Many WordPress users don’t realize it, but they make mistakes that can hurt their search engine rankings. WordPress is one of the best tools for making SEO-friendly websites. Whether you’re a new blogger or an old pro, staying away from these common mistakes will help your site get a lot more visitors and exposure.
We’ll talk about the five most common WordPress SEO mistakes and how to fix them to get more people to visit and rank your website higher.
1. Not taking care of basic WordPress SEO settings
A lot of WordPress users forget to set up important SEO settings, which can keep their site from doing well in search results.
Usual mistakes when setting up SEO:
- Not setting up a custom permalink structure: WordPress uses URLs like yourwebsite.com/?p=123 by default, which are bad for SEO.
- Blocking Search Engines: People sometimes check the box under Settings > Reading that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” without meaning to.
- Not Using an SEO tool: WordPress doesn’t have any SEO features built in, so you need to use an SEO tool like All in One SEO, Yoast SEO, or Rank Math.
How to Make It Right:
➡️Settings > Permalinks > “Post Name” (yourwebsite.com/sample-post/) is the one you need to choose.
➡️Make sure that the “Reading” setting in “Settings” is not blocking search engines from reading your site.
➡️Put in an SEO tool and make sure it’s set up correctly.
2. Not making content keyword-friendly
Keyword optimization is very important for search engine rankings, but a lot of WordPress users either use too many keywords (called “keyword stuffing”) or don’t optimize at all for relevant search terms.
Common Mistakes in Keyword Optimization:
- Choosing terms that are too competitive or don’t have anything to do with your audience is called “targeting the wrong keywords.”
- Not using long-tail keywords: short-tail keywords are hard to rank for because they are too general.
- Overusing Keywords: If you use keywords too much in your writing, it can get you in trouble.
How to Make It Right:
✔️Discover valuable terms with Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush, or use other keyword research tools on the list.
✔️Keep your attention on long-tail terms that match what people are looking for, like “best SEO plugins for WordPress” instead of just “SEO plugins.”
✔️Put keywords in the title, headings, URL, first 100 words, and picture alt text in a way that makes sense.
3. Websites that load slowly and don’t work well
Google gives a lot of weight to how fast a page loads. People will leave your WordPress site if it’s too slow, which will cause a high bounce rate and lower results.
Common Mistakes When Optimizing for Speed:
- Not Getting Good Hosting: Cheap shared hosting can cause pages to load slowly.
- Not Caching: Pages take longer to load when you don’t use caching.
- Uploading Big Images: Images that aren’t compressed make your site load more slowly.
- Too Many Scripts and Plugins: Having too many plugins can slow things down and make them bulky.
How to Make It Right:
✔️Select a dependable WordPress host, such as SiteGround, Kinsta, or WP Engine.
✔️Add a tool that caches your site, like LiteSpeed Cache, WP Rocket, or W3 Total Cache.
✔️Use ShortPixel or Smush to shrink pictures.
✔️Cut down on the amount of active plugins to just the ones you need.
✔️Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare to make your site faster for people all over the world.
4. Ignoring SEO elements on the page
One of the best ways to improve rankings is to do on-page SEO, but a lot of WordPress users forget about important parts.
Common SEO mistakes on the page:
- Do not use the correct heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.).
- Not Putting in Meta Titles and Descriptions
- Not Considering Internal Linking
- Not Using Alt Text for Images
How to Make It Right:
✔️For the main title, use an H1 tag. For major parts, use an H2 tag. For sub-sections, use an H3 to H6 tag.
✔️Always use an SEO tool to write a unique meta title and description that are full of keywords.
✔️Add links to related blog posts within the same blog post to make it easier to find and keep people on your site longer.
✔️Add descriptive alt text to pictures to make them easier for people to find and improve SEO.
5. Not putting together good backlinks
One of the most important parts of Google’s system for ranking websites is still backlinks. Your site might have trouble ranking for competitive keywords if it doesn’t have good backlinks.
Common mistakes with backlinks:
- Not building backlinks on purpose
- Using links that are spam or not very good
- Neglecting Guest Posting Chances
How to Make It Right:
✔️Ask relevant websites and blogs if you can write a guest post for them.
✔️Share your information on forums and social networks to get free backlinks.Last Thoughts
If you avoid these five common WordPress SEO mistakes, your site will rank higher in search results and get more visitors from search engines.
A quick review:
✅Fix simple SEO settings like permalinks, indexing, and SEO tools.
✅Use long-tail keywords instead of phrase stuffing to make your content more search engine friendly.
✅Make your website faster by using better hosting, caching, and picture compression.
✅Make sure you use the right on-page SEO methods, like meta tags, headers, and internal links.
✅Use guest posts, websites, and social media to build good backlinks.
If you fix these mistakes, your website will rank higher on Google and get more visitors!