WordPress is easy to install and easy to use…. But when it comes to WordPress SEO, there are a lot of SEO factors to consider. let’s Optimize your WordPress blog for search engines Here are the main ones!
Installation and configuration
Accommodation
You need to make sure that your site loads quickly. Find a decent web host and don’t skimp a few dollars a month on the plan you choose. Your web host will make a very big difference to the loading speed of your website.
Your web host also affects your site’s downtime and the physical distance between servers and visitors – two factors that are ranking factors.
Do not rely especially on hosting comparison sites which are not always objective because they finance themselves through the affiliation and may be tempted to highlight the hosts who bring them the most.
Choose a theme that is optimized for search engines
Your theme is one of the most important choices you will make for your WordPress site. It determines the look and layout of your site, can provide new functionality, and also plays a role in its SEO.
Your theme can affect the speed of your site. When choosing a theme, you’ll want to go for one that is SEO-friendly. These themes are often referred to as “SEO-friendly”.
What makes for an SEO-friendly WordPress theme?
- Responsive design: Mobile-friendly content may perform better for those looking on mobile.
- Lightweight: Avoid themes bloated with third-party plugins and scripts that you don’t need. They will slow down your website.
Url
Avoid duplicate content. You have to choose which version to use https or http, www or without www. Otherwise, we are facing a common problem for website owners. It’s the existence of duplicate content that they had no idea existed!
One of the first things to do when setting up a WordPress site is to make sure that you have specified whether or not you want to use the following as your domain structure.
- Remember, whichever version you choose, you can configure redirects from http to https and from the version without www to the www version so that each one is accessible.
- Add canonical tags so Google knows which version to index.
If you want to install Cloudflare as a CDN, prefer the www version. Otherwise, between the www vs non-www version, it’s more a matter of personal preference.
Permalinks
By default, WordPress creates permalinks or URL structures that are not very clean because they include the date. Prefer the shortest possible URLs.
Go to Permalinks settings and choose the penultimate option “Post title”. Do not change the permalinks of an existing site unless you know what to do in order not to lose your SEO.
Prefer permalinks of type ndd.fr/nom-article!
Categories
Define your categories well before uploading. Only put each article in one category.
Google Search Console
Add your site to the WordPress search console!
Sitemap
Sitemaps are used by search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yandex to capture the hierarchy and structure of your WordPress site as well as to ensure better indexing.
Search engines can crawl your site without a sitemap, but creating this file also allows you to get more report data on your site.
Use a sitemap file. The SEO plugins are automatically below your sitemap file.
Submit your XML sitemap file to Google Search Console so that you can access additional data about the state of your WordPress site. We’ll assume you already have a Google Search Console account, if not, take a look at this more in-depth article on how to submit your site to Google.
In Google Search Console, click on “Sitemaps” in the Crawl section then click on “Add / Test Sitemap”. Enter the location of your sitemap file that you configured in the previous step and click “Submit”. It will show you how many pages/posts have been submitted and how many are actually indexed. Google will now automatically and periodically crawl your sitemap file.
SEO plugin
It is advisable to install an SEO plugin when using a WordPress site. This allows you to have control over the optimization of what Google sees from your website. In terms of popularity, the free Yoast SEO and All-In-One SEO Pack plugins are the first with their full optimization capabilities. Let’s add the French SEOPress which is really very well done. Many tutorials exist on the configuration of each of these plugins, follow them carefully.
The importance of the Title
It is important that you have your main “focus” keyword that you want to rank for in your blog post or page title tag.
For each page, place your keyword at the beginning of the Title if possible because this will have more weight in the search engines.
Remember that Google has a display limit of 65 characters, so if you exceed that limit it will appear with… at the end, which is not binding. In reality, Title tags are limited by the number of pixels.
Remember that title tags don’t just affect SEO but your click-through rate (CTR) as well.
The Meta description
It doesn’t directly affect your SEO but it can increase CTR which is important.
A better-written meta description can make the user click on your post instead of the one before or after it in the SERPs. The higher your CTR, the more Google will judge your data as relevant and rank you better.
So, in a way, meta descriptions can affect your ranking. But not in the traditional sense. You can define your meta description manually in the Yoast SEO plugin.
The number of characters is between 150 and 170 characters. Beyond that, it might not be visible in the SERPs. As with Title, the limit is by pixels, characters are a close approximation.
Cache plugin
There is a multitude of them. More and more hosting providers are making their own cache plugins. The best is WP Rocket, again it’s worth taking out your bank card and paying a few euros for a plugin that will optimize a lot of things to speed up the loading of your pages.
Content creation
Your pages and articles
Publish articles or pages with structured texts. The Google robot checks for HTML header tags like H1, H2, H3, etc. to determine the relevance of the content of your site. A headline is also used to divide your content to make it easier for the visitor to read.
Generally, the best practice is to have only one H1 tag per page and then multiple H2s. Additional headers can also include your keyword or semantic variations of your keyword.
Most WordPress themes, if coded correctly, will automatically assign your page or post title as an H1 header. You can then assign headers H2, H3, H4, etc. on your page.
