What is SEO on WordPress? 

What even is WordPress?  

At its most basic, WordPress is the simplest and most popular way to create your own website.  

Did you know that WordPress contains over 43.0% of all the websites on the Internet? That means that more than one in four websites that you visit are probably powered by WordPress.  

What websites can WordPress create? 

WordPress is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) which allows the user to create: 

• eCommerce shops 
• Blogs 
• Forums 
• Social networks 
• Business sites 
• And pretty much anything else you can think of! 

What is SEO on WordPress? 

SEO stands for search engine optimisation; this is the way in which you can get your website found online. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “SEO”, I would recommend clicking here to read our Beginners Guide to SEO.  

WordPress is very SEO-friendly from the beginning, this is vital as when you are creating new pages, you want them to start ranking on Google from the get-go. A webpage is only useful if people are looking at it. 

Earlier we mentioned that WordPress is a content management system (CMS), Google has openly said that Google doesn’t consider CMS as a ranking factor however they do care about how accessible and useful your webpages are. WordPress just so happens to be the best CMS for facilitation of accessible and useful webpages.  

This is one reason why we favour WordPress! 

Why is WordPress the BEST for SEO? 

With the wide variety of CMS to use for your business (such as Shopify, Wix and Squarespace just to name a few) you may be wondering why WordPress is superior, let us explain. 

We believe that there are 3 important elements of WordPress that contribute to the overall SEO-friendliness. 

• There is a diverse and high-quality range of SEO WordPress plugins available which improve the functionality of your website. 
• WordPress has SEO friendly themes that can also aid in improving your SEO. 
• Finally, the WordPress CMS itself is inherently user-friendly, functional and is a low cost for the features provided. 

WordPress SEO Basics

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details on HOW you can properly optimise your SEO on WordPress, there are a few basics that you need to make sure you have covered to be confident that you are working with a concrete build. 

1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider: You NEED to make sure your website with a reliable hosting provider. To rank on search engines, fast, reliable web hosting is ESSENTIAL to the success of any SEO campaign. Google’s algorithm has consistently taken the user experience into account, so speedy websites are rewarded with improved Google rankings. 

2. Install an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme: There are thousands of themes to choose from, but how do you know which are SEO-friendly? Many claim to be SEO-friendly but come with a vast array of scripts and plugins that you will not use, and that will slow your site’s performance down. Before installing a theme, run its demo through Google’s web.dev tool to get insights on potential performance and SEO issues. 

3. Install a Free WordPress SEO Plugin: Before you begin to optimise your site, you need an SEO plugin. We recommend Yoast SEO. Install Yoast SEO in the admin panel and navigate to the ‘add new’ plugin page down the left-hand menu. Once it is installed, you need to activate the plugin. 

4. Verify Your Site with Google Search Console & Submit Your XML Sitemap: THIS IS A MUST! Not done it before? Check out this article written by Google on how to verify your site here. Follow the verification steps listed and choose the ‘HTML tag’ method (the easiest method!). A sitemap tells Google which pages and files you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these files so this is a MEGA important step!  

Tips for Optimising SEO on WordPress 

Once you have implemented the WordPress SEO basics, you are ready to get started optimising your site and working through the things that will make a real difference to how you rank. 

Here are our Top 7 ways you can optimise your content and pages:  

• Carry Out Keyword Research: You can’t optimise your content/pages without doing any keyword research now, can we? This is an ESSENTIAL step to optimising your website.  

• Set Custom URLs for Pages & Posts: Default URL’s can be lengthy and sometimes be cut off on SERPs. Re-write and shorten your URL’s.  
• Use Optimised Page Headings: Don’t forget to use your H1, H2, & H3 headings! A page’s H1 heading is intended to give context on what your page is about to both users and search engines. 
• Craft Unique Optimised Title Tags & Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions can significantly increase the chance of someone clicking on your content in the search results. If you choose not to add an optimized and intriguing meta description, the search engine will typically add the first sentence of the page. Usually, that will not be enough to pique the interest of the person searching and they might not click.  

• Use Internal Linking: Internal links help Google to understand the most important pages on your website. 
• Add Alt Text to Images: The purpose of alt text is to improve accessibility by describing what an image is showing to visitors who do not have the ability to see them. However, it also helps search engine crawlers and so improves SEO. Don’t forget to do this!  

Want us to do it for you? 😏 SEO is what we love to do. Click here to book a discovery call now to see how we can help your business.   

Want to find out how to check your SEO ranking? Click here.