Table of Contents

1. Basic of WordPress SEO

2. WordPress Visibility Settings

3. WWW Vs. non-WWW

4. Add WordPress website to google search console

5. Permalinks (SEO friendly URL Structure)

6. Keyword research

7.WordPress SEO plugin

8. Optimizing Your Blog Posts for SEO

9. Breadcrumbs navigation

10. Categories and tags in WordPress SEO

11. Remove broken links

12. Internal Linking

13. External linking

14. Use SSL/HTTPS for your WordPress site

15. Optimizing images

16. Optimize your site’s loading time

17. Security and safety of your WordPress site

Basic of WordPress SEO:

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) in your WordPress site is an important technique for getting more traffic. Here I will discuss the SEO process in WordPress site for beginners to get relevant traffic in the WordPress site. As we know we do not need a huge coding knowledge to develop a  WordPress site in the same way I will tell you if you want to see your WordPress site in search results you just need to install some plugins and how to work on those. I will explain to you the process of WordPress step by step.

WordPress SEO is done with the help of the contents, plugins, and some basic rules that have to be performed when working in SEO. WordPress SEO is working by generating the backlinks in your site.

WordPress Visibility Settings:

WordPress has an option to decide whether your site would be visible to the search engine or not. It shows an option at the time of WordPress installation “Search Engine Visibility” it can be checked or unchecked whatever you want to do but at the initial stage of developing the site, it is better to check it, which means you discourage the search engine to indexing the site. Once completed the site you need to uncheck the checkbox for indexing your site in search engine and you will get the option from the WordPress dashboard.

Setting->reading.

WWW Vs. non WWW:

It is important to open your site by using one link like https://www.abc.com or https://abc.com because the search engines will be known that these are two different sites if both links are working properly. You can take any of them to fix your site. To fix your URL go to the setting then click on general in dashboard set the same URL in both WordPress (URL) and Site address(URL).

Setting->General

Add WordPress website to google search console:

Google Search Console or Google Webmaster Tools help you to check your website whether the site is compatible with SEO or not.

It provides you the data to know how your pages or posts are appearing on the google search engine. It checks the duplicate contents and gives the broken links that are needed to remove instantly from your website.

It also gives you a list of how many pages are indexed in the search engine and it also alerts when the crawl is unable to access any page.

It gives the data of how many clicks are done on the pages.

Visit the below link to add your website to the Google search console and get a complete tutorial on how to add your website to the google search console or webmaster tools and follow the process.

https://search.google.com/search-console/about

Permalinks (SEO friendly URL Structure):

Your website link should have the targeted keyword and each word would be separated by the dash. It helps the search engine to understand what the site is about. WordPress provides so many permalinks to select now we will select the SEO-friendly permalink.

Go to settings then click on permalinks and at the last select the post name.

Keyword research:

Keywords research is the process of finding appropriate keywords for your WordPress website. the keyword will help the search engine to know about the site is addressing and index your WordPress website in user’s search results.

There is a lot of keyword research tools are available(Both free and paid). I commonly used keywords everywhere, Soovle, google search console, and google keyword planner.

I already have written a blog to know how to do keyword research just read it for more details.

WordPress SEO plugin:

There are so many WordPress SEO plugins are available like Yoast SEO, All in one SEO, and RankMath but I recommended you to use Yoast SEO plugin because it is very user-friendly and the plugin updates come frequently. This is the best reliable and free plugin.

Optimizing Your Blog Posts for SEO:

Every page or post will have a meta title, meta description, and keyword-relevant content. All the SEO plugins allow adding these details. SEO plugin will help you to maintain the keyword density in the contents and it will also show the broken links to be removed. It helps to find out the problems in your site that need to be shorted out for a better ranking in search engines. Just follow the instructions provided by the SEO plugin and you may need to change for a good ranking of your site in search engines.

Breadcrumbs navigation:

Breadcrumb navigation is an important technique recently associated with On-Page SEO. It helps the search engine to be more specific about the contents. It mainly changes the URL structure, which looks like the below structure.

Categories and tags in WordPress SEO:

It is a good practice to categories the blog post into different categories and tags. If you want to write a post for your blog site write it under a specific relevant category, it will help the users to find out the post easily under the category. The search engine also prefers to find out any post under any relevant category if you write any post under any category search engine will index your post in a higher ranking.

