One of the major digital resolutions that you must have made in the year 2020 (and if not then you can make it now- it’s never too late) is making site better and more impressive. It sounds good but you should be ready to put in the efforts required for the same. In this blog we are going to present some of the best tips and tricks that will help in improving the ranking f your WordPress site in 2020:
Responsive Design
As more and more communication devices of different shapes, sizes and make are now net-enabled, it has become very important for you to make sure that your site should look uniformly good regardless of the device on which it is being loaded. In technical terms it is called responsive design, i.e., the design that can automatically optimize its dimensions, color resolution, and other key elements to suit the visual ecosystem of a specific device thus delivering the same user experience on a 12” desktop monitor and 3” Smartphone screen.
Plugin to check your site’s responsive-ness: Responsiveness Check
Plugins to make your site responsive:
· WPtouch Mobile Plugin
· Touchy
· Superfly
· AMP
Neat, short and attractive Permalinks
Permalink refers to the permanent links that would form the detailed URL of your webpage. A quick way to search permalinks is to open editing page of your post (in WordPress dashboard), and search the term “permalink” with the find command (ctrl + F)
By default the permalinks are lengthy and look like an untidy hodgepodge of numbers and letters. You have the option to edit it though. So make it short and relevant to your post giving a definite hint to the audience about what can they expect in your post.
Remember that your permalinks are visible on the search engine result page to the visitors. The long permalinks look unattractive and spammy and can repel the visitors. By using smaller, familiar and impressive permalinks you can instantly invite the visitor's attention and encourage them to open your webpage.
Get a SSL Certificate for protection and building trust
SSL certificate is no longer technical jargon anymore, thanks to Google’s efforts. In short, the SSL is a special coding to encrypt the data that is being transmitted thus defending your users against data-in-transit attacks. Your site users and shoppers share sensitive information with you like login credentials, bank information, social security number, profile ID, etc. and encryption ensures the maximum safety of such vital information.
The visitors can easily identify the safe sites with the green padlock icon in the address bar and an https in the URL name of the site. The site without an SSL certificate starts with HTTP and doesn’t carry a padlock icon (but a rather alarming red sign of warning).
So, if you wish to build trust among users then it is very important to get an SSL certificate for your site. The buyers also want to confirm the safety of their vital banking/payment information before proceeding ahead to their online order. So SSL certificate can also have a positive impact on the overall conversion rate..
Tip: Did you know that you can get an SL certificate free and without any lengthy process? Here’s how to get a free SSL certificate: https://letsencrypt.org/
Backlinks are extremely important
Backlinks facilitates building the authority of your site and can incredibly help you to improve your ranking in search engine results.
The reputed and trusted sites linking to your webpages indicates the authenticity of and high value of your site thus suggesting the major search engines like Google show your website during relevant searches. Depending upon several factors it can also help your site gain abetter position.
However, building quality backlinks demands commitment and a well planned strategic approach. Relevance, quality, authority, and other such important points should be seriously considered and you should be prepared to employ multiple strategies in tandem to boost the potential and benefits of your backlinking efforts. Along with strong backlinking you should also concentrate on an internal linking strategy where you create internal contextual backlinks to different pages of your site with a definite objective like explaining a quick contextual point in detail or defining a specific methodology, a process in detail. Along with SEO benefits, it also keeps your readers engaged for log and invite them o explore more pages.
Best approaches to build backlinks
· Email outreach
· Guest posts
· Commenting on top ranking relevant blogs
· Creating infographics
Best WordPress Plugins for the purpose
· https://www.formget.com/out/wp-sitespy-wordpress-backlinks-plugins - For checking your competitors’s strategies for a quick inspiration
· https://www.linkio.com/- Anchor text suggestions for the right link building exercises
· https://monitorbacklinks.com/: Monitoring tool to check the performance and status of your backlink strategy
Speed optimization
Speed matters a lot and with the growing number of mobile users who browse the net on the go the slow loading sites are at a major loss. /While we have already discussed a bit in terms of responsive design, the page loading time depends upon various major and minor factors and by optimizing those vital factors you can easily boost your site loading speed.
· Light theme
· Responsive design
· Images optimization/compression
· Reduce redirects
· Caching
· Server response time
You can check your site speed on
· Google Page Speed Insights
· Pingdom Speed Test
Voice Search Optimization
The use of Alexa, Siri, and other virtual assistants is on the rise ad with fast-developing capabilities the Voice search is likely to experience wide popularity in 2020. By optimizing r site for voice search you can get maximum benefits out of this popular trend but if you fail to optimize your site accordingly, your site won’t probably load in SERPs during voice search thus costing you huge opportunities.
Conclusion
Following healthy WordPress practices not only makes your site look better and impressive but also accelerates its potential and enhances the user experience. In this blog, we have discussed some of the best WordPress tips and tricks to improve your site potential. The readers are advised to start with the easiest options and keep on quantifying the RoI of their strategies to ensure the maximum tangible benefits.