WordPress SEO Checklist

Your website is a project. Its main target is for search engines. That is why search engine optimization is the prime factor. From the beginning till every article was written and website update this should be the prime focus of a website.

Plan your website search engine optimization (SEO) from the beginning of your website:

  • Learn from here to create a landing page without a plugin.
  • Learn from here to set up free Cloudflare CDN for your WordPress website for free.
  • Learn from here to install a free TLS/SSL certificate signed by CloudFlare on your origin server.
  • Use read more from post editor to show the summary of articles in the front page.
  • Insert READ MORE TAG from post editor or alternatively use (Shift+Alt+T) to insert read more.
  • Use custom permalinks for articles.
  • In order to do it, open post editor and then provide the name of the article and then write the article on it.
  • Then, just below article, there is an automated permalinks structure developed with the article.
  • Then click edit and put the name of category for the article. If there is more than one article on that category then the permalinks will come up with category and numbers. Like, ‘wordpress’ ‘wordpress-1’ ‘wordpress-2’ and so on.
  • The search engine would find it easier to understand and segment about which category your article is all about.
  • Ensure to upload images from the MEDIA LIBRARY of WordPress Admin.
  • What it makes is that it would provide, caption, alternative text, description and short link and then add that link to the post from post editor,
  • Open POST EDITOR, ADD MEDIA and then INSERT FROM URL and paste the URL from Media Library.
  • In this way, each and every image that is uploaded to your website is now fully optimised for search engine optimisation (SEO).

Internal link your website:

  • There are some plugins available for automatic internal linking of your website but that is not sufficient.
  • It is important to work with this aspect of your website construction from the start of your website so that you can add links to posts from older posts to make it internal linked website.

Content is king:

  • Write good articles.
  • Choose a niche subject.
  • Even choose from your experience of day to day activities.
  • Add images that seem related to the website.
  • Use online image compressor to compress images so that it loads on web page faster.
  • Most of the modern website comes up with rich internet contents such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and so on.
  • It is important to make a complete balance of these elements so that it should not make a heavier website and takes ages to load.
  • Add breadcrumbs to the article in order to have search engine friendly HTML text navigation and cross links.
  • Learn from here how to add numbered pagination to your theme without a plugin.
  • learn from here how to add copyright in the footer of WordPress without plugins.
  • Learn from here how to install WordPress using site software.
  • Create an HTML sitemap for your website. This can be done either without a plugin or with a plugin.
  • Create an XML sitemap for your website with a plugin. Download plugin from the WordPress plugin repository. Learn from here how to install a WordPress plugin.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) from cPanel:

  • Use Varnish cache in the server and Cloudflare cache in the content delivery network.
  • You can learn from here how to use varnish cache and Cloudflare for maximum caching.
  • Use HOTLINK PROTECTION either from cPanel or through CloudFlare to prevent other websites from directly linking specified files.
  • You stop other sites from stealing your precious server bandwidth.
  • Use OPTIMIZE WEBSITE in cPanel to optimise the performance of your websites by tweaking the way Apache handles requests.
  • Apache allows you to compress contents before sending it to visitor’s web browser. It compresses specified MIME types such as text/HTML text/plain text/XML
  • Both the Hotlink Protection and Optimize Website add-on of cPanel makes website runs faster and that is a good sign for the website.
  • Most of the search engines fonds of faster website loading times.

Some additional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) suggestions:

  • It is important to use genuine SEO methods.
  • It helps you to avoid blacklisting by search engines.
  • Minimise broken links to the website.
  • Install REDIRECTION PLUGIN from WordPress plugin directory.
  • Check out of 404s URL.
  • After installing and activating this plugin on your WordPress go to TOOLS and then to REDIRECTION.
  • Find 404s URL and then redirect or modify them so as to enable those dead URLs to live it again.

Use CloudFlare Content Delivery Network (CDN) for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):

  • Use CloudFlare to optimise your website for search engines.
  • Use AUTO MINIFY options under SPEED segment and enable auto to minify for javascript, CSS and HTML and this will reduce the file size of source code on your website.
  • It removes the unnecessary characters from the source code of your website theme files.
  • Unnecessary characters such as comments and whitespaces.
  • Enable BROTLI compression under SPEED segment of Cloudflare.
  • It speeds up HTTPS traffic by applying Brotli compression.
  • It uses multiple compression methods to load web pages faster.
  • Enable ROCKET loader under SPEED of Cloud Flare.
  • It will improve the paint time for pages that include Javascript.
  • It loads content faster and loads web pages faster.
  • Speed is also the important factor in some search engine rankings.
  • It loads Javascript asynchronously so that they do not block main page loading of important contents of your web page.

Submit your website and XML sitemap of your website to search engine directories:

  • Submit it to Google, Bing, Yandex, Pinterest and Norton webmasters.
  • In order to submit first, you need to authenticate your website with these respective webmasters.
  • There are various methods through which you can authenticate your website with webmaster tools.
  • First one is HTML tag which adds a meta tag to your site’s homepage.
  • The second one is of Domain Name Provider which helps you to sign in to your domain’s name provider.
  • The third one is that Google Analytics which use your Google Analytics account.
  • The fourth one is that of Google Tag Manager which uses your Google Tag Manager account.
  • The last but not the least is HTML file upload which uploads an HTML file to your site to authenticate.
  • After doing either one of this or all of these methods then you can verify on your webmaster tools to authenticate your site.

Some other search engine optimisation suggestions:

  • It is important to submit your site manually to webmaster tools.
  • Do not use automated methods of search engine submissions.
  • Use Google Analytics on your website and then from time to time to read about visitor’s presence and their behavioural metrics.
  • Do not update the design of your site regularly. Avoid constant tweaking of your website.

Summary:

  • The principles of the basic idea of a website are to have the positive search engine optimisation.
  • Constant updating of good qualitative contents to make visitor back to your website periodically.
  • Submit website to search engines and webmasters.
  • Regularly check for link popularity.
  • Always use manual search engine optimisation.
  • Try to avoid any specialised software for this.
  • Use pagination, breadcrumbs, menu and to have a good and clarity on website construction.
  • Last, not the least slowly redirect 404s web pages to live pages to make most of the web pages of your website live and constantly producing good and interesting contents.

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