WordPress SEO Checklist to Improve your Rankings and Organic Traffic

Wordpress SEO checklist
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SEO success is a very important part for online businesses that are working hard to rank in search engines.

For some, this is their bread and butter, for some others it may not be so much.

For beginners in the world of blogging, this infographic from Capsicum Mediaworks can be very useful to mark in the SEO Checklist the points that are achieved to improve visibility.

In short, search engine optimization or SEO is the obtaining of traffic through search engines such as Google and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc.

In addition to having a social media plan, it is important to appear on the first page for a certain keyword to have greater visibility and greater attraction of interested people.

At the beginning, this term and all that it involves may seem complicated, but I consider this complete SEO Checklist for WordPress convenient, since it shows us in a synthesized way which points we should be fulfilling so that our page is more attached to the guidelines of the search engines, and it is easier for them to find our site.

There are two types of SEO work that you have to do. Among them is the On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.

We will summarize the important aspects to consider of a WordPress SEO checklist to help and give our recommendations based on our experience of what has worked out well.

Keyword Research Checklist

Keyword research is a critical step in any SEO strategy.

It helps you identify the most relevant search terms for your website and content.

A keyword research checklist can be a great way to make sure you’re covering all your bases when it comes to researching keywords.

This checklist should include tasks such as identifying your target audience, analyzing search engine trends, using the Google Keyword Planner, and exploring related topics.

You should also consider developing a comprehensive list of seed keywords that you can use as starting points for further research.

To help ensure accuracy, you may want to cross-reference your original list of keywords with other sources such as competitor websites or reviews from industry experts.

With these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to finding the best keywords for your website or blog.

Writerzen, one of the best keyword research tools

Writerzen logo

Go to Google Keyword Planner if you want a free tool for Keyword Research, but the information will be quite limited.

Writerzen is an excellent paid Keyword Research tool that delivers information with more depth.

Writerzen is one of the best keyword research tools out there.

It provides an easy-to-use interface, allowing users to quickly and easily find relevant keywords for their content.

With Writerzen, you can access comprehensive data on keywords, including search volumes and competition from a variety of sources.

You can also use Writerzen to analyze your competitors’ keyword strategies and gain valuable insights into what works for them.

Additionally, Writerzen provides tools to help you optimize your content for search engine optimization (SEO).

Its features allow you to quickly identify the best keywords to target, analyze their performance and adjust your strategy accordingly.

All in all, Writerzen is an invaluable tool that helps content creators increase their visibility online and reach more potential customers.

On-Page SEO Checklist

On-page SEO is all the work done internally on the site to optimize it for search engines.

It includes the most important elements of SEO such as page titles, meta descriptions, page content, headings, keyword density, image optimization and more. This On-page SEO checklist also provides helpful SEO tips and SEO best practices on how to make sure your site is optimized and up to date with the latest SEO standards.

Additionally, it can be used to assess the current level of optimization on your website for search engines and identify areas that need improvement.

This way, you can ensure that your website is following best practices and will rank well in search engine results pages.

Among some important points are the following:

One tool that helps with On-Page SEO is Surfer SEO.

Surferseo logo

Surfer SEO helps with On-page SEO by optimizing the content on webpages to ensure that it is as relevant and search engine friendly as possible.

Surfer SEO supports with SEO tactics by optimizing titles, descriptions, headings, and content to include keywords that users are searching for.

Additionally, Surfer SEO can help to improve your SEO with recommending NLP keywords which are based on the analysis of authoritative sites.

The relevance of content in SEO On-Page

When we talk about relevance in online marketing, and more specifically in SEO campaigns, we are referring to the expected correspondence between the keywords the user has entered and the content and code of the website they have accessed.

It seems that the only thing that people tend to deduce nowadays is that the more relevant they become, the more visibility the major search engines will give them, which translates into a higher level of traffic, which equals success.

However, the relevance of content in SEO focuses on two ways:

The first one has to do with optimizing the website so that it can be matched to a set of keywords, which have been chosen earlier thanks to successful keyword research to expand visibility and traffic.

