How to set up SEO on WordPress website

What is SEO and how to set up SEO on WordPress? SEO is a number 1 thing that a person needs to do if they want a decent amount of traffic from Google and other search engines. There are a ton of ways you can get the traffic but SEO will get you free organic highly targeted traffic.

This article will cover all the things you should know about SEO and how to set up SEO on a WordPress website. We will start with the easiest and the most basic things and then we will move forward.

Pick an SEO friendly Theme

The first thing you will have to do is pick an SEO friendly theme for WordPress set up. There are many themes out there that don’t have any SEO. You should never go with such a theme. Instead, you will have to find a theme that is SEO friendly.

This is a consuming fact for many people as they don’t know about the SEO friendly theme. If you have no idea what SEO friendly theme looks like, you will never be able to choose one.

Here are some of the major things you need to see.

• The website has to load in the least time possible. If the theme speed is too slow, it will affect your SEO.
• The theme has to be mobile-friendly. Google and all the other search engines are preferring responsive websites.
• Clean code, meta tags, and other stuff also play an important role here. So, you will have to keep in mind that too.

Most of the popular themes are SEO friendly. So, you can surely rely on that. You will see the SEO friendly tag on the theme. Therefore, you can look for the tag and decide accordingly.

Decide the Keywords

The next step is to decide the keywords. You will have to decide the keywords. Once you have the major topic ideas with you, you can use online tools to find the right and the best keywords.

For the homepage, you will have to do your keyword research and get the keywords you can use. You can get as many keywords as you want.

We highly suggest you collect 2 to 3 keywords for the main page. Thereafter, you can collect the LSI keywords. These are the keywords that are related to the main keyword.

You will have to insert the main keywords a decent number of times in your article or other content. Make sure you don’t add them too much for WordPress SEO set up optimization. If you add too many amounts of keywords, you will end up spamming Google. You will not have to do that. Instead, you will have to use it in a normal amount. Make sure you are writing the text content for the users and not for Google and other search engines. It should be for the users only. This is the main thing to keep in mind while you are adding the keywords. Talking about the keywords, the next thing that goes along with this is the content for better WordPress SEO optimization.

Content is the King

It’s a pretty common phrase, content is the king. You will have to create the content if you want to rank on Google.

There are two main types of content that you can add. One of them is the web content which is for the home page and all the pages. The second is the blog content which is for the blogs.

As of now, we will talk about general things that are applicable for both. We will surely have a separate section for the blog too.

You will have to make sure that the content is long enough to keep the user engage and not too long to make them feel bored. Usually, anywhere between 1500 words to 2500 words are the best-suited content. Depending on the industry you are in, you can change this.

Also, don’t use too many filter words for the content. You can keep the content natural and keep it to the point. If you use too many filter words in your content, it might get the wrong intention for the people. So, don’t use too many filter words. Instead, you can keep it short and to the point if the content can’t be expanded. Remember, the user’s attention matters more than the number of words.

Further, you also need to add the images to your content. It can be regular images but you will have to insert the ALT tags. You can easily find the option in the image option. Talking about WordPress, make sure you have a content analyzer that will check the content for SEO. This brings us to the next point in our SEO journey for WordPress SEO set up. For analyzing, there is a plugin that we will use.

SEO Plugin for WordPress set up

Here comes the best part of using WordPress. You can always use plugins to enhance things better. There are many plugins you can use for various purposes. In the same way, there are many plugins for SEO too. You can use one of many plugins to do the SEO of your WordPress website.

You should use the dedicated plugin for the same. There are many plugins you can use. You can use Yoast SEO, Rank Math or you can even use the All In One SEO plugin. All of them are good at their place. You can use any of them as per your wish and start the SEO.

It will ask for the basic confirmation at first where you can enter things like meta details, homepage title, etc. Once you set all these things up, you are all set to use the plugin.

