If you use the WordPress CMS infrastructure, you can increase both your organic traffic and income by improving your WordPress SEO. The information I will give about WordPress SEO optimization will be from beginner to advanced level.
WordPress is the most successful CMS system in SEO. There are various optimizations you can do to improve WordPress SEO. In this article, I will give you all the details about SEO optimization by going into the smallest detail as if I were giving you training.
Although everyone says WordPress has the best SEO options, you should know that this is not entirely true. In my opinion, WordPress is not completely SEO friendly. It would be nonsense to say that plain WordPress is SEO friendly without optimizing the system.
If you think that you can achieve good rankings only with the WordPress system without any optimization, I would like to point out that you are dreaming. If you want to rank well with WordPress infrastructure, you should definitely optimize for SEO.
Don’t let this scare you. I have already prepared this article to help you overcome your fears. Thanks to this WordPress SEO guide, you will make your optimizations easily. In this content, you will find valuable information about how to make the WordPress system SEO friendly.
Basics of WordPress SEO
It is necessary to consider WordPress SEO studies in 3 different categories. Grouping in this way not only ensures smooth optimization but also allows SEO work to be carried out in a shorter time.
- On-page WordPress SEO
- On-site WordPress SEO
- Off-site WordPress SEO
You can perform on-page SEO and on-site SEO in a short time with various plugins and some adjustments. I believe that this part will not cause you any difficulties.
Off-site WordPress SEO consists of the links and social media shares you get. You can carry out your off-site WordPress SEO work using various techniques.
In this guide, we will focus more on on-site WordPress SEO optimization rather than off-site SEO efforts.
# On-Page SEO
In this section, we will discuss how to optimize content for a specific keyword. Thanks to your on-page SEO optimization, search engines will be able to better understand what your content is about.
# On-Site SEO
On-site SEO requires more technical knowledge than on-page SEO. Various technical SEO settings must be made for search engines to crawl and index your pages without any problems. In this section, many factors such as adjusting page speed will be discussed.
Some of you already seem intimidated. If you have solid basic knowledge of WordPress, you will handle SEO optimization without any problems. I would also like to touch on basic WordPress information to help people who do not have basic knowledge.
Checking WordPress Visibility Settings
To adjust this setting, log in to your WordPress admin panel and go to Settings > Reading. Make sure the “Search Engine Visibility” setting is unchecked here.
Checking this section prevents search engine bots from crawling your website. When WordPress is installed for the first time, there is a possibility that the required location is marked here. You need to remove this mark to open the website to search engines.
Setting Whether Or Not WWW Is Available
One of the most common questions on users’ minds is whether or not to add WWW to their domains. Search engine bots treat WWW and non-WWW websites as two different websites.
Therefore, before launching your website, you need to decide whether it will be WWW or not. You can make the necessary configurations by going to Settings > General from your WordPress panel.
From an SEO perspective, there are several advantages and disadvantages to using or not using “www”. The important thing is to be consistent no matter which method you choose. Here are some points to consider:
Advantages of Using www
DNS Flexibility: The www subdomain provides greater flexibility in DNS configurations and can be easier to integrate with services such as CDN.
Cookie Management: Using www can prevent your main domain’s cookies from being shared with subdomains, which can be beneficial for security and performance.
Traditional Usage: Many users may perceive a URL with www as more trustworthy and professional.
Advantages of Not Using www
Shorter URL: URLs without www can be shorter and easier to remember.
Modern Look: Not using www can provide a modern and minimalist look.
Ease of Redirection: It may be simpler to redirect the site without www.
In terms of SEO
Consistency: The most important factor is consistency. If both www and non-www versions of your website are accessible, search engines may perceive these two versions as different sites, which may negatively affect your SEO rankings. You should ensure consistency by selecting one version and making a 301 redirect to the other version.
Canonical URLs: Whichever version you choose, you should indicate to search engines which version is the main URL by using canonical tags for the other version.
So, from an SEO perspective, using or not using www doesn’t have a huge direct impact, but consistency and proper redirection practices are important. So, whichever option you choose, make sure you apply it consistently throughout the site.
WordPress SEO plugins
There are various plugins in the WordPress CMS system to make SEO settings easier. By using such plugins, you can make your SEO settings in a shorter time. It would be a good decision to use plugins such as Rank Math and Yoast SEO.
WordPress SEO Optimization Tips
Now I want to offer you advanced tips to further improve WordPress SEO. If you follow what I say exactly, you can have a successful WordPress infrastructure in terms of SEO.
Add Your WordPress Website to Search Console
Google Search Console is a free SEO tool. It should be used from the moment your website goes live. Even if you do not have detailed knowledge of Google Search Console, you should add your website to this SEO tool.
