WordPress SEO Checklist: 7 Ways To Increase Your Google Rank
According to the findings of certain studies, a greater number of website owners choose WordPress as their content management system (CMS). This is due to the fact that it has been demonstrated to be more search engine optimization (SEO) friendly than other platforms.
You can verify this by looking at the list of outstanding WordPress features that are included on the homepage of the WordPress website. You will find that they are proud of the fact that their platform is SEO-friendly.
But even if you use WordPress, you still need to know the right WordPress SEO checklist, which you have to use on your website to make the most of what it can do, while still reaching more audience.
This is exactly what we are going to talk about in the following write-up, in which we will lay out the specific recommendations of the WordPress SEO checklist that you should follow in order to improve your ranking on Google.
Increase Your Google Ranking With This WordPress SEO Checklist
Here are some of the most helpful tips from the WordPress SEO checklist that will help you improve your website’s performance and management so that it ranks higher in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
Install An SEO-friendly WordPress Theme
This should be the first item on your WordPress SEO checklist that you should engage in, but you should do so in a manner that is professional. So, after downloading, the default theme will be the one that will be in use.
Users can, however, change the default theme to a different one of their choosing because there are thousands of free, SEO-optimized WordPress themes available directly from the dashboard.
When installing a theme, there are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to the WordPress SEO checklist. One of these things is to always check the theme’s demo using the Google Web.dev tool. This will give you an idea of how well the theme will perform in terms of SEO.
This action will, at the very least, provide you with the assurance that you are truly selecting a WordPress theme that will be highly effective for the management of your website and the RIO strategy.
1. Install SEO-friendly Plugins
This WordPress SEO Checklist involves the installation of a useful plugin that will assist you in optimizing your website pages for the performance of various search engines like Google and Bing.
By following these steps, you will be able to exert complete control over each and every element that appears on the page that website visitors will see as they go through your website.
If you use the right and best plugin as part of your SEO checklist for WordPress blog posts, you can make content that is full of keywords, create XML sitemaps, make optimized meta descriptions, and do a lot more.
Note: Because there are thousands of WordPress plugins accessible, which could make it tough to choose, we have selected the best on-page SEO plugin for WordPress so that you can choose from among those.
2. Get Your Website’s Index Settings Correctly
While you should strive for a website that is friendly to search engine optimization (SEO), you should also aim for a website that is friendly to Googlebot and that can be readily scanned and indexed by search engine bots.
On the other hand, Google will index your website if you have the WordPress SEO checklist set up to allow it to do so. To make this feature available, you will need to go into your settings and then click the visibility icon.
If you want Google to easily index your website, there is one more item on the WordPress SEO checklist that you should pay attention to, and that is ensuring that your website contains a file called “robots.txt.”
You may verify this information by going to YOURSITE.com/robots.txt, which will ensure that the search engines will be able to crawl your website. You might also add something called “meta robots” tags to each page of your website.
3. Create Custom URLs For Web Pages
Because this influences how search engines will index that page, this is a very critical WordPress SEO checklist that you should always check out before publishing any web page. You should do this before publishing any post.
For instance, you may have written a piece on your blog about the “top 10 best SEO companies in the World.” But the URLs will automatically make every word in your title stand out, which will make it too long and unappealing.
The URLs will automatically write it as: https://domain.com/top-10-best-seo-companies-in-the-world. You are aware, on the other hand, that the seed keyword for which your content is optimized is simply “SEO companies in the world.”
Because of this, the WordPress SEO Checklist recommends that you manually shorten the URLs to point to https://domain.com/seo-companies-in-the-world in order to get the most out of that particular web page.
4. Write Optimized Title Tags And Meta Descriptions
Creating an optimized SEO title and description as well as a meta description is highly regarded as one of the most crucial items on the WordPress SEO checklist that determines your CTR.
Most tools that have already been installed will always write the page’s title tags automatically. However, you should rewrite them so that you can improve them when you change them to a higher level.
You can insert additional keywords that you wish to optimize while you are rewriting your title tags. You can also include variations that explain where and why the information is being given.
This SEO checklist for WordPress blog posts also enables website and business owners to generate optimized title tags by using snippet variables and custom text in their construction.
5. Dates Should Be Labeled As “Last Updated”
One last thing to do on this WordPress SEO checklist is to refresh your evergreen content on a regular basis so that it remains relevant to the most recent developments in the industry.
However, the topic that arises most frequently among bloggers is whether or not they should update the publication date of their posts to reflect the current year or whether or not they should remove the dates entirely.
But the best way to increase the click-through rate of that particular piece is to tell people when the information was last updated by saying “last modified on” or “updated on.”
You can quickly and easily add information about when your WordPress web pages or blog posts were “last edited” or “updated on” with the help of a plugin called WP Last Modified Info. This is an essential component of SEO.
6. Use HTML Tags To Boost Your On-page SEO
With the help of our WordPress SEO Checklist, you will have the ability to make adjustments to the HTML code of your website to improve your SEO strategy. That is, make sure that the headers you use in all of your work are correct.
In addition, you can improve the effectiveness of your keyword utilization by including target keywords in the titles of the various sections of your content. However, utilizing it in an early paragraph is the strategy that has proven to be the most successful.
Your content and keywords need to be compatible, and you must steer clear of using the same keywords in many sections of your site’s content. If you don’t fix this, Google will label the content you produce as “Keyword cannibalization.”
Adding alt text to all of your photos and any other visual content on your site is another crucial item to cross off your SEO checklist for WordPress blog posts. This will assist search engine bots in locating your images on your website.
7. Increase The Speed Of Your Site
Because site speed has such a big effect on how well a WordPress SEO strategy works, we can’t end this list of WordPress SEO checklists without reminding you that you should always be working to improve your website’s speed.
Be aware that if it takes your website longer than 4 seconds to load, then one in every four visitors will immediately leave your website. Users will not return to a website that has a slow loading speed because of this.
But if you use this SEO checklist for WordPress blog, you can still speed up your website by reducing the file sizes of the images and media that are shown on the pages of your website.
In addition to that, get rid of any links and HTML code that aren’t being used. Your website’s response time will always decrease by a few milliseconds as a direct result of the actions you take, while the speed at which your website loads will increase.
Read Also: What Is SEO Writing? The 9 Best Google-friendly Writing Tips
The bottom Line On Our WordPress SEO Checklist
You are going to need to employ a professional SEO plan if you want your content to rank high in Google search results. To your good fortune, WordPress gives you access to tools that will make the process simpler.
Because the WordPress advanced SEO plugin is so popular and highly effective, it gives WordPress users more ways to improve the search engine optimization of their websites as a whole.
However, we have high hopes that the strategies we’ve covered in this WordPress SEO checklist will help you improve your site’s ranking and get more organic traffic to your website.
It is important to keep in mind that you should not be scared to experiment with the SEO strategies described above as well as any other strategies that you may come across in order to get the best possible outcome for your website.
Is there any information that should be added to our WordPress SEO checklist that has been left out? In the event that there are, kindly let us know in the comment section by providing a list of them. Keep an eye out!
