Want to know how to improve SEO on WordPress? Then, this article is for you.
By choosing the best CMS platform i.e. WordPress, you’ve already taken a major step for SEO optimization. It’s because the platform is designed in a way to make your site embraced by the search engines.
However, creating a website with WordPress isn’t enough for ranking on search results. There’re still many SEO strategies that you need to follow for higher-ranking opportunities. But nothing to worry about because it’s dead simple to follow these SEO tactics.
In this article, we’ll share the best WordPress SEO tips to rank high on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Let’s begin!
What is SEO? Why Optimize WordPress SEO?
Search engines (Google, Baidu, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) are the major source of traffic for any website. And it’s a good reason why SEO remains such a vital topic in the digital world.
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. To put it simply, SEO means optimizing your site for better ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Broadly, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) startegies can be categorized into 2 parts.
- Improving your website so that search engines can easily crawl to your content and make it appear on the top of the SERPs.
- Publishing relevant and quality content so that users find it useful, engage with it, link to it, share it, etc. Search engines analyze various user engagement factors and determine your page rank.
Now, you may be wondering why you need rank higher in search results.
Well, it’s important to rank high for the simple reason – the higher the search engine position, the more users will come to your site.
And consequently, more traffic leads to more conversions and more revenue. We’ll explain more in the next section below.
Why It’s Crucial to Optimize Your Site for Higher Positions?
Every website owner wants tremendous users to visit their site.
However, the site that doesn’t rank in the top 10 results on SERPs is barely noticed. SEO statistics by Intergrowth suggest that 75% of the searchers never go past the first page of the search engines.
Hence, the most starightforward reason to optimize WordPress SEO is to increase the number of visitors to your site.
Here, we’ve enlisted the major benefits of improving WordPress SEO:
- A well-optimized site for search engines has greater visibility and a higher ranking.
- Ranking higher in the SERPs results in increased organic traffic (traffic from unpaid search results).
- It improves the site’s authority meaning your site becomes more trustworthy and relevant to your users.
- You’ll be able to generate more leads and make good sales.
- You’ll be able to earn good revenue.
Last but not the least, it’s important that you keep up the pace with the best SEO practices. If you stop working on your site’s SEO, then there are chances that your site will simply vanish from the web. As a result, you’ll lose your customers.
So, always keep your WordPress updated with the latest SEO measures.
With that said, now let’s check out the tips on how you can improve an SEO on WordPress.
33 Actionable Tips to Improve SEO on WordPress
It’s time to explore the SEO techniques that will work for your website. Let’s get started!
1. Choose Your Web Hosting Carefully
The first and the most important tip on how to improve SEO on WordPress is to choose the best web hosting solution for your website.
Web hosting is a primary requirement for creating a website of any kind (business, portfolio, blogging, eCommerce). It’s defined as a space on the server that stores your website code and all your files.
Web hosting determines your site’s overall performance which has a direct impact on your site’s SEO. Hence, you must choose the web hosting service carefully.
Having said that, here are some key factors you should keep in mind while selecting web hosting for your site.
Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Web Hosting
- Speed: Fast loading site provides a better user experience and also improves your site’s SEO score. So you should go for the hosting that provides fast server speed to ensure a fast and smooth running website.
- Security: Your web hosting should be able to provide strong security to your website against cyber attack, hack, and other possible malware which can take your site down or even worse, crash your site entirely.
- Uptime: Uptime is the amount of time that a hosting server is working and available. To ensure that your website is highly available for your users, you must choose hosting with a good uptime guarantee.
- User-friendly Interface: It’s wise to choose the web hosting service provider with ease of use. Buy a hosting where it’s easy to manage important settings like emails, domain, backups, and so on.
- Customer Support: Now or then you may encounter a problem with your site due to some reasons. Therefore, the hosting company you choose should be able to provide you with reliable support to immediately solve your website issues.
For more information, you can check our article on how you can choose the best WordPress hosting service.
If you haven’t created your website, then we recommend you choose from the following hosting providers. They’re officially recommended by WordPress as well.
- Bluehost: $2.95/mo for Shared WordPress Hosting
- SiteGround: $6.99/mo for StartUp Managed WordPress Hosting
If you want fully managed WordPress hosting, then you can try the following web hosts:
- WP Engine: $22/mo for StartUp WordPress Managed Hosting
- Kinsta: $30/mo for Starter WordPress Hosting
Want to explore more hosting providers and their details? Feel free to check our article on the best WordPress hosting companies.
