WordPress SEO – The Definitive Guide 2023

 A guide for WordPress SEO Basics

WordPress is used by 27% of all websites on the internet. It is one of the greatest content management systems when it comes to SEO. You must, however, roll up your sleeves and optimize it for maximum efficiency.

This WordPress SEO lesson will assist you in optimizing your website or blog and gaining a competitive advantage!

Use URLs that are SEO-friendly.

The first 3-5 words in your URL have more weight with Google. For instance, "WordPress SEO" is the URL for this post. Use your target term at the start of the URL, if at all feasible, for the greatest results.

WordPress URLs aren't SEO-friendly by default, but this can easily remedied. Change the permalinks for your posts to Post name under Settings – Permalinks.

 

Make your titles SEO-friendly.

The title tag in WordPress is the most important on-page SEO component. Start your title with your keyword or put it at the beginning for the greatest results.

There are a number of title generator programs available to assist you in creating efficient click titles:

Hemingway Sharethrough – It will show how engaging is your headline.

SEOPressor’s Title Generator – A free title generator that will generate catchy titles for your blog posts.

Portent’s Content Idea Generator – This is one of my favorites. It can help you to create a headline just by entering a topic.

Blog Title Generator by BlogAbout – This is an excellent tool that provides optimized ideas.

Title Generator by TweakYourBiz – You’ll get a bunch of ideas just after entering a  topic.

Modifiers should be added to your title.

Modifiers can aid in the ranking of long-tail variations of your main keyword. Modifiers such "2023," "best," "guide," and "review, etc." should be used.

Make your descriptions more effective.

One of the most important ways to acquire more clicks in Google search results and boost your rankings and traffic is to improve your descriptions.

When individuals use Google to search for anything, they scan the results and choose based on the title and description. Your title should be complemented by your description.

It should also include your major keyword, as Google will bold the search phrase if it appears in the description.

How to improve it and increase the number of clicks:

1.   Take a look at the paid advertisements on Google Adwords. They've been tweaked to encourage people to click on them. Ad text, on the other hand, should only be used if it is relevant to your content.

2.   Examine the top 10 Google results immediately above you. Look for terms and phrases that they don't have but you do. Select terms that seem to match your description well.

3.   Use a precise number — people respond well to material that is numerically specific.

4.   Everyone is in a rush, therefore provide a quick solution. You will earn more clicks if you provide a solution within a certain time range.

5.   So, what exactly is it that I'm looking for? Try to be as specific as possible while describing the benefits.

Remove any information that is either too short or too long.

When you have the same material on many pages of your website or blog, you have duplicate content.

WordPress creates numerous archive URLs for you automatically. Furthermore, if you use tags, it produces tag pages. This might harm your SEO by producing redundant content and pages.

How to avoid duplicate content:

·       Only put your content in one category. When you publish an item in several categories, it will show on many URLs, resulting in duplicate material. If you absolutely must utilize many categories for a single post, use rel=canonical.

·       WordPress archives, which are produced automatically by default, can be disabled or no-indexed.

 

·         Tags should be set to no-index.

You can either disable archives completely or set them to no-index, which will prevent Google from indexing your tags.

How to check if you already have duplicate content?

Google Search Console and Siteliner are the best places to start.

There are two main ways to handle duplicate content:

1.Delete the duplicate content

2. Add a canonical URL to each version. You can change Canonical URLs in Yoast SEO.

Why should you remove or set no-index to your thin pages? Because they usually are low-quality or out-of-date pages that nobody visits. You need to remove them because they lower your overall quality score.

XML sitemaps

They are necessary since they assist Google in crawling and indexing the pages of your website. If you have the Yoast SEO plugin installed, your website will have XML sitemap capability. Click on Yoast SEO plugin – XML Sitemaps to view your XML settings.

Content Optimization

One of the most crucial components of any SEO strategy is your content. Content with high-quality backlinks is ranked higher by Google. That is why you should devote a significant amount of time and effort to creating content that ranks.

Let's get started on optimizing it right away!

Keyword sweet spots

The first 100-150 words of your post should include your major keyword to help Google comprehend what your website is about.

