
Do you want to improve your WordPress SEO outside of your SEO wordpress plugin?
Well, WordPress is known to be one of the best SEO friendly CMS across the web. In fact that’s one of the reasons why more than 40% of websites on the internet are using WordPress.
But just because WordPress is SEO-friendly doesn’t mean it’s enough to rank higher on Google and other search engines. You still need to understand and implement the right strategies and tools.
In this post, I will tell you some of the best WordPress SEO tips that will help you in driving more traffic and optimize your website for SEO.
Note: The following WordPress SEO tips and tricks are only applicable for self-hosted WordPress websites,i.e, for WordPress.org.
Table of Contents
Best WordPress SEO Tips to Optimize Site For Higher Organic Rankings & Traffic
1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider

A web hosting service plays a crucial role in organic rankings indirectly. Site speed is one of the ranking signals in Google algorithm.
Site speed directly impacts on the performance, WordPress SEO, user experience, uptime, and security of your website. Choosing a cheap hosting provider can hurt you in a very bad way.
WordPress themselves recommends SiteGround and DreamHost web hosting providers for better performance.
You can also check our list of recommended WordPress hosting providers that will help you to minimize your options.
2. Choose an SEO Friendly WordPress Theme

Just like a hosting provider, choosing an SEO-friendly WordPress theme also impacts user experience and search engine rankings.
There are hundreds of WordPress theme marketplaces and thousands of WordPress themes available. Almost every theme claims to be SEO-friendly which makes it difficult to choose the right SEO-friendly WordPress theme for your website.
To minimize your options, here are some recommendations of the best WordPress themes –
- Astra – Best SEO-friendly WordPress theme.
- Ultra – Powerful multipurpose WordPress theme suitable for SEO experts.
- Hestia Pro – A classic WordPress theme for marketers and SEO experts.
- Neve Pro – Stylish SEO-optimized WordPress theme.
- Ocean – WordPress SEO theme to design websites of almost any niche.
3. Install an SEO WordPress Plugin
Installing an SEO plugin should be the first stepping stone in optimizing your WordPress website for SEO.
An SEO WordPress website makes it easier for you to optimize your website for WordPress SEO as it offers powerful features and follows best practices for WordPress SEO.
Here are some of the best SEO WordPress plugins to help you out –
- Yoast SEO
- RankMath SEO
- All-in-one SEO
4. Set Your Preferred Domain (www vs non-www)

There is no impact on SEO of choosing www or non-www, it is considered as a best practice to choose one of them and use it forever.
You can easily set your preferred domain from the WordPress dashboard. All you have to do is to go to dashboard > Settings > General
. Here you can enter your preferred domain name in WordPress Address and Site Address
.
Whatever you choose, the other domain will automatically redirect your audience to your preferred domain so that you won’t lose any traffic.
5. Search Engine Visibility

Make sure your website is visible to search engines and is indexed by Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
You can check your website’s visibility by going to dashboard > Settings > Reading
. Here you need to make sure your checkbox with the label Search Engine Visibility
is unchecked to make sure your site is indexed.
6. Choose SEO Friendly Permalinks

By default, WordPress permalinks look like this – https://domain.com/?p=123
which looks ugly and confusing not only for humans but also for search engines.
Therefore, to make your website URLs SEO friendly, you need to change permalinks settings from dashboard > Settings > Permalinks from Plain to Post Name.
Ready To Improve WordPress SEO Of Your Site?
WordPress is undoubtedly one of the most SEO-friendly CMS’ across the web. It not only comes with in-built SEO functionalities but can also be enhanced with third-party SEO WordPress plugins and tools.
Following the above steps can really help you in boosting your WordPress SEO, driving more traffic, leads, and sales to your website.
