As one of the most popular content management systems on the planet, WordPress is a platform that was created to be not only user-friendly, but also completely customizable to your unique business needs.
And there is one thing that WordPress really understands, and that is the need to rank well on the internet! Keep on reading to check out some of our best SEO tactics for WordPress.
Ways to Enhance SEO on WordPress
Page and Post Titles
One of the easiest ways to enhance your SEO is by giving your page and post titles a makeover. Go through all the pages on your site and see if there are any that would benefit from adding in some extra keywords.
For example, say you are a plumber – you could transform “plumbing” to “certified plumbing services in [city]” to boost your status in search engines and draw new potential customers.
Sitemaps
Having a sitemap is essential in order for search engines to read the pages on your website. Much like books are indexed at a library, your sitemap will house all the URLs on your website, and send the information to search engines with the help of the right plugin.
We recommend Google XML Sitemaps.
Categories and Tags
Categorizing your blog posts can help users trying to find relevant content on your website through both your site and on search engines.
And much like a library, you will want to make sure that your content is organized efficiently by properly attributing your new blog posts with categories and tags that are related to the keywords you want your content to rank for.
Interlinks
Much like having a strong external backlink profile will help your domain authority for SEO, you can help build up your website’s power through proper interlinking. This means that, where relevant, you will link to your own pages throughout your website.
Keep this tactic in mind when you are writing new copy, or doing a site evaluation. And on WordPress, a lot of the heavy lifting is done for you, because the platform allows you to search keywords to find pages or posts to link to:
Meta Data
Did you know that WordPress will automatically use your page or post title as the meta title of your page? However, when you use a meta data plugin, you have the ability to add in a custom title and description to show up on search engines.
Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack are two of the most popular plugins, and you really can’t go wrong with either!
Alt Tags
Did you know that every photo you upload to your website is stored in a media library?
Not only does it make it easy to find photos, but it also allows you to quickly add alt titles to all your photos, which helps with accessibility and Google’s readability. People can even find your site through image searches!
AMPs
Another plugin that can help with your SEO is one used to create accelerated mobile pages. These pages are simplified versions of your WordPress site that are built for speed and user-friendliness.
We recommended AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Caching
Speed has become a big factor in SEO over the past few years as Google has been cracking down on aspects of website structure and health, and making them factors in rankings.
And while we ultimately recommend hosting your website with a good company (SiteGround is our favorite), we also highly recommend investing in a good caching plugin that will improve your site’s load time. Here are a few that our clients have invested in:
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