiently. If videos are an important part of your website and your SEO strategy, you need to use Yoast Video SEO!

    9. Use a content delivery network

    Content delivery networks (CDNs) won’t let you down when it comes to speeding up your WordPress website. It is incredibly important if you serve overseas users or those who live far away from your original web server.

    A CDN is an interconnected network of servers working together to deliver content to your end users. They make copies of your static content like images or HTML files and distribute them on all the servers within the network. So instead of serving images or HTML files directly from your original servers, those files will be sent from the server closets to your users.

    On the left: traffic to your site lands on a single server. On the right, a CDN sends visitors to the server nearest to their location. Image: Wikipedia

    As we explain in our guide to CDNs, the same ‘do your own research’ principles apply here, too. You’ll need to find the best mix of performance, features, and price.

    We’re huge fans of Cloudflare at Yoast (which we use to power all sorts of our own ecosystems), but it may not be the perfect fit for you.

    When you’re choosing a CDN for WordPress, it’s worth making sure that they have a good plugin integration, so that page and resource caches are automatically updated or purged as you write or update your content (like the Cloudflare WordPress plugin).

    10. Use fewer external scripts and optimize your JavasScript

    A note before we go further: this section is a bit more advanced compared to the other advice in this post. It’s best not to tamper with any JavaScript if you’re new to website building, or if you don’t have any development experience. Instead, play it safe and ask an experienced developer to help you out with JavaScript tweaks and optimizations.

    With that said, JavaScript is a wonderful language and allows us to do a lot of things on websites. It makes websites more dynamic and enjoyable for end users to use.

    When you see animations on a website, like when you click a button and something pops up, that’s most likely thanks to JavaScript. For website owners, it allows them to add analytics tools like Google Analytics or Hotjar and do cool things like A/B testing or personalization. 

    But using too much JavaScript and external scripts makes a page load much slower. Loading external scripts can slow down the performance of your website, as the browser has to make additional requests to retrieve the scripts. We often see this on web pages with many external ads, which can be frustrating at times. By minimizing the number of external scripts, you can reduce the amount of data that needs to be loaded and improve page load times.

    Too much JavaScript can also affect your crawl budget. That’s because Google needs to render these files while indexing, which takes up resources. The more resources Google needs to spend on processing those files, the less they have to come back and crawl other pages on your site.

    There are many ways to reduce the amount of JavaScript you use, which greatly depends on your website and the type of scripts. Start by finding out what’s loading. Then you can decide to not load it, or change how it loads to make it load more efficiently by implementing defer or async loading. 

    Avoid loading stuff from external domains, like Google Fonts or resources from CDNs, and load local copies instead. Also, ask yourself if you can get the same result by using a different method than using a script. For example, you can use CSS instead of a script for animation.

    11. Reduce files size

    We mentioned that you can compress your images to reduce their file size. You can do the same with your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, too.

    Although the number of bytes and kilobytes you shaved off these files doesn’t sound like much, they can add up. One way to reduce file size is to reduce the redundant spacing or lines in your code. You can also combine multiple files into a single file, compress it and still serve that file without breaking your site.

    Tampering with codes never sounds like a great idea, especially if you’re not a developer. But thankfully we have plugins to help us out. You can check out:

    • Autoptimize, which has some really clever JavaScript, CSS, and HTML optimization.
    • WP Minify, which also allows you to combine and compress JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files.

    12. Reduce HTTP requests to your server

    Every time a user clicks on a link to visit your website, their browser has to make multiple HTTP requests to your web server asking for various files and data. The server has to process these requests and send back all the necessary files so the browser can render them and show the page to the user.

    Reducing the amount of HTTP requests here basically means reducing the number of files the server has to retrieve and send to your user’s browser. That will help with decreasing the amount of data transferred and decreasing the load on your server, as well as making it easier for the browser to render and construct a page.

    If you’ve already implemented all the tips we mentioned above, then you’re already removing quite a bit of unnecessary HTTP requests. That involves using fewer plugins and scripts, including fewer media files, implementing a caching solution, and using a CDN to serve static content.

    Wrapping up

    Congratulations on making this far into the post! We hope this post will be useful in helping you speed up your WordPress website. We know there’s a lot of information here, so do take some time to process and digest it.

    By implementing the techniques and best practices we suggest, you’ll be on your way to building a fast and snappy website! Don’t forget to document the changes you make and evaluate the impact on your website’s search presence, organic traffic, as well as overall website performance.

    When every millisecond can make the difference between a visitor buying or leaving, there’s always more room for performance optimization. We regularly review the setup and configuration of our hosting, CDN, plugins, and theme – and so should you.

    Got a great recommendation for speeding up WordPress or other site speed tools? Let us know in the comments!

    More resources to help you speed up your WordPress website

    These articles and documentation can provide more information on website speed optimization. Have a read!

    Last but not least, an incredible source of information: Jono’s slide deck on site speed from a talk at SMXL Milan.

    Read more: Why every website needs Yoast SEO »

    The post How to speed up your WordPress website: 12 tips to start optimizing website for speed appeared first on Yoast.

  • Domain names and their impact on SEO

    We often get questions from people asking about the influence of domain names on SEO. Is there any relation at all? Does it help to include keywords like product names in your domain name? Is the influence of domain names different per location? And what’s the use of using more than one domain name for a site? In this article, we’ll answer all these questions and more.

    What’s a domain name?

    Let’s start from the beginning. A domain name is an alias. It’s a convenient way to point people to that specific spot on the internet where you’ve built your website.

    Domain names are generally used to identify one or more IP addresses. For us, our domain name is yoast.com.

    Note that we deliberately included “.com” here, where others might disagree with that. We think the most common uses of the word “domain name” include that top-level domain. 

    On a side note, if you’ve been on the internet for a while now, you may notice that websites back in the day used to have the “www” prefix before the domain name. So for Yoast that would be www.yoast.com. In this case, the domain name is still yoast.com, while www is the subdomain. These days people don’t add the “www” before the domain name anymore. It’s unnecessary, it makes your URL long, and frankly, nobody uses the term “world wide web” anymore.

    Top-level domain (TLD)

    Where “yoast” is obviously our brand, the “.com” bit of our domain name is called TLD (or top-level domain). In the early days of the internet:

    • .com was intended for US companies,
    • .org for non-profit organizations,
    • .edu for schools and universities and
    • .gov for government websites.

    But this is from 1985. Things have changed quite a bit since then. For the Netherlands, we use .nl. But lots of companies are using .com for when the .nl domain name was already taken.

    These days, TLDs like .guru and .pro are available. Automattic bought .blog in 2015. And what about .pizza? But these are not all. You can find all kinds of TLDs now. Many tech startups and SaaS companies are choosing .io as their TLD instead of the more “traditional” ones like .com or .net.