All of these plugins provide various features. One of the important features that will use is the SEO analyzer. When you create a page or post, there will be a small space where you can enter your keyword. When you enter the keyword, the plugin will analyze the page and tell you the changes you need to make. In simpler words, these are the main things that you will have to change to make the content SEO friendly. Once you make all the changes, you will see a green light. This means that the content is all set and is also SEO friendly. If everything is alright, you can always move forward and go on to the next steps.

You can check out the SEO plugin and explore it more before you move further.

Permalinks

You will have to set permalinks on your website. Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal and will hardly take a few minutes to do the entire task. You can easily set the permalinks by heading over to Settings > Permalinks.

There are several options from which you will have to choose one. The best one that you can and you should go with is the post name. You will see an option to set the permalinks as post name, just select it, and then you can simply hit the save button and you’re all set. This is the easiest way using which you can set the permalinks.

This will change the way URL sees. For example, when you visit the page normally, it will look something like example.com/id=12 and when you change the permalink, it will look clean like example.com/post-name.

Google will rank the URL which has the same URL as the keyword. So, make sure you are following the given format for permalinks.

Google Search Console – WordPress SEO set up

Now, this is not a mandatory part but this is a thing that you need to do if you want to measure the search. You can easily find out where your page stands on Google.

Search Console will tell you how Google will check your website. In this way, you can easily know what changes you will have to make to rank better. It will also show you the position of your every page. It will show the average page rank of the website and it will show the keyword ranking of the website.

This will help you in strategizing better.

Start Creating Backlinks

Now, you can easily start creating backlinks. Backlinks are the links that come to your website from an external website. For example, if you do a guest post on a website and add a link to your website, it is considered as backlinks.

If you have more backlinks, it will help you rank better. It is necessary to rank better. You will not only need to concentrate on quantity but you will also need to concentrate on the quality of the backlink.

Google will prioritize the quality of the backlinks more than anything else. Further, you will also need to create relevant backlinks. Remember, it’s not just about creating backlinks. Instead, you will have to focus on creating better and relevant backlinks.

Relevant backlinks are the links that come from a similar website. For example, if you post on a health topic, you will need to get the backlink from the health websites. This will increase the chance of getting ranked. This is the main thing you will have to do.

Speed, SSL, and Responsive

Although this depends on the theme you will surely do you apart when it comes to these things. However, the theme is not the only thing that matters when it comes to these things. For example, even if the theme is super fast but you have uploaded many pictures without compressing them, it will take a lot of time to load the page.

So, you will have to make sure that you do all the changes here too. For speed, image optimization is one of the most important things you will have to do. Make sure you optimize your image in the best way possible that it increases the speed. You can surely use a compression plugin for the same. This will ensure that the images you use are automatically compressed.

You can surely buy an SSL certificate that will add S to the HTTP. This ensures better security and will also increase the website’s visibility.

The website needs to be mobile-friendly for good WordPress SEO set up and optimization. You can use AMP for the same. Let’s talk more about AMP.

AMP

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. These are the pages optimized for mobile phones. With AMP pages, users can quickly and easily visit your website from mobile. These are the pages that have very limited functionality enough to run the page but not enough to run all the fancy scripts. In technical words, it works on HTML and CSS.

You don’t need to create all these pages, you can easily add the AMP version of the pages by adding a simple plugin. There is a plugin in the WordPress plugin directory that you can install. There are two plugins. Both of them have similar tasks. So, you can install any of them as per your wish, and then you can get started. The name of the plugins is AMP and AMP for Wp. Please note that you don’t need to install both of them. Installing one will do the job. The second is a bit advanced as compared to the first one. So, you will get better features there.

When you install the plugin, you will have to do the setup directly. The wizard will take you through all the steps. You can directly complete the setup and you are all set to rank your website. You can check the website by visiting it on your mobile phone or you can even add /amp at the end of the main page URL and you are all set to go.

Final Words – WordPress SEO set up

To conclude, these are the steps you can use to set up SEO on a WordPress website. There are some of the other things also needed that you will have to do to create a sustainable PageRank. However, following these things will be enough for a new website to rank on Google and get the rankings with ease. Don’t forget to other things too, this will help you get better rankings.