How to Improve SEO on a WordPress Website AKA On-Page SEO Tips – The Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide
Quick Table of Contents
- Meta Tag Keywords
- Page Names/Page Slugs
- Permalinks
- Page Titles
- Page Headings
- Page Descriptions/Meta Descriptions
- Images and SEO
- Post Categories
- Post Tags
- Site Links
- Website Sitemaps
This guide is written for those with WordPress websites that need a hand improving their SEO. There are things that can be done, but anyone promising a fast fix is trying to sell you something. It will take a few weeks for the changes to impact your page rankings. And there are a lot of things to do to improve SEO that will take time. SEO is a long game, not a quick fix.
For the purposes of following along with this guide, it is assumed that you are using an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or All-in-One SEO. I prefer Yoast but All-in-One is also quite popular and well-respected. I recommend you get one of these two plugins. Do not get both. That will only cause conflicts on your site. More is not better, in this case.
The first thing to keep in mind is that if you want to rank for certain keywords in Google, those words need to be on the page on your website. But it’s not just that the words are on the page, it’s where they are on the page and how they are implemented on your page.
I will say that the single most important thing you can do for your website is have other websites link to your website. Google is like a popularity contest: the more websites linking to you, the higher up you go on the rankings. That said, not just any website can link to you. Low-ranking, spammy websites will pull you down in the rankings if they link to you. For that reason, Google has a Disavow Links tool that you can use to say “I am not affiliated with those websites” so they’ll stop pulling you down.
My focus here will be in what is called “On-Page SEO” instead of link-building strategies (which is what it is called when you are trying to get websites to link to you). If you want to learn more about link-building, you can do searches for “link-building strategies” or “how to get more backlinks”. There are a lot of articles on this subject.
So while it is important to have other websites link to you (social media sites linking to you are a good starting point…set up an account with each one), there are still things that need to be done to your website that help Google understand what you are about and what keywords you should be ranking for. This is where On-Page SEO comes into play and is one of my areas of expertise. I’ve been following Google and how they handle SEO since the late 90s. Google SEO strategies change frequently, but there are still a lot of things that remain the same over the years. I’ll also let you know what has changed. We will cover that here today.
So let’s talk about the things that will help Google and other search engines better understand your website and what it’s all about.
Keyword Metatags
There are some people that will tell you that you need keyword metatags and this is false. Google stopped using these in 2009. What Google does, most other search engines do too. So no, you don’t need keyword metatags. These are a waste of time. You do need to have any keywords you want to rank for on the website. That part is important. But skip the keyword metatags.
Page Names/Page Slugs
Search engines look at your page name to determine keywords. Look at this URL:
https://odd-duck.net/web-design-development-services/
The part that says: “web-design-development-services” is the page name, or what WordPress refers to as a Page Slug.
You can find your page slug by logging into your Admin area and going to Pages on the left side of the page, then clicking All Pages. To view or edit a Page Slug, move your cursor over a page name and you will see some links appear. Click Quick Edit and you will see the Quick Edit part of the page, and the Page Slug is among the attributes listed. It looks like this:
This is where you can change your keywords for the page name. They should still describe what the page is about and avoid marketing language. Only use dashes to separate words; dashes should be the only special characters in the Slug. Although there is not a character limit set forth for us to use, I recommend against making your Slug overly long as Google may decide you are using a black hat SEO tactic called “keyword stuffing” and that will lower your ranking.
That said, if you have existing pages on an older site, I recommend not changing your page slugs for those pages. This could decrease any existing SEO value those pages may already have. If you use a service like SEMRush, you can check the rank of that page to see if it has any SEO value to determine if you want to change the page slug or not.
Permalinks
Permalinks are another name for the unique, specific URL for a web page on your website. These are configured in WordPress under Settings and then go to Permalinks. This determines how your pages are displayed: as text, as a date, as categories, and so on.
You will see a number of options and the default setting is Plain, with a page name that looks something like this: https://odd-duck.net/?p=123
This is not ideal. There are page numbers for page names instead of text. That won’t help SEO. The option Post Name is a better option and looks like this: https://odd-duck.net/sample-post/
However, an ideal structure is the custom one. Select “Custom Structure” and in the field after your name name, enter: /%category%/%postname%/
When you start making blog posts, this will put your blog category in the page URL. More on post categories later (there’s a whole section for that). Also, if you use Woocommerce, this will put your product categories in the URL. To set a custom structure, what you entered should look something like this.
Keep in mind that changing your permalinks will alter existing URLs that may have good page rank. You’ll have to ask yourself if it’s worth it to change the permalinks or not. If you have an established site that is ranking well, you may not want to change your permalinks. If you wish to change permalinks, PROCEED WITH CAUTION. This could also break your website too. You may need a WordPress web design/development professional to examine your website first before changing permalinks.
Page Titles
Another important thing to look at are your Page Titles, which is what shows on the browser tab that the web page is open in. Again, this is found under your Page or Post properties on the Quick Edit Menu when you move your cursor over a page name or post name. Click on Quick Edit and you will see your page title.
Like page slugs, don’t make this overly long. Keep it concise and specific to what the page is about.
Page Headings
You can find the Page Heading within a Page inside of a Heading module if you are using a site builder such as Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Bricks, or other builders. Here’s how it looks using Divi on my website (it will vary by website):
On a blog post, the page title as at the top of the page in the standard editor like this:
This page heading is also known as Heading 1 or as we say in HTML, <h1> or sometimes we just call it H1.
How Website Page Headings Work
To use headings effectively, you need to understand how they work. Headings come in multiple levels, starting with H1 or Heading 1 being the most important heading that Google pays attention to, all the way down to H6 or Heading 6 being the least important. But what is in the headings is still more important to Google than the rest of the plain text on the page.
The heading at the top of the page, the heading that describes that the page is about, is Heading 1 or H1. This will be something like “About Us”, “Our Services”, “Contact Us”. etc. The next heading down is the next important thing the page is about. Each subheading is a subheading of the previous heading. If you skip any of these tags or use them out of order, the structure breaks.
Most people will pick a heading based on the size of the font. This is a bad idea and your structure will be out of order. You can always adjust the size of the font for any heading in your theme builders design options. So don’t pick a heading based on the size of the font it gives. That’s just the default size of the theme and you can always change that.
Think of headings like an outline you make for a paper. Here’s an example of how it might look.
You can have as many subheadings as you want. The text in these headings will tell Google what’s important. The words in the headings tell Google what keywords your page and/or website is about.
Here’s an example of how you could use headings on a services page:
Our X Services (H1)
Service 1 (H2)
{paragraph or two of text}
Service 2 (H2)
{paragraph or two of text}
Service 3 (H2)
{paragraph or two of text}
Additional Service Related to Service 3 (H3)
{paragraph or two of text}
Another Sub-Service of Service 3 (H3)
{paragraph or two of text}
Another Related Service for Service 3 (H3)
{paragraph or two of text}
Service 4 (H2)
{paragraph or two of text}
You will likely use headings 4, 5, and 6 less often than the first 3 headings, but they are there if you need them.
Page Descriptions/Meta Descriptions
Descriptions are another important source of keywords. The words in the description are what people see in the search engine results. Here’s an example:
The text under the page title is the description. This description should be around 140 to 160 characters, with spaces. Do not go over 160 characters, as it’s a waste of time. Google cuts off the description after 160 characters.
Your description should describe what the page is about and should entice people to click the link. You can add text such as “call today” or “get in touch”.
In WordPress, descriptions are usually added thanks to an SEO plugin, such as Yoast or All-in-One SEO. My preference is Yoast. You can find it at the bottom of a post or page if you are using the standard editor (the built-in WordPress editor and not Divi, Elementor, or other page builder).
To edit the page or post using the standard editor, go to either Pages or Posts. Move your cursor over a page or post and you will see links appear. Click the Edit link.
Then, scroll down the page and look for the SEO plugin part of the page with the Description field that you can edit.
Images and SEO
There are a number of image issues that have to be addressed for WordPress and SEO. First, it helps to know what all of those fields are for on an image. An image in WordPress has the following fields:
- Alternative Text
- Title
- Caption
- Description
Alternative Text and SEO
Alternative text, also called alt text, is important for SEO and accessibility. Alt text is what screen readers read to visually impaired site visitors. It is also useful for SEO. When it comes to alt text, you want to accurately describe what the image is without stuffing random keywords you want to rank for in the text. Not all alt text will contain your keywords. But some will and it can help your SEO. To know how to write alt text, just imagine that you are describing the image to someone you know that is blind. Because that’s what you’re doing with your alt text: describing images for blind users. You can go to your WordPress media library and you will see an alternative text field for every image.
If an image is used as a background image, it doesn’t need alt text as it won’t be read by screen readers. This is what WordPress means by the “purely decorative” mentioned in the image above where it says “Leave empty if the image is purely decorative”. Here is an example of the alt text field found on images in WordPress blog posts.
Image Titles and SEO
Google doesn’t specifically use the title tags for SEO. These will provide a tooltip next to your cursor when you mouse over an image with a title tag. Not everyone wants title tags on their website. But it could be useful for things like product images used in shopping carts. Or you can do cute things like have alt text that describes a puppy, and a title tag that says “Isn’t this puppy cute?” and the title tag will show that question to anyone that puts their cursor over the image of the puppy.
Captions and SEO
Google also doesn’t use the caption field for SEO. All this does it put text under your visible image on the web page. However, not all images will show the caption. It depends on how your site builder handles images and if a caption is an option for your image. Not all image tools will show the caption but it can be nice to have in some cases. I am using captions on the images in this blog post (the text under the images).
Image Description and SEO
The image description is used to add text to the image attachment page. For every image you upload, an image attachment page is automatically created. This description field adds content to that page. You can ignore your attachment pages. They don’t help with SEO.
