WordPress Optimization Tips: 10 Steps to Better SEO and High Rankings

Source: Freepik

Alt text: A laptop on a table with an SEO concept on the screen

WordPress optimization is the process of improving your site and content to meet the ever-changing demands of search engines and get rewarded with high positions in organic search. From the business (or blog owner) point of view, getting higher rankings in Google means:

• Boosting visibility on the web and brand awareness.
• Driving lots of visitors (traffic) to your pages.
• Ensuring conversions.

You need to improve your WP site according to search engine optimization best practices to gain all these perks. Continue reading to find a detailed WP SEO checklist that should help! 

Preparing for WordPress SEO

If your site has been up and running for a while, do this before you develop and implement your optimization strategy – conduct an audit to detect errors and areas for improvement.

What does it consist of? Here are a few points to focus on:

• Traffic – Use specialized tools to measure the number of visitors reaching your site at the moment and analyze where most of your visitors come from and how much it costs you to drive them. Compare different website traffic checkers to find the right tool for traffic analysis. Once you pick the tool, start an audit and focus on assessing your current SEO traffic, in particular.
• SEO ranking – Apart from understanding how many people come to your site from organic search, you also need to define how high you appear in search engine result pages (SERPs) for your target keywords. You can check SEO ranking via rank tracking tools and define whether you’re currently high enough to stimulate traffic growth or not.

These two metrics should point at strong and weak spots in your previous strategy and help identify areas for improvement. Additionally, you can audit other aspects of your site, such as its health score, backlinks, on-page optimization metrics, and other things, to gain more insights into possible errors that might be holding you back from boosting your website search engine ranking.

10 Steps to Effective SEO for WordPress Website

After you measure and analyze your SEO traffic, traffic sources, ranking, and other aspects of online performance, the next big question is how to rank higher on Google.

We’ve gathered the top 10 steps that should bring you closer to your SEO goals:

1. Choose a SEO-Friendly Theme

One of the biggest benefits of WP for site owners is the possibility of setting up or changing the overall site theme with nearly no effort. And this should be the first step in your SEO workflow.

Opt for SEO-friendly WP themes created with search engine optimization best practices in mind. Typically, such themes come with responsive design, refined user experience, code that already includes essential schema markup, and seamless compatibility with the top optimization plugins. Picking such a theme for your site is a good starting point to improve your SEO ranking.

Some examples of themes that you can consider are:

• Inspiro PRO
• Neve
• Divi
• Astra

2. Install an SEO Plugin

Setting up the necessary plugins is an integral part of WordPress website development. However, while all site owners remember to install their first-priority plugins, they often forget about auxiliary tools like SEO plugins.

These plugins can greatly simplify your daily optimization efforts. With them, you can quickly and easily audit your pages, check your website search engine ranking, create sitemaps, gain content insights, and otherwise optimize your pages for higher positions in SERPs.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of which plugins you should use. There are plenty of options out there, so the best way to choose is to assess your site’s needs, compare the available options, and pick plugins that match your company’s goals regarding functionality, budget, etc.

3. Optimize Permalinks

A permalink is basically a permanent URL, a web address that people use to navigate to different parts of your site from the browser. You can think of these links as road signs that simplify users’ navigation and improve their experience on your site.

From an SEO perspective, permalinks are used to help search engine bots understand your pages better and rank them accordingly. Besides, permalinks can also boost your ranking by improving user experience and respectively, lowering bounce rate. The best part is that optimizing your permalinks is simple:

• Integrate relevant target keywords
• Use hyphens between words to boost permalink readability
• Keep them short and clear
• Avoid using dates
• Find an optimal permalink structure and apply it across your entire site for consistency

4. Conduct Keyword Research

To help search engines understand which keywords to rank your site for and to help users find your pages easily, you need to research relevant keywords and target the most promising ones for your strategy. Here are a few tips to help you research and find the best Google rank keywords:

• Leverage a plugin or external tool of your choice (e.g., Google Keyword Planner) to get helpful keyword suggestions. Simply insert a query relevant to your site’s niche into the chosen tool, tweak the key settings, such as geographic location and language, and find dozens of potential keywords.
• Firstly, target only those queries that perfectly align with your site/business.
• Compare keywords by search volume and competition. Typically, medium to high search volumes should help you receive more traffic, whereas low competition can help you rank for chosen keywords more easily.
• Diversify your target keyword list with long-tail queries that are more specific and convertible while less competitive.
• Peep into your competitors’ content strategies to see which keywords they are using and which they are missing out of sight.

