A Step By Step Guide to WordPress Website SEO (From Beginners to Pro)
December 26th, 2017 | by Ravi Chahar || 15 Comments |
Every time someone starts a new WordPress blog, the biggest concern is to scale and rank it on the first page of Google. Well, this guide to WordPress website SEO can help you.
Though there is no magic trick still if you follow each and every step to optimize your content, you can have the results worth praising.
For the beginners, it can be really intimidating to understand the concept of SEO. It’s not only you, most of the people don’t get a clear idea for many years.
People claiming your website to rank faster within a few days is a lie. If you want to scale your website with the authentic ways then this guide to WordPress website SEO is for you.
What SEO Truly Is
This is the first question which comes to your mind whenever you read or hear something about SEO. You aren’t seeking a full form, right?
Well, it’s Search Engine Optimization but what does it mean in the real world?
To be simple and specific, you want to make your website famous by driving millions of visitors through Google. It requires the optimization of the content to make it Search Engine (Google) friendly.
You just want to impress Google. It’s as simple as that.
Though there are many other search engines like Bing still Google has the majority and that’s the reason people worship the giant.
Now the question arises as if what’s the best way to make your website Google friendly.
The Proven Guide to WordPress Website SEO You Should Follow
You don’t need to get confused. It’s not a big term to deal with. You just have to start acting just after installing WordPress for the first time.
- Proper SEO Settings
- Choose an SEO Plugin
- Submitting to Google
- Optimizing your blog posts
- Maintain the website performance
- Enable SSL
There are many basic settings required for your fresh WordPress installation. There are many WordPress mistakes people make and regret later.
You have to start with fixing everything.
#1. Check the Search Engine Visibility Setting
Whenever you install WordPress for the first time, by default, the search engine visibility discouraging box gets checked.
You have to check it. Just go to Settings>>Reading and you can easily find the box after scrolling a little bit.
Never check it until and unless you don’t want Google to index your website. It discourages Google to make your website visible in the SERPs.
I hope this isn’t something you should be afraid of. Just check the settings and save it.
#2. Always Select the SEO-Friendly Permalink Structures
There are many types of permalink structures available for a website. It may include the date, month, category etc.
But you have to select the most efficient permalink which only consists the post name. let me show you a few examples.
https://www.blogginglove.com/guide-to-wordpress-website-seo
https://www.blogginglove.com/how-to-install-wordpress
Whereas, if you choose any other permalink structure, it doesn’t consider to be SEO-friendly. Here are the examples.
https://www.blogginglove.com/2017-12-02/the-best-seo-practice
https://ww.blogginglove.com/archies?..2234
If you’re migrating your blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org or from Blogger to WordPress then that’s a totally different scenario.
For a fresh installation, you should always choose the URL consisting only the post name.
#3. The Concept of WWW and Non-WWW
Every beginner gets confused between a website URL having WWW or not having any. You have to decide whether you want to index your website with WWW or without it.
For example.
https://yoursite.com
https://www.yoursite.com
You should know that Google considers them two different websites. Just go to Settings>>General and you will see two fields to fill the website URL.
And don’t forget to redirect your non-www website to WWW. Not everyone is fond of adding WWW. SO you have to make sure, people get redirected to your original URL.
This is one of the most important settings of this guide to WordPress website SEO.
Choosing an SEO Plugin is Necessary
Whenever you Google it, you may get confused between All In One SEO Pack and Yoast SEO plugins. It’s not possible to tell the best after checking their configurations.
As per many studies and the number of active installations, WordPress Yoast SEO is the best plugin anyone can have these days.
I hope you know the ways to install a WordPress plugin.
Installing it isn’t enough, you have to do the proper settings which can enhance the SEO of your new website.
This step by step Yoast SEO guide will help you. Just go through each and every section and configure the plugin properly for the optimum results.
Submitting Your Website to Google
Installing WordPress and configuring the SEO plugin isn’t enough. How would Google come to know about your website?
