7 Useful Tips to Optimize WordPress SEO without Plugins
7 Useful Tips to Optimize WordPress SEO without Plugins
SEO best practices are crucial in 2019. In fact, you could say that SEO is more important now than ever before. Google has changed its algorithm so many times over the years that it’s hard to keep track of what works and what doesn’t. In this article, I’ll walk you through seven ways to optimize your WordPress site without using any plugins:
Use a Keyword Rich Title
- Use your target keyword in the title
- Use your target keyword in the first sentence
- Use your target keyword in the last sentence of a blog post or page
- Include that keyword in your URL, which is also known as a “permalink” (e.g., [https://examplewebsite.com/blog/animals-of-the-world/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=keyword_optimization&utm_content=article1])
- Make sure you have a good description meta tag on every page or post that contains relevant information about what users will find there, including key terms related to its topic
Optimize Your Meta Description
Meta descriptions are a snippet of text that appears in search results. It’s an opportunity to entice people to click on your link, so make sure the meta description is relevant to the page and includes keywords. You can add a meta description by editing one or more pages on your site, or by adding one through Google Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools).
Add Alt Tags to Images
Alt tags are what appear when an image can’t be displayed. They’re also an important SEO element, as they help search engines understand what your images are about. In other words, if you want Google to know that that picture of a dog is actually about dogs and not just random noise, then you need to add alt tags.
Doing so is easy: just right click on any image and select “Properties.” This will open up the HTML code for that particular picture; all you have to do now is type in some text between the tags at the bottom of this window (e.g., “”). If there are multiple versions of an image on your site–say one with text and another without–you should use different alt tags for each version so that search engines know what each represents specifically (e.g., “”).
Create a Header Tag for Each Page
The header tag is used to identify the page title and meta description. You can use it to create a unique, SEO-friendly header for each of your pages.
The code for a header tag looks like this:
Title of Your Page
The tag is HTML’s way of telling search engines that this text should be treated as important content on the page. It also helps with user experience by making sure any links or other important elements are displayed in large enough type so that they’re easy to read.
Create an XML Sitemap and Submit It to Google Search Console
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website and allows search engines to easily find them. You can create an XML sitemap by using one of these WordPress plugins:
- Yoast SEO (free)
- Google XML Sitemaps (free)
- All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets ($40/year)
Once you’ve installed one of these plugins, go to Settings > General > Publishing Tools > Sitemaps and click ‘Add Sitemap’. Select whether or not this is an image-only sitemap and then click ‘Save Changes’. After creating your sitemap, submit it to Google Search Console under “Crawl” -> “Sitemaps”.
Create a Robots.txt File to Prevent Indexing by Search Engines
The robots.txt file is a very useful tool for controlling how search engines crawl your site. It allows you to tell the search engine bots that they should not index certain pages or folders on your site, which can be useful if you have sensitive information on a page that you don’t want indexed by Google, for instance.
The format used to create this file is simple and straightforward: just add it at the root of your website (the same folder as index.php) with one line per rule, like so:
- Disallow: /private/
In this example we’re telling Google not to crawl any files or folders inside of private/, so if we have anything sensitive in there we don’t have to worry about it being crawled by bots!
Take Advantage of Schema Markup in Your Content
Schema markup helps search engines understand your content and how users should interact with it. It’s a way to tell the search engine what type of information is in your post, so that it can better display it for users who are looking for specific types of results.
Schema markup is especially useful at helping you rank higher in Google searches, but there are other benefits as well: Schema markup makes your site look more professional, which can help win over potential clients or customers; it also allows you to add rich snippets (which show up in Google search results), which make it easier for users who are looking for specific services or products on sites like Craigslist or Amazon.
There are many different types of schema markups available–you just need to know where they go! Here are some examples:
You can optimize your site without plugins, you just need to know the right tricks
Useful Tips to Optimize WordPress SEO without Plugins
- Use a custom domain name (instead of your site’s URL) in the section of your theme. This allows you to add additional information, like meta tags and Open Graph tags for Facebook sharing. It also makes it easier for search engines to recognize that this is an entirely different page than the homepage–which means it can rank higher than other pages on your site if they’re not optimized properly!
- Add structured data markup in the section of each post or page using JSON-LD or Microdata syntax as needed (not all content needs this). This will allow Google to better understand what types of information are being presented so that they can show users more relevant results when searching for certain things related specifically to those topics (elements such as recipes or event listings would benefit greatly). It also helps make sure people get accurate info when clicking through links posted elsewhere online too!
Conclusion
You should now be equipped with the knowledge necessary to optimize your WordPress site. You can use these tips to improve your SEO and make sure that Google knows what your site is about. If you’re looking for more ways to improve your site’s performance, I recommend reading our article on basic website optimization or checking out some of our other resources on this topic!
