What items should be included in your WordPress SEO checklist?
WordPress has a 50-60% share in the market. It is considered the most popular CMS platform in the world. WordPress provides not only is ease of use but saves money and time. This is especially true when comparing to creating a custom website.
Why SEO is Still Important?
Many brands today choose to invest in Instagram, Facebook, Influencer, or YouTube marketing. They consider SEO as an “old-school” way of marketing. Nonetheless, SEO has remained one of the highest ROI midsts all channels. In addition, in terms of conversion, organic search performs 5.7 times greater than paid search ads.
Where to Begin?
To ensure you see results right away it is important to do an accurate tech SEO set up. The following is a basic WordPress SEO setup that can be used for any new site:
1. Select a good host
In some cases, a good host may mean more expensive but always stick to reliable, well-known hosting providers such as Wpengine or Bluehost. Good hosts provide the following:
- SSL certificate
- Quick loading speed
- Staging environment
- One-click, simple install for WordPress
- Reliability
- Technical support
2. Sensibly select your WordPress theme
It is important to also invest in a reliable, fast, good WordPress theme. Poor, cheap designed themes can:
- Reduce conversion rates
- Significantly slow the website down
- Break website structure, etc.
- Mess up your redirect and links
Good themes you may consider include Genesis Framework or Divi.
3. Install an SEO plugin
Setting up an SEO plugin is the first thing to do following WordPress theme install. There are many options to choose from, with one of the popular ones being Yoast. The basic version is free. SEO plugins let you:
- Manage redirects
- Analyze on-page SEO
- Create sitemap and robots.txt
- Check difficulty of reading
- Modify meta descriptions and titles for many posts
- Optimize content for specific keywords
- And more
4. Create a sitemap
Basically, a sitemap is a list of all your website pages. With Yoast, you can auto-generate sitemap and then submit it into Search Console. Google search bot will be notified and begin crawling new pages on your site.
5. Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a simple file that includes only a couple of lines of code, made for search bots, where indexing status of your site is specified.
6. Google Analytics
There are many options to track your site traffic, however, Google Analytics is recommended because bot traffic is excluded. Google Analytics can help analyze acquisition, audience, behavior, and conversions.
7. Search Console
Formerly Google Webmasters, Search Console is a central SEO tool. There are a number of things to do when creating a profile and verify your site, and as a recommended to connect it with your Google Analytics account.
8. Google Optimize or Tag Manager
These tools are both great free tools that let you track clicks, events, form submission, as well as optimize your site fittingly.
9. Image optimization
Optimizing images help make your site faster which would lead to higher rankings in Google. Some of these plugins include Tinify and Smush.
10. Caching
Speed up your site with caching plugins or system. Some free options include WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache.
11. CDN
Content delivery network should be enabled to make your site faster since the content will be delivered from a server that is located nearby.
12. AMP
Amplified Mobile Pages or AMP makes mobile pages lightning fast and is being pushed by Google. Since these pages are preferred by Google it is likely that your rankings will increase when using them.
Cultura Interactive agency is an award-winning Fort Lauderdale website design studio. We strives to create unique and attractive websites, and develop strategic digital online marketing campaigns for our clients.
Our team of professionals specialize in web design, logo design, WordPress development, eCommerce, responsive web design, mobile apps, SEO, social media marketing, pay per click advertising and more. Learn more about our services or contact us for a personal interview.
