Improving SEO for WordPress blogs in 13 practical steps to advance in search results

Nowadays, blog and website owners are competing to be at the top of search results and improve the SEO of their sites. There is no doubt that the competition has become intense, as everyone seeks to adopt strategies that will help them appear on the first results page.

If you aspire to advertise your site and achieve more targeted visits to your blog from the search engine, you must keep your eyes on appearing on the first page of search results. In other words, you must give special importance to your site’s SEO.

In this article, we will provide you with a set of essential steps and tips that will help you prepare your blog or website to appear better in search results. We’ll also explore a range of free and paid tools that will help you improve your site’s SEO.

We will also highlight some important points related to improving SEO, such as searching for keywords, checking the blog for errors, adding internal and external links, and other factors that play an essential role in making the site rank high in search results.

Is paying attention to SEO really that important ?

Paying attention to improving SEO is one of the deciding factors between the success or failure of any blog, by improving the blog’s appearance in search engines, as well as improving the search results for published articles. We can summarize the importance of SEO in the following points:

More visits: When you take good care of the SEO standard, your site’s pages will appear in the first search results, and thus you will get more visits and clicks and expand the visitor base to your site.
Website marketing: Improving search results is also one of the most important marketing methods. It is enough for one of your website pages to appear at the top of search results to garner hundreds and perhaps thousands of visitors to the various pages of your website. Therefore, you can imagine SEO as a basic self-marketing tool that can publicize your site, saving you trouble. And the costs of huge marketing campaigns.
A good user experience for visitors: By following the rules of SEO, and working on linking articles and publications to the site, we will provide the site with a beautiful user experience and navigation between the site.
Outperforming competitors: If you own a new or old blog, and you want to outperform your competitors, you must work hard on preparing the SEO for your blog, so that you can compete for the top spot in search results.

The most important tips for improving SEO for blog owners

Below we review some valuable tips that, if you follow them, you will notice the improvement of your blog’s SEO and see noticeable progress for your site’s content in search results:

1- Research keywords and develop a content plan

Whatever type of blog you have (cooking, sports, educational, entertainment, business, or other blog), the most important thing to think about is developing a plan for the content that you will display on your site and a plan of action corresponding to that content.

You must organize your work and precisely define what you want to write about on the blog. If you want your blog to be successful, you must avoid writing randomly and develop a content plan that is appropriate for the type of blog you have chosen.

For example, if you are planning to launch a blog in the field of electronic marketing, the first step is to search for the most prominent topics and questions that users ask or search for through search engines. You must create a table of the most prominent phrases and keywords in this field and organize a business plan that includes articles that will cover the keywords that users are searching for. Try to look for words that have a lot of research and little competition.

Keyword research tools

There are many free and paid tools that help you research keywords and know many details about them, such as the amount of competition for them and the number of searches, so that you can develop an organized action plan for content in accordance with topics of greatest priority and importance.

The first method : This is a simple and completely free method, but it does not provide you with a lot of information. This method involves typing the keyword into the Google search engine. The search engine will suggest to you a set of keywords related to the topic. These words or topics are the most requested or searched on the Internet at the present time, and you can work on them in your articles or blog.

The second method : There are also some paid tools, such as the Ahrefs tool, which provides you with a lot of information about the keyword you want, such as search rate, difficulty, competition, etc.

The third method: Using Google Analytics and Keyword Planner, which are two official tools from Google, allow you to identify keywords related to a specific topic with monthly searches on these words and the extent of competition for them.

Now you have to do research and investigation, whether using free or paid tools, and you can collect a set of appropriate keywords to work on. It is best to collect keywords and information in an Excel file, for example, so that you can compare them and choose the best. Here, for example, is a simple table that includes the most prominent keywords about social media, along with the search rate, competition, and related keywords.

After completing the keyword analysis and developing a plan of action for the content, you must analyze and examine your site, to find out the strengths and weaknesses of the site and the errors found in it.

2- Analyze your website or blog

There are many elements and points that you must subject your blog or website to testing, either because they directly affect SEO or the quality of the user experience for your visitors, or because they simply give you a clear vision of your current position in the competition race.

