Understanding WordPress SEO Basics

Search engine optimization is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing today. Luckily, content management systems like WordPress are making SEO best practices more user-friendly. Whether you’re a marketing firm in Utah or a small company in the midwest, here are a few tips on how to best utilize the SEO tools found within WordPress.

Permalinks

WordPress’s default settings use “post id,” but this isn’t very helpful for SEO. Under settings, make sure to change your permalink preferences to include post name or category/post name. Within actual post names avoid stop words like “a,” “the” or “an.”

Pages

Static pages are important not only for SEO but for the overall design of your website. For example, a bakery in Utah would likely include an About Us page, Contact Info, Menu and Location. Having this information easily accessible will improve user experience and allow search engines to direct users to a specific location.

Plugins

Yoast has created a plugin for WordPress that allows you to track your SEO practices before posting. Use this feature to select a focus keyword, change your SEO title and create a meta description. The SEO title is what will appear when people search within your market, so be sure to include your company name.

Meta descriptions show up underneath titles in search engine results. WordPress will automatically select the beginning of your post for this text, so be sure to change this to a helpful description and include a keyword if possible.

With each edit, the plugin will track how effective your optimization is by lighting up green for good, yellow for OK, orange for poor and so on. Be sure to use keywords enough to turn the light green, but don’t go overboard or place them unnaturally, as keyword stuffing will hurt SEO in the long run.

Whether you’re in Utah or Europe, producing original content and utilizing these WordPress tools will help your company rise to the top of search engine results.

Emily Culp writes for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. She writes for many other clients as well. Follow on Twitter