WordPress SEO: Your Guide to Useful Tips and Success

Want to know how to improve your WordPress SEO? You’re in the right place if so!

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is something that business owners and marketers in every field need to know if they want to stand out from their competitors, get more customers, and meet their goals.

Okay, if you want to know more about WordPress SEO and how the right plan can help you succeed, keep reading. We have a lot of great information for you today.

How WordPress SEO Works

To begin, let’s talk about what SEO is: it’s the process of making changes to different parts of your website in order to move it up in search engine results pages (SERPs).

We think that SEO is one of the best and most long-lasting ways to get people to visit your WordPress site and raise recognition of your brand.

Google and other search engines like it when websites are properly optimised. It’s easy to see why getting your content to show up in the SERPs is important when you think about how many searches Google gets every second.

One of the best things about sites that are easy for search engines to understand is that Google can show them to more people.

Google can help people find your blog and other important landing pages if you use the right keywords and make content that people will want to read. That’s why advertisers say SEO gives them the best leads.

Picture source: WPForms

In the end, if you use the right SEO approach, you can move up in the search results, get more visitors, and connect with your audience more often. More people might sign up, interact, and buy because of this.

Simple SEO tips for WordPress

I know from personal experience that making your WordPress site more SEO-friendly can seem hard at first. You can get lost quickly if you’re new to search engine optimisation and WordPress. There are a lot of places to start.

Don’t worry, though! Here are some easy-to-follow tips that will help you get started:

• Check to See If People Can See Your Site: There is a setting in WordPress that can keep search engines from seeing your site. This choice can be found in Settings > Reading. Keep going until you reach “site visibility.” Check that “Allow search engines to index this site” is checked.
• Do a better job with your permalinks: Your permalinks are the URLs for your posts and pages. Before a post goes live, change each one so that it has words that describe the post’s content (like the title) instead of random numbers. Google will be able to figure out what the page is about with this.
• Pay attention to the quality of your writing: More than 77% of people regularly read blog posts. So. You should always try to post content that your readers will find useful and interesting. As one of the building blocks of a strong SEO strategy, good material gets shared and linked to more often.
• Put in an SEO-friendly theme: Pick a famous WordPress theme that gives you a lot of options and loads quickly. Page speed and usefulness are two things Google looks at when deciding how to rank websites, so this can really help your SEO.
• Register your site with Google Analytics: Registering your site with Google Analytics will help you keep track of how well it’s doing and see how people use your content. You can add new content to your WordPress site and make it even better with this knowledge.

The best WordPress SEO add-ons

You’ll be happy to know that WordPress has a lot of SEO apps that can help you out. Some of the best tools on the market can speed up the optimisation process, help you find the best keywords, and show you gaps you might not have seen otherwise.

Because we’ve tested them and used them for years, we think these three WordPress SEO tools are the best.

Yoast SEO is our first choice. In the WordPress SEO world, it’s hard to find a better name. That was back in 2010, and Yoast is still going strong today. Here are a few that stand out:

The image comes from Yoast SEO.
Yoast has a paid version and a free version. The free version is for smaller projects or if you want to try it out before you buy it.

RankMath and All in One SEO (AIOSEO) are two more great WordPress SEO plugins that could be the best. Both have tools that can help you get the most out of your search.

One great thing about RankMath is that it has a built-in SEO analytics module that lets you see how your site is doing right from your WordPress homepage. This helped us a lot with keeping an eye on our optimisation plan and keeping track of certain keywords.

AIOSEO also has some great tools, such as the TruSEO On-Page Analysis, which will help you get the most out of your page by putting the right keywords, links, and organised data in the right places.

Check out our list of 7 more SEO tools that every search marketer should use to learn more.

Advanced SEO tactics for WordPress

You now know a bit more about SEO and how the right WordPress plugins can help. Next, let’s look at some more advanced techniques that you should know about if you want to succeed.

• Make a Sitemap: Search engine bots need a sitemap to find their way around your site. Google can figure out what your site is about by following the path from one URL to the next. As we said above, it will be a lot easier to build a sitemap and use the other advanced SEO tactics on this list if you use one of those plugins. If not, you’ll have to start from scratch and send Google an index.
• Use Robots.txt files: These files tell search engines what parts of your site to crawl and what parts to skip. If you set up your robots.txt file properly, search engines will crawl your main content first, which can make your site much more visible.
• Make your site work well on smartphones: More than 61% of searches are now done on phones, so your site needs to be optimised for them. It’s important for SEO because Google says they are focused on mobile-first experiences. Use a page builder that is flexible so you can make changes to your site for these people.
• Make use of categories and tags: Categories and tags are great for organising your content into key topics. Search engines and people who visit your site can both figure out what you like to talk about if it has a clear format. A marketing site might have categories like “PPC marketing” and “social media marketing.” It’s a good idea to make a variety of categories and tags to describe your posts in more detail. This small step makes sure that the right people find your work.

What are SEO services for WordPress?