Google Search Console tool helps you collect important SEO data about your website from a panel. Thanks to the information you will receive here, you can optimize your website better in the future.
Creating a WordPress Sitemap
The XML site map you create will allow search engine bots to more easily access the content on your website. Posts, Pages, Tags, categories are listed in the site map you will create.
There are many plugins for creating sitemaps. Instead of putting extra load on your website, if you are using the Yoast SEO plugin or any of the Rank Math SEO plugins, I recommend you activate the sitemap system here.
If you have activated the site map without any problems, a site map like this https://algorithmman.com/sitemap_index.xml should be created.
Note: If you copy the sitemap link I gave and run it in your browser, you will be greeted with a 404 page. Because I use the XML Sitemap Generator for Google plugin. Since you are a beginner, I recommend you to adjust the sitemap settings in Yoast SEO or Rank Math SEO plugins.
After creating the site map, go to the property you added to the Google Search Console system and add the site map to this section. In this way, search engine bots will access your content more easily. You should also know that this will enable you to get a fast index.
WordPress Permalink Settings
You should know that the permalink settings that come ready-made with the WordPress system are not SEO friendly. For a URL to be SEO friendly, it must be easy to read.
It contains various numbers and symbols in the URL, which is not SEO friendly. This makes it difficult for users to understand what the content is about.
In order to better highlight your content, you definitely need to have an SEO-friendly URL structure.
Go to Settings > Permalink. Select /%postname%/ as your permalink structure. In this way, your URL structure will become SEO friendly.
WordPress Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are important on-page SEO features that appear in the search result listing. If you don’t have Breadcrumbs on your website and add them, there will definitely be an increase in organic traffic.
Various plugins are available to activate the breadcrumbs feature. You can use Yoast SEO or Rank Math SEO plugin for this.
If you are not using any of the Yoast SEO or Rank Math SEO plugins, it is possible to activate the Breadcrumbs feature by using different plugins.
Adding Breadcrumbs to your website will provide you with the following benefits.
- Reduce bounce rate
- Improved user experience
- Better search engine visibility
Page Optimization by Target Keyword
This is the most important part of WordPress SEO work. If done correctly, high amounts of organic traffic can be attracted.
WordPress SEO plugins allow content optimization based on specific keyword. Optimize your content according to which keyword you want to be included in the SERP results. For this, using any of the Yoast SEO or Rank Math plugins will help guide you.
Note: When trying to highlight the keyword, definitely avoid word spamming. Stuffing your content with excessive keywords may cause you to enter the word filter, experience serious traffic loss, or even be removed from the search results completely. It is beneficial to use SEO plugins that will help you avoid any mistakes.
Keyword Research
Creating content without finding the right keywords will not benefit you in terms of SEO. Therefore, you need to determine the keywords most searched by users and create your content accordingly.
You can use tools like Ahrefs to do keyword research. Additionally, the free website keywordtool.io will help you do keyword research.
To find keywords, Google related searches and search suggestions should also be taken into consideration.
Using the Focus Keyword
Focus keyword feature is a feature included in almost all WordPress SEO plugins. This feature helps optimize your content based on the relevant focus keyword.
If you are using Yoast Seo or Rank Math SEO plugin, you can enter your keyword in the focus keyword section and edit your content accordingly.
If you have entered the focus keyword, the system will give you information about the following topics.
- Keyword density
- Outbound Link
- Internal Links
- Keyword in the introduction
- Keyword distribution
- etc.
If there is a red, orange or yellow warning, this indicates that you should continue optimizing your content. Continue editing your content according to the warnings until the system turns green.
Cleaning Broken Links
Broken links in the content cause search engine spiders to fall into a dead end. This will be recorded as negative SEO points on your account.
Broken links are easy to spot if there is little content. However, if there is a lot of content, it may be difficult to find broken links. In such cases, only plug-ins designed for this should be used. You can use the Broken Link Checker plugin to detect your broken links.
This plugin will periodically scan your website and inform you if there are any broken links. Therefore, make sure that the relevant plugin is always active.
Improving WordPress Internal Links
In the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry, the term “internal linking” refers to the links created between pages on a website.
Internal links are important for content to interact with each other. I told you before that content doesn’t have the same organic hits. I have also mentioned at length that organic hits should be directed to other content thanks to internal links.
Although many people ignore internal links, I would like to point out that they are the most effective SEO criterion.
Don’t always use the same anchor text when creating internal links. This can cause word filtering due to excessive SEO. Therefore, it is beneficial to use long tail keywords when creating internal links.