    The list of available TLDs is updated and maintained by the IANA – the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority – which you can find here. We call this kind of TLD generic TLDs.

    Generic TLDs

    For SEO, you probably want to use just one TLD. And, in most cases, it’s best to choose a common option, like .com, .net, .biz, etc.

    If your business is in a very competitive field, it might be a good idea to buy a few more common TLDs. This is to make sure someone else doesn’t use them to build a website with your brand name. It would be frustrating if your website is epicbusiness.com and someone starts epicbusiness.biz, right? But in most cases, it may not be needed. So whether or not this is necessary is up to you.

    Generic TLDs give you the option to be a little more creative with your domain name. Some fun examples of the possibilities: order.pizza, visit.amsterdam, ice.land, or maybe buyher.flowers… If it fits your brand, you could give this a try. But you should keep in mind that not everyone might realize that they’re looking at a domain name. It might be a good idea to mention that you’re talking about a website when you put your domain name on a poster or show it somewhere, so people realize it’s a website they can visit.

    Country code TLDs (ccTLD)

    We’ve already mentioned the .nl TLD. We call these kinds of TLDs country codes or country-specific TLDs.

    Years ago, Tokelau – an island in the Southern Pacific Ocean – started giving away their .tk TLD for free, and thousands of enthusiasts claimed their .tk. It’s like .cc, which you might have heard of, because it was once promoted as the alternative to .com. It’s actually a country-specific TLD belonging to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (although the people of Cypres might disagree)

    Country-specific TLD or subdirectory for sites with multiple languages?

    If your website is available in multiple languages, you might be wondering what the best solution is. Should it be domain.com/uk/ and domain.com/de/ (subdirectories or subfolders) or domain.co.uk and domain.de (which use country-specific TLDs)?

    For SEO, using a subdirectory makes more sense. If you use a subdirectory, all links will go to the same domain. Marketing is easier because you have one main domain. And all the backlinks you get are also attributed to that main domain. If there are language differences per subdirectory, add the hreflang tag to your pages to tell Google about that.

    Note that a subdomain, like the “www” we mentioned, is something totally different than a subdirectory. For instance, we have a dedicated website to store technical information related to our software for developers at developer.yoast.com, which is a subdomain of yoast.com. Google actually considers this to be a different website than yoast.com. Though we’re sure they can connect the dots.

    Does the age of a domain influence SEO?

    The age of a domain – referring to how long your domain already exists – doesn’t matter for SEO as much as it did before. Some may say it doesn’t matter at all. Nowadays, it’s much more about the content, the technical setup, the user experience, and how well your website answers the query people used in Google. You’ll have to be the best result to rank for a query.

    As a matter of fact, John Mueller of Google confirmed way back in 2017 that domain age doesn’t matter:

    Is it that black and white? No, it’s not.

    Domain age as such might not influence ranking. But older domains may have a nice amount of backlinks, pages ranking in the search result pages, etc. And obviously, that might influence ranking.

    Does Exact Match Domain (EMD) give you a ranking advantage?

    Let’s say Buycheaphomes.com is an existing domain name (it probably is). This is an example of an Exact Match Domain name.

    In 2012, Google introduced what we now call the EMD Update. Google changed its algorithm so websites that used domain names like that wouldn’t rank just for the simple fact that the keyword was in the domain name. And yes, that used to be the case, before the update.

    So, after this update, does it still pay off to use a domain name that includes a keyword? For the most part, the answer is no.

    You don’t need a certain keyword in your domain name. You can build a site on a different domain, write content that targets that specific keyword or topic, and still outrank a site with the exact keyword in its domain name.

    But if you managed to build a brand around an EMD, and you still get lots of traffic, keep up the good work. Just make sure your branding is absolutely top-notch.

    Choose a domain name around your branding

    Following the EMD update, branding became even more important. It makes so much more sense to focus on your brand in your domain name as opposed to just putting a keyword in the domain name.

    For instance, you probably know LEGO.com, Amazon.com, or Google.com. It’s all about the brand. It’s something people will remember easily and something that will make you stand out from the crowd and competition. Your brand is here to stay (always look on the positive side of things).

    In fact, Google’s John Mu also suggested picking a domain name that’s more like a brand and that you can build upon:

    Comment from discussion johnmu’s comment from discussion "How would Google rank the following domains: web-design.com, web.design, web-design.net? Assume people google "web design".".

    Make sure your brand is unique and the right domain name is available when starting a new business. This might be the reason to claim more than one generic TLDs or country-specific TLDs – to make sure no one else claims it.

    We mentioned that a (known) brand is usually easier to remember. For the same reason, we’d suggest going with a short domain name or a catchy one so it stays with people. Like Booking.com for instance.

    Read more: 5 tips on branding »

    More than one domain name for the same website?

    Does it pay off to claim multiple domain names and 301 redirect all the domains to the main domain name? In terms of branding: no. In terms of online ranking: probably not.

    The only valid reason we can think of to actively use multiple domain names for the same website, is offline and sometimes online marketing. If you have a specific project or campaign on your website that you’d like to promote separately, a second domain name might come in handy to get traffic straight to the right page on your website.

    “Actively” is the main word in that last paragraph. As mentioned, feel free to register multiple domain names, but make sure not to confuse Google. Besides that, actively using multiple domain names for the same website will diffuse the links to your website. And that isn’t what you want, as mentioned in the subdirectory section as well.

    Domain Authority or Domain Rating, what are they?

    We feel like we should mention and clarify these concepts. You’ve probably known or heard about Domain Authority, Domain Rating, or Authority score. They are metrics developed by popular SEO software providers:

    • Domain Authority: developed by Moz. This is a score that predicts how well your website will rank on the search results pages.
    • Domain Rating: developed by Ahref. This metric shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile.
    • Authority score: developed by Semrush. This metric is used for measuring a domain’s or webpage’s overall quality and SEO performance.

    Essentially, these metrics aim to quantify the quality of a website based on many factors. They all have one thing in common, which is the inclusion of a site’s backlink profile in calculating the score. For the Domain Rating metric by Ahref, the metric is purely link-based.

    Let us clarify that none of these are ranking factors that Google uses. They are metrics specific to the software that uses them. While Google doesn’t use these metrics, you can still use them as a reference point in your SEO strategy. But don’t blindly rely on them as there may be flaws in how these metrics are developed or calculated.

    Keep reading: SEO friendly URLs »

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  • SEO in 2023: Your chance to shine!

