Search Engine Optimization is the lifeline for bringing in organic visitors to a website, increasing that website’s visibility, and getting a higher place within the search engine results pages. On-page SEO, as the name suggests, deals with the optimization of individual web pages rather than the whole site to increase its relevance and the amount of traffic it receives. Optimizing a website’s on-page SEO factors can help in the overall performance of the site in terms of ranking, particularly for WordPress users. This guide intends to assist WordPress beginners with on-page SEO in WordPress by providing actionable practices and recommendations on these strategies.
What is On Page SEO?
As its name suggests, on-page SEO encompasses every activity that you can undertake on your website. This may include including content, HTML, meta, images, URLs, internal links and others. The aim of optimizing on-page factors is to improve the search engine friendliness of the website along with the user friendliness so that search engines such as Google comprehend and rank the whole content of the website appropriately.
Significance of On-Page SEO:
As, More than 1.9 billion websites exist today, in order for people to notice your WordPress site, there is a need to adopt optimized strategies to SEO. On-page SEO increases the ability of the search engines to comprehend your content better and therefore increases the chances of your page being displayed when particular words are searched. Moreover, good on-page optimization enhances the overall experience of the users, reduces the bounce rate increases interaction which are major ranking determinants for the search engines.
For now, let’s take a look at some actionable on-page SEO strategies that can be employed on WordPress.
1. You should Optimize Your Title Tags
A title tag or page title or simply a page header is one of the most essential on-page SEO components in the website. It constitutes the heading of a particular webpage usually found on the headline of the search engine pages and is called the metatitle. The role of a title tag is to tell Google what the content of that particular page is about thus it should be pertinent concise and has the main keyword.
Best practices:
Stick to 50-60 characters when creating a title tag.
Place the target keyword into a title tag as early as possible, ideally at the top.
Make readers want to click on your title increasing the click through rate.
In WordPress, to set the other critical on-page SEO strategy of editing title tags, it is very easy since there are plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math which facilitates that process.
2. Write a Highly Engaging Meta Description
A meta description definition is a few lines that provide the summary of a particular page content and it is usually displayed under the title on a search engine results page. While they may not have a direct impact on how search ranks pages, they do determine the CTR which can contribute positively to search rankings.
Try as much to make sure that the meta description is not more than 150-160 characters.
Make sure that the language used is actionable such that there is a reason for a user to click on the page.
Make sure you include your primary keyword relevantly.
In WordPress, SEO plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math allow you to easily edit the meta descriptions.
3. Organise the Heading Tags Appropriately (H1, H2, H3)
Headings and their subheadings such as H1, and H2 etc, are important for the proper arrangement and understanding of the content. Headings are also useful to search engines for determining the order of contents in a given piece.
Best practices:
Do not include more than 1 H1 tag for each page since it should serve as the main title for the page.
Consider using H2, H3, etc. for subheadings of the sections in your content.
Make use of keywords in your headings where necessary.
Headings also keep the users engaged with the content by enabling them to find sections in the content quicker thus cutting down the time it would have taken them to read in full the content.
4. Write Content that is Informative and High Quality as Well as Rich In Keywords
The most critical component of on-page optimization is content. Content quality has been rated to be high and informative as well as utilising the right keywords consequently increasing the search engine ranking.
Best practices:
Better up your game over your competitors by conducting relevant keyword research.
Always include the primary keyword in the first 100 words of the text.
Use a keyword approximately 1-2% of the average natural text content and avoid unnecessary use of the same keyword.
Maintain flow of writing in a way to address the purpose of the web form filling.
Use semantically related phrases for context, i.e., LSI keywords.
In WordPress’s Reverend editor considering that Gutenberg, no one is bothered how to style and arrange text since SEO plugins will advise on what keywords to use.
5. Optimize URLs (Permalinks)
A well-defined URL structure influences factors related to SEO. Properly structured, simple and relevant within the context URLs assist the search engine and users learn about the page content.
Best practices:
Keep URLs as short as possible preferably less than sixty characters and must contain the core keywords.
Dropping unnecessary articles and/or numbers from the URL.
Hyphen (-) is the only punctuation mark allowed to separate words.
WordPress users can modify the URLs by going to Settings>Permalinks and choosing post name mode, which is ‘snazzy’ as far as SEO considerations are concerned.
6. Image Optimization
While there is a need for input images to make the pages interesting to users, high resolution images that have not been optimized will act in the reverse, that is slow the loading speeds of the site. Since speed is a ranking factor, a lower site speed will affect the ranking within the search engine results pages.
Best practices:
Optimize images before even considering making uploads unto WordPress.
The images used contain ‘alt’ texts for images which is a brief description of the image themselves. Most of the search engines use this for image sorting in search results, therefore turning it in as an advantage.
Use proper image types or file formats (for example, use JPEG for images, PNG for a picture with less color).
7. Use lazy loading of images.
Instructions of this nature can be followed whereby for example plugins such as Smush or ShortPixel are some of the ways images can be optimized on WordPress.
8. Internal Linking
Internal linking has to do with interlinking certain pages or posts of your website. It aids in both the users, and the search engines and helps to transfer link equity from page to page if required.
Best practices:
Link to a related site on your web pages so as to assist the user in searching.
Include targeted keywords in the link description as anchor texts.
Avoid excessive and unnecessary linking internally. Make sure you use relevant and focused links only.
The built-in linking tool in WordPress enables adding internal links while writing or editing the content seamlessly.
9. Mobile-Friendliness
Google primarily applies mobile first indexing meaning that it ranks your site based on its mobile version. Making it responsive is also very important because the on page SEO of your WordPress site will be improved.
Best practices:
Install a mobile responsive WordPress theme which fits in all screen resolutions and devices.
Preview your site on different gadgets to ensure proper loading and function of the site.
Utilize the mobile friendly test available on the Google search engine to test your site for its compatibilities with mobile devices.
10. Improve Page Loading Speed
Page speed is one of the essential elements that determine the ranking of a website. With how slow the page is, it annoys the end users and negatively affects their SEO ranking as well.
Best practices:
Use a simple and liteweight theme so that it does not stress your site.
Refrain from using plugins except when absolutely necessary.
Make sure that browsers cache data and reduce the size of CSS, HTML and JavaScript files.
When the site is based in one region and addresses users from different regions, use there inclusive feature-content delivery network.
Using WordPress Page Speed optimization plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Rocket can greatly enhance the speed of your Worpdress site.
11. Target Featured Snippets
A Google Search feature that allows users to click the excerpted bits of a page to read more. This is one of the most sought-after visibility features of a site increasing its traffic within a short period.
Best practices:
Content must be organized such that it contains key answers to the most basic questions like where, who, when, how and so forth.
Whenever possible, substantiated opinions should always be supplied in lists, tables and bullet points.
Target difficult queries that are relatively long and are expected to encourage the appearance of snippets in the search engine.
Just like off page SEO, on page SEO is equally important and cannot be neglected in every SEO sensitive website. It is extremely easy to increase traffic by optimizing your wordpress site’s title tags, meta description, content included in body, Urls included in the website, images and internal linking. We know that the essential features of WordPress are its intuitive dashboard and extensible character by means of powerful plugins. So even beginners can take these on page SEO measures without any threats. Aim at a generation of content that is and will be useful and relevant and thus track progress of how your site stands in the host of search engines.
From this day, start optimizing your WordPress site so that you can see improvements in your search rankings.
You can always contact us for further questions that you may have, and our team will be happy to assist you.