What is WordPress Search Engine Optimization?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is about optimizing any website’s search appearance on search engines. It is a practice of improving and increasing the quantity and quality of traffic on your WordPress SEO websites and its visibility for relevant searches. It will determine the order in which the pages will appear in the search results of any given query.

It will help your site to achieve higher ranks in the search results when anyone searches for keywords related to your company and products. This high rank and greater visibility will give you a great material benefit over your competitors.

WordPress is a huge content management system with a wide community of discussions and dedicated forums all over the net. The amount of free data available on WordPress makes it one of the easiest content management systems out there, making WordPress Development worth for your business!

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SEO in WordPress uses methods to bring your name higher in rank on search engines like google, yahoo, and bingo. As WordPress increases its market share, people look to improve their WordPress SEO. SEO has changed over time, now businesses and companies must look for new ways to top the race of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Better ranks in SERPs bring more organic traffic. Organic here is, traffic only through search engines excluding social media, or paid advertisements, or any other exterior factors.

WordPress SEO tips

Achieving the high ranks on SERPs comes as a result of delivering high-quality website content and experience. Follow some basic SEO tips for WordPress below to optimize SEO WordPress:

Www or non-www domain

There is a common impression that this choice affects your WordPress site’s SEO results. But there is no SEO benefit to having WWW in your domain. It won’t affect your rankings in any manner. That however doesn’t close the option of the non-www domain. There can be some situations where you can use it.

• It is standard. This may not be completely true today, but large old companies still prefer to stick with it. As changing it will be a complicated process.
• DNS records. Large companies with a lot of traffic use it for Domain Name System records. Naked domains can’t have a CNAME to redirect traffic because of failovers.

Overall, a non-www domain is preferable as it’s recommended to keep the URLs short naked domains a better choice.

Install a WordPress SEO Plugin

Having SEO WordPress Plugins helps you to have full control over optimizing what search engines see from your sites. It facilitates better content, editing meta descriptions, enabling breadcrumbs, also adds social media and schema mark-ups, etc.

Set up Friendly Permalinks

By default, WordPress creates too messy permalinks that are the URLs that are complex and not clean. The system includes the date and the post or the page name into the URL.

But google prefers the URLs with your content’s title or keywords and also shorter URLs are always better. Learn how to change the URL in settings. It’s suggested to go with the post name permalink, as it is short and clean. You’ll get this option in permalinks below the setting menu of the WordPress dashboard.

*Do not forget to redirect all the previous URLs to the new one.

A Focus Keyword

SEO services for WordPress are still run by computer algorithms, thus keywords matter a lot even today. While writing you should write smart and always keep a focus keyword in mind. Don’t just keep adding stuff for the sake of more content but concentrate on the quality and the keyword density. Generally, a density of 0.5 is ideal. Always include keywords in a way it seems natural and make sense at the same time.

Meta Descriptions

Write meta descriptions to increase your click-through rates. It may not affect the SEO in WordPress directly, but it increases the CTR. A well-written description can motivate and entice the user to select your site over the others in the SERPs.

The indirect benefit for you here is that the higher your CTR, higher will google deem you as a relevant website and thus higher rank. There is a limit set by google of 150-170 words for the meta description.

Incorporate Title Tags

Always include your main keyword in the title of your post or title page. Experts say to in fact include it at the start of your title if possible. It is observed that about a 20 percent increase in the CTR can be achieved just with little changes in the titles. Having keywords in your title is still very important as we are moving towards optimization due to CTRs.

Alt Texts and Image Tags

Alt texts refer to the alternative text applied to your images on the WordPress sites. Google uses the alt texts to see the relevance of your images and the content around them. Always add alt texts to your images used in your blogs.

Image title tags allow you to add small tool tips to your images. This way you can add a simple call to action when someone visits your site. They do not help you rank higher directly but improves your user experience.

Focus on Word count

Pay attention to your word count. Everybody including Google loves quality content. Long format contents have proven to win over time in SERPs. But it always depends on the type of content. However, in the majority longer content ranks higher.

Set up a Sitemap

Search engines use sitemaps to understand the hierarchy of the WordPress SEO site to ensure better crawling. Sitemaps are not necessary, but it enables you to access more reports and data about your site. Using a sitemap’s file will give you a clear picture of your site’s picture to the search engines which will increase your chances to get Google site links.

Further Best steps to optimize SEO for WordPress

1. Usage of Long-Tail Keywords

Getting your website ranked with short and specific keywords is not helpful for a new website. The reason is those keywords are already in-use by high-ranking websites. Therefore, you can make use of long-tail keywords that get ranked with ease. So, get a list of the keywords that a user will type while searching for any product.

2. Use Crawl Option in the Google Search Console

Generally, your website will get sneaked by the search engine depending upon the publishing of new content. But another method to crawl your website automatically is the use of the Crawl option in the Google Search Console. You must go through the Crawl option and click on the ‘Fetch’ button after entering the URL of your updated post.

3. Inspect Your Backlinks

Backlinks are the most effective SEO services for WordPress to get your website ranking enhanced. You need to build up high-quality backlinks for your website. If your website has top-quality backlinks, its chances of higher ranking are possible.

You must observe the improvement of your backlinks. Off-page SEO activities are significant. It is suitable if a large number of websites get linked to yours. But what matters here is the authority and quality of the backlink sites. There are high chances of your website to get ranked in the search engine if quality websites are linked.

4. Incorporate Schema Mark-up

You have the chance to improve the ranking of your website by adding Schema Mark-up that is an extra code. Your WordPress theme may have already installed Schema Mark-up. You must execute this option. This code will enable the search engines to convey the best information to the users.

5. Usage of Shorter URLs

Always make sure that you use short URLs than extended ones. A short URL with the main keyword is the right way to better the ranking of your SEO in WordPress.

6. Conduct Keyword Research

You need to do proper keyword research for your website. Keywords are the fundamental terms that you need to include in your content. You need to have better quality content that is apt for the users. You can use the Google Keyword Planner tool to obtain relevant keywords.

7. Activate Search Engine Visibility Option

If your website is not getting indexed by the search engine, then it may be due to the turned-off Search Engine Visibility option. You need to check whether this option is on or off by proceeding to the settings.

8. Add Website to Google Search Console

Add your website to the Google Search Console. It will support you in correcting the errors in your website. For that, you need to type in the Domain or URL to add your website.

9. Google Analytics Tool

Another crucial SEO tips for WordPress that you should include is Google Analytics. It will help you in grasping the performance of your website. Also, the amount of traffic on the site is determined.

10. Website Loading Speed

A responsive and quick loading website is appealing for the users. If the website loading time is slow, get it fixed quickly. A good performing optimize SEO for WordPress will get more customers and revenue.

A good WordPress SEO plugin will give you better results and though it is a hard process, getting on top is never easy. Just follow the basic ingredients of WordPress and find yourself in a better position in the SERPs.

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