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How does WordPress work in SEO
How does WordPress work in SEO
Do you want to know how does WordPress SEO works? I have both good news and bad news for you.
The bad news is that WordPress alone isn’t getting to assist you rank in Google. Because it’s just a tool.
The good news is that WordPress makes it dead simple to use SEO best practices. So even you’re a beginner at SEO, you'll optimize your website for higher Google rankings with ease.
SEO can get technical, but it doesn’t need to be. Just learning a couple of basic SEO tips to optimize your site can offer you a clear boost in your website traffic.
To understand the tactics listed here, you don't have to be a genius. If you’re already using WordPress, then you’ve can easily understand what it takes!
Let’s start optimizing your website.
The Basics of WordPress SEO:
WordPress includes a feature that allows you to hide your website from search engines (SERP). The goal of this function is to give you some time to work on your website before it goes live. However, sometimes this feature can get checked accidentally and it makes your website unavailable to look in search engines. In case if your website does not appear in the search results, the first thing you should do is make sure this option is turned off. SEO-friendly URLs contain words that clearly explain the content of the page, then both humans and search engines can read it easily. So it must use an SEO-friendly URL in WordPress SEO.
Choosing the Best WordPress SEO plugin is important:
One of the simplest parts about WordPress is there’s a plugin for everything. There are more than thousands of WordPress SEO plugins which makes it complicated for beginners to choose the perfect WordPress SEO plugin. (The complete detail to choose the best WordPress SEO plugin will come in the next Article)
Adding XML Sitemaps in WordPress:
An XML Sitemap is a specially prepared file that contains a list of all of your website's pages. It makes it easy for search engines(SERP) to find all of our site’s content.
While having an XML sitemap does not increase your site's search rankings, it does assist search engines to find our page and rank the pages.
Register Your Site into Google Search Console:
Google Search Console, often known as Webmaster Tools, is a set of tools which is provided by Google that allows website owners to understand how Google views their content. It gives you information and data to assist you to figure out how your pages appear in search results. You can also see what search terms people use to find your website, how each page of your site appears in the search results, as well as the number of times consumers visit your pages.
All of this data might assist you to figure out what works and what doesn't on your website. After that, You can plan your content strategy.
Google Search Console will also notify you if something is wrong with your website, such as when search crawlers are unable to access certain pages.
SEO-Optimizing Your Blog Content:
Every blog post and page can have a title, description, and target keyword, and all of the top SEO plugins allow you to do so. It also gives you a sneak peek at what users will see if they search for your website on Google.
To receive the most clicks, we recommend that you optimize your title and description.
Simply scroll down to the SEO section in your WordPress and use it to your advantage while composing your blog post.
Researching Keywords for Your Website:
Content authors and SEO specialists utilize keyword research as a research strategy. It aids you in identifying terms that people use to access content, products, and services in your industry using search engines.
You may then use those words and phrases on your website to increase traffic from search engines.
You can utilize a variety of keyword research tools (both free and paid).
Best Practices of WordPress SEO:
If you follow the basics of WordPress SEO and use the best WordPress SEO plugin, you will already be ahead of most websites.
However, if you want even better results, then you need to follow the WordPress SEO best practices below.
These aren’t too technical and most won’t even require you to touch any code. But they will make a big difference if you follow them.
Properly Using Categories and Tags in WordPress:
WordPress gives you the option of categorizing and tagging your blog entries. This makes it simple for you to organize your material into subjects and for your users to discover the information they need.
Search engines can better grasp your website's structure and content by using categories and tags.
Develop a habit to link internally:
Search engines provide a score for each page of our website (page authority). This score's source is kept hidden so that the results can't be influenced. However, The most frequent authority signals are links. This is why it’s important that you link to your own content from your other blog posts and pages.
You should try to interlink your own content as much as feasible. Create a pre-publish blog post checklist that requires each author to interlink at least three other blog articles if you have many authors.
This will enhance page views, the number of time readers spend on your site, and, as a result, the SEO score of your individual blog posts and pages.
WordPress Comments Can Be Optimized:
Comments on your website can be a strong indicator of user interest. More links back to your site, more traffic, and better SEO all come from engaged users.
You must, however, ensure that your comments are genuine and not spam. Spammers leave spam comments with faulty links, which can harm or even destroy your search rankings.
NoFollow External Links in WordPress :
Links, as previously said, assist search engines in determining which pages are significant. When you link to a website, you're giving that link some of your site's SEO score. "Link juice" is the term for this SEO score.
You must ensure that you are receiving more link juice from other websites than you are giving away in order to achieve good search rankings.
When you add the "no follow" tag to external links (links to websites you don't own), search engines are told not to follow them. This allows you to conserve link juice.
Posts in their entirety vs. summaries or excerpts:
WordPress links to your posts from a variety of pages, including the home page, category archive, tags archive, date archive, author pages, and so on.
On all of these pages, the complete article content is displayed by default. This has an impact on your site's SEO because search engines may consider it duplicate content. Your archive pages will also take longer to load if you have full articles.
Your page views will be affected if you display entire content everywhere. Users that subscribe to your RSS feed, for example, will be able to read the entire article in their feed reader without ever having to visit your site.
The simplest solution is to display summaries or extracts rather than whole articles.
WordPress SEO Speed & Security :
Even if you perform all of the WordPress SEO best practices listed above, if your site is slow or is hacked, your search engine rankings will definitely suffer.
Here's how to avoid losing search engine traffic affected by poor performance or bad security.
Optimizing Your Site’s Speed and Performance is Must :
Users determine whether they want to stay or leave a website within a few seconds, according to web usability experts.
As a result, you only have a few seconds to display your content and engage users as a website owner. You don't want to waste any of your visitor's time by having them wait for your website to load.
Search engines like Google prefer quicker websites in their results since user experience is so crucial. In other words, Google favors quicker websites.
Optimizing the images in WordPress for SEO :
Images are more visually appealing than text, but they take longer to load. If you aren't attentive to image sizes and quality, your website will slow down.
Make sure you utilize photos that have been optimized to load quickly.
Using a meaningful title and alt tags is another way to optimize your photographs for search engines. These tags assist search engines in determining the subject of your image. Users with visual impairments can benefit from them as well because their screen readers can read the alt text to them.
When you upload an image to WordPress, you can easily add title and alt tags.
Security and Safety of Your WordPress Site:
Google blacklists approximately 20,000 websites every week for malware and approximately 50,000 for scamming. When a website gets blacklisted, it no longer appears in any search results.
This suggests that your WordPress site's security is critical for excellent rankings. You don't want all of your SEO efforts to be for naught if your website is hacked.
Using SSL/HTTPS is Must :