- November 15, 2016
- Posted by: Sadman Sakib
- Category: WordPress Tutorial
Some might lead you to believe “SEO is dead.” Google that search term and what comes back in return is over 800,000 search results. However, just because SEO has changed drastically over the past decade doesn’t mean it is dead, it simply means it has changed. Businesses now have to take new and unique approaches to SEO to win the never-ending game in SERPs. Many bootstrap companies and blogs build their entire business from the beginning off of organic search. While this may be risky, it still is a sign that organic search is alive and well. In this in-depth post we are going to share with you 45+ WordPress SEO tips to help skyrocket your traffic and hopefully help you dominate your competition.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the methods and or strategies used to rank a website and content higher in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, to result in more organic traffic. There are really two sides to SEO, the first is the technical part of it and the second can sometimes be more of a natural branding play among online businesses.
1. www vs non-www Domain
If you are just launching your website the very first question you might have is whether not you should go with www or not, and how this affects your WordPress SEO. It is very simple, there is no benefit SEO wise to having www in your domain. It will not affect your rankings in any way. But that is not to say you should always go with non-www. So why do websites still use www? There are a couple reasons:
- Using www as part of your domain used to be the standard back in the day. But that is not necessarily true anymore. Even we don’t use www here at Kinsta. One reason you still might see www being used a lot is simply because changing it after using it for years can be complex and cause issues. So a lot of older brands simply continue to use it.
- Another reason large companies with a lot of traffic might want to use www is due to DNS. Naked domains (non-www) technically can’t have a CNAME record used in order to redirect traffic for failover. However, there are workarounds to this issue.
So when it comes down to www vs non-www it is more a matter of personal preference. Perhaps you prefer shorter URLs in which case you could go with the non-www. Remember, no matter which version you choose you can setup redirects so that each is accessible. For example, if you visit www.kinsta.com, it simply redirects to kinsta.com.
In Google Search Console you can set your preferred domain to appear in Google as www or non-www. We recommend setting this option, however if you are running a WordPress plugin such as Yoast SEO (which we will go into more below) this is not technically required as the plugin automatically adds canonical tags to let Google know which version to index.
2. Install a WordPress SEO Plugin
WordPress out of the box is pretty good already when it comes to SEO. However, we always recommend that people install an SEO plugin when they are working with their WordPress site. This allows you to have full control over optimizing what Google sees from your website. In terms of popularity, the free Yoast SEO and All-In-One SEO Pack plugins steal the show with their end-to-end optimization capabilities. We highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin and in fact, a lot of this WordPress SEO checklist will have examples using this plugin.
The Yoast SEO plugin allows you to write better content with page and keyword analysis, automatically generate XML sitemaps, enable breadcrumbs, add social and schema markup, as well as a multitude of other optimizations. As of writing this it has over 1 million installs with a 4.6 out of 5 star rating. You can download their free WordPress plugin from the WordPress repository or follow the steps below to install it from within your WordPress dashboard.
Step 1
Under the plugins section of your WordPress dashboard click on “Add New.” Search for yoast seoand click on “Install Now.”
Step 2
Then click on “Activate.”
Step 3
You now have an “SEO” menu in which you can access the settings of the plugin. We will be digging into more of the Yoast plugin options further below.
And remember, the plugin doesn’t do SEO for you. It simply offers recommendations for you to make more data-driven optimizations.
3. Setup Friendly Permalinks
By default, WordPress provides creates weird permalinks (URL structure) that simply are not very clean. The default structure currently inserts the day and name into the URL, such as seen below.
http://wp.dev/2016/11/03/hello-world/
Google likes URLs that contain your title and or keywords in the post, but shorter URLs are generally better. We recommend using the “Post name” permalink setting as this is both clean and still can benefit you by using the title or your keyword in the URL. The format then appears like this:
http://wp.dev/hello-world/
You can change to a “Post name” permalink structure by clicking into “Permalinks” under the settings menu in your WordPress dashboard. Select “Post name” and click on “Save Changes.”
