WordPress SEO Guide: Boost Your Site’s Visibility

Wondering why your WordPress site isn’t getting the organic traffic you expected? 

You might have an SEO problem.

Effective SEO boosts your site’s visibility in search results, attracting more visitors and building authority in your niche. 

In this guide, I’ll cover essential WordPress SEO tactics—everything from keyword optimization to site speed improvements that enhance mobile experience. 

Whether you’re brand new to SEO or refining your strategy, these actionable tips can help you win at SEO. 

So, let’s get started. The time is now to start reaching a wider audience and maximize your site’s potential.

Key Takeaways

• A logically organized site structure improves user navigation and makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index content.
• Plugins like Yoast and Rank Math are essential tools for managing metadata, creating sitemaps, and optimizing content within WordPress.
• Make sure your WordPress site is mobile-friendly and fast—these factors directly impact user experience and SEO rankings.
• Use targeted keywords in titles, headings, and URLs while keeping content natural to improve relevance for search engines.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• SEO Basics: What Is SEO, and Why Is It Important?
• 1. Verify Your Website Is Visible to Search Engines
• 2. Add an SSL Certificate
• 3. Maintain a Consistent Address Format
• 4. Optimize Permalinks
• 5. Install a WordPress SEO Plugin
• 6. Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC)
• 7. Optimize Your Categories and Tags
• 8. Create a Logical Site Structure
• 9. Enable Breadcrumbs
• 10. Do Keyword Research
• 11. Optimize URLs
• 12. Optimize Meta Titles and Descriptions
• 13. Use Heading Tags Properly
• 14. Use Internal Linking
• 15. Create Quality Content
• 16. Add Alt Text to Images
• 17. Leverage Schema Markup
• 18. Optimize for Mobile
• 19. Ensure Your Website Is Fast
• 20. Ensure Your Website Is Secure
• 21. Use ‘Last Updated’ Dates
• FAQs
• Conclusion

SEO Basics: What Is SEO, and Why Is It Important?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of improving your website’s visibility in search engine results. Optimizing key elements such as keywords, metadata, images, and site structure increases the odds of potential visitors finding you.

With so much competition out there, implementing SEO WordPress strategies is a must to stand out. 

Do it right, and you’ll attract more traffic, improve user experience (UX), and take your online presence to the next level.

1. Verify Your Website Is Visible to Search Engines

You’ll never improve your website’s traffic from search engines if your website isn’t visible to search engines. Fortunately, this is an easy setting to check in your WordPress dashboard. 

Source: Pressidium

In WordPress, go to Settings > Reading and ensure the box labeled “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked. This will make your site visible to search engines.

2. Add an SSL Certificate

An often overlooked aspect of WordPress SEO is security. So, how can you signal to search engines and visitors that your site is secure? By installing an SSL certificate.

This boosts your site’s security and trustworthiness in Google’s eyes and gives visitors the confidence to stick around and explore. 

While installing an SSL certificate may sound complicated, WordPress plugins make it easy. 

A few options include Really Simple Security (previously Really Simple SSL), WP Force SSL, and WP Encryption.

These plugins offer a mix of free and paid options for securing your WordPress site in minutes.

3. Maintain a Consistent Address Format

Whether you use a “www” website address or not, the most important thing to SEO for WordPress is sticking with it.

A clear, consistent URL structure makes sure humans and search engines alike know exactly what to expect from your website. It also cuts down on 404 errors and ensures humans and web crawlers can get where they need to go. 

Here are some best practices for standardizing your address format:

• Keep it simple and consistent: Use static, human-readable URLs over dynamic ones.
• Establish a hierarchy: Implement a clear hierarchy with directories and subfolders instead of subdomains.

4. Optimize Permalinks

A permalink is the full URL that users and search engines see. They’re a key piece of SEO for WordPress. Keeping the structure consistent and concise means you’re delivering the best experience to both visitors and search engine crawlers.

To set your permalink preferences in WordPress, go to Settings > Permalinks. Here, you can choose a pre-set structure or create a custom one:

5. Install a WordPress SEO Plugin

You can get expert SEO recommendations—at a fraction of the cost of a human expert—with a WordPress SEO plugin. 

Plugins like Yoast SEO can guide your SEO optimization efforts and provide tools for managing metadata and more. They are also easy to set up. Even beginners can get started right away.

6. Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC)

Search engine crawlers won’t always have the bandwidth to crawl every page on your website. Optimize your WordPress SEO so that bots regularly crawl your most important pages. This is where XML sitemaps come in. 

