WordPress SEO: Checklist to Rank Higher in Search Engines

Learning WordPress SEO can be a daunting task.

But with the right practices and tips, you can optimize your website for higher rankings in Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

This guide will cover a checklist of things that you can do to increase your online visibility.

So whether you’re just starting with SEO or you want to take your game up a notch, read on for some helpful tips!

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is a popular content management system that allows you to build and manage a website, blog, or online store.

It was created in 2003 by a group of developers, including Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, as an open-source project. Since then, it has grown tremendously to become the go-to platform for website creation and management.

In fact, based on W3Techs statistics, WordPress now powers 43% of all websites on the internet, which makes it one of the most popular and widely used platforms by both small businesses and big corporations alike.

So why is WordPress so popular?

Some of the key reasons include its ease of use, its wide range of features (including thousands of plugins and themes), and the fact that it’s completely free and open-source.

It also has a wide community of users and developers who are always working to make it even better. From vast documentation to support forums and constant updates, it’s no wonder that so many people love using this CMS.

WordPress SEO Checklist

The CMS comes with several features and tools that you can use to increase your online visibility.

But this does not mean that WordPress SEO is automated.

In my experience, it requires a lot of time and effort, and you need to be consistent with your practices if you want to see results. This includes creating great content, earning quality links, and making sure your website is free of technical errors that can negatively impact your results.

  This is why this list will come in handy for you. It outlines some of the key SEO practices and tips that will help you improve your website rankings in search engines, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user.

So let’s get started!

1. Choose a Good Hosting Provider

As you may know, the quality and speed of your host can have a direct impact on rankings, as well as user experience and engagement.

Some key factors to consider when choosing a good hosting provider include uptime, bandwidth and scalability, support, and price.

You should also look for a host that offers SEO-friendly features like CDN or caching to help improve your site performance.

Some top WordPress hosting providers that you can consider include SiteGround, Cloudways, WP Engine, and Bluehost.

 ErikEmanuelli.com is hosted with WPEngine, and I can say from personal experience that they are one of the best WordPress hosting providers around.

Based on my experience of years with them, I can say their customer support is excellent, their servers are fast and reliable, and their SEO features are helping my site’s performance.

2. Install an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme

Choosing a responsive theme that is optimized for search engines can help improve your rankings and visibility on SERPs.

Some important things to look for include site speed, mobile responsiveness, user-friendly navigation, and great design.

So, how can you choose one?

There are many great themes available for WordPress, so you should have no trouble finding one that fits your needs and goals.

Some popular options include the Genesis Framework, MyThemeShop, and Thrive Themes.

ErikEmanuelli.com uses a personalized Genesis Framework theme and has seen great scores on tests, so far.

3. Check Your Search Engine Visibility

The next thing you should do is check your search engine visibility.

This option can be found in your WordPress dashboard, in the “Settings” menu:

It is commonly used if your website is still in the development phase or if you have just launched a new site and want to check that it is properly indexed by search engines.

So, to avoid any SEO disaster, be sure to check the box is unticked.

4. Set SEO-Friendly Permalinks

By default, WordPress sets your permalinks to a structure that includes numbers and letters. However, this is not SEO-friendly.

To optimize them, go to “Settings” in your WordPress dashboard and select the “Permalinks” option.

Here, you can choose from a variety of different structures that include words and phrases, rather than numbers and letters.

The most popular form used is the “Post name”, which includes the title of your post or page at the end of your URL.

So for example, instead of a URL that looks like this:

erikemanuelli.com/12345678

Your URL will look more like this:

erikemanuelli.com/off-page-seo/

5. Choose the Site Address

When you first set up your website, you need to decide whether your domain will be accessible from www or not.

To do this, go to “Settings” in your WordPress dashboard and select the “General” option.

Here, you can select the “Site Address” and choose either “WWW Prefix” or “Non-WWW”.

 You should choose one and stick with it, as Google considers them to be two separate websites.

So, which version should you choose? You may ask.

From an SEO point of view, there’s no advantage to either using one or another.

But there are some benefits and drawbacks, which are summarized in the table below:

6. Add SSL/HTTPS

SSL/HTTPS is an essential security protocol for protecting your content and ensuring that users’ data is safe when they are browsing or entering information on your site.

In addition to protecting your users, it can also help improve your online presence by telling search engines that you are trustworthy and legitimate.

In fact, since August 2014, it’s a ranking signal:

To add HTTPS to your WordPress blog, you will need to purchase an SSL certificate from a trusted provider (or rely on the hosting service that will do it for you).

