Want to start SEO for WordPress Website?
WordPress is the most popular CMS platform that let users edit, upload images and choose and customize website themes as per their business needs.
Users can even manage the SEO for their WordPress website by leveraging a few tools and plugins.
But, ‘Why SEO is Important For Your Business’?
Are there any Benefits of Small Business SEO?
How can it boost the sales conversion of small businesses or startups?
Best WordPress SEO Tips
Explore some of the best WordPress SEO tips to scale your site to the next best level
1. Choose a Quality Hosting Provider
It’s important to choose the right hosting provider as it affects the security, site speed, and uptime of your website. However, if you already have web hosting but aren’t satisfied with the performance, change it immediately.
Well, you can also migrate your website to its competitor’s platform.
Here are some features and WordPress SEO strategies to consider when selecting the right hosting provider:
- High uptime: Downtime happens only when you’ve chosen the quality hosting provider. However, if your website is not available 24*7 due to weak hosting, this will affect your reputation and business.
- WordPress friendliness: Your hosting should be compatible with the WordPress website. various hosting providers offer plans which can be tailored to your WordPress needs.
- Free SSL: This is a must-have hosting feature for your website as it enables the secure HTTPS encryption of your website.
- Available Storage: Prioritize the storage space for the purpose of your website. If you need a lot of space, choose a hosting provider that offers you enough storage so it doesn’t run out of memory.
If you are still confused to select the right web hosting for your website, explore some of the best SEO tools for WordPress and trusted recommendations:
2. Use an SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme
How to improve SEO on WordPress? Use the right SEO WordPress Theme.
While installing the WordPress website, check out the SEO Friendly WordPress theme- the best SEO tools for WordPress. You can explore the ‘Twenty Twenty theme’ for personalizing your website.
Make sure the theme you choose loads faster and is quite light weighted to improve SEO on WordPress. Because, when it comes to SEO, you cannot compromise on the speed and performance of your website, right?
But, How To Increase WordPress Website Speed?
Explore a wide range of free and premium WordPress themes from the official WordPress theme library and check that can go well with your business objective. Don’t forget to check the WordPress SEO guide.
How to find themes that performed best in independent tests?
- Find the demo site theme from the official website.
- Paste the URL into Google PageSpeed Insights and run the tool
- If your theme score is 90 or higher, you know you’ve found a lightweight theme.
This is one of the WordPress SEO tools to test the speed of your site.
IMPORTANT NOTE for WordPress SEO tips for beginners:
Gutenberg is the built-in editor of p. Various WordPress users also prefer 3rd party page builders like Divi, Elementor or Beaver Builder. They offer excellent features; however, keep checking the performance of the website while choosing any.
3. Make Sure Your Website Is Indexable
It goes without saying that your website must be able to index and display in the search result.
But, how to check the visibility of your website? You can also check the WordPress SEO tutorial for beginners.
Go to Settings > Reading.
Here, you will find a checkbox right next to the “Search engine visibility” section at the bottom of the page. Do not check this box. However, developers often tick this box when the website is in the development stage.
Note that once your website is live and deployed, the box needs to be unchecked.
If your website is live and ready to be ranked on Google, the box should be unchecked. For professional assistance, you can hire Info Stans and choose the most suitable SEO Package for your web framework.
4. Set Up an SSL Certificate
Use a secure HTTPS connection for your website. This will help you rank your site better on Google.
Encrypt your website with an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. This ensures that your information on the site is safe and secure. But, how to secure your website connection?
Yes, it’s quite easier to do than it sounds……
- Go to the hosting provider’s admin panel. Log in to hosting administration.
- Check out the “Security” or “SSL certificate” settings.
If you are stuck somewhere, Google “[name of your host] SSL certificate settings”. A few WordPress hosting providers often give a free SSL certificate called Let’s Encrypt.
Select and install the certificate.
Here’s how actually the setup looks like in the SiteGround web hosting admin panel:
Install Really Simple SSL Plugin – the best SEO WordPress plugin to ensure that your SSL certificate is correctly used and recognized on your WordPress site. But, how to install Really Simple SSL?
- Click on “Plugins” in the left menu.
- Select “Add new” and search for “Really Simple SSL.”
- Click the “Install Now” button.
This is the best WordPress SEO practice to try to rank your site on Google. Hire us for the best SEO Service for your business.
Bravo! Your website is encrypted now.
5. Select your address format
Looking for search engine optimization with WordPress through address format?
Choose between https://www.yourdomain.com or https://yourdomain.com format. These are 2 unique URLs. You need to choose one to avoid any issues with any duplicate content.
How to do this?
Click on Settings. Go to General and type your preferred address format.
6. Set a Permalink Structure
Every website has its own permanent URL structure, known as the permalink.
