Technical SEO for WordPress

WordPress technical SEO

The cornerstone for digital marketing is SEO. When it comes to modern times, since everyone is online and customers have to battle for attention, the best way to make sure that your content and messages are getting to your audience is to use great SEO.

SEO can be broke down into three overlapping categories:

• Off-Page SEO: This focuses on optimizing backlinks so that your content and brand can be built authority which helps your rankings.
• On-Page SEO: This focuses on optimizing all of your content that you can rank for those pages.
• Technical SEO: This focuses on the technical side of your site being optimized to be crawled and indexed by Google.

This post will teach you how you can leverage technical SEO to help optimize your WordPress site. Various practices and tactics will be covered, along with tools that you can use to make your site Seo friendly.

To start with, we will start by reviewing SEO terminology and basics.

Reviewing SEO Terminology and Basics

When you think about how Google works, it is best to consider it a matching game. When you search for something, Google will take keywords (phrases and words) in that search and the intent of the search (which is what is trying to be done with the search) and then tries to match the results with content that can be found online.

When it comes to SEO, you are trying to make sure that your content will be the best match for these searches that your targeted audience is searching for. It all comes down to knowing that the more content you have when a person searches online, the more likely you will end up earning their trust and possibly their purchases.

Technical SEO is what will deal with all of the critical parts of SEO. If you want your site to show up on Google’s search results, Google must crawl and then index your site.

• Crawling is Google’s ability to access your site and all of its content.
• Indexing is Google’s ability to collect information about your site to display the page when its content matches searches.

Technical SEO can also help improve your page’s rankings, such as where it shows up in the searches. It can be done by improving site speed, URL structure site structure, and other things that can affect how Google will rank your page.

Bear in mind that the best way to optimize is for your customers first, then the search engines. When it comes down to it, if your site is easy to navigate, it will be the site to win, so always keep your customers in mind when optimizing your site.

Now that you got the basics of Technical SEO, it is time to start optimizing your site.

Getting Set Up

First things first, you will need to download and install Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO is an essential tool for your arsenal. It is a free WordPress plugin with all of the needed things to help you track your technical, on-page, and off-page SEO.

You can download the plugin here.

You have the option to purchase a more premium version, but the free version will be enough for you to optimize your settings for WordPress technical SEO.

Setting Up Google Search Console

Once you have Yoast SEO connected, it is time to set up your Google Search Console.

The Google Search Console is another crucial tool that you will need for technical SEO. It will help you monitor, troubleshoot, and maintain your site’s performance in the SERPs or Search Engine Results Page.

There are plenty of guides that are pretty helpful when setting up your Google Search Console account. You can follow this one to get it set up.

Be sure to link your Yoast SEO account with the Google Search Console account. You can do that inside Yoast under the Search Console listing. Don’t worry. Yoast will provide you with complete instructions on how to connect them.

Optimizing Your WordPress Site

Creating Clear Site Hierarchy

One of the easiest ways that you will be able to boost WordPress technical SEO is to practice good site structure. The clearer your structure is, the easier it will be for Google to crawl and index your site.

The biggest tip that most SEO masters will give is to keep site navigation clear by creating a site hierarchy or site map.

Checking the Robots.txt File

The robots.txt file is a file that can be found on your website that will tell Google what type of content that they can and cannot crawl and then index.

Submitting the Site Map to Google Search Console

Site maps are vital for search engines. You want to ensure that you have submitted a site map to the Google Search Console.

Using Google Search Console for SEO Feedback

Google Search Console is not just for storing site map information, and it is also an excellent source for technical SEO.

• You can use the removal tab to request that specific URLs be removed from the search results, which is excellent for spam.
• You can use the coverage tab to find pages that Google has issues crawling and why they cannot crawl them.
• You can use Speed reports under Enhancements to find problems that are causing your site to slow down.

You can learn more about how to use Google Search Console to help with your SEO.

Final Tips for WordPress Technical SEO

Here are a few final tips that you should keep in mind:

• HTTPS: Your site needs to be an HTTPS site instead of just HTTP. That will help improve your ranks because it ensures that any data from your site will be secure, which is excellent for customers. You can learn more about how to get an SSL certificate here.
• 301 Redirects: If you are changing the location of a page or rearranging URL structures, you will need to ensure that you redirect the URL so that you do not get a 404 Error. You can learn more about redirects here.
• URL Structure: You need to have a clear URL structure that will make sense to customers and not just bots. It means that you need keywords in your URLs, and they have to be logical. Make sure that you redirect your pages if the current URL structure.

If you need help to optimize your technical SEO for WordPress, then check out the Maintenance Packages that we have here.