Having your website appear at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) is something you can achieve if you follow some tricks on your search engine optimization. Optimizing WordPress SEO is crucial to drag more traffic to a website. But learning the steps on your own remains difficult as most of the guidelines floating around the internet are too technical for beginners.
Today in this blog, we will help you how to optimize WordPress SEO.
Actions You Can Take to Optimize WordPress SEO
Website optimization needs more than a few steps to take. Basic actions to take are –
- Buildup a WordPress website that’s SEO friendly
- Optimize all of the content of the website
- Formulate actions to be taken outside the website to generate more positive results
Let’s explore some of the proer ven and mostly used WordPress SEO methods down below,
1. Use Custom URLs for Pages and Posts Instead of Auto-generated Ones
Permanent URL or permalinks represents what the post, page, or blog is representing on your website. Visitors know what the link is all about just from the URL. It improves user experience drastically.
Permalinks help to improve your WordPress site’s SEO. As search engines read permalinks to determine does your website have the answers to the questions that someone is looking for.
To make this change happen – First, go to your WordPress Dashboard. Then from Settings, click on Permalinks.
Change the Common Settings as per your need and finally click on Save Changes to complete the task.
2. Properly Research Keywords for Your WordPress Site
Keyword research is the method to discover words that users type or enter into search engines to find products, services, suggestions, etc. Using these words and their phrases can improve your website’s ranks and draw more search traffic.
Beginners mostly remain unaware of keyword research. In most cases, they use guessing power to sort out what topic the audience may search about. By following this methodology, they create blogs and posts for the website. Unfortunately, it likes to follow your intuition to find a road in total darkness.
You don’t have to do that. Because keyword analysis is the authenticated and proven way by which you can use real data to sort out what people are actually looking for. Many free and paid keyword research tools are available that you can check out. Some of the finest among them are-
- SEMrush
- SEO PowerSuite
- KWFinder
- Google Keyword Planner
- And more
Remember one thing inserting the same keyword into your content unnecessarily to get a better rank is not a good idea. Google might even penalize your website and lower your website’s position for it.
Plus, users will find it extremely difficult to read if you stuff keywords in an unexpected way. Use related keywords whenever possible. It will show the search engines that you are writing real content.
3. Get Assured about Your WordPress Sites Search Engine Visibility
There is a feature on WordPress that allows you to hide your website from search engines. It originated for the time when you are primarily creating or re-creating your WordPress site. Because people don’t want any visitors to see what is happening. But if this feature remains active accidentally after you launch the site, it will not be visible to the search engine.
To check the status of your site visibility, navigate to Settings and click on the Reading option. If you see a tick mark beside the Search engine visibility option, remove it and press Save Changes button.
4. Choose Optimized Page Headings
Page headings can be crucial for better SEO of your WordPress site. Page headings or titles are also called H1 headings. These headings represent what your page is all about to the search engines and the audiences.
SEO experts suggest using one H1 heading or page title. But you can also use H2 to H6 headings. These will come to break down the larger content into smaller pieces so readers can read them easily.
Optimizing page heading includes inserting the main keyword and its different variants into it. Its been suggested to do it sparingly or try to force enter keywords if it’s not fitting naturally.
5. Pick Necessary Tags for Your Pages and Blogs
Precise tags on pages and blog posts can allow your website to get chosen from the website pool. For example, your tags can be like – DC, Marvel, Tintin, etc.
Tags help search engines to understand your website’s structure thoroughly and improve your site’s SEO. Basically, it also enhances the user experience to find your content quickly.
To Add a new tag or go through the existing ones you have to start from WordPress Dashboard.
Click on Tags from the Posts option. Under Add New Tag, you can add a tag name, slug, and description. Finally, click on Add New Tag button to complete adding a tag.
6. Add Specific Categories to Your Blog and Posts
Just like Tags, adding categories can also improve your website’s SEO. Under a single category, multiple contents can be saved. Some contents may also remain under numerous categories. Wisely chosen categories can help users navigate your posts and blogs more easily. Examples of categories can be Books, Comics, English, etc.
Creating a new category needs just a few clicks. From your WordPress Dashboard, go to Posts and tap on the Categories option. Fill the empty portions as required and hit the Add New Category button right below.
7. Use SEO Plugins to Enhance Your WordPress Sites Overall Performance
Plugins for WordPress sites are like the soul power of the creation. They are used to adding features not available on standard WordPress sites. So you can use plugins that can assist you in optimizing WordPress SEO. There are tons of SEO-related plugins available on the WordPress plugin library. All you have to do is to find the one you are looking for.
- To find it, scroll down to the Plugins option from your Dashboard and then click on Add New.
- In the search bar type SEO Plugins and press enter.
- Select one of the top plugins and read out the features it is offering.
Install and Activate the plugin to optimize your WordPress site with SEO plugin.
All in One SEO, Yoast SEO, Rank Math are some of the finest among all plugins related to SEO improvement. You have to choose a plugin that fulfills the basic requirements as –
- Can build sitemaps
- Help you out on finding keywords
- Optimize content headings
- Add tags and categories
- Give you the advantage of Google Analytics Support, etc.
8. Include Your WordPress Website’s Sitemap to Search Engine
A sitemap is the list of all public URLs that exist on a website. In WordPress, there are two types of sitemaps available. One is called XML and the other one is HTML. Submitting a sitemap to search engines with accurate and updated information will help you to optimize your SEO performance.
It is possible to generate a WordPress sitemap manually. But it takes longer time and XML or HTML knowledge. But don’t get demotivated if you are not familiar with them. Different plugins available on the WordPress plugin library can generate these sitemaps for you. Some of the honorable mentions are-
- Yoast SEO
- All in One SEO
- SEOPress
- AIOSEO
- Google XML Sitemaps, etc.
