WordPress SEO: Enhanced Guide
Isn’t the most important reason for choosing WordPress to be SEO friendly? I think so too. WordPress is an SEO-friendly infrastructure that many people have experience with.
However, this does not mean that sites built with WordPress will achieve good rankings in search engines from the very beginning. Your site needs to be optimized for SEO. You need to know how to apply them. The good thing is that WordPress makes all of this easy and offers even beginners the opportunity to rank.
The platform has many features that comply with SEO best practices to make your life easier. Therefore, your efforts and efforts will not be in vain. Ready to gain rankings and organic visibility?
Below you will find the best WordPress SEO tips that will help you optimize your site and enjoy SEO success. However, it is necessary to consider a small detail beforehand.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a platform that powers 35% of all sites on the internet. It’s important to note that Sony powers some of the world’s biggest sites, including BBC America, Time.com, and TechCrunch. If WordPress works for global giants, it’s bound to work for you. Moreover, there are very valid reasons for this.
WordPress started its journey as a blogging platform in 2003. However, it will not be long before it becomes a powerful and flexible solution for running all sites. It should not be forgotten that it is now also used as an e-commerce solution.
So why did WordPress become so popular? Of course, there are some valid reasons for this:
- It is simple and easy to use. You don’t need to be a developer to start a WordPress site. It is extremely user-friendly even for beginners.
- It is a flexible and adaptable system. It has literally thousands of themes and thousands of plugins. Thanks to these, you can improve the functionality of your site in the best way possible. If you are an experienced developer, you can even manage to develop a theme or plugin for yourself.
- It has a great community. WordPress is open source. The community behind the platform is extremely active. You can easily get support from support forums. When you have a problem, you can quickly find a solution.
Of course, it’s not the right platform for everyone. You need to know that there are other content management systems options that are better suited to your individual needs. Commonly cited disadvantages and shortcomings of WordPress generally include frequent updates, potential security vulnerabilities, and some learning curve required to use bespoke themes. But WordPress is an extremely powerful platform for everyone. It also gives you a strong foundation for SEO success.
What is WordPress SEO?
WordPress alone can never replace a solid SEO strategy. Even though the content management system offers you the guarantee of using the most accurate methods, you need to make some effort. Otherwise, it will not be possible for you to rank on Google.
As long as your choice of content management system doesn’t leave you with extensive technical issues that prevent your site from being crawled and indexed, you’ll have a chance at ranking. You shouldn’t think that WordPress is a magic weapon that doesn’t require more effort. SEO can be a very technical subject at times, but considering the topics provided by WordPress, it is possible for it to be implemented by everyone.
Just because you use WordPress doesn’t mean the SEO tactics you use will change. However, you need to create great content, earn great links, and make sure you optimize your site. However, WordPress will help you handle many of the basic features that help your site rank. To do this, you can use the tricks and tips you will find below.
Getting Started: WordPress SEO Basics
You may be wondering how to properly optimize your WordPress site. Especially before you start increasing your organic traffic values, you need to make sure that you are working with a solid structure. For this, you must have knowledge of the following basic information.
1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider
You should try to host your site in a reliable hosting company. It is important to choose a hosting company that will not cause you any problems in terms of site speed, uptime and security. This is one of the basic requirements that you should carefully consider to get started.
Site speed has a direct impact on the SEO performance of your WordPress site. Additionally, both poor uptime and security vulnerabilities can cause site quality issues. If you do not want to struggle with performance problems, you should not consider going for the cheapest option.
WordPress itself recommends three different hosting providers. If you’re not sure where to start, just consider the options WordPress offers.
2. Install SEO Friendly WordPress Theme
When you first install WordPress, you’ll encounter the platform’s default “Twenty Twnety” theme. However, this theme will be a theme you do not want to use for your site.
You can find thousands of free themes right from the admin panel. If you want to use a paid theme, you can find different designs on various theme sites. You need to choose the theme carefully. Because you may encounter a theme that is not SEO friendly.
Even though many themes claim to be SEO friendly, it is not uncommon for themes to come with scripts and plugins that you will not use. This will negatively affect the performance of your site.
You can use Google’s web.dev tool to learn about potential performance and SEO issues before installing a theme. This will at least help you choose a theme that won’t leave you behind.
3. Install Free WordPress SEO Plugin
Before you start optimizing your site, you need to install an SEO plugin. There are several commonly used and recommended options, both free:
All in One SEO Pack will be used throughout this content. However, I want you to know that there are different options, both free and paid options. I was using the free version until April 2020. I upgraded to the PRO version to further improve my categories.
Installing a plugin for WordPress is quite simple. After logging in to the admin panel, you should follow Plugins > Add New from the menu on the left. When you come to the relevant page, search for the plugin and click the “Install Now” button.
Don’t forget to activate the plugin after it is installed. When trying to implement the best WordPress SEO tips, you may have to install different plugins. Therefore, it is very important to keep in mind how the plugin is installed.
4. Choose Preferred Domain Name
You can choose the domain name as https://www.seobod.com/ or https://seobod.com. Your domain name will have no impact on SEO. However, you must accept that your site is only accessible in one of them. Because these are considered different URLs by Google.
To perform checks. Log in to the WordPress admin panel and follow Settings > General. Here you can choose your preferred domain name.
The other domain version will then be redirected to your preferred domain. If you are someone starting a new site, feel free to choose both options. However, if you are replacing an existing site, you should make sure that you stick to the version you have used in the past.
You should also make sure you have an SSL certificate. You must run your site using HTTPS. If you do not have a certificate installed, you may consider contacting your hosting provider or your site’s developer. You can try using the Let’s Encrypt solution for free.
5. Check Your Site’s Visibility
WordPress gives you the option to prevent search engines from indexing your site. This option is often used by developers when developing a site, before the pages and content are ready.
You should remember that this is one of the settings that remains open even when the site is ready to launch. Therefore, you need to check the visibility settings of your site. You should go to Settings > Reading and uncheck the “Try to prevent search engines from indexing this site” option.
6. Activate SEO-Friendly Permalinks
WordPress gives you different options when it comes to configuring URLs.
WordPress uses these URLs by default: https://www.seobod.com/?p=123. These URLs are not search engine friendly. Even though it is not possible to determine what the page is about from the URL alone, this is one of the first points to look at.
If you’re using WordPress, you can choose a custom URL structure. You can make your selection from here using Settings > Permalinks. If you want to use an SEO-friendly structure, the “Post Name” option will be the best option for you.
7. Verify Your Site in Google Search Console
If you haven’t done so before, you need to verify your site with Google Search Console. You may have never done this before. This is a pretty simple step. All you have to do is use one of the Google Search Console verification methods.
Follow the verification steps listed and select the “HTML Tag” method. From there, follow All in One SEO Pack > General Settings > Webmaster Verification to enter the settings of the All in One SEO Pack plugin. Then enter the HTML tag in the “Google Search Console” box.
After verifying your site, you need to submit your sitemap. To do this, you must go to the sitemaps section in Google Search Console. With All in One SEO Pack, it creates an XML sitemap by default. You can find this in the relevant section of your site (such as https://www.seobod.com/sitemap.xml).
You can submit your sitemap to the relevant section in Google Search Console. The relevant section will appear in Google Search Console as follows:
