WordPress is considered one of the best search engine optimized content management systems. It provides a lot of tools that help websites gain the trust of search engines, and thus gain more visitors.
In this article, we will highlight the most important SEO problems that may negatively affect your site’s optimization for search engines. We will also provide you with practical and proven solutions to get rid of these problems, and open the way for your site to appear better in search results.
In the WordPress SEO Guide article , we highlighted the most important tips that you must follow in order to make your site compatible with the rules and algorithms of search engines. Indeed, the article provided the most basic tips that are especially useful for beginners in preparing their sites for various search engines.
We will divide SEO problems in WordPress into three basic types, and below each type we will list for you the most important problems that your site may face and ways to solve them radically. The problems will be divided into basic types with errors in the server provider or within your site’s control panel or even outside it.
We will start reviewing the most famous and most important SEO errors to solve, to make your WordPress site more compatible with the SEO of different search engines, and get greater numbers of visitors.
First: SEO problems can be solved by hosting and domain
Improving WordPress SEO does not start only after launching the site online, but it begins before that from the stage of choosing a domain and hosting the site on a server. Therefore, in this part, we will review for you the most important SEO mistakes resulting from choosing the domain and hosting for the website.
1- Problem: Error establishing connection to the database
Having your site continuously visible to visitors is one of the important things that affects the various search engines’ trust in this site. The problem (error in establishing a connection to the database) causes a loss of connection to the site’s data and content, and thus the site and its pages do not load properly, which negatively affects your site’s SEO.
The problem (Error establishing connection to the database) can be solved through the following methods:
- This problem can be solved by accessing the Config.php file and making sure that the database name matches the name inside the site’s database manager, and also make sure that the connection information is correct.
- This error may also result because your site has been subjected to one of the various site hacking attacks, and the attackers have changed the connection data to the databases. In this case, you must ensure that your site is fully secured , or perhaps you can contact the hosting company’s technical support for further assistance.
- This error may result from server updates by the hosting company, which is a rare possibility but it exists, so if the other methods do not work for you, you can check this matter with the hosting company for your site.
For more, read: Solution to the problem: Error Establishing a Database Connection
2- Choose hosting that does not suit your site’s needs
The closer your website’s server location is to where visitors are located, this helps reduce the site’s loading time and thus increase its speed. Site speed is one of the most important factors that search engines take into consideration to determine the order in which different sites appear in search results.
Therefore, whatever hosting company you deal with, it will be useful to choose a server close to the country or place where the largest percentage of website visitors are located.
Also, make sure to host your site on a server that provides you with the necessary resources to run the site at its full capacity, as some users face problems such as a technical malfunction on the site due to the entry of a large and unexpected number of visitors in a short time. Therefore, choosing a server that provides huge resources and can handle a large number of visitors. Visitors It will be beneficial for you if you expect large numbers of visitors to your site at the same time.
3- Choose a domain that does not represent you
A domain is the gateway to the website with all the content available within it. When choosing a domain, there are some simple tips that will help you choose a suitable domain to improve your site’s SEO later:
- Do not use a domain that contains a lot of random letters and numbers
- Choose a simple domain that consists of one or two words at most, for example: WPar.net
- Make sure to buy the domain from a well-known and highly credible company, so that you are not surprised by it being stolen from you without your knowledge later.
- When you purchase a domain, make sure to link it to an SSL certificate , as installing an SSL security certificate on your site protects the information that visitors enter into it, and enhances the confidence of the various search engines in this site.
- When choosing a domain, make sure to choose a name that is easy for your visitors to remember and type in search engines when they return to the site again.
- Do a search for keywords in the field of your site and choose a keyword to put in the domain name, but without exaggeration.
- Try to avoid putting a sign (-) in the domain name, such as my-domain.com, but preferably mydomain.com instead.
Second: SEO problems in your site’s control panel
In this part of the article, we will talk about the most common SEO problems that your site may face, and how to solve them through the tools and plugins that the WordPress system provides you. We will highlight common problems that some WordPress users fall into, which negatively affect search engines’ trust in the site.
1- The site does not respond to mobile phones
It can be said that the site’s mobile responsiveness is one of the important criteria in preparing your site for the search engine, as the largest percentage of Internet users recently have begun browsing websites through mobile phones.
