Are you someone who is looking forward to starting your blog or website? Have you decided to utilize WordPress for building your blog or website?
If your answer to these questions is yes, then let us tell you that you have made the right decision. But, if not, then we are sure that after reading this blog post, you would be convinced to make use of WordPress for your project.
WordPress is considered to be one of the best platforms especially for building blogging websites. It stands out from the other platforms available in the market as it is completely customizable, secure, and easy to use.
Here, in this guide, we will focus on letting you know about the best ways in which you can make WordPress SEO simple. So, to get the most out of your SEO efforts, all that you need is to read this detailed guide.
Understanding WordPress In More Detail
WordPress.org is considered to be a dashboard that is mainly utilized for creating, optimizing as well as updating your blog. The best part about this is that you do not have to write any code in it for building a website or blog. This open-source software is trusted by the developers present all across the globe.
A lot of people prefer to make use of this platform, so, it is known to be the most recognized CMS in the present day. What sets WordPress from the others is its open-source nature.
It suggests that anybody who has a good idea about software programming and coding can easily work on the WordPress code, make certain changes to it and also boost its functionality. But, it does not mean that you have to be a coding master to attain success while working with this platform. You can easily do this if you lack knowledge about coding.
But, if you require any assistance, you can hire affordable SEO services who have the required skills and experience to carry out this task.
Another important thing to note in this aspect is that WordPress is great for SEO. So, in case you are running an online business, then you would be greatly advantageous by making use of WordPress. By using this platform, you would be able to receive a huge volume of traffic to your business which ultimately boosts your sales and ultimately increases your revenue.
WordPress can also cover various SEO tasks which include keyword linking, URL optimization, content structuring, and a lot more. Not only that, but WordPress also helps to improve mobile responsiveness.
Now, let’s have a look at some of the tips and best practices for WordPress SEO which will surely prove to be very helpful for you.
WordPress Seo Tips To Follow
1. Select A SEO-Friendly Theme
While setting up your WordPress blog, you need to select a theme. It suggests what your website is going to look like. If your main goal is to attract traffic to your website, then it is extremely important to go for an SEO-friendly theme.
Thankfully, you will find the availability of a lot of free themes to choose from. If you already have installed a WordPress theme, but you are not receiving desired traffic to your website, then it is time when you should change your current theme and switch it to an SEO-friendly one.
2. Set Your Preferred Domain
You will require to select your preferred domain to keep setting up your WordPress website. It should be either https://www.domain.com or https://domain.com. Neither one is considered better for SEO.
All that you need is to ensure that your website is accessible on one of these as these are thought to be distinct URLs. So, whenever you are launching a new website, choose any of these options based on your preferences and you are good to go.
But, you should necessarily be careful, if you are considering the replacement of any existing website. In such cases, you should be sure to make use of the same version which you have utilized historically. Somehow, if you are having both domains, then all that you need is to redirect one of these to your desired domain.
3. Optimize Your Website
Another important thing is to optimize your website for important search engines. In this regard, you can make use of your theme editor to update your website meta description, title, and a lot more.
If you have installed SEO-friendly themes on your WordPress website, then it will provide you with a relevant suggestion, so that you can alter these to what shows up on Google when someone searches for your website or similar services or products provided by your business.
You can even use a plugin for this. One of the best plugins is Yoast SEO which you can use for editing meta titles and descriptions.
4. Choose A Decent Hosting Service
You need to go for a decent hosting service if you want to achieve the best outcomes. Thankfully, you will find the availability of multiple numbers of web hosts to choose from which includes Hostgator, Bluehost, WP Engine, Godaddy, etc. You should choose anyone among those to get started.
5. Boost Your Website Speed
Website speed is a crucial part of any good web experience. If you want to rank your website higher in the search results, then you should necessarily focus on this aspect. Slower loading web pages cause people to bounce off of your website. So, all that you need to make sure is that your site loads fast.
Luckily, many of the modern hosting platforms on WordPress are considered to be fast enough to host most simple sites. Some of the best ways to boost your website speed involve installing a lazy load plugin, making use of a CDN, compressing your images, etc. If you still see that your website is too slow, then it is time, when you need to upgrade your web hosting.
Read Also: How to Increase Speed in the website?
6. Make Your Website Responsive
If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, then you are missing a large number of potential visitors every day. So, it is extremely important to take this aspect seriously, if you want to make the most out of it. In such cases, you should go for a website design that is perfectly optimized to use on mobile.
Currently, a vast majority of the users access Google from their mobile. So, Google nowadays makes use of mobile-first indexing at the time of indexing as well as ranking a page. It means, that you should necessarily check your website loads on mobile so that, it becomes easy for mobile users to read as well as navigate.
As per Google, your website should be responsive which means that it perfectly adjusts to all sizes of the screen including smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
7. Take Advantage Of WordPress’s Heading Suggestions
WordPress offers you heading suggestions that let you know whether you are making use of the right heading hierarchy or not. Right heading hierarchy will significantly help your website in terms of SEO. Another important thing is to write headlines that are keyword-rich, interesting, and clear.
