Top WordPress SEO Strategies to Boost Your Online Visibility

WordPress powers almost half of the entire online world. More than 470 million websites rely on it, making it the most popular content management system (CMS) by a long shot.

One of the reasons for its appeal has to do with the beginner-friendly WordPress search engine optimization (SEO). Yet, keeping up with the latest strategies can be a challenge. That’s precisely where this WordPress SEO course comes in. Stick around as we provide 10 SEO tips for WordPress you can use today to make your presence on search engines more prominent.

Why Is WordPress Considered One of the Best Platforms for SEO?

When it comes to SEO, WordPress is the name of the game, and for good reason. It comes with all of the following:

• SEO-friendly code: WordPress was built with simplicity in mind. The CMS platform’s code is super clean, so search engine crawlers can easily pick it up. Obviously, the better these tools understand you, the easier they’ll index your content, and, more importantly, the higher they’ll rank it.
• Wide range of add-ons: While you could certainly do WordPress SEO without plugins, it’s the platform’s extensive plugin support that makes it especially effective for SEO. All in One SEO and Rank Math are just two examples of such tools.
• Excellent control over content: From customizable SEO WordPress URLs to meta tags, titles, headings, subheadings, and image captions, WordPress gives you full access to your content. It lets you adjust all aspects for readability and crawlability.
• Mobile responsiveness: The majority of WordPress themes are designed to make sites load quickly on phones and tablets. And sometimes, that’s all it takes to tip the scales in your favor when it comes to WordPress SEO.
• Strong community support: Users of open-source software are often really friendly and helpful. The WordPress SEO Reddit community is no exception, as it’s filled with thousands of people always ready to share their experiences and give you practical WordPress SEO tips.

10 WordPress SEO Tips for Improving Your SERP Ranking

With the WordPress SEO features out of the way, we can move on to discussing how to improve SEO on WordPress. To help you get started, we have compiled a list of the top 10 pieces of advice you can add to your SEO strategy, so let’s get right into it.

Create High-Quality Posts

Helpful content has always been crucial for WordPress SEO. That remains true today, and even more so in the era of ChatGPT-spewed nonsense. While these AI-driven bots can be helpful, they often lack one thing that differentiates great content from filler: value.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach here, though. Successful WordPress articles are all about understanding what your users want and giving it to them in a creative manner.

After all, despite its new AI Mode, Google (and other search engines) still appreciates originality and content that explores new angles. So do users, which is why you’ll first need to understand what they want with a bit of keyword research.

Research Your Keywords and Optimize Content Accordingly

Every site that pops up when you Google "how to do SEO on WordPress" will tell you about keywords, and for good reason. Even with all the SEO changes and AI SEO tools, these elements remain the top method for finding content you’re interested in.

But you can’t just go for any keywords and call it a day. Instead, you’ll have to figure out which phrases your target audience is using with some good old keyword research.

Once you’ve covered that, adding the right terms to your content becomes a breeze. What’s more, this will greatly increase your chances of popping up in search results, just like a marketing agency shows up when you look up WordPress SEO services.

Structure Your Tags for Readability

Most readers just skim through content instead of reading the whole thing. That’s precisely why having clear headings with well-structured sections matters.

These elements should also be arranged in a logical manner. For instance, H3s should always appear after H2s, which themselves only come after an H1. That creates a hierarchy that makes it easier for both readers and search engines to understand your content.

Your headings can include keywords, as well. However, not every heading needs one, and overstuffing them can negatively impact WordPress SEO.

Take Care of Your Metas

Metadata may not directly impact SERP ranking, but it still helps both search engine crawlers and readers understand what your page is all about. As such, it plays a significant albeit supporting role in online visibility.

Most WordPress SEO optimization guides suggest keeping the meta title between 50 and 60 characters, whereas the meta description should be about 150 to 160 characters in length. After all, search engines are known to cut metadata that’s too long.

And while these elements should primarily describe the contents of your WordPress blog post, they can also carry a few keywords. Just don’t overfill them and focus on including the primary phrases you’re trying to rank for.

Customize Your URLs

WordPress permalinks, or URLs, can affect both SEO and readability. Fortunately, the platform gives you complete control over these elements, so you can easily configure them yourself.