Tags are the common keywords that help the search engine to understand about the post is written for. It describes the content behavior of the individual post.

WordPress allows you to create the categories and tags easily.

To create a category in WordPress click on the posts from the admin dashboard and then click on categories.

If you want to create tags from the WordPress dashboard just click on the post then add new and then you will find the tags on the right side below the categories within the post section. From here you can add multiple tags separated by a comma.

Remove broken links:

Broken links create a bad impression on search engine bots. Usually, bots generate a negative impact on your site if it finds any broken links exist, I recommended you check your entire site, and if you find any broken links remove them instantly.

You can find broken links from the google search console and some WordPress plugins are available to detect broken links. I have to give you a few plugins below.

1. WP Link Status Pro
2. quality control – Cheapest in Broken Link Checker WordPress
3. Netpeak Spider — SEO Tool For Finding Broken Links
4. Video Link Checker – Best in Video Broken Link Checker WordPress Plugins
5. Link Checker – Finest in Freemium Broken Link Checker WordPress Plugins

Internal Linking:

Internal linking helps the search engine to understand that the post is giving additional informations to the readers. It helps to get a good SEO score. Internal linking means it gives redirections within your own site.

WordPress allows you to do the internal linking very easily. Just have a look at the below image.

External Linking:

You can also give additional information to the readers by using external linking but you should keep in mind that the website you are linking has a good popularity, higher authority, and trust. If you do not know about the site you can make a no-follow tag for the site.

You can add external linking in WordPress the same way in internal linking.

Use SSL/HTTPS for your WordPress site:

SSL certificate allows your WordPress website to open in HTTPS mode.SSL certificates ensure that the data exchange between the website and user are being encrypted. Now day google makes it mandatory for search engine optimization. You can purchase the SSL certificate or you can use it as a free version but it is better to purchase. Some hosting providers give it free with the hosting.

There are so many plugins that help you to install the SSL certificate.

1. Really Simple SSL

2. WP Encryption – One-Click Free SSL Certificate & SSL / HTTPS Redirect to fix Insecure Content

3. SSL Zen – Free SSL Certificate & HTTPS Redirect for WordPress

Optimizing images:

Image optimization is an important factor in search engine optimization. it attracts the readers to stay on your site that makes reduces the bounce rate in SEO. More images make the high loading time in your site, I will recommend you compress the image before using it, the image compressor reduces the size of the image but remains the quality same.

WordPress allows you to edit the image properly and help you to add alt-text, image name, these are very important in search engine optimization. Proper Image Name and alt-text help the bots to rank your site higher. It would be better if you can add the keyword in the image name and alt-text.

Optimize your site’s loading time:

In this high-speed internet generation, anyone can not wait if the site takes too much time to be fully loaded it also makes a bad impression on the search engine bots. The high loading time of your site makes the user angry and they will not be interested to visit your site again. If anyone does not stay for a long time on your site bounce rate will be high in SEO that accrues a negative score for ranking.

I will explain to you to reduce the Website loading time pointwise

1. Try to use a proper coding structure, do not use unnecessary tags, codes, etc.

2. Purchase good quality hosting.

3. Compress Images before use.

4. Use CDN Technique

5. Do proper cache(W3total Cache a WordPress plugin help to cache your site).

6. Do not use unnecessary plugins.

Security and safety of your WordPress site:

Malware affections in WordPress sites is a major problem but truly it happens due to our bad practice in WordPress and unnecessary plugin being used. Google backlist thousands of websites due to the malware attraction. If your site is affected by malware, the search engines will refuse to rank your site. So if you want to launch a website on the WordPress platform you should keep some basic points in mind.

1. Do not use unnecessary plugins.

2. Change your username and password of the admin dashboard regular basis.

3. Keep your WordPress updated.

4. Use an SSL certificate.

5. Make a WordPress backup solution.

6. Use the best WordPress security plugin like Sucuri WordPress Plugin.

7. Enable Web Application Firewall (WAF).

8. It is a bad practice to set the username admin. Change the user name as you can remember.

I hope this article will help you to understand the process of WordPress SEO. If you do the process as per the guideline you will definitely get the traffic and your site will rank as per your expectation.