It's also a good idea to put it at the end of the piece, in the last 50-100 words. This indicates that your page's main theme is concerning your target keyword. From the start to the finish.

Use LSI keywords

Keywords that are semantically connected to your principal term are known as LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing). Alternatively, these are the terms that appear at the bottom of the Google search results page.

LSI keywords in your content will aid Google in determining the relevance of your page. Don't go overboard; just utilize keywords that are relevant to your content.

Create Long Content

In Google search results, quality in-debt content fare higher. Why? Because they have a higher number of visits, backlinks, and social shares.

 

This does not imply that you should begin creating 2,000-word essays on how to change a light bulb! The length of your material will vary depending on your sector. Just make sure you go over your topic in greater depth and provide more pertinent information. That concludes our discussion.

Use Outbound Links

Make a lot of links to high-quality resources. When you link to other authoritative resources, you're telling Google that you're serious about providing excellent content by quoting well-known websites or blogs.

pro tip - Set outbound links to open in a new tab. When your visitors click on a reference link, they will stay on your page longer, increasing the amount of time they spend on your site.

Use Internal Links

Internal links connect and arrange your material, making it easier for users to explore your website. As a result, users remain longer. Internal linking distributes link juice (ranking power) throughout your pages as well.

Boost Dwell Time

The time visitors stay on your site is an extremely strong signal for Google about your website’s quality. That is why you need to create only 10x content, which is relevant and up to date

Multimedia will also assist in retaining visitors for extended periods of time. Use photographs, videos, slide shows, quizzes, and audio versions of your material, among other things.

Encourage others to talk. At the end of each post, invite your readers to make blog comments.

entice them to return

Return visits indicate that you are a valuable resource. To entice readers to return, develop material in installments or announce what will be coming next at the conclusion of each piece.

Do you have an email subscription form on your website? You're missing out on a tremendous opportunity to engage with your guests if you don't. Offer them sign up for free updates and send them an email when a new article is published.

At the conclusion of the post, I included a list of some great plugins for growing your email list.

Resurrection of Content

Google favors new material and frequently rewards it with a higher position. Over the course of several months, go over your finest articles and update them if they are out of date.

When people are seeking for information, they look at the date the piece was written, and they prefer to ignore stuff that is 6-12 months old.

At the top, mention the last time you updated and enhanced your content.

You may also hide the date of publication.

Conduct Keyword Research

Use keyword research tools to find topics and keywords you should target. Google Keyword Planner is the best free option and Semrush and Ahrefs are the best premium tools.

There is a new paid tool that is very affordable and does an awesome job too – Kwfinder.com. With the latest Keyword Planner updates, this tool is the fastest and most affordable way to find good keywords.

Use Buttons for Social Sharing

Social shares don't immediately assist your SEO, but they do help you gain more visitors, which is linked to higher Google ranks.

You may believe that people would automatically share material that they enjoy, but you are mistaken! In fact, according to a BrightEdge research, social sharing buttons may boost social sharing by 700%. Some of social sites like a Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, etc,…

Responsive design is a good idea.

There are more searches on mobile than on desktop.

Google even started to penalize mobile unfriendly sites. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to find out if your theme is doing well. In case it isn’t you can use plugins like WPtouch which creates a mobile version of your website.

Or get a better theme. Good themes are optimized for mobile.

Technical SEO

Boost Site Speed

Have you ever pushed the Back button on your browser because a page took more than 3 seconds to load? More than 40% of people do exactly the same thing.

Website speed is extremely important for your SEO success.

According to Alexa fast-loading sites rank significantly higher than slow-loading sites. Keep in mind Google ranks pages, not sites but if your website is fast all your page has a better potential to rank for your target keywords.

There is a straightforward explanation.

 

If your website is sluggish and users quit it, the amount of time they spend on it, the bounce rate, the average number of impressions per visit, and so on will all suffer. These are all important Google ranking variables.

Let's see how quick your website is. You can make use of the following resources:

Gtmetrix is a company that specializes in data analysis. It assigns a grade to your site's performance and makes suggestions for how to improve it.

Pingdom Website Speed Test – Speed Test, DNS Health Ping, and Traceroute (measure server response time). They offer real user monitoring services which I highly recommend. They show your website’s loading times distribution in different locations.

