you may have heard a lot that WordPress helps improve the appearance of the site in search engines, so that you do not understand the phrase wrongly; Let us clarify to you that WordPress is only an auxiliary factor to improve the appearance of the site in search engines, but it is not considered the secret behind improving your site.
There are many modifications and important matters that you must take care of on your site in order to have multiple opportunities to appear on the first search pages in front of users who are interested in the content that you provide on your site.
You must also understand that the content you provide on your site may be very important and contain many things that hundreds, thousands, and even millions of users are searching for, but if you do not care about improving the SEO within your site, you may not receive any attention at all due to the difficulty of accessing content. Your website through search engines.
What does WordPress SEO mean?
The WordPress system is built on the foundation to be ready to help website owners and managers improve and develop the appearance of their sites in the search results of many different search engines.
WordPress SEO, in short, is working on adjusting the settings of your WordPress site and configuring the internal content in a way that helps search engines show that content to searchers easily.
Stages of improving WordPress SEO:
As we mentioned, there are many procedures and settings that you must adhere to and adjust properly so that search engines begin to display your site to those searching for the content published within it. To simplify things for you, we will divide the stages of improving WordPress SEO into three main stages. .
We delve into each stage and explain it in detail so that you can start improving your site and properly meeting search engine requests, thus gaining more visitors to your site.
1- Site settings and ensuring its site health
This stage begins on the day your site was born, where all the settings that we will explain in this stage must be adjusted before you can think about launching the site completely.
The first thing you must ensure is the authenticity of the site and its software files, as you can easily identify this through the WordPress control panel. By entering ( Tools >> Site Health ) from the Control Panel Tools menu, a simplified report on the site’s status opens before you, telling you the necessary things that must be followed in order for your site to be in the best possible condition.
In the image above, you will find that it tells us that the PHP files are outdated and need to be updated, which makes you immediately, when you see this alert, contact the company hosting your site and ask them to update these files because of their importance.
As well as other notes and alerts, such as: deleting inactive plugins on your site that cause noticeable slowness in loading the site, so ensuring the site’s validity is the first and most important step to improving WordPress SEO.
You must also go to the ( Settings >> Reading ) menu from the WordPress control panel, and make sure that the “ Prevent search engines from archiving this site ” option is not marked; You should never choose it; Because if you put a “true” mark on this option, you are telling search engines to ignore your site and not archive it completely. So leave it as shown in the following image:
2- Choose a hosting company that helps you build a strong, fast, and secure website
The security and speed of your site are among the factors that search engines consider most when looking at your site and deciding whether to archive it in their search results or not. Therefore, when you choose a hosting company, you must choose a company that provides you with security and speed options to a great extent.
Your website’s hosting must contain updated programming files, such as PHP, which must be in the latest version.
Your site must also contain an SSL certificate, which you also obtain from the company hosting your site. Make sure you obtain this certificate, which makes your site appear in browsers in a secure manner. Failure to obtain this certificate causes some browsers to display a security alert to visitors that your site may “not be secure.” In addition, search engines may ignore archiving some or all of your site’s content because you do not have an SSL security certificate.
3- Install the fastest and safest theme that is compatible with mobile phones
Many search engines, the most famous of which is the “Google” search engine, have begun launching updates that give priority to sites that are compatible with mobile devices to appear in search results more than those that are not compatible with mobile devices. Therefore, before installing the theme on your site, you must test it whether it is compatible with mobile phones or not. In order to do this test, you must go to the official website of the template you want to install, and search for the demo link for the template, then copy it and put it in the Google tool for testing. Site speed . The template must be suitable for mobile, and the following image shows you an example of one of the templates for which we placed the link in the tool and the result appeared that it is compatible with mobile, and therefore this template is an appropriate choice to install on our website.
4- Install important plugins to improve WordPress SEO .
You can improve the performance of your site and improve the SEO of the entire site without the need to install one of the specialized add-ons for that, but as a beginner you must use one of the important add-ons that helps you adjust the SEO of your entire site and alerts you if there are some parts that need improvement.
One of the most famous and important WordPress SEO plugins is the Yoast plugin . You can search for it in the “Add-ons” box in the WordPress control panel and install it on your site.
The image above shows how to search for the add-on by going to (Add-ons >> Add New), then searching for the name of the Yoast SEO add-on and clicking on “Install Now” as shown.
After you install and activate the tool, a data panel will open for you asking you for some data about your site, such as the site name and address, and some things that you must answer in order for your site to begin performing properly.
We will talk in more detail about how the tool works and how to benefit from it in later parts of the article.
5- Add the site to Google Webmaster Tools Google search console
Google Webmaster Tools, or Google console for short, is the most important tool that you should start with from the first day of your website.
This tool helps track your site and provides you with periodic reports on the site’s performance and the results it was able to appear in Google searches, in addition to the most searched words that your site appeared on in Google searches. The tool also alerts you if there is an error or a major problem that prevents some site links from being archived in Google, and thus fixes those problems to avoid any problem that affects the site’s appearance in search results.
