Let’s look at a few basic and a few specific tips to optimise your WordPress website.
You will probably know that WordPress is a very SEO-friendly platform to build your website on. This most likely contributed to your decision to go with this platform. And it’s true, WordPress is great for SEO, its clean code follows SEO best-practices, and the platform offers so many functionalities and design options. But you can still improve a few bits to make your website rank higher in search results.
A Word from WordPress
We’ll start right at the beginning, with a couple basic tips from WordPress.
Your website’s privacy settings
Review your website’s privacy settings and make sure they are adjusted for maximum visibility. According to the WordPress support SEO guide, your site should be set to public, and the ‘discourage search engines from indexing this site’-setting must be unchecked.
Get a WordPress SEO plugin
While an SEO plugin is not strictly necessary to rank in search results with a WordPress website, it is strongly recommended. Yoast SEO is one of the biggest and most popular SEO plugins right now, and a personal favourite, but there are many more great options out there. Just a quick Google search will tell you all you need to know to find the best one for your website.
General SEO Factors to Keep in Mind
The same SEO methods that apply to any other website, also apply to WordPress websites. We won’t go into detail about those in this article, but let’s quickly go over some important ones.
Technical SEO Factors
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Page speed
- Canonical tags
- Sitemap
- Navigation
- UX-design
Read all about technical SEO and how to optimise your website, or check out our recent articles about accessible web design and behavioural design.
On-Page SEO
- Meta tags
- Key pages
- Keyword research
- Long-form content
- Evergreen content
- Content best-practices
Take a look at our posts about SEO for more information on how to incorporate these factors in your website.
Off-Page SEO
- Link building
- Internal linking
- Authority
- Fix broken links
WordPress-Specific SEO Improvements
Now that we’ve got the general SEO tips out of the way, let’s dive into some SEO improvements specific to WordPress websites.
Choose the Right WordPress Theme
There are countless free and premium WordPress themes to choose from, each one more intricate and detailed than the next. But before you go and pick the most aesthetically pleasing one, keep in mind that it needs to be functional and responsive too. Generally, the simpler themes are much easier to optimise for SEO, page speed, and user experience, and they give you so much more freedom when setting up your pages.
Use Heading Tags Correctly
The headings on a page make up its structure, so use them wisely. Each page should have only one H1-tag, this is the title of your page and contains your main keyword. The other heading tags are assigned when and where necessary. Always follow the correct order of hierarchy to help visitors and search engines understand your content.
You can define the style of each heading tag for your entire website in your WordPress theme. Doing this will make it much easier to stay consistent across your pages, and use the correct heading tag each time.
Change the Default URL Structure
Whenever you create a new page, WordPress will automatically create a URL for it. But, alas, these automatic permalinks aren’t always SEO-friendly. You can change the default permalink structure in your WordPress dashboard.
Go to settings > permalinks, and select your preferred option.
But even then, it’s important to check and make sure the URL is readable and unique. And when in doubt, shorten it!
Make the Footer Functional
Make your footer useful and functional by including important pages, (clickable) contact information, and a short description of your company and activities. We usually add links to all major content pages, the contact page, about page, and blogs and cases.
Many WordPress themes come with default links in the footer, usually leading to the WordPress website and the creator of the template. Make sure to remove these when you’re customising the footer.
Set Main Keywords in Yoast SEO
If you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress website, you can set main keywords for your pages. The plugin will then help you check whether or not you’ve used the keyword enough and in the right places. Keep in mind however, that this functionality is pretty basic and focusses on keyword density. It’s a great place to start for SEO novices, but not really that helpful to experienced SEOs.
Apply Categories and Tags Appropriately
If you have blogs or cases on your website, you can sort them by using categories and tags. They make it easier for readers to find the type of content they’re looking for, and for search engines to understand your website’s structure.
The question then rises, how do you use them appropriately?
Well, categories are meant to group your posts by their general subject. So, on our website for example, you’ll find categories for SEO, CPC, social media, websites, and ecommerce.
Tags on the other hand, describe the content of an individual post. So, the tag for this blog could be ‘WordPress SEO’. Still not quite sure when to use categories versus tags? This guide by WPBeginner will tell you everything you need to know.
Optimise WordPress Comments
Many blog-heavy websites have comments enabled. They can be a great tool to encourage engagement and interaction, but they can also be used against you. Spammers can leave comments with bad links, which could negatively impact your rankings. Be sure to check your settings to block as many spam comments as possible.
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