WordPress powers around 40% of all websites, so there’s no surprise that many people get it wrong when it comes to improving SEO efforts on WordPress.
Most of your website’s success in search engine rankings comes from your decisions when building the website. The same goes for the themes, customizations, and plugins you choose to implement into it.
Here are six ways you can significantly improve your WordPress site’s SEO.
Get a Good Hosting Provider
The first and most important thing you need to consider is finding a reliable hosting provider because better hosting means faster loading speeds for your visitors. If your website loads up faster than most other competitors, you’ll rank higher than them too.
Several factors determine hosting quality, the biggest of which is whether the hosting is shared or managed.
Shared hosting means your server capacity is shared with other sites. Your site’s performance could drop significantly if you don’t have enough server capacity. On the other hand, managed hosting is when your site is guaranteed a specific server capacity.
Ensure HTTPS is Enabled
HTTPS is on the official list of Google’s ranking factors. While it’s not as crucial as some other ranking signals, it lets your visitors know they’re on a secure website and gives you a slight ranking boost.
For that, you need to get an SSL certificate, which you can obtain from your hosting provider. Some offer free SSL certificates, which often come enabled as default. Once your SSL certificate is enabled, you must change your site’s address from HTTP to HTTPS.
Optimize the Site’s URLs
URL optimization is crucial when optimizing the pages on your site for specific search queries and keyword phrases. A good permalink structure is essential to SEO-friendly URLs, and fortunately, WordPress gives this to you from installation.
One of the best practices for on-page SEO in this regard is to place the primary keyword in the URL. That way, when a search engine crawls your website, they’ll immediately understand what your content is about.
Pick An SEO-Friendly Theme
WordPress provides thousands of free and paid attractive themes you can choose when creating your site. But instead of looking at the design, you need to pay attention to how the theme responds to mobile screens, what customization options come with it, etc.
If you find out the theme is layered with heaps of unnecessary code or worse, switching to another one will be a significant inconvenience. You should pick one with plenty of good reviews and a proven record.
Check Your Site with Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a handy tool to track your website’s performance in search and improve it. It covers categories like:
- Search reports
- User experience
- Search enhancements
- Indexing
- Security
You must visit the Google Search Console tool to use its services and submit your website’s URL. A verification tag will be given by Google, which you’ll need to add in WordPress.
Use An SEO Plugin
SEO plugins help you diagnose and effectively improve your site’s technical and on-page SEO. There are plenty of valuable plugins on WordPress that can help you rank your site higher. Some of the best WordPress SEO plugins include:
- Yoast SEO
- Broken Link Checker
- Rank Math
But it’s important to remember that each plugin you install damages your site’s performance, often making it slower or glitchier. So the fewer plugins you install, the better.
