19 WordPress SEO Tips and Questions

To introduce you to the issue and its scale, let’s take a very realistic example. You have an editor who’s excellent at producing content. We can even assume the content is optimised for the web, but they lack knowledge about WordPress.

Their article gets published, you promote it on social media and it does well. However, assume there were a couple of mistakes the editor has made:

• they didn’t specify different metatags for:
  • the title
  • the meta description
• after two weeks, the editor fixed small a mistake in the URL without creating a 301 redirect

We could add more to the list, but for the sake of introduction, this will suffice.

It might not seem like a big deal at first – the title tag and meta description will get populated. Google has an algorithm that automatically fills the metadata if it’s left empty.

Here’s how many issues these two small mistakes will cause:

1. If the title of your post is longer than 60 characters, it won’t be fully displayed in Google results, potentially cutting off engaging words or even the keyword
2. Your meta description will be automated, meaning you miss out on a chance to advertise your web page to the visitors
3. The social media posts return a 404 error because the old URL doesn’t exist anymore and no redirect was created
4. If the content ranked organically before the URL change, a lack of 301 redirects will hurt the ranking (learn more about WordPress 301 redirects at the end of this post)

For long-term SEO, creating this particular blog post or a web page was a waste of resources. And as mentioned in our article about content marketing and the importance of content strategy, it’s all about the long run.

If you run a small business, you might not know about the specifics of WordPress SEO. Or perhaps your web agency didn’t do a good job at supporting your website post-launch and you didn’t get SEO guidelines. You’ve hired a great editor, and it wasn’t your or their fault. They just need some WordPress SEO advice to help them make the content rank higher on Google.

Metadata SEO tips for WordPress

In our list of essential WordPress plugins for every website, we have included the Yoast SEO plugin – and for a very good reason. It’s a plugin that allows your editors to change metadata and even grade the content readability and SEO optimisation of your posts.

With that being said, we highly recommend you download and install Yoast SEO, as it will be taking the centre stage in our short guide.

Disclaimer

Yoast SEO appears in our guide as one of the most popular and approachable plugins. We firmly believe it’s a great starting point, and it will suffice in the context of this article.

How to edit the meta description in WordPress

After installing Yoast, you’ll find the following snippet preview in your blog posts (depending on your configuration it might be below or above the editor):

The plugin itself asks you to provide a meta description with an explanation of what happens if you don’t. You can do that by clicking the “Edit snippet” button which expands three fields:

• SEO title
• slug (the part of the URL that comes after your domain)
• meta description

SEO title and meta description input fields have text length bars underneath them, signalling whether your input is optimal.

As a rule of thumb, try to fit as much into the meta title and meta description as possible, while retaining their relevance and genuineness. Use them to offer value for your potential visitors. Sometimes, less is more.

WordPress SEO title tips – optimal length

A great blog title isn’t synonymous with a great meta title. The optimal length of the latter is 50-60 characters (or to be more specific 600 pixels) due to the amount of “real estate” in search engine results. However, that might be too short for a compelling “display” title of your blog post.

If you keep your titles under 60 characters, our research suggests that you can expect about 90% of your titles to display properly.

Moz.com

The display title of one of our articles is “6 WordPress Plugins That Will Enhance Your Blogging (Updated For Gutenberg)”, while the meta title reads “6 WordPress Plugins That Will Enhance Your Blog | NerdCow”. We have shortened the appealing display title to meet the requirements of search engines while keeping it as attractive as possible.

There is one exception to that rule that you might want to consider – you’ll find it in the bonus tip of the next section.

Please note that as far as our full SEO title goes, using our brand name is a choice we’ve made. It’s a sitewide rule for all the pages so you don’t have to replicate it unless it’s the standard practice on your website.

What is a slug in Yoast SEO and how to create the best blog post URL

The aforementioned slug is another part of your post that’s crucial for SEO. It’s the part of your URL that goes after the domain and any subfolders. In the case of this article, it’s:

https://nerdcow.co.uk/blog/wordpress-seo-tips-for-blog-editors/

By default, WordPress sets the slug to match your post’s title, which can be wrong for several reasons.

Here are a few key points to keep in mind when choosing the URL:

• remove stop words, such as “a”, “the”, “and”, and so on
• make it informative and engaging
• include your keyword in it
• separate the words with a hyphen
• unless it’s crucial to convey your message, don’t use numbers (i.e. the slug for “99 Best Breakfast Ideas” should be “best-breakfast-ideas”)
• be specific and consider future URLs – if you’re writing about Honda Civic price drop, a “honda-price-drop” slug (instead of “honda-civic-price-drop”) might be too broad and you could regret using it in the future

How to set focus keyphrase in WordPress

Since 2009, Google doesn’t use the meta keyword as a ranking factor. However, you can set a focus keyphrase in Yoast’s plugin instead. While this won’t directly affect your ranking in search engines, it will give you a better overview of the quality of your meta description and even analyse your post to give it an SEO rating.

Focus keyphrase example in WordPress and Goole snippet preview

It’s a good simulation of how your website would look on the search results page if the visitor used the exact query to find it. On top of that, below your snippet preview, you can expand the “SEO analysis” to see practical tips on how to improve your copy for search engines.

Please take the recommendations with a grain of salt. If you’re unsure about them, please refer to our WordPress SEO FAQs.

WordPress 301 redirects – what are they and how to add them

Definition

A 301 redirect signals that a page has permanently moved from one URL to the other. It’s also a signal to search engines that all “SEO juice” of the previous URL should be transferred to the new one. This is especially useful when changing links or consolidating pages.

Adding 301 redirects in WordPress

Redirects can be added programmatically, but also with a help of the Redirection plugin. Once installed, you can access the plugin in the “Tools” section of the WordPress dashboard:

Once there, you can simply click “Add new’ and fill two fields: Source URL (the one that you’re changing/removing) and Target URL (the new address). You don’t need to change any settings that you’re not familiar with. The default “add new” settings will create a 301 redirect just fine.

There are also other types of redirects, but as an editor, you generally don’t need to worry about them.

WordPress SEO Frequently Asked Questions