Google PageSpeed Insights – This tool grades your website score on desktop and mobile devices.

Varvy Page Speed Optimization – This tool creates an awesome visual summary of your website’s speed performance.

Speed Factors

• Image Optimization
• Group JavaScript and CSS files
• Use Caching Plugin
• Caching information (expires header)
• Add LazyLoad to your images
• Gzip compression
• Widget/Plugin Overload
• Optimize your WordPress database
• Disable hotlinking
• Fast WordPress Theme
• Use CDN for static files
• Use a solid web host
• Decrease the number of Ads
• External Embedded Media
• Control a number of post revisions
• Turn off pingbacks and trackbacks
• Optimize your home page

Image Optimization

Your goal term should be included in the file name of your image. Don't go too far with this. Let's assume a post or page has five photos. Only use your keyword in the most crucial 1-2 photos. Make use of several permutations and combinations of your primary keyword. For example, my first picture in this post is titled "WordPress-SEO," but I may alternatively label photos "WordPress-SEO-tips" or "SEO-tips," and so on.

Also, in a meaningful way, put your goal term in your ALT TEXT. Don't just cram it full of keywords.

Image types

• JPEG – Suitable for photographs and designs with people, places, or things.
• PNG – the best choice for graphics, logos, text-heavy designs, screenshots, and when you need images with transparent backgrounds
• GIF – only if you need animation.

Image dimensions — resize your photos to the precise size you need them on the page, or WordPress will use server resources to auto-resize them, causing your page to take longer to load.

To resize your photographs, you may use Picresize, a free web application.

Image compression - Compressing your photographs without sacrificing quality is one of the simplest methods to improve them. The two most prevalent methods are to do it one at a time or to utilize a plugin.

Make use of the following online resources:

TinyPNG – Despite the name TinyPNG optimize both PNG and JPEG images.

Pro Tip: After you download your optimized image from TinyPNG reupload it and repeat the process a couple of times to squeeze even more KBs.

Optimizilla – You may even glance at a preview of the optimized image. This saves time since the quality can be checked and controlled in real time.

You can also use TinyPNG, WP Smush, or EWWW Image Optimizer plugins which optimize your images automatically.

Group JavaScript and CSS files

The aim is to merge JS, HTML, and CSS files in order to compress and deliver them in a way that speeds up website loading.

You may use the WP Super Minify plugin or W3 Total Cache, both of which provide similar features, for free.

WP Rocket, a caching plugin that saves me time and performs everything from caching to minification, is my personal favorite.

Use caching plugin

What is Caching?

When a visitor comes to your website, his browser saves all of the photos, CSS files, JavaScript, and other items in a temporary folder to improve the user experience. Your website will load faster when this visitor navigates to another page or returns in a few days.

How caching plugins works?

Instead of loading all of the data from your website again, they save the dynamically produced HTML files and deliver them from the cache (i.e. previously generated data) whenever a request is made.

The most popular free caching plugins are WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. If you can afford it I strongly recommend using WP Rocket which offers more functionality.

Caching information (expires header)

Expires headers instruct the browser whether or not to request a certain file from the server or to get it from the browser's cache.

The goal of Expires Headers is not just to decrease the number of downloads from the server (repeatedly downloading the same file when it hasn't changed wastes valuable load time), but also to reduce the number of HTTP requests.

Here's where you can learn more about expires headers and how to use them. You might also utilize the Far Future Expiry Header plugin.

Add LazyLoad to your images

Only the photos visible in the visitor's browser window are served via LazyLoad. The additional photos begin to load as they scroll down. LazyLoad saves bandwidth by loading less data. It is not required to load all of the photographs because some viewers will not browse down to the bottom of the page.

Gzip compression

The Gzip technique compresses and shrinks your files. It is enabled on most servers, but you may check if it is on yours. Check out these resources for further information:Enable gzip compression and GTmetrix Gzip

Widget/Plugin overload

Remove any widgets or WordPress pluginsthat you don't use, and your blog's performance will increase by a few milliseconds.

