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11 WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners

Author wpdruggy

Published on: September 26, 2024

Do you want to make sure that your WordPress SEO Checklist website is correctly optimized for search engines?

Going through a search engine optimization (SEO) checklist will help you follow best practices and avoid missing minor things. This allows you to rank higher on Google and increase website traffic.

In this article, we’ll provide a WordPress SEO checklist for beginners.

Why Follow a WordPress SEO Checklist?

Many websites depend heavily on search engines as their primary traffic source. However, the prospect of optimizing your site for WordPress SEO might be daunting, particularly for novices.

There are a few technical words, SEO strategies, and emerging trends that can prohibit new website owners from optimizing their sites and ranking better in search engines.

This is where a WordPress SEO checklist can be useful. It covers all the fundamentals and guarantees that you follow SEO best practices. In addition, there are numerous tools and plugins available to help you optimize your site and handle technical SEO.

You can use the checklist by going through each point one by one. After that, make improvements so that search engines can easily crawl and index your content.

That stated, let’s have a look at the WordPress SEO checklist for beginners. Here are all of the topics we will cover, so you can just click the buttons below to move to your selected section:

1. Install a WordPress Yoast SEO Plugin

An SEO plugin can help you optimize your WordPress site for search engines. It makes sure that you adhere to best practices and manage all technical SEO optimizations.

You can use Yoast SEO on your website. It is the greatest SEO plugin for WordPress, allowing you to optimize your site for search engines without requiring technical knowledge or hiring a developer.

It is also the SEO plugin we use with WPDruggy.

Yoast SEO has a lot of powerful features. For example, it may be used to generate an XML sitemap, add schema markup, integrate social media, breadcrumb navigation, SEO On-Page analysis score, robots.txt editor, local SEO, WooCommerce SEO, link assistant, track broken links, and much more.

You can also use Yoast SEO to perform an SEO audit. The plugin will track and highlight critical issues. In addition, you will receive actionable tips for correcting these issues and increasing organic traffic to your website.

To understand more, check out our tutorial on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

2. Set Up Search Engine Webmaster Tools

Next, you’ll need to set up webmaster tools across multiple search engines, such as Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yandex.

These free tools allow you to monitor your website’s organic search performance. You may use them to determine which keywords people use to reach your website, check rankings, upload sitemaps, identify issues that may be blocking your site from ranking in search engines, and much more.

For example, Google Search Console displays which pages are indexed in search results. You can then determine why Google isn’t indexing additional pages, resolve any issues, and submit pages for indexing.

3. Add Google Analytics to WordPress

The simplest approach to set up Google Analytics in WordPress. It is the greatest analytics solution for WordPress, and configuring Google Analytics does not require any code editing or the hiring of a developer.

The best part is that you can start using Lite for free to add analytics to your website. The plugin also has a paid edition that allows you to set up sophisticated tracking features such as Ecommerce tracking, form conversions, and more.

To understand more, check out our step-by-step tutorial on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Google Analytics is another important tool to include in your WordPress website. It is a free tool that displays how visitors behave on your website, where they come from, which pages they visit, and much more.

Google Analytics allows you to track your WordPress SEO efforts and see how many visitors come from organic searches. It is a wonderful tool for monitoring website traffic and identifying spikes and troughs.

Aside from that, you may use it to identify high-converting pages and optimize their SEO, look for possibilities to increase organic traffic, track 404 issues, and so on.

4. Do Keyword Research for Your WordPress Site

Keyword research is a strategy used by content writers and SEO specialists to identify topics that your target audience is interested in based on search engine data.

Many newcomers will make their best beliefs about what topics others might be interested in. Instead, conduct proper keyword research to determine search terms for each page on your website.

You must establish a primary target term for your blog post or landing page. Using too many different search phrases can make it difficult for search engines to grasp the material.

There are many keyword research tools available to help you identify a primary search term. We chose Semrush because it provides detailed keyword data, keyword position tracking, competition analysis, related keywords, queries, and more.

If you’re looking for a free alternative, WPDruggy provides a free Keyword Generator that swiftly generates 300+ fresh keyword ideas. There’s also a free Keyword Density Checker that will help you figure out your competitor’s keyword strategy.

For more information, visit our tutorial on how to conduct keyword research for your WordPress blog.

5. Use LSI Keywords and Check for Keyword Stuffing

Now that you’ve identified a focus keyphrase for your content, the next step is to locate Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. These are search queries that are relevant to your primary keyword.

Google Search is the most efficient technique to find LSI keywords. Simply scroll to the bottom of the search results to view the ‘Related searches’ section.

