WordPress is a great platform for building a website, but you still need to know how to optimise your site for search engines if you want to rank high. Luckily, WordPress makes this easy to do. Following the right SEO tactics and implementing them on your WordPress site can start growing your traffic from Google and other search engines.
The platform has many features that help you follow SEO best practices, so you can focus on tasks that will improve your ranking and organic visibility.
Here are some of the most effective ways to improve your ranking with WordPress SEO:
1. Install an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme
Twenty-Twenty is the default theme that is quite basic and doesn’t offer much customisation or features. This is where installing a new theme comes in. By installing a new theme, you can completely change the look and feel of your WordPress site.
Installing a new theme is a fairly straightforward process. First, you need to find the theme you want to use. There are many places you can find WordPress themes, but a good place to start is the WordPress.org theme directory. Once you’ve found a theme you like, you can download it to your computer.
Next, you need to upload the theme to your WordPress site. You can do this by logging into your WordPress site and going to the Appearance -> Themes page. On this page, click the Add New button and then use the Upload Theme button to select the theme file you downloaded earlier. Once the theme is uploaded, you just need to activate it, and it will be ready to use.
There are a lot of themes to choose from when you have a WordPress site. Some are free, and some you have to pay for. It’s important to choose a theme that is SEO friendly.
The Google web.dev tool can help you identify potential performance and SEO issues with a theme before you install it. This is important because many themes claim to be SEO-friendly, but they may actually slow down your site’s performance due to unnecessary scripts and plugins.
2. Enable SEO-Friendly Permalinks
WordPress allows you to choose from multiple URL structures for your website. You should select the option that is most friendly for search engine optimisation.
WordPress allows you to change your permalink structure, which is how your URLs are displayed. By changing your permalink structure to something more descriptive, you can make your URLs more search engine friendly and easier for people to read.
You can set up your permalinks at the Settings > Permalinks page. This is the most common and recommended setting for permalinks. It will use the post name as the link to the post.
3. Adjust Your Site’s Visibility Settings
WordPress allows you to prevent search engines from indexing your site. Developers commonly use this while a site is in development to prevent it from being indexed while pages and content are incomplete. This will prevent your site from ranking.
This block is usually left in place after a site is launched because the site’s visibility settings are not configured correctly. To fix this, you must go to Settings > Reading and adjust the visibility settings.
Conclusion
WordPress SEO is a process that can be used to improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages. Following the tips outlined in this article can improve your website’s SEO and potentially increase your traffic and visibility.
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