Practice these 15 Steps for WordPress SEO

Oct 4, 2021 | Search Engine Marketing, WordPress | 0 comments

Creating good content is not the end task for bloggers. Blogging is like selling your product and digging money from it. So, only production or manufacturing is not the main focus. You have to understand the audience and take measures to reach your content to them. This is a lot more than sharing your expert knowledge. You have to be well versed with technology to sell your content.

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This job is done by SEO. WordPress SEO is one such platform that optimizes your content and brings traffic to it. This improves the ranking of the site. That’s how you can monetize your blog. Try some simple practices to get your content high up on the search engine result page. Choose some fancy theme and hit the first blog. Here are some common practices that work in WordPress SEO.

1Select a fast web host

If you select a fast web host your loading time will be less which will satisfy your audience. This will bring more audience to your website. Getting access and sharing content will be smooth too. The chosen host must have 100% uptime. Uptime is the time taken by the host to run and remain up. Google encourages this. On the contrary, if it’s slow and frequently reloads Google will penalize it. So you should go for a web provider which is a double dose of high speed and exact uptime. For WordPress SEO websites Bluehost is a good option.

2 –Monitor the performance of your site

Site performance is related to themes, image size, and plugins. So you have to check how well your site is performing. This will direct you to make a proper choice of theme and plugins. All you have to do is make a few clicks. Open WordPress console and select Tools>Site health. This page will display the performance and also suggestions to improve it. You have to read and understand the tools’ suggestions. You can also make use of Googles’ Page Speed Inside to check the pages of your site. Once you are done with the analyses go to the opportunities section. You can find suggestions regarding improvement.

3 – The security of SSL

SSL was only seen during banking or shopping online. But now all the sites are SSL certificate holders. This is secured and Google plays an important role in it. Google gives a good ranking to those sites that use SSL encryption. If your site is not that one, better get certified else Google will penalize or even block it. SSL is not chargeable these days. Most web hosts have automated tools to add SSL to your website. Take the advantage of Let’s Encrypt.

WP Force SSL PRO is the greatest SSL plugin for the money on the market. It is a straightforward method for resolving SSL difficulties and converting HTTP traffic to secure HTTPS. It has over 14 SSL tests and various parameters to provide the best user experience possible. The SSL certificate validation tool included with the plugin verifies that the SSL certificate is legitimate, appropriately installed, and up to date.

4 – General security of the website

Secured websites are safeguarded against hacking which in turn protects your ranking. SSL is a tight security part of your website. General security measures are using strong passwords. Do not forget to activate the fail2ban plugin. This initiates the fresh installation of WordPress SEO. This plugin doesn’t encourage forced login attempts. Activating Akismet is an effective way to prevent negative comments that may have a negative effect on your ranking. Always update the plugins, and delete redundant WordPress themes. Some updates will be done by Web hosts automatically.

5 – Monitor the site hierarchy

The organization of your site makes a big difference in SEO. The standard organization of a website is a home page with a set of menus, categories, topics, posts, and static pages. WordPress SEO supports the Yoast plugin for site hierarchy.

6 – General setting practices

Some basic settings include the following clicks. Select settings>general and select www or not, in two spots: WordPress address and site address. It is advisable to maintain consistency with www. Or .com. else Google will behave differently. The next step is to go to Settings>Reading and deselect the Search Engine Visibility box.

7WordPress SEO  optimization depends on title and tagline

Start from Settings>General to make sure your title is descriptive and relevant. Use keywords in taglines so that Google can catch them. Both title and tagline are taken into account while ranking as they help to understand the genericity of the site. WordPress SEO can boost it up. To create the URL of your blog post go to Settings>Permalinks and click on the post name radio button.

8 – Focus on meta description

When you search for something in a search engine, the site pops up along with a description. This snippet is created by Google automatically but it is better to do it yourself. To manage this, it is better to install the WordPress SEO plugin. The best plugin to do the job is Yoast or All-in-one SEO pack. This is effective and free free free!

9 – Advantage of XML Sitemap

These maps are for Google written in eXtensible Markup Language. This is nothing but text lists of all pages, posts, tags, categories, and other information. This gives a positive signal to Google and it catches all pages of your website. If the Yoast plugin is installed, the XML Site Map would be created automatically. But keep a check that the XML sitemaps are set on.

10 – Benefits of subheadings and meta description in posts

After doing the SEO foundation of our site, make plans for subheadings. This gives better structure to your posts and makes the topic catchier for the search engine. WordPress SEO boosts your ranking. Heading sizes will be as per the weightage. This will be convenient for the readers. They will get access to what they want to read. This serves as a clue for Google what the post is about. Do not forget to select an engaging title for the post. Fill the box titled meta description. To do this select the Yoast symbol in the post-editing interface and then in the right sidebar click Snippet Preview.

11 – Understand the importance of keyword

Keywords play a key role in SEO. They directly hint at the content. If you are writing about cooking then keywords can be cuisine, recipe, spices, and the likes. There should be a frequency of these words and place them in the title too. Use the keywords for anchor text for links in your posts. You have to keep a track of the number of times the keyword is used. Overuse of keywords leads to ‘keyword stuffing’. It can be penalized. You have to optimize your content not to reject it. Use relevant keywords.

12 – The rule of one H1 per post

The H1 heading is the largest type of heading you can make. After that, use H2, H3, and H4. H1 is the central idea of the post that signals Google. WordPress SEO optimizes this. In WordPress, only H1 is set as a post title.

13 – Stay away from duplicate content

Duplicate contents have multiple drawbacks. If you take up the same topic on multiple pages it will not escalate your ranking. Using the same keywords on multiple pages stands as self-competition. This brings down your ranking as it degrades the quality of your website. The best way to maintain the level is to choose a single post and update it time and again.

14 – Make use of tags

The tags used also signal Google about the content. Tags suggest the categories for your page. WordPress is tag compatible. So make use of it. The tags will include words relevant to the content such as recipes, Indians Cuisine, and Iconic dishes if you are writing blogs on Cooking and Cuisines.

15 – The power of link

Both internal and external link has its role to play. The internal link leads to your website and the external link leads to other websites. This contributes to SEO. Modern SEO experts prefer internal links more than external links. The link text should be descriptive. Link your internal and external pages when it is meaningful.

Hope these 15 WordPress SEO tips will help you to get noticed by Google. Make proper use of links, meta descriptions, tags, titles, and keywords. Stay connected to learn more ways to improve SEO and the content.

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