Want to take your WordPress SEO to the next level and achieve better Google rankings?

A top ranking means your website gets seen first, driving more traffic and boosting your business. But here’s the thing: SEO is constantly evolving, and staying ahead requires the right tools and strategies. With WordPress as your platform, you have a powerful starting point, but you still need to optimize it so that search engines can see real results.

Let’s explore why WordPress is an ideal platform for SEO and the steps you can take to boost your rankings.

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Why WordPress SEO is the Best Choice for Your Website

WordPress isn’t just the world’s most popular content management system—it powers over 35% of the internet, including major websites like BBC America, Time.com, and even The Rolling Stones’ official site. If it works for these global powerhouses, it’s easy to see why WordPress is the top choice for web developers and business owners alike.

While WordPress makes SEO more accessible, simply launching a WordPress website isn’t enough to secure top rankings. You’ll need to implement effective SEO strategies, but the good news is that WordPress provides the tools and flexibility to get started—even if you’re not a tech expert.

Here are a few key things you’ll need to focus on to achieve SEO success:

• Create valuable, engaging content.
• Build high-quality backlinks.
• Ensure your site is technically optimized and free from issues that could impact performance.

WordPress comes with several built-in features that help your site rank well online, but with the right tools and tactics, you can take your SEO efforts to the next level.

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Choose an SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme

Not all WordPress themes are created equal. While thousands of free and premium themes are available, choosing an SEO-friendly theme is crucial for Google rankings. Many themes claim to be optimized for SEO but include unnecessary scripts or plugins that slow down your site’s performance.

Here’s how to ensure you’re selecting the right theme:

1. Look for well-reviewed themes from trusted developers.
2. Test the theme’s demo with tools like Google’s web.dev to check for performance and SEO issues.

Recommended themes: (although I’m partial to Divi)

• Flatsome: Perfect for WooCommerce projects with excellent reviews.
• Divi: Intuitive front-end editor for designing custom layouts.
• OceanWP: A versatile theme packed with powerful features.
• Parallax: Stylish and modern, with engaging background effects.

Remember, your theme is the foundation of your website. A good theme ensures your site is fast, responsive, and easy for search engines to crawl.

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Install a WordPress SEO Plugin

To fully optimize your WordPress website, installing an SEO plugin is essential. These tools provide an easy way to implement critical SEO features like meta tags, XML sitemaps, and content analysis. Two popular and highly recommended options are:

1. Yoast SEO: A comprehensive plugin that simplifies on-page optimization, readability analysis, and more.
2. All in One SEO (AIOSEO): User-friendly with powerful features for optimizing content and technical SEO.

Both plugins are free to install, with premium versions available for advanced features. By using one of these plugins, you can ensure your site meets SEO best practices without needing extensive technical knowledge.

Please note that installing a plugin won’t optimize your site for you; it just makes it easier for you to do so and to adhere to best practices.

Set your Preferred Domain

Whether you choose your preferred domain as https://domain.com or https://www.domain.com won’t have an impact on your SEO, but you need to make sure your site is accessible on just one of these, as these are considered by Google to be different URLs.

In your Dashboard, go to Settings > General. Here you can choose your preferred domain:

As a side note to this, you need to make sure you have an SSL certificate in place and run your website using HTTPS. If you’re not sure what SSL certificates are and what they have to do with http vs. https, read this article discussing the importance of SSL’s and https encryption.

Check Your Site’s Visibility Settings

WordPress gives you the ability to ‘discourage search engines from indexing’ your site, which tells Google not to index your site and it won’t rank. This is commonly used by developers while a site is in development to stop it from being indexed while pages and content are not complete.

It is more common than you would think to find that this block is left in place after launch. You need to check your site’s visibility settings on your Dashboard: Settings > Reading.

Here, you will see a checkbox right at the bottom of the page:

If this box is ticked, you need to untick it.

Enable SEO-Friendly Permalinks

WordPress gives you a number of different options for how URLs are structured, and you need to make sure you are using the most SEO-friendly option.

By default, WordPress uses URLs like this:https://domain.com/?p=123. These URLs are not search-engine friendly, and there is absolutely no way to identify what the page is about from the URL alone.

It is advisable to change the URL structure on the dashboard Settings > Permalinks.  However, doing this to an already established website is very dangerous for SEO; it must be done at the beginning of development or a professional web developer with these skills should be hired to do this correctly. (hint hint – Accent Graphix)

For most sites, you will want to choose ‘Post name’ for your permalinks because this setting will allow search engines and people to identify what the page is about just by looking at the URL.

Verify Your Site with Google Search Console & Submit Your XML Sitemap

The last easy and free step in basic SEO optimization is; Create an XML Sitemap and add it to Google Search Console.   Either one of the aforementioned SEO Plugins will allow you to create your XML sitemap.  You can easily retrieve the sitemap by going right into your plugin settings.  For the purposes of this article, we are using the premium (paid) version of All in One SEO because it provides so many robust SEO Features.

Jump over to All In One SEO > Sitemaps and you will see various versions of any type of sitemap that you desire.  The easiest and most important is the general sitemap, which will lay out each page you have on your website.

After creating and retrieving the URL to your sitemap, you will want to submit this sitemap to Google Console.  Navigating your way to Google Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is easy.  In fact, you can get to Google Console right from your website dashboard in the All In One SEO Plugin > General Settings > Webmaster Tools

Google Search Console

Once in Google Console, you can then submit your sitemap to basically tell Google “go crawl all of the pages of my website that I am showing you with my sitemap.”

No doubt that WordPress is one of the most SEO-friendly website platforms, and that is one of the reasons why it is so popular. Not only is it user-friendly, but it is easy to implement a whole host of SEO tactics using just a small number of fantastic plugins.

If you are running WordPress, you have made a good choice. By following the steps above, you are putting yourself in a great position to outrank your competitors. However, it can be a lot to take in and can be overwhelming.  Sometimes it is best to hire an SEO professional who can integrate SEO features efficiently and easily.

The team at Accent Graphix can help you integrate basic and advanced SEO on your website and help you stand out from the crowd.