WordPress SEO Optimization Tips
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the most important task in this competitive market. If you use proper SEO technique then you can beat your competitor and steal their traffic. Apart from this, It improves your website ranking and can take your content to the first page of Google search result.
Also, if your site is on WordPress, you should also focus on improving WordPress SEO. However, WordPress is an SEO friendly cms, but you can make it even more SEO friendly. Today in this article we will guide how to make WordPress SEO friendly completely.
So let's start this WordPress SEO tips...
Search engines are the biggest source of traffic.
It is very important to optimize your content according to the search engines.
If you do not optimize your content properly, your article will not appear in the search result.
So it is very important for any website owner to make their website search engine friendly.
Let’s get started WordPress optimization...
1. Install a WordPress SEO plugin
You can take your site to a next level using good WordPress SEO plugin. There are many great SEO plugins available in WordPress. But the best is Yoast SEO. It comes with many features.
Yoast SEO improves your WordPress SEO and helps to get higher rank in search engines. The plugin provides a solid toolset that helps optimize your content according to the search engines.
The plugin allows you to optimize the meta description and title.
Key Features
In addition, All in One SEO Pack is a great alternative to Yoast SEO that you can use. This is the second most popular WordPress SEO plugin in the WordPress repository.
2. Set up a clean Permalink Structure
Always use SEO friendly Permalink Structure for your posts and pages so that it can better define your posts and pages. Furthermore, it helps to get a better rank in search result.
Examples of SEO friendly URLs
However, the default Permalink Structure of WordPress is not SEO friendly and it looks like this.
But do not worry you can change it.
WordPress Permalink Structure comes with 6 different Permalink Structure.
Just go to Settings >> Permalinks page. Select the post name option and then click on Save Changes button.
Note: If your website is too old or more than 6month, we do not recommend this. It can badly affect your website ranking.
3. Add your site to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a great tool powered by Google that helps to track how your site is performing in Google. And also warns about errors in your site.
It comes with many features to track your site
4. Submit a Sitemap
Sitemap is the list of your website URL. It tells search engines about all the pages and posts on your website.
However, sitemap does not improve your search ranking, but it allows search engines to better crawl your website.
5. Use a CDN
Content Delivery Network (CDN) boost your website's performance. CDN create a caches file of your site and stored on servers at different locations.
When a visitor requests a page, their nearest server delivers the content for the request.
This reduces the load on your server and speed up your WordPress site. You can use MaxCDN and CloudFlare on your site to get the advantage of CDN service.
6. Use Fast and SEO Friendly Theme
Choosing a best WordPress theme is very important to improve WordPress SEO. Because all WordPress theme is not SEO optimized and well coded.
If you choose the wrong theme for your WordPress site, it can affect your loading speed and SEO. See our guide 27 Best SEO Friendly WordPress Themes 2018. All these themes fully SEO optimized and well coded. Apart from this, compatible with third-party SEO plugins that can help to make your website SEO friendly.
7. Make your Content Shareable
Social share buttons are very important for any site or blog. To make your content shareable, add social share button below your content.
By integrating the social sharing buttons, you can allow visitors to quickly share your blog posts on social media sites.
But also you have to pay attention to your site's performance. So always use well-coded and lightweight social share plugins on your site.
8. Fix every Security Issue
Google takes security very seriously. If there is any security issue in your site, then Google will immediately reduce your site ranking. So you should keep an eye on this.
Apart from this, you can use the most trusted WordPress security plugins Wordfence and Sucuri.
9. Improve Load Time
Google gives a higher rank to fast loading. If your site is slow then Google will reduce your rank in Google search result. So focus on your website loading speed to get a good rank in Google.
If your site loads fast in Google, it will rank better in Google.
To check your website loading speed, you can use speed checker tools like PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom and GT Matrix.
Some quick tips to improve website speed
10. Fix broken links
Broken links are such links on your site, that does not exist and when visitors click on it, they show a 404 page not found error.
It greatly affects your WordPress SEO and user experience.
You can easily fix broken links from your site using the Broken Link Checker plugin.
11. Block or Delete Spam Comments
Spam comments take the extra space on your WordPress hosting, which increases the size of your database and it affects your website loading speed.
To deal with these spam comments you can use Antispam WordPress Plugins. These plugins automatically block spam comments on your site.
12. Use to a Responsive Design
If your WordPress site is not mobile-friendly, then it will not perform well in Google search result. The main reason more than half of the searches are done by mobile.
