Are you struggling to keep your website ranking on google? Are you pulling your hair out wondering why your WordPress SEO optimization is not working? Don’t worry, it’s happened to nearly everyone that has tried to grow their site in the past.
You just need to understand a few basic things that you can turn into regular habits that will help you understand what you need to do to get your site ranking, even if you’re a beginner.
Here are five tips for improving your rankings.
1. Use a Good SEO Plugin
One of the best things you can do for SEO optimization on WordPress is get yourself a good SEO plugin. A good option for this is Yoast SEO. These tools help to take a lot of the confusing work out of optimizing your site.
While these plugins will not automatically optimize your site for you, they offer you an easy-to-use platform that allows you to manage your optimization in a way that is stress-free and makes sense.
This should be the first thing you do before you even begin to think about optimizing your site.
2. Check Your Visibility Settings
A large part of the process of SEO optimization on WordPress is doing some basic prep work. Once you’ve got yourself a decent and reliable plugin, it’s time to make sure your visibility settings are up to scratch.
WordPress has an automatic setting that essentially works to hide your website from showing up on Google or other search engines. Web designers typically use this setting while the site is still being built.
It’s very common for this setting to be left on after the site has launched, though. To turn it off, head to settings > reading, and uncheck the box next to the words “discourage search engines from indexing this site.”
3. Use SEO Friendly Permalinks
WordPress offers its users a few different options for how they want to structure their URLs. You want to make sure that your permalinks and URLs are all optimized.
The default WordPress URLs are not very search engine compatible. If you head to settings > permalinks, you can choose from a range of options for how you want your permalinks to be laid out. Choose the option listed as “post name” to give yourself the most search-engine-friendly URLs.
4. Conduct Keyword Research
When it comes to WordPress and SEO optimization, carrying out keyword research is one of the most critical things that a WordPress SEO expert can do. If you skip this research, then you’re not going to know who or what you’re optimizing your content for.
Spend some time using keyword tools to assess your preferred keywords and how you can best work them into your site and your content to start seeing results.
5. Internal Linking
Finally, you need to be able to keep all of the content on your site relevant to the rest of the site. To do this, you should get into a habit of internal linking. Every piece of content you write should direct the reader to another page or post on your site.
Adding the links on WordPress is super easy. It’s just a case of clicking the link button on the toolbar and inserting the URL for the page you want to link to and the anchor text that you want to display on the post.
Get Help With Your WordPress SEO Optimization Today
Understanding WordPress SEO optimization is not an overnight process. It takes time and dedication to fully understand it and get the rankings you need. The tips listed above will get you on the right track for what you want to achieve, but there’s no shame in asking for help with WordPress SEO services.
Contact us today to see how we can help you optimize your WordPress site and expand your audience.