How to do WordPress SEO? This question often resonates in WordPress circles. This post will briefly explain the answer.
Ranking higher in search engines and driving more than maximum organic traffic is the dream of every website owner. A huge part of SEO directly operates on your pages and posts. It entails tips and techniques, which unite under the single umbrella term, known as On-Page SEO.
Increasing and improving the user experience of the website falls under the same category. Search engines track bounce rate to determine user experience.
Therefore, we all should understand how to do WordPress SEO and particularly how to perform WordPress On-Page SEO. The bots of search engines should understand your pages, in order to rank them well.
You are already one step ahead of your competitors if you are using WordPress and they are not.
How To Do WordPress SEO?
Now let us tell explain you how to do wordpress seo, but remember that it is not the end. You must off page seo tools as well. SEO friendly wordpress themes help a lot, and we will talk about it later.
Focus Keyword
Selecting an appropriate focus keyword is the very first step. Take your time. There are three types of it. Long-tail keyword, medium tail keyword, and short tail keyword. The medium one is the most recommended. You may need some patience, but once ranked you will be in a safe zone. Remember to include it in your content. You must enter it in the title and first paragraph and then spread it all over the content.
Come Up With Post Worthy Post Title & Meta Title
Significance of title is beyond nonprofessional’s comprehension. The user decides to read or ignore your post, after checking the title. Ordinary titles lead to lower rankings. The professional title does not exceed 65 characters and has modifiers (top, best, 2019, etc.) and focus keyword. Looking for trendy headlines in your niche would work too.
Change Your URL to be SEO friendly
URL should also reflect the content of your post. Series of random numbers and characters is not suitable. Best would be when your focus keyword and density also shows up in the title. Go to the WordPress dashboard and click on permalinks.
Add Table of Contents
Experts recommend long-form content to improve chances of ranking. But that makes it difficult to convey the big picture at the beginning of the post. A reader has to go through all of it. So many people are adding the table of contents at the start of post these days, to give the user a clear glimpse in beginning. That also helps the writer in structuring the content.
It is also clickable so the user does not have to scroll too much to get his/her relevant content. You can put your table of contents links in SERPs.
Internal and External Links
Beginners often fail to realize the importance of links. You must link to quality websites to demonstrate the quality of your own content. Neil Patel, a famous Indian SEO master suggests adding one external link in every 100 words.
Embedding internal links is equally crucial. That makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. That also is an excellent way to pass ranking juice to your pages.
Links are the lifeblood of the web, connecting each piece of content to the next. Create internal and external links that get clicks and conversions with The Complete Guide to On-Page SEO https://t.co/16olFEVMqu#ContentMarketing #Copywriting pic.twitter.com/U9wEfZVL6v
— SearchEngineJournal® (@sejournal) November 12, 2021
Heed Your Visual Elements
Two of the fundamental visual elements are images and videos. They help grab the user’s attention. It is evident that adding relevant high-quality videos and eye-catching images help to rank higher. Merely using text would not help in the longer run.
Image optimization is mandatory, too. Ensure that you give proper names and alt tags to every image. When your image fails to load, alt text appears on the screen, to depict what image harbors within. However, if you do not use heavy size images, this issue rarely arises.
Use LSI Keywords
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. These are the keywords related to your main targeted keyword. Search engines, these days rely on LSI to deeply comprehend the subject. In the past, it just depended on the content of the page, so people forcefully pushed the keyword into content multiple times. The worst part is that they did not bother relating it with context.
Enter your main keyword on Google, to find out LSI keywords under the section, ‘searches related to’. Do not forget to smear these keywords all over your content.
Develop Quality Content
Remember that content is the king. Nothing on this earth can save you if you are publishing bad content. Good content has four qualities.
- It is in-depth – It has less to do with the number of words. It is more about how deeply you illustrate the subject.
- It is engaging – Nobody likes to read boring school essays. Make content interesting enough to catch the attention of the reader and keep it until the end. It should relate to their real life. Words should reverberate enough in their minds to persuade them behaving the way you want.
- It is in bullet points – Good structure increases the readability.
- It has short paragraphs – Long paragraphs multiply the boredom and get reader off the hook. Use shorter paragraphs.
Write Best Meta Description Possible
Text placed in Google result under the title is called Meta description. It must be catchy enough to hold the attention and comprehensive enough to give a short introduction to the post. Use power words and do not go above 155 characters. Mentioning your focus keyword is strongly recommended.
Use Heading Tags Wisely
People often mess up with heading tags. The title should be in H1 tags and the main heading in H2. For sub-headings, H3 is best. Using H4 and H5 is not good practice.
Optimize Google Rich Snippet
Rich Snippets is the term used to mention structured data markup that site operators may add to their existing HTML. It enables search engines to understand what information is contained on each web page.
Major search engines use this markup to present richer search results and help users find the desired information. Rich snippets add to the information while the title, Meta description, and URL are already there. You can find snippets in Rank Math plugin.
SEO Friendly WordPress Themes
One must choose the WordPress theme wisely. SEO friendly WordPress themes can help you rank higher and drive more organic traffic. Make sure that you select anyone of as it works as an assistant in making SEO campaign successful
The Last Thoughts
We hope now you understand how to do WordPress SEO. It is not hard when you start systematically and gradually make it your routine. Now do not wait and instantly apply what you have learned. Good Luck