WP SEO

This is the ultimate guide for WordPress SEO. In this article, we will tell you basics of SEO and tips and techniques to improve SEO of your WordPress site. we will tell you following things:

• Introduction?
• What is SEO?
• Why SEO is important?
• SEO Techniques.

Introduction

You want people to find your site, so you need to make sure it can be found. A major way to do that is to focus on search engine optimization (SEO).
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users; these visitors can then be converted into customers.


what is SEO

SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a strategy used by website owners to get more traffic by ranking higher in search engines.
Search engine optimization isn’t about tricking Google or gaming the system. It’s simply about creating a website that has optimized code and formatting which makes it easy for search engines to find your website.
When people search the web for the topics you write about, your search-engine-optimized content will appear higher in the search results, and you’ll get more people clicking through to your website.

SEO is the process of making the tweaks and adjustments to your site that search engines like so they’ll rank your site higher. Showing up higher in search results means more people finding your site.

There are some simple strategies that can boost your SEO. Simply creating content is a good first step. Having more content gives search engines more things to rank, giving a user more opportunities to stumble across your site. It also means you have more content for people to link to. More links from other sites will also help your SEO.

Using WordPress is another good way to improve your SEO. WordPress is designed to be a search engine friendly way to build your site, so right from the start using WordPress will give you a leg up in the SEO game. You can also use plugins to further boost your SEO juice.


Why SEO is Important

Search engines are often the biggest source of traffic for most websites.
Google and other search engines use advanced algorithms to understand and rank pages appropriately in search results. But those algorithms aren’t perfect — they still need your help to understand what your content is about.
If your content isn’t optimized, then search engines won’t know how to rank it. When people search for the topics you write about, your website won’t appear in the search results, and you’ll miss out on all that traffic.

SEO can get technical, but it doesn’t have to be. Just learning a few basic SEO tips to optimize your site can give you a noticeable boost in your website traffic.

You might have heard experts saying that WordPress is SEO friendly. This is actually why a lot of people choose WordPress to start a blog or website.
While WordPress makes sure that the code it generates follows the SEO best practices, there is a lot more you need to do if you want to maximize your SEO efforts.

We have a number of actionable steps that you need to take to properly optimize your WordPress SEO.

Following are some tips and techniques to improve SEO of Your WordPress site.

SEO Plugins

When it comes to choosing the best WordPress SEO plugin, you will most likely narrow your choices down to the two most popular solutions: Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack.
They are both effective solutions, and we’ve done a pros and cons comparison of Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Pack.
We use Yoast SEO. and we also recommend you a Yoast SEO Plugin
Our highly recommended plugins are WordPress SEO by
Yoast or All in One SEO Pack.

google search console

also known as Webmaster Tools is a set of tools offered by Google to give website owners a look at how their content is seen by the search engine.
It provides reports and data to help you understand how your pages appear in search results. You also get to see the actual search terms people are using to find your website, how each page appears in the search results, and how often your pages are clicked.
All this information helps you understand what’s working on your site and what’s not. You can then plan your content strategy accordingly.
Google Search Console also alerts you when there is something wrong with your website, like when search crawlers are unable to access it, find duplicate content or restricted resources.

Optimizing your blog posts for SEO

SEO is an ongoing process that you must keep up with if you want to see maximum results.
Yoast SEO allows you to add a title, description, and focus keyword to every blog post and page. It also shows you a preview of what users will see when they Google your website.
We recommend that you optimize your title and description to get maximum clicks.

Add XML sitemaps in WordPress

While adding an XML sitemap does not boost your site’s search rankings, it does help search engines find the pages quickly and start ranking them.

If you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin, then it will automatically create an XML sitemap for you. To find your sitemap, just go to this URL (don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name):
http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

Check your site’s visibility settings

If your website is not appearing in search results, then the first thing you need to do is to make sure that this option is unchecked.

Simply log in to the admin area of your WordPress site and visit Settings » Reading page.
You need to scroll down to the ‘Search Engine Visibility’ section and make sure that the box next to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is unchecked.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.

Using SEO friendly URL structure in WordPress

examples of SEO friendly URLs are:
http://www.wpfloor.com/how-to-install-wordpress/
http://www.wpfloor.com/common-wordpress-errors-how-to-fix-them/

Notice that these URLs are readable and a user can guess what they will see on the page just by looking at the URL text.
So what does a non-SEO friendly URL look like?

http://www.wpbeginner.com/?p=10457
http://example.com/archives/123

you can check and update your WordPress site’s permalink structure.
You need to visit the Settings > Permalinks page. Select the post name option and then click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.


WWW vs non-WWW

If you are just starting out with your website, then you need to choose whether you want to use www (http://www.example.com) or non-www (http://example.com) in your site’s URL.
Search engines consider these to be two different websites, so this means you need to choose one and stick to it.

You can set your preference by visiting the Settings > General page. Add your preferred URL in both the ‘WordPress Address’ and ‘Site Address’ fields.

Despite what someone else might say, from an SEO standpoint there’s no advantage to using one or another.

Using HTTPS and SSL

start using secure connection techniques. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a technology that encrypts the connection between a user’s browser and the server they are connecting to. This adds an additional security layer to your WordPress site.
Websites secured with SSL are indicated by a padlock sign in the browser’s address bar. This makes your website more trustworthy, and it is required if you are running an online store with WordPress and processing sensitive payment information.

If you are using Bluehost, then you can purchase an SSL certificate. If you’re going to purchase your SSL certificate through your web hosting company, see our guide on how to add SSL and HTTPS in WordPress.
You can also get free SSL with Let’s Encrypt. Several WordPress hosting companies like Siteground, Dreamhost, and WPEngine have already started offering easy Let’s Encrypt integrations.

Note: here we mention Bluehost because Bluehost is officially recommended by WordPress.

We are sure this article helped you learn how to properly optimize your WordPress site for SEO. So Start implementing a few of these WordPress SEO techniques and tips, and you should see an increase in your traffic within a few months as the search engines process your changes.