2. Select an SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme
A theme in WordPress can control the visual aspect of your site as well as improve your site’s visibility in search engines. But this is possible only when you choose the best SEO WordPress theme.
The SEO-friendly theme has a clean code and they are designed for fast page loading speed. Both are important factors taken into consideration by Google for ranking higher in SERPs.
Besides, the theme provides better support for the SEO plugins that further boost your site’s search engine performance.
Zakra is one of the best examples of an SEO-friendly theme. It’s a multipurpose theme perfect for almost any kind of website. It follows the best SEO practices for ensuring your website’s popularity.
It has a clean code that is well optimized for search engines for better indexing. Further, it provides support to the major SEO plugins and has a blazing fast page loading speed.
However, Zakra isn’t the only option. For more alternatives, you can check our ultimate list of SEO-friendly WordPress themes.
3. Install the Best WordPress SEO Plugin
WordPress has tons of great plugins for almost everything including SEO. If you’re wondering how to get more traffic to your WordPress site, installing the SEO plugin is one of the important tactics.
SEO WordPress plugins are tools specifically built to help you improve your SEO. They assist in writing better content, optimizing keywords in your page and post, adding proper meta descriptions, creating a sitemap, and much more.
Well, there are tons of WordPress SEO plugins available in the market today. However, it’s wise to opt into a comprehensive plugin like Yoast SEO.
Yoast SEO is the best on-page SEO plugin for optimizing your site. It offers robust SEO features like XML sitemap, schema markup, search console, breadcrumbs, and so on.
We also have a handpicked list of the best WordPress SEO plugins for more options.
Installing the Yoast SEO Plugin in Your WordPress Website
You can follow the simple steps given below to install the plugin and start configuring your WordPress SEO with Yoast.
Step 1: Log in to your WordPress dashboard. After that, naviagate to Plugins >> Add New option.
Step 2: Type in Yoast SEO in the search box and install and activate the plugin.
Step 3: Once the plugin is activated, you’ll see the Yoast SEO icon on the sidebar menu.
Step4: Now, you can start optimizing your website with Yoast SEO.
4. Set Up SEO-Friendly Permalinks
Another useful tactic on how to improve SEO on WordPress is to set up SEO-friendly permalinks.
Permalinks (Permanent Links) are simply the URLs of your post or page on your WordPress website. URLs act as a clue for both your visitors and search engines to understand the content and index your site. That itself explains why it’s important to focus on your permalink structure.
Your WordPress has a chaotic URL structure by default. But there isn’t anything to worry about as WordPress provides several options for structuring your URL.
To create an SEO-friendly URL, log in to your WordPress dashboard then navigate to Settings >> Permalinks and choose the Post name option under Common settings. Finally, click on save changes to save your settings.
Choosing this setting enables you to include your content title and keywords in your URL. This makes your permalink clean and descriptive, which is good for your site’s SEO.
5. Focus on Quality of the Content
Your users are always searching for fresh, useful, and relevant content. If they don’t get what they want, then they simply leave your page no matter how good your site looks. This results in a high bounce rate which isn’t good for your site’s health.
To capture your visitors’ attention, you need to create quality content. This motivates them to stay longer on your site and improves your authority. Also, it’ll help to generate a high click-through rate (CTR).
Hence, high-quality content is the colossal part of your site’s SEO. It’s next to impossible to reap the full benefit of SEO in its absence.
Now you’ve known that content is the king. Here are some quick tips for writing quality content to engage your users.
- Know your target audience
- Emphasize your users’ search intent
- Create a fresh and original content
- Avoid complex words and jargons
- Speak to the point
- Include multimedia content like images, videos, gifs, etc.
- Make your content scannable
For more details, please check our full guide on SEO content writing.
6. Perform Keyword Research & Plan Your Site Content
A keyword is the search term that users type in the search engines to solve their queries or find other relevant information. It’s a linchpin between search engines and your visitors.
For a detailed beginner’s guide on keywords read our article – What is a keyword?
Performing keyword research is a vital SEO technique that helps you discover the words or phrases users tend to enter into the search engines. When you understand what people search for, you can plan your content accordingly and get more search traffic.
Hence, keyword research should be the first thing you should be doing as part of your WordPress SEO strategy before planning your content.
There are quite a few paid and free keyword research tools to help you discover great keywords. However, with a magnificent tool like SEMrush, you can also overview the keyword of your interest for keyword difficulty and search volume easily.