On the other hand, once you are more relevant to what we consider our target audience, we must take the visits we receive of higher quality, which will make there is a greater likelihood of converting achieving our goals.

So, when we talk about content relevance in SEO not only refers to placing titles or optimal descriptions and keyword stuffing that can hurt your SEO, this whole issue goes much further.

We must seek to be relevant for the user not only relying on the content, but in the way it is structured.

We see that for the optimization of content relevance in SEO we must work to make it rich and according to the expectation that the user has when he clicks on our website.

And that SEO practices influences everything, not only what is read.

Off-Page SEO Checklist

Off-page SEO is an important aspect of search engine optimization.

Off-page SEO refers to the activities such as link building, social media promotion, and reputation management.

An effective off-page SEO checklist should include tasks like researching relevant websites and blogs for link building opportunities, using social media platforms to create and share content, optimizing online business profiles, and monitoring online reviews.

Moreover, it should also include activities such as analyzing competitor sites to identify potential link sources, creating a backlinks strategy, participating in industry forums to build a network of contacts, developing relationships with influencers in the industry, and regularly checking search engine rankings to track progress.

A comprehensive off-page SEO checklist will help ensure that all aspects of your website’s visibility are optimized.

In case you are not clear about what is a backlink, we clarify that it is a link that is made from one website to another.

For search engines nowadays, both the quantity of these links and the quality of the website are used as ranking criteria.

What the search engines do is to look at these links as if they were an indication.

After all, if another website has gone to the trouble of linking to yours, it is because it believes that you are offering quality content.

Thus, with each link you have received, your website will gain authority.

The higher the level of authority you have, the higher your chances of achieving a good ranking.

Ranking websites by keyword alone is already proving to be somewhat impossible.

However, before you make a mistake now that you know why to get backlinks, it is not enough to get them from just any website.

Nobody likes deceptive techniques, and that “nobody” includes the algorithms of the major search engines.

And it is also worth saying that, if you have backlinks in web pages that are very well positioned in search results, the amount of authority they will be transferring to you will be excellent. So this is another aspect to keep in mind.

Some highlights to mention of an Off-page SEO are:

Websites to obtain backlinks

Adsy, Publisuites, Getlinko, Linkatomic, are some site where you can buy guest posts.

These sites are databases of websites that are open for link building collaborations.

The advantage of using these websites is that it is way faster to find potential collaborations, than doing the manual search online.

Technical SEO Checklist

Technical SEO is an important part of any website’s search engine optimization strategy.

It involves optimizing the technical aspects of a website to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index its content.

A Technical SEO Checklist can help you ensure that your website is correctly optimized for search engine visibility.

Common steps include optimizing URL structure, ensuring that pages are indexed correctly, checking for broken links and redirects, setting up sitemaps, optimizing meta tags and page speed, and improving structured data markup.

Additionally, using tools such as Google Search Console can further help identify technical issues with your site.

By adding the XML Sitemap to search engines, you are showing up your site structure to search engines.

Keeping up with these best practices will help improve the visibility of your website in search engines.

Another important technical SEO aspect is to have a robots.txt file.

A robots.txt file is a text file used to inform web robots (also known as crawlers or spiders) which parts of a website can or cannot be accessed by them.

It is usually placed in the root directory of a website and helps search engines understand which areas of the website should not be indexed.

This can include pages with sensitive information, such as login pages, that should not appear in search engine results.

The robots.txt file also allows webmasters to specify certain rules for how web robots should access the site and can even prevent certain types of bots from accessing the website altogether.

In addition, it can also be used to set crawl delays, so that the server does not get overloaded with too much traffic at once.

Overall, having a properly configured robots.txt file is essential for making sure that your website is crawled and indexed correctly by search engines.

As well, it is important to consider the ccTLD domain extension (.es, .fr, .mx) for better local positioning (I asked a question on Inbound.org about which is better for international positioning).

Semrush supports website to analyze Technical SEO

SEMRush logo

Semrush is a powerful SEO tool that helps website owners to analyze their Technical SEO.

It provides an in-depth analysis of your website’s performance and provides data-driven insights on how to improve it. It also offers keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor analysis and more.