Headings or headlines are mainly the titles that are written at the beginning of sections, pages, and paragraphs. Based on the importance as well as the location of the heading, they specifically vary in terms of size. While you are writing content for SEO, you should incorporate keywords you are ranking for in your headings. Headings are mainly used by search engines to determine that:
- Keywords and related words should necessarily be included in the main titles and headings of the page which include H1 and H2.
- The sub-headings of the page reflect the main headings which include H2, H3, and H4.
- The content of the page suggests the sub-headings which include the paragraph text.
- Always make use of H2s for important topics whereas H3s for listicles as well as smaller topics.
8. Make Use Of Image Best Practices
Whenever you are working with your WordPress SEO, it is extremely important to optimize images. There are some of the crucial tips to follow while optimizing your images for SEO which include the following:
- Always source your images as it helps to build up backlinks to your website
- Consider adding image titles, alt text as well as captions which helps Google to know what your images are all about and how these are related to your keyword.
- Compress your images as it helps to reduce their size and boost website speed.
9. Give Priority To Great UI Or UX
Both UX and UI significantly impact your SEO. If your website does not have a great UX, then people would not like to use your website, irrespective of how good services, products, or information, you are involved in providing. So, you should necessarily have a good user interface to provide a good user experience. Always ensure that the UI design of your website is functional and clean to maximize the SEO value of your website.
10. Accelerate The Content Generation Process
Formulating an ongoing and strategic content machine is extremely important if you are looking forward to getting a robust online presence. If your main goal is to boost the SEO score of your website, then there is no better way than producing exceptional blog posts often.
It means that you should always come up with keywords and topics which are relevant to your audience, produce persuasive blog content, marketing copy, etc. One of the best ways to accelerate the content generation process involves outsourcing your content to a blog writing service.
11. Verify With Google Search Console
One of the most important things which you need to boost your website performance is Google Search Console. This analytics tool by Google helps you to get a good understanding of the visitors which you receive on your website and your website performance. With the help of this tool, you would be able to see how Google views what is going on, on your website.
In turn, it lets the creators, they can effectively maximize their promotional efforts to reach a broader audience and improve their SEO. Once you are done verifying your website on Google Search Console, you need to set up your Google Analytics to get more detailed analytics.
12. Consider Internal Linking Of Your Posts
One of the most crucial things which you could do for ranking your website in the search engines is internal linking. You would be able to keep users on your page and create a great experience for them just by linking to other content on your website. Additionally, more internal links help you to place higher on the search engine results page. In each of your blog posts, you should incorporate at least 2 to 3 links to other pages on the blog or the main website.
13. Submit And Update Sitemaps Or XML
Talking about the XML sitemap, it is a file that aids in listing the important pages of a website to ensure that Google can easily find and crawl them. With the help of this, Google can have a proper understanding of your website structure along with what specific pages are relevant while deciding rankings.
Not only that but submitting a sitemap can again greatly helps with content discovery. It lets Google and other search engines know that your website has been updated.
14. Make Use Of WordPress Plugins
The best thing about WordPress is, no doubt, the plugins. These are the pieces of code that other people have written. To use this, you just need to activate this. Depending on your unique requirements, you can focus on downloading those which you need. Plugins make your work easy.
You will find the availability of some plugins which helps to automatically create internal links once you typeset keywords. Similarly, some other plugins are also there which do continuous checking of your website for broken links. You just need to go to the “Plugins” sections of the WordPress dashboard to find the suitable plugin as per your requirement.
15. Optimize WordPress Site Structure
It is the structure of your website which helps both the search engines and users understand as well as navigate your website. It displays the hierarchy of your pages along with your website. All that you need is to organize your website properly, as it helps users to navigate through your site.
Always ensure that your homepage is clear as well as easy to navigate. Never clutter your homepage with too many options as it will make your website much more difficult for people to comprehend. Also, consider adding categories and subcategories to order everything well. You should again add a clear menu along with breadcrumbs as it helps users to navigate your website.
16. Permalinks And URLs Matters A Lot
Whenever it comes to SEO, URL structure matters a lot. Thankfully, the WordPress URLs are very well structured. Not only do they make sense, but also are well-organized by categories you focus on selecting and as per the best practices. To reap benefits out of your URL, you need to stuff your keywords into the URL of the article.
Another crucial thing is to avoid adding changeable elements, particularly in your URL. Not only that, but you should always ensure that the layout of your permalink does not include the date or year published. It dates your posts automatically so, even when you update the content, it is old in the eyes of Google which is not at all a good practice.
Google always gives importance to fresh content as these are more accurate. Republishing with a new date will not help as you will end up losing any links to your previous post. One of the ways is to use an ‘updated on’ or ‘last modified’ note to show both the search engines and users when your content was last updated. It helps to show that your content is relevant and current. You could even do this manually or with the help of a plugin.
Wrapping Up
So, by implementing all of these tips and best practices for WordPress SEO, you would be able to give an extra edge to your website or blog. If you find any difficulties in implementing these tips, then opting for the assistance of professional SEO services will help you a lot.
