SEO for Your WordPress : Advice to Get Better Position on Google
Initially, I did not understand what SEO meant when working on the WordPress blog. As a blogger, I believed that my job was to write high-quality articles. I spent a lot of time crafting articles, inserting images, and polishing the appearance. After a while, I found myself stuck because I received almost no visitors through Google.
My content was useful, but people could not find it.
This situation gave me a valuable lesson – blogging is more than just writing articles. If you want to grow your WordPress website, you have to make sure that search engines understand the content on it. And this is where SEO comes in.
With time, after experimenting with various plugins, setting up website settings, refining articles, and making numerous mistakes, I have discovered that SEO is not about misleading Google. It is about providing better user experience and optimizing the site for crawlers.
In this post, I am going to give you some tips for WordPress SEO.
1. Select an Effective and SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme
An error that most beginners make is to select a theme just because it looks good. I have done the same mistake. I had selected a very beautiful and animated theme with lots of other things, which made my website very slow.
The outcome?
Visitors were leaving my website instantly, and I was losing rankings.
Page experience and loading speed are considered by Google. Slow website may harm you both in user experience and SEO.
Select a WordPress theme considering the following:
Lightweight design
Mobile-ready design
Clean code
Updates
Good performance
Popular SEO-Friendly WordPress Themes are:
Astra
GeneratePress
Kadence
Neve
It is not necessary to have many features in your design. Sometimes simplicity makes your website perform better.
2. Use a Reputable SEO Plugin
While WordPress provides you with a great platform, you need to use a SEO plugin for making it easy to optimize.
In the early days of SEO, I used to do everything manually and that made things complicated for me as my website grew. But after using the SEO plugin, things have become much easier for me.
SEO Plugins:
Yoast SEO
Rank Math
All in one SEO
The SEO plugins enable you to:
Write SEO titles
Write meta descriptions
Make XML sitemaps
Keyword optimization
Readability
Search appearance
For beginners, Rank Math and Yoast SEO both are good plugins.
Don’t think that using the plugin will help you rank on the top. It is just providing some suggestions to you.
3. Do Keyword Research Prior to Writing an Article
The biggest mistake I see new bloggers make is creating content without knowing what people are looking for.
I myself used to do this mistake. I was creating my articles according to my perception of the user's needs. Though sometimes I created very nice articles that got no traffic at all, just because there were no searches on this topic.
Before starting to write any article, do some keyword research first.
Good keyword research tools:
Google Keyword Planner
Ubersuggest
Ahrefs Keyword Generator
Semrush
Google Search Suggestion Tool
Instead of a very broad keyword:
"SEO"
A beginning blogger's blog can target a keyword:
"How to optimize SEO for WordPress beginners"
4. Produce Useful Content That Solves Problems
The primary aim of Google is to provide the most helpful answers to its users.
It is an error to create articles thinking just about search engines. Bloggers tend to insert the same keyword over and over again, creating content that sounds strange and unnatural.
A good SEO article should:
Answer users' questions
Provide solutions
Give examples
Be up-to-date
Be readable
Think of your blog post like it was written for a friend who needs help with the same issue.
Instead of writing:
"WordPress SEO optimization will increase your page rank through different techniques."
Better say:
"After optimizing my WordPress SEO settings, I have found out that my pages are loading faster and Google finds my content more regularly now."
Personal experience adds value to the content.
5. Maximize Your WordPress Titles and Meta Descriptions
The title is something that users will see first when searching on Google.
A bad title will lower the number of clicks despite your content ranking high.
Examples:
WordPress SEO Guide
How to Enhance WordPress SEO: 10 Useful Ways to Rank High on Google
It is evident that the second title provides clarity on the benefit.
An SEO title needs to:
Include your primary keyword in a natural way
Be engaging
Clearly show the value it will provide to the user
Meta descriptions will not impact your ranking, but it affects your click through rate.
Example:
"Discover practical tips for optimizing your WordPress site SEO to enhance its speed, content optimization, mistakes fixes and Google visibility."
6. Increase Website Loading Speed
Loading speed is one of the factors many WordPress owners have trouble with.
If your site loads too slow, you could lose visitors due to frustration.
Once I had a site that was rich in visuals and unnecessary plugins; it looked great, but it would take ages for it to load after I optimized my pictures and cleaned up from all those unused plugins.
Some ways you can optimize your website’s speed:
Image Compression
Large images make the website load slower.