For instance, you can see the keyword difficulty and search volume for the keyword Fastest web hosting as shown in the image below.
Not to mention, SEMrush also provides keyword variations, questions, and related keywords for your seed keyword as given below.
Besides, it even reveals the competitor’s marketing strategy and features much more for improving your site’s health and SEO performance.
7. Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
Targeting long-tail keywords come in handy when it’s difficult to rank for the main keywords. Long-Tail keywords are nothing but the long and more descriptive form of keywords themselves. As suggested by the name itself, they’re long, consisting of 3 or more words.
For instance, boots are the main keyword that is short and has a vague meaning. On the other hand, the cheap leather boots for women are a long-tail keyword with a more specific meaning.
Use of long tail keywords is helpful in SEO due the following reasons mainly:
- They have a clearly defined purpose that is understood well by Google. As a result, it brings in the visitors truly interested in your product/services thereby reducing your site’s bounce rate.
- Long-tail keywords usually get lower search volume but that’s not a problem at all because they’re accompanied by the benefit of low competition. That means you can easily rank higher in the SERPs.
Just like the short keyword you can also perform long-tail keyword research using various free and paid tools. Google’s Autocomplete feature, Searches related to, and People also ask box is the convenient long-tail keyword research tool.
Additionally, you can use SEMrush to find related keywords, questions, etc. which are usually long tail keywords.
You can check out the detailed information on long-tail keywords here.
8. Aim to Rank for Low-Difficulty Keywords
Keyword difficulty is the measure of how tough it is to rank for a certain keyword. It helps you to determine whether the particular keyword is worth your time and energy or not. In other words, it enables you to choose the best keyword for SEO.
The higher the keyword difficulty value, the higher is the competition for the keyword. So, it’s wise to target the keywords with low competition to utilize your time and SEO efforts.
Moreover, it’s the best idea to choose the keywords with good search volume and low difficulty as advised by the experts. For example, let’s evaluate the keyword difficulty of the keywords Optimal health and wellness. Here we’ll be using SEMrush for this purpose.
You can see from the image below that the keywords have quite a low difficulty and a pretty good search volume. Such keywords can be a great winning strategy especially for small or medium businesses for growth.
Hence, aiming for the low competition keyword can be a source of huge SEO success.
9. Write Catchy Titles for Your Blog Articles
The title of your blog article is the first thing that every visitor is going to notice. It doesn’t even matter how great your content is. No one is ever going to read your content if your title cannot grab the attention of your users.
Besides, WordPress automatically wraps your title as an H1 heading tag and enables the search engines to understand the context of your content. This means the success of your post largely depends upon your blog title.
Therefore, you should write a catchy title that matches the search intent of your users. It should be descriptive and to the point. You should also focus on the length of your title as Google won’t display your whole title if it exceeds 60 characters.
Further, you must not forget to include the keywords in your title. For instance, the title of our blog post is ‘How to Improve SEO on WordPress’ which itself is our focus keyword.
Adding SEO Title to Your Page/Post Using Yoast SEO
With Yoast SEO, you can easily add titles to your page/post. Just scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see an SEO title section where you can manually input well-optimized titles to your post. Make sure it’s green as green color signals a good SEO title to rank better.
Further, with the WordPress Google Analytics plugins like MonsterInsights, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your heading. MonsterInsights 7.12 and greater is featured with Headline Analyzer Tool to help you create attractive headlines. This tool will provide a score of 1to100 for your heading.
Again when you click on the headline analyzer, it also provides useful suggestions for improvements right from the WordPress dashboard. Thus, you can create catchy headlines that are sure to get more clicks.
10. Optimize Your Heading Tags (Across the content)
Headings tags have a crucial role to play in structuring your content. They break down the long walls of text and make it skimmable. This makes it easy to understand the content for your readers as well as search engines improving your site’s visibility.
WordPress enables you to manually add separate heading tags from h1 to h6 depending upon your specific needs.
But, make sure not to H1 tag inside your content because your post title is H1. However, you can use multiple H2 to H6 tags to make your content more readable.
To add headings, click on ‘Plus’ icons in the block editor and then choose ‘Heading’ block. Thereafter, you can select the required heading tag to divide your content into small readable segments.
Not to mention, you can also include the keywords in your headings for better WordPress SEO results without keyword stuffing (irrelevant use of keywords).
11. Use Internal and External Link Properly in Your Content
Proper use of both internal as well as external links is a strong SEO strategy for boosting your WordPress SEO capacity.
