Did you know that 96.55% of webpages receive no traffic from Google? Don’t let your site suffer this fate. Here’s how to give your WordPress site search superpowers (no matter your level of technical knowledge—we’ll make you an expert).
Before we get started, there are a few things you’ll need to succeed with SEO on your WordPress site:
- Quality hosting: Slow hosting makes applying all other SEO strategies more challenging. At WordPress.com, we pride ourselves on providing lightning-fast hosting for WordPress websites (more on that below). That said, even if you’re using another hosting provider, you can still use the tips in this post.
- The right plugins: WordPress SEO plugins are available for almost every SEO task you need to execute. We’ll mention several throughout this post. WordPress.com users on the Business plan or higher can install plugins.
- Time and patience: Good site SEO takes effort, but the rewards are worth it.
What Makes WordPress.com Awesome for SEO?
Some people say WordPress.com is limited. We disagree. Here are five features that make WordPress.com SEO-friendly right out of the box:
- Fast and secure hosting performance means your site always loads quickly (which search engines and users love).
- Automatic version updates keep your site running on WordPress’s latest and best-performing version.
- Built-in Jetpack CDN (and the option to use Cloudflare) improves your site speed and performance by caching content closer to users, optimizing file delivery, and reducing server load.
- XML sitemaps are automatically generated and added to your site, providing search engines like Google with a structured, computer-readable list of your crawlable and indexable content.
- The ability to add plugins on the Business plan and above gives you even more flexibility in the tools you add to optimize your site.
Not sure what all of this means yet? Don’t worry. Throughout this post, we’ll explain everything you need to know.
- Start By Installing an SEO Plugin
- Make Sure You’re Using the Latest Version of WordPress
- Research the Keywords People Use to Find Your Site
- Keep Your Site Structure Organized
- Fix Broken Links and Close Navigational Dead-ends
- Consolidate Duplicate Content
- Use a Good Permalink Structure
- Add an XML Sitemap
- Optimize Metadata
- Make Images Search Engine-Friendly
- Indulge Your Site’s Need for Speed
- SEO Tips for Blog Posts
- Measuring Results
- Now Get More Traffic
Start By Installing an SEO Plugin
A good SEO plugin is essential to good site SEO. SEO plugins make it easy to execute various tasks that will ensure your site is search engine-friendly.
Here are three SEO plugins that we recommend (along with a tutorial from each brand on how to use them):
These plugins unlock tons of functionality that we’ll reference throughout this tutorial. That’s why we recommend installing one of these plugins first (if you haven’t already).
Make Sure You’re Using the Latest Version of WordPress
When WordPress websites encounter technical issues, using an outdated version of the WordPress software is a common cause. This is because newer software versions typically ship with performance and optimization updates.
WordPress.com automatically updates your site to the latest version of WordPress, so if you’re hosting your WordPress website with us, you can rest easy. If you’re using another hosting provider, check to see whether they handle updates for you, or if you’re responsible for keeping your site up to date.
Research the Keywords People Use to Find Your Site
Keywords are the terms people use to find content on search engines, so keyword research is the process of identifying the terms and phrases you should include in your posts and pages so users can find your content in search results.
You can see where this is going: including relevant keywords makes finding your content easier.
There are many free and paid tools you can use. We recommend these three free options:
- Google Keyword Planner: This tool can show you how often keywords are searched each month.
- KeywordTool.io: You can figure out keyword ideas based on Google Autocomplete results using this free tool.
- Answer The Public: You can enter a topic in the search and quickly generate tons of related keywords to help you build a well-rounded piece of content around the main topic.
These tools are only as good as your ability to use them. Fortunately, the fine folks at Ahrefs (a paid and robust keyword research tool) have assembled an excellent beginner’s guide to keyword research. Throughout the rest of this post, we’ll tell you when, where, and how to apply keywords too.
Tip: Your site should have only one page or one post per keyword. If you have two or more pages whose content is too similar, it can confuse search engines and cause them not to rank either page. It can confuse users too, making it unclear which page best addresses what they’re looking for.
Keep Your Site Structure Organized
Search engines reward well-structured sites that help users find key pages easily. That means it’s important to organize your site’s structure and navigation.
Avoid Duplicate Categories and Tags
WordPress uses categories and tags to organize blog posts. Let’s define their roles:
- Categories organize all posts within a topical area: For example, a cooking blog might have categories for Recipes, Restaurant Reviews, and Cooking Utensils.
- Tags organize specific groups of posts: For example, the same cooking blog might have tags for restaurant reviews in specific cities (i.e., Chicago and New York City) or reviews of specific utensil brands (i.e., Le Creuset and KitchenAid).