You have to add your website to Google Search Console. It requires a verification of your ownership. You can either use the cPanel to install an HTML file or copy and paste the meta tag into your website header
You require to login with your Gmail account to the Google Search Console.
The verification isn’t enough to make Google know about your new website. It also needs the sitemap submission.
The sitemap consists every single page, posts, and media files of your website. This helps the Google bots to crawl your website.
This guide to submitting your website Sitemap will make you understand everything.
Start Optimizing Your Blog Posts For SEO
This guide to WordPress website SEO isn’t complete until you know the concept of On-Page SEO.
It’s totally about optimizing your content for Google. There are some specific things which can be done.
- Choose a focus keyword
- Add the keyword to the title and the URL
- Make interlinking your habit
- Keep the keyword density above 0.5% and below 2.5%
- Add it in the first paragraph of the article
- Nofollow the outbound links
- Add categories and tags
This whole thing can freak you out. To make it simple, you can read these posts.
After going through each post, you can get an idea how Google works and what are the best SEO practices.
As I have told, after installing the Yoast SEO plugin, you get the SEO score for each post. You can check it below your blog post.
Follow the given suggestions and you can have an SEO-optimized article.
Always Maintain a Fast Loading Website
According to many studies, it’s clear that the page loading time of your website should be less than 3 seconds.
People don’t like to wait for your website for more than that. Even Google prefers to provides the best user experience and one of those factors is the fast loading website.
There are a few things you can do.
- Optimize the database
- Use a CDN
- Upload optimized images only
- Choose a proper WordPress theme
- Avoid tons of WordPress plugins
- Have a caching plugin installed
Now you may be wondering as if what’s the reason behind all these points. Well, let me provide the tutorials for each.
- Read this to clean up your WordPress website database
- How to use free CloudFlare CDN
- The best caching plugins you can use
- The Best Way to choose a WordPress theme
- How many WordPress plugins are too many
- Select a plugin which can satisfy you
These articles will help you understand the concept and why people always struggle to boost their WordPress website speed.
Any Guide to WordPress Website SEO is Nothing Without an SSL Certificate Guide
After the official announcement by Google, it’s mandatory to enable an SSL certificate on your website.
There are many ways to accomplish this. Most of the web hostings are providing one year free SSL certificate. Let me mention those companies.
Whenever you buy a new web hosting, always check if they provide the free SSL for one year or not.
CloudFlare provides the lifetime free SSL. You can use that too.
You will find these guides helpful.
- How to enable an SSL certificate from Bluehost
- How to enable an SSL certificate from Inmotionhosting
Google considers the websites with the secure connection.
If you’re already running a website with HTTP protocol then you should what to do after installing the SSL certificate.
I Hope this Guide to WordPress Website SEO Will Scale Your Website
Everything takes some time. You can’t dream about ranking your website on the first page of Google just within a few months.
There are millions of website with the same niche. To be unique, you have to use the power of your writing skills to make people stay.
Learn some blogging tips to create the best blog ever. Apart from all that, you should use these Website security tips.
If your website gets hacked then it’s of no use to write. Millions of websites get hacked every year and you should remove every possible vulnerability.
I hope this guide to WordPress website SEO is helpful. Drop a comment to ask your questions.
You can also connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
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15 comments
Leave a Reply
Hi Ravi,
Great tips to help us improve our SEO. I actually just started paying more attention to my SEO the past few months. It’s nice to see that my organic traffic is starting to pick up.
To tell you the truth, I haven’t been paying much attention to tags. I have set up the categories for my blog, but I just don’t seem to use tags.
Thanks for sharing these tips with us, I have no doubt that they will help bloggers improve their SEO and get better rankings and more traffic.
Have a great day ?
Susan
Hi Ravi,
It looks like a complete guide SEO WordPress Guide. You have shared almost all the points. I really appreciate your effort in writing this post.
Thanks for sharing.
Great Share Ravi.
