5 WordPress SEO Tips

This is a short list of 5 WordPress SEO tips that are quick and easy to setup. These are basic techniques that anyone can implement on their wordpress website to improve search engine optimization.

1. Permalinks

By default WordPress creates URL’s with a page number. It looks something like this (http://mywebsite.com/?p=123) and does nothing to tell the search engines what the post or page is about.

The other options for permalink structure are Day and name, Month and name, Numeric, Post name, and Custom structure.

The best one is the post name option so that all your pages and posts take the format of “URL/page title” (i.e. http://mywebsite.com/Our Services). This structure maximizes SEO when using keyword rich post/page titles.

2. Image File Names and Alt Tags

Make sure that the image corresponds to the content of the article or page. Give every image a descriptive file name and enter an alt tag.

Use keywords in both the image file name and alt tags to maximize the image SEO. Most people remember the alt tag, but don’t use keywords in the image file name.

3. Image Size

Wordpress has a maximum image size of 2MB-10MB. If you don’t reduce the image size before uploading, large images will slow down the page load time tremendously. Google is now factoring page speed into it’s SEO algorithm so this is important!

There are 2 plugins you can use to improve image size and load speed. The first is WP Image Size Limit to set a custom image size preventing huge images from being uploaded. The second option is to use WP Smush.it to reduce the size of all uploaded images.

4. Load Time

In addition to using smaller images, consider installing a cache plugin. Cached pages load much faster. Two good plugins to use are W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. If you use both image compression and cache, you will increase your page load speed by a good margin.

5. Related Posts Links

Most premium WordPress themes now come with a related posts widget. These appear at the bottom of every article and make it easy for visitors to read other content on your website. This keeps them on your website thereby reducing your bounce rate.