You can access the Webmaster Tool link and start adding your site link, then follow the instructions that appear to you and the process of adding the site will be completed properly.
After adding the site completely, you start adding the sitemap file to the webmaster tool. You can add the sitemap file easily by entering the “Sitemap file” highlighted in red in the image above, and the following page will open for you:
In this box highlighted in red, you add a link to the Sitemap file for a site, and the link looks like this: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml , taking into account replacing example.com with the link to your real site, and you click Submit.
After that, some statistics begin to appear to you, such as the number of clicks your site received from searches, the number of times it appears in searches on Google, and other statistics that are very useful to you to evaluate the performance of your site and work to improve it continuously.
Explanation of Sitema p
In the previous step, we added the sitemap file for the site to the webmaster tool, and explained that it is a necessary step for the search engine to begin archiving the site pages and displaying them in the search results, so what is a sitemap file?
A sitemap file is a file that is automatically created within your site if you install the Yoast tool, as we explained previously. This file helps provide descriptive information about your site to search engines. For example, the sitemap file tells search engines the number of sections and internal pages it contains. It contains your site and the way it is formatted and arranged, and then this information helps search engines archive the site and its pages in the correct manner. The following image shows an example of what a sitemap file looks like:
Note : It is not necessary to create a sitemap file manually, because SEO plugins create it for you automatically without your intervention. All you have to do is add the link to the file within the Google Webmaster Tool as we explained in the previous step.
6- Content Optimization of the website’s internal content
It is the next stage of WordPress SEO optimization. I will explain to you in detail all the things that you must improve regarding the content of your site in order for it to be optimized and ready to appear in search engines.
Site content includes (articles – pages – images – links – multimedia files – any visual content that appears to site visitors).
Configure the permanent link correctly .
When you publish an article or page on your site, a link is automatically built to access the content of this article. But you can control and customize the way this link is configured so that the link appears the way you want.
But the form of the link must be appropriate and optimized for search engines. The more the link contains one or more words that the searcher uses to reach the content he wants, the greater the chance that your site will appear in the first search results.
As you can see in the image above, you can choose the custom link to contain the “article title” as shown, and you can access this through the site’s control panel menu (Settings >> Permanent Links).
Now notice the following image showing how to display the article link, which contains the article title written in the “Title” box.
Improve your SEO Score with Yoast plugin
One of the most important benefits that the Yoast plugin gives you is that it helps provide suggestions on improving the content of your site. When you write an article within the WordPress editor, you can scroll to the bottom of the page to find the statistics of the Yoast plugin, which provides you with a full report on the degree of improvement of your content (SEO Score). It provides you with modification suggestions that you should make in order for your content to receive a high degree of improvement.
You must write the target word Keyword in the Focus Keyword box as shown in the image above, and the tool will begin preparing a comprehensive report on the performance of your content and the quality of the target word within it. You can move between the (SEO) box and the (Readability) box to see all the suggestions that the tool provides you. In order to get fully optimized content.
The plugin uses 3 colors to evaluate the quality of the content as follows:
Red color : means that there is a major error and it must be fixed so that it does not negatively affect your site’s appearance in search engines.
Yellow color : means that there are some improvements that need to be made to obtain a higher search ranking.
Green color : means that the matter is good and does not need further improvement.
The tool provides many tips and suggestions on improving content, including the following:
- The content must be no less than 300 words.
- Internal links should be included between different site articles.
- The image must be optimized to contain a meta title.
- The number of times the target word is mentioned within the article should be moderate.
- You must add a text description for the article in order for it to appear on the search results page (meta description).
- The target word must be mentioned in the first paragraph of the article.
Note : The SEO add-on only provides you with suggestions, but it does not guarantee that your site will appear on the first search pages once you apply all the modifications suggested by the add-on. There are many other factors that affect the appearance of your site, such as the age of your site’s domain, the number of backlinks, and many other factors. Others, but the Yoast add-on provides you with the main guide for your site to be eligible for search engines to appear in their search results.
Improve image descriptions and media files within content
When you insert an image into the content, you must tell search engines what this image or media file refers to, whatever it may be, in order to help search engines show your content to searchers who are greatly interested in it, and in order to tell search engines what the images contain, you must specify The meta description of images, which is called ALT text, title text, and description. All of these descriptions are written to describe what the image contains so that the search engine accesses what the image refers to through the descriptive content that you write.
In WordPress, you can specify descriptive text for images and media files with ease. When you upload an image into your article, this panel appears that allows you to write descriptions of the image:
As you can see, you must write (alternative text – title – explanatory words – description) in order for the image to be SEO optimized and thus increase the chance of your content appearing in search engines.
