SEO Best Practices for WordPress Blogs

To optimise SEO for WordPress blogs effectively, focus on these best practices:

• Create people-first, high-quality content that addresses your audience’s needs and uses relevant keywords naturally.
• Use SEO-friendly URL structures by keeping URLs short, descriptive, and including target keywords. Avoid dates or special characters. Set this in Settings > Permalinks using "Post name" or a custom structure like /%category%/%postname%/.
• Choose an SEO-friendly WordPress theme that is lightweight and performance-optimised, as this impacts site speed and user experience, both important ranking factors.
• Organise content with categories and tags to improve site navigation and help search engines understand your content hierarchy.
• Use headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) correctly to structure your content logically. Include primary keywords in the H1 and relevant keywords in subheadings without keyword stuffing.
• Ensure your site is visible to search engines by checking that the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" option is unchecked under Settings > Reading.
• Maintain consistency in your domain format (www vs non-www) and set proper redirects to avoid duplicate content issues and consolidate domain authority.
• Add external links to reputable, high-authority sites to enhance user experience and signal trustworthiness to search engines. Use nofollow attributes for untrusted or sponsored links and open external links in new tabs.
• Keep metadata concise and relevant, such as SEO titles under 60 characters and meta descriptions between 50-160 characters, to avoid truncation in search results.

Additional tips include securing your site with SSL, optimising images for faster loading, and regularly updating content to keep it fresh and relevant. These combined practices improve your WordPress blog’s search engine rankings and user engagement.