One of the huge benefits of using WordPress to create your website is that it is aligned with SEO more than any other CMS platform. This means, even if you just did the basic optimisations to a new website, it would probably have more SEO in place than a lot of websites that do not use WordPress. However, assuming you want your website in one of the top spots on Google for most of your keywords, there is more you should do concerning SEO.

To that end, we have listed fifteen of the most proven techniques that you can use to boost a WordPress website’s SEO and ensure, that when it comes to ranking highly on Google, you have given your website every opportunity to do so.

#1 – Do Extensive Keyword Research: Every SEO campaign has keyword research as one of its first tasks and that is no different for your website. By researching what keywords you want to rank for, the rest of your SEO efforts are guided properly to optimising for those keywords and increasing the chances of ranking for them. Read more about keyword research

#2 – Select The Correct Theme: One of the dangers of having so many WordPress themes available is you struggle to pin down which one is right for you. Our advice is to create a shortlist and then research further to ascertain which of them has the best SEO track record based on reviews from other website owners that have used them.

#3 – Install An SEO Plugin: No website using WordPress would be complete without at least one plugin, and when it comes to SEO, plugins exist that can help you. Our advice is to install one that has been used to great success and proven effective, such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math.

#4 – Optimise Where Necessary To Increase Page Load Speed: Google hates websites that load slowly, probably because its users hate slow websites too. That is why you want to do everything possible to optimise your website for fast load speeds. This includes minimising image sizes, activating browser caching, and removing superfluous plugins you do not need.

#5 – Use Effective Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions may not at first appear the most exciting SEO optimisation, however, they are hugely important. They appear in search results and can often be the difference between getting clicks to your website and not. Make sure every meta description is captivating and use keywords in them wisely.

#6 – Include Header Tags In Your Written Content: When you read a blog post on a WordPress website, ‘Header’, or ‘H’ tags are the bolded text that includes the title at the top, and the sub-headings throughout the blog post. These do more than just split up the text, they are also crucial to SEO as Google reads them to establish relevancy.

#7 – Never Compromise On The Quality Of Your Content: Not much to say here, except to emphasise the absolute importance of any content you publish on your WordPress website being of the utmost quality and created as much for the benefit of your website visitors as it is for SEO purposes.

#8 – Link Internally Between Pages: Whilst you certainly want to receive backlinks from external sources, you must not overlook the benefits of linking internally. Creating links between the pages of your websites and also between blog posts, will add to Google’s understanding of your website’s relevance to specific keywords, as well as increase the authority of many pages.

#9 – Encourage The Sharing Of Your Content To Generate Backlinks: We have just mentioned external backlinks and we are going to do so again, but this time we give you a way of earning them. That is by encouraging those who come to your website and hopefully enjoy your great content, to share it. This can be on social media, but also on their websites, which of course creates backlinks to yours.

#10 – Ensure Your Website Is Secure: You will want your website to be secure and the reason for that is more than just wanting to avoid being hacked. Google penalises websites that it believes are unsecured, such as those without SSL certificates. So, ensure you have one and do whatever else you can to enhance your website’s security.

#11 – Make Your Website Accessible To Everyone: The more people who consume your content and potentially share it, the better. This is why you want an accessible website. This means having features like large fonts for those with sight issues, captions on videos for those with hearing problems, and voice activation for anyone who struggles to use keyboards.

#12 – Optimise Your Website’s URL Structure: This is the practice of ensuring that each of a website’s page and post URLs mean something rather being a random number or date. This helps Google understand what each page is about and that can only help your website’s chances of good rankings.

#13 – Use Schema Markup: This is another SEO practice that helps search engines better understand the relevancy of your website and its pages to the keywords you are trying to rank for. A plugin such as Schema Pro or AIOSEO can help you get your schema markup in place and optimised.

#14 – Make The User Experience Your Primary Focus: Despite all the technical matters we have discussed such as plugins and metadata, for example, do not lose sight of the fact that one of the best ways to help your SEO is to give your users an awesome experience when they visit your website. It will not go unnoticed by Google and the rewards for that are better rankings.

#15  – Continually Look For Ways To Improve Your SEO: Finally, if you have done all the previous fourteen proven SEO techniques, go back and see if you can improve them further, even if just a fraction. SEO is a continuous process and improvements in your SEO should be an ever-present goal for you.