Steps to Make a WordPress Blog SEO Friendly are here available If you run a WordPress website, you should optimize your blog for SEO to gain more visibility online.

Greater visibility for your blog and more organic visitors will come from higher ranks on Google and other key search engines.

We’re not even referring to light traffic. 91.5% of traffic for a keyword or phrase goes to websites featured on the first page of Google search results, claims Search Engine Journal. 32.5% of that traffic is directed solely to the top result.

There is no secret method to manipulate Google’s algorithm, but you may take measures to make your content, code, and formatting as search-engine-friendly as possible.

Here, we’ll take a closer look at those steps.

Steps to Make a WordPress Blog SEO Friendly

WordPress is regarded as one of the systems that are most SEO-friendly and come with features that can help you optimize your blog for search engines.

We’ll go through how to use these built-in capabilities as well as external services and resources in the sections below to increase your likelihood of ranking.

Step1: Select a Managed Hosting Provider.

Prior to installing WordPress, you should choose a hosting provider that can help safeguard and accelerate your website.

Although speed and security may not directly affect your ranking, a slow or compromised website may result in bad user experiences and decreased visitors.

This ultimately affects the SEO of your website.

Managed hosting is one of the four service kinds that is a great choice for optimizing your website.

In essence, managed hosting entails a joint effort between you and your hosting provider to manage a blog.

Among other things, the business will regularly cache your website, perform malware scans and daily backups, repair security gaps, and update your WordPress plugins and themes.

To put it another way, a managed hosting company aids you in maintaining a dependable, quick, and secure website.

The optimization process can be made simpler for you with managed hosting because SEO is impacted by site speed, page load times, and security.

Once you’ve made a decision regarding a hosting service, you should pick a reputable, effective hosting company.

Among many others, the WordPress community holds Blue Host and HostGator in high regard as service providers.

Step 2: Choose a WordPress Theme that is Optimized for SEO.

Did you know that this year, 60% of traffic to organic search engines came from mobile devices?

And Google shows the mobile-friendly results first for the vast majority of search searches.

For your site to be optimized for both desktop and mobile devices, you must choose a responsive theme.

When choosing a theme, you should also take the coding and design into account.

Your site’s performance may be slowed down by a badly coded or feature-rich theme, which will harm both the user experience and search ranking.

One theme that has been SEO-optimized is Brando.

In order to make it lightweight and SEO-friendly, it is fully responsive, coded using HTML5 and CSS3, and built on the Twitter Bootstrap framework.

Step 3: Check and Update your Permalinks

A permalink on your WordPress site is a permanent URL or link to a particular post or page.

WordPress by default employs a simple permalink structure, which means that your URLs will be randomly given a set of numbers and question marks to distinguish them from one another.

Although this default configuration is perfectly functional, neither readers nor search engine crawlers can understand the content or significance of your postings.

You may easily modify your permalink structure to include the keywords you’re aiming for in your post with just one click.

Search engines will be able to scan your URLs and evaluate whether your website contains the answers to specific search requests.

Simply click Settings > Permalink and use the “Post Name” option.

Step 4: Write Good Content and Write Often

When discussing vital SEO settings, this may not seem very intuitive, but in our opinion, it is a very important SEO strategy.

It takes a lot more than just good content to get your website to the top of Google.

Google has gotten fairly adept at figuring out what makes for quality content.

You should certainly use the word “motorcycling helmet cleaners” a few times in your article if you’re writing about them, but try not to overuse it.

The mere fact that your key term appears eight times in a paragraph won’t help you improve your rating; in fact, it can make it worse.

Be intelligent but write naturally. If you have a decent chance to include one or two keywords, do so, but don’t overdo it.

Even if it could be a crucial SEO setting, using it excessively can backfire.

Your SEO efforts will also be aided by a frequently updated website. Not only will Google notice that your site is active, but there will also be additional information on which to base your ranking. This has a double positive effect by increasing user engagement and retention.

As before, one of the fundamental principles of SEO is to avoid going overboard.

Ten daily updates of the same content on your website will only hurt your ranking.

By all means, post new and worthwhile content three to four times each day if you have the option.

Without a doubt, a website that updates only once a week with a truly excellent post is far more value than one that updates daily with filler.

Steps 5: Improve the Speed of Your Website

A key element is website speed. Google also takes it into account.

Additionally, there are a number of negative consequences of site speed that, when combined, will sabotage all of your efforts.

Due to the direct impact it has on the user experience, site performance is a crucial component in early exits, bounce rates, and page view times.

As a result, you will keep fewer visitors, your SEO ranking will decline, bringing in even fewer visitors, and many of the visitors who do stay will grow impatient with you.

