Top 10 WordPress SEO Tips You Should Try

1. Choose a Good Theme

One of the best WordPress SEO tips is to choose your theme carefully. You can choose your theme when you set up your site, and you can change it later.

When choosing a theme, you want to make sure it’s SEO-friendly. That way, you’ll have an easier time ranking in search engines, and you’ll make it easier for people to use your site, thus telling search engines your site is good.

Now, you can choose any theme you like, but you may need to make more customisations to make it SEO-friendly. So save yourself the trouble and stick to themes from WordPress or other well-known developers.

2. Verify the Visibility

When setting up a WordPress blog, you may not want it to be visible at first. As you build out the site, you can use a setting to keep search engines from indexing your site.

However, once your site goes live, you’ll need to change that. You can go to Settings, then Reading. Look for a check box next to the phrase “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” and uncheck the box.

3. Use a Plugin

WordPress SEO can be much easier if you use an SEO plugin, such as Yoast. You can use the plugin to input your chosen keyword for the page or post you’re writing.

Then, the plugin will tell you what you need to do to optimise the content. It can make suggestions regarding when and how often you. use the keyword.

In the case of Yoast, it will give you a green, orange, or red light signalling how well you optimised the page. Then, you can make any changes to get a green light.

4. Research Keywords

SEO plugins are great, but you still need to choose a keyword to use in your content. You can do this by researching keywords with special tools.

When you use a tool, you can input a keyword or phrase you want to use. The tool will then tell you how many people search for that term each month and how competitive the keyword is.

Ideally, you’d choose a keyword with a good search volume but not too much competition. Then, you’ll have a decent chance of ranking highly in search while getting good traffic.

5. Add Keywords Strategically

After doing some keyword research, you will need to add the keyword you select to your content. It should go in at least the title, introduction, conclusion, and one header.

Make sure when using the keyword that you use it naturally. Old WordPress SEO tips might have suggested forcing the keyword into the text just to get it in there.

But search engines can recognize when you do that, and they can penalise your site for that.

6. Choose One Keyword

You might want your website to rank first for a variety of keywords. However, when writing a page or post, you should focus on one main keyword.

Then, you’ll be able to optimise the content for that one term. Now, you can add relevant terms to the post. But you’ll want to use the main keyword in your title and the body of your text.

Also, make sure not to use the same primary keyword multiple times. That way, you can rank for more terms with the same amount of content.

7. Link to Content

Another excellent WordPress SEO strategy is to include links in your content. You can use internal links, which lead to other pages and posts on your site.

Those are useful because they can help people learn more about you and find what they need.

Using external links to sites with a lot of authority in your niche is also useful. Those links can show you have authority, so they can look good to visitors and search engines.

8. Make Sure It’s Responsive

A responsive website is one that works on all devices with varying screen sizes. Make sure to use responsive design to help make your site easy to use on small and large devices.

That way, you’ll be able to attract more traffic. When that happens, it can tell search engines that your site is good and is easy to use.

Even if you use an SEO-friendly theme, you should verify that each page and post is mobile-friendly.

9. Don’t Forget Readability

Another essential part of WordPress marketing is making your content easy to read. Luckily, tools like Yoast help you by using the same system of green, orange, and red lights.

Your content should have plenty of white space, so be sure to use headings to break things up. Consider a few ways to make your content readable:

• Short paragraphs
• Bullet lists
• Number lists

These features can make the content easy to read on mobile devices and desktops. So you can keep people on your page, which will tell search engines that your content is valuable.

10. Focus on Page Speed

WordPress SEO tips may focus on things that your visitors see, such as keywords. However, you shouldn’t ignore more technical aspects of SEO, such as how fast your website runs.

Improving your page speed can make it easier for people to navigate and use. And as mentioned, the longer people stay on your site, the better it can be for your SEO.

You can improve the speed by compressing images to make file sizes smaller. Getting rid of plugins and pages you don’t need can also help.