Internal link refers to the link that directs users to another page/post of the same website. Major benefits of using the internal linking are:
- Prompts visitors to read more and keeps them engaged with your site for a long time.
- Improve the authority of your overall site.
- Helps search engines crawl your content and improves site traffic.
External link refers to the link that directs your users to the page/post of various other reputable websites. You should always link to a trustworthy and informative website while linking externally or else your site may suffer. Major benefits of external linking are:
- Linking to a high domain authority website enables search engines to understand what your content is about.
- Improves the credibility of your site.
- Helps connect with other websites which can be beneficial on both sides.
Adding Internal/External Links to the Anchor Text
Adding internal and external links is an easy task. However, it’s important to note that the anchor text for the link addition must be a group of descriptive and relevant words. After selecting the words click on the Link button as seen in the toolbar.
Then, paste the URL of the internal or external content that you want to link. Finally, click on the Enter button at the side.
12. Keep Your Page/Post URLs Short
If you remember, we’ve recommended choosing post names in common settings for SEO-friendly permalinks in our previous section. This means WordPress will automatically create a URL from your post title which might sometimes create a problem of long and complex URLs.
For example, if you see the title of our blog posts, it’s quite lengthy. Lengthy URLs often look like spam and have a low click-through rate.
On the other hand, short URLs are clean and organized and they can be easily understood by Google as well as your visitors. That’s why short URLs are more preferred by Google. Additionally, they also help to boost your click-through rate.
However, WordPress always allows you to overwrite your URLs to make them short. Here, we’ve set our slug as to how to improve SEO on WordPress. Therefore, the new short and pretty URL of our blog post is:
“https://themegrill.com/blog/improve-seo-on-wordpress/”
If you further want to shorten your URL when sharing on marketing platforms, then you can check our article on URL shortening tools.
13. Add a Compelling Meta-Description
Meta-description is a short text (usually a line or two) that appears below the title in the search engines. It’s a summary of what your content is about.
It doesn’t directly influence your ranking factor but plays a vital role in your WordPress SEO by improving the click-through rate of your site. A well-written meta-description included with keywords in it can persuade visitors to click on your post.
Adding meta-description becomes a plain sail with the availability of several WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, Premium SEO Pack, etc. They allow you to add meta-descriptions in their meta-field easily.
For instance, this is how the meta-field of Yoast SEO looks like.
Yoast SEO also has a Snippet Preview option where you can preview how your page/post title and meta-description are displayed on mobile and desktop. It even bolds your keywords to highlight them in search results.
14. Optimize Your Images
Adding media files like images can improve the quality of your content. This provides a better user experience and keeps your user engaged. But just adding images isn’t enough. You need to optimize these images to further improve your WordPress SEO.
First of all, you should choose the proper format for your images i.e. either JPEG or PNG. Beyond that, you need to compress your images to minimize the overall page size and ensure the fast loading of your site.
You can compress your images using a free and convenient tool like TinyPNG. It reduces the size of your image size without degrading its quality.
Besides, several image optimization plugins like Imagify, Smush, etc. are also available to compress your images.
For more information, check our article on WordPress image optimizer plugins.
You can further optimize your images by adding image title, alt text (Alternative text), and caption. Alt tags allow search engines to understand the context of your images and help your images rank better.
With the best CMS (Content Management System) platform like WordPress, you can easily add image alt text, title, and caption to make your images SEO-friendly.
15. Update Your Posts Frequently
Google and other search engines evaluate the freshness and relevance of your content to decide the ranking of your page/post. So, if you want to consistently do well on SERPs then you’ve to consider reviving your old content at regular intervals.
When you update your posts regularly, your content becomes up-to-date and gets indexed more often in Google. Likewise, you also get better chances of ranking for more search terms.
Other SEO benefits of frequently adding fresh content to your site are listed as given below:
- Drive-in more traffic
- Enhance click-through rate
- Improve shares
- Increase authority potential
- Improve Conversion rate
16. Check for the Broken Links & Redirect
Broken links are the dead links that cannot be accessed by the user due to various reasons. Some examples are ‘404 pages not found’, Bad URL, Timeout, etc.
Broken links negatively affect the ranking of your site. They make it difficult for search engines to crawl your site and also hamper user experience which results in a higher bounce rate. Therefore, you need to check for the broken links and fix them immediately.
One of the easiest ways of checking for such links is by using a Google Search Console.
