Ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners

The internet is a highly competitive space to be in, and without Search Engine Optimization, you could find yourself falling farther and farther behind your competitors. It can sometimes seem like too many factors to consider when it comes to search engine optimization.

However, with this WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners (Step by Step), you’ll find everything you need to know about navigating the world of WordPress SEO.

WordPress optimization is a crucial part of improving your website’s traffic. Unfortunately, most WordPress SEO guides are overly complicated and technical, but that’s why I created this one.

All business owners are looking for that factor that will get them ahead of their competition. Many businesses start with a website but soon realize they need more than just a website to stay ahead in the game.

WordPress SEO strategy help to improve your site’s ranking on Google and other search engines. If you have not yet started using WordPress SEO, this guide is for you.

This guide will teach you the best WordPress SEO practices to improve your search engine rankings and increase your organic traffic.

WordPress SEO Introduction

WordPress SEO can be daunting for beginners, especially if you’re not techy, but not impossible. Start to learn from essential WordPress SEO tips, and dive deeper into the more complex aspects once you have picked up the basics.

Why SEO is an important ranking factor

Search engines are the place where websites get most of their visitors. If you want to make sure your website is getting the traffic it deserves, you will need to make sure that search engines know about it. 

That’s where Search Engine Optimization comes in FIRST Place. It is inevitable for your website to get traffic from search engines.

Search engine optimization is the process of making your website and content as relevant as possible to search engines. This will allow your website to become more visible to search engines, especially Google, which is considered the major search engine among all. In addition, search engines will crawl your website and do further indexification to provide the necessary ranking for particular keywords.   

SEO is a crucial component of any online business, and every website owner needs to understand what it is and how it can benefit them in the long run.

Remember one thing: Seo is a long time process, you have to keep in mind that there is no shortcut to success. As a result, you cannot fool Google or other search engines with any sort of tricks. But if you keep doing this, your site will gradually lose all of its rankings from Google. You will be penalized for such action. Make sure you have enough time and effort to earn trust from Google.

Basic WordPress SEO for Beginners

WordPress SEO is the process of optimizing your WP website for search engines so that you can rank high on Google and other search engines. It has a plethora of free plugins that will help you with your SEO to improve your keyword position on Google. It’s effortless to install without any external help.

There are many different ways to use WordPress, so you don’t have to be a tech genius to use them. All you need to do is learn the basic usages of tools available to make it as easy as possible. If you’re already using WordPress, this is the perfect place to start!

Here are some basic tips to optimize your website and notably boost your website traffic.

Check Your Site’s Visibility Settings

With WP, you can turn off the visibility of your website from search engines. You can do this by disabling the option to allow visitors to find your website. This configuration is included with WP Config, so you don’t have to install a separate plugin to do this. Furthermore, this is the best way to protect your website from search engines while working on it or your site is not ready to publish.

When this option is marked as checked, it means that your website will go invisible. Therefore, it is imperative that you make sure that this option is marked as checked or unchecked depending on your working purpose. 

SEO Friendly URL Structures in WP Website

Creating an SEO-friendly URL makes it easier for search engines and readers to understand what the page is about.

SEO friendly URLs contain words that clearly explain the page’s content, and they’re easy to read by both humans and search engines.

The following are examples of SEO friendly URLs:

https://www.exeple.com/how-to-optimize-wordpress/

https://www.exeple.com/wordpress-errors-and-how-to-fix-them/

You should use relative and readable URLs and include a text link on the page that explains what the link does.

Here are some examples of non-SEO friendly URLs:

https://www.example.com/%134v?/

http://example.com/?12a/?23d/

The above structures are bad practices that would lower your SEO score.

The visitors often cannot guess what they want to search on the page. As the numbers are confusing in the URL structure which will lead to a high bounce rate.

The permalink structure is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization and one that is often overlooked. This will increase your chances to get the top position in search results.

You can update your WordPress permalink structure by following these steps.

Click on the ‘Settings’ link » Permalinks. Choose the ‘Post Name’ option and click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Remember: It is better to keep the permalink structure the same as the one you have used for more than 6 months, as it makes it easier for search engines to index your site. Use the short date format, “Day and Month.”

