SEO can be complicated. It’s one of those things that you will spend a lot of time on, but never really see the benefits. You might think it is best to do everything You don’t have to give up control and employ any sort of plugin or service to make your life easier.
However, if you’re just getting started with SEO for your WordPress site, there are a few key actions you must take in order to get the most out of it. We’ll go through what has to be done once a new WordPress website is constructed so that it’s optimized for search engine rankings in this post!
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is the most popular content management system on the internet, with 35% of all websites. It’s used to power a large number of the websites you visit every day, including BBC America, Time.com, and TechCrunch. The Rolling Stones, for example, employ WordPress on their official website. You’d think that if it works for these big corporations, it would work for most website developers.
WordPress began as a blogging platform in 2003, but it rapidly pivoted to become a powerful and adaptable tool for running complete websites. It is also capable of functioning as an eCommerce platform by 2020.
What Is WordPress SEO?
Although WordPress is a wonderful content management system, it isn’t a substitute for a solid SEO strategy, and while there’s no denying that the CMS saves you time and helps you to adhere to best practices without experience, you must remember that Google ranking your website takes effort.
A CMS has no bearing on whether or not you can rank well unless your site is plagued with significant technical difficulties that prevent it from being crawled and indexed. You should not believe that WordPress is a magic bullet; it needs time and effort. SEO can become quite technical, but the appeal of WordPress makes it accessible to anybody, even people not considered technical.
There’s no need to change the way you do SEO just because you’re using WordPress. You still need to develop high-quality material, get excellent backlinks, and maintain your site free of technical problems that might hold it back.
WordPress saves you a lot of time and effort by providing you with everything you need out of the box to rank well. What follows are growth-driving strategies that will help you use WordPress to its full potential, particularly on the platform.
1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider
You should always do your research when it comes to selecting a web host. You must check the provider’s performance, uptime, and security before signing up with them.
The amount of time it takes your WordPress site to load also has an impact on its SEO performance, as well as poor uptime and security bugs. You’re less likely to have performance problems if you spend a little more money.
2. Install an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme
When you first install WordPress, it will most likely be the platform’s basic “Twenty Twenty” theme. However, this isn’t one you’ll want to use on your website.
There are hundreds of free themes immediately accessible from the dashboard, as well as many premium ones. You must select carefully or you may end up using one that isn’t SEO friendly.
While many themes claim to be SEO-friendly, it’s not unusual for them to include scripts and plugins that you won’t use, slowing down your site’s performance. Run the demo of a theme through Google’s web.dev tool before installing it to check for possible performance and SEO concerns.
It will also provide you with confidence that you are selecting a theme that will not restrict you.
3. Install a Free WordPress SEO Plugin
You’ll need an SEO plugin before you begin optimizing your site. Fortunately, two popular choices are both free to use:
- All in One SEO Pack
- Yoast SEO
A plugin is not going to optimize your website for you; it simply makes it simpler for you to do so while following best practices.
The easiest way to install a plugin on WordPress is to go to the admin panel and select ‘add new’ from the left-hand menu: Plugins > Add new. When you get there, look for the plugin you want to install and hit ‘install now.’
4. Enable SEO Friendly Permalinks
WordPress offers a variety of ways to structure URLs, and you must pick the most SEO-friendly option.
WordPress, by default, uses URLs like this:https://domain.com/?p=123. These URLs are not search engine friendly, and there’s no method to figure out what the page is about from the URL alone.
Fortunately, you may select a customized URL structure at Settings > Permalinks. For most sites, ‘Post name’ is the best option.
5. Verify Your Site with Google Search Console & Submit Your XML Sitemap
You’ll need to verify your site with Google Search Console if you haven’t already. If you’ve never done it before, follow our step-by-step tutorial to learn how. Choose the ‘HTML tag’ method from the drop-down menu. Next, head to Yoast’s SEO > General > Webmaster Tools plugin.
Put the HTML content into the ‘Google verification code’ box
After you’ve verified your site, go to the ‘Sitemaps’ menu and click ‘Upload Sitemap.’ (By default, Yoast generates an XML sitemap from domain.com/sitemap.xml.) You can then upload your sitemap file:
6. Interlink your posts and pages
When you’re working on a new post or page, keep an eye out for opportunities to link to previously published material. These links should be relevant to the subject of your essay. Every 250 words of text should include at least one connection. When it’s appropriate, connect to external resources.
7. Use your keywords in blog posts
Try including your article’s primary keyword in the first 100 words, and make sure to include the keyword as well as any relevant ones.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. However, don’t overdo it. Google can detect unnatural keyword cramming, which is called “keyword stuffing.” Naturally formulate your thoughts with periodic allusions to your keywords when they make sense.
Also, don’t forget to incorporate your keywords in subheads as well.
Mastering SEO on WordPress
SEO is a complicated process, but it doesn’t have to be hard. Once you’ve read this post on basic SEO for WordPress sites, you’ll understand the basics and be ready to tackle it on your first or next site.