    For most sites, SEO in 2023 will probably be similar to the past couple of years: you still need to improve your work but set the bar higher and higher. Competition is getting fiercer, and Google — and your potential customers — are getting better at recognizing true quality. Also, you should keep an eye out for technological advancements like ChatGPT, as they might make for an exciting year. Here, you’ll get a quick overview of SEO in 2023.

    Table of contents

    2022 is over; now what?

    2022 was a weird year. It might have been a somewhat positive year for most of us — although we’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, with a recession looming. The pandemic is still around but has taken a back seat in most places. If we look at our industry, SEO, we see that the online world has made a big jump. A lot of businesses moved online. Many people have shopped online for the first time, and many of them will keep doing that. There’s never been a better time to build an online business.

    With a recession looming, SEO will likely become even more important. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways of reaching an audience — plus, it’s relatively easy to do. You can rely less on external platforms and more on the one that you fully control: your website.

    So, with all these people waiting for your content — how would you use SEO in 2023?

    It’s all about quality and E-A-T

    2023 is all about quality and authority. Improving quality across the board should start with determining what you do. Please look at your products and services and the way you describe these. Have you had any trouble telling what you do? You may need to go back to the drawing board. Your product must be excellent, as there is no use in trying to rank a sub-par product. No one would fall for that. A killer product needs a killer site and a killer plan to get that site noticed.

    Increasingly, Google looks at other signals to determine the value of your offer and yourself. These signals, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (or E-A-T) help it to discern the real from the fake, so to speak. The web is already rife with sub-par content, and the advent of new artificial intelligence content writers might flood it with even more. Quality, originality, authority, trustworthiness, and expertise will be where you will be judged on. And the recent addition of Experience to the E-A-T acronym shows Google is not done with its focus on this ranking factor.

    Google will build out the Helpful Content system that it launched earlier in 2022 to help uncover truly good and original stuff.

    SEO in 2023

    For years, we heard talk about AI taking over the world, and 2023 might be the year that could happen. The launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 was a bombshell for many, and it was followed by a ton of new tools and developments. Plus, all the news surrounding the chat AI helped it reach a vast audience, which will surely help it get into the mainstream. ChatGPT could dramatically reshape how we search for answers, write our content, and much more. Now, it’s still early days, but keep a close eye on it and related technologies.

    There’s a ton of other stuff happening as well. 2023 will also see much more visual and intelligent ways of searching and finding, like the multisearch stuff that Google introduced. Images will play a big part in how people will find you, so be sure to make these as good as possible.

    There will also be a renewed interest in SEO as marketers will get trouble tracking their success on other platforms due to various legal changes, like a possible ban on Google Analytics in Europe. Cookies are also about to die. Even though tracking will continue in different forms, it’s time to invest in SEO before others flock to SEO.

    Take note of these developments to see where search is heading, but for this moment, for most sites, it’s all about improving what you have right now. Site quality is critical. Content quality is vital. So, these SEO trends for 2023 are not hyped-up stuff but subjects we’ve been hammering home for a while. Remember Holistic SEO?

    Improve site quality

    If you’ve been playing this SEO game for a while, you’ve been working on your site for a long time. Over the years, there’s been a lot of talk about all the things you should focus on because that’s what the search engines would be looking at. Experts claim to know many factors that search engines consider to rank a piece of content for a specific term. That’s not possible. While nobody knows precisely what happens behind the scenes of a search engine, you can look back over a more significant period to determine trends. One thing that always keeps popping up?

    Quality.

    To win in SEO in 2023, your site needs to be technically flawless, offer a spectacular user experience and high-quality content, and target the right audience at the right time in their user journey. And, of course, your site’s speed and user experience need to improve. It also means incorporating and improving Schema.org structured data, as structured data remains one of the critical developments for some time.

    Let’s review some of the things you need to focus on in 2023.

    A better Page Experience with good Core Web Vitals

    As part of an effort to get sites to speed up and to provide a great user experience, Google announced the Page Experience algorithm update that rolled out in 2021. This update gives you another reason to put site speed front and center. While the Page Experience update didn’t shake up the SERPs, we expect it to continue to become a stronger signal.

    Site speed has always been critical. If you can’t keep up with your competition now, you’ll soon find yourself having a more challenging time keeping up if you’re not speeding up your site. If one of your competitors becomes a lot faster, you become slower by comparison, even when you’re not becoming slower. Improving loading time is a lot of work, but as it might make you much faster than the competition, it’s an excellent tradeoff.

    Start by finding a better hosting plan — one of the quickest ways to speed up your site! — and optimizing your images with image SEO.

    Enhance the user experience

    Page experience ties in with user experience. Is your site a joy to use? Can you find what you need in an instant? Is the branding recognizable? How do you use images? Improving the user experience is a surefire way to make your — potential — customers happy. Happy customers make happy search engines!

    Untangle your site structure

    Loads of sites were started on a whim and have grown tremendously over time. Sometimes, all those categories, tags, posts, and pages can feel like the roots of trees breaking up a sidewalk. It’s easy to lose control. You might know that keeping your site structure in check is beneficial for your visitors and search engines. Everything should have its proper place, and if something is old, outdated, or deprecated, maybe you should delete it and point it to something relevant.

    This year, you should pay special attention to your site structure. Re-assess your site structure and ask yourself if everything is still where it should be or if improvements need to be made. How’s your cornerstone content strategy? Is your internal linking up to scratch? Are redirects screwing up the flow of your site? The SEO workouts in Yoast SEO Premium can help you get started on this.

    Implement Schema.org structured data

    Structured data with Schema.org makes your content instantly understandable for search engines. Search engines use structured data to connect parts of your page and the world around it. It helps to provide context to your data. Besides making your site easier to understand, adding structured data makes your site eligible for rich results. There are many rich results, from star ratings to image highlights, and search engines continue to expand this. Structured data forms the basis of many developments, like voice search and Google’s ecommerce push.

    Implementing structured data has never been easy, but we’re solving that problem. Yoast SEO automatically outputs a complete graph of structured data, describing your site and content in detail for search engines — and connecting everything. For specific pages, you can describe the content in the Schema tab of Yoast SEO. Also, our structured data content blocks for the WordPress block editor let you automatically add valid structured data by simply picking a block and filling in the content. We now offer blocks for FAQ pages and How-to articles, with more on the way. In addition, we also have an online training course on structured data to help you improve your SEO in 2023.

    The FAQ block in Yoast SEO makes it easy to get rich results for your FAQs

    Mobile still needs your focus

    We’ve talked about mobile for years, but we must remind people to take it seriously. Since Google switched to mobile-first indexing, it judges your site by how it works on mobile, even when most of your traffic is from the desktop. Give your mobile site special care and work on its mobile SEO. You should test whether your site works as well on mobile and desktop. Is the structured data functioning and complete? Do images have relevant alt-texts? Is the content complete and easy to read? Could you make it lightning-fast, easy to use, and valuable?

