The Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your WordPress Blog for Google

If you have a WordPress blog, you likely had an easy time navigating the setup and operation process. However, optimizing your site for higher ranking in Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) may be more difficult.

There are basic SEO strategies that you should implement, like the following:

This is a great starting point for optimizing and improving your blog for Google, but you can do more with your WordPress blog to rank higher in SERPs. Consider implementing the following strategies to boost your page rankings.

1. Consider Site Speed
Faster site loading times are important if you want to rank higher in search engines. It is recommended that your blog should load in 1-2 seconds. All of the elements on your website such as CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and images should be loaded within that initial start render time to rank higher with Google algorithm. Consider some of the following tips to help your WordPress blog load faster:
Use themes that are optimized for speedy load times
Make sure your images are optimized for faster speed
Use faster plugins: WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, and Sucuri Firewall
Additionally, consider the fact that when people search for sites online, 53 percent won’t stay on the page if it takes longer than three seconds to fully load.

2. Use an XML Sitemap on Your Blog
You want to give Google a roadmap to easily find all of the important pages on your blog. Using an XML sitemap on your blog acts as a roadmap to improve crawl times and make it easier for the Google algorithm to find your content due to sitemap tags. You can use a different sitemap for media content to ensure that the indexing of your videos and images are improving too. Using sitemaps also helps you monitor the search engine performance of your blog by reviewing if your pages are being indexed in various search engines. You can use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin on your WordPress blog.

3. Balance New Posts with Links to Old Posts
When you write new posts for your blog, don’t forget about linking to older ones on your site. Using internal linking is a great way to provide search engines with related content on your blog. Internal linking makes site navigation simpler for users and search bots. It’s better for content performance to manually link to these older posts and create relevant anchor text than to use plugins that link to the older post and show the complete title. While this optimization can help to boost ranking for the new post, it can be helpful in also boosting traffic to the older post.

4. Make the Site Optimized for Mobile Viewing
You can add a tracking code from Google Analytics to your blog to track visitors. Reviewing the site statistics can show specific data points such as percentages of users viewing your site on mobile devices or computers. With so many people accessing websites and blogs from mobile devices like phones and tablets, you need to make sure that your blog is optimized with a Responsive Web Design (RWD). This design ensures that the site renders well on all devices. Users will be able to view and access all content whether they’re viewing the blog on their phone or laptop.
Sites that have an RWD are qualified for increased ranking with the updated Google algorithm. Users will have a better experience with this design, and that is one of the factors considered in the algorithm.
You can use any of the following default WordPress themes with responsive designs:
Twenty Eleven
Twenty Twelve
Twenty Thirteen

5. Correct Any Broken Links on the Site
Broken links, also known as dead links, lead to unavailable pages on your site or other sources you have linked to. You may have typed the URL incorrectly, or the site is unavailable and shows a 4xx or 5xx status code. If Google's algorithm identifies too many broken links on your site, it can be detrimental to your ranking. Search engines may penalize your site because it deems that it is not being adequately maintained.
The Broken Link Checker WordPress plugin is an effective tool to help you deal with any external or internal broken links on your blog. You can set the plugin to automatically list these broken links as “nofollow,” so the search engine algorithms don’t think your site is unmaintained. If the plugin detects any broken links on your site, you can be notified by email. This makes it easy for you to navigate through the plugin interface to correct the URLs or unlink to them.
After you review your WordPress blog and implement some of these optimization strategies, make sure you track web traffic statistics to see if the number of visitors to your site has increased. Use an online tool like WebRankStats to track if your blog ranking is increasing after implementing these strategies.