Looking to improve your WordPress site’s search engine visibility to drive more traffic and revenue? You’re in the right place. The world’s rapid transition into a digital-first economy has resulted in a massive surge in online competition, with billions of new and existing websites fighting to establish a strong online presence on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! As a result, WordPress SEO has become a crucial aspect of daily site management to drive more organic traffic by improving SERP rankings with different strategies, tools, and practices.
In this post, we’ll share a simple but comprehensive guide on how to improve SEO for WordPress Site. Unlike traditional guides that are often too technical to implement, our DIY guide will help you get started without professional intervention.
So, if you’re not too keen on hiring a WordPress SEO service or expert just yet, this one’s for you.
What Is WordPress SEO?
Search engine optimization is the art and science of improving search engine result page (SERP) rankings organically. The core objective of SEO is to ensure visitors find your website easily when searching different keywords. The higher your site ranks, the more traffic you generate. The more traffic you generate, the more leads you can convert through your content to increase sales, revenue, and brand awareness.
On paper, WordPress SEO can be defined as the process of optimizing search visibility for WordPress websites. However, this is a mere oversimplification of a complex digital marketing process comprising several essential components that help websites stay ahead of changing search engine algorithms.
It requires a specialized approach to optimize individual pages and their content with:
- Plugin utilization
- Keyword integration
- Customized URLs
- Meta tags integration
- Internal Linking
- WP theme selection and customization
- Site security optimization
- AMP integration, etc.
In the modern digital landscape, there are over 810 million WordPress websites. In 2023, the world’s largest CMS represents over 43% of all active websites. In that context, learning how to do SEO for WordPress Sites is an indispensable aspect of development, user experience (UX), content management, and other connected processes designed to create a holistic, high-performance site.
Essential Components of WordPress SEO
Below are the key components you must consider when learning how to improve SEO for WordPress sites:
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is the most critical aspect of search engine optimization for any site. Consumers use special words or phrases when searching for information on their search engines. Keyword research helps WordPress SEO experts find the best keywords in terms of search volume, competition, and relevance to integrate them naturally into their site’s pages, content, URLs, and meta tags.
2. Content Creation & Optimization
All WordPress websites contain a unique collection of text, images, videos, and other forms of content populating different pages. The content’s purpose is to convey different messages and engage visitors by providing value in the form of:
- Product/service descriptions or reviews (text, image, video, etc.)
- Blog posts and articles
- Infographics
- Social media feeds
- Downloadable resources
- Call-to-Action (CTA)
- Frequently Asked Questions and contact information, etc.
3. SEO Plugin Integration
One of the key differences between standard SEO and WordPress SEO is the integration of different plugins that simplify and accelerate search visibility enhancement. SEO plugins for WordPress like Rank Math, Yoast SEO, and HubSpot provide different tools and features to improve various aspects of your sites without coding or in-depth technical knowledge. For instance, they can:
- Provide keyword analysis and recommendations
- Improve content structure and readability
- Generate XML sitemaps for automated search engine indexing
- Optimize pages for different devices
- Audit and manage internal and external links
- Integrate search consoles for performance monitoring and addressing issues, etc.
Today, you can find free and paid WordPress SEO plugins from the platform’s plugin repository. Log in to your account and head to the Plugins section from your dashboard. Use the search bar to refine your search by targeting SEO functionality to browse different options. Finally, install your desired plugin, configure its settings, and activate it.
8 Effective Strategies, Tools, and Practices to Improve Your WordPress Site’s Search Visibility
Here are eight ways to improve WP SEO for your site:
1. Choose a Quality Managed Hosting Service
Your hosting provider is critical in improving your WordPress site’s search visibility. A web hosting service is responsible for making your website accessible to online visitors on different search engines. It stores your site’s data, content, and files on shared or dedicated servers, providing the necessary infrastructure and technologies to improve your SEO efforts.
By opting for a robust managed WordPress hosting provider like Zabhost, you can improve several aspects of SEO, including (but not limited to):
● Loading Speed
Page loading speed is an essential site performance metric influencing how visitors or users perceive your website. Zabhost offers optimized server configurations and high-quality content delivery networks (CDNs) to ensure fast load times to meet Google and other search engine’s requirements.