When doing SEO for WordPress blogs, you generally want permalinks that at least hint at what your page is about. And while you could do that manually with WordPress, the best way to go about it is to just pick "Post name" in Settings > Permalinks. This option automatically creates easily readable URLs with relevant keywords for you.

Add Visual Elements to Your Pages

WordPress blogs are first and foremost textual. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have images and other visuals, like graphs or illustrations, for example.

After all, it’s visuals like these that grab the visitors' attention. They also help you simplify complex topics and make your blog stand out in a sea of other text-focused ones.

On another note, visual content also supports WordPress SEO by increasing the time visitors spend on your site. However, these elements are only effective if they’re properly taken care of.

Optimize Your Images

Images of certain formats, such as PNG, for example, can take several MBs of space, so adding images without any modifications simply won’t cut it. In fact, it can even slow down your WordPress site. And as we know by now, the site’s loading speed does impact SEO.

So, before you click upload, you should first take care of all the images you intend to use. This typically involves converting them to a single format, such as WebP and AVIF. You can then further compress and resize the images to optimal SEO WordPress settings.

Take Advantage of Image Alt Tags

While adding images (and other visual elements) makes content more dynamic for the readers, it doesn’t do anything for search engine crawlers. These tools don’t "see" images. Instead, they rely on textual descriptions to understand what’s going on. So, you’ll need to help them out by naming your images and adding highly descriptive alt tags.

Most WordPress SEO advice mentions using lowercase letters and keeping both names and tags as short and as relevant as possible. The more accurate these are, the better the indexing will be. Both of these elements can also include keywords, but you shouldn’t overload them, either.

Focus on Internal Linking

Links are a key part of optimizing WordPress for SEO, as they primarily help search engine crawlers find other pages of your WordPress site. The same goes for users, who are likely to click on a relevant link to find out more, which keeps them on your site longer.

But that’s also the thing with links. While they’re an untapped goldmine for doing SEO for WordPress websites, they must also be useful to the reader and relevant to the topic. Otherwise, you’re just risking pushing away both search engines and readers.

Use a Reliable WordPress SEO Plugin

Last but not least, you’ll need a tool to take care of all of the aforementioned elements. The WordPress SEO Yoast plugin is a prime example, as it offers both content analysis and optimization features, even in its free version.

Other popular options also include All in One SEO (AIOSEO), Rank Math, and SEOPress, as well as Broken Link Checker, Monster Insights, Redirection, SchemaPro, and WP Rocket. Each of these excels in certain areas of doing SEO for a WordPress website, whether that’s monitoring for broken links, handling old URLs, or caching.

Conclusion

WordPress SEO refers to a set of practices that help sites on this particular CMS platform achieve better search engine visibility. By following the best SEO tips, you’ll be able to drive more users to your WordPress site. More importantly, you’ll manage to convert some of these into customers and increase your profits.

That said, mastering SEO for WordPress takes time. It could also be months before you see any real results. But once you get the hang of it, all the effort you’ve put into it will pay off through a steady flow of traffic that sticks around.

FAQ

Can you do SEO on WordPress?

Absolutely! In fact, there’s an abundance of WordPress SEO free tools you can use. This involves built-in features and plugins, such as Rank Math and AIOSEO. The platform’s high levels of content customization and mobile-friendly themes are also vital for ranking high on search engines.

How do I enable SEO on WordPress?

When doing SEO for WordPress, the first thing you’ll need to take care of is crawlability. Simply head into Settings > Reading and uncheck the box next to "Discourage search engines from indexing this site". From there, you should install the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin (or other similar add-ons), set it up, and follow the rest of our WordPress SEO tutorial.

Which SEO is best for WordPress?

What you consider the best WordPress SEO plugin depends on your needs. For the majority of users, All in One SEO would likely be the top choice, as it’s a super user-friendly tool. However, Yoast SEO and Math Rank are both great options, too. The former is widely used for content analysis, whereas the latter offers a robust free version.

Is WordPress hosting good for SEO?

One of the key elements of every WordPress SEO checklist is fast loading. Fortunately, the platform’s hosting plans absolutely deliver in this department. To begin with, the servers utilize powerful CPUs to ensure seamless performance. They’re also available on 6 continents, so your visitors won’t have dozens of nodes between them and the content, which also improves speed.