6 WordPress Tips and Tricks for SEO

One of the advantages of having a WordPress blog is that it simplifies many of your tasks, including search engine optimization (SEO). There are many ways to customize WordPress blogs to make them more SEO friendly. Best of all, most of the methods that accomplish this are very simple. What follows are some of the best tips for optimizing your WordPress site for the search engines.
SEO Experts in Mumbai - India - Vickeemore
SEO Experts in Mumbai - India - Vickeemore

Start With Keyword Research

Keyword research is always one of the first steps to take when it comes to SEO. These are the words that you are trying to rank for, so you must choose them carefully. You can use free keyword tools like Wordtracker or the Google Keyword Tool to find out what people in your niche are searching for.

Another effective way to find keywords is even simpler. You simply start typing words into Google search and see what phrases are suggested. These may not always be appropriate, but you can then put these phrases through other keyword tools to see how popular they are.

You should think about keywords right from the start, before you even purchase your domain. The title of your blog should contain your main keywords, and they should also be used in your blog description. Naturally, you also want to focus on them with all of your posts and pages as well.

Use the Right Permalink Structure

This refers to the URL of your blog posts.

The default permalink structure is something like this: www.myblog/123?. This is not helpful for SEO purposes, as there are no keywords in your post’s URL.

You can remedy this by going to your WordPress Settings and clicking on Permalink Structure. There you will find several choices. You can click on the choice for Post Title, or you can click on Custom Structure and put in /%postname% so that your actual post name is included in the URL. For this to be effective, you have to think about the keywords you use in all of your post titles.

Use Plugins for WordPress SEO

There are lots of plugins that can help with WordPress SEO, but a couple are practically mandatory.

Google XML Sitemap

This free plugin will create a sitemap so that Google and other search engines will index your site more quickly and effectively. This plugin notifies the search engines whenever you post to your blog, so it’s working on your behalf all the time.

Check out Google XML Sitemap plugin.

All in One SEO Pack

This is another free plugin that can help a great deal with WordPress SEO. One important function of this plugin is that it automatically makes all of your title tags more SEO friendly. It also generates meta tags automatically and ensures that the search engines don’t penalize your site for duplicate content.

All in One SEO Pack has many features that are customizable. For example, if you have an e-commerce site, you can make sure that all of your products and pages are optimized so people can easily find your products through the search engines.

Optimize Your Images

When you use images in your blog posts, you should make they are as SEO friendly as possible. You can do this by customizing the image title and the Alt-tags. Remember that the search engines don’t notice actual images, only the descriptions that accompany them. On top of that, always name your image’s filename with descriptive keywords.

You can use your chosen keywords when you put in the name of the image and in the Alt-tag. This will make it easier for the search engines to locate all of your images.

Make Sure Your Blog Loads Quickly

Having your blog load quickly is not only important for attracting visitors, it also has SEO value. The search engines will penalize a site that loads too slowly. You will also lose many visitors this way!

Many sites load slowly because they are bogged down with applications, images, plugins and other features that slow them down. You have to find the right balance when setting up your blog. Some plugins are very helpful for SEO, but having too many plugins of any kind ends up slowing down your site. Similarly, images can make your blog appealing but if they are too large they will make your site sluggish.

Use Internal Linking on Your Blog

When you link to other pages and posts in your blog you are adding SEO value to your site. This is also a good way to keep visitors on your site longer (and thus reduce your blog’s bounce rate).

When you write a new blog post, see if there are any older posts that are related to the same topic. If so, put a link to the older post in the new one. This gives the search engines a chance to index your older content as well as the newer!

SEO is Simple With WordPress
The above are just some of the best tips to better optimize your blog with the search engines. WordPress is set up to be as user friendly as possible, and there are many ways you can customize it for SEO purposes.

You shouldn’t get carried away with things like SEO plugins, however. As I mentioned, having too many plugins can slow down your site. A few basic ones, however, can work wonders and save you from having to perform tasks manually.

There are some other common sense tips you should remember as well, such as providing quality content and updating your blog frequently. A blog that is only updated once per month is going to have a hard time ranking no matter what other steps you take!

With persistence, you will find that WordPress provides the ideal environment to create sites that are loved by visitors and search engines alike.


Article Source: Top10Wordpress
Author: Janice