It is important to note though that changing the permalink structure after the posts go live can render all previous links useless and people sharing these links on social networks will remain unable to direct traffic to your site. If you are changing the permalink structure on an older site, make sure to redirect previous URLs to the new permalink by editing the .htaccess file or leveraging a third party plugin such as Change Permalink Helper.
4. Always Use a Focus Keyword
When it comes to WordPress SEO, it is important to remember that Google is still a computer algorithm, and that is why keywords still matter in 2016 and 2017. You definitely should be writing for your visitors and customers as Google recommends, but write smart. You can easily write for your audience as well as keeping the best SEO optimizations in mind. And remember, other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo rely sometimes even more on what some may call outdated SEO practices.
Whenever you write a blog post or post a page on your WordPress site you should always have a focus keyword in mind. Don’t just publish a post for the sake of pushing out more content. We will go more into keyword research further below. Using the Yoast SEO plugin you can easily set the focus keyword that you want to write about. For example, for this post we are using the focus keyword “WordPress SEO.” You can see that Yoast SEO actually analyzes the keyword density and it is reporting that it is a little low for this post. Generally, a 0.5% or more is a good amount to aim for. So we should figure out a way to include our keyword a few more times, naturally of course, within our content.
5. Importance of Title Tags
It is important that you have your main “focus keyword” that you want to rank for in your blog post or page title tag. Brian Dean, an SEO expert recommends to even place your keyword at the beginning of the title if possible as this will have more weight in search engines. For example, the title of this blog post is “WordPress SEO Checklist – 50 Tips for 2017.” We are placing our keyword, “WordPress SEO” at the very beginning. This might not always be possible, but can help give you a little boost.
You can manually set a title tag in the Yoast SEO plugin, as seen below. Remember that Google has a viewable limit of 65 characters, so if you go over that it might not appear. They are really limited by pixels now, but Yoast SEO uses characters which is a close approximation. And remember that title tags not only affect SEO but also your clickthrough rate (CTR). Some have reported seeing 20% increases in CTR simply by making small tweaks to their titles.
Split-testing and A/B testing your titles can be another effective way to increase CTR and in a sense help Google see your content as more relevant. There are even WordPress plugins such as Title Experiments and Nelio AB Testing which can help you run your own tests.
It seems that Google still relies on us setting well optimised H1 and Title tags, and that even small, data-driven and well researched, changes to these can make a difference to your organic search performance. – Distilled
6. Increase CTR with Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions have no effect on your WordPress SEO when it comes to rankings. However, meta descriptions do affect your CTR. A better-written meta description can entice the user to click on your post instead of the one above or below it in SERPs. And it has been said, the higher CTR you have, the more relevant Google will deem your data, and rank you higher. So in a sense, meta descriptions could effect your rankings. But not in the traditional sense. You can set your meta description manually in the Yoast SEO plugin.
Remember that there is a limit in Google of 156 characters. Anything over that might not be visible in SERPs. They are really limited by pixels now, but Yoast SEO uses characters which is a close approximation.
Also, it is good to include your focus keyword in your meta description because Google will highlight the search term in bold. For example, say we searched for “coolest car” in Google. KBB happens to have a post with “coolest car” in the meta description and so Google bolds this keyword as it is relevant to your search term. So by including your focus keyword in your meta description you can stand out a little bit more.
7. Should You Use Meta Keywords?
Meta keywords are really a thing of the past. We are simply including this in our list for those that might be wondering if they should use meta keywords or not. The simple answer is no. Google and Bing used to rely on meta keywords in their ranking algorithms but no longer due. It appears Yahoo might still rely on meta keywords somewhat, but we wouldn’t recommend using them simply for that reason. However, depending upon where your site is located, it is important to know that the Yandex Russian search engine and Baidu Chinese search engine both still use meta keywords.