Don’t change your permalink structure unless you are 100% sure that it’s the right decision for your business. If you change your permalink structure, you will lose all of your social media share counts and your overall SEO ranking.

Any Solution? Absolutely there is, all you need to do is to log in to the admin area panel afterwards go to the Settings » Reading page in your WordPress dashboard.

If you are concerned about your site being indexed by search engines, scroll down to the ‘Search Engine Visibility’ section and ensure the box is unchecked. Always remember to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.

WWW vs non-WWW

A critical factor in determining the search engine visibility of a site is the presence of the ‘www.’ before the domain name. 

For example: www (http://www.example.com) or non-www (http://example.com)

The ‘WWW’ added to the beginning of a domain name allows the search engines to recognize the name as a website rather than a regular website.

You can change your preferred URL in the Settings » General page. To change your address, go to the field ‘Site Address’ and ‘WordPress Address’, and enter the URL you want to use.

WordPress SEO Plugin

Select the Best WordPress SEO Plugin

There are several different WordPress SEO plugins available for WordPress. The two most popular solutions are AIOSEO and Yoast SEO.

Optimizing your site for search engines is an important part of SEO. It’s the most effective way to drive traffic to your site and increase sales.

Add XML Sitemaps in WordPress Website

XML sitemaps are essential for your websites search engine optimization. Search engines use XML sitemaps like Google and yahoo to index your web pages.

Sitemaps are not ranked in search engines, but they help search engines find your pages quickly.

AIO SEO is a powerful WordPress SEO plugin that will help you create an XML sitemap automatically.

Add Your Site to Google Search Console

One of the most powerful features in Google Search Console is Google Index Status (i.e., how many pages Google indexed). This is a handy feature for large sites that want to verify that they have correctly implemented their sitemap/robots.txt file.

Search Console is a free tool powered by google which provides data analysis and reports on website and page performance in search results. You’ll also learn how to determine what keywords to use to get more traffic and improve your website’s visibility in the search results.

This report will show you how to get the most out of your search engine optimization, whether you’re using the Google, Bing, or Yahoo search engines.

You can use Google Search Console to learn more about your website, including which parts of your site are missing, search engine crawlers issues or anything wrong with your content – like duplicate posts.

After adding your site to Google Search Console, click on the Sitemap tab and paste the final part of the Sitemap URL. Do not forget to save your changes. You will now use the search console to improve your website crawling.

WordPress SEO Plugin

Optimizing Your Blog Posts for SEO

When you start making a new website, it’s easy to assume that you’ve done all that’s needed to optimize your site for search engines. However, that’s only the first step. You need to keep up with your site’s ongoing SEO to see the best results.

If you want to add titles, Meta descriptions, and focus keywords, most SEO plugins will help you. This report will help you identify the best keywords to use when optimizing your website for Google. 

It is always a good idea to choose a well-optimized Title and Meta description so that visitors will click most. On-page SEO is one of the first priorities to achieve top search engines rankings, but what are the main things to focus on to achieve the best results? You should focus on writing different kinds of content that are optimized for search engine results. An essential part of SEO is choosing the right keywords for your website.

Go to the SEO section, and you will see all of the tools you need to optimize your blog post.

Doing Keyword Research for Your Website

Choosing the correct keywords for your blog posts is the most important thing to getting your posts to rank well in search. There are easy ways to select the best keywords for your blog post.

You should also use keyword research tools to help you find the best long-tail keywords for your blog post. 

Keyword research is the process of finding out which words and phrases are the most popular among your target audience. You do this to find out what your prospects and customers are searching for. 

Keyword research can help you learn about their interests, and it can help you get more search traffic to craft your marketing strategy.

WordPress SEO Best Practice

WordPress SEO basics are what you need to do to get started with SEO on your WordPress website. Then, you can use a WordPress SEO plugin to make your website look good to search engines.

However, WordPress SEO best practices will assist you in getting even more perfect results for your site.