Once you have the certificate, you will need to install it and update your URLs accordingly.

 Based on my experience with small, niche blogs, you can quickly do this by installing the “Really Simple SSL” plugin (+5 million installations, so far). It’s so easy!

7. Install an SEO Plugin

There are many SEO plugins available for WordPress, and it can be hard to know which one is the best fit.

Some of the most popular ones include:

• Yoast SEO (10+ million active installations)
• All-in-One SEO Pack (3+ million active installations)
• Rank Math (2+ million active installations)

These plugins can help improve your online visibility in many ways, such as optimizing your meta tags, ensuring proper sitemaps (like XML sitemaps), and helping improve your content rankings in search engines.

Now, you may be wondering: “Which one should I choose?”

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, as all plugins vary in their features and functionality. So it’s best to do a bit of research and try out a few different plugins to see which one is the best fit for your website.

 If you ask me, I went with the most popular choice: Yoast SEO. And it has worked great for my website so far.

8. Add an XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file that contains information about all the pages on your website, including URLs and other technical data.

It is an essential tool that helps search engines better understand your site structure and index all of its content.

If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, it will automatically generate an XML sitemap for you.

You can generally find it at this URL:

http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

Just replace “example” with your domain name.

8. Submit Your Site to Google Search Console

GSC (Google Search Console) is a free tool that helps you monitor your website’s performance on Google and identify any potential issues.

It provides insights such as :

• Search traffic: how many people are visiting your pages from search engines?
• Keywords: which keywords are driving the most traffic to your content?
• Crawl errors: what SEO issues do you need to fix on your website?
• Index status: what pages are indexed in Google?

To submit your site to GSC, simply go to this URL:

Next, sign into your Google account and follow the prompts to submit your website information.

Once you have submitted your site, you need to verify your ownership of it. This is a crucial step, as Google won’t give you access to GSC features until this has been verified.

There are several verification methods available, including adding a meta tag to your website’s header or verifying via a DNS TXT record.

The exact method will depend on your website setup and platform, so make sure you follow the instructions provided by Google to complete this step.

If you are using Yoast, it’s really easy.

You simply need to add the verification code in the “General” tab of the plugin menu, by visiting the “Webmaster Tools” tab:

Once your site has been verified, you can start using the tools and monitoring features in GSC to improve your performance and rankings.

9. Do Keyword Research

Keyword research is an essential SEO practice that helps you understand what people are searching for online and which queries to target on your website.

There are many tools that you can use for this purpose, such as Google Keyword Planner and Moz’s Keyword Explorer.

During this process, it’s important to consider a wide range of factors, including the search volume and competition for each keyword.

You should also think about your target audience and what kind of terms they are likely to use when searching on the internet.

  By using the tools and strategies mentioned in this guide, you can select the best keywords for content creation and on-page optimization to improve your online visibility.

10. Optimize Blog Posts for SEO

Once you are ready to start writing content for your website, it’s important to optimize each blog post for search engines.

This means including SEO-friendly elements such as title tags and meta descriptions, as well as using your chosen keywords in strategic places throughout the article.

If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, you can do this by filling in the fields under each of your blog posts:

You should also consider using user-friendly formatting, such as headings, bullet points, and subheadings to break up your content and make it easier for users to read and digest.

 In addition, you should regularly update your older posts with new content, to make sure that your website is continually improving the quality of the information shared.

11. Use Internal Links

Using internal links will help connect different pages on your website to related topics, improving the page experience.

In addition, they allow links authority to distribute through your site, and make it easy for users to browse your content.

To do this, simply include hyperlinks in your blog posts by typing out the URL or using one of the many shortcodes available.

This practice helps you avoid creating orphan pages on your website.

Remember to take advantage of using keyword-rich anchor texts, as it will help search engines understand the topic of the linked pages.

Google has stated that there is no such thing as an internal linking over-optimization penalty.

 So, you can abuse as much as you want!

12. Optimize Images

The next step is to optimize the images on your website.

This will help improve your loading speed and make it easier for users to view and navigate your content.

One of the best ways to do so is by adding descriptive alt text and titles to each image.

You should also consider compressing the size, as this can drastically improve your website’s loading time.

To do this, you can use tools like ShortPixel or TinyJPG to automatically shrink your images and make sure that they are optimized.

