Getting more traffic to one’s website is essential, and improving WordPress SEO is vital in achieving this. Unfortunately, many WordPress SEO guides are overly technical, making it challenging for beginners to get started. Therefore, it’s crucial to pay attention to WordPress SEO practices to increase website traffic. This guide provides the top WordPress SEO tips, helping to improve WordPress SEO and to get more organic traffic.

Experts claim that WordPress is SEO-friendly, explaining why many individuals choose it for their blogs or websites. Though WordPress ensures that their code follows SEO best practices, there remain many more steps necessary to maximize SEO efforts. Therefore, we’ve compiled a series of actionable steps to appropriately optimize WordPress SEO. Our ultimate WordPress SEO guide includes a table of contents for easy navigation.

Introduction

For beginners, optimizing WordPress SEO may be daunting, especially if you lack a technical background. However, there’s no need to worry because it’s not as complicated as one might assume. We suggest beginning here to grasp the basics before applying them to your website.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, SEO for short, is a marketing strategy implemented by website owners to increase traffic to their site by improving their search engine ranking.

Search engine optimization doesn’t involve deceiving Google or manipulating the system. It revolves around creating an optimized website with proper code and formatting that provides ease for search engines to find your site. Optimized content will result in a higher rank in search results when individuals search for the topics of your website. As a result, more individuals will click through and visit your site.

Why SEO is important

Search engines represent the primary source of traffic for most websites. Google and other search engines rely on complex algorithms to evaluate and rank pages accurately in search results. However, these algorithms are not perfect and require assistance in understanding the content. Without optimization, search engines will fail to rank your content appropriately. Consequently, your website will not appear on search results pages when people search for the topics you cover, resulting in significant loss of traffic.

For business owners, it is critical to optimize their websites for search engine traffic to maximize their reach and visibility.

Basics of WordPress SEO

Search engine optimization may seem technical, but it does not necessarily have to be complicated. Learning a few basic SEO tips for optimizing your website could make a noticeable difference in your traffic.

Utilizing the techniques suggested below does not require technical expertise. Even if you are not a tech expert, using WordPress will suffice.

So, let’s get started on optimizing your website!

Check Your Site’s Visibility Settings

WordPress includes an internal choice to conceal your website from search engines, allowing you time to work on it privately before launching it. Unfortunately, this option could accidentally be checked, causing your website to be inaccessible to search engines, resulting in a failure to appear on search results.

To remedy the issue, the first thing you must do is ensure that the option is unchecked. Begin by accessing the admin area of your WordPress site and navigating to the Settings » Reading page.

Proceed by scrolling down to the ‘Search Engine Visibility’ area and verify that the checkbox adjacent to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is unchecked. Finally, be sure to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to save your new settings.

Using SEO Friendly URL Structures in WordPress

SEO-friendly URLs employ words that accurately describe the webpage’s content and are legible to both humans and search engines. For example:

https://www.yourdomain.com/how-to-install-wordpress/
https://www.yourdomain.com/common-wordpress-errors-and-how-to-fix-them/

Note that the typography of these URLs reveals the content of the pages.

On the other hand, a non-SEO friendly URL often employs unrelated numbers:

https://www.yourdomain.com/?p=10222

https://www.yourdomain.com/archives/123456

These URLs don’t indicate the page content, and a user cannot identify what the page content is through the URL.

Employing an SEO-friendly permalink structure will improve a website’s search ranking. To verify and amend the permalink structure of your WordPress website:

Navigate to the Settings » Permalinks page. Select the ‘post name’ option, and click the ‘Save Changes’ button to save your formatting preference.

Please abstain from changing the permalink structure of a website that has been operating for more than six months, except if already utilizing the “numbers” option. If using the “Day and Name” or “Month and Name” formatting types, the current structure should be maintained.

Changing the permalink structure on an established website can cause a loss of social media share counts and poses a risk to the existing SEO ranking. If a permalink alteration becomes necessary, it is best to enlist a professional’s assistance to incorporate proper redirection. Furthermore, social media share counts for the sites might still be lost.

The Best WordPress SEO plugin

A major advantage of WordPress is that it offers plugins for any feature or functionality, including SEO. However, with thousands of WordPress SEO plugins available, selecting the optimal one can be challenging for beginners.