With Semrush, you can track the progress of your SEO efforts and get tips on how to optimize your website for better search engine rankings.

It also allows you to create customized reports for tracking, analyzing and comparing different aspects of your SEO performance.

The easy-to-use interface makes it simple for anyone to use this tool in order to maximize their website’s potential.

Implementing SEO in WordPress by Installing Rank Math SEO plugin

rank math logo

SEO is not stuffing keywords in the content which is bad for SEO, or just adding the keywords in the best WordPress SEO plugins such as Rank Math or Yoast SEO plugin.

These two are the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress.

There are several ranking factors that are going to be considered and tell any search engine if the website it is worth showing it to the users.

Actually, implementing SEO in WordPress not neccesarily must use a SEO WordPress plugin, but it certainly will help with some of those aspects.

The use of WordPress SEO plugins will set out the minimum SEO basics of what is needed to make sure that the WordPress site’s SEO is fulfilled.

Therefore it is highly recommended to go to the Plugin WordPress Dashboard and search for Rank Math, which in our opinion is the best SEO plugin available and it is improving even more.

You can download Rank Math for free, but also the Rank Math Pro version has advanced features that can help you with aspects such as the Schema Markup, Woocommerce, Local SEO and Video SEO.

Rank Math recently added the Content AI, which uses artificial intelligence to give recommendations to improve your content.

After installing Rank Math, you can easily follow the instructions.

Rank Math Pro can add schema to your WordPress site, which delivers the information in a structurated way.

Rank Math takes care of almost all the technical aspects of WordPress SEO, where you don’t have to really worry if you are not a tech expert.

It runs an internal WordPress SEO audit that will give you the hints of how your website is ranking and which keywords are getting traffic to your site.

Optimize your WordPress Site Speed with WP Rocket

WP Rocket

If you want to reach the criteria of the Core Web Vitals, then you will need to optimize your WordPress website, plus also use a CDN, such as Cloudflare.

A good website speed loading has an impact on your SEO and impact on your WordPress website experience overall.

Optimizing your WordPress site for more speed with WP Rocket is essential for improving your website’s performance and user experience.

A tool like WP Rocket provides the most comprehensive caching solution to ensure that the pages on your site are served quickly and efficiently.

This plugin optimizes your website’s code, minifies HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, defers JavaScript loading, adds browser caching, and more. With all these features combined, you can expect to see a significant improvement in your website’s loading time.

If you are using a heavy WordPress theme, or some other WordPress plugins like Elementor or Divi, WP Rocket will help to reduce the bloat that their code delivers.

Additionally, WP Rocket also enables you to optimize images for faster loading times and provides powerful tools for debugging performance issues.

With WP Rocket installed on your WordPress site, you can significantly improve its speed without having to make extensive changes or hire an expensive developer – it’s both cost-effective and time-saving!

Plus, it is worth mentioning that it is important to have a WordPress hosting that is fast if you really want to have a solid SEO strategy.

WordPress SEO Checklist Infographic

seo-checklist-Infographic
Capsicum MediaWorks

Importance of SEO

Let’s start by saying that no matter how much you can attract traffic to your website (you can even use misleading techniques, or penalized by search engines to achieve your goal), if your customers, or potential customers, do not stay to browse your page.

In this case, the opposite effect to what you expect is produced, because if they don’t like what you offer, they may create bad publicity for you.

So, if you can get positive reviews why should you risk a negative one?

The importance of SEO comes when we understand that by using it we grow as a company. And it is something that should be taken into account from the first moment in which we are about to create a website for our project.

Besides, we also have the creation of content, which is what will attract the most attention. It is expected to be one hundred percent original, educational, well done and, above all, useful for users.

What is poorly done only serves to hinder your customers.

Besides, when you ask yourself why SEO is important, remember that, if you create quality content, you have the option to influence their decision making.

And we’re not just talking about the moment of purchase, but also in so many other matters that you’d be surprised at the power that a job well done can have.

So, working hand in hand with SEO is not only important to bring more people to your website, but to ensure that they will stay and like all the content you have developed on it. This way you will be preventing them from leaving with the competition.

More about SEO

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