Ever wondered what is the role of SEO in WordPress website maintenance exactly? Well, look no more than this article, where we dive all in and explain it to the T!

For those of you who don’t know, SEO plays an important role in overall WordPress site maintenance. Both basic and advanced ones and you could even say it’s a necessity. So, in this article, we’re cutting corners and explaining all the ways why any business benefits from having not only knowledge of SEO but maintaining it the right way.

The role of SEO in WordPress website maintenance backstory

SEO plays a critical role in the overall health and success of your WordPress website. In fact, it is intertwined with many of the tasks involved in maintaining a top-performing site. From site speed optimization to the plugins you use, the content you produce, keyword targeting, URL structure, image optimization, link health, and beyond, all of these elements impact your site’s SEO. It’s clear that SEO is not something you can overlook or ignore. Regular attention must be given to ensure that your site is always at its best. SEO should be a fundamental component of your ongoing WordPress website maintenance plan. By making SEO a priority, you give your business a competitive advantage in the online world.

With that in mind, here’s how to make sure your site’s SEO is always in top shape.

5 tips on how SEO supports WordPress website maintenance

In short, without SEO there would be much, much slower website progress, conversion, and ROI – all of which you need for a business site to be successful. SEO is integrated into many WordPress site maintenance tasks which is why it’s important to have it regularly checked. SEO, as website maintenance, is not a one-time deal or something you do occasionally. It needs to be included in your regular maintenance check-ups so you and your business can thrive. Luckily, with our help and these tips, they will.

Site speed and optimization

Site speed is a key factor of SEO that is often overlooked by many website owners. Moreover, it impacts your site’s ranking and user experience. A slow-loading website not only frustrates visitors but also increases the bounce rate as well as decreases the overall engagement on your site.

Furthermore, site speed is one of Google’s ranking factors which is why a quick-loading site (among other things) ranks better than the ones that don’t. So, by ensuring your site is fast you’ll improve the user experience and efficiency of your site.

How do you optimize and speed up the site, you ask? Well, the easy way would be to use ManageWP which shortens your tasks by doing a performance scan, obtuse revisions and spam, and even database overhead. This all helps in saving your time by automating not a too small amount of things, right? If not and you wish to do it yourself, follow these steps:

•       use caching plugins,

•       reduce file sizes,

•       optimize images,

•       use a fast and reliable hosting provider.

By regularly monitoring and improving your site’s speed, you’ll ensure that your site is always optimized for both users and search engines, and this will contribute to your overall success in the online world.

Content production

The overall content production and having meaningful, relevant content are critical pieces of a successful WordPress site maintenance plan. It is precisely that relevant content plays a key role in attracting and engaging visitors, building a loyal audience out of them, and driving traffic to your site. And, once they’re engaged and fulfilled with relevant information, you’re more likely to convert them into clients and customers.

Search engines live out of content production, too and it is one of SEO’s main strong parts. By ensuring you have high-quality content, search engines will see you as a high-quality website and a valuable resource of information for your target audience. Make content production a part of your site maintenance plan and regularly update your clients’ sites with fresh, meaningful, and valuable content which will bring much ROI, to you all.

On-Site SEO

It’s only natural to continue the list with On-Site SEO. This covers everything that you do within your client’s site with a huge role in how search engines see and rank your client’s website. Making sure everything is optimized, well structured, and with the right keywords, ensures people come to the website because it’s visible in search engines. Not to mention a well-structured site hierarchy and easy navigation. All of these things impact your clients’ website performance which is why it should be on regular monthly maintenance service.

URL structure and link health

Moving on, technical SEO is as important as the rest of the SEO pillars. That means having the URL structure and overall site and health in order. What do we mean by that? We’ll give you two examples:

Example 1: http://www.example.com/product.aspx?ID=1396526&IT=5d2o5n

Example 2: http://www.example.com/shirts/button-down-shirt/  

The first example isn’t really doing much for visibility nor SEO. It’s confusing to both search engines and people who use them and it can only hurt you in the long run. The second example is clean, on-point, and gives specific information – as well as having a focus keyword for ranking. Checking your (or your clients’) URL structure is and should be something you offer as a regular maintenance service. As well as the overall link and site health check, which we explained more about in one of our previous articles.

Image optimization

We all know that image quality is essential for any and every website. More than that, you need to optimize those images as well. It is also one of the SEO tasks and, as such, should be a regular part of the website maintenance plan. But what exactly is image optimization? In a nutshell, it’s ensuring the images look and perform flawlessly on both desktop and mobile. And we do it because we don’t want to overwhelm the site’s load time or its weight which is a big error in SEO eyes. By optimizing images, you’re improving:

•       website speed and performance,

•       user experience,

•       search performance, and visibility.

Image optimization includes not only having high-quality images at their lowest file size but also naming them correctly. Take this image for example:

Don’t use the generic name of your camera or phone assigned to it, such as IMG_9579. Instead, name the file something like macbook-on-the-desk.jpg. In doing so, you’re ensuring search visibility, better explanation and also improving the site’s accessibility, something which is especially important in the WordPress community.

In conclusion

At the end of the day, it’s all about having a continuous, successful online presence. In today’s world, just having a site isn’t enough, without regular maintenance and steady SEO updates there is no optimal website presence or growth in organic traffic. A functional and well-maintained site is what helps in having a good result in search engines which is why the role of SEO in WordPress website maintenance is so important. Hopefully, we’ve managed to explain this all and you’ll use the advice to improve your and your client’s site performance, all the way knowing you don’t need to do it alone.

ManageWP has everything you need to automate your workflow and improve your services from one place and with one click. Feel free to reach out and see just how much we make your life easier.