If you own a website that uses WordPress as its content management system (CMS), you are on the right page. Improving your WordPress SEO can help you get more traffic. If you are serious about that, you need to master the search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. Below, we are listing some of the top WordPress SEO tips and ways to help you improve the organic visibility of your posts and get more traffic.
Why Is WordPress SEO Important?
If you are new to SEO, you should know that it is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words, SEO works as a strategy used by website owners to get more traffic by ranking higher in search engines.
WordPress SEO is important because it helps you create a website that has optimized code and formatting, which makes it easy for search engines to find it. In times when search engines are the biggest source of traffic for most websites, here is what you need to do to make your site rank higher organically.
Step 1: Ensure That Your Website Is Visible to Google
Did you know that WordPress comes with a built-in option to hide your website from search engines?
The purpose of this feature is to prevent anything from going public before your website is ready or live. However, this option can get checked by accident and would make your website unavailable to search engines.
To make sure your content is visible in the search results, log in to the admin area of your WordPress website, and visit the Settings > Reading page.
Once you are there, scroll down to the ‘Search Engine Visibility’ section and make sure that the box located next to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is unchecked. Click on ‘Save Changes’ to confirm your changes.
Step 2: Use SEO-Friendly URL Structures In Your Pages And Posts
SEO-friendly URLs contain words that explain the content of the page, instead of unusual characters. As such, they are given priority by both humans (when searching) and search engines.
An example of a SEO friendly URL is:
https://www.devinedigitalmarketing.com/wordpress-seo
A non-SEO friendly URL, on the other hand, would look like this:
https://www.devinedigitalmarketing.com/?p=10467
As you can see, URLs should be short and concise, use words instead of numbers or characters unrelated to the content, and quite descriptive of the page they are directing the user to.
Step 3: Make Sure Your Hosting Provider Is Reliable
Believe it or not, the hosting company that you choose is vital for your SEO. Nowadays, Google takes speed into account when ranking sites, which is how a good host can help you push your content to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Your host will also affect the amount of downtime that your website experiences, and the physical distance between your servers and your visitors. If you haven’t created a website or picked a hosting provider yet, it might be smart to go with a WordPress-specific hosting plan.
Step 4: Ensure You Are Using A SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme
Your theme is how your website will visually look, and is therefore a very important choice for your website. However, it is also a tricky subject since many themes are not SEO-friendly. The functionality of your chosen theme plays a role in its SEO, and can affect your website’s speed (which, as we know, is vital to your organic performance).
So, when picking a theme, make sure that you choose one that is SEO-friendly (there is usually a tag that features themes like these). You can also contact us for custom website design solutions and get an optimized, accessible and inclusive website.
Step 5: Add ALT Text, Meta Titles + Meta Descriptions On Every Post
Adding ALT text will help your images rank higher. These tags are used when optimizing images – so that your images show up in the ‘Images’ section of Google Search. However, having proper ALT text would also help visually impaired and people with other disabilities who use screen readers, as their devices or assistive technologies would be able to read the ALT text to them.
Aside from ALT text which is good for SEO, customizing your meta titles and meta descriptions is another practice you should follow when adding new pages or posts. These are essentially the formats of text that people would see in the search engine results. Make sure you use popular keywords, and structure them in a way so people are interested to click and proceed reading or learning more on your website.
Step 6: Install a SEO Plugin
Lastly, if you are new to WordPress and the entire WordPress SEO thing, you might consider using a plugin. These are add-on software programs that you can install and be guided on the best SEO practices whenever you create a page or a blog post.
These plugins provide small features such as creating a sitemap, or helping you understand SEO in detail. One of the most popular SEO plugins out there is Yoast SEO, which adds a whole suite of SEO-focused features to your WordPress website.
We hope these tips will help you understand WordPress SEO and take actions to make your website rank higher. For professional assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us and discuss our search engine optimization (SEO) packages. Schedule your appointment today by visiting this link!