Points you should investigate on your site include:

Site speed on desktop devices.
Website speed on mobile.
Errors on the site.
Monthly search rate on the site.
The most important articles on the site.
External links from other sites that point to your site (backlink).
What are the SEO errors on your blog?

Through the Ubersuggest tool, you can enter your site link, and wait a little while while your site is analyzed and all this required data is provided. You can work on this tool for free, but the free version has limited features and you will not be able to obtain all the information and data required to form a clear idea of your current site level.

The next step that you must take after analyzing your site and finding out the errors and weaknesses in it, is to take a close look at competitors’ websites and analyze their strengths and weaknesses well.

3- Competitors survey

This step is one of the important steps that you must take during the journey of improving your blog’s SEO. You should conduct a comprehensive analysis of competing sites, what keywords they use, how they present content to visitors, etc. Eventually you should have a detailed report on those sites.

Suppose, for example, that you have a blog about sports, you must study competitors, to find out where they excel on your site. The most important things that you should examine when analyzing competing sites are:

What keywords do they use?
What is the number of backlinks on their website pages?
What are their top articles, and what do they contain?
What is their website loading speed? What is the search rate?

The same previous tool ( Ubersuggest) can be used to analyze competitor sites, where you can click on the Competitive Analysis option, and the tool will provide you with a list of the names of competing sites that are similar to yours. Through this tool, you can know the keywords for these sites, the monthly search rate, the number of backlinks, and many more. Other material information.

After these steps, we will have come a long way in improving the SEO of your site. The next stop will be the blogging stage, which is the foundation on which you will build the fame and success of your blog. Now you have to start blogging and writing articles, of course taking into account the rules of SEO.

4- Start blogging and writing content

After the research, investigation, and analysis in the previous steps, we will now embark on the journey of blogging and writing content for your blog. “Distinctive, unique and valuable content is the basis of the success of any blog.” You should make this a basic slogan for your blog, as distinctive content is what attracts visitors to your site.

What does a good article look like?

You may be wondering to yourself now: How can I provide unique content on my blog? Which article meets the criteria for featured content? Below we will review some of the most important principles and standards that you must consider in order to know how to write interactive content that attracts readers and takes into account the rules of SEO.

The article must be exclusive and not copied.
Format the article in an easy and simple way.
Writing without spelling and linguistic errors.
Observe all SEO rules for 2021 (we will talk about them in detail).
Writing in a simple and clear manner, away from tautology, exaggeration, and verbosity.
The article must have a clear structure consisting of an introduction, then the content of the article, and then a conclusion.

What are the SEO rules that must be observed within the article?

There are many factors that affect your site’s ranking in search results, including: the distribution of keywords in the article, internal and external links, good description of both the meta-description and the SEO title, in addition to the main and sub-headings of the article, etc.

What does WordPress offer blog owners to improve SEO?

The WordPress platform offers many useful plugins that help you improve your site’s SEO in simple steps while writing articles. The most notable of these additions are ( Yoast SEO , Rank Math ).

In our next illustrative example, we will review the popular Yoast SEO plugin and how it helps you write an article that takes into account SEO rules, and helps blog owners improve the SEO of their blogs and articles.

You can download the Yoast plugin by going to the WordPress control panel, then going to Plugins << Add New , then typing the name of the plugin in the search box.
After that, the add-on will appear, and all you have to do is click on install now , then activate

After downloading and installing the Yoast plugin, it will look like this:

5- Distribution of keywords within the article

One of the important factors that plays a fundamental role in improving the SEO of blogs and articles is the good and balanced distribution of keywords within the article and the absence of exaggeration and filler writing.

You must determine the keyword you want to work on, as well as identify words that are synonymous or related to the keyword (sub-words) and distribute them well within the article.

For example, suppose that the main keyword of the article is “profit from the Internet”, you must now distribute this phrase in the article appropriately to the context and without filler, in addition to identifying sub-phrases that visitors may search for, such as “profit from blogging” or “ Profiting from YouTube” or “Earning money from the Internet” and others, and adding them within the article, either within the texts or in the form of sub-headings.

Below we will explain how to optimally distribute keywords within the article:

Write the keyword in the introduction, at the beginning of the article.
Repeat the keyword every two paragraphs.
Put it at the end of the article.
Include them in alt text for images and image descriptions.
Include them in some subheadings.

