Content is the real hero of every blog, which delineates the ideas and defines the entire work. One puts a lot of hard work, time, and brainstorming to put their thoughts into words. A writer gets snowed under to carve out a perfect blog, so it is better to make sure your blog gets optimized and performs well on search engines.
It is essential to get all your SEO techniques together to justify the blood, sweat, and tears shed while writing it for a well-written blog. Here are some of the best tips to optimize your blog posts for WordPress SEO. You can exert them to optimize your work and bring overwhelming traffic to the blog. We have compiled all the information ranging from fundamental blogging tactics to the best tips to optimize your blog posts on WordPress in this article.
If you have already worked with WordPress, you must know that it is one of the most SEO-friendly platforms available online. WordPress follows the best SEO practices, giving bloggers an open space to optimize their work and rank their blogs better.
Before we begin with tips to optimize your blog on WordPress SEO, here is a pudding of essential information regarding blogging, SEO, and WordPress, which will help you better understand the search engine world.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a strategy used by bloggers and website owners to improve the ranking of their website and coax more traffic through search engines. All this can’t be done through some foul play but requires a planned strategy of optimized content and arranging it to make it easy for search engines to rank your blog highest.
What is WordPress?
WordPress has been ruling the internet since 2003 by powering around 35% of the content on the internet. That means one in every four websites you visit is powered by one of the internet’s most prominent players. Now how is it possible for WordPress to allow so many websites to operate through one single Content Management System?
WordPress is a basic tool that a creator can use to generate their website. It is an open content management system licensed under GPLv2+ through which one can launch a website, edit, manage and optimize their content as per their need. Now the reason for this massive success of WordPress is that a user doesn’t need to acquire high-tech knowledge about programming to use WordPress. You can create your website through WordPress without even learning the programming language.
What is WordPress SEO?
As WordPress has zeroed down the significant tiresome chunk of work for you, here comes the actual work that needs to be done on your part to get a better ranking of your website on search engines. Creating a blog on WordPress doesn’t guarantee you a better ranking, but it’s like a deep dive into a space where a lot of good content is already floating. You have to focus more on WordPress SEO to rank in the highest slab of Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). You have to focus on generating great content and bringing better links to your website. Make sure your website doesn’t have any technical lag, which will hinder the performance of your website.
Tips To Optimize Your Blogs on WordPress
1] Check Site’s Functioning
You need to tick a lot of boxes to get your website functioning properly. The first thing you can do to enhance the website’s performance is to go through a health check-up of your website. WordPress provides you a tool under the Site Health section where you can check the performance of the site. This plugin provides you with an option that can assist you in improving the WordPress SEO.
2] Choose Right Hosting Provider
It is a smart move to choose the right hosting provider for your website. An excellent hosting provider accounts for a better site speed, uptime, and security of your website. Many people choose to opt for a cheaper hosting provider to save money which eventually hinders the ranking of their website. All the hard work done on the content of the website goes down the drain. Even WordPress recommends three providers, i.e., Bluehost, DreamHost, and SiteGround, making your work easier on optimization.
3] Check Site’s Visibility
Many people have encountered zero traffic on their websites. If you are one of them, then you must read along with this point carefully. In WordPress, there is a feature that can make your website go invisible on the internet. This feature is built to give you time to develop and work upon your website before it goes live. However, many people forget to uncheck this setting and wonder why there is no traffic coming to their website. If you want to check your site’s visibility, follow the steps: Settings > Reading > Search Engine Visibility > Save Changes.
4] URL Structure
If you are planning to optimize your blogs on WordPress, one of the basic steps to start with is to create an SEO-friendly URL. Now, you must be wondering what an SEO-friendly URL would be like? Here, see the below sets of URLs:
- https://example.com/rise-indian-content-creators/
- https://example.com/tags/business/2019/01/01/complete-list-of-top-indian-youtubers-of-2018-tech-health-fashion-education-more/
These two URLs are created for similar topics, but their ranking varies from top 3 search results and ranking on the tenth page, respectively. It would be best if you created a URL that gives the reader a gist about the content. It needs to be crisp, informative, and SEO friendly to get a better ranking on SERPs for WordPress SEO.
5] Upgrade PHP Version
WordPress is considered to be one of the most SEO-friendly content management systems for a reason. It provides you with everything which can improve the website’s performance in any way. To enhance the working of your website, upgrade your PHP version to at least 7.0 or higher. According to stats, there are plenty of websites that still run on 5 version series, which is one of the primary reasons websites don’t perform well. WordPress has even stopped giving support for any version which is older than 5.6. It is recommended to run WordPress on at least PHP 7.3 for the excellent performance of your website.
6] Work On Permalink Structure
The ones who are thinking of launching their website must go through this point carefully. It can help your website with a good start. A Permalink structure defines the way your page and post URLs will look like. If you create a more straightforward and organized structure for your links, it will impact the quality of your website for search engines. By default, your permalinks will be created like abcd.com/5?=689. It is better to choose a structured style for it while creating your website. People who already have a running website with default settings must not change it as it may cause some SEO issues.
7] Curate SEO Friendly Content
As we said at the beginning of this blog, content is the real hero of a website. So, it’s always wiser to keep a check on your content. While writing your content, make sure you follow the SEO-friendly tricks and tips of content writing. Give your content a proper structure that makes it easier for the reader to understand. Create appropriate headings, subheadings, and meta descriptions when and where required. Add relevant and good keywords to your content which can improve the ranking of your website. One of the most important things to keep in mind while writing the content is to insert your keywords only when required. Do not overload your blog with unnecessary keywords because that won’t help your page.
We hope this article will help you optimize the content on WordPress and improve the ranking of your website. So, what are you waiting for? Bookmark this post and get started for WordPress SEO!