    In 2022, many people experienced mobile shopping for the first time, and they will come back for more in 2023. If you sell stuff online, be sure to optimize the checkout process of your ecommerce site — make it as short and focused as possible!

    Content quality

    There is a ton of content out there — and a lot of new content is published daily. Why should your content be in the top ten for your chosen focus keyphrases? Is it perfect enough to beat the competition? Are you publishing original, all-encompassing content that answers the questions your audience has?

    Keep search intent front and center

    Search intent is the why behind a search. What does this person mean to do with this search? Is it to find information or to buy something? Or maybe they’re just trying to find a specific website. Or is it something else entirely? Search engines are better at understanding this intent and the accompanying user behavior. Thanks to breakthroughs in natural language processing with BERT and MUM, Google is starting to know the language inside out. In 2023, we’ll see Google use these new skills to bring better and more accurate search results — and present them in innovative ways.

    Of course, we can still help search engines pick the correct version of our content. By determining the intent behind a search, you can map your keyword strategy to a searcher’s specific goals. Map these intents to your content, and you’re good to go.

    Re-do your keyword research

    The last two years were impactful for many of us, and a lot has changed. Keeping this in mind, it’s high time to re-do your keyword research. There is bound to have been an enormous amount of change in your market. Not only that, your company itself is bound to have changed. Not updating your keyword research means missing out on significant opportunities. Read up on the research about consumer trends for 2023 and beyond. After that, ask yourself these questions:

    • What changed in my company?
    • What changed in and around my audience?
    • Has something changed in people’s language?
    • What has changed in where people search?

    Content is context

    Context is one of the essential words in the SEO field. Context is what helps search engines make sense of the world. As search engines become more innovative and intelligent, providing them with as much related information as possible is becoming more critical. By offering the necessary context about your subject and entities, you can help search engines make the connection between your content and where that content fits in the grand scheme of things. It’s not just content; the links you add and how you add these links also provide context that helps search engines. Also, Schema structured data provides another way to show search engines how entities are connected.

    By mapping the context of your subject, you might find a hole in your story. It could be that you haven’t fully explored your topic. Or maybe you found new ways of looking at it, or perhaps the recent developments threw you a curveball. Who knows! Stay on top of your topic and incorporate everything you find. Sometimes, it also means going back through your old content to update, improve or fix things — or delete stuff entirely.

    Re-assess the content and quality of your most important pages

    If you are anything like us, you have been at this game for a while and produced loads of content. That’s not a bad thing, of course, unless you are starting to compete with yourself. Keyword cannibalization can become a big issue, so content maintenance is a thing. Keep an eye on the search results of your chosen focus keyphrase. Do you have multiple articles in the top ten for a specific keyphrase? Is that what you want to happen?

    You need to re-assess your content to find out how you are doing. Is everything in tip-top shape? Do you need to write more? Or less? Maybe combine several weaker articles into one strong one? Content pruning is going through your posts to see what you can take to improve the rest. Sometimes, the best SEO strategy can be to hold the writing for a while and improve what you have!

    Work on your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T)

    Now search engines can understand the content; they are increasingly looking at its value. Is it trustworthy? Who is the person claiming these things? Why should we trust the author? Is the author an authority on the subject? Google looks not just at the quality of the content but also at whether that content can be assessed professionally. Trust and expertise will be essential, especially for YMLY (Your Money or Your Life) pages, like medical or financial content. E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) looks at this and is becoming a more significant part of SEO in 2023. What’s more, at the end of 2022 even added an extra letter to the acronym: Experience!

    Hone those writing skills!

    Quality content is well-written content. Quality content is original, in-depth, and easy to understand. Search engines are improving at determining an article’s text quality and making decisions based on that. Also, readers value well-written texts more and get a sense of trust from them. If content reads well and is factual and grammatically correct, it will come across as more professional, and people will be more likely to return to read more of your content.

    While it is increasingly challenging to write all that high-quality content yourself, artificial intelligence might help make your job easier. AI content generators are getting better by the day and have reached a level that produces pretty good content. So why not make use of these tools, I hear you say?

    Having an AI tool write your content doesn’t lead to high-quality, unique, authentic stuff. An AI has been trained on stuff that we already know, so there is no way for it to write something unique. Please take care in using tools like this. Of course, there’s no harm in having an AI speed up your work, getting you inspired, and helping you set stuff up. Be sure to edit the outcome into something you are proud of.

    It will be interesting to see Google’s reaction to the flood of AI-generated content that is bound to arrive in 2023. They will probably focus even more on identifying E-A-T signals in content to try and discern AI content from content written by expert humans.

    Whatever happens, brush up on those writing and editing skills! We have an excellent SEO copywriting guide and an SEO copywriting course if you need help. If you buy Yoast SEO Premium, you get complimentary access to all our SEO training courses — for one low price.

    Search is on the move

    As much as we’d like everything to happen on our website, it’s not. Depending on where you are and what you’re doing, your search engine optimization might need to happen elsewhere, not specifically in Google. Search is moving beyond the website or social media platform for investigations and actions. Loads of devices can answer a spoken question with a spoken answer. Machines that can book tickets for you or reserve a table. There are powerful e-commerce platforms that seem to get most of the product searches, not to mention all those app-based services. Visual search is also on the rise. TikTok is huge in certain demographics. Maybe these have value for you?

    (Progressive web) apps

    Links to apps continue to pop up in search, especially on mobile. Many sites bombard you with links to their apps on the home screen. Some services are app-only, like Uber. Apps are everywhere; even Google is testing structured data for software apps. Moreover, Google has expanded its mobile homepage with the Discover app that suggests new content based on your interests.

    Where there’s an app, there’s a customer to reach. Uber might be the ultimate taxi-hailing service, but why can’t a local taxi company replicate that? Apps offer another way — and sometimes a better way — of reaching your audience. Depending on your product and market, looking into apps might be a good idea. If you’re not willing to go down the native route, there are always progressive web apps — which we’ll see a lot of this year!

    Video

    Video content is incredibly popular! And there’s no end in sight for the video boom. YouTube might be the most crucial search engine for many people besides Google. We’ve seen the arrival of short-form content providers like TikTok and several enhancements in how video gets presented on the search results pages. You can count on it that video content will only become more critical. If you have the means, invest in video. Remember, it doesn’t always have to be flashy and professional — make it heartfelt. In addition to our Video SEO WordPress plugin, we also have a ton of content on how to do video SEO well.

