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10 Common WordPress Mistakes That Can Affect Your Website’s SEO

  1. Installing too many plugins:  Too many plugins can slow down your site’s speed and negatively impact user experience. Be sure to evaluate the compatibility and  functionality of the plugins you use on your site, and only activate those that are absolutely necessary.
  2. Not optimizing content for SEO:   To rank highly in organic search engine results, you have to ensure that you code your website pages  in a “search engine friendly” format.
    Optimizing individual pages for a specific search term is the foundation of effective SEO. The first step is to make sure your WordPress theme is structured so that search engines clearly understand the content.
  3. Not changing the default permalink structure:  WordPress posts or pages have a unique identifier, called the ID.  These ID’s are the default setting. For example, your pages and posts will appear like this: https://examplesite.com/?p=123.  Be sure to change your site’s setting to show the post title (pretty link). For example: https://examplesite.com/my-page-here
  4. Ignoring WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates:  It’s quite simple, ignoring updates can break functionality and leave you open to security flaws. Check for updates periodically or hire a website admin to manage your site.
  5. Changing a post’s URL after it’s been published:  Once your page has been indexed, deleting it can cause an error and negatively impact SEO. Be sure to use 301 redirects to tell search engines that a page has moved (or no longer exists) and redirect visitors to a new location.
  6. Not resizing images for web upload:  Big and bloated images can slow down your site and negatively impact your SEO. Optimize your images (reduce file size) to ensure quick loading time.
  7. Accidentally blocking search engines:  This setting is under the “Reading” section of your the Settings section on your WordPress dashboard menu. Uncheck “Discourage Search Engines From Indexing This Site” to ensure that your site gets indexed and found in relevant searches.
  8. H1 tags for key pages: These vital tags should be used for the title of your page or post. It’s tells search engines and visitors what the page/post is about.
  9. Alt-tags for Images:  Alt text field on images provides visitors using screen readers as well as search engines with a text description of what is depicted in the image. This is a cornerstone practice for your SEO. It improves the accessibility of your site and the ability to get your image ranked in image search results.
  10. Default Admin:  Be sure to change your default admin username setting to something unique. You should also consider changing the default /wp-admin page to a unique address. This will strengthen your site’s security and help fend off hackers.