WordPress that is primarily known as a blogging platform has also built a reputation for its solid SEO foundation. As a Content Management System(CMS), WordPress provides exceptional SEO features. Currently, WordPress powers 34% of the web. Some of the popular websites that use WordPress are BBC America, Times.com and TechCrunch. Hence WordPress sites tend to rank well on Google.  The success of WordPress SEO can be attributed to the in-built features of the CMS making it easy to customize especially for business and people with lesser technical experience. In this article, we will talk using WordPress SEO how to rank on Google - ten ways to boost your WordPress website and we will also look into the pros and cons of using a WordPress site.

WordPress SEO how to rank on Google

SEO can get technical but learning a few basic SEO tips can be helpful in optimizing your site. This is beneficial for increasing the traffic to your website. Here are 10 ways to boost WordPress sites for SEO.

Choose a reliable hosting provider 

Make sure that you choose a reliable provider while hosting your site. This helps in improving the site speed, uptime as well as the security of your website. There’s a direct impact on your WordPress website’s SEO for site speed. Poor uptime and security vulnerabilities can also result in site quality issues. If you don’t know where to start from, you can always opt for any one of the three hosting providers that WordPress recommends in itself.

Install an SEO friendly WordPress theme 

There are various free themes as well as premium themes which are not free. You have to be careful while selecting a theme for your website as selecting an unsuitable theme with unnecessary plugins might decrease your site speed. 

Install free WordPress plugins 

There are several free SEO plugins in WordPress which are pivotal for helping you optimize your website. Like Yoast, schema pro, image optimizer etc.

Check your site’s visibility settings 

WordPress comes with an inbuilt option that helps in hiding your website from search engines. The purpose of this is to give you time for working on your website before it goes live on the internet. If your website is not appearing in search results, make sure that the visibility settings are unchecked.

Enable SEO Friendly Permalinks

WordPress allows you to customize permalinks. You can omit the unnecessary characters from your URL and use your target keywords on your website link. This makes your website more easily readable and understandable by search engines. 

Verify your site with Google Search Console and submit your XML sitemap

It is necessary to verify your WordPress website with Google Search Console to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in google search results. XML sitemap is also beneficial in quickly finding your essential website pages, even if your internal linking isn't perfect. It works as a roadmap for your site helping search engines find the important website pages. 

Carry out keyword research 

You should have strong keyword research before you start with any project of SEO for WordPress. Using an effective SEO strategy to plan your site content helps in on-page optimization. Without proper keyword research, you will not be able to optimize your website’s content.

Use optimized page headings 

Various SEO plugins in WordPress help in optimizing headings. You can break up your content from H1 to H6. Embed your keywords in the right places as it makes your content easily readable and it can be easily found by search engines.

Use internal linking 

Internal linking plays a pivotal role in your content strategy for establishing topical relevance between various pages on your website and also to help users efficiently navigate your website. SEO plugin in WordPress are incredibly effective in internal linking.

Optimize images 

If you are using a lot of images in your content, the size of your page might increase if the images are not optimized properly. WordPress provides you with various features and plugins to optimize your images to improve your site’s speed and performance.

Pros of WordPress

1. Easy to use: WordPress SEO is extremely user friendly. With more than 55,000 plugins and the themes available on WordPress, it renders a website to be extremely professional and attractive. You don’t necessarily need a developer for launching a WordPress website. With all the necessary features WordPress focuses on offering amazing user experience. 
2. Create attractive Permalinks: Instead of having an URL that looks way too cluttered with too many characters in it, you can easily edit your permalink on WordPress. The benefit of customizing your Permalink is that you can always incorporate your keyword in it. Hence it makes the link to your website even more informative and easy to search. SEO with WordPress is very helpful in ranking your website higher in relevant search queries. 
3. Metadata is easily manageable in WordPress: Metadata helps search engines in understanding what your webpage is all about as it helps in interpreting the relevance to your site. Embedding the right keywords in your metadata helps your site in procuring a higher rank for those relevant keywords. The SEO plugin in WordPress i.e. Yoast SEO  allows you to add and customize metadata to all your posts on the website. 
4. Easy image optimization for SEO: Images are also an essential part of your blog posts. Using relevant images to your blogs can break up your blogs into interesting and readable sections. Images form a powerful tool for SEO with WordPress. SEO plugin in WordPress allows you to “create alternative text” for each image and resizing images is extremely easy.
5. WordPress sites don’t have slow load time: Page speed matters a lot when it comes to ranking on google. If your page speed is low automatically the bounce rate of your users will increase thus rendering a lower rank for your website.  There are amazing SEO plugins in WordPress that are very helpful in optimizing your page speed. For example, ShortPixel Image Optimizer compresses your PDF documents and past images for speeding up your page’s loading time. 
6. WordPress SEO is optimized for mobile users: As the usage of mobile phones has increased phenomenally in the last few years, your website should be well optimized for mobile usage. SEO for WordPress makes your website more accessible on mobile devices. 
7. Integrate your campaign with social media: Social media is one of the best platforms to market your brand. WordPress helps in integrating your campaigns with Social Media by allowing you to add social media feed to your website. To make it easier for your readers to share the blog, you can create customized social media buttons with WordPress for your blog.
8. WordPress has amazing plugins: WordPress provides users with amazing plugins making it easier to rank higher in the relevant searches.
9. Easy to integrate with other software tools: WordPress can easily integrate with other software tools which are really helpful in running your site smoothly and boosting the engagement efficiently.
10. SEO friendly themes: Another component besides keywords and metadata that search engines examine for relevance is a good web page design. WordPress doesn’t require you to optimize your site design as it already has inbuilt SEO friendly website themes. 

Cons of WordPress

1. Vulnerability: Besides all the advantages of using WordPress, the biggest disadvantage of WordPress is the vulnerability of its security as it is an open-source platform. This CMS relies on a wide range of plugins and themes for customization which is developed by different people and companies. As there’s no one monitoring them, they can easily consist of bugs or code lines that are malicious. 
2. Can be expensive: Depending on your business goal, WordPress can be expensive. Since WordPress for SEO depends on its various themes and plugins, some of these features are free and some are not. According to your business goals, if you require plugins and themes which are needed to be bought, it might get expensive. 
3. Customization requires coding: If you want to personalize your themes in a unique way or enhance your site design, you might have to have the knowledge of numerous complicated code lines. You might have to possess knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP to make certain changes to your WordPress site. Hence if you have the knowledge of these, things can go down smoothly.

Conclusion

WordPress is highly reputed as one of the most SEO friendly CMS. You can easily implement a whole host of SEO tactics using the available plugins. If you are using WordPress, you can put yourself in a great position by following the above-mentioned tactics. Using WordPress you can acquire a great position to outrank your competitors. If you are new to blogging then WordPress is the best CMS option for you.