Imagine the frustration of entering a store with no clear signage, disorganized shelves, and no staff to guide you. How long would you stay? The same applies to website navigation.
Do you ever wonder how to improve your WordPress in order to make it even more effective? We want to present a collection of the best SEO practices for WordPress that will help you achieve high results and make your website jump to the top positions in the search engine.
Is WordPress SEO friendly?
As you already know, WordPress is a great CMS that significantly supports the work of marketing specialists. It helps in content marketing, performance marketing, as well as in building an overall brand image. However, many people wonder if this is a good option when it comes to SEO. The answer is yes. It is definitely one of the best systems when it comes to SEO activities for your website. According to Search Engine Journal, WordPress is the best CMS for SEO for several reasons. Among many, it allows for:
- using plugins that help adapt individual pages to SEO;
- managing SEO settings;
- changing settings, even by people who are not website developers;
- creating a website in accordance with the user experience rules;
- easy and convenient website content creation, which is necessary for SEO.
Search Engine Optimization with WordPress – how to conduct it?
Let’s move on to some specific WordPress SEO tips that will definitely prove useful to you.
1. Choose a SEO friendly WordPress Theme
Unfortunately, many people have no idea that SEO preparations need to start before the website’s structure is even created. How to optimize WordPress for SEO from the very beginning? Select an appropriate theme! This is crucial when it comes to the results achieved by your website. According to SEJ, the best themes for this CMS in regard to SEO, are: Astra, Geneza, Divi, GeneratePress and OceanWP. The algorithm of search engines values them for being user-friendly. People who manage the website can also easily use all the WordPress SEO tricks suitable for those themes. It is worth remembering that not every motif on WordPress has the same SEO options.
2. Set up permalink structure
How to boost SEO on WordPress? You should definitely take care of the structure of the permalinks. In the context of SEO, it is often referred to as internal and external linking. However, it will not work well if you do not take care of its organization. Permalinks work as the URL format for posts and pages. If the URLs on your site are not easy readable, it will prove to be a problem for users. Describing the links properly does not make a big difference when it comes to rankings, but it does have a great impact on user experience. If you have not set up permalinks yet, you can do it by going to Settings, then Permalinks. Afterwards, you only need to select the Post Name option or define your own Custom Structure depending on your needs.
3. Install one of the top WordPress SEO plugins
One of the reasons WordPress is so popular is because of plugins that help you set up the website without major programming changes. For example, you can use them to prevent the copying of content, create contact forms, plan content, etc. There are also many solutions that support SEO. Why should you install plugins? Well, they increase the functionality of the website and allow you to optimize it by adding options that are not available in the basic version.
Top WordPress SEO plugins
What are the best SEO plugins for WordPress in our opinion?
- Yoast SEO
This is probably the most popular solution available for WordPress, which is rated as exceptional by users. What makes it stand out is the simplicity and intuitiveness of use. With this plugin, you can quickly and easily optimize a specific entry or page. Its interface is very user-friendly – even a person with basic knowledge about this CMS can easily control its functioning. It allows you to create a sitemap as well as set titles and meta-tags. It also auto-suggests how to add SEO keywords in WordPress website and helps you analyze their results. Additionally, it is compatible with Google Search Console.
- Rank Math
This is another popular option, which is even simpler to use than the previous plugin. It has a very user-friendly page optimization configurator, which is especially helpful when you are just getting started. Moreover, the default plugin settings are usually sufficient for most websites, so you do not have to worry about it.
- All in One SEO
It is a slightly advanced plugin due to the enormous number of functions it has. However, its configuration is automatic, so feel free to use it even if you are a beginner. It also has a very helpful feature – this plugin will suggest additional keywords for your website during its optimization.
However, remember to choose one, maximum two plugins that can manage your WordPress SEO optimization for you. Too many plugins can make the website run slower and less dynamic. It is worth paying attention to this, as it’s also one of the factors that affect how algorithms perceive it.
4. Generate a sitemap
One of the effective ways for improving SEO on WordPress can be the sitemap configuration. A sitemap helps search engines find your content. This is extremely important because the algorithm is not always able to catch the new content. You can use the maps to inform Google that the page has been updated. Many plugins generate such maps on their own. One of them is Yoast SEO that has been discussed earlier in the article. Just click on “SEO”, then “General”, later “Features”, select “XML sitemaps” as enabled, and you are ready to go. In the plugin, you can conveniently manage what types of content should be included in your sitemaps.
