WordPress SEO Tutorials for Beginners
There can be no denying that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the cheapest yet the most targeted way to drive traffic to your site as articulated over at runrex.com. SEO comes in handy in helping your target users discover your content at the right time when they are looking for it. WordPress SEO is not as confusing or difficult as many tend to believe, and with the right SEO tools, you can optimize your site for search engines regardless of your skillset according to the subject matter experts over at guttulus.com. This article will look to explain what WordPress is all about and how to go about it as a beginner.
What is SEO and why is it important?
As is covered over at runrex.com, SEO is a technique through which you optimize your web pages to drive organic traffic from search engines like Google. Your goal is to, therefore, follow WordPress SEO best practices on your site and help search engines easily crawl and index your site for the right keywords. This will potentially help users discover your content when they are looking for it by searching with the keywords that you are targeting.
WordPress SEO best practices for beginners
While WordPress is one of the most SEO-optimized website builders out there, that doesn’t mean that your content will be automatically crawled, indexed, and ranked on Google just because you were using WordPress. This is why you should follow WordPress SEO best practices and as per the gurus over at guttulus.com, they include:
Enabling your website visibility settings
The first thing you need to do, according to runrex.com, is to ensure that your website isn’t hidden from search engines. WordPress comes with a built-in option to hide your website from search engines, a feature that is helpful to you if your website isn’t ready to be crawled and indexed, and you need more time to work on it. While setting up the site sometimes users check off this option and then forget to enable visibility settings after. This is why you should log into your WordPress dashboard and head over to Settings then Reading to see an option called Search Engine Visibility. Make sure that this option is unchecked then hit the save changes button at the bottom so that you don’t lose your settings.
Using an SEO-friendly URL structure
You should also ensure that your URL is SEO-friendly. This is because, as explained over at guttulus.com, an SEO-friendly URL reveals the context of your content to both users and search engines.
An example of an SEO-friendly URL – https://www.runrex.com/best-wordpress-seo-plugins/
An example of a Non-SEO friendly URL – https://www.runrex.com/?p=39767
SEO-friendly URLs are one of the ranking factors, which means that they enhance the possibility of your website getting higher rankings in search results. Including your keyword in your URLs is one of the ways to make them search engine friendly.
Adding an XML sitemap to WordPress
An XML sitemap enables you to inform search engines about URLs on your website that are available for crawling. It plays a massive role in letting Google discover your web pages and posts as explained over at runrex.com. Using the Yoast SEO plugin is the easiest way to create a sitemap for your site. It is an all-in-one SEO plugin that takes care of every little thing to ensure that your site is optimized for search engines. Once you install and activate the plugin on your site, Yoast automatically creates a sitemap for you.
WWW Vs. HTTPS
As is revealed in discussions over at guttulus.com, search engines consider these two as two different web addresses, and, therefore, to avoid confusion, you need to know which one to use for your website. WordPress lets you prefer which website address you want to choose, which you can do by going to Settings, then to General on your WordPress dashboard, where you can then add your preferred URL in both the WordPress Address and Site Address fields.
Adding Site to Google Search Console
Google Search Console helps you track your website’s performance on Google. According to runrex.com, it offers all important data related to your website’s visibility and performance such as keywords, impressions, clicks, CTR, and more. It also helps to find indexing status as well as errors so that you can fix them to drive more organic traffic. According to the gurus over at guttulus.com, if it spots any form of error on your site, you will promptly receive a notification so that you can take action immediately.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO is a technique where you optimize the individual pages of your site to have a better search ranking, more visibility, and traffic. It involves working on your content, images, and even the HTML source code. Some of the things that you need to keep in mind while doing your on-page SEO include content strategy, optimizing your title, image optimization, adding categories and tags, interlinking, and adding meta descriptions. All these points are covered below in more detail.
Content strategy
If you want to know what question your readers might have, you need to do keyword research as part of your content planning. This also helps you figure out which keyword has high traffic volume, competition, buying intent, and more. you should start by using a keyword research tool that will allow you to get in-depth keyword data, competition analysis, keyword position tracking, and lots of other useful features.
Image optimization
As the gurus over at runrex.com point out, images play a big role in the success of your post, particularly since without them, your post will appear dull and boring. They can make your post engaging and interesting to read. However, simply adding images to your post isn’t enough as it is important to make it easier for search engines to understand what these images are all about, something you can do by adding alt text to your images. Alt texts are words describing the image.
Adding categories and tags
Categories and tags help you optimize your website content, which helps your readers and search engines to find your content easily on your website. Categories are used to organize your content into major topics discussed on your blog while tags are the topics discussed in an individual blog post. A blog filed under the food category for example can have tags like salad, breakfast, pancakes, and so forth. You should ensure that you add proper categories and tags to your content before you publish it.
Optimize your title
Your title is the first thing a visitor will notice about your article which is why you should craft engaging titles that work. You should try using power words in your titles as they can trigger an emotional response in your users and attract them to click on your title.
Adding meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are brief snippets or HTML tags containing up to 155 characters summarizing your content. As explained over at guttulus.com, adding meta descriptions to your posts and pages make it easier for your users and search engines to understand your post better. When adding meta descriptions make sure that you include your keywords at least once.
Internal linking
Internal linking is a great way of building a contextual relationship between your older and new posts. Once you have enough posts on your blog, you can start internal linking them, which will allow you to redirect your visitors to the older posts and generate some traffic for them. adding internal links in WordPress is easy as all you have to do is select the text you want to link and when you do so a new window will pop up. Click on the link button and paste the URL of the post you want to link to then click on the Save button to save your changes.
Nofollow external links
Building backlinks is the backbone of SEO since when you link to another website, you are passing some of your site’s SEO score to that link and saying that this link is trustworthy. Therefore, if you are linking to a low-quality website, it is in your best interest to add the Nofollow attribute to your external links.
Link building for authority
According to the gurus over at runrex.com, building backlinks to your site from established websites in your niche is a surefire method to boost your rankings. Some of the ways through which you can build backlinks include writing great content that others want to link, email outreach, and guest blogging.
The above are some of the things you should be aware of as a beginner when it comes to WordPress SEO, with more information, tips, insights, and help on the same to be found over at the excellent runrex.com and guttulus.com.