Alternatively, you can also use online tools like W3C Link Checker. They help to identify the broken links on your site so that you can fix them as soon as possible.
How to Fix the Broken Links?
The most common method for fixing the broken links is by using redirect plugins. For example, Simple 301 Redirect is a simple WordPress redirect solution that helps you to replace the broken link and redirect it to a different page.
If you’re a Yoast SEO premium user, then you can find the redirections feature in the plugin. Also, the Rank Math SEO plugin includes a redirections feature.
Alternatively, you can also update 301 redirects by editing your .htaccess file. However, the method is a little risky if you aren’t familiar with the process.
17. Build High-Quality Backlinks
Want to know how to improve your WordPress SEO? Building a quality backlink can help. A backlink is simply a link used by a third-party website that points to your website. It’s also called “inbound links” or “incoming links”.
For instance, let’s assume two websites as website X and website Y. Now, let’s say that website X linked to website Y on a post. This means website Y has got the backlink from website X.
Backlinks are one of the important ranking factors for your site. Google and other search engines consider backlinks to determine the quality and credibility of your site. Hence, the more the number of quality sites linking to your page/post, the higher is its ranking opportunities.
However, it’s important to note that not all backlinks boost your site’s ranking necessarily. Some backlinks from low-quality domains can even hurt your site’s SEO rather than helping it rank better. Hence, building high-quality backlinks should be your priority.
How to Build the Quality Backlinks on Your Site?
In reality, earning quality backlinks isn’t an easy task. So if you’re confused about where exactly to begin, you can start by performing competitive backlink research. It’ll provide you with useful ideas about link building.
For this, you can depend upon SEMrush’s Backlink Gap Tool which helps you to gain a quick insight into the link-building strategies of up to 5 competitors.
Want to know more on how to build quality backlinks to your site? Then check out our blog on the best ways to build backlinks.
18. Check Your Site’s SEO Visibility Settings
WordPress comes with a built-in option that can discourage search engines from indexing your site. This option is useful for the websites under construction to prevent it from going live before it’s completed.
However, if your site is completed and ready to go live and you still keep this option checked, then it can cause a disaster. No matter what WordPress SEO technique you follow, your site won’t be showing on search engines.
Hence, it’s a good idea to check your site’s SEO visibility settings. For this, log in to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Settings >> Readings. You’ll see a Search Engine Visibility option at the bottom of the General Settings page.
This box should be left unchecked to make your site visible on Google and other search engines. Finally, click on the Save Changes button to save the setting.
19. Perform SEO Audit of Your Site Regularly
Performing an SEO audit of your site on the regular basis is yet another important strategy on how you can improve your SEO on WordPress.
An SEO audit helps you understand how well your site is performing. It provides insight on various issues regarding your site’s technical SEO, on-page or off-page SEO, and more. Hence, you can improve upon them for better WordPress SEO optimization.
However, SEO auditing by self is a time-consuming process as you’ve to go through all the aspects of your website. So, to help you with this numerous SEO audit tools are available.
For example, you can use an intuitive free online tool like SEO Site Checkup to audit and analyze your site and identify the problems affecting your organic search performance.
Besides, you can also use other tools such as SEMrush, RavenTools, WooRank, etc.
20. Optimize Your WordPress Site’s Speed
Your website’s speed is another important factor taken into account by Google for ranking higher on SERPs. Besides, the fast site speed is also the key factor for providing a better user experience to your visitors.
Thankfully, improving the site’s speed with WordPress isn’t a big deal. We’ve discussed choosing the best hosting, themes, and optimizing images previously, each of which has a direct impact on the speed of your site.
Apart from these, several other WordPress SEO tactics can help you optimize your site’s speed. You can start by measuring your site speed to get a better insight into your site’s speed. For this purpose, you can use a free tool like GTMetrix.
GTMetrix is a popular tool for running a website speed and getting a useful suggestion for its improvements.
Additionally, there’re many speed optimization plugins to improve your site’s speed. For instance, you can use all-in-one WordPress speed plugins like Hummingbird, WP Rocket, etc.
You can even install cache plugins such as W3 Total Cache, LiteSpeed Cache, etc.
On top of that, you can also use CDN (Content Delivery Network) services. It’s a network of servers distributed across the globe that stores versions of your site data for the fast delivery of the content. Some of the best CDN services are Cloudflare, KeyCDN, etc.
21. Make Your Website AMP-Friendly
If you want to know how to improve SEO on WordPress then making your site ready for mobile devices is a good technique.
