Crucial Steps to Boost Your WordPress SEO

One of the reasons why you have probably chosen WordPress as your website’s content management system (CMS) might be as you have read that it is SEO-friendly out of the box. In fact, you just have to check out WordPress’ own list of ‘powerful features’ on their homepage in order to see that they are proud of the fact that the platform is SEO-friendly.

But this doesn’t mean that simply launching a WordPress website is sufficient in order to rank at the top of the search engines. You are still required to understand the correct SEO tactics to use as well as how to implement these. But the wonderful news is that WordPress makes this easy to do and makes it quite easy for beginners to grow their traffic from Google.

The platform has many features which adhere to SEO best practices to make your life simpler, meaning you are able to focus your efforts on the tasks which make a real difference to your rankings in addition to your organic visibility.

Choose A Dependable Hosting Provider

You need to make sure that you are hosting your website with a reliable provider — site speed, uptime as well as security are all important reasons to think very carefully about who you will use as your host.

Site speed has an immediate effect on your WordPress website’s SEO performance, and both poor uptime and security vulnerabilities can result in website quality issues. Don’t be tempted to go for the cheapest option, as you are more likely to suffer from performance issues.

WordPress themselves recommend three hosting providers, and it makes sense to consider these options if you are not sure where to start.

Pick A Theme That’s Optimised For Search Engines

Your theme is one of the most vital choices that you’ll make for your WordPress website. It determines your website’s appearance as well as layout, can offer new functionality, and also plays a role in its SEO. For instance, your theme can affect your website’s speed — which is super important. In addition, the way a theme was developed matters as clean code gives your website the best chance in SERPs.

Thus, when choosing a theme you’ll want to opt for one that is built with SEO in mind. These themes are frequently referred to as ‘SEO-friendly’. Also you may want to look for a theme which offers features that are specifically designed to improve your SEO, such as new heading tag options. Fortunately, there are plenty of themes available which fit the bill.

Install A Free WordPress SEO Plugin

Before you begin to optimise your website, you need to install an SEO plugin. Fortunately, there are a couple of main options which come commonly recommended, both of which are free to install:

• Yoast SEO
• All in One SEO Pack

Please note, a plugin won’t optimise your website for you; it just makes it easier for you to do so and to adhere to best practices.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you are eager to discover further information about SEO best practice then you need to do our SEO and Web Analytics Course. Follow this link to find out more.