Categories and tags are both useful for organizing content. However, avoiding duplication in the names of your categories and tags is important. There are two reasons for this:
- They confuse users: If two things look the same, a reader might waste time thinking there’s a difference and have trouble telling which one will contain the content they’re trying to find.
- They confuse search engines: When you have an identical category and tag, WordPress will create duplicate archive pages for both. This makes it harder for search engines to understand your site, leading to lower rankings (and less traffic).
Fortunately, these issues are easy to avoid when you follow these tips:
- Use categories for primary navigation: This ensures every post is organized.
- Be disciplined with tag usage: Avoid using tags that exactly match any category.
- Consider setting tag archive pages to nofollow: This means telling search engines to ignore (and not rank) your tag pages. This makes absolutely certain that tag archive pages will not conflict with category archive pages in search results. Only do this if you’re comfortable with losing your tag pages in search results (your category pages will still be eligible to rank). You can apply this setting with Yoast, AIOSEO, or Rank Math.
Tip: Be careful using SEO plugins to nofollow or noindex portions of your site. It’s easy to accidentally block pages you want search engines to find.
Menus are essential for helping users navigate your site. They’re also helpful for search engines to understand how your site is structured (and to determine whether your site offers a good user experience).
When designing your menu, group relevant pages together. For example, if your site sells products, you might have a menu item labeled Products, with links to each category of products underneath.
Add links to your important pages in your site’s footer as well. Organize them so child pages (subpages) are listed underneath parent pages (top-level). This will keep your footer links clearly structured to match your page hierarchy, making it easy for users and search engines to navigate your site structure.
Add Internal Links Between Related Pages and Posts
Search engines use internal links, links between your content, to understand how pages are related to one another. When a page has many relevant links that help users navigate to the page, search engines recognize its importance
- Add links between related pages: Ideally, all pages grouped together in the same columns in your menu should also be internally linked within their content.
- Add links between related blog posts: This helps readers find more interesting content to read on your site while helping search engines understand what your posts are about.
Add links from your blog to your landing pages: It’s especially important to add links back to pages where a user might sign up for your service or make a purchase.
Tip: As a best practice, set internal links to open in the same window—external links should open in a new tab.
Fix Broken Links and Close Navigational Dead-ends
Broken links between pages frustrate users and make it difficult for search engine bots to crawl through your site. Fortunately, it’s easy to find and fix broken links by using a broken link detection plugin. Then, update the links so they point to relevant posts or pages. That’s it!
Consolidate Duplicate Content
Do you have two or more pages that serve the same purpose? Consider consolidating them into one authoritative page to reduce confusion for search engines and users.
Use a redirection plugin to re-route the duplicative pages to the one you want to keep. This prevents bots and readers from getting confused about which page to rank and read.
Use a Good Permalink Structure
Permalinks control how URLs are formatted on your site. It’s important to structure them so search engines can easily crawl them. We recommend including the following items in your permalink structure for blog posts:
- Dates: Include date information if you value accurate historical preservation. Otherwise, remove them. This makes it easier to update content in the future without confusing search engines.
- Post category: Categories help search engines understand the relevance of the page.
- Post name: By default, this will include the page headline.
The post name field controls your URL slugs. No, we’re not talking about slimy gastropods. On every post and page you publish, edit the slug to include your primary keyword, and remove all extra words. This helps bots understand what the page is about (and rank it accordingly).
As a reminder, this applies to permalinks for blog posts. For pages other than your homepage, WordPress.com will create a slug that matches the page title (which you can edit, of course).
Tip: WordPress.com users need the Business plan or higher to change the permalink structure.
Add an XML Sitemap
XML sitemaps are files in your site’s code that list all the important pages on your site to help search engines crawl and understand your content. WordPress.com automatically generates one for you, so if you’re a WordPress.com user, your homework here is done.
If you’re using WordPress with another hosting service, never fear. You can add an XML sitemap with an SEO plugin like Yoast, AIOSEO, or Rank Math.
When it comes to websites, you’ll sometimes hear people refer to “metadata.” This term could mean several different things depending on the context, but in general, it refers to data about a webpage that helps search engines and readers understand its context.
Here are ways you can optimize your post or page metadata:
Write Title Tags That People Want to Click On
Title tags are short lines of text that tell search engines and users what a page is about. They appear in the top line of text in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Here are some tips for writing effective title tags:
- Keep them under 60 characters: If they’re too long, search engines will truncate them. Use a free SERP preview tool to see how they will look before you publish them.
- Include your primary keyword: This is what your page is all about, so be sure to include it in the title tag.
- Make sure they read well: Try reading your title tags out loud. If they sound clunky or don’t make sense, try writing them again. They should sound natural, as searchers will largely decide whether to click on your content in search results because of your title tags.