The problem of the site’s mobile responsiveness can be solved from the beginning at the site design stage, by installing a WordPress template from within the control panel that is responsive to mobile phones and other types of screens.
First, pay attention to choosing the correct WordPress template and make sure it is responsive to mobile phones, in order for the users and visitors of your site to have a very comfortable and useful user experience, as this will immediately reflect in increasing the ranking of your site’s links within search engines.
For more information, we advise you to know the most important tips that make your site responsive to different screens .
2- Activate the “Block access to search engines” option
Some WordPress beginners make an unintended mistake during the first steps of launching a WordPress site, where they activate the “ Prevent access to search engines ” option, and then they are surprised after a long time that the site never appears in the search results and cannot be found in any way.
In this case, it is useful to check this option by entering the WordPress control panel, then going to: Settings > Reading , and making sure that the “Prevent search engines from archiving this site” option is not activated, as shown in the following image.
3- Set permanent links in a way that is not SEO-friendly
One of the useful factors to gain the trust of search engines is to pay attention to assigning permanent links to publications, articles and site classifications in a way that is appropriate and preferable to search engines.
By default, WordPress sets permalinks to articles in a way that is not search engine friendly: the URL, followed by the post ID, for example:
example.com/P123
This style of link building is considered unfriendly to the search engine, and does not clarify the content of the article. Therefore, it is useful to show the keywords or part of the article title within its permanent link.
You can reset the permalinks of your site’s articles and set them based on the title of the article or based on a custom text string that clearly defines the significance of the article to make it more friendly to search engines. This is done from within the WordPress control panel, then going to: Settings > Permanent Links , then select the ideal combination, which is (article title).
4- Do not specify a description for the categories of articles
Categories help you organize your site’s content and improve the user experience for site visitors. They help them easily find all articles that address topics of interest to them. Hence, it plays a vital role in SEO of your website.
Search engines treat all parts of a website as a collection of content, whether written textual content or image content, so always make sure to assign a text description to each of your site categories whenever possible.
Many WordPress users do not set a description for their site categories , which makes them lose an important opportunity for search engines to read the content of the categories, and for the categories to appear in various searches.
As the previous image shows, you can set a description for the categories on your site from within the WordPress control panel, then go to: Articles > Categories , and as you can see, in the “ Description ” box, you can set a text description that expresses the content that this category provides to site visitors.
5- The site loads slowly for visitors
Increasing the site loading time for visitors is one of the main problems facing websites. The speed of loading the site helps search engines determine the most appropriate ranking for this site in search engine results.
Therefore, we advise you to review the guide to increasing WordPress website speed in order to speed up your site to the maximum extent. Speeding up the site will reflect positively on improving the user experience, will increase search engines’ confidence in your site, and improve the ranking of site links in search results.
6- Visitors leave the site quickly
Did you know that the time a visitor spends on your site is considered one of the most important factors for search engines in determining the extent of the visitor’s confidence in the site’s content?
The length of time a visitor stays on the site greatly affects the extent of search engines’ confidence in the site’s content. The longer the visitor stays on your site, the more positive impression he will get on search engines, which is directly reflected in raising the site’s ranking in search results.
There are many measures that you must take in order to increase the visitor’s stay on the site as long as possible. We will summarize them in the following points:
- Divide content into headings, subheadings, and structured paragraphs.
- Insert internal links into the content of your site so that they help the visitor move from one article to another instead of leaving the site after finishing the content he is browsing.
- Embed some videos into the site. Video clips have a positive effect in increasing the length of time visitors stay on your site, but do not exaggerate them because their abundance causes slow loading of the content, and may cause the visitor to be distracted and bored.
- Pay close attention to the comments of your site visitors, as some visitors get their first impression of the content through comments on articles as well as responses to them. Also, paying attention to responding to comments encourages new visitors to place their comments and wait for your responses, which makes them interact with the content and return to it again.
- Insert expressive illustrations that help visitors understand the content better. Carefully selected images that express the content will motivate the visitor to continue reading, and browse articles and additional content within the site.
We also advise you to read the guide to improving user experience for WordPress website owners.
Read also: Tips for writing an interactive article that spreads online
7- The presence of damaged linhttps://www.wpar.net/improve-user-experience-of-wordpress-site/ks within the site
One of the factors that negatively affect your site’s SEO is the presence of broken links that you have not repaired on the site. Therefore, when a visitor clicks on a damaged link, he will reach an error page telling him that the link is no longer available on the site.
