WordPress SEO

This is a WordPress SEO overview of a few techniques and services I use and offer. I’ve included the free tools I use to track website metrics, improve local visibility and global page rank. All of which help you achieve organic traffic to your website. All of these things combined will help your website business be successful.

Note: None of these techniques or tools require paid advertising or marketing campaigns, just your time and energy. Teach yourself these techniques and implement them without the help of a professional.

After performing the WordPress SEO techniques I outline in this post, go ahead and add a Google paid campaign to your list. If done right, your results should be astronomical.

Checkout my – WordPress Internal Server Error Fix

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My personal WordPress SEO checklist / tools. (Not in order)

• Keyword / Keyphrase Research (Google Search Console)
• Website Speed / Performance (A2Hosting)
• Meta Titles / Meta Descriptions
• Add Internal / Outbound Links
• Use Keyphrase in Subheadings
• Word Count Goal 1500 – 2000
• WordPress Theme (GeneratePress)
• Link Building / Backlinks
• Add Images / Videos
• Add Image Meta Info
• No Word Fluff / Repetition
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics (Website Metrics)

Keyword Research

• Many SEO oriented websites offer keyword and keyphrase research tools. The problem, they are usually very expensive. Chances are you’ll go broke before your website starts to make money. So the way to avoid this cost, use Google Search Console. It’s 100% free.

• At first look, Google Search Console may be a bit daunting, but if you’re patient and teach yourself how to use it, you will be rewarded with a website that performs well and grabs organic traffic. Not just that, but you’ll be able to track all of the important metrics needed to help you understand what you need to do to improve your website.

Link Building

• WordPress is an amazing platform to build and maintain websites, not to mention really easy to perform SEO. WordPress sites also seem to rank well, you just have to put the work in to get them to that point. This depending how much content and how popular your niche is will determine how well your WordPress site ranks. One of the things we like about WordPress is the simplicity, plugins, availability, support community and ease of pushing fresh content out to the public to improve your local exposure.

Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions

• Titles and descriptions are important. Without them Google would not be able to find your content. The title of your page or post is the first thing Google reads. The second is the description. This meta information is read by Google’s algorithm.
  
• Titles and descriptions should not be too long or too short. Titles should be under or close to 60 characters and descriptions should be under or close to 160.

Answer Common Questions

• Everyday millions of people around the world are asking Google questions. Make it your priority to answer those questions better than your competitors. If your static web pages or dynamic blog posts are doing a better job at answering the questions people are searching Google for, those pages or posts will rank higher than your competition’s.

WordPress Website Performance

Web Hosting

• When you talk about user experience, buying the fastest web host you can afford is number one. The first thing your visitors notice is how fast your Website loads. Website performance can make or break the user experience. This will be the most important decision you will make for your WordPress website.
• I’ll save you the time, headache and money, I recommend A2Hosting. They are my #1 pick for the best overall web host money can buy. There is only one other web host that competes on performance, SiteGround. The difference, SiteGround is considerably more expensive and has a confusing dashboard, A2Hosting wins on both performance and value. Read my A2Hosting Review.

Images

• Optimizing your images. Heavy unoptimized images will bring your site to a crawl, even on a fast web host. In order for your visitors to view your images, those images need to load on their device. If your images are several megabytes they could have trouble. Visitors with slow connections or slow devices/computers will have to wait for them to load and may not want to. You might end up saying goodbye to your potentially new customers. So make sure you optimize your images. I try to keep mine under 100K, with an exception of a high res header image if needed.

Plugins

• Don’t install too many plugins. This is something I see too often. Unless you absolutely need it, don’t install it. Just like unoptimized images, too many heavy unoptimized plugins will put a choke hold on your site’s performance.

Themes

• Choose a WordPress theme that focuses on performance and has a large library of site themes to choose from. Since 2016, I decided to stick with GeneratePress. GeneratePress is a lightweight WordPress theme that focuses on speed, stability, and accessibility. They have a monster site theme library to choose from. It’s great for beginners, whether you’re a hobbyist, freelancer, or agency. It’s my favorite WordPress theme!