The Tools And Tips For Creating SEO-Friendly WordPress Site

Setting up your WordPress website could be the easiest thing to do, but the question is, is it optimized for search engines?

There is no doubt that WordPress is SEO friendly by its natural configurations because it has the ability to generate SEO friendly codes. However, there are still a ton of actionable steps you need to put in place in order to maximize positive SEO results for your WordPress website. 

Your WordPress website may be beautifully designed and have a lot of rich features. But if it isn’t SEO optimized, all the stunning designs may count for nothing.

What actionable steps have you taken to ensure that your WordPress website is properly optimized for search engines?

If you want to generate more traffic to your WordPress website, generate leads, rank high in search engine results, and boost sales for your business. Then you need to pay attention to the tips that would be revealed to you in this post.

What Is SEO And Why Is It Important For Your WordPress Website?

Before we dive in, let us take a look at what SEO stands for. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It basically relates to techniques and strategies that can be employed to make your website show-up when relevant keywords relating to your website are typed into the search engines. 

SEO is currently the buzzword in any discussion relating to website ranking for business owners and entrepreneurs in today’s online world.

Your website may not be able to achieve its aim of generating leads and sales for your business if it is not properly optimized for search engines.

Here are some reasons why it is very important for your website to be SEO optimized.  

If you want to remain in business in today’s online world, and not get pushed to the background by your competitors. You need to start assessing the SEO situation of your website.

Here are some simple tips and tools that would be of great help.

Choose Your Web Hosting Company Wisely

There are so many reasons why you need to be careful with the kind of host provider you choose for your WordPress website

If you pick a host with slow servers and a high downtime rate, your website will take ages to load. This would affect the ranking of your website in no small measure. The speed or amount of time your website takes to load is a very important criterion that Google takes seriously in ranking websites.

To know the actual speed of your website, you can use a tool like Pingdom to run a speed test on your WordPress website.

You can also check your website speed by setting up Google Analytics for your website; you’ll get a ton of information about your website from its analysis.

Pick WordPress Themes That Are SEO Optimized.

The type of theme you use to develop your WordPress website is very important for the ranking of your website. It determines the overall functionality and layout of your site and also affects the SEO capabilities for your website. 

When choosing a WordPress theme, choose the ones that are built on the principles of SEO. Fortunately, there are lots of good SEO friendly themes you can use to develop your WordPress website.

Maximize The Use Of Yoast WordPress SEO Plug-In 

The Yoast SEO WordPress plug-in is unarguably the number one and most robust WordPress SEO plug-in you can use for your website.

Yoast plug-in has a set of comprehensive SEO solutions you can use to rank your WordPress website. It has page analysis tools that help you to properly structure your website for optimization.   

From checking your meta description, meta tags to making sure you use the right keywords and titles in your content. The Yoast SEO plug-in enables you to know and see what you are doing as regards SEO for your WordPress website.

Make Sure Your WordPress Website Is Mobile Friendly

It is no longer news that mobile devices are becoming the go-to devices that are being used to browse the internet today, and it isn’t likely to slow down any time soon. If your website is not optimized for mobile, then you’ll miss out on a lot of traffic. Plus it may be difficult for your website to rank in search engines.

Here’s the kicker, Google is more favorably disposed to mobile-friendly sites and ranks them higher in search engines. 

Therefore, if you want to create an SEO friendly website, you need to make use of a WordPress theme that is mobile friendly.

Develop Your Website Content With Relevant Keywords

Keywords are short phrases that reflect the dominant ideas in your content. Using keywords in relevant areas of your website content would ensure that your website will rank for your chosen keywords when users type these keywords in search engines.

However, be mindful, so you don’t stuff too many keywords into your content. A great tool you can use to check for relevant keywords in your niche is KWFinder

If you write content in various languages and for a wide reach of audience, then you can use The Word Point to get the proper translations of relevant keywords for your site.

Optimize Images On Your Website

Image search is a very important factor that determines the SEO potential of your website. When creating your WordPress website, ensure to add descriptive file names and ALT texts to your images. So you can benefit from the SEO it would generate for your website.

To check for images on your website that do not have ALT text, a tool like Screaming Frog will come in handy. 

Structure Your Website Content With Heading Tags

How do you use heading tags for your website content? If you are a newbie, this may seem confusing. But it shouldn’t be.

Heading tags are simply formatting options that you can use to structure the content or posts on your website. On your WordPress editor, there are heading options listed from 1-6. 

Heading 1 (H1 tag) is used for the title of your post. While other tags such as H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 are used for various sub-headings in your content.

Headings are important because they break up your content and make your content easier to read. Also, headings are important to search engine bots known as crawlers. It helps them to better understand the structure of your content. WordPress has heading options that can help you. 

Your WordPress URL Structure (Permalinks) Should Be Search Engine Friendly 

You need to make the structure of your permalinks search engine friendly. Permalinks are URL links that connect to every page on your website. When you use permalinks that are not search engine friendly. It may be difficult for both visitors and search engines to read.

Example of search engine friendly URL or permalink: https://www.wordpress.com/good-wordpress-installation-packages/beginner

Example of URL or permalink that is not search engine friendly: https://www.wordpress.com/archives/?p=78550

Note that the first example is easier to read, and users can know the content of the page. The second one contains numbers that do not allow users to know what the page is all about.

Wrapping Things Up

Optimizing your WordPress website for search engines shouldn’t be difficult. You need not be a tech genius to achieve this. All you need to do is have a basic understanding of the things that would make your website attractive to search engines.

If you are a newbie and you’re looking to begin the process of creating an SEO friendly WordPress website. You need not be afraid. Just follow the simple guide, steps, and tools in this post, and your WordPress website would begin to rank in no distant time.

Dominic Beaulieu is a gaming enthusiast turned tech writer who covers an impressive variety of topics like design, development process, game marketing, and helps developers with spreading the word about their creations. He is a fluent French speaker, who also has mastered Dutch,
Norwegian, and Swedish. He has experience in software translation, tech counseling, project management and digital marketing tailored for startups.


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