Is Wordpress SEO Friendly?
By default, Wordpress is a blogging platform, not an SEO tool.
If you use Wordpress straight out of the box with no consideration for SEO, you will most likely end up with a lot of on site and on page issues that will dilute site quality and hinder your site's organic performance.
Without any SEO knowledge or expert guidance, as you install themes, create pages and add content you will more than likely create a lot of thin and near duplicate content, bloat your site code and slow down your site's speed - all of which will adversely affect your organic performance.
To maximise your organic visibility these issues should be resolved and prevented from re-occurring as your site continues to grow.
What Is The Best Way To Optimise A Wordpress Site?
There are a number of areas that can be optimised via basic Wordpress settings and a best practice SEO approach, such as:
- SEO friendly URLs
- Site taxonomy (i.e. category and tag pages)
- Site and page visibility settings
- Internal Linking & Breadcrumbs
- Canonical Domain Configuration
Following this, for the more technical aspects there are plugins and themes available which will help with:
- XML Sitemap configuration
- Site Speed
- Image Compression
- HTTPS Migrations and Site Security
- Mobile Friendly and Responsive Templates
- .htaccess and robots.txt File Amends
There will also may be a requirement to edit your site's template and files directly, which can is possible via the Appearance Editor. And then there is always Google Tag Manager which can be used when your installation's functionality doesn't quite do what you need it to.
The good news is, most Wordpress installations can be fully optimised via plugins and template editing without the need for extensive or expensive development work. Also, if by chance you're Wordpress site does already have a lot of SEO issues they will be relatively easy and quick to resolve.
Useful Resources
If you want to find out more about Wordpress SEO, the following resources are a good starting point, alternatively, if you want any assistance fill in the contact form below:
- Wordpress.com
- 43 Best Responsive WordPress Themes (2019)
- Yoast SEO Plugin (SEO Fundamentals Plugin)
- W3 Total Cache (Site Speed Plugin)
Testimonials
The following are genuine testimonials left by actual real life people on Organic Digital's Google Business Listing in relation to my Wordpress optimisation services. To read more, visit the testimonials page.
"Dave is a pleasure to work with. He's helped us to gain visibility and maintain it, securing a steady increase in organic traffic to the site overall, and ensuring excellent results for one-off campaigns. His knowledge of SEO is so extensive and his optimisations have kept us at the top of searches consistently. I'd highly recommend!"
Fiona King
manchestergin.co.uk
"Dave recently performed a technical SEO audit for one of our clients, and we cannot recommend him enough. The audit was exactly what we were looking for, clear and concise, and his help and guidance throughout it all was fabulous. We would never hesitate to use Dave again, and we know he is still on hand to help with anything we might need."
Sarah Power
dontpanicspeakerbureau.com
"CE Safety, have worked with Dave at Organic Digital for 18 months. The quality of the work is brilliant. Organic digital have carried out most of the technicsl work on the website. The work includes; Audits, AMP implementation, Site speed improvements, Structured data implementation & general improvements across the site - We know have rich snippets picked up by google as a result.
The work has been completed on time, at a fair price (not the silly prices some agencies charge for technical SEO). Dave is probably the best technical person we have worked with, both agency and freelancers. What initially attracted us, was reading his excellent (but not frequent) technical SEO posts on linkedin. What we have learnt along the way, is Organic Digital work with an unusual mix of clients, from vey large to small businesses, and we have benefited from Dave approaching us to suggest things that Organic digitals other clients have successfully tried.
Daves agency background has helped when working with our digital PR partners. Need to give downsides for balance, but struggling to think of any.
To summarise, using Organic Digital for our technical SEO, is like employing a top digital agency technical department, but at a fraction of the cost and with excellent communication. He works on our technical SEO to a very high standard and works very well in collaboration with other SEO third parties we use for non technical SEO."
Gary Ellis
cesafety.co.uk