That's why Google gives better rank to mobile-optimized sites to improve Mobile User Experience.
However, all WordPress's themes come with responsive design. But it is your responsibility to check whether your site is responsive or not. For this, you can use the mobile-friendly testing tool.
13. Optimize Your Robots.txt
When a search engine bot crawls your site, they follow the Robots.txt file which part of the site you want to index and what part you want to block.
Therefore, if you misconfigure the robots.txt file, it may harm your website ranking. See our guide How to Optimize WordPress Robots.txt File properly.
14. Remove Unwanted Plugins
Plugins extend site functionality but if you use more plugin on your site then it greatly hurt your website loading speed. So delete unwanted plugins on your site that are useless.
Also, delete unwanted media and inactive themes that are useless on your site because unwanted media takes extra space on your WordPress site and increase your WordPress database size.
Note: Inactive plugins and themes can create security vulnerabilities and can also affect your WordPress site performance.
15. Compress Images Size
By compressing images, you can reduce web page size and get better performance.
There are many image compressing plugins available in the WordPress.org. Just choose the best image optimization plugin. Here we have listed some of the Best Image Optimizer WordPress Plugins, which you can use on your website.
When you upload images in your content, Image optimizer plugins automatically reduces the size of images by compressing.
16. Minify Html CSS and Javascript
By reducing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript you can greatly improve your site's performance. It reduces your web page size and makes your site blazing fast.
Even Google recommends to minify javascript and CSS files from your site.
17. Optimize your Database
WordPress uses databases to store information. If you do not optimize the WordPress site's database regularly, it can affect your website load time.
There are many plugins to optimize the database. We use the WP-Optimize plugin to optimize databases on our blog. Furthermore, do not forget to remove the unwanted table from your database.
Images take a lot of time to load compared to other elements. if you use many images for your article, it increases your page load time.
In this situation, the lazy load plugin takes care of page loading speed.
19. Enable GZIP Compression
GZIP Compression compress your webpage size and makes your site fast.
There are two most popular caching plugins that allow you to enable GZIP compression - WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache.
20. Keep your Site Simple
Make Your Site Simple and Clean because Google does not like Decorate site. As well as the visitor will feel uncomfortable on your site.
Keep your site's background color white. So that your site looks clean and simple and readers can easily read your article.
21. Optimize Meta Description
Meta Description plays a vital role to increase the Click Through Rate (CTR) for your content. Google usually allows 300 characters to write meta descriptions.
you can write custom meta descriptions using Yoast SEO and optimize to get higher CTR. But don't forget to add main keywords in your meta descriptions.
But keep one thing in mind, avoid keyword stuffing in your meta description.
22. Optimize Title Tag
If you do not optimize the title tag properly, then you lose the opportunity to increase your content potential.
When search engines crawl your content, they first see your Title Tags & Meta Descriptions. If you optimize it properly you can boost your content for good rank. Always try to start your title with the main keywords.
Apart from this, more than half of the people see the title before reading the content. And if your title is attractive, they click on your content.
23. Use H1, H2 or H3 Tags Properly
H1 tags boost your ranking. But does not fill your whole content with the H1 tag.
In fact, Googler John Mueller states about H2, H3 Tags
It does not matter to WordPress SEO. But when it comes to WordPress SEO optimization, every little thing helps.
24. Optimize your Images with ALT text
Google cannot read the image. It reads the image based on the alt tag.
That's why always give the correct name of your images. Apart from this, you should also pay attention to the Alt tag.
Optimized images help you get a good rank in image search.
25. Move to HTTPS
If you use HTTPS on your site, it boosts your ranking. Google uses it as a ranking factor.
Google announced in August 2014 - HTTPS as a ranking signal.
If you're running your site on HTTP, then redirect it to HTTPS.
But if properly redirection is very important otherwise it can affect your site's ranking and traffic very badly. Even your traffic may be zero in overnight.
26. Breadcrumb
Breadcrumb helps users to know where they are on your site and also helps the search engine to understand your site's structure data.
Google states that
See our guide how to add breadcrumbs in WordPress using Yoast SEO.
27. Use a Caching Plugin
WordPress uses PHP to run a website which makes more load on the server.
But when you use the caching plugin, it generates static HTML files. It minimizes the number of requests between the server and your user’s browser and improves loading speed.
You can use the most popular cache plugins W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache for your site.
28. Keyword Research
SEO totally depends on keyword research. It helps you understand what people are searching for and what they want to read.
Google Keyword Planner is the best keyword research tool powered by Google. You can use it for any niche to find the best keyword.
