Basic WordPress SEO Setup Guide For Beginners (2022)

Posted by Bakul Sengal

April 25, 2022

SEO 47 min read

While developing your website, you must have probably run across different types of information on various sites, platforms, CMS (Content Management System), and other different aspects of building a website. However, which one to choose can be challenging to decide, especially if you are a beginner. As a beginner, the WordPress platform can be an ideal solution to all your well-development concerns. 

More than 40 % of websites on the internet operate their business activities through WordPress. WordPress is the most popular and unique website platform that allows brands to build various types of business websites over the internet. WordPress is considered one of the most SEO- friendly platforms and content management systems out there. As per the study, some of the most widely read and influential websites are run on WordPress platforms. Hence it is safe to say that WordPress is the most powerful and well-known platform for getting your business information and services out to your potential customer base in the most effective manner. 

So, let us begin this blog by understanding what WordPress is. 

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is an open content management system (CMS) that helps in creating, managing, and publishing a website on online platforms. In other words, business enterprises or anyone can use or modify this platform for free. A content management system (CMS) is a tool that makes it easy for users to manage important aspects of their website without a need to know much about programming. Even users who aren’t familiar with web designing or development can build their own websites effectively on WordPress.

WordPress initially started as a blogging platform however, quickly adapted to become the most powerful and flexible platform to run an entire website and find solutions to all e-commerce website concerns. A little bit of learning and understanding of basic WordPress SEO strategies can help you build your own website easily and bring out the best version of your brand website. For a great SEO foundation and success, you must consider seeking help from experts in the digital marketing industry. 

What Is WordPress SEO?

WordPress definitely can be a great platform and CMS to build your website without the need for any prior web designing or developing experiences. However, there is no denying that you will also need SEO strategies to rank your website on Google and attract a huge amount of visitors online. 

WordPress SEO Basics can helps you to set up and prepare the most optimal SEO environment on your WordPress blog. 

You are required to apply a set of optimizations and strategies while setting up a website on WordPress in order to maximize the SEO of each and every post or content created on your website. These optimizations and strategies can ultimately help you build a strong foundation for your website and achieve higher rankings and success in market places. To implement basic WordPress SEO you must first understand what SEO strategies mean and the ways you can implement the same on your website. 

SEO strategies are a set of complex tools and techniques that might require years of experience to correctly implement the same on your website. You must consider taking services from a  good and reliable marketing agency to help you overcome your marketing challenges and concerns. 

WordPress SEO Basics: 11 Steps Setup Guide for Beginners

Here are some simple yet effective steps and tips that will help you gain the utmost knowledge and understanding of WordPress SEO Basics. If this is your first time creating a website using the WordPress platform, you don’t have to worry anymore as these simple steps will help you do wonders and leave an everlasting impression on your potential customers. 

1. Check Your Site Health

Before implementing any changes to your website, it is always a wise idea to check where your brand ranks on the search engines results pages. Gaining knowledge about your site’s whereabouts on marketplaces will help you make rational decisions and select the right marketing strategy for your basic WordPress SEO tactics. You can begin by identifying the software and hardware your site is running on. 

Check Your Site Health

Whether your current hardware and software are able to bring effective results to your website or not. If the answer is no, then you must look for the hardware and software that suits your business needs the best. You can visit the site health section on WordPress to find out what goes behind the scene of your site. Also, check WordPress’s technical requirements and switch to a suitable hosting plan. Also, consider upgrading to PHP 7.0  or higher version that offers an incredible speed boost, increases efficiency, and helps to receive timely security fixes and reduce vulnerabilities to attack. Unlike old times, you need a valid SSL & HTTPS setup today to prevent third-party intercepts and data hacks.

2. Check Search Engine Visibility Settings 

WordPress platform comes with a built-in feature to hide your website from various search engine pages. This default setting can block your website from getting recognized by various engine pages on the internet. This feature can come in handy when you are building or rebuilding your site and don’t want visitors to see your work-in-progress. The primary purpose of this feature is to give ample time to users to work on their website before it is ready to go public. 

Check Search Engine Visibility Settings

If you are facing a hard time achieving ranks on search pages, then you must ensure to check your site visibility settings. Moreover, check if you are preventing search engines from indexing your website. Tap your settings and readings section and simply uncheck the option to allow your website to be visible on the search pages. Ensure to click on the “save changes” to store your changes. 

3. Set Preferred Domain: WWW or Non-WWW 

There are generally two primary ways you can access a website by URL on the internet including www ( e.g www.xyzwebsite.com ) and without www or non-www ( e.g xyzwebsite.com ). Search engine pages will see these two URLs as completely different websites. There is no rule in choosing a certain URL as there is no bad or good option, your decision will not leave a negative impact on your SEO strategies.  You can choose the one you feel more comfortable or drawn towards. 

Set Preferred Domain

To choose an URL option for your website you can head to your WordPress dashboard and click on ‘Settings’ and under ‘General Setting’ you will be able to find form fields for your URL.

4. Choose the Right Permalink Structure 

Your permalink settings play a major role in defining what format your page and post URLs will take and leave a greater impact on your SEO. In other words, the permalink can clearly state what your post, page, and blog actually are to the visitors, so that users are aware of what they are clicking on. Choosing the right permalink structure will not only improve user experience but also help you improve your SEO permalinks to determine whether or not your website has the right answers to users’ search queries. 