SEO is not difficult if people like you explain it in such good way. A definitive guide for bloggers who are just starting out.
I personally like your interlinking technique. It works well.
I’m sure you’ll keep it updated with the latest algorithm changes.
Hi Ravi,
An awesome article carrying helpful information. I am reading first time your blog and I am really impressed with your writing skills. The article helped me a lot in SEO. Thanks for sharing this article with us and keep posting this kind of stuff.
Hello Ravi,
Great tips over here ?
People do think a lot when they do get a new wordpress blog, that how they can improve its ranking over the SEO and how
people will attract to their writing skills and end up in getting more and more traffic.
There are many factors which are responsible for ranking our sites well, also Google changes every day, there are something
new every day, so it always good to act smartly so that we remain in the race.
Its very obvious to make visible our search engines setting so that people and Google also can spot us in the crowded market.
I would prefer to with www instead for non www as it is more specific.
Getting a SEO plugin is very important. Its helps to get our wordpress web site get rank well in the SEO.
Thanks for the share.
Shantanu.
Hello Ravi,
Great Post on SEO. SEO is very important term to rank your site in search engines and make a good flow of organic traffic to your website or blog. Today SEO is one of the challenging task for newbies and many of them are fail to comply with it. Learning the basics of SEO is very necessary to understand how its works and you have mentioned here briefly. Thanks for providing the valuable information.
Have a great day and new year ahead ?
Vishwajeet
Hi Ravi,
What an informative article you presented. I really enjoyed reading it because it opened my eyes to some of issues I have overlooked, such as the SSL certificate. My new site is running on http and I never thought of moving to HTTPS as being mandatory.
Also the www aspect is something I haven’t given much consideration. What shall I do? Shall I go back to my settings and choose the www for my site URL?
However, the Yoast SEO is unarguably the best SEO plugin there is because it provides you with areas to work on and gives you suggested well.
Thanks for sharing as I await your response.
Hey Moss,
Having an SSL certificate is one of the most important things right now. Your web hosting may provide it for free.
No need to change your current settings. Just make sure, whether people open it with WWW or without it, it should open your website only. Try opening using both.
Thanks for stopping by.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Thanks so much for the info. I so much appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
Bytheway, I have received about 25 comments on a blog post from readers with no Gravatar. Their comments are great but I haven’t approved that comments because I just find it strange for all 25+ not to have Gravatar.
What so you think, is it ok to approve them?
Awaiting response and thank you once again in advance!
Hey Moss,
If the comments are relevant to the article then you can approve them but I usually remove the link to their website. No risk should be taken at any cost.
Hope that helps.
Have a great one.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Sure, it does help a lot. I actually have bn considering removing he links from the comments and approve them.
Thank you!
Hi Ravi,
Very informative guide to SEO for WordPress!
You have done a great job here. I am saving it for reference as well as sharing it on my social.
Happy New Year!
Hi Ravi,
Wonderful to visit you .. thank you for such a smart and detailed post. It will be very helpful to those who need help understand how to set up WordPress…
Hey Ravi,
That’s a detailed post on WordPress SEO. SEO is not just about keywords – content, usefulness, user friendliness, uniqueness, speed, correct technical set up, security – all are involved in SEO.
And you have covered them here pretty well. Both beginner and advanced bloggers need to have an eye on the latest SEO updates and catch up with the trends.
Speed and SSL are recently becoming very crucial as they directly relate to user experience.
Thanks for putting this together!
Cheers,
Jane.
Great post Ravi!
I love the Yoast SEO plugin, been using it for years. I recently got SSL for my site a few months back, had to do a few things, but everything is redirected and working fine…as far as Screaming Frog tells me.
The SSL hasn’t really improved my SERPs, but I did a total redesign, and hopefully things will start to kick in.
Using a good image compression plugin along with WP Fastest cache, really improved my speed. This was my 5 minutes or less method.
Enjoyed the points you made…thanks again!