Source: Freepik

Alt text: A person working on a laptop on the backdrop of an online search bar

5. Optimize On-Page Elements

When you have determined the list of target keywords, use them to optimize the following elements of your site:

• Meta titles;
• Meta descriptions;
• Headings and subheadings;
• Page content;
• URLs.

Also, be sure to integrate high-quality visuals to your site and always add alt text to them, including target keywords where possible. Additionally, implement a wide network of internal links. They help search engines understand your site better while also boosting user experience. And add schema markup, unless you haven’t selected a WP theme that already has it.

6. Create High-Quality, Engaging Content

Apart from optimizing existing content, you should also consistently create and deliver new, engaging content that’s also optimized for SEO. To create content that will benefit your WordPress SEO, use these tricks:

• Know who you are speaking to and what your readers hope to find.
• Keep up with the latest algorithms and SEO best practices.
• Leverage relevant keywords in every piece of content but limit their use to prevent stuffing.
• Focus on creating high-quality, original, engaging content that brings value.
• Experiment with different content types.
• Write for humans instead of focusing solely on search engine bots.

7. Optimize for Mobile Devices

The Pew Research Center has reported that 97% of US adults own some kind of cellphone. This is a massive boost from only 35% in 2011. And that’s in the US alone.

Cellphones and other mobile devices are growing more popular all across the world. Moreover, people tend to rely on these devices more frequently when performing daily tasks, such as web browsing.

This emphasizes the necessity for site owners to optimize for mobile as this can help them – 1) match the needs of mobile users, which make up a large share of organic traffic, and 2) meet the requirements of Google in the framework of its mobile-first indexing tactic. To attain these goals, you need to test your site’s mobile-friendliness and implement a responsive design to improve it. Or you can use WordPress mobile optimization plugins to simplify the process.

8. Improve Site Speed and Performance

The time your pages take to fully load directly affects user experience, bounce rate, conversions, and overall brand image. Respectively, it also affects your rankings.

Google and other search engines don’t reward sites that load more than 2.5 seconds. Hence, as a part of your WordPress SEO, be sure to optimize your site speed and overall performance using these simple tips:

• Run a speed test first to see if there are any problems.
• Optimize your image sizes.
• Leverage HTTP caching.
• Restrict the number of HTTP requests and redirects.
• Get rid of external scripts and render-blocking JavaScript that are unnecessary.
• Restrict the number of CSS and JavaScript files.

9. Build Quality Backlinks

Backlinks from trusted external sources bring you more traffic and exposure while serving as trust signals to users and search engine bots. Their role in SEO is enormous. Here are a few tips for earning them:

• Publish unique expert content that people can’t find elsewhere.
• Create infographics, reports, case studies, etc.
• Create evergreen content and ultimate guides.
• Seek potential link donors and nurture relationships with them.
• Publish guest posts on trusted sites.
• Leverage continuous analytics to assess your backlink profile, reclaim lost links, fix broken links, and solve other issues.

10. Monitor and Analyze Performance

Lastly, don’t stop after implementing all the WordPress SEO tips from this guide. SEO is an ongoing effort that requires time, dedication, and precision. To make the most out of it, you need to equip yourself with reliable performance monitoring tools and keep an eye on your key metrics, such as:

• SEO traffic;
• Bounce rate;
• Session duration;
• SEO ranking;
• Click-through rate (CTR);
• And others.

By measuring and analyzing these metrics, you can detect possible issues and areas for improvement to take your SEO game further and achieve greater results!

Conclusion

Whether you’re running a business website or a simple WP blog, the higher it appears in search engines when people look for relevant queries, the higher the likelihood of receiving traffic and loyal customers/readers. To make this real, you need to implement efficient WordPress optimization.

After reading this article, you have a list of winning WordPress SEO tips that can help. Start using them ASAP to grow your site and make it become one of the best SEO websites out there!