9. Link Your Pages Internally to Increase the Authority
One of the powerful ways to increase your website’s authority and improve the SEO is to internally link your site’s pages, blogs, posts, videos, and other content.
The smartest way to do it is by highlighting specific words from your page where you want to add links. Then press on the Link button from the automatically popped-up WordPress toolbar. Now copy and paste the URL you want to insert in that word. Press Enter and your linking is done. The selected word with the link will turn into blue if you successfully enter a link.
10. Include Image Alt Text to Optimize Your Image Contents Properly
You can optimize the images by using image alt text. These are the image descriptions that search engines use to read and rank sites according to them. After that, search engines decide whether these images provide the exact information users are looking for.
To add alt text without a plugin, go to WordPress and open a blog in the editing panel that you have published or drafted previously. Now click on Blocks from the right menu bar. Under the Settings menu, please write down the Alt Text or Alternative Text.
There are some awesome SEO plugins available which can add image alt text easily. Select one from the list below. Readout the descriptions and choose the one best matches your requirement.
- Smush
- EWWW Image Optimizer
- Optimal
- WP Rocket
- Imagify
You can try them out to find out a better one.
11. Fix Your Mind to Either Use WWW or Non-WWW Site URL
Google and other search engines consider www and non-www URLs in different ways. Choosing any of them and getting stuck to it can help you improve your WordPress site’s ranking.
After you decide which format to go with enter the Dashboard and go to Settings. Click on General and enter your chosen type of domain in WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) boxes.
12. Put Nofollow External Links in Your Posts
External links are the weblinks that exist on different domains other than your own website. You may have to use other content creators’ information to create better content. To mention those sources if you use the real link that is called an external link. External links have a higher impact on search engine ranking than internal ones.
When you internally link pages of your website, you are providing authority to yourself. But when you include external links, you are helping other content creators gain control or sharing the website’s “link juice” with them. You should allow some external links in your posts or blogs but add nofollow links if you don’t trust the external site.
Adding a nofollow link on your WordPress site prevents search engines and users from following the URLs to external sites. Doing this gives you total authority over the content and a chance to improve your site’s ranking.
To create a no follow link, you can follow two different methods.
hello world how are you
The first method includes the link in a suitable word/sentence. Then select the linked word/sentence. A bar will automatically pop up with the option Set to no follow. Enable it and your attached link will become no follow.
In the second option, choose the selected link first and then click on the three dots of the WordPress bar. Now choose Edit as HTML option and add rel= “nofollow” just after the site’s name as per the image.
This way, the external link will become a nofollow link.
13. Get Engaged in Your Posts Comment Section
Overall engagement of a post means more traffic to the site link sharing, commenting under the content, etc. In total, these engagements represent improved SEO of a site. You must stay aware of spam in your comment section because it can ruin your site’s ranking and SEO.
Take necessary steps to prevent spam comments, faulty form submissions, deals, subscription requests, etc. If you feel manually blocking spammers is a tiring job, use external plugins to do your work. Comment-blocking plugins will block known spammers and protect your comment section from spam.
Find out good spam-protecting plugins from the WordPress plugin store and install it as per the image shown.
14. Differentiate Between Full Posts vs Summaries
When you create any content, WordPress displays and show links to this post from different sources such as the home page, author page, category, date and tag archives, etc. In a standard way, it shows the full article on each of these pages.
It can affect your site’s SEO because search engines may think that all of these are duplicate content and you are reusing the same thing several times. Plus a full article on every archive page will make them load slower.
Showing the highlighted part of your content or summaries instead of full article can solve this problem. To make it happen:
- Go to the Settings option from your Dashboard.
- Click on Reading and then choose Excerpt.
- Hit Save Changes button to activate your command.
15. Try to Include Qualityful Motion Content or Videos
Currently, including video content is one of the most effective ways to engage audiences. Though most of the video content is created and posted on video hosting platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Social Media, you can put them on your WordPress Site too.
Though directly uploading video content may slow down your WordPress website. So uploading Video content on a different platform and sharing it on your site will optimize the speed.
Having better-quality video content will increase the traffic as well as conversion rates of your site. This way, your site’s SEO will also increase.
16. Publish Content on External Sites
Another way to boost WordPress SEO is to post external publications or guest postings on popular websites. There are several benefits of gusset blogging. You will get backlinks which will improve your site’s authority and if high-authority sites permit, your site will get link juice to your site from them.
How SEO Works?
This will be easier to describe with an example –
Suppose you have a comic book store in London City, Ontario. Now if any comic lover from a nearer neighborhood search for a “comic book store in London city”, you definitely wish that your store’s WordPress website comes up at the top of the Google search result. Because if it happens then people who live near to London City are more likely to see your store’s website, enter into the site and purchase some items online or in person.
Reaching the top of the google search list needs way more than just building a WordPress website. The way to keep your site on top results is actually a huge some of the work. The prior work among them is optimization.
Necessity of SEO on Your WordPress Site
WordPress is renowned for its great content management system and its SEO friendliness. To ensure the best search engine ranking, you have to optimize your site further.
Here we will explore why optimizing WordPress SEO is necessary for you,
- Reach the audience searching for the products and/or services you are offering.
- Not spending money on any search engine to place your site at the top of related searches.
- Increasing traffic and improving site visibility for direct sales, uprise the number of leads, brand value, and more.
Final Words
All of the methods discussed above are simple and easy to implement. When you follow the steps, the authority and rank of your site will increase.
Finally, if you own or work on a WordPress site, it’s one of the best decisions you have made. With the help of this blog, you now learn how to optimize WordPress SEO thoroughly. It’s just a matter of time before you reach your competitors and climb up to the search engine rankings if you follow the methods appropriately.