WordPress SEO The 6 Steps Simple Guide
WordPress has always been praised for being the BEST SEO and content management system out there. Even straight out of the box. But there are still some basics that need to be followed to improve it even further and have that edge on everyone else’s website. If everyone were to use plain WordPress than wouldn’t the SEO optimisation just be the standard? How do I get more views on my WordPress website? Well follow this guide and we will teach you what plugins to install and how to optimise them to get ahead of everyone else in your industry and rank 1 in google just by doing some WordPress SEO optimisation!
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Now lets jump straight into it!
Step 1: Check your privacy settings
This is a very basic step, but probably the most important one. This is due to the fact that if your WordPress website is set to private you wont even be shown on google. Which is the whole point of this tutorial to get put on google, and increase your WordPress SEO.
Make sure to check that the setting is set to the option that says: “Allow search engines to index this site.”.
Step 2: Optimise your permalinks
By default WordPress uses the ‘simple’ ‘gross’ ‘bland’ URLS which may look something like this http://www.example.com/blog/?p=20
For WordPress SEO and SEO in general as well as user friendliness we want to change this as soon as possible! The longer you wait the more effort you will need to put in at a later date!
Thankfully WordPress makes it super simple to change this and make your website more SEO optimised.
So head over to Settings –>Permalinks and choose the option that says “Post Name” or enter your own custom URL structure below.
Step 3: Installing WordPress SEO plugins
If you are unsure how to install a plugin head on over to our tutorial on how to set up a WordPress website.
All In One SEO Pack
We recommend installing an all in one WordPress SEO plugin. This allows to quickly add a meta info (The description and title shown when you appear on search platforms such as Google). We at HBHosting have tried many different plugins and have found that Yoast SEO has been the most simple and effective plugin to use!
But remember don’t just take my word for it, remember to try out a bunch of plugins as well to find the most suited one for you.
Google XML Sitemaps
A sitemap is basically every link you want to appear on google. This can be done manually OR it can be done through a plugin and save you a lot of time!
Google XML Sitemaps is my favorite plugin to use to create sitemaps, as it automatically regenerates the file for you every time you create a new blog post or page! HOW EASY IS THAT!
Step 4: Choose An SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme
Choosing a theme that you like and think looks nice is one of the most important things. Why would anyone like your website if you don’t even like it?But another factor to take into account when creating your WordPress Blog is to ensure it is SEO optimised.
Another issue is some themes do not properly utilise H1, H2, H3, H4. Content positioning or are simply coded poorly causing your WordPress SEO to drop dramatically.
What to look for when picking a theme
Here are some things you will want to look for while choosing your WordPress theme.
- The site title should be an h1 heading on the homepage and an h2 heading on other pages
- All post titles should have the h1 tag
- Breadcrumbs navigation
- Next and Previous post links
- Related Posts on single posts
- Clean semantics – check with W3c
- Make sure there are no “fishy” links in the theme pointing to sketchy sites – this will lead to many of your viewers leaving fast which will drop your SEO rating
Built-in SEO optimisation?
This is not a must when picking a theme as the above plugins will ensure adequate coverage in the SEO department. But is is a bonus. So don’t stress if the theme you just bought does not have a built-in SEO optimisation as this is easy to workaround.
Step 5: Add Analytics Tracking To Your Theme
This is not a necessary SEO step but it is nice to track your progress and see how many people view your website each day/week/month and track your improvements.
For this, there are hundreds of plugins you can use but as always we trust Yoast. Their analytics plugin is called Yoast Google Analytics Plugin and this is the one you should use.
Step 6: Write/Add Epic Content
And for the final most fun part of running a blog. WRITE YOUR CONTENT! Ultimatly the biggest factor of your WordPress SEO is not about which plugins you installed or what theme you used or how much you pay someone to advertise your site, because at the end of the day, if you do not have content, or have poorly written, or misinformed information. People will not come back. So remember follow the above steps to help you out to get found. But ensure you write out quality content that adds to people so that they will want to share it and come back, and I promise you. If you followed this last step especially but all of them all together your WordPress blog will explode with views!
Summary
If you start with the basics and perfect those, it will make your SEO work in the future much easier. I’ve seen a lot of people not change their permalinks until they had gotten attention, and then have to redo most of their website.
Start with the basics and your blog will explode. Do not do what I did and have to start your website from scratch do it right the first time and your WordPress SEO optimisations will not need as much focusing in the future.
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