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Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners
by Abhinav G. Movie EnthusiastImproving WordPress SEO is essential to increasing traffic on your website. Unfortunately, most WordPress SEO guides can be too technical for beginners to understand.
You should consider WordPress SEO best practices to increase your website traffic.
This guide will provide the best WordPress SEO tips and tricks to improve your WordPress SEO.
Experts may have told you that WordPress is SEO-friendly. Because of this, many people use WordPress to create a blog or website.
WordPress ensures that the code generated by the software follows SEO best practices. However, you can do more to optimize your SEO efforts.
You can optimize your WordPress SEO by following a few simple steps.
We have created a table of contents to make navigating our ultimate WordPress SEO guide easier.
The following is a brief introduction to the topic:
Understandably, optimizing your WordPress site for SEO can seem intimidating to beginners, mainly if they need to be tech-savvy.
Don't worry; it's not complicated. Learn the basics here, then start using them on your website.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a technique used by web admins to increase traffic on their websites by ranking higher in search engines.
It's not about gaming Google or tricking it. This is simply creating a site with optimized code and formatting, making it easier 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: Why it is Important
Most websites get the majority of their traffic from search engines.
Google and other search engine use advanced algorithms to rank pages in search results. These algorithms could be more flawless -- you still have to help them understand your content.
Search engines can only rank your content if it is optimized. Your website will not appear on the first page of search results when people search for topics you write about. You'll lose out on a lot of traffic.
All business owners should ensure their websites are search engine-friendly to maximize search traffic.
WordPress SEO Basics
SEO is a technical subject, but it doesn't need to be. Even if you only learn a few simple SEO tips, your website's traffic will increase.
The techniques listed below don't require you to be a technical genius. You're ready to go if you already use WordPress!
Start optimizing your site today.
Check your site's visibility settings.
WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to hide your site from search engines. This option gives you time to finish your website and make it public.
This option is sometimes accidentally selected, and your site will be unsearchable.
This option should be unchecked if your website does not appear in the search results.
Log in to your WordPress site's admin area and go to the settings >> Reading section.
Scroll down to the section titled 'Search Engine Visibility.' Ensure the box next, 'Discourage search engines from indexing the site,' must be checked.
Click on the "Save Changes" button to save your changes.
Use SEO Friendly URL Structures for WordPress
Search engine-friendly URLs are easy to read for both humans and engines.
Examples of SEO-friendly URLs include:
These URLs can be read, and the user can tell what the page will look like by looking at the text.
What does a URL that is not SEO-friendly look like?
http://example.com/archives/123
These URLs are based on numbers that have no relation to the content. A user can't guess what the page contains by looking at the URL.
You can improve your search engine rankings by using permalinks that are SEO-friendly.
How to check and update the permalink structure of your WordPress website.
To do this, go to the Settings page >> Permalinks. Click the "Save Changes" button after selecting the Post Name option.
You can find more information in our guide; what is an SEO-friendly URL structure for WordPress?
Please note: After running your website for at least six months, you should keep the permalink structure the same. Continue using Day and Name and Month and Name if you currently use them.
If you change the permalink structure of an existing site, your SEO ranking and social media shares will be affected.
Hire a professional to set up redirects if you need to change your permalink. Your social shares will still be lost on those pages.
WWW vs. non WWW
If you are starting with your website, use www (http://www.example.com) or non-www (http://example.com) in your URL.
You need to stick with one website, as search engines will consider them two separate websites.
Visit the settings >> General to set your preferences. Enter your preferred URL into both the WordPress Address and Site Address fields.
Contrary to what others may say, either one has no SEO advantage.
For more detailed information on this topic, look at our guide on www or non-www. Which is better for WordPress SEO?
The Best WordPress SEO Plugin
WordPress has a plugin to do everything. SEO is the same. The fact that there are so many WordPress SEO plugins makes it difficult for beginners to select the best WordPress plugin.
We will guide you to the best WordPress SEO plugin for all your SEO needs. It's free!
The Best WordPress SEO Plugin
You can choose between All In One SEO or Yoast Search Engine when selecting the best WordPress plugin for SEO.