Go to Settings and Click on Permalinks. Select the Post Name.
However note that, if you are changing the permalink structure on your already existing website, it’s important to redirect it to all old URLs. Otherwise, your website may show up 404 errors.
7. Utilize the structured data
Structured data is a particular format for sharing information and categorizing your web page content. This makes it easier for Google to understand the content of that page. Moreover, this can change the way how snippet looks on search engine ranking pages.
When you show your structured data in a schema, it can make your content scannable too. This will increase your brand exposure and boost your click-through rates too.
For instance, this Recipe snippet includes valid and well-structured data and shows detailed information like required time, ingredients, and ratings.
Here’s how to add structured schema markup to your website.
Firstly, you can add WordPress schema markups – by leveraging a WordPress SEO plugin or manually with JSON-LD. It is advisable to use a manual method that involved coding which minimizes the chances of damage.
However, to leverage the WordPress SEO plugin, use AIOSEO to determine how to add schema markups using a plugin.
- Adding Site-Wide Schema Markup
Go to All in One SEO → Search Appearance from your WordPress dashboard and open the Content Types tab.
Select Schema Markup and find the Schema Type option with a drop-down menu.
8. Enable Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are the links that show the position of the page in the site hierarchy. This will help users understand and explore their site effectively.
If you enable breadcrumbs, it will improve the user experience and facilitate easy navigation to your website. This WordPress SEO tips is useful for a website that is full of content and has many blog posts and pages.
For instance, eBay has enabled breadcrumbs to help visitors to navigate the website or its other category pages.
Breadcrumb trailing is the best way to optimize a WordPress site for Google. Typically, it is an internal link strategy that helps Google understand the relationship between the pages. This linking strategy encourages visitors to check out more pages of the website and that increases the dwell time per visitor on your website.
TIP OF THE DAY:
You can use the AIOSEO plugin for enabling the breadcrumbs on your website. All you have to do is -:
Go to General Setting. Click on the tab ‘Breadcrumbs’. Switch the toggle ‘Enable Breadcrumbs’ and select how to want to embed it on your WordPress Website.
9. Installing and Configuring the WordPress SEO Plugin
WordPress SEO Plugin makes your website easier to rank on Google. Some of the popular WordPress SEO plugins are -:
- Yoast SEO
- All-in-One SEO
- Rank Math
- Installing the Yoast SEO
If you want to install Yoast SEO, go to WordPress Control Panel.
Click on the ‘Plugins’ and ‘Add new’ buttons. Select ‘Yoast SEO’ and click on the ‘Install Now’ button and then ‘Activate’.
- Configuring the Yoast SEO
Once you have activated the Yoast SEO, you will be prompted to go for the ‘first-time’ configuration. At that time, you will have to -:
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- Run Yoast’s SEO data optimization function
- Provide basic information related to your website
- Integrate your social media handles
- Title Tag Separator
You can use Title Tag Separator for inserting any symbol in your Meta Title. All you have to do is go to Yoast SEO. Click on Search Appearances and then select Title Separator.
10. Optimize the WordPress Image
Using images in your website is the best WordPress SEO tip as it captures the attention of audiences. However, ensure that the one you’re uploading is an optimized one.
This can improve the loading time of your site and accessibility furthermore improving your ranking on SERPs.
How to optimize the image?
- Compress your images
Image compression will reduce the file size of your image. This keeps your WordPress website lightweight. Choose between lossless image compression or lossy image compression. However, it may vary as per the type of image that you want to upload on your website.
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- You can use lossy image compression for JPEG files that do not contain many details
- You can use lossless image compression for PNG files that contain a lot of text
- Adding Alt Text for Images
It’s important to add alternative text to your images to make them more accessible to search engines. Moreover, this will help screen readers who are visually impaired understand what this image conveys. You can add the alt text via the media library and block editor.
Go to ‘Media Library’ and click ‘Alt Text’ under Attachment details.
Check out some of the WordPress SEO optimization practices for alt text -:
- Write a small description of the image to help visually impaired users
- Keep your text concise to 80 -125 characters long
- Include keywords that are relevant to the respective image
- Ensure that the content in the alt text is free from grammar errors, spell-proof, and structurally written
Write Readable file names for images
Yes, giving readable file names to images can help Google understand the visual content. Moreover, such a WordPress SEO tips is more likely to recommend images that have readable file names. So, instead of giving IMG_001.jpg label, write the name of the files.
The Final Words
The above-mentioned WordPress SEO tips & tricks are compelling and can significantly improve the performance of your site. Try these best SEO practices for WordPress sites and add value to your online business.
If you are stuck anywhere, call Info Stans now!
We are a trusted WordPress SEO service providing company. Our SEO experts help you from scratch to deliver promising results.
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