This post may contain affiliate links.
SEO can be a tricky thing. You can spend a lot of time on it, but never really see the benefits. You might think it is best to do everything yourself. You don’t have to give up control and employ any sort of plugin or service to make things easier.
However, if you’re a beginner with SEO for your WordPress site, there are a few key steps you must take to get the most out of it. We’ll go through what has to be done once a new WordPress website is constructed so that it’s optimized for search engine rankings!
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is the most popular content management system on the internet, with 35% of all websites. It’s used to power a large number of the websites you visit every day, including BBC America, Time.com, and TechCrunch. The Rolling Stones, for example, employ WordPress on their official website.
WordPress began as a blogging platform in 2003, but it rapidly became a powerful tool for running complete websites. It can also be used as an eCommerce platform.
What Is WordPress SEO?
Although WordPress is a great content management system, it isn’t a substitute for a solid SEO strategy. You must remember that Google ranking your website takes time and effort.
SEO can become quite technical, but the appeal of WordPress makes it accessible to anybody, even people not considered technical.
There’s no need to change the way you do SEO just because you’re using WordPress. You still need to develop high-quality material, get excellent backlinks, and maintain your site free of technical problems.
WordPress saves you a lot of time and effort by providing you with everything you need out of the box to rank well. What follows are growth-driving strategies that will help you use WordPress to its full potential.
Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider
You should always do your research when it comes to selecting a web host. You must check the provider’s performance, uptime, and security before signing up with them.
The amount of time it takes your WordPress site to load also has an impact on its SEO performance, as well as poor uptime and security bugs. You’re less likely to have performance problems if you spend a little more money.
Install an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme
When you first install WordPress, it will most likely be the platform’s basic “Twenty Twenty” theme. However, this isn’t one you’ll want to use on your website.
There are hundreds of free themes immediately accessible from the dashboard, as well as many premium ones. You need to carefully select one that is SEO friendly.
While many themes claim to be SEO-friendly, it’s not unusual for them to include scripts and plugins that you won’t use, slowing down your site’s performance. Run the demo of a theme through Google’s web.dev tool before installing it to check for possible performance and SEO concerns.
Install a Free WordPress SEO Plugin
You’ll need an SEO plugin before you begin optimizing your site. Fortunately, two popular choices are both free to use the All in One SEO Pack or Yoast SEO.
A plugin is not going to optimize your website for you; it simply makes it simpler for you to do so.
The easiest way to install a plugin on WordPress is to go to the admin panel and select ‘add new’ from the left-hand menu: Plugins > Add new. When you get there, look for the plugin you want to install and hit ‘install now.’
Enable SEO-Friendly Permalinks
WordPress offers a variety of ways to structure URLs, and you must pick the most SEO-friendly option.
WordPress, by default, uses URLs like this:https://domain.com/?p=123. These URLs are not search engine friendly, and there’s no method to figure out what the page is about from the URL alone.
Fortunately, you may select a customized URL structure at Settings > Permalinks. For most sites, ‘Post name’ is the best option.
Verify Your Site with Google Search Console & Submit Your XML Sitemap
You’ll need to verify your site with Google Search Console if you haven’t already.
Choose the ‘HTML tag’ method from the drop-down menu. Next, head to Yoast’s SEO > General > Webmaster Tools plugin.
Put the HTML content into the ‘Google verification code’ box
After you’ve verified your site, go to the ‘Sitemaps’ menu and click ‘Upload Sitemap.’ (By default, Yoast generates an XML sitemap from domain.com/sitemap.xml.) You can then upload your sitemap file:
Use your keywords in blog posts
Try including your article’s primary keyword in the first 100 words, and make sure to include the keyword as well as any relevant ones.
Be careful not to overdo it. Google can detect unnatural keyword cramming, which is called “keyword stuffing.” Naturally, formulate your thoughts with your keywords when they make sense and remember to incorporate your keywords in subheadings as well.
Interlink your posts and pages
When you’re working on a new post or page, keep an eye out for opportunities to link to previously published material. These links should be relevant to the subject of your blog post. Every 250 words of text should include at least one connection. When it’s appropriate, connect to reputable external resources too.