Since the number of mobile users exceeded desktop users back then in 2016, Google has implemented the practice of mobile-first indexing. This means that Google uses the mobile version of your content to determine its ranking on SERPs.
Hence, it has become essential to make your site AMP-ready. AMP is an abbreviation of Accelerated Mobile Pages. It’s a technology developed by Google itself to ensure the faster loading of your site on various mobile devices.
Luckily, WordPress makes it super easy to implement the AMP on your site by using the best AMP plugins like AMP by AMP Project Contributors, AMP for WordPress, and more.
Don’t forget to check our beginner’s guide on how to implement AMP on WordPress for detailed information.
Not to mention, WordPress also offers several responsive themes to make your website look good on any mobile devices your users might be using.
22. Add SSL (HTTPS) to Your Domain
Google also uses HTTPS as a ranking signal for your website. To put it simply, HTTPS is an acronym for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS allows secured communication between your browser and a website by encrypting the data i.e. converting data to code.
Adding HTTPS to your domain is important to prevent unauthorized access to your data. This is beneficial especially when a website includes sensitive information like your personal or financial details.
In the web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and others, secured websites are indicated by padlock signs in the URL bar.
On the other hand, unsecured websites are indicated by the Not Secure warning signal.
To enable HTTPS in your site you need to get a TLS (Transport Layer Security) formerly called SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate.
Some of the best hosting services like Bluehost, SiteGround, Kinsta, etc. offer SSL certificates for free. Besides, you can also get the TLS/SSL certificate from Certificate Authorities (CA) like Let’s Encrypt and install it manually.
Check out our comprehensive guide on adding SSL and HTTPS to the WordPress site for more information.
23. Create XML Sitemap of Your Site
The next useful tip on how you can improve SEO on WordPress is to create an XML sitemap of your site.
An XML sitemap is simply a list of your site’s URLs that act as a roadmap for search engines to crawl to your pages easily. It also enables the search engines to understand the structure of your site.
Though creating an XML sitemap doesn’t directly influence your WordPress SEO, it still helps search engines to quickly find all your important pages. Your pages can be indexed better and start ranking on SERPs.
How to Create an XML Sitemap Using Yoast SEO?
Yoast SEO helps you to create a sitemap quickly, easily, and without any extra effort from your side. So if you’ve already installed and activated the plugin as mentioned in your post earlier, go to SEO >> General >> Features.
Now, scroll down the page and you’ll see the XML Sitemaps option. Simply toggle on the button and hit the Save changes button. Congrats! You’ve successfully created a sitemap with a push of a button.
Further, to confirm your sitemap has been created, click on the question icon. After that, you’ll see the option that says See the XML sitemap. Click on that link and you should be able to see the XML sitemap of your site.
Your site’s XML sitemap looks something like this.
24. Submit Your Site to Search Engines’ Webmaster Tools
After you create the XML sitemap of your site you need to submit it to a webmaster tool like Google Search Console. Doing so enables you to analyze your site’s performance in Google search results. And you can locate issues affecting your site’s ranking and make improvements to it.
Before you can add your site to Google, you need to have a Google account. Chances are high that you already have one so you can quickly head on to the Google Search Console homepage. To get started, you can select the property type as domain or URL prefix.
Site Verification via Domain
If you choose to enter the domain name you need to verify your domain ownership. For this, you need to sign in to your domain provider then copy and paste the TXT code provided by Google Search Console for verification.
Site Verification via URL Prefix
However, if you fail to verify by this method you can choose to verify using a URL prefix. Entering your URL prefix recommends various verification methods. If you’re using Yoast SEO then using the HTML tag method is the easiest way. You just need to copy the meta tag in this case.
Now from your dashboard navigate to SEO >> General >> Webmaster Tools and then paste the code to the Google verification code box.
Again go back to Google Search Console and click the Verify button. Finally, your ownership will be verified.
After the verification step, you’ll be able to add your sitemap URL to Google Search Console. After navigating to the Sitemap menu, you just need to copy and paste the URL and hit the Submit button. You can repeat the process for your other sitemap URLs. And that’s all.
Similarly, you can also submit your sitemap to Bing and Yandex as well.
25. Integrate Google Analytics into Your Website
Integrating Google Analytics is an important strategy on how you can improve SEO on your WordPress website. Google Analytics is a web analytic service that allows analyzing your visitors and tracking your site’s performance for making smarter decisions.
