WordPress SEO is the best way to get much traffics for your WordPress website. To optimize your WordPress SEO, there are several steps you can take, including determining keywords for posts, setting permalinks, using SEO plugins, and so on.
When you are optimizing your WordPress SEO, you need to prioritize the things that are important to do first. In this article, we will discuss 15 easy tips for SEO optimization for your WordPress website.
1. Optimize the permalink of your WordPress website
Permalinks are permanent URLs for each of your website posts, as well as categories and lists of other weblog posts. WordPress has a fairly long default permalink structure, for example:
https://mydomain.com/2022/01/01/post-title
Google likes permalinks that contain titles or keywords. Shorter permalinks have the advantage of providing better SEO performance. When specifying permalinks, I recommend that you use the Post Name. This method will make keywords easier to see when your website appears on Google. for example:
https://mydomain.com/post-title
To customize the permalinks, you can change the permalinks via the WordPress dashboard. Select the Settings menu > Permalinks. Then select the Post name radio button and click the Save Changes button to save the changes.
When you make changes to the permalink of a post that has been online and you have already shared on social media, the post will no longer be accessible. Therefore, make sure to redirect the URL of the old post to the post with the new permalink so that visitors can still visit easily. Change Permalink Helper is a plugin that can help you do this.
2. Optimize with WordPress SEO plugin
The second tip you need to do to improve SEO on your WordPress is to install an SEO plugin. An SEO plugin can help you in WordPress SEO optimization easily and quickly. Using an SEO plugin can provide excellent and efficient results.
There are several SEO plugins available, the most popular being Yoast SEO or All In One SEO Pack. Just use the one that you think is best and you like. You can read some reviews that you can easily search on Google before you decide which plugin to use.
3. Do a keyword research
Google considers keywords as one of the factors in determining the ranking of an article on the search results page. Therefore, you need to do in-depth keyword research. Keyword research will give you the right keywords for your article.
There are several popular tools that you can use to find the right keywords, including Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, and WordTracker. Some of these tools are paid services but provide free trials in a few days with full features.
Also Read: How to Start a Blog with WordPress
4. Define keywords for your posts
After you do keyword research, put those keywords into an article. A focused keyword will make your article easily understood by visitors and search engines. This can increase your chances of ranking first in search engines.
If you're still confused about how to incorporate keywords into your articles, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin is very helpful in analyzing and directing you to optimize an article.
5. Define the title tag
The function of the title tag is as a backlink that will connect users to your site. The title tag on the search engine display will attract users to click on your website. You can determine the best title tag for your post.
Enter the SEO title column of the Yoast SEO plugin. It is recommended to put keywords at the beginning of the title tag. For example, if the keyword is "WordPress SEO", you can use the title “WordPress SEO Easy Tips for Your Website”. We put the keyword SEO WordPress at the beginning of the title tag as part of this optimization step.
The maximum recommended character for the title tag that can be displayed in search results is 65 characters. In addition to affecting SEO, you can also increase your Click Through Rate (CTR) by creating an attention-grabbing article title.
To see which titles have the highest CTR, you can experiment with title A/B testing. To do this, you can use the help of plugins such as Title Experiments and Nelio AB Testing.
6. Create the meta description
In addition to the title tag, another component that can affect CTR is the meta description. The better the meta description, the higher the CTR of your article. So this will affect rankings on Google because the higher the CTR the greater the chance for your website to appear in search results.
To create a meta description, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin, this is why the Yoast SEO plugin is widely used. Please click the Edit snippet button then enter a brief description of your article in the Meta description column. For a maximum word count of 156 characters, this number is what will be displayed in search results.
Also include keywords in the meta description, it would be better if placed at the beginning of the paragraph if possible.
By entering keywords in the meta description, Google will put a bold mark for the keywords in the meta description as shown in the example below. This will increase CTR, as it appears more relevant to what visitors are looking for.
7. Use HTML heading tags (H1, H2, H3)
Apart from making an article more comfortable to read, HTML heading tags also serve to make it easier for Google Crawlers to determine the level of relevance of your content. Generally, in an article, there is one H1 tag and several H2 and H3 tags in it.