I am against using plugins when editing internal links. Some plugins can help create internal links automatically. However, there is also a possibility that you may be negatively affected by this situation. That’s why you should be cautious and create internal links manually.
Structured Data Usage
The use of structured data helps search engine bots understand what the content is relevant to. For example, you can mark a blog post as an article, mark the event type as event page, and add data such as event start date and end date. This information you added will be seen in the serp results.
The use of structured data in SEO helps search engines better understand the content of your website. This typically involves providing additional information in JSON-LD, RDFa, or microdata formats.
Benefits
Rich Results: More eye-catching and informative results are displayed in the search results, which increases click-through rates.
Better Understanding and Indexing: Search engines better understand the content of your site and make more accurate rankings.
Voice Search: Performs better in voice search results.
Examples
- Products: Information such as price, stock status, reviews.
- Events: Details such as date, time, location.
- Recipes: Ingredients, cooking time, nutritional values.
Structured data allows your site to be crawled more effectively by search engines and attracts users’ attention.
In the WordPress system, you can add structured data using various methods. You can add them manually or use various plug-ins.
For a reviews-based WordPress website, the WP Review Pro schema plugin can be used. Additionally, Schema Pro is an important schema plugin developed for WordPress. Choosing and using the one that suits you will ensure improvements in serp results.
Using SSL and HTTPS
Using an SSL certificate is necessary to allow websites to use the HTTPS protocol. This system ensures the encryption of browser information of users visiting the website. In other words, it is important for your site to signal that it is reliable.
Google has officially announced that HTTPS is a ranking signal. It should be used on all websites, not just e-commerce sites.
Almost all hosting providers offer an SSL certificate for free. If you have a blog style website, you can use these free SSL certificates. However, if you are dealing with e-commerce, you should prefer paid SSL certificates as security must be at a high level.
Avoid Duplicate Content Penalty
Duplicate content is a problem that causes negative SEO scores to occur. This problem occurs because many URLs on the website point to the same content.
Opening tag, category and archive pages to indexing is the biggest reason for the duplicate content problem. Indexing pages that do not have full content will definitely cause duplicate content problems.
It would be correct to set archive and tag pages to noindex. Descriptions must be entered on category pages. If a description is not entered, there may be a duplicate content problem. You should also mark page1 page2 paginations as noindex.
Replytocom and URL Parameters
It is one of the most common problems in the WordPress CMS system. If you examine the reply links to the comments made, you will see a URL structure similar to the one below.
http://domain.com/%postname%& answertocom = 1 # response
This URL structure caused the majority of website owners to receive algorithmic penalties when the Google Panda update went live. To prevent such URLs from being indexed, you can use Yoast SEO or Rank Math SEO permalink options.
Search Intent Optimization in Title and Meta Description
There are websites that do not have enough organic traffic even though they create very high quality content. This occurs because the titles and meta description are not optimized to meet the search intent.
Search using your keyword before creating content. Enter content that ranks well and pay attention to what they include. Are there lists? Have how-to topics been discussed? Create your content by paying attention to these.
Here are the things you should pay attention to when creating a title and meta description:
- Include your keyword in the title.
- The title should be a maximum of 65 characters.
- Include keywords and long tail keywords in the meta description.
- Meta description should not exceed 160 characters.
Image Alt Text and Image Sitemap
Images added to the content have a great impact on the content ranking well. If you have not used images in your content until now, you should definitely start using them.
Using images in your content will help you attract additional traffic from visual searches. It is also possible to get traffic from social media sites such as Pinterest.
Search engine spiders use alt text to understand what images are about. If you want your images to rank better, you definitely need to add alt text.
Also, when naming the images, be careful to use meaningful names such as wordpress-seo.jpg instead of meaningless names such as 33453.jpg.
If you have an image-heavy website, definitely create a sitemap for images. Also, add this sitemap to your Google Search Console account for them to be indexed.
Optimize WordPress Loading Speed
Website loading speed is among the ranking criteria. For better rankings, it is important that pages load quickly. Since WordPress causes serious memory consumption, improvements need to be made to increase the loading speed.
To increase WordPress site loading speed, you should use quality caching plugins. WP Rocket, WP Fastest Cache and WP Super Cache are among the plugins I recommend you use.
After installing these plugins and making the necessary settings, there will be significant improvements in site loading speed.
Also “How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site?” contains valuable information to help you increase page speed. You can also review my article.
Perform website analysis on the Google PageSpeed Insights page to find out what you need to do to increase site speed. The system will give you information about where there are defects. You can increase your website speed by paying attention to the warnings you encounter and making the necessary optimizations.
