9 WordPress SEO Tips to Improve Your Site Rankings
We get it. WordPress SEO isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it helps to know the basics. You can’t get more traffic if you don’t know what to fix on your website or what’s working. A good starting place is to perform an SEO audit of your website. Ideally, you’ll want to know what to improve on to get more website traffic and dominate search engine results pages. (SERPs). Below, we’ll go over nine vital WordPress SEO points to improve your rankings.
What’s an SEO Audit (and does it matter)?
An SEO audit is the process of evaluating whether your website is optimized for search. It typically involves analyzing your website to find opportunities for improvement and identify key issues to resolve. Website optimization can unlock growth opportunities, ensure you rank higher in search results, and attract more web visitors. If unsure whether your SEO strategy works, you’re a good candidate for an SEO audit.
When you perform an SEO audit, you uncover critical SEO issues that might prevent your website from topping search engine results. Afterward, you can tweak your WordPress SEO and resolve critical issues so your website becomes search-engine friendly.
1. Use XML Sitemap to Improve Indexing
For a start, check whether your website has an XML sitemap and if it’s working. Search bots typically read the XML sitemap to find and index new website pages. While a sitemap won’t necessarily get you to 1st page, it enables search bots to crawl your website effectively. As a result, search engines get to know which pages are the most valuable on your website.
If you have set up a new WordPress site, the sitemap will also help Google or Bing to discover new website content. Yoast SEO and XML Sitemaps plugins are two good options. Go to the plugins area in your WordPress dashboard, then search for any XML sitemap plugin and install it. Ensure your sitemap is enabled so search bots can find new pages when they crawl your website.
2. Find and Fix Broken URLs
A 404-error page isn’t just an eyesore but also makes it difficult for Google to process your website’s structure. Moving your website to a new domain, updating the page link, or deleting a page can all cause a 404 error. A simple typo can also trigger a 404. Too many broken links on your website aren’t good for your SEO. In fact, they can negatively impact your keyword rankings and lead to a poor user experience as visitors and search bots won’t find the page. By performing an SEO audit, you can discover and fix dead links. We recommend Broken Link Check.
3. Ensure That Your Site is Using HTTPS
Another crucial SEO item to check off your list is HTTPS. Find out whether your website has an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate encrypts and ensures sensitive information such as SSNs, login details, and credit card numbers are transmitted securely.
Google and other search engines will prioritize secure websites using HTTPS over those using HTTP. If unsure your website is secure, look for a padlock sign to the left of your browser search bar.
4. Scan your website for malicious code
While performing an SEO audit, remember to scan your WordPress site for security flaws. Chrome and other browsers use Safe Browsing to show users a warning message before they visit a dangerous site or download a harmful app.
Google safety warnings can hurt your SEO and make visitors avoid your website. Worse, Google will lower your rankings as your website contains potentially harmful programs or malware.
You can use a WordPress security scanner like Sucuri to check for malicious code, spam injections, and other website vulnerabilities. Sucuri will tell you whether your site is clean or whether core WP files were modified and then give you recommendations. It will also monitor your website for threats, including hacking attempts, DDOS attacks, and suspicious web activity while protecting the server side.
Signing up for a paid plan will unlock WordPress firewall protection, which is superior to standard firewalls. What’s more, Sucuri will serve your web content via CDN, which can dramatically improve your website speed and performance. And if your website gets infected, Sucuri experts will clean up the malicious code for free.
5. Inspect your site for Missing Metas
A meta tag is an HTML code snippet that tells search engines the content of your page, so it can rank it properly. Two common snippets are the title tag and meta description. Both usually appear on Google search results. However, Google may change the text depending on what a person is browsing.
Make sure all pages and blog posts have metas. Remember, the SEO title is the first thing a person sees in SERPs before clicking the link. Meta descriptions are right underneath and include a summary of the page or content. You can add the title and meta description to any page or post using Yoast SEO. Simply scroll down until you see the meta box, then add details.
6. Ensure Pages have Internal and External Links
In your SEO audit, check whether the pages you’re trying to rank in Google have internal and external links. Search engines typically follow links when looking for new pages to index. Using internal links and external links enables search bots to discover new content, which could boost your rankings. Links also make your website easy to navigate. Visitors can easily find information and resources. Link Whisper and All in One SEO (AIOSEO) are two useful plugins that can give you a great headstart. Both will give you linking suggestions, including which texts to hyperlink.
7. Perform a Website Speed Test
No SEO audit is complete without a speed test. Measuring your page load speed can help uncover issues that slow down your WordPress website. Find out how fast users can access your website. Here is where Pingdom Website Speed Test or the speed test tool on Monster Insights will come in handy.
Pingdown will show you the average load time in seconds, page size, and performance grade, with A being the highest and F being the lowest. Scroll down, and you’ll see practical suggestions to improve page performance.
8. Make sure your website is mobile-ready
Next up on your SEO audit checklist? Check whether your WordPress site is mobile-friendly. Google Search typically uses the mobile version for indexing purposes. So, having a mobile-friendly website will give you a boost in search results. If unsure whether your website is optimized for mobile, use Google Mobile-friendly Tool. Simply type your website’s URL and click the Test URL button.
9. Monitor your keywords rankings and traffic
Finally, check your keyword rankings in Google if you see a drop in website traffic. Monitoring your keyword rankings helps you uncover search terms or phrases visitors use to find your website and opportunities to drive even more traffic. To monitor rankings, you can use Google Search Console, which is free. But first, you have to add your website to the console. Afterward, you can navigate the Performance report and see your keyword’s performance. Semrush is another useful tool that can yield insights into your website’s performance in search engines.