7- Improving the user experience on the site
Improving the user’s browsing experience within your site is a very important matter, and it has a major impact on the quality of your site and its evaluation for search engines. We will present to you one of the things that helps improve the visitor’s browsing experience within your site as follows:
Organizing and coordinating your site content in a way that is convenient for visitors
Dividing the content into a main title, sub-headings, paragraphs, and images is one of the most important things that improves the visitor’s experience on your site, and thus you gain the trust of search engines and have a greater chance of appearing in search results.
The following image shows an article that has been written and formatted in a way that is convenient for the visitor and divided in an organized and good manner:
However, the following image shows overlapping content without sub-headings and paragraphs, which is considered difficult to read and browse, and therefore the visitor will not stay with you for a long time and may not return to you again.
The toolbar included with the WordPress editor helps you apply the formats you want with ease, as you can choose the format from the toolbar and apply it to the desired text simply. Keep in mind that the content within your articles is divided in a way that is comfortable for the visitor, so that the topic contains h2 or subheadings. What is called “Header 2”, followed by “Paragraph” explaining the subtitle, then “Header 2”, then a paragraph, then “Header 3”, then a paragraph… and so on until you finish your entire topic.
You must design the list of pages of your site in an organized and organized manner (main sections and sub-sections) so that it is easy for the visitor to navigate between them with greater ease and flexibility. This helps to greatly improve the visitor’s experience within your site and thus reflects on your benefit from the ability of search engines to show it to searchers. A greater percentage of those sites do not make the process of navigating between their internal pages easy for the visitor.
Review comments manually
When you publish an article or page within your site, you start receiving comments from visitors below your articles. But the annoying thing is when someone posts dozens of annoying comments that contain links to his site, thus annoying your site visitors and negatively affecting the browsing experience within the site.
Therefore, you must activate the option to review visitors’ comments before publishing them directly on your site’s pages. In order to activate this option, from within the WordPress control panel, you go to (Settings >> Discussion) and activate the option to review comments manually as shown:
Enable AMP on your site
In 2015, Google launched the AMP initiative, which helps mobile phone visitors open website pages significantly faster than the desktop version and other devices. Since then, accelerated web pages have become one of the biggest priorities for website owners to help mobile phone users from Browsing the site and opening its internal pages very quickly.
You can use the official WordPress plugin to easily create a fast-opening version of your AMP pages.
Various questions and their answers
Does WordPress help a website appear in Google search results?
Not only will your site appear in the first Google search results once you install WordPress on it, but you must make dozens of internal improvements to your site, which WordPress helps to accomplish in the required manner in order for it to appear in the first search results.
What do Breadcrumbs mean and are they useful for WordPress SEO?
Breadcrumbs are a feature that helps your site’s internal links appear in search engines in a coordinated and organized manner, such as the following image:
Instead of it appearing in its normal position as follows in the following image:
In order to activate this feature on your site links, you can do this clearly from within the settings of the Yoast tool and activate it easily by clicking Enable or Activate as shown:
Images from: https://ahrefs.com/blog/wordpress-seo/
How does updating website content affect SEO?
Updating the internal content of the site is one of the things that search engines love most, as the information that was written a year ago is now outdated and must be updated in order to provide the visitor with the highest possible degree of benefit by updating the content whenever something new is available to you that must be added.
What does keyword cannibalization mean?
Dispersion of target words occurs within your site when there is more than one article talking about the same target word, and thus these articles compete with each other within the search engines, so your site’s links become competing with each other in the search engines, which is something that is not in your favor in many cases, so be careful. To focus on the target word within one article so that the focus on it is stronger and becomes more competitive within search engines and appears in the first results more quickly.
What does internal linking mean on my site and how can I benefit from it?
Internal linking between site articles is one of the most beneficial things for your site’s SEO. Internal linking helps the visitor navigate between the topics and articles of your site in a way that helps him obtain the greatest possible degree of benefit. For example, when you write an article in which you talk about “healthy foods that are beneficial for diabetics,” and you have another article on the site that talks about “how to make cake suitable for diabetics.” “Sugar.” Linking the two articles will be very useful to the reader and help him get the greatest possible degree of benefit.
Does compressing WordPress files help improve website SEO?
Site loading speed is considered one of the first and most important factors in your site’s ranking in search engines. Compressing WordPress files such as CSS and Javascript files and other things that help speed up site loading and thus your site gets a higher ranking in search results or is a candidate for it is one of the most popular plugins that help you. File Compression is a W3 Total Cache plugin available in the WordPress plugin store.
Does publishing my website’s content on social media help improve its SEO?
Publishing and sharing content via social media sites is considered one of the most important strategies that helps strengthen your site’s SEO and obtain a better ranking in search engines. Therefore, make sharing your site’s content on social media platforms one of your most important priorities to obtain noticeable progress in search results, as the rate of Publishing your content determines the number of social signals, which are considered the most important factors in ranking sites’ appearance in search engines.