● Uptime and Reliability
Zabhost offers a 99.99 % uptime guarantee, making it one of the most reliable hosting providers in the market. Search engines, especially popular ones like Google and Bing, favor WordPress sites with minimal downtime due to server crashes or other issues. Hence, the more reliable your hosting solution is, the better your SEO performance.
● Security
Search engines favor WordPress sites implementing robust security measures to keep cybercriminals at bay. Zabhost offers automatic SSL certificate deployment, powerful NAXSI firewalls, and round-the-clock malware scanning to protect its servers from harm and maintain user search rankings.
● Server Location
Zabhost has 32 data center locations strategically chosen to ensure your WordPress site loads quickly by minimizing the physical distance between visitors and servers. Latency is another factor Google and other search engines consider when ranking sites. Hence, a delay in transmission or indexing can result in various issues.
2. Use an SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme
When you create a WordPress account to initiate site development, you’ll come across the platform’s default theme. However, like most users, you’d like to choose a different pre-designed template to foster a unique visual appearance. Unfortunately, most pre-designed themes are heavily coded and include unnecessary functionalities that can slow your site down and affect SEO.
Therefore, you should use a light, SEO-friendly WordPress Theme from official or third-party sources to ensure fast loading and adherence to best on-page SEO practices. With this strategy, you can reap several other benefits, including (but not limited to):
● A Clean Code Structure
SEO-friendly WordPress themes have a simple, well-structured code that simplifies crawling and indexing by search engines, increasing the likelihood of improved ranking.
● Responsive Design
SEO-friendly templates can improve your site’s ranking by making your pages more responsive on different devices, browsers, and screen sizes. Google and other search engines consider mobile-friendliness a core factor influencing user experience and overall site performance.
● Customization
Many premium SEO-friendly WordPress templates allow users to customize the design and layout to foster a unique visual appearance. This feature can enhance search engine optimization by making your site stand out from others using the same theme.
3. Install Powerful WordPress SEO Plugins
As mentioned earlier, WordPress SEO plugins can fast-track your SEO efforts and quickly improve your site’s search visibility. Below are our top picks:
● Yoast SEO
Yoast-SEO is the most popular WordPress SEO plugin in the market. You can use it to improve content management, XML sitemap creation, keyword selection/placement, and more. In other words, you can use it to optimize your content’s readability score and check the result on Google. Yoast SEO is a must-have tool for copywriters and digital marketers for web copy, blogs, and article creation.
● Rank Math
Rank Math is another highly recommended WordPress SEO plugin teams use to generate real-time insights about posts and pages. The plugin integrates with Google Search Console to add an analytics dashboard to your WP interface. You can see the keywords you’re ranking for, your site’s search impressions, page errors (404 monitoring), sitemaps, etc. Overall, Rank Math is a powerful tool any owner or SEO expert can use to monitor their site’s health.
● All-in-One SEO Plugin
The All in One SEO plugin (AIOSEO) is the go-to option for many small businesses that rely on organic search to generate traffic and sales. It provides a detailed SEO audit checklist to help fix errors, generate sitemaps on multiple search engines, and localize content.
● WP Meta SEO
WP Meta SEO is an excellent tool for single users looking to oversee content and SEO. It integrates with Google Search Console for keyword research and strategy development. You can also use it to generate sitemaps and edit meta information in bulk to accelerate the process.
● Ahrefs
Ahrefs is among the world’s most popular SEO software suits, offering a powerful plugin primarily focusing on SEO content audit and backlink optimization with petabytes of indexed data from Google and other search engines. Other features include a Google Analytics-enhanced dashboard and detailed backlink profile extraction.
4. Minimize or Prevent Site Duplication by Addressing Domain Format
One of the most common issues affecting SEO performance is duplicate domains. Fortunately, you can fix this easily by choosing your preferred site address format:
- www format – https://www.yourdomain.com
- Non-www format – https://yourdomain.com
Google considers www and non-www domains as separate URLs. Therefore, you must choose one version for all your links by heading to your WordPress dashboard > Settings > General. Once there, simply type in your preferred domain format in the required fields – WordPress and Site Address.
