This year your WordPress website’s SEO is more important than ever. Like most bloggers you want your site to have high rankings and constant traffic. It’s important that your posts are found, read and shared after you hit publish.

This 2020 WordPress SEO checklist will keep your website ranking and winning around the web.

Optimize Your Keywords

Google uses a computer algorithm, so keywords are still very important in 2020. You should be writing every post with your chosen keywords in mind. However, you need to be writing smart. Here are some pointers.

• Use your target keyword phrase at least once in your:
  • Title
  • Meta description
  • URL
  • In the first paragraph of your content.

Use Proper Title Tags And Meta Descriptions

Next on your WordPress checklist is making sure your content’s title is quality. An SEO optimized title will be easily found by search engines. It will also be compelling to readers.

Keep in mind that on average only 20% of viewers read beyond a headline. So the title of your post is crucial for keeping site visitors around. Choose an inviting tone to encourage the most site visitors.

Meta descriptions actually don’t have much effect on SEO. However, they do affect your site’s click through rate (CTR). The better you write your meta description the more people will click to your site. More visitors mean higher Google rankings.

Place your keyword at the front of your title if possible. Also include your keyword in your meta description.

Link Build Throughout Your Site

Another important point on your WordPress checklist is to use internal link building. This is when you link from a post on your site to another.

Internal linking helps people maneuver through your website. It also organizes your website’s info and structure.

Now, don’t get too link happy. Having too many internal links on a post can negatively affect visitor experiences.

Use Up-To-Date Sitemaps

Sitemaps are used by search engines to capture the structure of your website. They also ensure better crawling of your site.

The Yoast SEO plugin will automatically generate your sitemap for you. You should then submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster.

Content Is Still King

Google will reward you for publishing long-form high-quality content. The better your content the higher your SEO rankings. Make sure your content is:

• Written as short paragraphs. These help visitors to read through your content easily.
• Using bullets, numbered lists, italics etc. to break up chunks of content.
• Is utilizing evergreen content that can be reshared and remains relevant.
• Using call-to-actions at the end of all posts to boost reader engagement.

Great SEO Practices For The Current Year

Google’s algorithms primarily uses a website’s mobile content for ranking. So you should also make sure your site is mobile-friendly.

It’s also a good idea to create a lot of video content. Video gets site visitors more interested than plain text.

Wrapping Up Your WordPress Checklist

Ready to see how good your website’s SEO is?  You can use Google Analytics to see how well your SEO is doing.

Follow this WordPress checklist so your website’s SEO is tight and ready to rank.

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Until next time……