Best Practices to Follow To Keep Your Website Health Perfectly Well

Your website is often the first interaction potential customers have with your brand, making it imperative that it not only looks good but functions seamlessly too. Just like our physical health, your website health requires regular check-ups, attention, and care.

In this blog, we will explore the best practices you need to follow to keep your website in perfect health. From ensuring optimal performance and security to enhancing user experience and maximizing search engine visibility, we will cover a wide array of topics. Whether you’re a business owner, a web developer, or simply a website enthusiast, these practices are crucial for maintaining a website that not only attracts visitors but keeps them coming back for more.

Best Practices for Maintaining Website Health 

1. Check your website health

• Check Your Hosting: Assess your current hosting plan, ensuring it meets WordPress’s recommended requirements. Upgrading to modern PHP versions is vital for performance and security.
• Adopt SSL/HTTPS: Secure your site with an SSL certificate, now considered mandatory for SEO, user trust, and emerging web technologies.
• Review Site Settings: Navigate through WordPress settings to optimize visibility, reading options, and general site information, such as taglines.
• Optimize Permalinks: Modify your permalink structure for user-friendly URLs. Choose between /post-name/ or /category/post-name/, keeping SEO implications in mind. WordPress facilitates redirects when changing structures.

• WWW or Non-WWW: Decide whether to display your site with or without ‘www’ in the URL, reflecting your branding preference. There’s little SEO impact, and most setups handle redirects automatically. 

2. Optimize your content

Optimizing your WordPress site for SEO necessitates offering top-notch content within your niche to maintain your website health. Users seek compelling, credible articles and reliable solutions to their queries. Crafting excellent content for your WordPress platform starts with your original insights or unique perspective on a specific subject. Moreover, it involves presenting these thoughts coherently and accessibly. This approach not only captivates your desired audience but also sustains their interest, ensuring a meaningful engagement with your content.

• Set Focus Keyphrase(s): Choose unique keyphrases for each page to avoid self-competition. Integrate the keyphrase naturally in the SEO title, introduction, subheadings, and meta description. Use synonyms and related keyphrases for context. Utilize Yoast SEO Premium’s analysis, including word forms, synonyms, and Semrush integration, for efficient optimization.
• Optimize Permalink: Include the focus keyphrase in the URL. Keep permalinks concise, descriptive, and free of unnecessary words. Avoid changing published URLs to maintain existing links.
• Optimize Page Title: Craft compelling titles with keywords near the start. Engage readers and consider how titles appear in search results. Be aware that search engines may rewrite titles for clarity.
• Use Headings Correctly: Structure content with appropriate headings (e.g., <h1>, <h2>, <h3>). Ensure consistent usage and logical hierarchy for readability and SEO.
• Optimize Meta Description: Avoid automated descriptions; write unique, descriptive meta descriptions for each page. These summaries serve as adverts in search results, enticing users to click.
• Optimize Images and Media: Name and format files appropriately for search engine understanding. Use descriptive alt attributes for images and provide transcripts for videos. Consider next-gen formats like WebP for performance.

3. Keyword Research and Audience Intent

Before creating content, conduct keyword research to find specific, niche-focused phrases for maintaining website health. Consider user search intent to address their needs effectively. Yoast SEO Premium offers a Keyword research training course to assist with this.

4. Maintain your content quality

Ensuring your website aligns with Google’s quest to provide users with the best and latest information requires consistent content monitoring and updates. It’s crucial to avoid displaying outdated, repetitive, or inaccurate content to your visitors.

This task can be daunting if your site boasts a vast archive of posts. To streamline the process, concentrate on two key areas: refreshing cornerstone content and averting keyword overlap.

Within your website, certain pages hold more significance than others. These pivotal pieces, known as cornerstone content, are vital. We’ve extensively covered the concept of cornerstone articles and their potential to enhance your rankings.