With Google Analytics integrated into your site, you’ll be able to track your site’s traffic, demographic data of visitors, their interest, incoming conversion rate, and so on easily.
These data and reports can help you evaluate your marketing activities and campaigns. Further, they also help you decide the type of content you should be creating. As a result, you’ll be able to optimize your pages in a well-organized manner and boost more traffic to your site.
How to Integrate Google Analytics into Your Website?
To add Google Analytics to your site, you need to sign up for Google Analytics first which will automatically land you on the Tracking Code page. Here, you need to copy the Tracking Code as shown in the image given below.
From your dashboard, go to Plugins >> Add New and search for the Headers and Footers plugin. Now install and activate the plugin.
After that, go to Settings >> Insert Headers and Footers and paste the tracking code. Lastly, press the Save button. That’s it.
For more detailed information, check our guide on how to add Google Analytics to WordPress.
26. Include Schema Markup
Schema markup has become a viral topic in the world of WordPress SEO as it plays a crucial role in improving your site’s ranking. In a simple word, it’s defined as the microdata added to your HTML to enable search engines to understand your content better.
The addition of schema markup can help you get rich results (formerly called rich snippet) i.e. additional pieces of information that appear in search result pages. This improves the click-through rate of your site which ultimately results in better ranking opportunities.
One of the major benefits of having Yoast SEO on your site is that it can automatically include the schema markup to your pages and posts. However to properly implement the schema on your site you need to configure a few settings.
How to Implement Schema on Your Site Using Yoast SEO?
From your dashboard, navigate to SEO >> Search Appearance.
Then, under the General tab, you’ll see Knowledge Graph & Schema.org option. Under this option, you can represent your site as personal or an organization. Now fill up with the name of the organization or the person and add the logo. And click on the Save changes button.
You can also add the schema to each of your posts or pages. For this scroll down at the end of your post to the Yoast SEO meta box. Now you can adjust the settings like Page type and Article type to describe your content as you see fit under the Schema tab.
Besides, you can also use How to and FAQ Yoast structured data blocks for rich results for your respective sections.
Now that you’ve included schema to your site it’s time to look if it has been successfully implemented or not. For this, you can rely on the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. If a schema is added to your webpage it’ll look something like this if not it’ll be blank.
27. Aim for the Featured Snippet/Position Zero
Aiming for the featured snippet is another helpful tip on how you can improve your WordPress SEO.
You might have noticed the box that appears on the top of the SERPs when you search for some specific terms. Such content displayed at the top spot of the Google search results i.e. position 0 is known as a featured snippet.
Obtaining position 0 in the SERPs matters a lot these days because it improves brand awareness, increases website traffic, and even boosts revenue.
Though there aren’t such proven ways to get your content as a featured snippet, some of the best practices which increase your chance of getting featured in position 0 are:
- Target the questions your readers might be asking
- Aim to provide the best answer
- Use suitable headers (h1-h6) to highlight your question.
- Keep your answer short and sweet
- Implement schema markup to your site
28. Improve User Experience
Google and search engines are continuously keeping an eye on how users interact with your website. This has a direct impact on your search rankings on SERPs. That’s why user experience (UX) is an integral part of your WordPress SEO strategy.
User experience makes a huge difference in your site’s credibility and audience retention rate. It also reduces the bounce rate which has a positive impact on your site’s health.
Hence, it’s essential to optimize your website with a good URL structure, clear navigation menu, and proper heading tags to increase user experience. Also, be sure to look for the following to provide a great user experience to your visitors.
- Optimize your site speed
- Implement mobile-friendly design
- Avoid adding too many pop-ups
- Add social media links and icons to your site
- Improve your customer service
29. Create Video Content & Optimize (Implement YouTube SEO)
According to video marketing statistics, 69% of people prefer watching videos to learn about the products and services. That’s huge, isn’t it?
Video marketing is continuing to grow and if you’re interested in reaching out to your potential clients to grow, it’s important to add video content to attract more customers. For this, you can use YouTube for demonstrating your product and displaying your brand.
YouTube is the second most visited website by search traffic after Google. It has billions of searches every month. Attempting proper YouTube optimization can help your site rank on top of search engines. Moreover, it can also increase the traffic to your website.
That being said, let’s briefly discuss how to optimize the YouTube video content.
How to Implement YouTube SEO?
Google acts as a bridgehead for the people searching for videos. Though it has the potential to automatically understand the video details, it’s still a good practice to make your YouTube videos more SEO-friendly.