With managed WordPress hosts, speed times in the WordPress space can be greatly improved. We heartily suggest:

• Kinsta– starts at $30 / month, 1 WordPress install, up to 20,000 visits / month
• Flywheel– starts at $13 / month, 1 WordPress install, up to 5,000 visits / month
• WPEngine– starts at $22.50 / month, 1 WordPress install, up to 25,000 visits / month

You won’t even need to check inside the engine because both of these hosts will take care of the necessary SEO settings.

To perform basic speed tests on your site, use either of these tools.

And make sure to check out this Post on how to Promote your website free

Step 5: Create XML Sitemaps

To make it simple for search engines to find, crawl, and index your material, XML sitemaps are files that list every page on your website.

A sitemap can be made manually, although the procedure involves some coding.

Otherwise, you can install a lot of sitemap plugins to handle the task for you.

You will upload your sitemap to your web server after creating it and submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster.

Every time you make a big change to your website, unless you’re using HubSpot or another platform that updates your sitemap automatically, you’ll need to update and resubmit it manually.

Search engines will continue to comprehend how your website is constructed as a result, making it easier for them to assess and rank it.

Step 6: Optimize Your Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Two crucial SEO elements are page titles and meta descriptions. They describe what readers can learn by clicking on your post or page on search engine results pages together with your URLs (SERPs).

Additionally, they assist search engine crawlers in evaluating the relevance of your material and matching it with relevant search terms.

You must meet the length requirement and include the keywords you want to rank for in your titles and meta descriptions to optimize them.

Titles and meta descriptions should ideally not exceed 60 and 160 characters, respectively.

Put your keywords up front if your title is lengthier.

In this approach, even if the title of your content is chopped off in SERPs at the conclusion, searchers will still find it relevant.

As you can see in the example below, the ranking term “on-page SEO” is positioned right at the start of the lengthy title to ensure that the snippet is still optimized for both readers and search engines.

Step 7: Set Your Categories and Tags Correctly

WordPress uses categories and tags to help you organize the content on your blog.

The general idea with categories and tags is to:

• Use categories to group your posts under a common topic
• Use tags to single out individual aspects or sub-topics of your posts

Consider the following illustration to help make this point more clear:

Here’s how three sample blog entries might be structured if you’re blogging about the most popular subject of them all: food(! ):

• Spanish Paella Recipe – category: recipes, tags: dinner, rice, spanish
• How to Make Scrambled Eggs – category: recipes, tags: breakfast, eggs
• How to Pair Wine With Food – category: drink, tags: wine

Though it’s only an illustration, you get the point. Tags are a level below categories, which are more generic.

This kind of content organization has a strong SEO advantage because WordPress makes distinct archive pages for your categories and tags.

Those automatic category and tag archive pages can develop into useful resources on their own if you have a solid category and tag structure.

Simply navigate to this blog’s WordPress tutorials category to see how this appears in action.

Step 8: Utilize an SEO Plugin:

Yoast SEO is one of the top WordPress SEO plugins (though there are viable alternatives, too).

It features everything you’ll need to turn your website into an SEO powerhouse and successfully takes care of all your crucial SEO settings.

It is updated often to stay up with search engine updates.

Yoast’s advantage is that it essentially functions as-is and doesn’t demand for any challenging configuration.

You can generally get by with factory settings.

However, tweaking a few items will only take a few minutes and can be beneficial.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Go to SEO → General → Webmaster Tools. Provide your verification code for Google Search Console. Follow the highlighted link to get your code:
2. Go to SEO → Search Appearance and go through the individual tabs.
3. Start with Content Types:

Verify that you have selected every option for your posts and pages.

The Media. There’s just one thing:

Enable the option to redirect attachment URLs to the actual attachments.

Taxonomies is the next tab. Here, you can choose how your WordPress blog’s category and tag listings will be managed.

In general, you should decide to include them in search results if your site has a lot of categories and tags.

Disable it from search if you simply have a few categories or one category.

This assists you in avoiding the problem of duplicate material, which is crucial for your fundamental WordPress blog SEO.

Archives is the next tab.

WordPress also establishes date-based archives and distinct archives for author accounts in addition to your categories and tags.

Disable the author archives for blogs with a single author.

You are free to use date archives, although many people suggest turning them off as well.

This summarizes all of Yoast’s key SEO settings.

Step 9: Optimize Your Images

Your photos need to be optimized twice. To preserve the speed and functionality of your site, you must first ensure that they are appropriately sized and compressed.

Use Imsanity, an image optimization plugin, or carry out the task manually. Next, make sure that the images have alt text.

Both search engines can better rank photos on image results pages thanks to alt text, which informs search engines about the content of the images.

Additionally, as Google currently prioritizes picture results over text results for particular keywords, it may improve your SERP ranking.

As shown in the example below, before any organic text results, the first SERP that Google returns for the query “email newsletter design” features a sizable number of clickable images.

Additionally, alt text improves accessibility for users of low-bandwidth devices or readers with visual impairments.