5. Turn on Breadcrumbs
When you want to find out how to improve SEO on WordPress, you should try enabling Breadcrumbs. They improve internal linking and allow search engines to more efficiently define the structure of the website. You can enable breadcrumbs with plugins. For example, Yoast SEO has such an option. How to do it? Go to Yoast SEO and find “Search Appearance”, then click “Breadcrumbs” and set it to “Enabled”. It is very easy!
6. Write title tags and meta descriptions to boost SEO on WordPress
The first thing you will hear when you ask specialists how to do SEO on WordPress is to use title tags and meta descriptions. Google usually shows the title tag in search results, so this is an extremely important parameter when it comes to SEO. Additionally, the title also functions as a ranking factor! So remember that it is worth including the primary keyword near the beginning of the title. Meta descriptions, on the other hand, are not a direct ranking factor, but that does not mean they can be forgotten. Google may show them in search results, so it is definitely worth writing compelling descriptions that will entice users to click and thus increase your Click-Through Rate.
7. Use headings to structure your content
In every WordPress SEO guide, you will read that headlines are important for several reasons. The biggest one is that they enable a better understanding of the content hierarchy. However, they are also important from the user experience perspective. On WordPress, we can add them using the WYSIWYG editor. Just click on the “Paragraph” drop-down menu to select the type of header. Most WordPress themes are based on the post title as the H1 heading, so you should use H2-H6 headings in your body.
8. Optimize images in WordPress for SEO
Unfortunately, many people forget about photos completely when they are wondering how to optimize WordPress website for SEO. You need to know that the alt text is important for SEO because, among other things, it tells the search engine about the content of images. Hence, a well-described picture can get better results in the Google image search engine. Adding an alternative text on WordPress is not difficult and takes literally seconds. Just fill in the “alt text” field when uploading the image. Remember about other factors related to pictures! In order to make the image SEO WordPress triangle work, you should not forget about the format of the visuals. They should be compressed, so they do not slow down the page. It is also worth using newer graphic formats such as WebP.
9. Add Schema structured data
The next step to take in regard to how to set up SEO on WordPress to get results is adding structured data. This kind of data helps search engines understand what this particular content is about. Additionally, the use of structured data allows for generating rich results. The easiest way is to add it with plugins. Yoast SEO automatically generates the schema code. You just need to configure this in the SEO section by going to “Search Appearance”. For the corporate website, select the “Organization” option, and also upload the logo.
10. Speed up your WordPress website
You should bear in mind that the website performance is a very important matter when it comes to SEO tips for WordPress. If the page is slow, users are less likely to stay, convert and visit again. A slow website also means worse search engine rankings. As a result, you not only lose visitors, but also your SEO efforts are wasted. To easily measure how fast your website loads, you can use Pagespeed Insights. When you want to optimize the speed of your website, plugins that implement cache and optimize resources can be useful. The most popular performance enhancing solutions are: WP Rocket, Autoptimize, WP Optimize, W3 Total Cache.
You can also use Page Counter online tool. This tool will help you find all the pages on your website and perform their technical SEO analysis. This way you will find all the technical errors on each page that affect website SEO and its speed.
11. How to do SEO on WordPress? Content is king!
To finish the discussion, we must mention one more thing. If you want to be positioned high in Google rankings, you need to have good, optimized content on your website with a suitable SEO title and description configured on WordPress. You also cannot forget about high-quality text content, which will contain selected key phrases and valuable information for users. The texts should be grouped in topic clusters, thanks to which the search engine will better understand the relationship between the content of individual pages.
Without good content, even with perfect SEO settings in WordPress, you have no chance of ranking high. Moreover, you will not be very successful in obtaining organic traffic on the site, as users are not inclined to spend time on websites without interesting, insightful materials.
Improving SEO on WordPress – summary
Is WordPress good for SEO? Now you should be able to answer this question and decide if you should choose this CMS for your website. If you want to learn more about how to rank WordPress website on Google, check out our blog. There you will find the article titled WordPress as a tool to enhance your marketing. We also invite you to one of our free WordPress workshops, where you can learn how to set up a website.
