It has been said that the only constant in life is change. This certainly applies to WordPress, which is constantly evolving with new features and enhancements. With each update, you may need to adjust your SEO approach to maintain or improve your ranking. So, let’s discuss some tips for keeping your WordPress site optimized in 2022.
Use an SEO Plugin
One of the first things you will need to do if you want to get better rankings on WordPress would be to use one of the many SEO plugins. The good news is that you don’t always have to pay for a plug-in, and there are many great free options.
It’s important to remember that these plugins won’t optimize the site for you; instead, they will provide the tools needed to optimize the site. In other words, you are practically running around in the dark without an SEO plugin.
Avoid SEO-Unfriendly Themes
If you have just created your WordPress website, you have most likely seen the default theme given to you. Chances are you will probably not use this theme since there are thousands of free themes to choose from that are way better than the default one.
When choosing a theme for your WordPress website, you should carefully read through the descriptions to find ones that are SEO-friendly. An SEO-friendly theme doesn’t mean that it will begin drawing traffic to your WordPress website. However, it does not use any unnecessary scripts or plugins that can slow down the load speed of your website.
Use Custom URLs
Another important tip to gain better rankings in 2022 would be to make use of custom URLs. For example, WordPress’s default URLs usually look like this; https://exampledomain.com/?q=123213. This URL does not clearly indicate what can be expected to be found on the page, which isn’t search engine-friendly in the slightest.
Hence, you should consider using custom URLs to give search engines a better idea of what sort of content can be found on the page. For example, https://exampledomain.com/blog-post-title/. This is a lot cleaner and allows you to include keywords in the URL.
Use a Sitemap
Another incredibly beneficial thing you can do to get better rankings in 2022 for your WordPress website would be to use an XML sitemap. If you are unfamiliar with what an XML sitemap is, it is a file that is specially formatted, and it lists every single page that can be found on your website.
An XML sitemap makes it incredibly easy for search engines like Google to find your site and its pages to begin the indexing process. The faster indexing occurs, the faster your site can be ranked. The good news is that there are SEO plugins for WordPress that automatically create sitemaps for you.
Do Keyword Research
While it is true that keywords aren’t the be-all and end-all anymore, they are still incredibly important to use, especially if you want to get ranked higher. One of the reasons you should do keyword research is to know what type of content to create.
This is because keyword research will give you an idea of what people search for on the Internet. More than this, you need to incorporate keywords on your website since this will help search engines determine what content you are producing.
Optimize Posts for SEO
Finally, the last thing you should consider doing when trying to rank your website is optimizing your blog posts for search engine optimization. Admittedly, this sounds quite complicated; however, the process can be quite easy.
For example, the first place to begin would be with the title of each blog post; it needs to be concise yet let the search engine and readers know what to expect. The next thing you should focus on would be a group of keywords since this is an important factor when bots crawl the site.