AIOSEO, the original WordPress SEO plugin, is used by over 3,000,000 websites.
This is the plugin we use on WPBeginner.
It has powerful features such as TruSEO on-page analysis, rich snippets, social media integration, and breadcrumb navigation. WooCommerce eCommerce SEO is also supported, along with local SEO.
AIOSEO is a WordPress SEO plugin that handles the technical optimization of your site.
This tutorial will use AIOSEO to show screenshots and examples.
You can learn more in our guide to setting up All In One for WordPress.
All-in-One SEO is more innovative and influential than Yoast SEO. See nine reasons we switched from Yoast AIOSEO for more information.
Add XML sitemaps to WordPress.
An XML Sitemap, or XML Sitemap file, is a specially-formatted file listing every page of your website. Search engines can easily find your entire content.
Although adding an XML Sitemap will not improve your website's ranking, it can help search engines find pages and begin ranking them.
You can create an XML Sitemap if you use the AIO SEO plugin. You can find your Sitemap by visiting this URL. (Don't forget the replace example.com with your domain name).
http://example.com/sitemap.xml
Next, we will show you how to submit your XML Sitemap to Google.
Add your site to Google Search Console.
Google Search Engine is also known as Webmaster Tools. It is a collection of tools that Google offers to website owners so they can see how the search engine views their content.
You can get reports and data that will help you to understand how your pages are displayed in the search results. It also shows you the actual search terms that people use to find your site, the order in which each page appears, and the number of times your pages are clicked.
This information will help you to understand which parts of your website are working and which ones are not. Then, you can plan your content strategy.
Google Search Console will also notify you if there are any problems with your site, such as when the search crawlers cannot access it or find duplicate content.
This guide will show you how to Add your WordPress Site to Google Search Console.
You can add Google Search Console to AIOSEO by following this guide.
Click on Sitemap in the left-hand menu, and then copy the URL of the Sitemap.
To save your changes, click on the Submit button.
Google Search Console now checks your Sitemap to improve the crawling of your website.
It will show as pending once you've successfully added your Sitemap. Google takes some time to crawl through your website. You will be able to see the stats after a few hours. You will be able to see the number of pages and images that were indexed, as well as how many links are in your Sitemap.
You should check your Search Console on a regular basis to gather insights and see the SEO progress of your website.
Update The AIOSEO Team has launched a new Google Search Console integration which allows you to have a complete search statistics dashboard within your WordPress site.
We recommend that, in addition to Google Search Console, you submit the URL of your website to other popular search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.
MonsterInsights is a great tool to use along with other search engines for analyzing your organic traffic. MonsterInsights allows you to view insights from Google Analytics directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Learn how to install Google Analytics with MonsterInsights in WordPress by following this tutorial.
SEO Optimizing Your Blog Posts
Beginners often make the mistake of believing that simply installing and activating the WordPress plugin will suffice. If you want maximum results, you need to keep up the SEO process.
Top SEO plugins let you add an SEO title, a meta description, and a focus keyword to each blog post or page. You can also see a preview of the results that users will get when they search for your website.
You should optimize your title and descriptions to maximize clicks on search engine results.
Scroll down and make the most of SEO when writing your blog posts.
Our beginner's guide on optimizing blog posts for search engine optimization will explain in detail how to select a focus keyword, focus keyphrase, title, and meta description.
It is important that you read this article because on-page optimization is critical to the success of your search engine marketing strategy.
Keyword Research is a Must for Websites
Beginners often make their best guesses about what people want to read on their blogs or website.
You are shooting in the dark. It's not necessary to do this when you can use data to discover what people want.
Keyword research is used by SEO experts and content creators. This technique helps you find out what words people use to search for content, products, and services within your industry.
Use these words and phrases to increase search traffic on your site.
You can find a lot of Keyword Research Tools, both free and paid. We recommend using Semrush. It helps you find keywords and can even tell you where your competitors rank.
See our guide for beginners on keyword research to optimize your WordPress website.
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About Abhinav G. 
Movie Enthusiast
85 connections, 3 recommendations, 215 honor points.Joined APSense since, March 4th, 2013, From Noida, India.
Created on May 31st 2023 04:41. Viewed 140 times.
