One of the main reasons why companies choose WordPress as their website’s CMS is because of its SEO-friendly feature. However, simply launching a WordPress website is not enough to rank at the top of a search engine – SEO is more complicated than that. WordPress just makes things easier for you, but to rank well on Google, you need to understand SEO tactics.
WordPress is one of the world’s most popular content management system and runs about 33.7% of the entire internet. It started as a blogging platform that soon transformed into a powerful solution for websites and e-commerce solutions. One of the reasons behind its popularity is its flexibility and ease of use, with literally thousands of themes available that you can tailor to your needs.
WordPress SEO Checklist to Improve your Ranking
WordPress, on its own, cannot replace a solid SEO Strategy; you need to understand the basics in order to rank your website on Google. WordPress is not a magical weapon that caters for all SEO needs with little effort. The platform itself makes it accessible to those who have little technical knowledge.
On that note, here are a few basics that you need to cover for a reliable WordPress SEO build.
A Reliable Hosting
Some of the key reasons why you need a reliable web hosting for your website are site speed, security, and uptime. Site speed has a significant impact on your WordPress SEO because users will definitely bounce from your homepage if it takes too long to load.
Research shows that one full second can decrease the conversion rate by 70%! It means that if your website is even one second slower than your competitor, you will lose traffic. Therefore, don’t go for the cheapest option and suffer from a performance issue, but go for a reliable host. You can also get recommendations from an SEO service company.
SEO Friendly WordPress Theme
When you first use WordPress, you will see thousands of themes and options that chances are you will be overwhelmed. There are multiple free themes on the dashboard with premium options, too. Hence you need to choose an SEO friendly theme for your website.
Why are themes important for SEO? Well, simply because many WordPress themes come with a plethora of plugins and scripts that chances are you will never use, and these will slow down your website. Therefore, when you pick a theme, don’t just go for colors and appearances, but run a demo through Googles web.dev tool to assess its potential performance and any other issues.
SEO Friendly URLS Structures
There are two kinds of URL Structures: SEO friendly URL and non-SEO friendly URL’s.
Let’s look at examples:
https://spiralclick.com/blog/seo-amid-covid-19-why-you-shouldnt-stop
This is an SEO Friendly URL because the user can guess what will be on the page just by looking at the URL text.
https://spiralclick.com/?q=12345
This is a non-SEO friendly URL, with numbers that are unrelated to the context, and the user cannot guess about the webpage by looking at the URL. Therefore, use SEO friendly permalink to structure your URL to improve SEO and your chances of ranking in search engines.
Choosing the Best SEO WordPress Plugin
One of the best parts of WordPress is that there are so many plugins for everything, including SEO. Before you begin to optimize your website, you need to install an SEO plugin. Some of the best WordPress SEO Plugins are:
- Yoast SEO
- All in One SEO Pack
Make sure to understand that an SEO Plugin WON’T optimize your website for you. It just makes things a little easier for you, but for maximum results, it is recommended to get advice from an SEO services company in Dubai for best practices and top ranking on Google.
Check Visibility Setting of your Website
WordPress comes with a ‘Search Engine Visibility’ option that discourages search engines from indexing your site when you are working on it before going public. Make sure you uncheck the box that states “Discourage Search Engines from Indexing this Site” because it makes your website unavailable for search engines.
Add XML Sitemap and Verify your Site with Google Search Console
An XML sitemap lists every single page on your website, which helps search engines in finding your content. If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, it will automatically create an XML sitemap; otherwise, you need to find your sitemap with the following:
http://domainname.com/sitemap_index.xml
The next thing you need to do is to verify your website with Google Search Console, which provides you reports to help understand how your webpages appear in search engines. It helps you plan your website content strategy accordingly. It also alerts you in case search crawlers are unable to find your website.
Optimize Blog Posts for SEO
One of the biggest mistakes made by beginners is that they believe activating the WordPress SEO plugin is all that they need to rank their website. SEO is a consistent, ongoing process that must be kept on to see maximum results. All SEO plugins allow the users to preview what viewers will see when they search your website on Google. So, you should optimize your description and title to get more traffic.
Here are a few tips to increase on-site SEO:
- Search for the best keywords for your website and blog posts that are most searched by users on Google.
- Use the SEO Writing Assistant plugin to optimize your website content.
- Divide your site content with tags into categories to make it easy for users to browse through your website.
- Make a habit to interlink your posts from multiple blogs whenever possible to increase page views.
Your website blog should be customized to perfection and should provide the viewers with something new and fresh. Another important factor that affects your site ranking is the fresh content. If your website has outdated content, then people will stop coming to your website; therefore, it is recommended to consult with Spiral Click for SEO friendly and fresh content to increasing site traffic.
Smart Optimization for your Websites
There is no doubt that WordPress is one of the easiest to use and SEO-friendly CMS with multiple plugins and customization options out there. One of the reasons why it’s so popular among developers is because it is not only user-friendly but also provides numerous SEO tactics for bloggers.
Choosing WordPress for your sites is a good choice, but remember, you need a strong SEO strategy to outrank your competitors.