Pictures
When you upload an image to your WordPress site, you must first have:
- Rename your file: Name your image files with words related to your content before uploading them. Always include hyphens between words in image file names. Google reads files with hyphens as individual words.
- Include your focus keyword if applicable, at least on your featured image. We always name our featured image on our blog the same as our main keywords.
- Convert your file to the most suitable image format
- Resized your image
- Lightened your image
Then complete the ALT attribute. This is the alt text that is applied to the images on your WordPress site. ALT tags are used by Google to check the relevance of your image to the content around it. They are also used by screen readers for the visually impaired.
Fortunately, with WordPress, you don’t need to know any code to add the ALT attribute text, you can just add them when uploading images to the media library or clicking an image in the visual editor.
Conclusion
If you have a blog, it’s to generate traffic. SEO remains one of the best leverage for attracting qualified traffic. When you have the traffic you also have the opportunity to monetize your blog or generate leads.
There are many WordPress plugins that can help you optimize your blog for search engines. Some of the best ones are:
• Yoast SEO plugin
• All in One SEO Pack
• WP-SEO
• SearchEngine Optimization Premium
These plugins will help you increase the ranking of your blog on Google and other search engines.
There are many methods that you can use to make your WordPress blog searchable.
Use SEO plugin: This is the most basic method of making your blog searchable. It will enable you to easily create meta tags and optimize your site for better rankings in search engines.
Install Google Webmaster Tool: This tool helps increase the visibility of a website by providing information about its location, status, and contact details on the web’s largest indexing engine – Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Update content with meta descriptions: Meta descriptions provide a short summary of what users can expect when they visit a page or click on an ad listing in search results pages across major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and more.
There are many ways to optimize your blog for SEO. The first step is making sure that you have a content-rich website with lots of useful information and lots of social media shares.
Next, make sure that your website loads quickly so it doesn’t lose potential customers due to slow loading times. You can do this by reducing the size of images on your site and hosting your website on a reliable server with good bandwidth.
You should also ensure that you have an email list sign-up page where people can sign up for updates about new products or services offered by my company which they are looking for.
Finally, you should also include Google Analytics in order to track all the activities happening on your website such as visits, conversions, etc.
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that allows users to create their own websites without any programming knowledge. It also comes with built-in SEO tools and plugins that can help you optimize your website for search engines.
SEO plugins:
Yoast SEO – The best WordPress plugin for all types of SEO needs, from blogging to site speed optimization.
All in One SEO Pack – The best choice for most bloggers and webmasters who need only one plugin to do everything they need on their website’s SEO, including keyword research, on-page optimization, title tags, meta descriptions, URLs, and more.
Raven Tools Suite – Raven Tools Suite provides free tools like the Raven Toolbar for Google Analytics which helps you monitor your site’s health as well as view traffic data by referring domains or keywords; the Browser Status Bar displays information about your browser’s configuration, and there are several other useful features too!
Yoast SEO has a free and paid WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.
This plugin includes:
• Meta boxes with SEO meta tags.
• Permalinks, canonical URLs, and redirects.
• Social media optimization (like Twitter cards).
• Google XML Sitemaps.
Both Yoast and All in one SEO are two different types of WordPress plugins that help to improve the SEO performance of your website.
Yoast is a plugin that helps with basic optimization, while All in one SEO is a premium plugin that offers many more features like Google Analytics integration, keyword research, and site audits.
The WordPress blog does not appear on Google due to the following reasons:
The website is either a parked domain or has been removed from Google’s index for various reasons, including robots.txt restrictions, manual removal of URLs from our index by Google Webmaster Tools, or other technical errors.
There are no pages indexed in the top 10 results for your chosen keyword.
The URL you provided doesn’t exist on your site and was likely misspelled or mistyped (Google crawls all web pages found on your website).
There are many ways to promote your WordPress website.
One way is by creating posts that are specific to the niche you want to target and then linking them on relevant social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Another way is by using sponsored ads or banners on sites like Google Adwords or Bing Ads. These ads would help you reach out to a wider audience and increase traffic towards your site.
To get your website indexed by Google, you need to do the following:
Create a page that has keywords relevant to your business.
Include all the information related to your business on this page in an organized manner and make sure it is optimized for SEO.
Submit this page for indexing by Google by submitting a sitemap file or submitting a URL directly from Google Search Console.
First, you need to find out what keywords your website is relevant for. You can do this by using a keyword tool such as SEMrush or Searchmetrics.
Next, you should identify the specific content that your website needs and create high-quality content that includes keywords and phrases related to the topic of your website.
The next step is optimizing the content on your site so it gets more visibility in search engines like Google. This involves creating backlinks from reputable websites, including linking to other pages on your own site, ensuring that your meta descriptions are optimized with keywords and phrases related to the topic of your website, etc.
Another interesting plugin for image optimization: https://wordpress.org/plugins/optipic/ Its automatic convert image to Webp (for webp-supported browsers) and compressed/optimized png/jpeg (for webp-unsupported browsers).