13. Use Categories and Tags

Using categories and tags helps improve your WordPress SEO by making it easy not only to organize your website content by topic but also for users to find the specific information they need.

Furthermore, you will help search engines understand both your website’s structure and its pieces of content.

To add categories and tags to your blog posts, you can simply go to the Posts section on your WordPress dashboard.

Here, you can create new categories and tags, as well as assign them to your existing posts.

 While keyword meta tags are not a direct Google ranking factor, they are important because they help users navigate your site.

14. Optimize WordPress Comments

The comments section of your site allows users to engage with your content and leave feedback (which means more opportunities to get backlinks, more traffic, and improved rankings).

To optimize and moderate WordPress comments, you need to make sure they are real and not fake (or worse, spam).

To help you with this task, Akismet comes in handy. This plugin lets you filter out spam comments and keep your site clean.

Just register and get your API key.

You may also consider using plugins like Disqus to improve engagement on your site.

 And, remember to respond to all the comments and ask for more engagement by asking questions or prompting users for feedback.

15. NoIndex Tag Management

The NoIndex tag allows you to tell search engines not to index specific pages or posts on your site.

This is particularly useful when you have duplicate content, such as when you are using an aggregator or have multiple pages that serve the same purpose.

To add this tag to your WordPress site, you can use plugins like AIO SEO Pack or Yoast SEO.

Simply navigate to the advanced section (which is below each page or post) and set your preferences.

In the alternative, you can use the robots.txt file to suggest search engines which content you would like them to index and which one to ignore.

16. Add Schema Markup

Schema markup may help your WordPress SEO by adding context to your content and data.

It is also important for improving the user experience on your site, as it helps visitors better understand what they are seeing and make more informed decisions.

You can manually add it to your WordPress site by following this documentation or easily implement it on your content by installing the Yoast SEO plugin.

In fact, since Yoast 11.0, full-fledged structured data graphs have been automatically generated for every post and page.

 To ensure your content is properly set up to gain special SERP features such as rich snippets, you can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to identify and fix any errors.

17. Install a Cache Plugin

Cache plugins help improve your page speed, which is a key SEO ranking factor.

There are many different options available for WordPress, like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache (both of which are free and easy to install and use).

With WPEngine, my site enjoys included caching options (without the need to install a plugin), which has helped improve my overall performance on the web.

18. Add Rich Media

Rich media includes things like images, videos, infographics, interactive maps, slideshows, and other engaging forms of content that help keep users on your site for longer.

They also help with metrics like dwell time, and reducing bounce rate on your pages.

In 2002 we launched a page with a set of guidelines for site owners that gave an overview of best practices when it came to building a site. A lot has changed since then, so today we're launching a refreshed, simplified version of the Webmaster Guidelines:https://t.co/0xXAcwDHSI pic.twitter.com/QotRXJLieT

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) October 13, 2022

 More rich media you can use are gifs, podcasts, and embedded social media posts, like tweets, Instagram stories, or Facebook updates.

19. Include LSI Keywords

To help with WordPress SEO, you can use LSI keywords.

They are similar or related terms that search engines look for when determining a page’s relevance and ranking factors.

Adding them can help signal to search engines that you are semantically covering the topics in your content.

So, how do they work?

  Simply add them naturally in your writing, including into image captions and alt text.

To find them, you can use Google autosuggest or the “People Also Ask” section or even the related terms that show up below the SERPs.

20. Use “Updated” Dates in Posts

When you refresh a blog post or other piece of content on your site with new information, be sure to add an updated date so that search engines know that the page has been changed and needs to be crawled again.

This is good for your site users too, as they will be able to view the updated date and consider that new information has been added.

To do this in WordPress, you can use a plugin such as WP Last Modified Info.

Or, if you have Genesis Framework, you can add this code:

Before You Go

If you have come this far, congratulations on adding more optimization strategies to your WordPress site.

But wait! There’s much more you can do to make your content easier to rank.

You may want to read:

Now, it’s over to you. ​​​​

Do you have any other tips?

Share them in the comments below!

And remember, with great SEO comes great website traffic, engagement, and ROI.

So start optimizing today and watch your results grow!​ ​​ ​ ​​​​ ​​​

 

Related Reading:

• HTTP Status Codes: The Full List [And How to Handle Them]
• Website Architecture: 9 Simple Strategies to Improve Your Site Structure
• Google RankBrain: A Complete Guide
• Core Web Vitals: The Comprehensive Guide
• Redirects: How to Use Them for SEO [The Complete List]