How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO - Comment optimiser le SEO de votre site

How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO: Do you want to improve the SEO of your WordPress site? Here is a comprehensive guide to optimizing your website to rank higher in search engines. If you want your website to grab the attention of your potential customers, it needs to rank above search engines. Therefore, SEO optimization of WordPress is one of the most important tasks you should focus on when creating it.

WordPress optimization during installation - How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO

• Choose quality hosting: WordPress SEO optimization of the website is also influenced by the choice of hosting. Web hosting should guarantee 99.99% uptime. Additionally, it should be fast to make your site load slow and provide customer and technical support.
• Obtain an SSL certificate: The SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate guarantees secure communication with website visitors. Also, Google considers your website safe and you receive more visitors (= better WordPress SEO). There is also a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate. Therefore, make sure to use at least this one.
• Choose an SEO-Friendly template: The description of many WordPress themes indicates that they are "SEO friendly". If this is true, this optimization is not done all at once. It is an ongoing process. Let's go through the different points you need to pay attention to in this process. 
• Choose a domain name: A well-chosen domain name is important for quality SEO. It should describe the content of the site. It should also be easy to remember, short, and different from the others.

Configure WordPress - How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO

• Check your search engine visibility settings: You may have already met all the points listed, but the website is still not visible in the search engine. So let's take a look at the WordPress theme itself. In the WordPress admin menu, find a way to hide the site from search engines. This option gives the user enough time to create and modify the page. If you have ever created a page, you may have accidentally enabled this option while editing. Go to the Settings>Reading Settings menu and go to “Search Engine Visibility”. Be sure not to enable the "Ask search engines not to index this site" option. This box cannot be checked. Be sure to save the changed settings.
• Configuring URL format: For SEO optimization, it is important to display the URL in a friendly form. By default, WP uses invalid URLs, for example,/?P=123, which is bad. You can change the URL settings in the theme admin menu. Go to the permalinks section and change the parameter to “post name”. In this way, the URL will indicate the title of the article and inform the visitor about its content.
• Display settings: WordPress displays and links posts from pages, categories, authors, etc. individual websites. However, in this process, all positions are posted. This slows down the page, but can also be noticed by search engines. In this case, they rate it as duplicate content and affect your SEO.
• Include only the snippet in the RSS feed. If your RSS feed subscriber can read the full article instead of a preview, it reduces web traffic because people aren't necessarily going to your website to read the full article. Set up a preview of your articles instead of displaying all of your articles. In the theme management menu, go to Settings -> Playback and select "Excerpt".
• Structure your site with categories: Categories help visitors navigate the website and find what they are looking for. Thanks to them, search engines understand the structure and content of a website. Learn how to use category names correctly. Categories are the main topics of the blog. Categories can have their subcategories.
• Avoid using tags: You risk creating duplicate content. They create unwanted internal links.
• Connect the website to Google Analytics: To improve everything, you need to be able to assess the current situation and the impact of changes. Therefore, connect your WP site to Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager (GTM).
• Add Site to Google Search Console: Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a tool for managing and analyzing your website in searches, and understanding what is and isn't working for your site. It analyzes site visitors, fixes indexing issues, and helps identify site deficiencies. You can increase traffic to your site. Add the sitemap (see below) to Google Search Console. Select the Add/Test and Submit Sitemap option from the menu. After a few hours, you should have the first traffic statistics for your site.

WordPress plugins - How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO

Use a WordPress SEO plugin

The most used WordPress SEO plugin is Yoast. With its help, you make the most important settings to improve search engine visibility. It can set page indexing, manage meta titles and meta descriptions, and optimize content for social networks, categories, tags, and individual posts. You also have the SEO extensions: All in One SEO Pack, SEOPress, RankMath, and Squirly SEO.

Create a sitemap and upload

Searches engines send spiders or crawlers to crawl the web. It's a bit of computer code. Bots search for new content, they check, collect and process the data they collect. To invite them to your site, it is not enough to have enough keywords. It must be indexed. Bots pay attention to code, content, reference quality, and more.

You perform indexing by uploading a sitemap. The Sitemap plan increases the likelihood of your website being found in the search engine. You can create it in Yoast, All in One SEO Pack, or XML Sitemaps plugins. Then add the created sitemap to the Google Search Console.

Optimize the speed of your website

Another important step in WordPress SEO optimization is website speed optimization. Search engines penalize slow sites. So you need to pay increased attention to the speed of your website. One of the most important tools to increase speed is WP Rocket, WP Super cache, and W3 total cache plugins.

Create optimized content - How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO

1. The keyword: Choose a keyword or search phrase for which you would like to rank well in Google.
2. Write interesting articles: The reader will not return to boring posts. And probably not on the page where he read them. Be creative. Pick interesting topics. Your elaboration must be unique. Under no circumstances should you copy other articles. If an Internet user finds on your site a text that he has already read somewhere, he will not be impressed by your site. This isn't just true for magazines and blogs. It is equally important for online shops and entrepreneurs.
3. Blog
4. Post Optimization SEO optimization is an ongoing process. With your SEO plugin, you can add a title, meta description, and keywords to each post. You can also see what appears in the search engine when someone searches for your article directly in the plugin. Complete this step of the accounting process. The meta title and meta description should contain appropriate keywords. It also gives people basic information about what they will find on your site. It has to be something that convinces them to visit your website. Meta descriptions should not be too long – a maximum of 150-155 characters is recommended. The title should be approximately 50 characters.
5. Use relevant and unique titles: Be creative. Write relevant and unique headlines that will grab attention. They must also contain keywords, but not in a forced way, otherwise, they will not look natural.
6. Include internal links: An important part of WordPress SEO optimization is linking your posts and page sections. I'm not just talking about the links between the article on rejuvenation creams and related products ;). You should also link to articles on related topics. By creating internal links, you support your subpages and the visitor stays on your site a little longer. It also makes searching easier. Google rates as unnecessary the content for which the visitor spent only a few seconds.
7. Link externally to authority sites: As mentioned before, linking between articles helps optimize SEO. Backlinks that lead to your website from other websites are also a valuable indicator of a website's success. A very good tool to ensure that this traffic is published on other websites. However, be careful if you want to add links to an external site for your article. Ideally, favor reference sites to make your outgoing links.
8. Keywords in comment reply: Use keywords in your comment replies. You don't have to use them only in messages. Add them in such a way that they fit into the answer. This may seem trivial, but it also helps optimize your website.

Optimize images for SEO - How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO

Everything on your WordPress site is SEO related. And pictures are no exception. First, make sure your images are optimized for the site. Plugins like Compress JPEG and PNG images, EWWW Image Optimizer, or WP Smush. take care of this size optimization for you. They optimize the size of uploaded images as well as images that you have already placed on your website.

The second important thing is the image title and alt text. Make sure the image name is filled in. Use more than one word for the name. Alternate text (alt-text) is displayed when the image is not displayed.

Thanks to the title of the image and the alternative text, search engines know what the image is about. Be sure to include the caption, title, and description of the image. The more information you include, the easier it is to find you.

Conclusion - How to optimize a WordPress site for SEO

WordPress is a CMS used for almost a third of websites. It is essential to optimize your site to bring in traffic from search engines like Google. To do this, follow the advice given above.