In essence, these posts or pages should:

• Deliver indispensable information to your audience
• Be comprehensive, current, and well-crafted
• Exhibit authority and expertise
• Garner the highest number of links from related posts within your site
• Outrank your other articles on the same topic
• Bring in the highest volume of organic traffic to your website

Whenever you’re uncertain about where to commence your content updates, prioritize your cornerstone content for maintaining website health. They are the backbone of your business and must never become outdated!

5. Keyword cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple articles targeting the same or similar keywords erode your search engine rankings. For instance, having a dozen articles on a single topic confuses search engines, making it challenging to determine which one should rank highest. Consequently, your own articles end up competing for a top position in search engine results.

If you frequently publish content, you’re likely to encounter keyword cannibalization issues sooner or later. To tackle this problem, we’ve devised a systematic approach for maintaining website health:

• Identify the keywords affected by cannibalization
• Evaluate which content performs best for these keywords
• Retain the top-performing posts
• Decide whether to consolidate the other posts into the best-performing ones
• Alternatively, delete the redundant posts and set up redirects

6. Avoid accidental duplicate content

Duplicate content issues occur when search engines encounter multiple URLs with similar or very identical content, leading to ranking confusion and lower search results placement. These issues often stem from technical factors, such as session IDs or indexed www and non-www versions of a page. Additionally, content can be scraped or copied by others, further contributing to duplication problems.

To address these issues and maintain website health, follow these steps in order of preference:

• Prevent Duplicate Content: Avoid creating duplicate content whenever possible. Disable features like session IDs in URLs.
• Implement 301 Redirects: If duplicates are inevitable, set up 301 redirects from duplicate URLs to the original version to consolidate ranking signals.

• Use Canonical Links: When it’s necessary to retain duplicate articles, include a canonical link pointing to the original version within the <head> section of the duplicate content. This informs search engines of the original version, consolidating link authority. Yoast SEO can assist with this process. 

7. Support international audiences

To effectively optimize your website for diverse international audiences and language regions, a comprehensive approach involving both content and technical configurations is essential. Let’s begin by addressing the content aspects of international SEO.

Conducting targeted keyword research and crafting unique content for each audience is paramount. Consider clothing items, for instance. An American vest differs significantly from its British, Dutch, French, or Spanish counterparts. Utilizing automated translations is discouraged. Instead, invest time and resources in thorough research and accurate translations to optimize your keywords and copy effectively.

Additionally, selecting the appropriate domain structure is a critical consideration in international SEO. While a distinct country code top-level domain (ccTLD) like www.yoast.de is a viable choice for large corporations with substantial budgets, subdirectories are often the more practical option for most cases.

Search engines aim to present the correct language version of your site to each visitor, regardless of their country of origin. To assist them in this task, the implementation of hreflang is crucial. Hreflang is a code that informs search engines about the available language variations of a page, aiding in preventing duplicate content issues and ensuring accurate language targeting.

8. Add Schema.org structured data

Structured data functions as a digital guidebook for search engines. By coding a description of your content, you provide instant clarity about that specific piece. This code not only identifies the author, publisher, and publication date but can also specify if the content contains recipes, FAQs, or how-to guides. By communicating this information, search engines gain a deeper understanding of your site, enhancing the likelihood of generating rich results and thus, maintaining website health.

Moreover, structured data offers the advantage of swiftly constructing various content pages using specific data blocks. These blocks seamlessly integrate with the block editor. Presently, two types are available: FAQs and how-tos. These blocks enable you to visually create content while building valid structured data in the background. Additionally, the Schema controls empower you to define the page type you’re working on. For instance, you can effortlessly incorporate structured data into your contact page by selecting the corresponding type, streamlining the process.

9. Optimize your site structure

A well-organized site structure is crucial for user experience and SEO. Proper organization, including clear navigation paths and hierarchical categories, helps users and search engines understand your site’s importance. Avoid cluttering your homepage; instead, create a user-friendly menu and breadcrumbs. 

Contextual internal linking within your content establishes connections between related pages, aiding user navigation and providing search engines insight into page relationships. When managing categories and tags, choose main categories wisely, create subcategories when needed, and use tags sparingly. 

