Creative Bloq published a post two weeks ago about improving organic search results:
Here’s a helpful primer on what you’ll need to implement to see your site’s search results featuring some of the more prominent features in the SERPs to aid your visibility, and reclaim that lost organic search traffic.
Their takeaways drew on the work of Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz.
In this post we’re going to align those takeaways against WordPress-powered solutions. Enjoy!
Image Search Results
| Recommendation | In WordPress |
|---|---|
| Use a short descriptive piece of text featuring desired keywords within the image alt text attribute. | Use the Alternative Text field when embedding images in posts and pages. |
| Create an Image XML sitemap | Try the Google XML Sitemaps for Images plugin. |
| Ensure your images directory isn’t blocked by robots.txt | Install the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. Control your robots.txt in the Edit Files screen. |
| Ideally host images on the same domain | Upload images to your Media Library. Don’t host them on 3rd party services like Imgur or Picasa. |
Reviews/Ratings
| Recommendation | In WordPress |
|---|---|
| Add star ratings in search results to improve clickthrough rates to your site. | Use the All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin. (You can check out our review here.) |
Authorship
| Recommendation | In WordPress |
|---|---|
| Add a link from your web page to the authors Google profile using rel=author. | Install the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin and set up authorship attribution. Developer Craig Fifield has a great step-by-step on how to do it. |
Video Snippets
| Recommendation | In WordPress |
|---|---|
| Self-host video content or use a secure video hosting platform that allows you to have control over where your videos are featured. | VideoPress is a premium video hosting service available through the Jetpack by WordPress.com plugin suite. |
| Apply Schema.org/VideoObject mark-up | The All-In-One Schema.org plugin supports video schema markup. |
| Create a Video XML sitemap | Check out the premium Video SEO for WordPress plugin from Yoast. |
Long-Form Content
| Recommendation | In WordPress |
|---|---|
| Wrapping your article content with Schema.org/Article mark-up | Once again turning to the All In One Schema.org plugin, which supports the Article markup type. |