You may then employ these terms throughout your material to provide in-depth coverage of the entire topic. This also allows search engines to better grasp your material.

However, you mustn’t overuse keywords in your text. Using the same search term repeatedly does not give a pleasant reading experience for users, and search engines are rather adept at identifying keyword stuffing.

6. Optimize Your SEO Title and Meta Description

The next WordPress SEO checklist step is to make sure that your SEO titles and meta descriptions are optimal.

The title of your WordPress blog post or product page is very important for search rankings. A captivating title will motivate users to click on the link.

The meta description also gives readers more information about the page and helps to increase the organic click-through rate (CTR). As more people click on your site’s link, it sends a favourable signal to Google, allowing you to rank higher.

It is an SEO best practice to incorporate your major keyword in your SEO title, meta description, and URLs. You should also keep your titles and meta descriptions to no more than 55 and 155 characters, respectively. Otherwise, Google will truncate both your headline and description.

If you use SEO, you can use the headline analyzer to produce compelling title tags. It provides a score for your headline and suggestions to improve your SEO title.

7. Use SEO-Friendly URLs

You should also optimize your blog post and landing page URLs for SEO.

Creating brief and descriptive permalinks allows searchers to grasp what the website is about in the search results. In addition, it is a good habit to incorporate the major terms in your URL.

For example, here’s how an SEO-friendly URL should look:

https://wpdruggy.com/top-10-wordpress-themes/

Here’s an example of a URL that isn’t SEO-optimized:

https://www.wpdruggy.com/post.php?post=6268&action

You can customize them in your WordPress permalink settings.

8. Make Sure to Add Alt-Text to Your Images

Image optimization for search engines is also an important aspect of WordPress SEO. One approach to accomplish this is to include descriptive alternate or alt text with your photos.

Google and other search engines use alt text to comprehend the image’s subject matter. In this manner, your pictures will appear in Google Images, allowing you to gain more organic visitors.

In WordPress, you can quickly add alt text to your photographs. When you add a photo to the WordPress post editor via the Image block, the Alt Text option appears in the options panel on the right.

9. Add Internal Links to Your Content

Another crucial factor to consider when reviewing the WordPress SEO checklist is the internal links in your content. Internal links are links to pages on your website.

These links help search engines identify and index the content on your website. It also helps to transfer authority from one page to another.

It also helps visitors navigate your website, read related content, uncover statistical sources, and discover old articles and pages.

If you are using Yoast SEO, you may use the Link Assistant tool to find internal connecting chances. It displays stranded sites with no internal links, offers ideas and anchor text, and allows you to insert links with a single click.

10. Improve the Readability of Your Content

When checking for on-page SEO, make sure your material is easy to read. It has a significant influence in achieving higher rankings because easier-to-read blogs frequently rank higher than those that are difficult to read.

According to studies, customers make their decision to leave or stay on a page in less than a second. This means they scan your material and you have a very short time to convince them to stay on your website.

By boosting the readability of your material, you may help people scan your articles more quickly. A simple approach to accomplish this is to organize your information into sections under headings (H2, H3, H4, etc.).

Aside from that, you can compose short phrases, use bulleted lists, divide lengthy paragraphs into smaller paragraphs, and include a table of contents. Including photographs, movies, and other multimedia can improve readability and make your material more compelling.

With Yoast SEO, you can examine readability difficulties within the content editor and receive advice to improve your text.

11. Your WordPress Site Should Be Mobile Ready

The final WordPress SEO checklist item you should verify is whether your site is mobile responsive.

Google has now made mobile its primary focus. This indicates that it will index your site’s mobile version rather than the desktop one. If your site is not mobile-ready, you will miss out on higher ranks.

Using Google’s mobile-friendly test tool is a simple approach to test mobile responsiveness.

The free tool will examine your website and determine whether it is mobile-responsive or not.

Simply insert your website’s URL into the tool and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, start by updating the theme. Many responsive WordPress themes are specifically built for mobile devices. You can follow our instructions on how to update a WordPress theme without losing data or traffic.

Also, Read More Relevant Articles

The Last Sum Up

Implementing excellent SEO tactics on your WordPress website is critical for increasing exposure and obtaining organic visitors. By following this checklist, beginners may create a solid basis for their SEO efforts, ensuring that their content reaches the intended audience. Remember that SEO is an ongoing process; the best results will come from upgrading your strategy regularly.

Maintaining up-to-date algorithm changes, and continuously optimizing your site. With effort and attention, you will not only improve the performance of your website but also develop a great resource that will appeal to your visitors. Begin using these suggestions today and watch your WordPress site grow!

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11 WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners