WordPress (the popular online blogging platform) is to blogging what Microsoft and Apple are to computers. It has completely changed the way that blogging is done, how we access our favorite blogs, and how companies advertise. You now no longer need a huge marketing budget to make high-quality content and churn it out daily.
A staggering 25% of companies now use it for their blogs, and over 400 million people view posts monthly. Knowing how to properly optimize your posts is a major advantage, and putting in the extra time to get it right will mean more readers, followers, and eventually customers. So for those that have no clue how to SEO their WordPress posts, here is the WordPress SEO guide for beginners.
Choose the right title
The title of your post might seem obvious at times, but it is one of the most important aspects of your post. If you are a beginner at WordPress SEO, then start by taking the time to properly set out some ideas for your blog titles. Search out your competition and see what they are writing about. One great advantage of WordPress is that you can follow other blogs, so use this to your advantage. Check out what is trending, who has the most followers, and which blogs in your niche is getting the most hits.
After you have the right idea in mind, make sure to optimize your title tag by placing the keywords closer to the front. “WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners” is better than “the beginner’s guide to WordPress SEO” if you are trying to rank for WordPress SEO. Make sense? Do you best to get showy and create a title that people want to read. “Double your followers in 3 easy steps” is superior to “how to get more followers on WordPress.”
Create relevant categories
Categorizing your posts is a great way to help your readers find relevant information. If someone is coming to your site for SEO tips and sees an entire category of helpful tips, then you’ve found yourself a great prospect. If your goal is to build a dedicated readership or help customers find relevant content, then these are necessary. Not only that, but categories could be helpful to search engines as well. Think of them as the table of contents in the book that is your blog.
Work some keywords into the categories as well. A New York City real estate blog would do well to have categories like Manhattan real estate, luxury New York apartments, cheap Brooklyn house share, Bronx co-ops, and so on.
Images
Pictures in your posts are a must. Anyone interested in blogging needs to harness their power. Make sure to do them the right way on WordPress, though. It all starts with your featured image. Title your images accordingly, caption them using at least one target keyword, use the main keyword in the alt tag, and tell search engines exactly what they are looking at in your description. Within the post, use images that capture the reader’s attention, and use them to break up large blocks of text.
WordPress is perhaps the most powerful tool at your disposal for online marketing, and the best part is that it’s free. It might sound crazy, but this blogging platform runs 4.5% of the entire web! 13.6 million people view it each day, so putting some high-quality content on there is your ticket to success. You just need to know how to do it right. This WordPress SEO guide for beginners will start you down the right path.