Image Sizes and SEO
Google places a heavy emphasis on page load speeds for SEO, especially for the mobile experience. Therefore, all images need to be optimized for the web. This means adjusting the physical size of the image (measured in pixels or px) and adjusting the file size (usually measure in megabytes (MB) or kilobytes (KB).
Photos taken on a camera, even a phone, are usually over 3,000 or 5,000 pixels wide and are several megabytes in size. This is too big for the web. The average computer monitor resolution is 1920×1080, so if your image is over 1920 pixels wide, it’s wider than most monitor resolutions. And a good rule of thumb is that if your image is measured in MB instead of KB, it’s definitely too big for the web.
You are unlikely to need an image to be 1920px wide, even for a full-width image. You’re going to have to play with your image sizes in Photoshop, or a free editor like GIMP, to find the size for the image. What size it should be depends on how the image will be used and where it will be placed on the screen. Try to keep your images files under 200KB, but most of your web images will be far under that size. A good, free tool for compressing images is TINYPNG. You can use this site to compress JPG or PNG files without losing any image quality.
Also, when deciding if an image should be JPG or PNG, generally speaking you only need PNG if you have an image with a transparent background. PNG images tend to be a little larger in size than JPGs. Some people prefer PNG for images with text but I have seen no decrease in image quality in text on JPGs.
Image File Names
Image file names can also contribute to SEO. When you take a photo with your phone, your default image file name may be something like IMG_1234.jpg. This is not ideal for SEO. Your image file name should describe the image and possibly include a keyword or two related to what the page is about. For example, I could have an image on my Web Design Services page that is a photo of a laptop on a table showing a website. And the image name could be “laptop-table-website-web-design,jpg”. That said, try not to stuff too many keywords into an image file name as, again, Google may deem that to be “keyword stuffing”.
Post Categories
If you are writing blog posts or selling products through your website, categories can be important keywords. When it comes to blog categories, don’t make tons of categories. The whole point of them is to organize content. For example, for a plumber that I blog for, I stick to his 3 services; I have categories named plumbing, water heaters, grease traps. That’s it. Stick to categories you want to rank for.
That said, there are some businesses or nonprofits that may have 25 or more keywords due to the broad range of topics they cover. You may also have more categories if you have more services or a wider variety of subjects to write about. A good rule of thumb is: if you have 50 categories, you’ve gone overboard on creating categories. That said, there are exceptions to every rule. You’ll have to decide for yourself or hire a professional SEO to determine how many categories to have.
You’ll need to make sure your permalink structure shows categories for these to be effective. This is accomplished using the custom permalink structure like this: /%category%/%postname%/
Post Tags
In addition to using categories to provide context for blog posts, there are also tags. Not all blogs use these or show them, but some do and they can also be helpful keywords. These are more specific than categories. For example, I could have a blog post about WordPress using the category “WordPress” and then use tags like “security” and “themes” and “SEO” if I had a WordPress blog post discussing those topics. So while categories are broader, tags are more specific and can help users find more specific information.
Links
Links to pages within your website also help Google rank you for specific keywords. For example, I have “web design” on my home page linked to my web page about web design services. These types of links are important. You don’t need to link every bit of text on your site. But finding ways to work those keywords with text into your page content will help.
If you have an external link on another website, usually it is just linked to your business name. But if there’s a chance that someone can mention your services and make that a link, that’s a keyword link that will help you too.
Website Sitemaps
There are two kinds of sitemaps for a website. The kind the people visiting the site can see, and the ones designed for search engines. We’re going to discuss the ones designed for search engines.
A search engines-specific sitemap can be generated by one of your WordPress SEO plugins. Once you’ve got the sitemap made, you’ll want to submit it to Google and Bing. For Google, look for the Google Search Console. For Bing, use the Bing Webmaster Tools.
All you have to do is submit the URL to the sitemap. For example, the one I would submit for my website is located at http://odd-duck.net/sitemap_index.xml. You’ll need to submit the one for your website to these webmaster tools from Google and Bing. As you add web pages to your site and update content, you will want to periodically resubmit your sitemap to these search engines.
SEO Wrap-Up
On-page SEO is only one part of what it takes to get a site ranking well. Again, the other important thing to do is to get other websites linking to you. That is more challenging. Gone are the link farms of the 90s where people could just get their website linked on any website offering free linking.
You’ll need to really look into link-building strategies or possibly hire an expert to get you backlinks. But proceed with caution. Some link builders just spam other websites blog post comment area with a link to your website with no regard to the quality of the website you are linked to. This can hurt your ranking. Beware anyone promising thousands of links. These will be poor quality links.
You may need to pay a fee to be listed on some websites such as certain professional directories or if you decide to join a local Chamber of Commerce or other professional organization. You’ll also need to create some content that people will want to link to. This means blogging or creating other custom content that people like. A few long blog posts, like this one you are reading, can also help SEO.
But remember, SEO is a long game. Be suspicious of anyone promising overnight results. And as always, you can contact me, a WordPress SEO web designer/developer for help with your website. On-page SEO is a lot of work and the larger the website, the more work you have to do. If this is a daunting task for you, get in touch! I’m happy to help!
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