Add Descriptive Meta Descriptions to Pages and Posts
Meta descriptions are short summaries of a page’s content. They appear underneath clickable links on SERPs.
Here’s how to write meta descriptions that make users want to click:
- Keep them concise: 120 to 150 characters is a good length for meta descriptions. If they’re too short, search engines may not use them. If they’re too long, they’ll get cut off.
- Use persuasive language: Tell the reader what makes your page or post valuable and interesting.
- End with a call to action: Encourage the reader to click through to your site.
Make Images Search Engine-Friendly
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. Since search engines can’t “see” images, they need help understanding their relevance to your content.
Here are some ways to make your images search-ready:
Include Keywords in Image File Names
Before you upload images to your posts and pages, give them a clear file name that includes relevant keywords. Follow this structure using dashes (rather than underscores): a-good-keyword-that-describes-this-image.jpg.
Use Descriptive Alt Text
Search engines use alt text to better understand what images are about, and screen readers also use them to help users with visual impairments understand your images through words.
Alt text should accurately describe the elements in your images—think number of people, activities depicted, colors, and textures.
For example, take this picture:
Good alt text for this image might look something like this: Two small golden retriever puppies sitting in the grass with orange flowers around their paws.
Our support guide will show you where you can edit image alt text on WordPress.com sites.
Indulge Your Site’s Need for Speed
Everyone loves fast-loading websites (including search engines). Give your site a tune-up to make sure it’s as quick as possible using these strategies:
Choose a Fast Hosting Provider
Slow loading speeds are often caused by slow hosting, which negatively impacts user experience.
Want to know how fast your site loads? Use our free WordPress Page Speed Test tool to find out:
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Content delivery networks (CDNs) use remote servers worldwide to cache and serve website files from locations close to your users. This helps your pages and media load faster.
All WordPress.com sites come with an excellent CDN from Jetpack. You can also choose Cloudflare, another popular option, as an alternative on the Premium plan and above.
Choose a Well-Designed WordPress Theme
Outdated themes are a common cause of WordPress performance problems. Fortunately, all WordPress.com websites have access to tens of thousands of high-quality themes that will load quickly. If you choose a theme from a third-party store or developer, buy one from a reputable vendor by reading reviews and ensuring you’ll get top-tier support.
Tip: WordPress.com users can upload third-party themes on the Business plan and above.
Compress Images for Faster Loading Speed
Image files can be large and hard for web browsers to load. Compressing images helps them load faster.
You can compress images manually using an image editing tool. An image compression plugin that reduces file sizes without reducing quality is a more convenient option. Here are a few options to check out:
SEO Tips for Blog Posts
Blog posts have some specific considerations to keep in mind for SEO. Let’s look at a short list of additional tips that can help your posts rank better and get more traffic.
Write Unique Content
Don’t copy content from other sites. If you want your content to rank, don’t write it all with AI either. Publish original content that serves user needs, and search engines will reward you.
This advice applies to other pages on your website too. All of your content should be original.
Include Keywords Naturally
Keywords help search engines understand your page’s topic and ensure it matches what users are searching for. They’re also crucial for users, as they should align with their intent and needs.
Just don’t go overboard trying to fit keywords everywhere you can. Keep your writing natural and focused on human readers. The folks at Copyblogger have an excellent guide on how to do this well.
Header tags impact readability and SEO by making pages and posts easier to read and understand. When writing posts and structuring content on pages, follow this header hierarchy:
- H1: The page title or headline
- H2: Major subpoints on the page or post
- H3: Supporting sections for each H2 subsection
- H4: Use sparingly, if at all
Your header tags should also be nested—don’t jump from an H1 directly to an H4.
Use Concise Sentences and Paragraphs
The classic best practice of writing for the web says to keep sentences under 25 words long and paragraphs under three sentences. These aren’t hard and fast rules, but this guidance can make your writing easier for readers to digest and find the answers they’re looking for.
You can also use the Jetpack AI Assistant to catch issues with your writing and make your content clearer and easier to read.
Display Excerpts Instead of Full Posts
WordPress allows you to display entire posts or post excerpts on blog archive pages. Showing excerpts only improves rankings and makes these pages easier to navigate.
From My Home, click Settings → Reading. Then, next to “For each post in a feed, include,” click Excerpt:
Measuring Results
You’ve learned tons of WordPress SEO tips to bring more people to your site in this post. How will you know whether your work was worthwhile?
Use these analytics tools to measure performance:
Now Get More Traffic
There’s always more to learn about SEO, but by this point, you have the essential knowledge to help your WordPress site rank and gain traffic. Do the right things consistently, and eventually you’ll join your favorite sites at the top of the SERPs.
WordPress SEO success starts with fast and dependable hosting. Get started with WordPress.com or move your existing WordPress site today.
