[ad_1] Not sure how to get started when it comes to WordPress SEO? As the world’s most popular way to make a website, WordPress is well-suited to helping you create search engine optimized websites that rank at the top of Google’s search results. However, out of the box, WordPress is lacking in some SEO aspects, which is why it’s important to properly configure your site if you want to rank well. In our ultimate guide to WordPress SEO, we’re going to cover all of the most important tactics to boost your site’s search engine rankings. That includes the following: Let’s dig in! WordPress SEO Guide: Important Sitewide Settings In this first section, let’s take a look at some important sitewide WordPress SEO settings that you’ll want to optimize before working on individual pieces of content. 1. Make Sure Your Site Is Visible to Search Engines The first step in WordPress SEO is to make sure that your site is visible to search engines. If it’s not, Google won’t rank your site no matter how optimized it is. When you’re first building your site, it’s common to block search engines from indexing it because it’s not ready for primetime yet. But once you go live, it’s essential that you turn off this block. To check, go to Settings → Reading in your WordPress dashboard and make sure that the Discourage search engines from indexing this site box is not checked: Once the box is unchecked, Google and other search engines will be able to start indexing your content. 2. Choose An SEO-Friendly WordPress Permalink Structure Your WordPress permalink structure controls the basic format of your site’s URLs. For example, consider these two URLs: yoursite.com/09/2022/cool-blog-post yoursite.com/cool-blog-post The first URL includes the month and year that the blog was published, while the second URL only includes the blog post’s “post name” or “slug”, which is the unique identifier of the blog post – “cool-blog-post” in this example. In the first example, the month and year would be automatically generated based on your chosen permalink structure. For most WordPress sites, using just the post name is the best option. You really only want to include dates in your URL slugs if you only publish time-sensitive content, such as a news blog posting current news. If you post more “evergreen” content, having the date in the URL slug is limiting. For example, let’s say that the URL slug says “2020” but you fully updated the post in 2022. This might cause readers and search engines to think the post is out-of-date even though the content is current. To set your site’s permalinks, go to Settings → Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard: 3. Use Consistent Site URL (WWW vs non-WWW) In addition to your permalink structure, you’ll also want to choose whether or not to use WWW as part of your URL. That is, yoursite.com or www.yoursite.com. There’s no right or wrong choice here. The only important thing is that you pick one and stay consistent with it. For example, here at WPKube, we use www.wpkube.com, and you’ll see that on every piece of content. If you just enter wpkube.com in your browser address bar, you’ll also be redirected to www.wpkube.com instead. To choose your URL structure, go to Settings → General and make sure that the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) use your preferred setup: WordPress will now automatically redirect users to your preferred structure, so there’s no need to set up a redirect at the server level (though you can if you want). 4. Install a WordPress SEO Plugin In order to add a lot of important SEO functionality to your site, it’s essential that you install a quality SEO plugin. There are a lot of good SEO plugins, but we recommend Yoast SEO to most beginners for the following reasons: It’s popular. It’s easy to use. It has a long track record of reliability. The free version works fine for most sites. It’s also the SEO plugin that we use here at WPKube. For those reasons, we’re going to use Yoast SEO for all of the screenshots and instructions in this tutorial. With that being said, here are a few other options you can look at: You can read our Yoast SEO vs Rank Math comparison to see how two of the most popular options compare. Once you install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin, you’ll want to go through its setup wizard to configure some important basics for your site’s SEO. Later on, we’ll also show you how to use Yoast SEO to optimize individual pieces of content on your site. 5. Install an SSL Certificate and Use HTTPS HTTPS makes your website more secure and privacy-friendly by encrypting the data that passes between your site’s server and your visitors’ browsers. You can tell if a site is using HTTPS by looking for the green padlock in your browser’s address bar: While that alone is reason enough to use HTTPS on your site, there’s also another big benefit – Google has used HTTPS as a positive ranking factor since 2014. So not only does it make your site more secure, but it also helps it rank higher in search engines. In order to use HTTPS on your site, you’ll need to install an SSL certificate on your server, which most web hosts offer for free nowadays. If your host doesn’t, you can consider switching to one of the top WordPress hosting providers from our list. Once you’ve installed an SSL certificate, you can enable HTTPS on your site by using a plugin like Really Simple SSL. If you feel comfortable, you can also do it manually, but it requires a little more work. 6. Verify Your Site With Google Search Console and Submit Sitemap Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that lets you manage all aspects of your site’s SEO, including configuring settings and viewing real performance data. For that reason, you’ll absolutely want to set
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