Therefore, it is important that you constantly check the integrity of your site’s links, detect any damaged link and repair it immediately, or redirect to another link that works properly.
You can rely on one of the WordPress plugins that checks for broken links within your site using the Broken Links Checker plugin , and you can read an article explaining the installation and activation of WordPress plugins in an easy and direct way.
Note : Bad links cause the famous 404 error to appear, which results from the presence of damaged and invalid links on the site, so be sure to solve the problem of the 404 error appearing on an ongoing basis so that it does not negatively affect your site.
8- A white screen appears on your site
The problem of the appearance of the white crash screen, or what is known as the white screen of death, on the WordPress site is considered one of the most technical problems that causes the entire site to crash. The problem is that this page does not provide information about the reason that led to the appearance of this crash, and does not provide you with suggestions or solutions that you can done to fix it. You can see the article on resolving the problem of the white screen of death in WordPress to learn more information about this error.
9- Weak internal links in the site content
Internal links are one of the most important factors that greatly help you gain search engine trust in your site. Internal links serve as a guide for the reader to help him navigate between the site’s articles, obtain content that supports his browsing experience within the site, and enable him to obtain the largest amount of information before leaving the site.
You can rely on the Rank Math or Yoast SEO plugin , as they provide you with the necessary options to facilitate internal linking and linking articles and content that have similar links or connections.
10- Do not use the Accelerated Pages (AMP) system.
Fast-appearing pages, or what is known as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for short, are very useful for site visitors who use mobile phones extensively, as these pages help reduce the rate of visitors bouncing off the site due to the long loading period before appearing on the site. Mobile phone screen.
You can see the benefits that your site gets from activating AMP pages in WordPress , which include important benefits for site SEO and increasing its ranking in various search results.
11- The site was exposed to large amounts of annoying comments
Spam comments are considered one of the methods that saboteurs may use to harm the SEO of your website, as these comments contain links and codes that may harm the site from a technical standpoint, and may also harm the SEO of the site, as these comments are classified as spam and inappropriate content. Useful for the reader.
Therefore, if you allow it to spread widely within your site, the site will certainly be negatively affected in terms of appearing in a good ranking in various search engines. You can rely on the Akismet plugin in WordPress to prevent the spread of spam and unwanted comments within the pages and articles of your site.
12- Not improving image SEO.
The following image shows the interface that WordPress shows you while you upload a new image to the site, but unfortunately many users ignore filling out this text data and are content with uploading the image as it is empty within the article.
You should know that image SEO is one of the things that must be taken care of if you want to gain the trust of search engines greatly.
As we mentioned previously, search engines prefer to show images that contain descriptive texts such as (title, alternative text, description, etc.) in search results, rather than display images that do not contain these descriptive texts.
Therefore, when you upload images to your WordPress site next time, be sure to write descriptive texts for those images to help your site be loyal to search engines.
13- Weak connection between the site content and search terms
You may write a rich article full of information that benefits the visitor more than any other content online, but if the content of this article does not contain the search words that visitors use to search on Google, for example, then the chance of you appearing will be much lower.
Therefore, before writing content on your site, make sure that you do a search for the search words that are most relevant to the content that you intend to publish on the site. You can see the guide to choosing the best search words for site content for more information about writing content that is strongly relevant to different searches.
14- Problems that can be solved with SEO plugins
In this part, we have collected for you some SEO errors and problems that you can completely solve and fix by installing one of the SEO plugins that performs the task of fixing these errors in very simple steps.
Below we will list the most important SEO problems that can be solved by relying on one of the famous SEO plugins.
A- Not activating the descriptive text of social media platforms
One of the things that helps you not only in improving the SEO of your site’s content, but also in improving the SEO of your pages on social media platforms, is activating the (descriptive text of the content) option while sharing it on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This option can be easily activated when using one of the popular SEO plugins .
After installing one of these add-ons and activating it on your site, a text description box will appear at the bottom of your site’s article editing page in which you can put the title, description, and image that appears on the content while sharing it on social media platforms, as shown in the following image:
B- Do not include an XML Sitemap on the site
A sitemap is one of the important things that you must create to help search engines understand the internal structure of your entire site’s pages and links, which is certainly reflected in improving the site’s links in search engines, indexing it sufficiently, and making it appear better.