The tool allows you to see the keyword competition, monthly searches, CPC and more.
29. Use Quality Web Hosting
If you use a low quality hosting to create your WordPress site then it will badly hurt your WordPress SEO. The main reason your website will be mostly in downtime and will load very slowly. This affects both your website ranking and SEO.
However, there are many web hosting companies, which promise to be the best. Therefore, choosing the best WordPress hosting service is a daunting task, especially if you are a beginner. Here we have picked some of the Best WordPress Hosting Services that you can use without worry.
30. Use Internal Links
Internal linking makes your post more relevant for search engines and visitors. Also, visitors spend more time on your site which reduces the bounce rate. Apart from this, Google treats content as quality content.
31. Use External Links
This technique also works as the internal link. External links make your content more useful.
But, the linking site should be trusted. Otherwise, your site may be penalized.
This technique refers to your content as trustworthy and informative in Google's eyes.
32. Backlinks
Backlinks is a very old Google ranking factor. But backlinks should be relevant and from trusted and good ranking websites.
If you create bad and low-quality backlinks, it can badly hurt your WordPress SEO.
Keep one thing in mind, do not buy backlinks for your site, otherwise, you may face Google Penalty because such backlinks contain with low quality and pornographic sites links.
33. Use Nofollow Tag for Affiliate Links
If you monetize your site by affiliate links for revenue, use the Nofollow tag for them. This will help to boost your WordPress SEO.
34. Quality Content
Finally, want to say quality content is king of SEO. If you write good content on your website and optimize well, then you will definitely get a positive result.
Also, you have to pay attention to the length of the content. Long content performs well in Google search result.
If you write short content on your blog then it should be at least 1000 words.
There are some of the best WordPress SEO tips that you can implement on your WordPress site and take to the next level in Google search engine or other search engines.
What did you think of this post? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
Find this article helpful? Don't forget to share!
Also, if your site is on WordPress, you should also focus on improving WordPress SEO. However, WordPress is an SEO friendly cms, but you can make it even more SEO friendly. Today in this article we will guide how to make WordPress SEO friendly completely.
So let's start this WordPress SEO tips...
Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners
Search engines are the biggest source of traffic.
It is very important to optimize your content according to the search engines.
If you do not optimize your content properly, your article will not appear in the search result.
So it is very important for any website owner to make their website search engine friendly.
Let’s get started WordPress optimization...
1. Install a WordPress SEO plugin
You can take your site to a next level using good WordPress SEO plugin. There are many great SEO plugins available in WordPress. But the best is Yoast SEO. It comes with many features.
Yoast SEO improves your WordPress SEO and helps to get higher rank in search engines. The plugin provides a solid toolset that helps optimize your content according to the search engines.
The plugin allows you to optimize the meta description and title.
Key Features
- Content & SEO analysis
- Includes XML Sitemaps
- Integrates with Google Search Console
- Add Breadcrumbs
- Set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content
- Bulk editor ( Allow to edit .htaccess file and Robots.txt file)
In addition, All in One SEO Pack is a great alternative to Yoast SEO that you can use. This is the second most popular WordPress SEO plugin in the WordPress repository.
2. Set up a clean Permalink Structure
Always use SEO friendly Permalink Structure for your posts and pages so that it can better define your posts and pages. Furthermore, it helps to get a better rank in search result.
Examples of SEO friendly URLs
https://justbrightme.com/wordpress-seo-optimization-tips/
However, the default Permalink Structure of WordPress is not SEO friendly and it looks like this.
https://justbrightme.com/?p=10467
But do not worry you can change it.
WordPress Permalink Structure comes with 6 different Permalink Structure.
Just go to Settings >> Permalinks page. Select the post name option and then click on Save Changes button.
Note: If your website is too old or more than 6month, we do not recommend this. It can badly affect your website ranking.
3. Add your site to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a great tool powered by Google that helps to track how your site is performing in Google. And also warns about errors in your site.
It comes with many features to track your site
- Search analytic
- Submit a sitemap
- Fix website errors
- Messages from the Google search team
- Google index
4. Submit a Sitemap
Sitemap is the list of your website URL. It tells search engines about all the pages and posts on your website.
However, sitemap does not improve your search ranking, but it allows search engines to better crawl your website.
5. Use a CDN
Content Delivery Network (CDN) boost your website's performance. CDN create a caches file of your site and stored on servers at different locations.
When a visitor requests a page, their nearest server delivers the content for the request.