Rather than installing multiple plugins for each SEO task, we’ll recommend a single, all-encompassing WordPress SEO plugin that’s both the best and entirely free.

When selecting the optimal WordPress SEO plugin, the two most popular options are All in One SEO (AIOSEO) and Yoast SEO.

AIOSEO, the original WordPress SEO plugin, boasts more than 3 million website users, including our own WPBeginner website. It is loaded with dynamic features such as TruSEO on-page analysis, rich snippets schema markup, social media integration, breadcrumb navigation, advanced eCommerce SEO support for WooCommerce, local SEO, an internal link assistant, and more. In essence, AIOSEO optimizes your WordPress site’s entire technical SEO details.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we will showcase AIOSEO with sample screenshots and use it as the primary example. For additional information, we recommend reading our comprehensive guide on how to install All in One SEO for WordPress.

Previously, we used Yoast SEO, but we opted for All in One SEO due to its faster innovation and more extensive feature set. For additional information, check out our article outlining the 9 reasons behind our switch from Yoast SEO to AIOSEO.

Add XML Sitemaps in WordPress

An XML Sitemap is a specially structured file that catalogues every webpage on your site. This technique helps search engines locate all of your content readily.

Although adding an XML sitemap will not increase your site’s search engine rankings, it does support search engines in finding and classifying your pages quickly.

If you’re using the AIOSEO plugin, it will generate an XML sitemap automatically. To locate your XML sitemap, enter this URL, substituting example.com with your domain name:

http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

We will display how to submit your XML sitemap to Google in the subsequent stage.

Add Your Site to Google Search Console

Google Search Console, or Webmaster Tools, is a collection of tools provided by Google to offer website owners insights into how the search engine views their content.

It provides reports and data to help you evaluate how your pages fare in search results, and lets you see the actual search terms that people are using to locate your website, how each page displays in search results, and how frequently your pages are clicked.

All of this data aids your comprehension of what works and what doesn’t function on your site, enabling you to establish a content strategy that suits your needs.

Google Search Console also sends alerts when there are issues with your website, such as crawlers being unable to access it or finding duplicate content, or when resources are restricted.

Optimizing Your Blog Posts for SEO

It is a common misconception among beginners that installing and activating a WordPress SEO plugin is sufficient for optimizing their website. However, search engine optimization (SEO) requires ongoing effort to achieve maximum results.

Leading SEO plugins enable users to incorporate a SEO title, meta description, and focus keyword for each blog post and page. Additionally, they provide a preview of how your website will appear in search engine results.

For optimal click-through rates in search engine results, we advise optimizing your title and description.

To do so, scroll down to the SEO section while composing your blog post, and make the most of it.

In case you are unsure about selecting a focus keyword or focus keyphrase, crafting an effective title, or composing a compelling meta description, we have extensively addressed these topics in our beginner’s guide to optimizing your blog posts for SEO.

We strongly urge you to peruse this guide, as on-page SEO plays a pivotal role in the success of your SEO strategy.

Doing Keyword Research for Your Website

When starting out, many beginners rely on guesswork to determine what topics are popular and what they should incorporate into their blogs and websites.

This approach is similar to blindly shooting an arrow in the dark. However, there is no need for guesswork when you can utilize concrete data to identify user search trends.

Keyword research is a technique employed by content creators and SEO professionals to identify the words and phrases that users enter into search engines to find content, products, and services within your industry.

By integrating these keywords and phrases into your website, you can boost search traffic and engagement.

Numerous keyword research tools, both free and paid, are available for use. We highly recommend SEMRush, which assists in identifying keywords and even enables you to analyze your competitors’ ranking keywords.

Best Practices for SEO on WordPress

By sticking to the fundamental principles of WordPress SEO and implementing the top WordPress SEO plugin, you can easily outperform the majority of other websites.

Nevertheless, to achieve optimal results, it is recommended that you adhere to the following WordPress SEO best practices.

These practices do not involve complex technical skills and most do not require any coding. Nonetheless, implementing them can yield substantial improvements for your website.

WordPress provides the ability to categorize and tag your blog posts, which simplifies content management by topics and aids users in locating relevant content.

Moreover, search engines benefit from the use of categories and tags, as they assist in comprehending your website’s structure and content.

