Check your search engine visibility settings

There’s a checkbox in WordPress that, if checked, is effectively an SEO death sentence for your website because it prevents Google from indexing your pages.

You’ll find this under Settings > Reading > Search engine visibility

Set preferred domain

Google looks at domain.com and www.domain.com separately, so it’s important to choose a preferred version for your site. You can do this under Settings > General. Just set the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to your preferred version.

Set up permalinks

Permalinks are basically the URL format for your posts and pages, and the “post name” option tends to be the most SEO-friendly because it helps:

Make it immediately obvious what the page is about.
Keep URLs short, which can prevent them from truncating in the search results.

Require manual approval for blog comments

WordPress makes it really easy to solve this issue once and for all by offering users the option to set all blog comments to require manual approval.

You can do this in Settings > Discussion > Comment must be manually approved

Install an SEO-friendly theme

What you really need to check when choosing a theme is its performance.

it’s worth reading through the description to see what’s included. If there’s a bunch of features you won’t use, it may not be the best choice for you.

You can also run the theme demo through PageSpeed Insights for a better sense of its performance.

Install an all-in-one SEO plugin

Extend the SEO functionality of WordPress and make it easier to optimize aspects of your site with an all-in-one SEO plugin. We use Yoast SEO, but there are plenty of other alternatives.

Make sure to generate a sitemap

Sitemaps list the important posts and pages on your site to help search engines discover them.

Exclude low-value content from indexing

You should only allow Google to index pages that offer value to searchers.

Write a “clickworthy” title

it’s important that your title entices visitors to click through to your page while accurately describing what the page is about. In other words, the title should be clickworthy but not clickbait.

Set an SEO-friendly URL slug

By default, WordPress sets the URL to the full title of the post or page. This is rarely ideal because it’s usually long, and long URLs tend to get truncated in the search results.

For a more SEO-friendly URL, click “Edit,” enter your primary keyword (or a close variation), and replace the spaces with dashes.

Use headers to create hierarchy

Headers create structure and help visitors and search engines to better understand the hierarchy of your content.

Internally link to relevant content

Internal links point to other pages and posts on your website. They’re important for SEO because they help:

Keep visitors on your site.
Boost the “authority” of your other content and rank the content higher.

Add alt text to images

Alt text is important because it:

Tells Google what images are about, which may help them rank higher on Google Images.
Improves accessibility for visually impaired visitors using screen readers.
Replaces the broken image on the page if the image breaks.

Write a compelling title tag

Google usually uses your title tag for the snippet in the search results.

sometimes it’s too long, so it’s worth pasting in the full title manually to make sure it’s not likely to truncate.

Write a compelling meta description

write a compelling meta description that supports your title and further entices people to click.

Here are a few tips for doing that:

Double down on search intent
Use an active voice
Keep it under 120 characters

Nest pages in subfolders

Assuming that you set your permalink structure to post name, your page and post URLs will look like this:

domain.com/post-name
domain.com/page-name

But with pages, you can create them with different levels using subfolders.

let’s say you’re a digital marketing agency offering three different services: SEO, PPC, and social media marketing.

Create a “Services” landing page that lists the services you provide
Create individual pages for each service you offer

Link to each service page from your “Services” page

nest the individual service pages under the “/services/” subfolder like this:

domain.com/services/
domain.com/services/seo/
domain.com/services/ppc/
domain.com/services/social-media-marketing/

Just use the “Parent” dropdown on the page editor and choose the “Services” page.