Now, let’s talk about when you might need professional WordPress SEO services.

In the first place, SEO services offer focused, hands-on help that can help you make your website more visible.

When SEO companies look at your site, they will check its structure, content, and keyword optimisation to see where you can make changes to make it better. They offer a wide range of services and can help you by giving you a thorough study of your site, which is very important if your organic traffic is stopping to grow and your keyword rankings are going down.

They also look at how you’re doing compared to your competitors. This can help you figure out what they’re doing to get free traffic and clicks.

It’s great to work with WordPress SEO pros because they will tell you what’s wrong and then fix it. A lot of the time, they can help you improve your site’s content, speed, and keywords so that it ranks higher in search engines.

It can be expensive to hire skilled SEO services, but it’s definitely worth it if you want to improve your site’s search performance.

How to make your WordPress material SEO-friendly

One of the best ways to move up in the search results is without a doubt to make content that people want to click on. A huge chunk of people aren’t ready to buy something the first time they visit a website. They look at the company blog first. They might decide to join your email list if they like what they see.

But you need to make their lives better in order to get their email address. Also, it’s very important that search engines know when to show other people your blog. This is called “perfect curation.”

You will be glad to know that there are many strong and not too hard ways to make content SEO-friendly. First, make sure that at least one term is used in every part of your post. Though every business is different, as a general rule, you should use terms that get a medium to high number of searches and have low to medium competition.

Use these words and sentences in your title, headings, and text in a way that makes sense. This gives crawlers some background information about each page, which helps them decide how to group it for people who type in your chosen terms.

Don’t forget to use lots of headings to make your writing simple to read. Google reads H2 and H3 headers to find out more about a page, so this is also a great time to add one or two more keywords.

I also think you should use conversational wording, since voice search users like that. It’s clear why this step is so important when you think about how 30% of mobile searches are done without a screen.

When you’re done with that, don’t forget to add a FAQ to the end of each post. You might even get a featured snippet for your chosen phrase if you do this step. It will help you rank for voice search and answer common questions.

Yeast SEO, a WordPress add-on, can really help with this. It tells you how to optimise your post, where to put keywords, how easy it is to read, and gives you a final score before you click “Publish.” This tool is great for people who are new to marketing or just want “another” set of eyes on their work.

Tips for technical SEO on WordPress

Technical SEO might sound hard, but it’s mostly about making sure your site works well and safely. Here are five technical SEO tips that I think all professionals should use to make their search profile better:

• Speed Up Your Site—Your site needs to load quickly. If it doesn’t, people may leave before reading your material. We learned that most people expect a page to load in two seconds or less. After a while, the bounce rate starts to rise very quickly. 53% of people say they’ll leave after 3 seconds if it doesn’t load. Things can go faster if you compress images, host movies off-site, use lazy loading, and add a caching plugin.
• Use a responsive design—It’s important that your site looks good and works well on all of the most common phones, tablets, and computers. For example, use a responsive design. You should always make sure that your WordPress theme works on all screen sizes, even if it says it does in the theme’s settings. Look around your site for a moment on a few different devices. This way, you can be sure that everyone who visits your site has a great time, no matter how they get there.
• Make sure you have HTTPS—Safe connections are important to protect the information of your guests. HTTPS lets your users know that their data is safe, which is important for building trust. If your website still says “HTTP,” you should get an SSL licence from your hosting company. This change does more than just keep your data safe; it also makes you look more trustworthy to your audience and may even help search engines rank your site higher.
• Create a plan for internal linking— These links connect your pages and help search engines figure out how your website is organised. By giving more weight to the most important pages, they help you set up an order on your site. When you write something new, you should always link to your key pages. It should be easy for people to find and go to other useful and interesting pages on your site as they read it. This will make the experience more interesting for them.
• Run an SEO Audit—A technical SEO audit is something you might want to do if you want to see how your site does. This tool from Google can help you figure out what you’re doing right and what you could do better. Also, Yoast SEO can quickly and easily show you problems on each page and suggest ways to fix them. One of their papers looks like this:

The image comes from Yoast SEO.

Techniques for on-page SEO

We’re now going to look at some on-page SEO techniques and features that can help you move up in the rankings.

Title for SEO

It’s the first thing people see in search results, so think of your SEO title as a first impression. Be careful when writing it, and make sure that your main term is near the beginning. This will help you get people’s attention before they scroll down and forget about you.

Having an optimised, catchy SEO title can definitely boost your clickthrough rate. This tells search engines what your content is about.

Meta Description

The meta description is what shows up below your SEO title in search results. It briefly describes what your page is about. People might have been interested in your title, but now you need to tell them why they should click through.

I think you should figure out a way to include your main term in the meta description. But remember that your main goal is to get people to click on your link.

The canons

To handle duplicate information on a site, canonical tags are necessary. These tell search engines which version of the page is the source and should be used. Without them, you might make it hard for search engines to figure out which post is most important. To make sure people can find the right page on your site, make sure you add canonicals when you need to.