This is a beginner’s guide to web development. You won’t need to know any code to follow along. Follow these easy WordPress  tips to help you with many different aspects of running a successful WordPress site.

Properly Using Categories and Tags in WordPress

WordPress categories and tags are a great way to organize your site. They help visitors find content and help you find your content when you’re looking for it. WordPress has an excellent system for using categories and tags, but some people don’t use them effectively.

You can use categories and tags to organize your products and are helpful to search engines to understand better your site tags and categories. You can also use these tools to make your product search results relevant.

Categories are a great way to group your posts, giving your customers an easier way to find what they’re looking for. You can assign a category and post to multiple categories or create categories for each product.

On the other hand, tags are a great way to organize items, especially if you have a lot of similar products. As with categories, customers can then search for items using those tags. It’s also a great way to help customers find related things they may be looking for.

For example, if you’re selling a pair of shoes, you can create a tag for each shoe style, color, and size. The tag for each shoe can then be listed under a single product to make it easy for your customers to find.

Make Internal Linking a Habit

There are a few ways to improve the authority of your website. The most obvious way is to add links to your content. Internal linking your posts is an important part of your blog, but it’s essential to make sure that you are linking to the best sources and making sure that your links are doing their job.

The best part about the internal links is boosting your blog traffic and page views. It will also motivate visitors to spend more time on your blog, which will improve your SEO score for the particular blog posts and pages.

Optimize WordPress Comments

Your comments are a strong indication of how engaged your users are. When users leave comments, it means that they are actively interacting with your site.

Getting users to engage with your site is an excellent way to build more links back to your site, get more traffic, and improve your search engine optimization.

Be careful that your comments are authentic. Spam comments and bad links could harm your search rankings.

NoFollow External Links in WordPress

Links are one of the most important aspects of a website, especially for search engines. They help them to find the important pages.

Google and other search engines practice following links to find the most important pages on a site. But this does not mean that you should link to every site page on every other page. That is a bad practice of link building, and it may negatively affect your website.

The more relevant and popular a website is, the more link juice it can give to a link. This is why it’s essential to make sure your links are as relevant as possible.

“Nofollow” links are links to other websites you don’t own. This is a helpful trick to help you save link juice.

Speed and Security for WordPress SEO

Make your website faster, safer, and more secure with a better WordPress SEO. Give your website a boost in search engine ranking with password-protected pages. Boost site speed to make your website more appealing to users.

Here’s how to keep your site secure and fast so your customers won’t leave.

Optimize Your Site’s Speed and Performance

There is so much work to do on the web and every second counts. Website speed optimization is the first step to achieving a high search engine ranking. While the performance of your site might not directly affect your ranking, it does affect the user experience, which in turn affects your conversions and repeat customers.

Why it Matters: You want people to use your site, but if it takes forever to load, they’re not going to stick around. However, fast websites rank higher in Google, so it’s important to have a fast website.

It’s crucial to capture your audience’s attention within seconds and provide them with a good first impression. Users make judgments about the quality of a website in seconds. Websites with a good usability design will get users to stay and spend more time on the site, while those with poor usability design will get users to leave.

Fast WordPress hosting providers like Bluehost, Namecheap, or SiteGround can improve your website speed and you will enjoy a better WordPress hosting experience.

Optimizing Images in WordPress for SEO

When it comes to WordPress, you have many techniques at your disposal. It’s important to know the right way to do image optimization. 

The more you use images on your website, the more time they will take to load. Make sure to optimize your images and keep them small and high-quality.

When you upload an image, you can add title and alt tags to make sure that it is properly identified. The alt tags are an essential tool to make your images more visible on search engines. You can add them to your images easily by using the WordPress media library.

A gallery plugin is a good choice if you are a photographer or add a lot of images to your WordPress site.

Security and Safety of Your WordPress Site

The web is a big place, and with that comes a lot of risks. If you don’t have the right security and safety in place, your website could be hacked and you could lose your entire business.

There are a lot of ways to ensure your site is secure and that you’re protected against hackers. You can use Sucuri or wordfence to protect your website from cyber-attacks.