I have noticed that many of you manage websites in WordPress and I thought it would be pertinent to write an article with the best 20 SEO tips to optimize your WordPress Website.
If you don’t have a website of your own and are considering creating one, this is the ideal platform to do so!
Now let’s get down to business! Here’s what I’m going to cover in this article:
1. What is WordPress?
2. What are the benefits of SEO for WordPress?
3. WordPress SEO Tips
WordPress is open source software (open-source) perfect for creating websites, blogs or applications s>. According to its official website 35% of the web uses WordPress, from blogs personal to the largest websites news online. It is capable of managing content for numerous types of sites, such as e-commerces, sites institutional, blogs, portals, magazines online, etc.
This platform stands out for being easy to access, very intuitive and easy to work with. It allows the customization of the design, the optimization for SEO, the creation of sites responsive and high performance, the management of multimedia content and, also, the from website, blog or application from anywhere.
Good SEO work will improve users’ experience when browsing your pages, position them better in search engines and increase traffic.
20 WordPress SEO tips:
- 1. Installing a WordPress SEO Plugin
The plugin that advice (and which I use on this website) is the all-in-one SEO pack! This plugin offers several features: it supports XML Sitemap, allows integration with Woocommerce (the only free plugins that provide this integration), connection to Google Analytics and AMP, automatic creation of meta tags, embedded API, etc.
To install this plugin, just go to your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New, search the search bar for All-in-one SEO pack and click Install Now.
- 2. Configure the structure of PermaLinks
The permalink (or Permalink) corresponds to the way in which the standard structure of URLs on your website is defined. When creating a website in WordPress it is possible to determine how pages should be generated, through their permalinks, which will also influence how they are recognized by search engines.
If you don’t have to worry about configuring the structure of permalinks, the pages and publications of your website will follow a predefined standard structure , which is not the most suitable, in terms of SEO.
Google prefers URLs that contain the title and/or keywords of the post.
Shorter URLs are generally better. In URLs, you should also avoid unnecessary buzzwords such as articles, prepositions and connectors, examples include: “in”, “in/on”, “ o/a”, “by”.
To change the structure of permalinks, you must access the control panel, click on Settings > Permalinks, and choose the Post Name setting.
- 3. Use Interlinks
Interlinks are links that point from one page to another within your WordPress website. These pages extend the time that people stay within the website and facilitate their navigation. They also help to understand the information, often providing additional context and information.
If you have related content, try to use about 3 to 5 interlinks on each page of your website!
- 4. Add links external high authority domain
In addition to interlinks, you can also add external links, ie links to other websites high domain authority. This is a way to show Google that you are giving users other relevant and quality content.
One of my frequent advice is to activate the option to open the content in a new window, so that the user does not leave the page. So, after reading the information on the external domain, you will return to your page.
- 5. Google Search Console
Add Google Search Console to your website. This platform will demonstrate the current performance of your WordPress website on search engines and alert you to any errors that may exist.
Just access the control panel and click on SEO > General > Resources. Scroll down, below you will find “XML Sitemaps “.
To make sure it is created correctly, click See the XML sitemap and you are done!
- 6. Sitemaps
Sitemaps are used by search engines to crawl online websites. A website does not necessarily need a sitemap to be crawled, however, sitemaps allow you to define the data that we want them to be effectively tracked.
In this way, it is possible to ensure that certain pages (with a less positive rating) are not crawled, giving more importance to others (better ranked).
If you have followed the first tip, you have this task simplified, as the All-in-one SEO pack creates sitemaps with a lot of ease. Let’s see later.
- 7. Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console
Now, a really smart thing to do is send this sitemap we just created to Google. Just go to Google Search Console and click on Sitemaps.
In the upper right corner will be an option to add or test the Sitemap. Click on this option, enter the URL of the sitemap and Submit. From now on, Google will crawl your sitemap on a regular basis, contributing to faster indexing.
- 8. Optimize Title Tags
You probably already know this tip, but it’s always good to remember it! You must have, both in your publications and in the title tag of the page, the main keyword for which you intend to appear. If possible, right at the beginning of the text.
In this article, for example, the title is “20 SEO Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website”, which immediately introduces the main keywords: SEO and WordPress.
- 9. Optimize Meta descriptions
The meta descriptions in addition to affecting your SEO, they greatly affect the CTR (click through rate) of your page. A good meta description can be the key for the user to choose to click on your page and not on the previous or next page, in the search engine results (SERP’s).
The higher the CTR, the more relevance Google will give your page and, consequently, the better your ranking.
You can manually optimize the meta description through the All-in-one SEO pack plugin, which presents a simulation very close to reality.
- 10. Optimize Images
First of all, separating the text with images is a foolproof strategy, as it hooks the reader to our content and provides a more dynamic experience.