The Yoast SEO tool helps you analyze the distribution of keywords in your article, examine the keyword density and its location within the article, and will give you the results of the analysis in the form of weak points within the article and how to address these points.

6- Prepare the meta description and SEO title

SEO Title is the title that appears in search engine results. It is the main title of the article, and it must contain the keyword.

The meta description is the description that appears in search engines below the article title, and it must also contain the keyword. You must write a short and simple description that helps the user know what is inside the article, in an attractive manner that prompts him to click on the page link and view the article.

The length of the meta description should be approximately 300 characters, and the maximum length of the SEO title should be approximately 67 characters.

The Yoast plugin also provides the ability to write the SEO title, meta description, and preview how the results look on desktop or mobile devices before publishing the article.

7- Internal Links

Our next step in improving SEO, which is no less important than the previous one, is the process of linking the site internally to each other, so that articles and publications are linked to each other. The primary goal of the linking process is to make the content as integrated as possible so that the visitor becomes self-sufficient in your site. Any information or ambiguous term in the article he reads will be linked, via internal links, to another article that provides more explanation.

The other essential benefit that you will get from the previous linking process is keeping the visitor on your site for as long as possible. Here the visitor has everything he needs to know by linking the articles together. In other words, there will be no need to leave your site and search for information on another site.

Through the WordPress platform, you can link articles to each other through the link button in the WordPress editor, as shown in the image.

8- Improve search results for images

Articles generally need illustrative and expressive images, in order to better convey the information to visitors and ensure that the reader is constantly interacting with the content. In general, it is preferable to add at least one image in your articles.

If you want to make the most of images, there are a set of general principles that you must follow when attaching images to articles on your site.

First, you must write the name of the images in the correct form and avoid writing an ambiguous name for the images, such as: image or pic. The name of the image must express the content it displays or illustrates, and you must place a sign (-) between the words to make it easier for search engines to analyze the content of the image description.

There are also some fields that you must fill out appropriately before uploading images, which are:

Alt Text : Must contain the keyword.
Explanatory words: Explanatory words about the image.
Description : A description of the content of the sound. For example, the picture shows a red football.

9- Backlinks

Another thing that we will add to our golden list in order to improve SEO is obtaining a backlink to the site. By backlink, we mean links that lead to your site or blog through other sites and blogs.

This adds more confidence to your blog, so that for search engines, your blog represents an important source and reference for information, which means significantly improving your site’s ranking in search engines.

You can, for example, ask other sites to publish an article about your site and get a backlink from their sites, or you can work on providing unique and useful content that prompts other sites to talk about you and refer to your site.

10- Use categories and tags

Categories and tags help understand the content of your site, and divide it into specific sections and types of content, such as dividing the content on your site, for example, into “technical content” or “marketing content,” so that it makes it easier for the user to navigate the site, in addition to facilitating the process of archiving and analyzing. content by search engines, which reflects positively on improving your site’s SEO.

11- Update articles

Another important criterion that search engines adopt when ranking sites in search results is updating the articles on the site. You can update articles by adding new paragraphs, modifying or deleting old paragraphs, adding new images, etc. In other words, you must provide new content and keep up with developments in any field you talk about on your site.

12- Mobile compatibility

You must make sure that your blog is compatible with smartphones. Do not forget that the largest percentage of users nowadays browse websites on their phones. It is worth noting that the Google search engine emphasizes that sites are compatible with phones, so your site design must be suitable for browsing on all types of devices, and the addresses (URL) must be the same across the different types of operating systems and browsers that the visitor may use to browse your site.

13- Using skima to improve results

The last strategy we will review on our list is using Schema, to improve the search results for your blog and show it better in the search results for users and visitors.

Schema enables you to display the content of your site pages in an organized manner, as it shows a description of the page contents in the form of excerpts.

In the end, paying attention to how to improve SEO for WordPress blogs is one of the basic pillars and essential conditions for the success of any blog, so if you want to advance your blog and take the lead in the competition for search results, you must focus carefully on improving SEO. You need to start by searching for the right keywords for your blog and creating a business plan and organized content.

You should also focus on writing good and useful content that provides value and real useful solutions for visitors and users, while paying attention to writing according to the SEO rules that we mentioned, placing internal links, distributing keywords, etc