Redirections

With redirections, you can tell people (and search engines) that a page has changed and lead them to a new one. For instance, if you chose to put all of your posts about statistics into one big article, the URLs of all of the original posts would change. If a visitor gets to one of these pages, the redirect sends them back to the current URL so they can keep going with their trip.

Slug

The title of a certain page or post on your site is in the URL slug. Keep it simple, like a storefront sign, so that both people and search engines can understand it. Putting your term in the slug can also help, but remember that clarity is the most important thing.

For example, Cook-waffles-from-scratch could be the slug for a page with a story called How to Cook Homemade Waffles from Scratch.

Number of Keywords

You have to carefully balance the words you use in your text if you want to use keyword density. Too many and it will look like you’re stuffing your content, which is bad for both readers and search engines. Not enough and you might miss out on SEO chances.

Most people agree that the keyword intensity should be between 1% and 2%. That is, you can use it 15 to 30 times for every 1,500 words. Of course, it goes without saying that they should always feel spontaneous and not forced.

Excerpt

Now is your chance to show a quick look at each blog post on your site. Excerpts are often shown on the home page or main page of a blog. They tell people what the post is about. A lot of people read the sample to decide if they want to read the whole thing. So, make sure it’s interesting and related to the post’s title.

Let’s look at an excerpt to see why they are so useful for both users and search engines:

Source of the picture: WP Mail SMTP

Techniques for off-page SEO

On-page SEO is important for making your WordPress site more visible, but off-page SEO is just as important. On-page SEO is what you do on your website itself. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is how you improve your site’s image and connection with other websites and internet users.

Off-site SEO gives you a lot of different ways to raise your rank. Here is a list of our favourite strategies:

Content that can be linked to

Building links is like getting a thumbs up. Search engines know that your content is important when other reputable sites link back to it. You’ve already taken the first step if you chose to focus on making good content that other people want to share after our advice.

The chances are good that another blogger will link back to your work in their post if they find it interesting or useful. A reference, which is like a stamp of approval for search engines, will be given to you. Google will probably give your page more weight if a lot of other sites link to it.

Write guest posts now.

In simple terms, guest posts are blog posts that you write for other websites. For guest blogging chances, you can ask people in your network, publications in your field, and even companies that give away free stuff. Find out if they want material. If they say yes, tell them about your plan!

Read their rules to find out how to link to your own material. In some sites, you can only have one link in your author bio. In others, you can link to your blog more than once in the same post.

It’s the same as when you use backlinks. It’s better to build with reliable sites more.

Online phone books and directories

Add your business to the right web directories and platforms. This not only helps people find your website, but it also gives you more backlinks. Make sure that all of your profiles are full and correct; having the same information in all of the directories will help people trust you more.

Do not wait any longer to claim your Google My Business page. This will make it easier for people to find your website. You should also check the Better Business Bureau, Best of the Web, your Facebook page, and any other places you think people might be able to find you.

Using social media to connect

Talking to people on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok will help your work reach more people and be more likely to be shared.

Even though these social signs don’t have a direct effect on rankings, having people from all over the internet visit your site can help it naturally grow and get more visitors. Nearly 60% of people in the world have at least one social account. This is another reason to spend more time promoting your business on social media. You can be sure that the people you want to reach are waiting for you.

Reviews

97% of people who are going to buy something read reviews first. Review and recommendations can be very helpful for businesses in all kinds of fields, as this shocking number shows.

Reviews not only help you build social proof, but they also make people want to visit your website to learn more about your goods or services. Also, it’s important to note that Google can see what other people think of your business if you use structured data for your reviews. If you regularly get good reviews, Google may move you up in the results.

Keeping an eye on your WordPress SEO progress

Lastly, it’s just as important to keep track of your SEO results as it is to do the SEO work. You won’t know if your plans are working or how you can get better if you don’t keep track of your progress. This might make things stay the same on your page and in the search results.

Thanks to tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, it’s easy to keep an eye on your SEO. Google Analytics lets you see how many people visit your site and what they do while they’re there. Google Search Console also helps you figure out how visible your site is and find problems that might be slowing it down.

If you decide to try Yoast SEO, you’ll find that they have a full tracking tool that helps you plan out the best things to do in the coming months.

No matter what you use to keep an eye on your WordPress SEO, you should still keep an eye on and understand this data so you can keep learning and growing.

Ending it up

We talked about a wide range of SEO tips for beginners to experts today. We also looked at the best WordPress SEO services and plugins and a number of on-page and off-site SEO tactics.

If you feel like you have too much to do, take a deep breath and remember that SEO is an ongoing project that will take time and patience. Don’t feel like you need to do everything at once. Instead, take a step back and plan what you can do in the next few days. For starters, that could mean reading some tips. It could also mean getting an SEO expert to look over your page. In between, there are a huge number of other things that can happen.

The most important thing to remember is that your SEO plan will only work if you are aware of it, keep at it, and want to make it better. Our view is that everyone can rank; they just need to make the right choices along the way.