In this sense, it is essential to optimize the images and name them with the keyword for which you want to position yourself.
Instead of random names like “PKH_2716.jpg”, the images should be titled as follows: “image-name-keyword.jpg”. This structure enhances the ranking that Google will give to that image in Google Images, which can also lead to increased traffic to your websitesite.
Remember to also put the keyword in the Title and Alt of the image!
Another point that you shouldyou should consider is the compression of images, which contributes immensely to the speed of the website. Two of the most popular plugins are the imagify and the LazyLoad. These allow you to compress images without harming their quality.
- 11. Search and Monitor Keywords
In addition to the care we must take in the proper selection of keywords, it is advisable to monitor them regularly. Only in this way will you be able to understand the interests of users and adjust your strategy to their searches.
You can use tools like a Keywords Everywhere, which shows search traffic for each keyword, CPC, difficulty level (in terms of competition) and allows you to follow its evolution.
The Rank Tracker or Ubbersuggest tools (the latter free) are equally excellent options!
- 12. Long-Tail Keywords
It is generally easier to position a page for a longer, more specific keyword (long-tail keyword) than for a short, very broad keyword.
In fact, the traffic you receive from a long-tail keyword generates, usually, more conversions, because it matches what the user is looking for in their search.
- 13. Integrate Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most important tools for anyone who has a website.
Analytics shows in detail your site traffic and a set of important parameters: source, target audience, session duration time, bounce rate, number of pages visited, among others.
To set up your account, go to the homepage and create an account (if you don’t already have one). Then click on Tracking Info > Tracking code. Copy the code, and then, depending on the “theme” of your site, you may have an option to directly add the Analytics code to your WordPress.
If this doesn’t happen, you can use the plugin Insert Headers and Footers. Open the plugin, go to the header section and paste the tracking code.
- 14. Monitor site speed
Did you know that, according to a Kinsta study, 40% of users say they leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load? Obviously, we don’t want to be included in that percentage!
In order to test the speed of your website, I recommend you to use a WebPageTest< /a>.
- 15. Fix broken links
In addition to not providing a good experience, having broken links in content makes it more difficult for your pages to be crawled by bots , harming ;ranking of them.
Don’t know how to check broken links? Don’t worry!
One of the easiest ways to do this is through Google Search Console, clicking on Crawl Errors.
Next, just open each error and check where the broken link is. Then just correct it!
- 16. Optimization for mobile
It is essential that you consider the optimization for mobile. If you still don’t pay close attention to this parameter, you’re already late! I recommend the tool mobile-friendly from Google to check if your website is in accordance with the new updates, regarding mobile.
In addition, being aware of Google Analytics is always essential. On this platform, you will be able to understand the amount of traffic that your website receives from mobile devices. ;
- 17. SEO Audit
To make sure that your website is fully optimized, you can use an SEO audit tool that will do this analysis for you, saving you a lot of time!
This way, you will have a report with all the points that you are doing correctly and with which you should improve. O SEOSiteCheckup, for example, is a free tool that analyzes over 50 ranking factors to assess the current performance of your website.
The tool Varvy SEO is also quite useful with regard to this topic as it allows you to verify that the website conforms to Google guidelines. In addition, it analyzes its performance in terms of convertibility on mobile devices, security, accessibility, page speed, among others.
The SEMRush is also an excellent choice. It offers an all-in-one toolbox that analyzes data from over 500 million domains and 16 billion keywords. Despite being a software paid, I consider it totally worth the investment!
- 18. Take advantage of social signals
As we know, social signals (tweets, shares, likes, etc.) pages in the SERP’s. A post popular is more likely to reach the first page of Google results than a post less popular
One of the best plugins you can use to put social media buttons and counters in your content is the Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress.
- 19. Using HTTPS
Did you know that HTTPS is currently a ranking factor?
To change your site WordPress to https, just do the following:
- Make sure your sites hosting supports https and ssl;
- Purchase an SSL certificate or get one using the Let’s Encrypt command ;
- Install the SSL certificate on your host;
- Check that SSL is working properly;
- Redirects links and all your HTTP traffic to HTTPS.
- 20. Redirects
If you still don’t have a site WordPress and this article convinced you to create one, don’t forget to redirect all pages of your site old to new site WordPress! Otherwise, you will lose all that traffic.
To make the call Redirect 301, my advice is to use the plugin Redirection, where you can specify the URL of the site old and the new WordPress page you want to redirect to.
That way, you don’t lose the old link or the traffic that still stops there, canceling out the risk of users landing on a page that no longer exists.
The best way to do redirects is the Redirect 301, as it tells Google the relevance of the old page to the new page. Other types of redirects, such as the 302 redirect, for example, do not transfer the relevance of the page, so they are not as favorable.
