Start a website/blog today with this complete step by step guide. In this, we will discuss everything on how to start a blog, what are the requirements, which is the best web hosting for a beginner, SEO techniques to rank website in the search engine, backlinks, best wordpress themes and plugins. So, read this complete guide, it will definetly beneficial for you.
If you want to get top positions in google through SEO and your website is developed in WordPress, then you have to do good practices to get good ranking and traffic.
For beginners, SEO is complicated, and WordPress is one of the best and easiest ways to start for a beginner. If you want to improve your SEO and increase your traffic, then this WordPress SEO step by step guide will help you.
Introduction
When you start in SEO using WordPress or other CMS (content management system) at the start, it seems complicated and tedious, but when you learn technical things, it gets interesting.
However, WordPress for beginners is not as robust as it seems. Just start and learn all things step by step. Don’t rush and make complicated everything. It takes some time, and all you have to do is to implement and keep patience.
Before going to WordPress do you know what SEO is?
I hope you already know SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is nothing more only techniques and strategies to rank your business, web pages to get among the top positions. When you get first positions, it will help you to grow your business fast and makes money.
For example, people search for a query like “Wordpress SEO guide,” and if you optimized your web page for this specific topic, you would get rank. If your web page appears in the top 5 results in Google or other search engines, the more people will see your website compared to the sites that appear on the second page.
How to create a WordPress Blog/Website?
Creating a WordPress site is not a tough job, and WordPress is the most comfortable, secure way to create a website. You need a domain, hosting, and knowledge to install them. If you want to know how much it will cost, what are the basic things and experiences you required? Check our step by step guide on how to make a website in 4 easy steps. However, we will give you an overview of creating a website and their step by step procedure in short. If we are going to discuss each step in brief then this post becomes boring and long, and because of this reason, we have already provided you a link. You can create a well-optimized website in less than 15minutes.
Steps:
- Buy a domain name and hosting from any website. But we recommend bluehost and siteground, as these are the best web hosting in the market and trusted by millions of people.
- Install wordpress from your hosting Cpanel.
- After that, Install the wordpress theme and plugin.
- Customize website front page and design.
- The final step is to start posting your content.
Basic of SEO in WordPress
Getting good results in SEO takes some time and some technical knowledge. But learning and implementing some basic tips in the right direction helps you to gain some ranking in search engines, and it boosts your WordPress traffic.
All you need is a WordPress website, content ideas, and the rest is easy.
1. Importance of SEO Optimized WordPress themes
Themes play a vital role in the success and failure of a website. A suitable WordPress theme should have these features.
- Responsiveness and Mobile-First Design
- Cross-Browser compatibility
- Compatible with various SEO plugins
- Good Load Speed of the theme
- Includes Schema.org Markup
These are things that a WordPress theme should have, and its effects on user experience. SEO in 2019 is not like previous times when a user does not matter. Now search engines give ranking to those websites where the user stays for a long time and gets what he/she is looking for. So if your website speed is low, users will not wait and immediately close your website, and this will send a wrong impression to google. So you should use a fully optimized theme that has good loading speed, responsiveness, and a simple look.
Below you can see the list of best SEO friendly themes for WordPress.
- Astra
- Schema
- Genesis
- Divi
- Hestia
These are SEO friendly themes you can install and active on your WordPress site.
2. Useful SEO friendly WordPress Plugins
A great thing about WordPress is that it is not limited. The ability of WordPress is that you can make changes according to your needs using plugins. There are thousands of plugins that are available that are designed to do different functionalities.
Below you can see the list of useful plugins with their functionalities.
- Yoast SEO: One of the most useful plugins that help to increase ranking.
- XML sitemap: Creating a website is not enough; you have to make sure that your website index and appear in the search engines. In case your site is not indexed in google, you can use XML sitemap Plugin to index your website in search engine.
- WP Hide and Security Enhancer: If you want to hide the WordPress theme name, you can use this plugin. It also hides wp-includes and wp-content files.
- MapPress Maps for WordPress: You may see different websites that show google map, and if you want to add google maps to WordPress website, you can use this plugin. You can also use the WP Google Maps plugin.
Using plugins, you can Customize Blockquote in WordPress and Remove Design By Smartcat From Athena theme footer. Also, remove the Tag display in Post Page of WordPress Website.
3. Add your site to Google Search Console
The next essential thing you should know is that you have to submit your website, web pages in the search engines, and Google is top search engines, and most of the users come through google. So, you should have to add your site to google search console.
The process of adding a site in the search engine is very straightforward. All you have to do is go to google search console > click on start now > login with your email > copy the address of your site and paste it in search console > search console will provide you an HTML code paste this code between your WordPress head tag.
Go back to the search console and click on verify. This process will take 24 to 48 hours, and your site will start indexing in google.
Search console is one of the necessary but most essential things in your SEO, and you should have to learn it. Using search console, you can index and de-index specific pages and posts. Also, you can get all the details of your website. For example, which keyword ranked and on what position and which website provide you backlinks and so on. You may seem different issues in search console such as your website, not index it face no index marked. Learn how to fix the submit URL marked noindex and other problems as well.
4. Publish SEO friendly Content
In the success of your website, two things that matter the most. The first one is the interface of your sites, and the second is the content that you published. If you want to get a top position, you have to create high-quality content that should complete user and search engine requirements. Also, create related categories and tags to your post. You should set the structure of your content and website design as a top priority. Also, links your previous post in new posts but in a natural way.
5. Optimize images you upload
Images are a great way to attract and make the user stay longer on your site. But these images should have high quality and well designed.
Also, images take time to load, which increases the loading time of speed, which is not a good thing in SEO. You should have to optimize your images that load faster. To optimize images, you can use different websites and plugins. Popular plugins that you can use to optimize images are Optimole, Imagify, Smush Image Compression and Optimization, EWWW Image Optimizer, and ShortPixel Image Optimizer plugin.
Also, take care of another thing that the background of your image does not match with your website background. Or you can add a border to image without plugins.
6. Backlinks
A backlink is also a technique in SEO that helps you to rank well in google and other search engines. A backlink is a link that a site gets from another site. You can create backlinks for a website using multiple techniques. It is another vast topic that you have to keep practicing and implementing.
WordPress SEO is a very vast field, and it takes time to become an expert but start with basics that we tell you.
Best free SEO tools
Setup the WordPress site, and creating content is not enough; you have to take care of each thing. Also, you have to stay updated on what you have to do next and what you have done wrong. All these things you can measure with SEO tools. These tools can help you to track your website traffic, ranking, and other data. There are multiple paid and free SEO tools available using them; you can follow your website.
Below you can see a list of some of the famous and best SEO tools for WordPress.
- Google Search console
- Google disavow tool
- Data Studio
- Enhanced Google Analytics Annotations
- Google Analytics
- Moz, Ahref, and so on.
Conclusion
I hope this WordPress SEO step by step guide helps you to learn the basics of SEO and WordPress. These are things that you may read in one day, but when you implement it will take time, and you have to stay focused and do every part with a focused mind. After a short time, surely you will see results, and your website will get ranked. If you like reading our guides then you can subscribe to hackchefs to receive all the latest updates & guides.