If you want to add meta keywords to your WordPress site posts and pages you can enable it in the Yoast SEO plugin by following the steps below.
Step 1
Click into the “Title & Metas” section of the Yoast SEO plugin and click on the “Other” tab. You can then enable the “Use meta keywords tag” option.
Step 2
Then on your post and pages the Yoast SEO plugin now has a section to enter in your meta keywords as seen in the example below.
8. Header Tags – H1, H2, H3
The Google crawler (bot) checks HTML header tags such as H1, H2, H3, etc. to determine the relevancy of your site content. Generally, the best practice is to have a single H1 tag per post or page and then multiple H2s and H3s underneath that. Think of it has a hierarchy of importance. The H1 tag is one of your most important header and should contain your focus keyword. Additional headers could also include your keyword or long-tail variations of your keyword. However, don’t abuse headers. These are used to split up your content to make it easier to read for the visitor.
Most WordPress themes, if coded properly, will automatically assign the title of your page or post as the H1 header. You can then assign H2, H3, H4 headers etc. within your post or page. You can create a header by using the dropdown in the visual editor. This automatically assigns the block of text the <h2> or <h3> HTML tags that Google will read.
You can also use the shortcut keys in the visual editor to more quicly apply headers:
ALT + SHIFT + 2 (H2 header) ALT + SHIFT + 3 (H3 header)
9. Image Alt Tags
ALT tags refer to the ALT attribute or alternative text that is applied on images on your WordPress site. ALT tags are used by Google to see how relevant your image is to the content around it. They are also used by screen readers for visually impaired people. For example, if someone was using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, ALT tags can actually help them navigate the page better. You should always add ALT tags to your images. And if you haven’t been, go back and do it now.
<img src="image.jpg" alt="image description" title="image title"/>
Fortunately, with WordPress you don’t need to know any code to add the ALT tag, you can simply add them upon uploading images to the media library or by clicking on an image within the visual editor. Follow the steps below to quickly add an ALT tag to an existing image.
Step 1
In the visual editor hover over your image and click on the “Edit” option.
Step 2
You can then enter in your ALT tag description in the “Alternative Text” field. Usually, it is beneficial to add your focus keyword if it is applicable for the image. However, don’t just add your focus keyword as an ALT tag across all of your images. As with all things SEO, do things in moderation. Google doesn’t like spamming.
10. Image Title Tags
Image title tags aren’t used for WordPress SEO purposes and are not crawled by Google or Bing, and therefore you are not required to use them. See example of what a title tag looks like below.
<img src="image.jpg" alt="image description" title="image title"/>
However, title tags do allow you to add tooltips to images. This can be a great way to simply add a little CTA when someone hovers over it. So while they aren’t technically going to help you rank better, it can help add to the user experience. Just like with ALT tags you don’t need to know any code to add the title tag, you can simply add them upon uploading images to the media library or by clicking on an image within the visual editor. Follow the steps below to quickly add a title tag to an existing image.
Step 1
In the visual editor hover over your image and click on the “Edit” option.
Step 2
You can then enter in your title tag description in the “Image Title Attribute” field under the advanced options.
You can then see the title tag in action as a tooltip if you hover over your image.
11. Focus Keyword in First Paragraph
The first paragraph of your post and pages content in WordPress is very important! It is always recommended to add your focus keyword within the first paragraph if possible. The reason is because Google crawls content from top to bottom, and if it finds your keyword there it can help deem your article as more relevant to the topic. The Yoast SEO plugin even has a check for this to ensure you are keeping up with this best practice.
12. Content is King (Word Count)
The old saying “Content is King” is still alive and well. Google and visitors love high-quality content. It is generally much better to publish higher-quality and longer-form content than it is to publish shorter content more frequently. This can vary of course. If you are news site, this might actually be the opposite. But long-form content has time and time again proven to win in SERPs. Back in 2012, serpIQ published some statistics on the importance of content-length. As you can see the websites holding the top positions have a lot more content.
