{"id":446,"date":"2016-05-27T12:43:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T09:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/?p=446"},"modified":"2023-10-05T11:58:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T08:58:32","slug":"essential-seo-settings-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/essential-seo-settings-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"10+ Essential SEO Settings for New WordPress Blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this post, I’ll explore 11 essential SEO settings every new blog should consider. This is your intro to WordPress blog SEO!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Why? – you ask. \ud83e\udd14 Your site’s content is its most important asset, but it’s useless if it doesn’t attract visitors! SEO – search engine optimization – is a tool every website owner should use to make sure their content is optimized for search engine consumption, which will bring in more and more visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it just so happens that setting up your WordPress blog correctly is the first step to good SEO, so this is where the following tutorial on your essential SEO settings comes into play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udcda Table of contents<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Make sure search engines see you<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Fine-tune permalinks<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Write good content and write often<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Optimize your site for speed<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Set your categories and tags correctly<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Use an SEO plugin<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Optimize your images<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Give your post titles extra attention<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. Use essential SEO settings for your posts<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. Test your site for mobile friendliness<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  11. Make friends<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\t\t
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    \n\t\t \t\t10+ essential #SEO #settings for new #WordPress blogs \u2705<\/a>\n\t\t \t<\/div>\n\t\t \t
    \n\t\t \tClick To Tweet \n\t\t \t\t<\/span>\n\t\t \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n
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    1. Make sure search engines see you<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Just launched your blog?<\/a> WordPress has a built-in setting that – if turned on – discourages search engines from looking at your site. This can be useful for development or private sites, but should always<\/strong> be switched off otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Head on over to Settings \/ Reading<\/em> and look for the “Search Engine Visibility” setting. Make sure it is switched off and everything will be dandy!<\/p>\n\n\n

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    \"essential<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

    This is probably the most important of all essential SEO settings for WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n

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    2. Fine-tune permalinks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    In case you’re not sure what this is about; here’s the permalink for this very post, the underlined part, “essential SEO settings WordPress”:<\/p>\n\n\n

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    \"SEO<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

    However, by default, your blog doesn’t allow you to set permalinks in this custom way. To enable pretty permalinks, go to your WordPress dashboard \u2192 Settings \u2192 Permalinks<\/strong>. Select the structure labeled “Post name”<\/strong>, like so:<\/p>\n\n\n

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    \"post<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

    At this point, you can assign custom permalinks to each of your blog posts and pages. Furthermore, WordPress will predict what the best permalink for any given post is and assign it automatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Lately WordPress has become smarter and is filtering out unnecessary words from default permalinks. Until not long ago a post titled, say, “Ten essential plugins for ecommerce websites” would have used ten-essential-plugins-for-ecommerce-websites<\/code>. Depending on how you want to target your article you might want to use essential-plugins-ecommerce-websites<\/code>, or even essential-ecommerce-plugins<\/code>. Either way, the word “for” is completely unnecessary there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You can fine-tune permalinks under the post title. If you don’t see a permalink, make sure to save a draft, it should pop up after the page reloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The main idea here is to put the main keyword for the post in the permalink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Speaking of posts and their impact on your WordPress blog SEO:<\/p>\n\n\n

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    3. Write good content and write often<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Granted, this might not sound that intuitive when talking about essential SEO settings, but we think this is an absolutely crucial SEO tactic. Good content alone is not enough to propel your site to the top of Google, but goes a long-long way. Google has become pretty good at determining what constitutes good content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you’re writing about “motorcycling helmet cleaners” you’ll probably want to put that phrase in your article a couple of times, but don’t overdo it. Just because you have your key phrase eight times in a paragraph won’t do anything to budge your ranking – on the contrary, it may send you further down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Write naturally, but be smart. If you have a good opportunity to drop in a keyword or two do so, but don’t go overboard. It might be an essential SEO setting, but too much of it and you’ve done more harm than good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A regularly updated site<\/a> will also help you in your SEO efforts. Not just because Google will see that your site is active, but because there will be more content to base your rank on. In addition, this helps with user engagement<\/a> and retention as well – a double win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As before, don’t go overboard, that’s one of the main rules of SEO. Updating your site ten times a day with similar content will just lower your rank. If you have the option to post unique and valuable content three to four times a day, by all means do so. Otherwise a site updated once a week with an extremely good article is way more valuable that one updated every day with fluff.<\/p>\n\n\n

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    4. Optimize your site for speed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Website speed is a crucial factor. Google takes it into account as well. Moreover, site speed has a number of other effects which will add together to grind all your efforts to a halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Site speed is a critical factor in early exits, bounce rates<\/a>, page view times because it directly affects user experience<\/a>. As such, you will retain fewer visitors, your SEO rank will drop which will lead to even fewer visitors and many of those who stay will become increasingly frustrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Speed times can be helped a LOT in the WordPress arena with managed WordPress hosts<\/a>. We can highly recommend:<\/p>\n\n\n\n