Last Updated on September 10, 2020 by Kuldeep Bisht
Making a WordPress website or blog is easy and optimizing it for SEO is important. With this tutorial, You can easily learn how to optimize your WordPress blog for SEO.
Why is Blog Optimization Important?
Optimization makes your blog search engine friendly and with a proper optimization of your blog, you’ll start getting a higher rank on various search engines. You’ll start getting traffic and at last earning from your blog.
You’re making good quality content that is helpful for your readers then you need optimization to market your content to the appropriate audience. So they can learn, read and follow your blog. So optimization is also good to build a relationship with your readers.
After you have installed a theme on your blog, it’s time to optimize it for search engines in step by step.
#1 – Login to your Blog Dashboard with Admin user.
Go to “yourblogname.com/wp-admin” and login into your dashboard.
#2 – Change Your WordPress Setting for Search Engine
The first step to allow search engines to crawl or index your website and you can do this by following below step.
Go to your blog Settings in Left Side Bar and Click Readings
You’ll see the option “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. Uncheck it!
#3 – Change Your Blog WebPage URLs
After allowing indexing for the search engines, now make your web page URL search engine friendly. This will help search engines to understand your page and content.
Under Settings Click “Permalinks”
Choose your desired URL format. If you’re not sure what type you should choose. I’d recommend you to go for the “Post Name” setting.
[alert-note]Tip: If you’re having a news type blog content then must choose “Day and Name” setting.[/alert-note]
You have done the basic optimization for your WordPress site and now it’s time to optimize it for the SEO. To make it SEO friendly you need a WordPress SEO plugin and I’d recommend you to use “Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin”. This is easy to use and most popular SEO plugin for the WordPress websites.
#4 – Installing WordPress SEO Plugin “Yoast SEO”
At the Left menu bar, look for the “Plugins” option and Click “Add New” option. An Add New Plugin window will appear and search for “Yoast SEO” as described in the Image Below.
It’ll search for the “Yoast SEO” plugin and will give you a list of plugins. Find the real Yoast SEO plugin and Click “Install Now” Button.
[alert-note]Tip: If you’re having a news type blog content then must choose “Day and Name” setting.[/alert-note]
It’ll start installing the Yoast SEO plugin and then click ‘Activate the Plugin’.
Now you can see “SEO” option in Left Menu Bar as described in next step.
#5 – General Setting for the Yoast SEO Plugin
Click “SEO” at Left and It’ll open a page like below.
#6 – Give a Name to Your Blog
Under the General Yoast Setting Page, you’ll see a Tab for “Your Info” option. Click That! You’ll see a page like below.
- Website Name – Name of your blog.
- Alternate Name – Must add an alternate name. (Your Name, Nickname, or you may use your blog niche with name)
- Company or Person – choose whether you’re a company or a person? This is good for the Google Knowledge Graph.
#7 – Optimize Title & Meta Description for your Blog.
Under the SEO Settings click “Title & Metas” and You’ll see a page like below. I’d recommend you use the same setting as appearing in below screenshot.
Click ‘Homepage’ Tab Under the same page and write title and meta description for your front page or homepage. See the below screenshot.
After Homepage Title & Meta setting click “Post Types” tab in the same window and apply setting as below.
Keep the rest settings same as it is and don’t make any changes for the “Pages and Media”.
Just Click “Save Changes”. 🙂
#8 – Social Profile Setting Through Yoast SEO.
Now Again go to the Left Menu Bar and click “Social” menu under SEO settings. This will lead you to a page like below. Fill all your possible social profiles there and leave the rest setting same for now.
#9 – XML Sitemap Settings for WordPress Blog
Just under the “Social” menu, you can see an option for the “XML Sitemaps”. Open XML sitemap setting page and click “Enabled”.
A small pop-down window will appear as like below screenshot. Click the “XML Sitemap” Link and note down the URL.
Just Click “Save Changes” and You’re done! Keep the rest setting same for now.
[alert-note]You must submit XML Sitemap on Google Webmaster Tool.[/alert-note]
Now your blog is SEO friendly and will start crawling by search engine robots. 🙂
But We’re not finished yet. Here is one more tip that is most important and should be done with every single post you publish on your blog.
#10 – SEO Optimization for Single Blog Post Page
Open your Single post and page and scroll down to the “Yoast SEO” option. See the below screenshot for the detail.
Focus Keyword – This is your main keyword for the particular blog post or content. Your post should be optimized for this Single Focus Keyword.
As you’ll notice that Yoast SEO plugin has already grabbed your title, URL and meta description data as per your Yoast SEO Plugin Settings that we just did above. But you can change them for every single post. Just click “Edit snippet” button.
Now you can edit your post title & meta description. These will appear on google Search Results.
[alert-note]Tip – Make sure you use your focus keyword in Title, URL and Meta Description.[/alert-note]
After optimizing your page title and meta description, you must see your SEO score. You must get a Green Singal for the Good SEO Score. You can optimize it by fixing below analysis points.
Thus you can optimize your WordPress site and blog post easily with Yoast SEO plugin.
Watch the Video
I am sure you want to do it quick and if you don’t like to read then watch the below video on how to optimize your wordpress blog for seo.
Always publish a post with complete SEO optimization and start promoting the content to get traffic.
I hope this blog post is helpful for you to optimize your WordPress blog or website. If you have any question on “optimizing your WordPress blog” then you can share in the comments below.