Choose the Right Permalink Structure

You change your permalink by clicking on the settings and permalink section to ensure it looks like example.com/post-name/, or example.com/category/post-name/. Make sure to include an accurate description of your content head and click on save changes to secure your changes

5. Install an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme 

SEO-friendly WordPress themes play a vital role in enhancing your website appearance and offering a pleasant experience to all your visitors. Right WordPress theme can also help search engine pages navigate your site content more effectively. Pretty much all themes available on the WordPress platform are highly responsive and mobile-friendly. 

While selecting the theme for your website you must always make sure to look for the one that is highly responsive, speedy and lightweight, regularly updated, and WordPress compliant. You can run its demo through Google’s web.dev tool to get insights before installing it. Google often tends to prioritize and give a higher ranking to mobile-friendly websites compared to other websites on the internet. 

6. Install the Best WordPress SEO Plugin 

To add additional functions, and tools, and customize your site to SEO settings, you need to install WordPress plugins. A  good SEO plugin can make things easier for you to implement on your website. The two most popular basic WordPress SEO plugins that are widely used by top brands in today’s market are Yoast SEO and All-in-one SEO.

Install the WordPress SEO Plugin

Both Yoast SEO and All-in-one SEO are freemium, which means you can easily download these plugins for free and upgrade the same, to their paid version for additional advanced features. You can use the one that suits your business needs and preferences the best. 

Check out the best Yoast SEO alternatives you should consider in 2022.

7. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider 

With a reliable hosting provider, you can offer the best user experience to all your potential customers or website visitors. Search engine pages generally give more preference and rankings to pages with greater user experience levels. Therefore while choosing the hosting provider you must take various factors in mind. Factors such as 

  • Uptime guarantee– your website should not be offline for less than 0.1% of the time. 
  • Resources- The bandwidth, storage space, and memory offered by the provider should support your site and the growth of your web content.
  • Value for money- The hosting provider’s price should match your budget and benefit your brand. 

You can check WordPress’s technical requirements and switch to a suitable hosting plan to run WordPress including PHP, MySQL or Maria DB, and HTTPS Support.

8. Secure Your Site With HTTPS 

Modern site speed and performance techniques require a valid HTTPS setup. SSL is a security technology used to encrypt the connection between a website and a browser. In other words, it prevents unauthorized parties from accessing sensitive and important information from your site. When a domain is secured and SSL-certified the URL will always start with https:// and not http:// 

Secure Site With HTTPS

Google generally takes HTTPS into account when determining the user experience and reliability levels of the page. If your website does not have an SSL certificate browser, then you might face a hard time achieving higher ranks on most search engine pages on the internet. Moreover, ensure you are using a valid SSL & HTTPS setup to prevent third-party intercepts and data hacks.

9. Install Google Analytics 

A good SEO campaign relies both on implementing changes and measuring the impact of those changes. Keeping a track of your changes and measuring the result and effectiveness on your web pages can help you determine which plans and programs suit your business needs and preferences the best. Google Analytics is a tool that helps you store all user data in one place on your own account. It can also help you check how many visits your website gets, conversion rates, the number of visitors leaving your site, and many more. To install Google Analytics you must seek help from digital marketing experts, for better results.

10. Verify Your Site in Google Search Console 

Google search console is another amazing tool to analyze and measure the result of your web pages and identify new opportunities. It is free web-based software that helps you monitor how SEO-friendly your website is. Google search console also helps you reveal various insights into your search engine visibility such as the number of clicks generated from Google searches, the average position on SERPs, core web vitals, and which searches in particular, lead users to your site. 

Verify Site in Google Search Console

To set up Google Search Console on your website you first need to create or sign in to your Google Search Console account and click on ‘Add a property’ under the search drop-down and enter your website URL in the box and click on continue. 

11. Create & Submit Your XML Sitemap 

XML sitemaps can help Google crawl your website faster and determine which pages are more valuable on your website and which are not. As a matter of fact, XML sitemaps don’t directly affect your website rankings however, play an important role in faster crawling and making it easy for search engines to find all of your content on the internet. Once you have verified your website with Google Search Console, you would now have to submit your XML sitemap. 

submit sitemap on gsc

To submit your XML sitemap you can use the WordPress SEO plugin of your choice. Yoast SEO plugin generates an XML sitemap by default. You can consider Yost to generate your XML sitemap. Once you have created or have a sitemap, you can open Google Search Console to submit the same. Click on the Sitemap tab located on the left sidebar of Google Search Console. Insert the file URL and click on the submit button on the page. Later a notification will appear stating that Google will regularly crawl your site and inform you in case of any errors. 

Wrapping Up

WordPress platform has always been the most praised and SEO-friendly web builder platform on the internet. Using WordPress for your website can help you grab endless opportunities and bring effective results to your business. 

This 11 steps setup guide contains all the vital information about WordPress SEO basics including Check Your Site Health, Check Search Engine Visibility Settings,  Set Preferred Domain: WWW or Non-WWW, Choosing the Right Permalink Structure, Installing an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme, Installing the Best WordPress SEO Plugin, Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider, Secure Your Site With HTTPS, Install Google Analytics, Verify Your Site in Google Search Console, and  Create & Submit Your XML Sitemap. We hope with these 11 steps setup guide you now have a better understanding of the WordPress SEO programs and ways you can create a better website for your business

At Blurbpoint, we consist of experts that possess years of knowledge and experience in handling complex marketing needs. If you wish to learn more about the services our experts at Blurbpoint have to offer, you can simply contact us today or explore our website to gather more information. 

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