Now that you know how to add a new post onto your blog, now let’s learn how to optimize your blog posts for (SEO) or search engine optimization. Improving your WordPress SEO is crucial for getting more traffic from the search engines to your website.
If you are serious about increasing your website traffic from Google, Yahoo, or Bing, then you need to pay attention to WordPress SEO best practices. In this short tutorial, I will share the top WordPress SEO tips to help you improve your WordPress SEO and get more organic traffic from the search engines.
You might have heard the term that WordPress is “SEO friendly”. This is actually why a lot of people choose WordPress to start a blog or website. While WordPress makes sure that the code it generates follows the SEO best practices, there is a lot more you need to do if you want to maximize your SEO efforts. Here are several actionable steps that you need to take to properly optimize your WordPress SEO for ALL of your future blog posts.
SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a strategy used by website owners to get more traffic by ranking higher in search engines.
Search engine optimization isn’t about tricking Google or gaming the system. It’s simply about creating a website that has optimized code and formatting which makes it easy for search engines to find your website.
When people search the web for the topics you write about, your search-engine-optimized content will appear higher in the search results, and you’ll get more people clicking through to your website.
Why Is SEO So Important?
Search engines are often the biggest source of traffic for most websites.
Google and other search engines use advanced algorithms to understand and rank pages appropriately in search results. But those algorithms aren’t perfect — they still need your help to understand what your content is about.
If your content isn’t optimized, then search engines won’t know how to rank it. When people search for the topics you write about, your website won’t appear in the search results, and you’ll miss out on all that traffic.
It is really important for all business owners to make their website search engine friendly, so that they can maximize their search traffic.
WordPress Basics For SEO
SEO can get technical, but it doesn’t have to be. Just learning a few basic SEO tips on how to optimize blog posts for SEO and to optimize your website can give you a noticeable boost in your website traffic.
You don’t have to be a tech genius to use the techniques below. If you’re already using WordPress, then you’ve got what it takes!
Let’s get started optimizing your website.
Check Your Website’s Visibility Settings
WordPress comes with a built-in option to hide your website from search engines. The purpose of this option is to give you time to work on your website before it’s ready to go public.
However, sometimes this option can get checked accidentally and it makes your website unavailable to search engines.
If your website is not appearing in search results, then the first thing you need to do is to make sure that this option is unchecked.
Simply log in to the admin area of your WordPress site and visit Settings » Reading page.
You need to scroll down to the ‘Search Engine Visibility’ section and make sure that the box next to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is unchecked. Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.
Using SEO Friendly URL Structures in WordPress
SEO friendly URLs contain words that clearly explain the content of the page, and they’re easy to read by both humans and search engines.
Some examples of SEO friendly URLs are:
http://example.com/seo-friendly-blogposts
http://example.com/how-to-create-winning-headlines
Notice that these URLs are readable and a user can guess what they will see on the page just by looking at the URL text.
So what does a non-SEO friendly URL look like?
http://www.mattieblaze.com/?p=10467
http://example.com/archives/123
Notice that these URLs use numbers unrelated to the content, and a user cannot guess what they will find on the page by looking at the URL. Using SEO friendly permalink structure improves your chances of getting better positions in search results.
Here is how you can check and update your WordPress site’s permalink structure.
You need to visit the Settings » Permalinks page. Select the post name option and then click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
Note: If your website has been running for more than 6 months, then please don’t change your permalink structure unless you’re using the numbers option. If you’re using Day and Name or Month and Name, continue using that.
By changing your permalink structure on an established site, you will lose all of your social media share count and run the risk of losing your existing SEO ranking.
If you must change your permalink structure, then hire a professional, so they can setup proper redirects. You’ll still lose your social share counts on the pages.
WWW OR Non WWW
If you are just starting out with your website, then you need to choose whether you want to use www (http://www.example.com) or non-www (http://example.com) in your site’s URL. Search engines consider these to be two different websites, so this means you need to choose one and stick to it.
You can set your preference by visiting the Settings » General page. Add your preferred URL in both the ‘WordPress Address’ and ‘Site Address’ fields.
Despite what someone else might say, from a SEO standpoint there’s no advantage to using one or another.
The Best WordPress SEO Plugin
One of the best parts about WordPress is that there’s a plugin for everything, and SEO is no exception. There are thousands of WordPress SEO plugins which makes it harder for beginners to choose the best WordPress SEO plugin.
Instead of installing separate plugins for individual SEO tasks, I will help you choose the best WordPress SEO plugin that does it all, and it’s 100% free.
When it comes to choosing the best WordPress SEO plugin, you will most likely narrow your choices down to the two most popular solutions: Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack. They are both effective solutions for optimizing your blog posts.
At MattieBlaze, we use the All In One SEO Pack Worpdress Plugin. Here is a video tutorial on how to set up this powerful plugin right out of the box!
If you follow these basics of WordPress SEO and use the best WordPress SEO plugin, you will already be ahead of most websites. Now there are other things that you can do to optimize your blog posts for SEO like adding categories and tags. You can also do some internal linking with your posts.
You should make it a habit to interlink your own posts whenever possible. This will help you boost your page views, increases the time users spend on your site, and ultimately will improve the SEO score of your individual blog posts and pages.
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