This reduces the load on your server and speed up your WordPress site. You can use MaxCDN and CloudFlare on your site to get the advantage of CDN service.
6. Use Fast and SEO Friendly Theme
Choosing a best WordPress theme is very important to improve WordPress SEO. Because all WordPress theme is not SEO optimized and well coded.
If you choose the wrong theme for your WordPress site, it can affect your loading speed and SEO. See our guide 27 Best SEO Friendly WordPress Themes 2018. All these themes fully SEO optimized and well coded. Apart from this, compatible with third-party SEO plugins that can help to make your website SEO friendly.
7. Make your Content Shareable
Social share buttons are very important for any site or blog. To make your content shareable, add social share button below your content.
By integrating the social sharing buttons, you can allow visitors to quickly share your blog posts on social media sites.
But also you have to pay attention to your site's performance. So always use well-coded and lightweight social share plugins on your site.
8. Fix every Security Issue
Google takes security very seriously. If there is any security issue in your site, then Google will immediately reduce your site ranking. So you should keep an eye on this.
Apart from this, you can use the most trusted WordPress security plugins Wordfence and Sucuri.
9. Improve Load Time
Google gives a higher rank to fast loading. If your site is slow then Google will reduce your rank in Google search result. So focus on your website loading speed to get a good rank in Google.
If your site loads fast in Google, it will rank better in Google.
To check your website loading speed, you can use speed checker tools like PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom and GT Matrix.
Some quick tips to improve website speed
- Upgrade to PHP 7.2
- Optimize your image's size
- Keep only useful plugins
- Remove unwanted media
- Optimize and minify your CSS and JS Files
- Use a good cache plugin
- Minimize redirects
10. Fix broken links
Broken links are such links on your site, that does not exist and when visitors click on it, they show a 404 page not found error.
It greatly affects your WordPress SEO and user experience.
You can easily fix broken links from your site using the Broken Link Checker plugin.
11. Block or Delete Spam Comments
Spam comments take the extra space on your WordPress hosting, which increases the size of your database and it affects your website loading speed.
To deal with these spam comments you can use Antispam WordPress Plugins. These plugins automatically block spam comments on your site.
12. Use to a Responsive Design
If your WordPress site is not mobile-friendly, then it will not perform well in Google search result. The main reason more than half of the searches are done by mobile.
That's why Google gives better rank to mobile-optimized sites to improve Mobile User Experience.
However, all WordPress's themes come with responsive design. But it is your responsibility to check whether your site is responsive or not. For this, you can use the mobile-friendly testing tool.
13. Optimize Your Robots.txt
When a search engine bot crawls your site, they follow the Robots.txt file which part of the site you want to index and what part you want to block.
Therefore, if you misconfigure the robots.txt file, it may harm your website ranking. See our guide How to Optimize WordPress Robots.txt File properly.
14. Remove Unwanted Plugins
Plugins extend site functionality but if you use more plugin on your site then it greatly hurt your website loading speed. So delete unwanted plugins on your site that are useless.
Also, delete unwanted media and inactive themes that are useless on your site because unwanted media takes extra space on your WordPress site and increase your WordPress database size.
Note: Inactive plugins and themes can create security vulnerabilities and can also affect your WordPress site performance.
15. Compress Images Size
By compressing images, you can reduce web page size and get better performance.
There are many image compressing plugins available in the WordPress.org. Just choose the best image optimization plugin. Here we have listed some of the Best Image Optimizer WordPress Plugins, which you can use on your website.
When you upload images in your content, Image optimizer plugins automatically reduces the size of images by compressing.
16. Minify Html CSS and Javascript
By reducing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript you can greatly improve your site's performance. It reduces your web page size and makes your site blazing fast.
Even Google recommends to minify javascript and CSS files from your site.
17. Optimize your Database
WordPress uses databases to store information. If you do not optimize the WordPress site's database regularly, it can affect your website load time.
There are many plugins to optimize the database. We use the WP-Optimize plugin to optimize databases on our blog. Furthermore, do not forget to remove the unwanted table from your database.
18. Use LazyLoad for Images
Images take a lot of time to load compared to other elements. if you use many images for your article, it increases your page load time.
In this situation, the lazy load plugin takes care of page loading speed.
19. Enable GZIP Compression
GZIP Compression compress your webpage size and makes your site fast.
There are two most popular caching plugins that allow you to enable GZIP compression - WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache.
20. Keep your Site Simple
Make Your Site Simple and Clean because Google does not like Decorate site. As well as the visitor will feel uncomfortable on your site.