Submitting your XML sitemap to Google Search Console gives Google crawlers a roadmap for traveling your site most efficiently. This means more of your site’s pages will be indexed—and that means a greater chance of ranking on search engine results pages (SERP).  

7. Optimize Your Categories and Tags

Categories and tags are your allies when organizing your WordPress content. 

• Categories are meant for broad topics and follow a hierarchical structure via subcategories. This hierarchy helps organize content into main topics and subtopics, which helps with site navigation.
• Tags apply to more specific topics and are not hierarchical. Using them is a way to label content with extra detail. They’re sort of signposts for finding related posts across different categories.

The way you use category and tag pages will likely change over time, but if you start with a logical structure, you’ll be better off in the long run. This means considering the breadth of topics your site will have and creating categories and tags that enable you to index it properly.

Here’s an example of categories on my site, NeilPatel.com:

This makes it easier for visitors to find the content they’re looking for and creates more entry points for SEO.

8. Create a Logical Site Structure

If you want users and crawlers to navigate your website efficiently, create a logical site structure from the start. This includes a clearly laid-out hierarchy that offers seamless and predictable navigation.

Here’s what that might look like:

• Home page: Acts as the hub, linking to primary categories.
• Categories and subcategories: Organize content into broad topics (categories) and then break them down further (subcategories).
• Individual pages: Each piece of content belongs to a category, keeping navigation predictable.

You might map out your structure visually with a flow chart or sitemap to get going. 

What your site structure ultimately looks like will depend on many factors. For inspiration, check out sites you consider easy to navigate. You may find it easier to emulate your favorite site’s structure than creating one from scratch. 

9. Enable Breadcrumbs

You want visitors and search engine crawlers to be able to navigate your website with ease. Breadcrumbs can help with this.

Breadcrumbs are navigational aids that show the path users have taken within a website. They create a visible path from the homepage through each level—making it easy for users to understand where they are and jump back to previous sections. 

Breadcrumbs also provide a clear view of your site’s architecture. 

To enable breadcrumbs on WordPress, you’ll need to choose a WordPress theme with built-in breadcrumb support or use a plugin like Yoast SEO. 

10. Do Keyword Research

This wouldn’t be an SEO for WordPress tutorial if we didn’t mention keyword research.

When you identify relevant keywords, you can target them within content, titles, and meta descriptions—all in the name of search engine visibility. 

So, how do you identify those keywords? Keyword tools like Ubersuggest can help. 

Ubersuggest’s suite of keyword research tools provides you with key metrics for any search term, metrics like search volume, SEO difficulty, and cost per click (CPC). 

Ubersuggest is also a goldmine of keyword ideas, helping you identify words and phrases with high search volume but low competition.  

11. Optimize URLs

With SEO for WordPress, even the little things matter. This includes the makeup of your individual URLs. 

What does an SEO-optimized URL look like? This example from author and chef Jenn Segal’s site Once Upon a Chef is a good place to start:

While URLs should be as short as possible, they should also be descriptive. This means incorporating the primary keyword in a way that aligns with user search intent.

For SEO purposes, you can remove any definite articles, prepositions, or conjunctions like “the,” “for,” and “and” to further shorten the URL.

12. Optimize Meta Titles and Descriptions

Meta titles and descriptions are what display on search engine results pages. Like a billboard, they tell users what your page is all about. 

Clear, keyword-rich descriptions also communicate to search engines exactly what your page is about, helping it rank higher and attract more clicks from interested users.

At a minimum, metadata should include relevant keywords. You can use tools like Ubersuggest to ensure you’re targeting the right ones. You should also keep them short, with titles between 50 to 60 characters and descriptions no more than 160 characters.

13. Use Heading Tags Properly

A heading tag is markup that indicates a heading on a website. 

You can see how your WordPress site currently uses headings by viewing the source code and searching for “<h1>,” “<h2>,” and so on.

So, how do you use heading tags appropriately? 

For one, there should only be one <h1> heading tag on each page. This is typically the title of the page. You should also “nest” your headings appropriately. For example, you shouldn’t go from <h2> to <h4> without an <h3> somewhere in between.

14. Use Internal Linking

Internal linking is the practice of linking to other relevant content on your site. This does a few things to improve WordPress SEO. 

For one, it improves link authority. Two, it helps users easily navigate through your site and find more relevant information that meets their needs. Three, it helps crawlers to navigate more URLs on your site in less time.