Custom taxonomies can be employed if they enhance user understanding. Effective site structure ensures logical content grouping, smooth user interaction, and maintain website health.

10. Manage your archive pages

Utilizing categories and tags automatically generates archive pages that compile posts and pages under specific categories or tags. Apart from these, there are also date-based and author archives, which require careful management to avoid SEO issues and also, for maintaining website health.

In the case of a single-author blog or when author archives are unnecessary, it’s advisable to disable them. Similarly, if date-based archives are not essential, disabling them is a prudent choice. Even if these archives are not actively used in your template, external links might still direct to them, potentially affecting your WordPress SEO.

Additionally, there’s a specific type of archive generated by your internal search function, which is marked as “noindex.” This practice aligns with Google’s recommendations and helps optimize your site’s search engine performance.

10. Opt for Pagination

When your WordPress site contains numerous posts, it’s essential to consider the appearance and functionality of your pagination. Otherwise, your most valuable content might be buried within your site’s depths, making it challenging for both users and search engines to discover. Customizing the design and functionality of your pagination is crucial to enhancing user experience, maintaining website health, and facilitating easier navigation for both visitors and search engines.

11. Configure your breadcrumbs

Incorporating breadcrumbs into your posts and pages is highly recommended for maintaining website health. Breadcrumbs, the links typically positioned above the post title, such as “Home > SEO blog > WordPress SEO,” serve two vital purposes:

• They enable seamless navigation for your users throughout your website.
• They assist search engines in comprehending your site’s structure more effectively.

It’s important that these breadcrumbs are linked back to the homepage and the specific category of the post. In cases where a post falls under multiple categories, it should be associated with one primary category.

12. Manage your XML sitemaps

XML sitemaps are a valuable tool to notify search engines like Google about your site’s updates. You have the flexibility to review and control the content, archives, and templates that are included in your XML sitemaps. Content types configured not to appear in search results will be automatically left out of your XML sitemaps.

13. Speed up your WordPress website

A sluggish website can lead to user frustration, reducing engagement, conversions, and the likelihood of return visits. This, in turn, diminishes the chances of content sharing, linking, or brand recommendation. In essence, speed significantly impacts WordPress SEO and the overall user experience. Therefore, it’s vital to assess and enhance your site’s performance, particularly for users on mobile devices or slower connections.

With an update from Google’s Page Experience, page speed and user experiences have taken center stage, becoming increasingly crucial over time. Evaluating your site’s speed can be perplexing due to varying scores and results from different tools, sometimes even conflicting information. Once you identify the bottlenecks, the next challenge lies in optimizing hosting, themes, plugins, and overall performance.

Page speed optimization extends beyond WordPress SEO, varying significantly from one site to another. For some, quick wins might involve changing hosting services or implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Others might benefit from reevaluating plugin usage or modifying the loading process of CSS and JavaScript files.

However, this complexity shouldn’t deter you from maintaining website health. We’ve compiled a guide featuring page speed tools and straightforward optimizations to help you make initial improvements. 

14. Secure your WordPress website

• Secure Login Credentials: Change the default username from “admin” to avoid easy guesses by hackers. Utilize strong, unique passwords (at least 20 characters) managed by tools like 1Password or LastPass. Implement two-factor verification using WordPress plugins for added security.
• Regular Backups: Create regular backups to swiftly revert changes in case of hacks or issues during updates. Various user-friendly backup plugins are available, eliminating technical complexities.
• Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider: A reputable hosting company for your WordPress website offers full-proof security.
• Utilize security tools: Tools like Cloudflare enhance website protection against threats.
• Limit Login Attempts: Restrict login attempts (e.g., allow five tries) to thwart brute force attacks and malicious login attempts.
• Keep WordPress and Plugins Updated: Regularly update WordPress core, plugins, and themes to patch security vulnerabilities. Stay vigilant about checking for updates to maintain an up-to-date installation.
• User Management: Be cautious when adding new users and assigning roles and permissions based on necessity. Avoid granting unnecessary administrative rights to guest bloggers or contributors.
• Authentication Keys and Salts: Change authentication keys and salts when setting up a new WordPress instance. These keys work together to safeguard passwords and cookies during transit between the browser and the web server.
• Use monitoring: Consider outsourcing security to experts like Sucuri, who can swiftly address hacks. Regularly monitor your site using tools like Sucuri’s Sitecheck or security plugins such as WordFence and iThemes. Choose a reliable security plugin and stay alert to file changes and user logins using tools like WP Security Audit Log. Being proactive in monitoring ensures prompt action against irregularities, swift response to security threats, and maintain website health.

15. Cater to your mobile visitors

Observe your surroundings, and you’ll quickly realize that mobile devices have become the predominant means of web browsing, even in the comfort of our homes. However, we don’t visit separate mobile websites; we visit websites. It’s crucial for website owners to perceive their mobile and desktop sites as one unified entity and cater to their visitors accordingly.

In recent years, mobile market share has surpassed desktop usage. If your optimization efforts focus solely on desktop visitors, you’re neglecting the majority of your audience. However, these trends might vary depending on your specific niche. Google Analytics can provide precise data tailored to your site.

Given the prevailing market dynamics, considering your mobile website as an ‘extra’ is no longer viable. It’s time to prioritize mobile SEO to effectively engage with the predominant segment of your audience and for maintaining website health. You can analyze your mobile responsiveness using plugins. Here are some strategies to implement: 

• Mobile Website Optimization is Essential: Mobile devices dominate web browsing; optimizing for mobile visitors is crucial. 
• Ensure Mobile-Friendly Design: Prioritize mobile-friendly themes; ensure links and buttons are easily accessible. Maintain consistent font size; optimize image dimensions and file sizes.
• Implement Responsive Design: Adopt responsive design for versatile screen adaptation. Use CSS media queries to adjust layouts based on screen widths.
• Focus on User Priorities: Identify main user tasks (4-6) on your website. Emphasize crucial tasks with prominent call-to-action buttons.
• Consider Mobile Internet Speed: Assess mobile internet speed in the target region. Optimize image usage and text enhancements for faster mobile performance.

16. Analyze and improve your performance

An effective SEO campaign doesn’t just involve making changes; it also hinges on evaluating the impact of these changes, identifying successful strategies, and building on them. Google offers two distinctive tools designed to assess your website’s performance, pinpoint potential opportunities for future focus, and maintain website health.

• Google Analytics: Google Analytics provides vital insights into visitor behavior and website performance. Track visits, conversions, bounce rates, and more to gauge user engagement.
• Google Search Console: Optimize Search Engine Visibility and connect your website to Google Search Console for search performance data. Verify your website using meta tags, easily managed through plugins like Yoast SEO.

17. Promote your site

WordPress SEO empowers you to invest significant time and effort into creating quality content, ensuring it’s discoverable through search engines. However, merely publishing posts isn’t enough to attract visitors, grow your audience, and maintain website health. So, how do you effectively expand your readership? The key lies in the proactive promotion of your site!

• Encourage Engagement: Interact with readers through comments, social media shares, and calls to action. Foster engagement by writing engaging content and encouraging discussions. Respond to comments to build relationships and show your site’s activity.
• Grow Your Reach: Utilize popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Be active where your audience is present to expand your blog’s visibility. Develop a social media strategy to effectively engage with your target audience.
• Build a Mailing List: Invest in a newsletter to connect with your audience directly. Include a subscribe option below posts and in prominent site locations. Ensure the newsletter is mobile-friendly and offers unique, valuable content.
• Amplify Your Content: Stand out in the sea of content by amplifying your posts. Consider advertising on platforms like Facebook or Instagram to reach new audiences. Analyze existing channels and explore new avenues to broaden your content’s reach beyond organic reach.

Conclusion

This guide provides a comprehensive range of strategies for maintaining website health. It covers technical SEO pointers, conversion strategies, content enhancements, communication tactics, and much more. However, there’s a crucial caveat: to rank well for highly competitive terms, you must diligently implement these techniques to let your website function perfectly well.