5 Reasons Your Website Isn’t Ranking (And How To Improve Them)
Your SEO methods should evolve alongside the ever-evolving nature of search engine algorithms. Even though a lot of factors go into rankings (like keywords, WordPress SEO plugins, etc.), a few are very important and have a significant effect on the overall rankings. So, SEO for WordPress sites makes a lot of difference when it comes to ranking.
Here are five WordPress SEO tips and factors for adjusting them if you are not experiencing an increase in your average position, organic traffic, or leads.
Irrelevant or Bad Content
When a user types in a keyword or search query, Google and the other search engines want to know that they’re sending them to the most relevant and valuable resource they can find. For search engines to determine if your site is relevant to a user’s query, your site’s content is the essential factor.
Instead of just mentioning a keyword or search query, your page should give all relevant information. Pages that provide minimal user value, sometimes known as “thin content,” will never improve the site’s search engine results.
Solution
Prioritize the most crucial pages to your site and give them each a focus keyword. The next step is determining why someone would type that keyword into a search engine.
Find out what people are looking for when they type in the keyword, and then use that information to develop the page’s content. You can use the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin for this issue. So, this is how to SEO WordPress websites.
Slow Website Speed
Nowadays, people want their needs to be addressed quickly and efficiently. Your website’s success will decrease in proportion to the amount of effort required from users and the duration of time they must wait before seeing any results.
Your web pages should load as soon as possible to get optimal page performance. A few seconds may significantly impact your organic search rankings and conversion rates.
Solution
Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to get an in-depth insight into how to enhance the speed of your websites. The report will detail the factors slowing down your site and provide actionable steps for fixing them. One important tip is to lazy-load the images on your website using any relevant WordPress SEO plugin.
Website Not Mobile-Friendly
With mobile usage higher than desktop and laptop computers, it is essential to have a mobile-friendly website. The search engine rankings might take a significant hit if your website is not optimized for mobile devices.
A responsive website will automatically adjust its layout and design to fit the user’s device, whether using an Android phone, an iPhone, or an iPad. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to see how well your site responds to mobile devices. It will verify whether or not your website passed its criteria.
Solution
Using mobile-responsive web design is the best solution to fix it. A website with a responsive design automatically adjusts its size to fit whatever screen size the user is viewing it on. The result is a website that looks great on every device, regardless of screen size. When viewed on a mobile device or a desktop computer, a website with a responsive design will adjust its layout to be more user-friendly on both.
Google gives preference to indexing and ranking mobile-friendly websites. Therefore, having a mobile-responsive website improves a website’s SEO value. You can use WordPress SEO plugins like Elementor to design a mobile-responsive web design for your website. It is also an excellent solution for those looking forward to knowing how to add SEO to WordPress.
Not Using the Right Keyword
Your page won’t rank well if it’s unclear to search engines what questions you’re attempting to answer.
Site pages full of industry jargon that people may not be searching for should be avoided in favor of plain content so that people can immediately understand what you are presenting. To do this, you might use keyword research for your writing. Remember that this rule applies to every page of your website, not just blog posts.
While there are many factors to consider when optimizing a website for search engines, the content on your site must make it obvious what issues your business solves and how those problems are searched for.
Solution
Starting with basic keyword research can help you get off to a good start in your effort to target the correct keywords. Aside from the main point, it may be helpful to check how well your site is doing for specific keywords. You can use different WordPress SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
Not all keywords have the same value (for example, a top spot on Google for Hiking Shoes won’t do much to bring in qualified leads and prospects for an IT business). We recommend you use WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast or RankMath. WordPress SEO by Yoast is an essential and trusted source used by thousands of websites.
Out-Ranked by Competitors
There will always be another website or competitor trying to outrank you; thus, your SEO efforts should never end. It’s possible that another website is doing a better job overall, whether it’s because the content is better or because the user experience is better, and that’s why your site isn’t getting higher rankings.
Solution
Keep a close eye on how your competitors are performing in the rankings. If their rankings have improved, go over their website to see what changes they may have made. Improve upon the strategies that your competitors are already using. You can also use some content-optimizing tools such as SurferSEO. It helps you check the competitor’s content layout and gives you suggestions on how to outrank them.
Conclusion
If anyone is thinking about how to check SEO in WordPress, we recommend you use Yoast or some other WordPress SEO plugin. Once you have checked the SEO of your website, you can move forward and fix the issues and factors explained in this article.
