5 WordPress SEO Mistakes To Avoid

SEO for your Wordpress website, can be really easy once you understand how to do it, but in the beginning SEO mistakes can be easy to make, and very serious. Some of these Wordpress SEO mistakes could be seriously damaging your SEO or even stopping you from getting found on search. Let’s find out, where you are making SEO mistakes and what you can do to fix them, because Google wants to send you lots of traffic, you just have to help them.

In this blog, I am going to show you the most common WordPress SEO mistakes I see on a daily basis, and exactly how to fix them.

1. Blocking Search Engines

The process of blocking search engines from visiting your site is a simple, but extremely costly mistake you don’t want to make.

There is no need to worry, WordPress makes it very easy for you to do this (even accidentally), especially when you are creating a new website. Practically, this is when you should block search engines – while you are developing a new site, changing things etc.

Although, once the site is live – you want to “unblock” search engines and make sure you appear on them ASAP! Or, you can quietly turning them away, often without having a clue.

2. Not Connecting WordPress With Google

Neglect to connect your website with Google is still a mistake, that I see most website owners making. Google helps us by providing few tools to run our websites – Search Console, Analytics are the two most important.

I suggest you sign up for both. With Search Engine Console being the biggest help for SEO, for many reasons:

• Google tells us what pages and posts are on your website (and where) • Provide details, when you have published something new. • Google provide detailed information you in return when you have problems on your website (broken links, HTML issues, and a bunch of other helpful info) • It also tell you exactly what they are showing your site for on search (keyword, average position, and volume of searches).

3. Not Installing An SEO Plugin

A lot of people (and WordPress developers experts) will promise you that, Wordpress is awesome for SEO right out of the box. Although, in 95% of cases you have to add an SEO plugin to make it run like a well-oiled SEO machine. Wordpress SEO plugins not only help you set up the basics for search engine optimization, they also cover lots of complex SEO cases. Here are some super-important suggestions, you should be aware of:

• Submit a sitemap.xml for Google Search Console - see 2. above • Blocking those WebPages you don't want to appear on search engines • Optimizing your webpages and posts for keywords (more on that in 4. below) • Add open graph tags for better social sharing (not pure SEO, but certainly useful and related)

Without an SEO plugin, many of the things above are difficult to do, or downright impossible. So search add a rock-solid SEO plugin NOW!

4. Not Optimizing Your Website For Keywords If you are not optimizing your website pages and posts for keywords at beginning(words that people search for) is a huge mistake. Selecting a keyword for each post or page and using it in various places — such as the title, the headings, and the content itself.

Actually it is a key that helps Google to find amazing content of your website and blog post. Certainly I know that there are lots of other ways to optimize your content with Wordpress website design best practice, but this one should come first.

It’s because search engines always look for clues from us to figure out what a specific page or post is about. And get us ranked for those keywords! On the basis of Keyword Research, you can actually know the words your potential visitors/customers are using, and then you can add those in the critical places that Google looks.

I hope next time you will create a piece of content (page or post) make sure to give Google the right “signs” by placing your well-researched keywords in exactly the right places.

5. Not Researching The “Right” Words

It is a general issue that affects all websites and severely cripples your chances or getting found on search engines.

One of the biggest lessons you can learn in online marketing is that, you may think you know what people think, search for, want etc. But in the end, you have no clue. Words the only way to truly know what kinds of words people are typing into Google is to ask Google. After that, once you know what people search for (in relation to what you want them to find on your website) can you tune your website for those words.

This process is called: Keyword Research. Through keyword research you can find the right words for your pages and posts that will get found on Google and bring people to your website.

Have you ever made of any of the above SEO mistakes? Share with us, what other common errors do you see, made by other during Wordpress website design.