For the H1 tag in WordPress by default, it is in the article title and the tag must contain a keyword. In addition to the title, the keyword must also be in the subtitle, namely the H2 or H3 tag, it can be in the form of keywords or variations of long-tail keywords. Arrange these keywords into sentences that are easily understood by your visitors.
8. Add keywords in the first paragraph
Google will start crawling the first paragraph of a website. Crawling is a discovery process carried out by search engines. Search engines send teams of robots (known as crawlers or spiders) to find new and updated content. Add your keyword in the first paragraph if possible to make it easy for crawlers to find.
9. Title Text on Image
Title text on an image has no effect on SEO, but it will add value to the user experience. The title text will appear when the mouse hovers over the image.
In the WordPress editor, you can easily add title text to an image. Simply by clicking on the image and selecting the pencil logo and enter the title text in the Image Title Attribute column.
10. Alt text on image
ALT text or ALT tag is an HTML attribute that specifies the alternative text to be displayed when an image cannot be displayed. The ALT tag is also used by search engines to determine how relevant an image is to the content created. So adding Alt tags is quite important to do on every image on your website.
To add Alt tags in WordPress is quite easy to do, click on the image then select the pencil logo. After that please enter a description of the image, if possible enter the keywords of your content, as long as there is a relationship between the image and the content.
11. Add internal links
To improve SEO, you also need to add internal links to an article. Internal links are links that point to other articles on your website.
Internal links are useful for helping visitors read relevant articles on your website, thus increasing the duration of their visit to your website. In addition, the information on your website is more structured.
It is recommended to add 3-5 internal links for each post. But if your content has a lot of words, you can add even more. Creating internal links is very easy. You only need to block words or sentences, then click the chain icon and type the URL of the article you want to reference, then press enter.
12. Name the image file
Give the image file of your content a name that is relevant to your content. For example, if your image file name is MyImage.png, replace it with WordPress-seo.png.
In addition, use a separator in the form of a dash, for example, WordPress-seo.png, so that Google can read it in two words.
If possible, add keywords to the name of your image file, it can be added to the featured image of your content.
13. Use HTTPS
HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. It is a secure version of HTTP which has a function for data transfer over the WWW (World Wide Web).
Well, usually when sending data from the server to the client, this is the data that is most prone to being stolen. But for websites that already use HTTPS, all shipments are encrypted.
So you don't have to worry, especially sending important data via the internet. The key is that the website you are using already uses an SSL certificate.
Google has also informed that HTTPS also determines the ranking of websites on search engines. If you want your website to compete on search engines, use HTTPS. Paid and free SSL are available. If you want to use free SSL, nowadays almost all hosting services provide free SSL.
If you are looking for the Best Blogging Platform, you can read this article.
14. Verify your domain on Google and Bing
For a website to appear in search results from search engines, search engines need data from your website for indexing.
For example, you want your website to appear in Google search results, then you must register your website with Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) and verify it. To do this simply open Google Search Console and add the domain properties and all URL prefixes (including http, https, and www) of your domain. Then, follow the steps for verification.
After successfully verifying, your website will be indexed by Google immediately. Search data from your website will appear after 1 day or so in Google Search Console.
15. Create an XML sitemap
A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages of a website. This XML Sitemap file is useful for helping crawlers find all the pages of your website in one place, rather than finding them through internal links. An XML sitemap can make it easier for search engines to index your website, an easy way to make it using an online XML generator sitemap tool like this one.
Conclusions
SEO optimization on WordPress is an important thing to do to improve the performance of your website and business. The 15 tips we present in this article are just some of the ways to do WordPress SEO. Nevertheless, the 15 tips above are essential tips that have proven effective in improving the SEO performance of a WordPress Website.
Hopefully, this article can help you in optimizing the SEO of your website so that it can achieve the best ranking on Google. Do you have any other better tips or ways for WordPress SEO? Please share in the comments section below.
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