5. Ensure XML Sitemap Submission to Google Search Console
As technical as many of these WordPress enhancement tips may sound, they’re quite straightforward if you pay attention to them. An XML sitemap is a simple file that lists all your web pages in Google’s preferred format. Creating and submitting XML sitemaps consistently helps crawlers find new pages and update your site’s information easily.
Another benefit of using WordPress as your CMS is that it creates sitemaps automatically. You can access them using the link below:
You can also submit more advanced XML sitemaps using WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast, Jetpack, and SEOPress.
6. Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO
Ultimately, your site’s visibility and SEO performance depend on your pages and content. However, your blog will play a fundamental role in boosting your content marketing efforts. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process. The best way to improve rankings organically is by regularly updating your blog with new posts.
Regardless of your SEO plugin, you can optimize your content by adding an SEO title, meta description, and focus keywords. You can also improve readability by following the best practices recommended by the platform, including:
- Avoiding passive sentences (Up to 10% max)
- Writing blogs with a minimum of 300 words
- Keeping 80% of sentences under 20 words
- Using transitional words for better flow
- Using proper subheadings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) with focus keywords, etc.
7. Do Extensive Keyword Research
The biggest SEO problem new site owners (or those with limited SEO knowledge } face is relying on guesses or intuition to find keywords and topics their target audiences may be looking for instead of data. It’s like fishing in the ocean without knowing what species you’ll find, their location, or whether they’ll take the bait. The same analogy applies to WordPress SEO when creating blogs, web copy, and other content using keywords.
Therefore, you must conduct extensive keyword research to improve on-page and off-page SEO to increase your chances of ranking high on SERPS. When conducting research, consider the following tips:
● Target Both Short-Tail and Long-Tail Keywords
When conducting keyword research, use a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords to attract more organic traffic. Short-tail keywords generally have more competition and significant search volumes. Conversely, long-tail keywords have less competition and target more specific search intent, like queries or descriptions.
● Search for Low Competition Keywords with Moderate or High Search Volumes
Ideally, you want to target keywords that aren’t too difficult to rank for while ensuring your content contains a healthy mix of commonly searched keywords. To do that, you must target low- and high-competition keywords with high monthly search volumes.
● Use Keywords According to Your Target Audience’s Search Intent
Thirdly, pay close attention to your target audience’s search intent to leave breadcrumbs leading to your website. This strategic approach will help you proactively determine your users’ needs and intentions. For instance, are they familiar with your brand and looking for different products? Or are they looking for general information related to your expertise or services? You can quickly maximize visibility and engagement by answering these questions (and more).
In the modern age, keyword research isn’t a complicated process. You can find dozens of powerful tools online, including:
- Semrush
- Ahrefs Keywords
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Answer the Public
- Ubersuggest
- KWFinder, etc.
WordPress also offers a free keyword generator called WPBeginner that allows you to generate up to 300 keywords and assess their search volumes and difficulty.
8. Create WordPress Tags and Categories
Finally, our last tip to improve your WordPress site’s SEO is creating categories and tags to simplify navigation. The process sorts all your blog posts into main and subcategories. You can create new categories and tags using the following steps:
- Head to Posts on your WordPress dashboard and click on categories.
- Once there, fill in the category’s name, slug, and description in the dedicated fields and save the changes.
- To create and customize tags, head to Posts on your dashboard and click Add New Tag.
SEO for WordPress Sites – Bottom Line
WordPress remains the world’s most popular content management system. Today, millions of websites rely on its user-friendly interface, stunning themes, powerful plugins, and other features to establish and improve their digital presence. From bloggers to startups, small businesses, and global giants, the platform caters to a broad clientele looking to launch and manage websites to connect with their audience effectively.
However, creating a great WordPress website is just step one. You must improve your site’s search engine visibility by learning and implementing effective WP SEO strategies. Hopefully, with our comprehensive guide, you can accelerate your transition and establish a strong online presence on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other popular search engines.