A general rule is to use five to 10 links per 2,000 words. You should also use anchor text that clearly communicates what the link destination’s content is about so users aren’t confused or disappointed when they click through.

15. Create Quality Content

You’ll never improve your WordPress SEO without quality content. Particularly in the E-E-A-T era. 

Valuable, engaging content that meets user needs will boost your rankings and keep visitors engaged.

Now, the real question is: How do you create quality content?

The most important step is to create and implement a well-tuned content marketing strategy. 

A good starting point is getting to know your audience on a deeper level—who they are, their pain points, what they care about, and how they consume information. Tools like audience personas and analytics can help uncover this info.

Once you have a clear picture of your audience, you can create content that targets relevant keywords and directly answers user needs.

16. Add Alt Text to Images

Image alt tags are hidden text snippets that describe the content of an image. They exist within a page’s source code, which can be accessed by screen readers (for visually impaired users) and crawlers to help understand what the image is of.

By adding relevant, descriptive alt text to your images, you improve accessibility and help search engines understand image content. This will not only improve your WordPress SEO but also helps make your site more inclusive of a wider audience. 

17. Leverage Schema Markup

Schema markup, also known as structured data, is a type of website code that helps search engines better understand your content. It can enhance how your site appears in search results by displaying extra information—like ratings, prices, or event details—through features like rich snippets.

This extra information can make your SERP listings more appealing to users, leading to higher click-through rates and greater engagement on your website.

While schema markup isn’t a necessity for SEO for WordPress, it’s definitely a plus.

18. Optimize for Mobile

If your WordPress site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re really missing out. After all, the majority of searchers (about 60%) use a mobile device.

How do you optimize your site for mobile? 

• Implement a responsive design.
• Improve site speed.
• Make your content mobile-friendly with compressed images, ample white space, and a larger font.

Tools like Ubersuggest and Google Search Console are invaluable for monitoring and optimizing your mobile SEO performance.

In 2024 and beyond, you can’t talk about WordPress SEO without considering the needs of mobile users. 

19. Ensure Your Website Is Fast

A fast website isn’t only important to mobile users. Page speed is a key factor for the majority of users. A slow-loading website causes frustration and increases bounce rates. 

The answer, then, is to improve site speed. How, though?

Start by turning to tools like PageSpeed Insights to see where your website currently stands. Simply enter your URL, and it’ll provide performance recommendations for your specific website:

Here are three steps I recommend to speed up your site in the name of better WordPress SEO:

1. Compress and optimize images.
2. Enable caching.
3. Minimize website code.

20. Ensure Your Website Is Secure

An SSL certificate is an important first step in securing your website, but don’t stop there. After all, a secure, trustworthy website is a must. 

So, how can you secure your website if you’re not a security expert? Protect your site with security plugins, firewalls, and regular updates. 

WordPress security plugins, like Wordfence and Cloudflare, take the guesswork out of website security. With just a few clicks, you can lock down your website to protect against malware, hackers, and more.

Many WordPress security plugins also include built-in firewalls. These protect against malicious viruses and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to keep your website safe and accessible to users.

21. Use ‘Last Updated’ Dates

To optimize for WordPress SEO, displaying a “Last Updated” date on your posts can signal freshness to both users and search engines, potentially boosting your rankings. 

Since Google values recent, relevant content, keeping this information visible helps your content appear more current and authoritative. 

Regularly updating posts and showcasing the updated date also provides a clear cue to visitors that your site maintains up-to-date information. This is crucial in improving user trust.

FAQs

Is WordPress good for SEO?

WordPress has many features that make SEO optimization easy. These include built-in content tools and access to millions of plugins, many of which can help you increase site speed, improve security, and optimize content.

How to do SEO on WordPress

You can do SEO on WordPress using its many built-in features, like permalinks and sitemaps, or by using plugins that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. These plugins can help with tasks such as generating XML sitemaps or optimizing your on-page SEO. This makes WordPress a good choice for anyone, including SEO beginners and experts.

Does WordPress have built-in SEO?

WordPress has many built-in SEO features, like permalinks, sitemaps, optimized title tags and headings, and proper HTML markup.

Conclusion

I get it. Getting started with WordPress SEO might sound like a lot, but you’re not alone. 

With this guide and WordPress’s countless user-friendly tools and plugins at your disposal, you’ll be on the right track in no time.

WordPress SEO is a critical part of your digital marketing strategy, so don’t wait. Put some time into it, and you’ll open the door to more visibility, more targeted traffic, and, ultimately, more customers.