    Other platforms

    Traditionally, many searches happen not on search engines but social media and other platforms. These past years, we’ve seen a steady decline in traffic and conversion from social media. Different platforms are taking their place. YouTube is a powerful search engine, as is Amazon. Plus, there are all those short-form videos going around. Maybe that’s something to attract a new audience? Also, did you see the meteoric rise of alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo and Neeva? People are getting more privacy-aware, which is a good thing! Depending on the searcher and their goal, platforms like these are becoming increasingly important. Indeed, something to think about!

    Don’t just think: “I need to publish a blog post on my website” — there are so many great destinations out there that might fit the goal of your message better.

    A system for getting traffic with SEO in 2023

    What does it all boil down to if we recap all this? We know it sounds easy when you read it like this, but this is what you should keep in your head at all times:

    • A lot has changed in the last two years, so restart your research and read up on consumer trends for 2023.
    • You should have a fast, easily usable, technically flawless website with high-quality content that genuinely helps visitors.
    • This website must be supported by a brand offering high-quality products and services.

    SEO in 2023: What’s next?

    It’s easy to say that your site must be better than ever in 2023 because it’s true! Those ten blue links and rich search results are what it’s all about for most sites. The majority of traffic will still come from organic searches. Social media traffic is down, and conversational search is rising, but not enough to put a dent in organic. And then there’s video. Ultimately, you must keep improving your site in all the right places.

    Of course, much other stuff is happening simultaneously, and most of it concerns an ever-changing Google. Next year, we might see Google less like a search engine and more as a virtual assistant — a person who lives on your phone and solves your problems. And that’s what they want to get to. It’s been a promise for a long time, but now we’re starting to see it with all these rich results and answer boxes. This will be interesting to watch.

    Have a great 2023!

    The post SEO in 2023: Your chance to shine! appeared first on Yoast.

  • How to check page speed: tools and suggestions

    Page speed is one of the factors which determines whether you get a good ranking in Google. Page speed is a ranking factor, and its importance keeps growing. In this post, we’ll discuss how to check your page speed and which tools can help you do just that. Read on!

    Why is page speed important for SEO?

    For starters, a fast website provides a much better user experience than a slow one. Research has shown time and again that people don’t buy as much from slower sites. They also don’t read or engage as much on slow sites. That in itself should be enough reason to make sure the speed of your web pages is as good as it can be.

    Beyond just being better for users, faster websites can be easier for search engines to crawl, process and index. That means your posts will take less time to show up in the search results. And they’ll be more likely to perform and rank better.

    Page speed is not a single metric

    We’ve written an extensive post about the concept of page speed and its importance. Long story short, page speed is not a single metric. You should not think of page speed as in “this page loads in 5 seconds”.

    This is due to the complexity of various factors that affect the loading speed of a web page. Some of these factors include the infrastructure of your web server, the quality of the internet connection of your users, and the technical setup of your website (i.e: themes, plugins). And it’s not possible to determine the definitive loading speed of a page either. 

    Even if you try to simplify all of this to something like “the time it takes until it’s completely loaded“, it’s still tricky to give that a useful number. For instance, you can run an analysis that shows you that your page loads in 5 seconds. But this number may only apply to a percentage of your users. Someone who lives further from your web server, with a slower internet connection, and uses a slower device will experience a longer load time.

    Instead, we advise you to think of page speed as a part of the user experience that your website provides. Page speed and user experience go hand-in-hand.

    Make a page “feels” like it loads faster

    In an ideal world, we’d click on a link in the search result page and the web page would appear instantly before our eyes. But we all know that our technologies haven’t reached that point yet. At the same time, websites nowadays are incredibly complex, with web pages getting heavier and harder to load. 

    Now, the challenge for website owners is not only to make pages load faster, but also to give visitors the “perception” that the page is indeed fast. In fact, being able to deliver the “perception” that a page is fast is crucial, as it ties into the “experience” that visitors get on your website. In order to create this “perception” of a fast-loading page, it’s good to get a grasp of the loading process of web pages.

    Web page loading process 101

    From the moment when you click on a link or hit ‘enter’ in your URL bar, a process begins to load the page you requested. That process contains many parts, but they can be grouped into several stages which look something like this:

    4 stages of the loading process of web page, which include the: DNS lookup and TCP connection stage, the HTTP Request and Response stage, Server response stage, and Client-side rendering stage.
    The “one-second timeline” from Google’s site speed documentation.

    Please note that the above model refers to the delivery and rendering of content above the fold. The model is also mobile-centric.

    While Google’s documentation might be a bit ambitious about the timings of these stages, the model is helpful. Essentially, the process can be described in three stages of loading. Let’s discuss these three stages and what they mean to your pages.

    Network stage

    DNS lookup and TCP connection: Without going too much into detail, you can understand that these are protocols to establish communication between your web server and the user’s device. Essentially, they are what make transferring data via the internet possible.

    Generally speaking, you don’t have a whole lot of control over what happens here. It’s also hard to measure or impact this part of the process. But it’s good to note that there are technologies that exist to speed up this process, including CDN, intelligent routing, etc. However, these technologies are more useful for sites that serve large international audiences. If you have a site that serves mostly local audiences, there are other things that you can do to speed up your pages.

    Server response stage

    HTTP request and response: After a connection is established, your user’s device sends a request to your web server asking for the page and its accompanying files and content. Your web server must process this request and prepare the requested content. Your hosting infrastructure, your web server, and the availability of a CDN have an impact on this stage.

    Server response time: Server response time refers to the time it takes for a server to return the initial HTML, excluding the network transport time. This stage is about how fast your web server can return information. Your hosting infrastructure, web server, themes, and plugins can affect this stage.

    Browser-rendering stage

    Client-side rendering: This stage is where the page needs to be constructed, laid out, colored in, and displayed. The way in which images load, in which JavaScript and CSS are processed, and every individual HTML tag on your page affects how quickly things load. Themes and plugins also add additional elements to be rendered.

    It’s good to realize that assets, content, and elements (i.e: buttons) on any given page are loaded in sequences. You can imagine that elements near the top of the page will be prioritized first, then elements closer to the bottom of the page will be loaded later on. This is also why Google emphasizes the importance of above-the-fold content in various documentation – it allows users to start interacting with a page as soon as possible. Additionally, being able to quickly load content on the top of a page also gives the perception that the page loads fast.

    Metrics to pay attention to when checking page speed

    Since 2021, Google introduced Core Web Vitals – a set of metrics to measure websites’ speed and user experience, which made their way into Google’s core algorithm update. Essentially, Core Web Vitals look at three aspects of a web page: loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.

    • Loading – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the most significant piece of content to appear on the screen. 
    • Interactivity – First Input Delay (FID): Measures how fast the page can respond to the first user interaction.
    • Visual Stability – Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures the stability of visual elements on your page. In other words, does stuff move around on the screen while loading?
    Metrics in Core Web Vitals

    When optimizing your page performance for SEO, these three metrics are the most important to look out for. To pass Core Web Vitals, you need your page to get a green “score” for all these three metrics. And it’s good to know that at least 75% of your real-world users need to experience the green “score” in order for your page to have a pass.

    Google’s John Mueller said that all three metrics must appear green if you want your site to benefit from the page experience ranking signals. Note that you shouldn’t optimize your site to get green scores – but having green scores will be beneficial for your visitors. It’s all about happy visitors – and great content, of course!

    Other interesting metrics

    In addition to these three metrics, it might be interesting to also look at:

    • Time to first byte (TTFB): Measures how long it takes until the server responds with some information. Even if your front-end is blazing fast, this will hold you up. 
    • First contentful paint (FCP): Measures how long it takes for key visual content (e.g., a hero image or a page heading) to appear on the screen. 
    • Time until interactive: Measures how long it takes for the experience to be visible, and react to user’s input. 

    All of the mentioned metrics are much more sophisticated metrics than “how long did it take to load”. And perhaps more importantly, they have a user-centric focus. Improving these metrics should correlate directly with user satisfaction, which is super important for SEO.

    You can read more about these metrics in Google’s documentation.

    Get practical: How to check your page speed

    Now that you’ve got the basics about the concept of page speed and the web-loading process, it’s time to get practical and dive into the tools to check your page speed.

    Your best friends are Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights.

    Google Search Console

    Essentially, data regarding Core Web Vitals and other page performance metrics are taken from PageSpeed Insights. But we want to point you to Google Search Console (GSC) first before going into PageSpeed Insights. 

    Assuming that you’re working on improving your page speed to gain competitive advantages in search ranking, then you’re probably using Search Console a lot already. Not only does the tool give an overview of your search performance, but it also provides a great overview of how your pages perform according to the page experience standards. 

    To see this report, go to Google Search Console and look for “Page experience” in the left navigation bar. You should see an overview of how your mobile and desktop pages perform.

    The Page experience overview in Google Search Console

    Take a look at the “Core Web Vitals” tab. There, you’ll find a list of URLs that are failing Core Web Vitals, which are conveniently grouped into categories that they are failing. 

    This is great because the tool presents you with an overview of the links you should work on. In addition, you already know beforehand what your objectives for these URLs are. For instance, you know whether you should work on improving the LCP or CLS score of a page.

    Lists of groups of URLs failing Core Web Vitals

    Clicking on one of these groups will prompt GSC to show you a few groups of URLs, based on their performance. For example, in the screenshot below, Search Console is showing URLs with low LCP scores, grouped based on the different LCP scores.

    Clicking on one of these groups will show you the full list of URLs on your right bar. And if you click on an URL, a box will appear with a link that takes you to an audit of the page on PageSpeed Insights.

    PageSpeed Insights

    As we mentioned above, PageSpeed Insights provides you with data regarding your page performance. You’ll find metrics in Core Web Vitals and other metrics of a specific page. 

    This is an incredibly useful tool if you want to work on improving your page performance. It provides real user metrics of your website, straight from Google.

    This is a screenshot of a page audit in PageSpeed Insights. It shows you the Core Web Vitals score of a page and other metrics such as First Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Time to First Byte.
    Results from PageSpeed Insights for yoast.com

    If you scroll down a bit, you’ll find a diagnostic that provides you with the causes of why your page is failing Core Web Vitals. The reasons listed here are unique to a page and can range from a redundancy of third-party code, JavaScript error, lack of caching, etc,…

    The tool also provides suggestions to optimize your page, which you can find under the “Opportunities” section. They are good starting points and can be helpful when you’ve just started out with speed optimization. But it’s good to know that following these suggestions may help your page to load faster, but they might not directly affect the performance score. There are also a bunch of other things you could do other than what’s listed here.

    More advanced tools

    If you’re new to page speed optimization, then Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights probably give you enough information to start working. This section is more useful for those who would like to have more data and want to dive deeper into their website’s performance.

    Tools to check server performance

    These tools focus on the performance of server hardware, databases, and scripts. You may need to ask for help from your hosting provider or tech team.

    We can check the performance of the server with tools like NewRelic or DataDog, which monitor how your site behaves and responds from the ‘inside’.

    They’ll provide charts and metrics around things like slow database queries and slow scripts. Armed with this information, you can get a better understanding of whether your hosting is up to scratch, and if you need to make code changes to your theme/plugins/scripts.

    WordPress has some great plugins for doing this kind of analysis, too. We recommend checking Query Monitor out. It provides some great insights into which bits of WordPress might be slowing you down – whether it’s your themes, plugins, or environments.

    Another tool to check page performance

    Another tool that may be interesting to look at is WebPageTest.org. This tool lets you test how your page performs on various types of networks and devices.

    An interesting feature of this tool is the “waterfall” view. Essentially, it presents you with an overview of how much time it takes for all the assets on a page to load. This can be especially useful if you want detailed diagnostics to identify optimization opportunities.

    For instance, the image below is the waterfall view of the homepage of Yoast.com. It looks quite daunting at first, but it does become easier to understand once you run the test yourself. Remember the model of the stages of the loading process we mentioned earlier? This waterfall view tells us that the first stage (DNS lookup and TCP connection) takes about 0.55 seconds to complete. Then the HTML file is sent from the web server to the browser (but not rendered) and then onto other assets.

    WebPageTest.org results for yoast.com

    Field data vs Lab data

    Now that you’re equipped with the right tools to check your page speed, let’s talk about how these tools get their data.

    Metrics in Core Web Vitals are measurable in the field and reflect the experience that your real-world visitors get. That’s why Google requires at least 75% of your real visitors to experience good page performance before giving you a pass. You can count on PageSpeed Insights to give you field data from real users.

    In contrast, a tool like WebPageTest.org runs tests and collects data within a controlled environment, with predefined devices and network settings.

    We know and understand the importance of field data since it captures true real-world user experience. It helps you to understand what your users struggle with. However, with field data, you run into the issue that you have limited debugging capabilities. Since every user is different, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly whether the changes you deploy are effective or not.

    On the other hand, with lab tests, you can control for as many factors as you can, so the results are consistent and reproducible. And since field data is captured from real-world experience, it can only do so if users are able to enter and load your page. Lab data can help with identifying optimization opportunities and help make your site more accessible to a wider range of audience. Let’s say your goal is to optimize your site so users with a really slow connection can still access it. Running lab tests may give insights into what you can do to improve.

    Which to prioritize?

    Generally speaking, if you have both field and lab data on a page, you should prioritize using field data and base your optimization efforts on that. That means looking at the data in Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. Google also recommends prioritizing field data. Since field data reflects the experience real-world users get, you can better understand what issues they are facing and what you need to do to fix those.

    Wrap up

    Learning how to check your page speed doesn’t need to be difficult. If you’re just starting out with page speed optimization, look to Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. These tools will give you insights into which pages are falling Core Web Vitals and how real users experience your page.

    From there, identify what your pages are lacking and focus your effort on optimizing your pages to pass Core Web Vitals. The suggestions that Google gives on PageSpeed Insights may provide you with a good starting point. However, don’t rely on them all the time. There is so much more you can do!

    Did we miss anything in this post? Or do you have great tips on page speed optimization? Let us know in the comment!

    The post How to check page speed: tools and suggestions appeared first on Yoast.

  • Holistic SEO: Improve every aspect of your website

    At Yoast, we try to combat the notion that SEO is just a trick. While tricks might get you ranked quickly, they usually don’t work in the long run, and they might even backfire. Permanently ranking well in Google demands an extensive SEO strategy focused on every aspect of your website; the technical stuff, the user experience, the content on your website, and the security of your website all need to be in order. So, to keep ranking well in Google, you should develop a holistic approach to SEO. Let us explain what that is, here.

    What is holistic SEO?

    Holistic SEO (search engine optimization) refers to improving all important aspects of a website to make it rank higher in search engines. The ultimate goal is to make a website that fulfills its users’ needs on all levels. Not only by providing the right information at the right time but also by being easy and safe to use. To reach this goal, website owners should, at least, work on the following aspects of their site:

    We’ll also include resources to help you learn SEO and optimize various parts of your website at the end of this post. Do check them out!

    Why a holistic SEO approach?

    Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find what they are looking for, whether that’s the answer to “Where is Wijchen?”, a recipe for apple pie, or the best toaster. That’s why making your website and your marketing strategy fit this goal is the way to go.

    Let’s use an analogy to explain the holistic approach to SEO. Think of working on your site’s SEO as similar to taking a ship to a ship-building competition, where the judges are Google and other search engines. Similar to a website, a ship is big and has lots of moving parts that need to be managed. Your design is the ship’s exterior, your content is the interior and services, and your technical setup is the engine. The goal here is to appeal to the judges so they rate you highly and recommend you to people.

    This competition is packed, so to get a good ranking, you not only need a great-looking ship and a fast and reliable engine but also a good interior and high-quality onboard services. If you have a great-looking ship on the outside (an eye-catching design) but the interior (content) is lacking, people are less likely to want to be on that ship. On the other hand, if you have an amazing interior and onboard services, but your ship is slow and your engine is prone to issues (technical setup), people will look for other alternatives.

    As you can imagine, the judges (search engines) would give high ranking and recommend ships (websites) that meet and exceed the standards mentioned above. Their mission and reputation depend on giving good recommendations, so they take this very seriously. That’s why using “tricks” to make it seem like you’ve improved your ship won’t work, because you haven’t actually improved it.

    By working on improving every part of the ship, over time, your ship will become better across the board. At the same time, you’re not the only ship trying to be better, others are doing the same. In a competition so fierce and packed, every small gain and improvement will add up to be significant. With that, you may get a higher ranking in the competition and become a recommendation.

    SEO tricks are of the past, holistic SEO is the way forward

    Back in the early days of SEO, people could get away with doing tricks. They used to stuff keywords and internal links on pages, wrote thin and irrelevant content, or scraped content from other sites and ranked with that content. These are things of the past. Since then, Google and other search engines have been improving their algorithms by the day. No longer do they fall for such tricks (for the most part).

    While Google has changed its algorithm numerous times, most of our advice has remained the same ever since we started. This advice is simple (which doesn’t mean it’s easy though!): you have to ensure your site is exceptionally good. Having a website with high-quality content, offering a great user experience and up-to-date security will not instantly improve your ranking. In the long run, though, it will definitely have a positive effect on your SEO!

    In addition, great websites tend to get more backlinks from other websites and will also receive more social media attention. Remember the analogy about the ship earlier? This is similar to getting recommendations from other ships (websites) in and outside of that competition, which is a strong signal to search engines that your website is amazing.

    On top of that, people behave differently on a website that they like, compared to a website they don’t understand. Google uses these kinds of user signals to find out how people experience your site. Awesome websites will also result in higher conversions. If your audience likes and understands your website, the chance of them buying your products or returning to your website is, of course, much higher.

    Read more: Everyday website optimization: 6 tasks for your daily SEO routine »

    SEO takes time

    Understanding that SEO takes time to bear fruit is a key point in the holistic SEO approach. You only have so much time and resources to work on improving your site. So, you need to identify what you want to improve, come up with a plan of attack, execute your planning, and see the results of those changes after some time. Sometimes you make big changes, other times you make smaller ones that don’t feel so important. But over time, they will add up, which gradually turns your site into a better one.

    In addition, whenever you implement a change or improvement, it takes some time for Google to notice that change as it comes around and crawls your pages. Then, Google needs to take these changes into account in its complex ranking algorithm. So don’t worry too much if you don’t see the results that you expect after a few weeks or even months. Just remember that it takes time, and keep on working on improving every aspect of your website to the best of your capability!

    Learn SEO, the holistic way

    Sure, you say, but where to start? We understand you might feel overwhelmed by this advice. Fortunately, there are many ways to improve your knowledge about the above-mentioned topics.

    For starters, we offer a free SEO for beginners course, a great starting point to learn how SEO works. If you really want to put this knowledge into practice, consider trying our All-around SEO training, you’ll get lots of hands-on tips to start improving many aspects of your own site.

    Go Premium and get access to all of our SEO courses

    Unlock all the premium features and learn holistic SEO with our experts today!

    Get Yoast SEO Premium Only €99 EUR / year (ex VAT)

    Just want to read? These beginner guides are great starting points! If you’re a bit more knowledgeable and are looking for resources to optimize various aspects of your website, we recommend checking these articles out:

    The post Holistic SEO: Improve every aspect of your website appeared first on Yoast.

  • Local ranking factors that help your small business’ SEO

    If you have a local business selling products or services, you have to think about the local ranking of your website. Local SEO will help you surface for related search queries in your area. As Google shows local results first in many cases, you need to make sure Google understands where your location is. In this article, we’ll go over all the things you can do to improve Google’s understanding of your location, which improves your chances to rank locally.

    What are ranking factors?

    Ranking factors are elements that Google considers when determining the position of a URL in the search results. There are many ranking factors, most of which are characteristics of the URL and your website, but they can further extend to your online presence. An example of a ranking factor is page speed: a fast-loading page that delivers a good user experience is likely to rank higher than a slow page when other characteristics are comparable.

