One of the most essential “powerful features” advertised by WordPress is that its site is very SEO-friendly. However, setting up a WordPress website doesn’t guarantee a top rank in search engines. You still have to understand the right way to do SEO andimplement them. Nevertheless, WordPress makes it a bit easier for you so that even beginners can access it and generate traffic from Google. Here are a few ways to improve your page’s ranking and visibility.
1. Look for a reliable host provider.
While choosing a hosting provider, consider the following aspects-site speed, uptime and host security. Site speed is vital for WordPress SEO, while poor uptime and faulty security can result in performance issues. NEVER settle for a hosting provider just because it comes cheap. Chances are they cannot give you optimized facilities.
2. Make sure to install an SEO-friendly theme.
Be clear about the difference between a visually appealing template and an optimized template, which is not the same as a responsive template. The template must be responsive or adaptive to be optimized, and the visual attractiveness does not tell us anything about the optimization.
Each business is different, and so are its requirements. So, we recommend not to use the default theme. There are thousands of free WordPress themes as well as premium themes that you can choose from. We recommend running a demo first through Google’s web. Dev tool so that you can get a clear picture of how it might perform. Following this step will ensure that you are choosing a competent theme.
Read: How to start a blog for beginners
3. Set a preferred domain
What domain you choose does not impact your SEO. For example, https://domain.com or https://www.domain.com both are okay. However, you have to make sure that your site can be accessed on any of these URLs. This is because Google considers them to be separate URLs.
Here’s how to set a domain:
- Login to the WordPress admin area
- Choose Settings>General
- Choose your preferred domain
4. Upgrade to WordPress SEO Service List
Many people who work with WordPress do not know what this list of WordPress update services is about, as it is not evident in the control panel.
The update list is nothing more than the compendium of a series of addresses. The WordPress system sends the information once you have published an article or page, indexing your website. By adding more services to notify after updating WordPress, you achieve much faster content indexing.
5. Keep a check on the visibility settings of your site
WordPress has this feature called “discourage search engines from indexing”, which essentially means that it won’t show up on google rankings. Login to WordPress admin area>Go to Settings> Reading. You will see a checkbox for Search Engine Visibility. If this option is ticked, untick it.
Read: 7 Requirements to make your blog successful
6. SEO Friendly Permalinks
One of the most striking features of WordPress concerning SEO is choosing the structure of the URLs that you use on your pages. Additionally, the generation of permalinks or permanent links is immaculate; in general, nonsense numbers or chunks that include programming variables are not used. The suggestion is that you use the structure that generates the link from the name of the page and consists of the keywords you are targeting.
If you use clean permalinks and include your SEO target keyword, you will rank better.
7. Verify your site with Google Search Console and submit the XML sitemap
Sitemaps help search engine crawlers better understand how your web page is structured. Sitemaps must be generated so that your web page is indexed faster, but above all, it should be done correctly. Wrong indexing can generate duplicate content problems, and that is highly penalized by Google.
Read: How To Improve Your Blog’s Design
8. Thoroughly analyze keywords
The Google search engine and other tools keep a record of the search history for a specific product or service type. You can find tables with complete SEO web analysis of keywords that show the number of searches per month and the investigation’s relevance.
Something that you should never forget is that you must bet on the most local SEO or specific. That is, when looking for keywords, try to make them distinctive to your area. So, for example, if you sell digital marketing services, and you are in New York, the wisest thing is that you position yourself with “digital marketing in New York” instead of “digital marketing”, in general, and that is, in a second way! You would be fighting a position with all the companies in the world!
9. Stay up-to-date with search engine SEO algorithms
Although it is difficult, if not impossible, to know the criteria and weightings that each search engine gives when indexing and positioning web content, we can put trends that we can put into practice to please search engines.
Stay up-to-date on algorithm topics and what’s essential to a search engine when indexing its results; try to adapt your website to these premises and new trends.
For example, currently, there is the belief that Google appreciates longer content (with a more significant number of words) since the engine assumes that more terms are equal to a better-explained topic.
10. Custom URLs for pages and posts
You can overwrite custom URLs to avoid them from being lengthy and truncated. You can click “Edit” and rewrite the URLs accordingly.
11. Optimize the Page Headings
The Page Title also defines the H1 heading of your content. Now, what is the H1 header? It gives users/search engines a context about your page, just like the title of a book. Therefore, an excellent way to optimize WordPress SEO is by adding the main keyword into your Page heading.
Read: How to Fully Optimize SEO’s Digital Marketing
12. Optimize Title Tags and meta descriptions
Title Tag informs both the user and search engine about the content of your page. Google sees this to determine if your site will be displayed or not. You can enter the primary keyword or a keyword variation that you might not include in the page heading. The variations can be the location or the intent of the content.
Enticing meta descriptions also help in improving traffic to your site organically by increasing the Click Through Rate(CTR).
13. Use Internal linking
Provide links to other pages of your site to express the relevancy between the different topics. With the help of these, users can navigate easily through your site and have a better understanding of your business.
14. Optimize your image file name
As much as we use loads of images on our content, it’s equally important to name them accordingly. An excellent way to optimize WordPress SEO is to call your file in a way that describes what the image is all about.
15. Add Alt Text to your Pictures
In addition to aiding visually impaired users with screen readers, Alt Texts are a great way to provide some context and description of your images to search engines. You can add Alt Text from the Image Settings section of your site.
16. Install Cache plugin
The cache plugin helps improve your site’s speed by caching your posts and pages as static files.
17. Optimize Images
Well, optimized images also help to improve the speed and performance of your website.
Read: Writing Outstanding Headlines for Your Ecommerce with SEO Intent
18. No-Index Tag pages and other Low-Value content
WordPress uses several different page taxonomies, including categories and tags. Head to: SEO > Search Appearance > Taxonomies to choose whether or not the taxonomy type should be displayed.
19. Schema Markup your pages
Schema markup enhances WordPress SEO by adding context to your content and information. Google can thus use your content well and show optimized search results, which in turn makes for a great user experience.
20. Use “Last Updated” dates
It is a good practice to update your content to help it stay relevant frequently. Always publish the last update dates. This gives the user confidence that the content is recent and relevant.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that WordPress is one of the most SEO-friendly sites. However, you must apply all SEO tactics to optimize your website. If you are a blogger, you will need a good WordPress SEO plugin to improve your site rankings on Google search. Rank math is precisely that and more. Visit the site and download a free version to check how it works.
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