10 Simple Steps to Rocket your WordPress SEO

By Jamie Gill

19th October 2019

9 min read

Well, you have done it.

You have created your WordPress website, and it looks fantastic. Now what?

Well, to be successful you are going to need traffic. In other words, people visiting your website or else what the point of it is?

Many WordPress website builders get to this point then hit the stumbling block of generating traffic.

In order to get the traffic, you need to ensure the search engines such as Google know your website is there and what it is about.

This involves SEO – Search Engine Optimisation.

What Is SEO?

SEO is the art or science of optimising your website so that the content and website format is accessible for search engines to find.

Search engines are probably the most significant source of traffic for websites.

You need to help search engines to understand and then rank the pages of your website, and they need to understand what your content is about.

If your content and website are not optimised, then search engines won’t know how to rank it.

Here are ten easy things that you can do to help you get your website noticed.

1. Website Visibility

When you build your WordPress site, it comes with a function that hides your website from the search engines while you build it.

Sometimes this get’s forgotten, and your site remains hidden from the search engines.

It’s easy to check, though.

Log in to your admin area and go to Settings > Reading page

Make sure the box next to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is unchecked.

Make sure you save the changes you have made.

2. URL Structures

When you create a post or page on your WordPress website, it creates what is known as a URL for that post/page.

You need to make sure the URL’s of your site are SEO friendly.

This article would probably look like:

https://www.easywordpress.com/10-simple-ways-to-seo-your WordPress-site

The title is easy to read and understand.

When you create a blog/post on your WordPress site, it might look something like

In order to get the right URL structure, you need to ensure your Permalinks are set up correctly.

You need to visit the Settings>Permalinks page.

You need to ensure the post-name is chosen.

3. To WWW or Not To WWW

As a new website, you will have the choice of whether to use www like ( http://www.easywordpress.com ) or (http://easywordpress.com)

A search engine will see these as two different sites.

Therefore you need to choose one and stick to it.

To be honest, there is no advantage of using one over the other.

To set the one for you to visit Settings> General page.

Choose your preferred URL and insert it.

4. Using Categories and Tags In WordPress

In your WordPress site, you can sort your pages or posts into categories and tags.

Categories and tags will help search engines understand your website structure.

You might ask when and how do I use them?

You use categories for a broad selection of your posts or pages like a table of contents in a book.

Tags are more to do with specific keywords. They are more likely to describe the contents of the page or post.

Using categories and tags help people navigate your site better.

5.Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is commonly known as webmaster tools.

They let you have a peek at how the search engines view your website.

There are many videos and guides on the web on how to add your site to the Google Search Console -here is a link to Google’s step by step instructions.

Google Console

6. Internal Linking

Search engines will give every page they visit a score – a page ranking.

The most common factor that affects this score is website links and the authority of those links.

It is essential, therefore, to link other blog posts on your website to other posts on your site.

You should try and interlink your blog posts where ever possible. This will supply the search engines with good link juice.

7. WordPress Comments

Comments on your website are an indication of user engagement with your site – search engines like that.

You need to make sure though that the comments are not spammed comments as these usually contain bad links that can affect your rankings.

There are a few WordPress plugins that you can install on your site to help stop this happening.

If you can garner some spam free comments on your content, it will bode well for your rankings in the search engines.

8. No, Follow Links

As mentioned before, links help the search engines decide how relevant your site is.

To achieve good rankings, you need to ensure you are not giving away more link juice to other websites than what you ger getting.

One way to do this is to add ‘no follow’ links to other websites that you don’t own.

A normal external link looks like this:

<a href=”http://example.com”>easywordpress.com</a>

A ‘no follow’ link looks like this:

<a href=”http://example.com” rel=”nofollow”>easywordpress.com</a>

9. WordPress Website Speed

The speed of your site loads in the browser of a search engine is essential.

Most people have an attention span of a nat, so if your site is slow to load, they will soon go elsewhere.

You only have a few seconds to engage your visitor, so make sure your site is loading a quickly as it can.

Here is a link to Google’s site speed checker to make sure it is going to be acceptable to Google 

Site Speed Checker

10. Image Optimisation

Most websites have some images of some description.

You need to make sure that images are loading quickly on your site and are fully optimised.

Make sure you add a descriptive title to any image and any relevant tags; this will help them get recognised by the search engines.

So the work doesn’t stop when your website is built.

In fact, it is just starting – make sure you follow the steps in this post to begin to get your WordPress site noticed.

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