    Local SEO ranking factors

    In this post, we’ll focus on the factors that influence the ranking of your website’s pages in local searches. As you can read here, Google itself talks about local ranking factors in terms of:

    • Relevance: are you the relevant result for the user? Does your website match what the user is looking for?
    • Distance: how far away are you located? If you are relevant and near, chances are you’ll get a good ranking.
    • Prominence: this is about how well your business is known. More on that at the end of this article.

    So you have to show you’re relevant, you’re close by, and you’re well-known. Let’s see how you can work on these factors with some concrete actions!

    Be relevant

    Being relevant means that you offer the service or products the searcher is looking for. While this might seem pretty straightforward, sometimes, people can get too cryptic on their website. Make sure that you clearly mention what your business or profession is, what kind of products and services you offer, and make sure to do this in the wording your audiences use. To find out if you indeed communicate using the language your audiences use, please conduct some keyword research and speak with your customers to find out which terms they use when looking for a service like yours.

    Check out this local content strategy guide for more inspiration to write relevant content for your local business site.

    Google Business Profile

    For your local ranking in Google, you can’t do without a proper Google Business Profile listing. Google Business Profile is especially helpful if you want to show up properly in the local pack – i.e., the big panel with the map. You need to sign up, pick the right primary categories for your business, add all your locations, verify these and share some photos. You’ll also need to actively manage your profile and build it up over time.

    Google Business Profile allows for customer reviews, and you should aim to get some of those for your listing. Every year, the importance of online reviews for local SEO grows. Positive reviews (and negative ones) help Google and its users judge your business. This is pretty much like your local market. If people talk positively about your groceries, more people will be inclined to come to your grocery stand.

    Getting reviews is one, but you can keep the conversation going by responding to these reviews. But, as Google puts it, be a friend, not a salesperson.

    It helps to sign up for Google My Business if you want to rank your business in the local three-pack

    LocalBusiness schema structured data

    If you have a local business and serve primarily local customers, of course, you’ll add your address to your website. To help Google and other search engines understand the primary address, you can best serve it in a specific format readable for machines. Use localBusiness schema for that. Our Local SEO plugin makes adding that LocalBusiness schema to your pages a breeze!

    This is very much about what Google calls distance. If you are the closest result for the user, your business will surface sooner.

    Make sure you have one main NAP!

    Even if your business has multiple locations, make sure to match the main NAP (name, address, phone number) on your website with the Google Business Profile NAP. That is the only way to make sure Google makes the proper connection between the two. Add the primary address on every page (you are a local business, so your should mention your address on every page). For all the other locations, set up a page and list all the addresses of your branches.

    Facebook listing and reviews

    What goes for Google Business Profile goes for Facebook as well. Add your company as a page for a local business to Facebook here. People search a lot on Facebook as well, so you’d better make sure your listing on Facebook is in order. Facebook also allows for reviews, which could help your business too. Keep an eye on those reviews! If your reviews aren’t that great, make sure to fix that by providing better products or services, or at least show in your replies you take the feedback you get seriously.

    Location and keywords in title

    The obvious one: for ranking locally, adding city and (in the US) state to your <title> helps. Add your main keywords as well and make the title attractive. Please keep in mind that the effect of adding the name of your town to your titles might be a lot less effective for local ranking than adding your business details to your Google Business Profile. But it won’t hurt for sure. For more local content tips, do check out this guide.

    In this example, this title could have used a location to help in the local search results

    Local directories help your local ranking

    In addition to your Google Business Profile listing, Google uses the local Yelp and other local directories to determine just how important and local you are. While we usually recommend against putting your link on a page with a gazillion unrelated links, the common ground for a local listings page is, indeed, the location. And, these links do help your local rankings.

    So get your web team to work, find the most important local directory pages and get your details up there. We’re explicitly writing details and not just links. Citations work in confirming the address to both Google and visitors. If a local, relevant website lists addresses, do consider getting yours up there as well. And while you are at it, get some positive reviews on sites like Yelp as well!

    Following how directories help your local ranking – especially in the organic local search results, exchanging links with related local businesses also pays off. If you work together in the same supply chain or sell related products, feel free to exchange links. Don’t just exchange links with any business you know. In most cases, these will be low-quality links for your website (because they’re usually unrelated). Also, try to build high-quality content that attracts relevant links. And, don’t forget to get those local keywords in the anchor text of those inbound links.

    Social mentions from local folks

    Again, there’s a local marketplace online as well. People talk about business, new developments, or new products on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and more. All these social mentions find their way to Google’s sensors as well. The search engine will pick up on positive or negative vibes and use these to help them rank your local business. If many people talk about your business and link to your website, you must be relevant. Monitor these mentions and engage.

    Some say links from other websites, directories, and social media are critical for local rankings. As always, we believe it’s the sum of all efforts that makes you stand out from the crowd, not just optimizing one aspect. Take your time and make sure your Google Business Profile is correct, local business structured data is active on your site, and you have proper links to your site and the right people talking about you on other platforms like Twitter. And please don’t forget to do proper keyword research and make sure the right content is on your website.

    Optimize your content for better local rankings

    Google won’t rank your site for a keyword if that keyword isn’t on your website. It’s as simple as that. If your business is in city X, you probably have a reason why you are located there. Write about that reason. And note that these may vary:

    • You are born there or just love the locals and local habits
    • There is a river which is needed for transport
    • Your local network makes sure you can deliver just-in-time or provide extra services
    • The city has a regional function and your business thrives by that
    • There are six other businesses like yours, you’re obviously the best, and you all serve a certain percentage of people, so your business fits perfectly in that area.

    These are just random reasons to help you write about your business in relation to your location. They differ (a lot) per company. Make sure your location/city/area is clearly mentioned on your website and not just in your footer at your address details! If you have multiple locations, set up and write pages for each one and include the proper business details.

    Read more: Tips for your local content strategy »

    One more thing: what about prominence?

    Prominence means that when Google can serve a result first from a well-known brand or business, they actually will. Despite all your efforts to improve your local ranking, this might get in the way of that number one position. But, it just means you have to step up your game, keep on doing the great work you do, work on your branding, and trust that eventually, Google will notice this as well. As a result, Google might allow you to rank on that number one position for that local keyword!

    Another thing to note is that prominence is also based on the information that Google knows about a business. All this information is derived from links, articles, and directories across the web. The more positive reviews and ratings your business has, the more likely Google will place it in a high position for local search queries. Not to mention, your position on the “normal” search results page (web results) is also a ranking signal. So, invest some time and resources into SEO if possible, and ask your satisfied customers to leave a good review on Google and other platforms such as Yelp or Facebook.

    Keep reading: The ultimate guide to small business SEO »

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