Step 9: Include a List of Relevant Links

On-page SEO depends on internal links. You may make it easier for search engines to find all of your information on a certain subject by connecting to your related content.

Your chances of ranking for the relevant keywords will increase as a result.

You’ll also improve their experiences and persuade them to stay on your site longer by linking to other useful topics and pages.

When you publish a new post, you can manually link your pages.

Alternately, you can utilize a plugin to automate the process of creating internal links.

A commercial WordPress plugin called Link Whisperer uses artificial intelligence to automatically recommend links when you begin writing in WordPress.

Step 10: Use Essential SEO Settings for your Posts

Each post will have a “Yoast SEO” box if you are using the Yoast SEO plugin.

For further flexibility over how your result appears on Google, use the snippet editor.

Set the focus keyword as well to acquire an evaluation of how effectively your post complies with the most recent SEO standards.

This is a fantastic technique to write content that is more geared toward search engines and, as a result, attract more visitors.

Even though a snippet is generated automatically for each post, I prefer to customize it.

These subtle details are what set serious websites apart from those that are struggling.

Step 11: Test Your Site for Mobile Friendliness

An optimized design that looks excellent on mobile devices is another thing Google wants to see with websites when it comes to crucial SEO settings.

The cause? Simple: more people access the internet now on mobile devices than on desktop and laptop computers put together.

Simple: if your site doesn’t load properly on a mobile device, you’ll drop in the rankings. Right, that doesn’t sound like a great deal, but it is still clear!

Okay, how can you be certain you’re safe? Fortunately, Google offers us a tool to evaluate our sites and make sure everything is working properly.

The Mobile-Friendly Test is the only name given to it. It is available here.

Throughly test your website with it. Check to see if there are any problems with your homepage, blog articles, or pages.

If you notice anything troubling, repair the problems using Google’s recommendations.

Plugins to Make Your WordPress Blog SEO Friendly

It takes time to continually improve your blog’s search engine optimization.

Fortunately, several of the above-mentioned tasks can be automated by WordPress plugins, making it simpler.

The plugins listed below provide a variety of functions to assist you in developing XML sitemaps, putting tags and categories in place, and creating pertinent titles and meta descriptions to improve your blog for both visitors and search engines.

1. All in One SEO

Over 2,000,000 experts utilize the well-known SEO plugin known as All in One SEO (AIOSEO).

Even total amateurs may optimize their website for SEO using this plugin in about ten minutes.

You may choose the ideal SEO settings for your sector automatically with the aid of the SEO setup wizard.

The SEO audit checklist will scan your entire website for flaws and offer a useful checklist for post and page optimization.

Additionally, you can use this plugin to alert all search engines of any adjustments and automatically create a WordPress XML sitemap.

A redirection manager, rich snippets schema, social media integration, WooCommerce SEO, and more strong features are included with AIOSEO.

2. Yoast SEO Plugin

Yoast SEO is a potent plugin that enhances your WordPress dashboard’s SEO tools and functionality.

For instance, its internal linking tool counts the internal links in an article so you can quickly determine whether it needs more links.

Additionally, it has a Snippet Preview tool that lets you simply edit and see a preview of how your material will look on search engine results pages.

You can also enter your goal keyword in the “focus keyphrase” box, and the tool will examine your content to see if you’ve used it in the post’s or page’s title, heading, introduction paragraph, URL, body, meta description, and image alt tags.

4. Elementor Page Builder Plugin

Elementor is a comprehensive tool that gives you complete control over the appearance of your website.

You may quickly and effectively search engine optimize your blog using this platform.

Use the simple Hello theme from Elementor and use the theme builder to drag and drop any content you desire onto it.

It won’t introduce any superfluous or incompatible code that would slow down the loading of your website.

To check if your post is compatible with both tablets and mobile devices, you can also utilize the Responsive Mode in the Elementor editing panel.

By making your blog responsive to all types of devices, you’ll not only guarantee a seamless user experience for all visitors but also raise your site’s search engine rating.

Finally, you won’t need to install a different internal linking plugin if you utilize Elementor.

Simply choose the text you wish to link in the text editor, and Elementor will propose pertinent stuff to link to automatically.

Conclusion

The most crucial guideline to keep in mind is that Google has always tried to understand what your content is about by imitating human behavior.

Computers are far worse than humans at determining what is useful and what isn’t. Therefore, the better your content is, the more “naturally good” it is.

While there are a few tricks and suggestions you can utilize, they won’t last long.

For instance: In the past, people would stuff their pages with keywords, hide them from view, and then swiftly climb the SEO rankings.

When Google figured out how to handle them, it severely penalized the offender websites’ rankings.

Use the tools at your disposal, write quality, focused content, and exercise common sense to provide Google with as much information about your material as you can.

These are the key SEO settings for you. If you follow best practices, all search engines will honor you with a high rating.

Tech Bango