Improving WordPress SEO is essential to increase traffic to a blog post. Unfortunately, many make WordPress SEO sound too complicated when, in fact, it should not be. This results in many beginners feeling overwhelmed and confused.
Luckily, this article will show you easy to follow SEO practices to improve WordPress blog post rankings.
Before we dive into the best practices, you must first have a good understanding of WordPress. Technically, it is an open-source CMS or content management system, and it currently runs 35% of the whole internet, including websites you commonly use on a day to day basis such as TechCrunch, Time.com, BBC America, etc.
In 2003, WordPress began as a blogging platform, but due to its effective and flexible solutions to run whole websites, it became one of the most used e-commerce solutions today. Other than that, what makes WordPress desirable is that it is straightforward and easy to use. You do not need to rely on a developer to launch a website using WordPress. In fact, even beginners can manage to start a website on their own, especially if you are going to make a blogging website.
Knowing how to use WordPress is not considered to be an SEO strategy. Although it might help save you time and effort, you still need to have a good understanding of how SEO ranking works to formulate effective strategies to help attract traffic on your blog post.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a widely used strategy by many website owners worldwide to improve traffic by getting high ranking in search engines such as Google. Unlike advertising strategies, you cannot buy a slot to be featured on search engines' top results. Instead, you need to publish relevant content to a particular niche, use tags, metadata, etc.
So, why is SEO so important? Well, nowadays, when people look for information about a specific product or business, they automatically turn to search engines for answers, hence why it is the biggest source of traffic for websites.
Although search engines have advanced algorithms to calculate and rank pages according, they still need help understanding your content because it is not perfect. When your website or blog is not optimized for search engines, it might not appear on the first page, so lesser people will have the chance to discover your value.
If you are considering launching a blog post using WordPress or already having a blog website using Wordpress, you might find the following SEO tips helpful in attracting traffic.
Upon installing WordPress, you will notice that it has its default theme. However, since it is a difficult theme, it means that there are hundreds of others who will also use the same themes which will not set your blog website apart from others.
The good news is that there are a lot of free and premium themes available right at your dashboard. However, you need to make sure that the theme you will be picking is indeed SEO Friendly.
How to determine whether a theme is SEO-friendly or not? Well, it's simple. You can check whether it is SEO friendly by running a demo using Google's web.dev to. By using that, you will get insights on the theme's possible SEO performance and setbacks.
Installing and using WordPress SEO plugins will also help your blog post a lot. There are plenty of WordPress SEO plugins that are offered for free. However, it will not do the SEO work for you, but it will definitely help make optimizing your blog post a lot easier.
Here are some free useful and popular WordPress SEO plugin that you can use on your blog post:
Do you wonder why other websites have domains that start with www. while others don't? Well, that's because you can customize that.
They don't really have a lot of bearing in SEO, but it is good to have only pick one formal because Google will deem it to be different URLs if you use both. Also, it is important to be consistent with the domain that you use.
How search engines determine the score of a website's page is kept secret to avoid people from rigging it. However, the most commonly used and effective strategy used to improve page authority score is by using links, so make it a habit to interlink your own blog posts with one another.
Doing so can help improve your page views and increase the number of time users spend on your website. Later on, it will have a significant impact on the individual blog posts on your site.
Another way to optimize the blog post on WordPress is by creating unique title tags and meta descriptions. The title tag must contain the keyword that you want to rank on since it is what the search engine and users will use to determine your blog post.
You can use plugins such as SEO Yoast to check whether your title tag will do well in SEO or not. If it doesn't, then it is best to rewrite it.
On the other hand, although meta descriptions do not directly affect SEO ranking, they have a significant impact on attracting organic CTR. Quality meta descriptions are typically only around 160 characters, and they must pique the user's interest to click on your blog post.
Final Word
WordPress makes running a website more manageable, even for those who are not techy, and when it is combined with SEO, it can be the recipe to get a lot of traffic on your blog post. Hopefully, the information and tips mentioned above have helped you understand how they work and what you can do for your blog posts.