Things to do before uploading pictures:
Resize images
Compress images
Convert to newer format like WebP
Some tools to use for this purpose:
ShortPixel
Imagify
Smush
Install a Caching Plugin
Website caching allows creating cached versions of your website pages.
Popular caching plugins are:
WP Rocket
LiteSpeed Cache
W3 Total Cache
Delete Unnecessary Plugins
Unnecessary plugins may cause your site to load slower.
Delete everything you don’t need.
7. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly
People access the web through smartphones.
Users tend to leave websites which do not look good in their smartphone screen.
Even Google applies the mobile-first indexing algorithm, so it prioritizes the mobile version of your website.
Test your website with:
Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Google Search Console
Make sure that:
The text is readable
Buttons can be clicked
The images load correctly
The menus work fine
Responsive WordPress theme fixes most problems with mobile websites.
8. Optimize Your Images For SEO
Many bloggers post images without any optimization.
An optimized image might drive traffic to your blog from Google Images.
Before posting the image, make sure to:
Rename the image
Not Good:
IMG_45892.jpg
Better:
wordpress-seo-tips.jpg
Use Alt Tag
Alt tags help the search engines understand the images.
For example:
"WordPress SEO settings dashboard"
Do not use unnecessary keywords in alt tags.
9. Create Internal Links Between Your Articles
Creating internal links is one of the easiest SEO changes.
This will help Google comprehend your website structure and will be useful for visitors in discovering more content.
Example:
If you are writing an article on WordPress SEO, then you can link to other articles like:
How to Install WordPress Plugins?
Best WordPress Themes for Beginners
How to Speed up WordPress Website?
By properly using internal links, my visitors stayed on my website longer because they could easily access relevant information.
10. Utilize Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that all website owners should use.
With its help, you will learn:
Which keywords bring traffic
Which pages are clicked on
Errors in your website
Indexing issues
Search performance
Once you have posted a new article, you can submit your sitemap via Search Console.
You can usually access your sitemap from:
yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
The more you know about how SEO works, the easier it gets.
11. Get Good Backlinks Naturally
Backlinks are the links from other websites that point to your website.
They can increase the authority, however, the quality is more important than the number.
One thing which people usually do is getting a huge number of cheap backlinks. That can hurt their website instead of helping it.
More efficient way to get backlinks:
Create useful guides
Make original researches
Do guest posting
Develop relationships with other bloggers
Getting even one good backlink may be more beneficial for your site than tons of bad ones.
12. Refresh Your Old Posts Regularly
SEO is an ongoing process.
Bloggers publish posts and then forget about them.
With time:
Content gets outdated
It loses rankings
The competition comes up with better content
Every couple of months check your old posts.
Update:
Statistics
Screen-shots
Dead links
Outdated information
Missed parts
Sometimes it may be easier to improve old post rather than create a new one.
13. Optimize Your Website Structure
Website structure optimization will benefit both your users and search engines.
Your website must have:
Clear navigation
Categories
Headings
URLs
Example:
Good URL:
example.com/wordpress-seo-tips
Bad URL:
example.com/post?id=45892
Short and descriptive URLs are better understandable.
14. Avoid Common WordPress SEO Mistakes
Most beginners do something wrong which harms their ranking position.
Do not make these mistakes:
Keyword stuffing
Filling your content with keywords will create an unnatural piece.
Content Copying
Using duplicate content is useless and will harm your website reputation.
Neglecting Website Security
If your website gets hacked, then your ranking may get harmed.
Use:
Strong passwords
Current versions of WordPress
Security plugins
Publishing Without Strategy
Articles selected randomly will not make a good website.
Write articles on subjects that are relevant to your niche.
15. Monitor Your SEO Results
SEO takes some time to get results.
Don’t expect to rank with a new website right away.
Monitor your results with the use of:
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Semrush
Check for:
Increase in impressions
More clicks
Good keyword positions
Longer visit duration
Conclusion
The WordPress SEO optimization is not about finding something like a magic formula. It refers to making your website faster and more convenient for visitors.
Reflecting upon my previous experience with blogging, the most important thing I learned is that SEO requires much time. Posts that were most successful had nothing to do with the keywords; instead, they helped solve people’s problems.
Do the basics first:
Select an optimized theme
Improve your content
Optimize the speed of your site
Solve any possible technical issues
Understand your target audience
Work on the improvement of your WordPress site regularly, and success will come.
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