How to Optimize Your WordPress Site for SEO in 2024
Organic search is a fancy-sounding name for non-advertised search engine results. However, marketers can use this for marketing by using search engine optimization.
So, if you’re someone running a WordPress website, what’s the best way to ensure your website can reach a larger audience?
Well, the answer involves a couple of factors, which we are going to discuss in this article.
Before you can focus on the finer details like schema markups and XML tags, you’re going to need to set up your website properly first. Get a reliable web hosting service and a suitable domain name. Set up themes to give your website a polished look and install some plugins to make the process smoother.
To make sure you can do this without any hiccups, you will have to look around for a fast internet connection which offers its service in most parts of the U.S and has a proactive customer support. That really helps. For instance, if you are using Xfinity internet, and you run into a connectivity issue, all you have to do is call Xfinity customer service and they will take it from there. You know that your issue will be resolved at earliest.
Once your website is set up, let’s move on to how you can optimize your WordPress site for SEO in 2024.
Understanding the Basics of SEO
Keyword Research and Content Optimization
SEO Plugins to Use With Your WordPress Website
5 Things to Do for Technical SEO in WordPress
Analyzing and Monitoring SEO Performance
Understanding the Basics of SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving various elements on your website to make it more visible on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex. This helps your website become more visible when people look up products, services, or information you provide.
When your website is on top of the search results, there’s a higher chance that people click on your site, which ultimately leads to more sales, audience, or clients.
With Google raising the bar on high-quality content, it’s important to make sure that your content stands out, as well as provides more value to the user. Not only that but there are other factors like backlinks and user experience that dictate how well your website ranks in search engines.
Before we talk about WordPress SEO best practices, let’s talk a bit about how you can ensure great content on your website.
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Keyword Research and Content Optimization
Targeting the right keyword helps you make sure that you always reach the right audience.
After all, you wouldn’t want to sell dog toys to someone looking for a PlayStation 5 controller, right?
Keyword research will help you find which keywords are the best to target and it will provide insight into queries your target audience is searching for. Use these insights to create a content strategy as well as your overall marketing strategy.
Tools for keyword research can help you find which phrases and words you need to target, to reach your target audience. Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner can help you do this.
Once you create the actual content, you need to make sure it’s user-friendly. The first thing you need to focus on is its layout.
Make sure your pages have title elements and the keywords are placed in their order of importance. Try incorporating phrases of keywords naturally in your content. Make sure not to add any fluff or oversaturate your content. This will help your content appeal to both users as well as search engines.
SEO Plugins to Use With Your WordPress Website
There are some plugins that you absolutely must use with your WordPress website. Let’s take a look at some of them.
YoastSEO
- Clean up old data and import existing settings
- Traffic light style system to show what works and what doesn’t
YoastSEO is a great plugin that’s already loved by the WordPress community. The tool does a great job of providing you with a sense of security since it’s a tried and true solution for SEO.
The setup process is smooth and has all the essentials you’re going to need for your website. You also have the option of importing your previous settings from other tools like TSF, AIOSEO, and WPMeta.
The plugin features an intuitive traffic light system that can analyze and show if your pages are doing good or need improvement in a few places. You can also get suggestions such as trimming your meta description to keep it within the character limit or adding keywords.
It’s not a fully free SEO tool, and Yoast Premium can get you access to other features like generative AI that can create meta titles automatically.
Rank Math
- Provides instant indexing on Bing and Google
- Helps analyze and fix website issues
Rank Math is a great plugin that can help you with your website speed and SEO, as well as help improve its search engine ranking and traffic.
The plugin offers a ton of features, and the best part is that you don’t have to pay to use a lot of them. A great example of this is the redirection feature, which is a paid feature in YoastSEO but is entirely free in Rank Math.
Rank Math also allows you to choose up to five keywords which can help you get an advantage in search engine rankings, without having to spend extra money for more keywords.
Rank Math is one of those SEO plugins for WordPress that you need to have in your arsenal to make sure your website attracts a lot of visitors.
5 Things to Do for Technical SEO in WordPress
Here are five things you need to do when performing technical SEO for your WordPress website.
SSL Certificate and HTTPS
A huge factor that contributes to the ranking of your website is its security and framework.
Search engines prefer websites that use HTTPS rather than HTTP. To secure your website, you’re going to need an SSL certificate which is used to encrypt the connection from the user’s browser and the website’s server.[SF1]
You can make sure your website is secure by going to your website and looking for the padlock icon in the browser search bar towards the top left side of the window.
Mobile Optimization
With around 95.8% of internet traffic being dominated by mobile phone users, it’s important to set up your website to have a mobile-friendly design.
Due to the high influx of mobile traffic on the internet, Google switched its model to index mobile-first in 2018. This means that Google will look at the mobile version of your website to determine its ranking.[SF2]
This is why it’s crucial to optimize your WordPress website for mobile users as well as desktop users.
Schema Markups
These help search engines understand your website’s content in a better way which helps it display your content in a relevant manner.[SF3]
Schema Markups can be used for blogs, addresses, and the FAQ section as well as smaller details like reviews, author bios, and more. Utilizing this, also helps Google capture featured snippets, which can further boost your website’s authority.
You can use various plugins like AIOSEO to add a schema markup for WordPress.
Setting Up XML Sitemaps
Another big factor that makes it easy for search engines to find your website is XML sitemap creation.[SF4]
This tells the search engine about the important parts of your website, which makes it easier for the crawler to navigate your site and index your content faster. WordPress plugins like AIOSEO can help you create and customize your website’s sitemap.
While having an XML sitemap won’t instantly boost your website’s ranking, it will help with the crawling and indexing process.
Optimizing Website Speed
The speed of your website plays a huge role in the SEO framework of your WordPress website. Google uses the load speed of a webpage as a ranking factor, which means that faster-loading sites will generally rank higher compared to slower websites.[SF5]
One of the biggest factors that contributes to your website’s load speed is images. Try using WebP format instead of JPG and PNG, since WebP provides both lossy and lossless compression as well as animation.
Try using simpler HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code on your website since complex code can add to your website’s load time.
You can also check the website’s load time by running a speed test using plugins like MonsterInsights.
Analyzing and Monitoring SEO Performance
While you work on the technical SEO for your website, it’s important to analyze your website from time to time, to see if the steps you’re taking are making a difference.
Google Analytics is a great tool to check your website’s performance as well as any marketing campaigns you’re running. Google Search Console is another great free platform that allows website owners to monitor how they rank on Google’s search engine and optimize the site’s organic presence.
You can view referring domains, rich search results, mobile site performance as well as the highest-traffic pages and queries.
Make sure you perform regular SEO audits to identify and fix any issues with your website.
SEO isn’t something that can be explained in one article. However, these tips should help you gain a significant boost in clicks and traffic, along with a boost in search engine rankings.