When using the Yoast SEO plugin, you can go to the plugin settings and activate this option easily through the WordPress control panel. Click on the name of the extension > then choose General > and activate the XML Sitemap feature. Then click on the ‘ Save Changes ‘ button to save the changes.
Third: SEO problems can be solved outside the WordPress control panel
In the previous paragraphs, we talked about the most common SEO problems that may cause a delay in the appearance of your site in the search results of the various search engines for the words that are competing for them. We mentioned some of the problems that could be solved by improving the choice of hosting and domain and the technical matters related to them, and some others were Its solution is available from within the WordPress control panel, whether with some simple skills or by relying on some ready-made WordPress plugins that do it for you.
In the following paragraphs, we will review for you some SEO problems that are not related to hosting or domain and cannot be solved from within the WordPress control panel itself, but they are some additional things that you do outside of your site and help your site rank higher on larger numbers of search terms in search engines.
1- The site lacks social signals
Social signals are one of the factors for the success of the site’s SEO to a very large extent, and social signals are the number of times the content of the site’s links has been referred to within various social media platforms, such as sharing some articles on Facebook, Twitter, or others..
In order for your site to receive a good number of external social signals, always make sure to share your site’s content regularly on various social media platforms and interact with your followers on those platforms, as the more interaction there is on your content, and the more it is shared across social media platforms, the more it will increase. The number of social mentions pointing to your location. Which will increase your opportunity to win competition for the keywords provided by this content.
2- Do not link the site to Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools (Google Search Console) is a free service provided by Google to website managers, where you can link your site to this service in order to provide comprehensive reports on this site, and provide data and advice to improve it on the Google search engine.
Linking your site to Google Webmaster Tools certainly does not mean that your site will appear lightning-fast in search results for visitors, but this service will provide you with many tools and options that help you understand your site’s behavior in various search results.
By linking your site to Google Webmaster Tools, you will be able to identify the most important pages of your site that rank highly in search results for various search terms. Therefore, you must then pay more attention to those pages than others and work to strengthen their content to increase your visitors’ confidence in the content you provide. .
These tools also provide you with some important reports about technical errors on the site that must be fixed to help search engines show the site’s links better.
You can also review the comprehensive guide to using Google search console and start using it to strengthen your site’s visibility in search engines.
3- The site is not linked to Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free service – partly – provided by Google. It helps you track the movement of visitors to your website, collect their data, and accurately understand their behavior and movements within the site. It also generates reports about them, which helps you monitor and improve the performance of your site’s pages.
Linking the site to the Google statistics service is not a complete guarantee that your site will advance in search results, but it is considered one of the important factors that indirectly helps you advance in a greater number of search terms within search engines.
When you link your site to the Google Analytics service, you will be able to know the search terms through which your site received the most visitors, and thus you will have the opportunity to provide content that is completely compatible with those search words, and your chance to appear in front of larger numbers of visitors will increase.
This tool also provides you with dozens of other tools and options related to the length of time a visitor stays on each page or article on your site, in addition to providing data related to the most countries or places from which your site received visits over time or in a period of time that you choose yourself, which makes you able to Greater understanding of more information about your visitors and their characteristics.
Read the guide to using Google Analytics and use it to strengthen your site’s visibility in various search engines.
5- The site lacks external links
External links are signals placed on other sites that ultimately lead to your site. They are a double-edged sword that may benefit or harm your site depending on the way you use them.
Creating external links to your site in a correct and useful way will greatly serve your site and help it rank stronger in search engines.
You can also encourage other website owners to place links to your site’s content within their sites in a way that enhances the content of their sites as well, so that your content is complementary and helpful to the content available on the other site. Thus, external links in this case are beneficial to both the visitor and the search engine, which reflects positively on the progress of your site. On search results pages.
Conclusion
In this article, we tried to review for you the most common problems that prevent your site from advancing and ranking in search engine results, and we were keen to support the explanation with some illustrative examples to fully convey the idea to you.
But in any case, if you have any additional inquiries or questions regarding this topic, or you would like to obtain more information about one of the SEO problems that affects your site and would like to obtain a solution for it, do not hesitate to comment below the article, and we will be sure to interact with you and provide support. Necessary
