Simple Tips to Improve Your WordPress SEO Rankings

Every business marketer aims to rank higher on search engines, focusing on implementing the best SEO strategies to drive more traffic.

Just because SEO algorithms change over time doesn’t mean it’s dead. The more WordPress grows, the more people seek ways to improve WordPress SEO.

If you are serious about increasing your website traffic, you mustconsider WordPress SEO best practices.

Tips to Improve Your WordPress SEO Rankings

If you’re new to SEO, then don’t panic. By creating a WordPress site, you’ve already taken a big step towards increasing your website’s visibility.

This guide will share the top WordPress SEO tips to help you improve your WordPress SEO and get more organic traffic. So, let’s get going:

1. Choose Your Hosting Provider Carefully

First, initiate your WordPress SEO journey by choosing the right hosting provider. Google prefers to rank those sites which load faster.

A good service provider can help you reach the top of search engines.

Your host also affects the downtime your site experiences and the physical distance between servers and visitors — ranking factors.

However, most hosting providers offer different types of plans. Remember, don’t settle with the cheapest option; otherwise, you are more likely to face performance issues.

Not sure about where to start?

Don’t worry! WordPress recommends three hosting providers. You may consider these options if you are not sure where to start.

2. Pick An SE-Optimized WordPress Theme

When installing WordPress, it will display its default ‘Twenty-Twenty’ themes. However, the chances are that these themes are not the ones you want to use for your site.

WordPress offers thousands of website themes to choose from. Every theme caters to a specific market. Know that the WordPress theme you choose must complement your website’s content. While choosing a website theme, consider the following points:

● Strive for simplicity
● Choose a responsive design (it should be mobile-friendly)
● Browser compatibility
● Supported plugins
● Translation + multilingual ready
● Ratings and reviews

Before installing a theme, run its demo through Google’s web.dev tool to get a clear insight into its performance.

3. Use a Dedicated SEO Plugin

If you are a newbie WordPress user, you may not be familiar with its plugin. WordPress offers many plugins that add new features and functionalities to your site. There are two best and free plugins for SEO: Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack.

Yoast SEO in WordPress helps improve the website’s rankings on search engines and helps users optimize the site’s content and keywords.

All-in-One SEO Pack allows you to import SEO data from third-party plugins easily.

Also, there is a free version of this SEO plugin. However, upgrading to a paid version can be your best bet to access advanced SEO features.

Know that these plugins won’t optimize your site for you. Instead, it makes it easier for you to make the necessary changes. It needs your input and some planning.

4. Set Preferred Domain

While choosing a web domain, know that Google looks at xyz.com and www.xyz.com separately. Therefore, it is essential to choose a preferred version for your site. You can do this under Settings > General.

Set the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to your preferred version.

It doesn’t matter which domain you choose if you have a new website. But if your pages are accessible at both URL versions, your best bet is to use the version with the most backlinks.

Besides choosing the domain, ensure that you have an SSL certificate. Contact your hosting provider immediately if you haven’t got an SSL certification.

5. Create an XML Sitemap

Sitemaps help Google discover the web pages on your website, providing a quick way to see your site’s overall structure and what it includes.

Earlier, these sitemaps were designed to help users navigate websites. But today, their primary purpose is to communicate information to search engine bots (also known as crawlers).

Yoast SEO creates a sitemap, but you mustensure the option is turned on.

You can check this by going to SEO > General and ensuring the XML sitemaps button is set to On. However, if Yoast SEO is not an option, you can try the classic plugin Google XML Sitemaps.

6. Use Heading Tags in Your Content

Headings play a pivotal role in enhancing the overall structure of your blog post and using headings in your content also increases the readability of your content.

“When organizing a post, use subheadings such as H1, H2, H3, or H4.These headings make it easier for readers to navigate and jump straight to the most interesting sections”, says Cristian Ward, CEO of Sandiegoseo.company

Also, crawlers pay a lot of attention to headings, using them to understand how your content is organized and what it’s about. So, when creating posts and pages, don’t forget to use WordPress headings.

7. Incorporate Internal and External Links

Google prefers to rank a well-connected website to other websites - internally and externally.

Using plenty of links in your content tells crawlers how they relate to similar content, and it also encourages other people to link back to your site — which in turn shows search engines that your content is valuable!

While adding links is great, stuffing links in your content is a bad practice, and it will result in affecting your rankings in search engines.

Instead, infuse the anchor links where they fit naturally and don't look like sales. Adding links to the content greatly increases your website’s visibility in search engines.

8. Write an Attractive Title

An attractive title is something that encourages users to click on your website. It’s not the only thing, but you’re making it very hard on yourself if you overlook writing effective titles.

With that in mind, here are some points to keep in a while writing title tags:

● Use less than 66 characters
● Your title should describe your page
● Put the keywords first
● Mention your brand name
● Separate your brand name from the page title
● Write a unique title for every page

Suppose you’re struggling to write an effective title for your website. In that case, you can take ideas from top-ranking websites on search engines related to your niche.

9. Add Alt Text to Images

When writing blog content, it is necessary to add images. According to research, readers spend more time on pages with visual content. Another reason to use images is that readers process visual images much faster than plain text.

So, while adding images to your content, add alt text to each of them. You can add alt text to any image within WordPress in the ‘Image Settings section of the ‘blocks’ menu.

Alt-text is crucial because of it:

● Tells Google what images are about
● Improves accessibility for visually impaired readers
● Replaces the broken image on the page if the image breaks.

While writing blog content, be as descriptive as possible, and use unique alt text for each image.

10. Avoid Duplicate Content

Most business marketers think that posting duplicate content can increase website rankings. Well, it doesn’t, and it can affect your website.

Google punishes websites that have duplicate content. Therefore, you must avoid posting duplicate content to maintain the quality and authority of your website. Posting unique and evergreen content can be your best bet.

Evergreen content refers to content that never goes out of date. For example, you can write something related to this “The best cake recipe ever”.

Such types of content can be edited and upgraded over time. This approach is better than creating new posts that rehash the same topic.

11. Write Long-Form Content

The longer the content, the higher the chances of ranking it. Google’s new algorithm considers ‘content length’ as a ranking factor. It doesn’t mean that short content never ranks, and however, long-form content is on the positive side.

Plus, the more informational and relevant your content is, the better it can communicate its topic to crawlers via keywords, headings, etc.

Longer content is also valuable to readers, and it can increase your perceived credibility and encourage visitors to spend more time on your site. So, when creating content, try to make it as in-depth as possible.

The minimum length should be between 700 and 2,000 words. However, there is no upper limit for the content. The content length depends on several factors, including topic, scope, audience, etc.

Key Takeaways

Indeed, WordPress is one of the best SEO-friendly CMS in the market. If you’re serious about ranking on Google, there are a few more things you must do:

● Write effective title tags, meta tags, and meta descriptions.
● Set Custom URLs for web pages
● Secure your website with SSL
● Monitor your site performance regularly
● Exclude low-value content from indexing.

Best SEO Services are designed to boost your online visibility, drive organic traffic, and enhance search engine rankings for long-term success.