Beginners may struggle to determine the most efficient approach to using categories and tags. Here’s how we deal with these features, after informing thousands of readers.

Categories are designed to broadly group your posts, similar to the table of contents in a book. A personal blog, for example, could have categories such as music, food, travel, etc. Categories are hierarchical, so you can add child categories to them.

Tags, on the other hand, are more specific keywords that describe the contents of a single post. For instance, a blog post categorized under food might have tags like salad, breakfast, pancakes, etc. Think of these as the indexes section in a textbook.

Develop a habit of performing internal linking

The score assigned to each page on a website by search engines is called page authority, which is influenced by various signals, including links. Interlinking your own posts can help increase pageviews, user engagement, and ultimately improve SEO scores. Creating a pre-publish checklist for authors to interlink at least 3 other blog posts can be helpful. The All in One SEO plugin offers a feature called WordPress Link Assistant to make internal linking easier.

The Link Assistant feature of All in One SEO plugin can automatically scan the links present on your WordPress website and provide appropriate internal linking recommendations that you can easily include in your content with just a single click. This tool can essentially automate the process of adding multiple internal links, making it an efficient time-saving solution.

Schema Markup and Rich Snippets (FAQ schema, Reviews, and more)

Have you ever pondered about the reason behind certain website listings standing out more in Google search results? Maybe they have star ratings displayed next to them or are larger in size with FAQ questions listed underneath?

To make your website more noticeable on search engines and improve your WordPress site’s SEO ranking, you can use schema markup to obtain rich snippets. Schema markup is an exclusive kind of HTML code that can be added to your WordPress site to provide additional information to search engines about your content. This can help you indicate the type of page it is, such as a blog post, recipe, FAQ, news article, or a product page, and provide rich results to searchers. The majority of website owners do not add code to incorporate schema markup, but it can be beneficial.

Optimize WordPress Comments

User engagement on your website can be gauged by the comments received. Increased engagement can lead to more links back to your site, greater traffic, and better SEO. However, it’s important to filter out spam comments that contain harmful links, which can harm your website’s search rankings.

To prevent this, Akismet is recommended, one of the two plugins pre-installed on WordPress. If Akismet is not enough to handle spam comments, additional tips and tools can be used. Genuine comments are a positive sign, but too many can slow down the page loading time, adversely affecting search engine rankings.

By splitting comments into multiple pages, your website can better handle the burden of comments on your server and improve its speed.

NoFollow External Links in WordPress

To assist search engines in determining which pages are significant, links play a crucial role. When you link to another site, you’re sharing some of your site’s SEO ranking with that link, which is referred to as “link juice.”

To ensure good search rankings, it’s important to receive more link juice from other websites than you give away.

If you add the “nofollow” attribute to external links (links to websites that you don’t own), search engines are instructed not to follow those links. This aids in conserving link juice.

An external link without the nofollow attribute looks like this in HTML:

<a href=”http://example.com”>Example Website</a>

An external link with the nofollow attribute appears like this:

<a href=”http://example.com&#8221; rel=”nofollow”>Example Website</a>

Although WordPress does not have a built-in option to make links nofollow, using the AIOSEO plugin makes it simple.

When adding a link, simply choose the Add “nofollow” to link option.

Improve the Speed and Performance of Your Website

According to research, the average human attention span in the internet age is shorter than that of a goldfish.

Experts in web usability argue that users make up their minds to stay or leave a website within a few seconds of visiting it.

As a website owner, you have only a limited amount of time to engage your visitors and deliver your content. It’s crucial not to waste this valuable time by making your visitors wait for your site to load.

As user experience is of paramount importance, search engines such as Google prioritize faster websites in their search results. In other words, faster sites tend to rank higher on Google.

Optimizing Images in WordPress for SEO

While images can be more engaging than text, they can also cause your website to load slower if their sizes and quality are not optimized. To speed up your website, it’s important to use images that are optimized for the web. Check out our guide on how to optimize images for the web to improve your WordPress site’s speed.

To optimize your images for search engines, you can also use descriptive title and alt tags. These tags help search engines understand the content of your image and improve accessibility for users with visual impairments who use screen readers.

Thankfully, WordPress makes it easy to add title and alt tags when uploading an image.