Primary check list For WordPress website SEO
With thousands of websites getting launched everyday,one needs to adopt new ways and means to stay ahead in the game of search engine ranking positions. Here is a checklist that will help you optimize your WordPress website so that it stands out from the rest and helps you dominate competition.
SEO Plugin
Though WordPress is pretty good when it comes to SEO, it is still recommended that you install an SEO plugin like Yoast to have full control over optimizing your website. It is a comprehensive optimization tool that recommends how to make optimizations and maximize your website’s potential. It enables you to write good content by providing keyword analysis, automatically generate XML sitemaps, add social media and schema markup and enable breadcrumbs.
Optimize Permalinks
Permalinks signify how the URL’s of your website are structured. The default setting generates weird links that are not very clean and SEO friendly. To increase your search engine ranking it is important to customize the URLs. Google prefers short URLs that contain the title and keywords of your post. You can update your settings and use the “Post name†option which helps you insert the title of the post.
Keywords
Keywords are the backbone of the search engine algorithms. While you write the content for your visitors you should have one focus keyword in mind that has huge search volumes. Use the focus keyword in the front of your title and within the first paragraph if possible. Google keyword planner can help you identify such keywords that will help you rank high in the search engines.Yoast SEO plugin analyses the keyword density and recommends ways to keep up with the best SEO practices.
Title and Headings Tags
Search engine crawlers use the header tags to determine the content of the page. Make sure that the title of the page is wrapped in H1 tag, and all the sub headings in H2 and H3 tags. Sub headings break the content into readable format and increase user engagement. But most importantly they make it easier for the search engine spiders to reach your page.
Meta description
Meta description displays information under your web page link in the search engine result page. It is no longer used by the search engine algorithms to determine the rankings. However this description helps you to grab the user’s attention and entice them to click on your page. This will help you raise your click through rates. A high CTR will make your data look more relevant to the search engine and therefore improve your rankings.
Image alt text
Whenever you upload an image always add an alternative text for it in the alt tag. It basically describes what your image is about and helps the search engines identify whether the image is relevant to the content. Using a keyword rich phrase will help in optimizing the images for the search engines.
Word count
A long form content ranks better in the search engine results than short form content. A long article that delves deep into the subject will give you an edge over short articles especially when you are looking to rank for competitive keywords.
Linking
Providing links to other content on the website helps in establishing a structure and hierarchy of the information. It creates a clean link architecture of the website and enables the search engines to easily crawl through the website. External links to websites with related content will enhance user experience and help you get more backlinks.
SEO is a complex combination of optimizing content, page appearance as well as backend technical aspects. If you focus on providing high quality content and follow this checklist you will reach your target audience much faster.