Keep your site's background color white. So that your site looks clean and simple and readers can easily read your article.
21. Optimize Meta Description
Meta Description plays a vital role to increase the Click Through Rate (CTR) for your content. Google usually allows 300 characters to write meta descriptions.
you can write custom meta descriptions using Yoast SEO and optimize to get higher CTR. But don't forget to add main keywords in your meta descriptions.
But keep one thing in mind, avoid keyword stuffing in your meta description.
22. Optimize Title Tag
If you do not optimize the title tag properly, then you lose the opportunity to increase your content potential.
When search engines crawl your content, they first see your Title Tags & Meta Descriptions. If you optimize it properly you can boost your content for good rank. Always try to start your title with the main keywords.
Apart from this, more than half of the people see the title before reading the content. And if your title is attractive, they click on your content.
23. Use H1, H2 or H3 Tags Properly
H1 tags boost your ranking. But does not fill your whole content with the H1 tag.
In fact, Googler John Mueller states about H2, H3 Tags
These heading tags in HTML help us to understand the structure of the page.
It does not matter to WordPress SEO. But when it comes to WordPress SEO optimization, every little thing helps.
24. Optimize your Images with ALT text
Google cannot read the image. It reads the image based on the alt tag.
That's why always give the correct name of your images. Apart from this, you should also pay attention to the Alt tag.
Optimized images help you get a good rank in image search.
25. Move to HTTPS
If you use HTTPS on your site, it boosts your ranking. Google uses it as a ranking factor.
Google announced in August 2014 - HTTPS as a ranking signal.
If you're running your site on HTTP, then redirect it to HTTPS.
But if properly redirection is very important otherwise it can affect your site's ranking and traffic very badly. Even your traffic may be zero in overnight.
26. Breadcrumb
Breadcrumb helps users to know where they are on your site and also helps the search engine to understand your site's structure data.
Google states that
Google Search uses breadcrumb markup in the body of a web page to categorize the information from the page in search results.
See our guide how to add breadcrumbs in WordPress using Yoast SEO.
27. Use a Caching Plugin
WordPress uses PHP to run a website which makes more load on the server.
But when you use the caching plugin, it generates static HTML files. It minimizes the number of requests between the server and your user’s browser and improves loading speed.
You can use the most popular cache plugins W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache for your site.
28. Keyword Research
SEO totally depends on keyword research. It helps you understand what people are searching for and what they want to read.
Google Keyword Planner is the best keyword research tool powered by Google. You can use it for any niche to find the best keyword.
The tool allows you to see the keyword competition, monthly searches, CPC and more.
29. Use Quality Web Hosting
If you use a low quality hosting to create your WordPress site then it will badly hurt your WordPress SEO. The main reason your website will be mostly in downtime and will load very slowly. This affects both your website ranking and SEO.
However, there are many web hosting companies, which promise to be the best. Therefore, choosing the best WordPress hosting service is a daunting task, especially if you are a beginner. Here we have picked some of the Best WordPress Hosting Services that you can use without worry.
30. Use Internal Links
Internal linking makes your post more relevant for search engines and visitors. Also, visitors spend more time on your site which reduces the bounce rate. Apart from this, Google treats content as quality content.
31. Use External Links
This technique also works as the internal link. External links make your content more useful.
But, the linking site should be trusted. Otherwise, your site may be penalized.
This technique refers to your content as trustworthy and informative in Google's eyes.
32. Backlinks
Backlinks is a very old Google ranking factor. But backlinks should be relevant and from trusted and good ranking websites.
If you create bad and low-quality backlinks, it can badly hurt your WordPress SEO.
Keep one thing in mind, do not buy backlinks for your site, otherwise, you may face Google Penalty because such backlinks contain with low quality and pornographic sites links.
33. Use Nofollow Tag for Affiliate Links
If you monetize your site by affiliate links for revenue, use the Nofollow tag for them. This will help to boost your WordPress SEO.
34. Quality Content
Finally, want to say quality content is king of SEO. If you write good content on your website and optimize well, then you will definitely get a positive result.
Also, you have to pay attention to the length of the content. Long content performs well in Google search result.
If you write short content on your blog then it should be at least 1000 words.
There are some of the best WordPress SEO tips that you can implement on your WordPress site and take to the next level in Google search engine or other search engines.
What did you think of this post? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
Find this article helpful? Don't forget to share!
Great article about wordpress seo optimization tips. Useful tips for every seo candidate.
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