Here are some important YouTube SEO tips that you can follow:
- Perform YouTube keyword research
- Add keywords in the video title
- Optimize video description
- Add video tags
- Add hashtags
- Upload custom thumbnail image
- Add Video0bject Schema to your videos
30. Use Social Media Platforms
Yet another technique of how you can improve your WordPress SEO is by using popular social media platforms. Social media platforms are considered a powerful SEO tool for marketing and branding websites by SEO experts.
They can add more visibility to your content and serve as an important source of the traffic to your website. If a lot of people share your content, chances are high that more people will link to it. And getting more backlinks means better ranking opportunities for your website.
According to Statista, the number of social media users is expected to reach around 4.41 billion by the year 2025 globally. Sounds incredible right?
This statistics itself makes it clear that you cannot afford to ignore the power of social media as it means to ignore a whole lot of audiences visiting your site.
Fortunately, there are lots of social media plugins for WordPress to get started with social media campaigns. They enable you to add social sharing buttons for content sharing, social icons for adding links to your profiles, and so on.
Easy Social Sharing is one of the best free WordPress social media plugins for sharing your content easily. The plugin is simple yet powerful for both beginners and professionals.
For more benefits, don’t forget to check our guide on social media marketing.
31. Localize Your Website
Localizing your website simply means making your site available in multiple languages. Doing so can improve your WordPress SEO and drive traffic from diverse audiences.
As per Statista, only 25.9% of internet users use the English language. Other common languages used by internet users include Chinese (19.4%), Spanish (7.9%), Arab (5.2%), and so on.
However, contents are usually created in the English language so it’s likely that it’s difficult to rank for the SEO keywords. But, if your site is multilingual you can easily rank for the keywords in other languages with less competition and get more site traffic.
Further communicating with your audience in their local language can help gain their trust. Also, it’ll provide a good user experience. As a result, your products and services appear more appealing to your customers thereby enhancing the marketing potential of your site.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money or hire an expert for localizing your website. All you need to do is to install the best WordPress translation plugins like WordPress Multilingual Plugin (WPML).
32. Add No-Follow to External Links You Don’t Want to Pass Credit
As discussed earlier, Google uses links/backlinks to determine the quality of the page to decide how to rank them on SERPs. So, whenever you link to the external website Google will pass the portion of your SEO score to that link.
Therefore, if you don’t want to pass credit to external links you can simply add no-follow to imply Google or other search engines not to follow those links. Doing so saves your SEO score and you’ve better chances of ranking within the search engine results pages.
You can add a no-follow attribute to WordPress using two methods:
- By adding HTML attribute rel=“nofollow” manually
- By using the WordPress plugins (Ultimate Nofollow, Pretty Links, etc.)
You can also use the Yoast SEO plugin to no-follow external links. It allows adding no-follow to your external links in a push of a button and eliminates the need of adding rel=“nofollow” manually.
33. Write Proper Length Content
If you’re thinking about how to improve SEO on WordPress, writing proper length content can be of help. Publishing longer-form content is the strategy used by every marketer, business owner, and SEO copywriters these days for ranking higher and engaging readers.
Several studies have found that long-form content has more potential to rank better in search engines compared to short content.
You can see from the graph above that the content holding the top position in Google has a longer length than the others.
Though this doesn’t necessarily mean that short content doesn’t rank, still writing good length content can offer several benefits of getting more shares, backlinks, and so on.
As per OkDork, content with 3000-10,000 words tends to get more shares. Again, long-form content gets an average of 77.2% more links than short content according to Backlinko. And you already know how much getting shares and links matters for the higher ranking of your site.
Besides, it also increases the average time spent on your page by the users and improves your site’s click-through rate. In conclusion, longer content is valuable for Google as well as your readers.
You can also check our guide on how long should a blog post be for more information.
Concluding
WordPress is a great platform for SEO. However, just creating your website with WordPress won’t suffice.
There’s a competitive world out there so to get ahead of the competition you need to follow the best SEO practices as mentioned above.
Prioritize these WordPress SEO techniques with high-quality content at the top of your priority list and you should have no trouble building your website visibility in search engines.
Well, this is the end of our article on how to improve SEO on WordPress. We hope you found this article helpful.
If you’ve any say on this feel free to let us know in the comment section below.
And if you want to make your online branding stronger you can further check out a few more articles on how you can get your new website on Google super-fast and warning signs your WordPress website isn’t SEO-friendly.
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