And while the above graph is over 4 years old the same still applies today. Not much has changed when it comes to content and length. Neil Patel, a popular internet marketer, has a great post from 2016 on how long-form content can help boost your rankings. And you can probably tell that we have seen the same results here at Kinsta, otherwise we wouldn’t spend this much time publishing content this long!
Another advantage from long-form content is that over time you will also start ranking for not only your focus keyword but a lot of long-tail keyword variations, sometimes into the hundreds of keywords. And sometimes the traffic from all the long-tail variations will be more than that of your focus keyword. So it is really a win-win when it comes to long-form content!
13. Use Short URLs
Google likes WordPress sites that are clean, organized, and structured; this includes using short URLs. They can also help improve your CTR. MarketingSherpa ran a study and they discovered that executives are 250% more likely to click on an organic listing if it:
- had a fairly short URL and
- appeared directly below a listing with a long URL
So keeping your URLs as short as possible can be an enormous competitive advantage. The one thing to keep in mind is that WordPress automatically creates a URL for you based on the title. For this post we ended up with the following:
https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-seo-checklist-50-tips-2017/
We can clean that up quite a bit and simply use our focus keyword. Follow the steps below on how to shorten a URL for a WordPress post or page.
Step 1
Next to your URL (also known as a slug), click on “Edit.”
Step 2
You can then type in the URL that you want to use. Make sure to separate your keyword with hyphens. Then click on “OK.”
We then end up with the following URL, which is much nicer.
https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-seo/
It is also important to remember that each URL or slug in WordPress has to be unique. So you can’t have two posts or pages that both use the exact same URL. So keep that in mind when you are writing.
14. Use Smart Image File Names
This is one thing that a lot of WordPress website owners do wrong, and that is naming your images correctly! With a few correct best WordPress SEO practices you can really see a nice little boost both in SERPs and Google Image Search.
- Always name your image files with actual words related to your content before uploading them. For example, instead of DC0000.JPG, name it wordpress-seo.JPG.
- Always include hyphens between words in the image file names. For example, if you were to name it wordpress_seo.JPG or wordpressseo.JPG Google won’t be able to read this. Google reads files with hyphens as individual words, so you will want to name it wordpress-security.JPG.
- Include your focus keyword if applicable, at least on your featured image. We always name our featured image on our blog posts the same as our focus keywords.
15. Importance of Dofollow vs NoFollow Links
There are two basic types of links on the internet when it comes to WordPress SEO; and that is dofollow links and nofollow links. Here is the basic differences between the two:
Dofollow Links
By default, every link you create on a WordPress site is dofollow. Google crawls websites and when it finds dofollow links it passes link juice between them and the site they are linked to. This helps build authority and affects your rankings in Google. You have probably heard people say that you need more backlinks, well, they are usually referring to dofollow links from other high authority sites. In general, the more dofollow links you get the better!
Nofollow Links
Nofollow links are links that contain the rel attribute of nofollow, as seen below:
<a href="https://kinsta.com" rel="nofollow">my link</a>
Nofollow links tell Google that they should not pass any link juice and that they should simply be ignored. That is not to say nofollow links aren’t important though. Remember that nofollow links can still generate traffic, even if they don’t pass link juice. For example, the link on your Twitter profile is nofollow as seen below. However, this link can still generate a lot of traffic and therefore is still important.
Building up a backlink profile of a good ratio of dofollow and nofollow links is the best and safest approach. Read this post on some other easy ways to find out if a link is dofollow or nofollow.
Summary
As you can see there are a lot of WordPress SEO factors to consider when running your WordPress site. It definitely can be overwhelming if you are just starting out, especially because not everything with SEO is black and white. Hopefully the checklist and tips above help get you further along! Did we miss any important tips or perhaps you have questions? If so, let us know below.