Optimize your WordPress database

WP-Optimize is a plugin that will help you optimize your database (spam, post revisions, drafts, tables, etc.) I can also suggest the WP-DB Manager plugin, which allows you to plan database optimization days.

Disable hotlinking

Hotlinking is considered "bandwidth theft." When other websites employ direct connections to your website's files, this is known as cross-linking (images, video, etc.) This puts more strain on your server and slows down your website.

The best option is to add a line of code to your.htaccess file in the root directory of your WordPress site. This tutorial will walk you through the procedure step by step.

Fast WordPress Theme

Not all WordPress themes are equal in terms of speed. Your theme should load quickly, be updated frequently, be compatible with the most recent WordPress version, and be mobile-friendly.

This is frequently mentioned on the sales page of a good theme supplier. If there is no information or you are using a free theme, you may use the speed test tools described previously in the post to see how quick it is.

Installing pirated themes on your site is never a good idea. They almost always include hidden links in the footer, malware, or backdoor code that might lead to your site being hacked. Always do your study before picking a free theme and make sure it's included in the WordPress theme directory.

Use CDN for static files

Your multimedia static files are stored on numerous servers across several geographic regions via a content delivery network (CDN). When a visitor visits your website, the CDN service will load the pictures on the pages he visits from the server that is nearest to his physical location.

For instance, suppose your website is hosted in the United States. Your website receives a visitor from the United Kingdom. A server from your CDN provider is located in Germany.

It will load your website's files for that visitor from a German server, not from one in the United States. This will improve the user experience and speed up your website.

Another wonderful advantage of CDN is that it reduces the amount of bandwidth used by your server.

Traditional CDN service providers, such as MaxCDN or Cloudflare, give additional safety for your website.

Use a solid web host

There can be no compromises when it comes to WordPress hosting.

You may choose reliable shared hosting services like Bluehost or Asmallorange if you're just getting started, on a low budget, and don't plan to have 50k visitors per month in the next 12 months.

I utilize TrafficPlanet for larger projects like FortuneLords. These people are the greatest, with the fastest and friendliest customer service I've ever encountered.

Pro Tip - If you're on a limited budget, a mix of shared hosting and a CDN can produce excellent results.

Decrease the number of Ads

You may be utilizing certain advertisements that are too huge and not optimized for performance, depending on the ad network you're using. Use GTmetrix to see how big your adverts are and how long they take to load.

Determine which are your best-performing ad spots on your ad network's dashboard and delete the remainder.

Limit External Embedded Media

When embedding external resources, make sure they don't take forever to load. Personally, I exclusively use material from large websites that don't skimp on speed, such as Youtube, Giphy.com, and others.

Control a number of post revisions

Every single one of these manuscripts would be saved permanently by WordPress. If you're a nerd like me, each post may go through 50-100 edits. You don't need these drafts if your content is already published, right?

Turn off pingbacks and trackbacks

You may use trackbacks to let other WordPress sites know that you've linked to them. Pingbacks will automatically notify them whenever you link to a WordPress blog.

Sounds fantastic, however there is so much spam these days that this is an almost worthless tool that sucks up system resources.

To disable them, go to Settings-Discussion and uncheck the top two boxes, then click "Save changes" at the bottom of the page.

Optimize your home page

Many of us make the mistake of cramming a lot of information onto the front page. It should be optimized for lead generation and speed.

How to make your home page better:

• Instead of entire postings, show extracts.

• Keep the amount of postings on the page to a minimum. On my home page, I prefer to have 3-5 posts.

• Remove any sharing widgets from the main page that aren't essential (include them only in posts).

Other Important Technical SEO Tips

Eliminate Errors

Check Google Search Console  on a regular basis to see if your website has any technical or indexation issues.

You could also check for broken links using the Broken Link Checker. It scans your material for broken links and missing pictures, as well as allowing you to disable search engines from tracking broken links.

Uptime Monitoring 

Serious marketers and online company owners keep a constant eye on their site's uptime. Frequent downtimes can harm your SEO and may result in a long-term drop in your results. Pingdom (paid) and Uptimerobot are two of my favorite tools (freemium).

 

You now know how to improve the SEO performance of your WordPress website or blog.