Search engines like Google are an essential traffic source for almost every website. If you’re considering WordPress for a new site, you may be wondering how well it plays with search engines.
Is WordPress good for SEO?
Yes, WordPress is an excellent platform for SEO. This is one of the many reasons it’s so popular. WordPress sites are built on a familiar, search engine-friendly framework, and with the right configuration it’s easy to optimize your site for higher search rankings.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the features that make WordPress a good choice for SEO and how you can take advantage of them.
Why WordPress Is The Best Platform For SEO
What is it specifically that makes WordPress search engine-friendly?
SEO-Friendly Framework
WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system, powering more than a third of all sites on the web with a very consistent structure.
Because it’s so ubiquitous, Google knows exactly how to crawl and index it.
WordPress also formats your content dynamically according to your themeA WordPress theme is a set of files that determine the design and layout of a website. It controls everything ... More. This means you don’t have to worry about using the right HTML tagsIn WordPress, tags are a taxonomy used to classify and organize posts. They are similar to categories, but unl... More or structuring your site in a specific way—it’s all done for you.
Pretty Permalinks
Along the same lines, WordPress allows you to choose a consistent URL/permalink structure that’s both readable and search engine-friendly.
You can customize your permalink structure by going to Settings > Permalinks in your WordPress dashboardIn WordPress, the Dashboard is a central hub for managing a website's content and settings. It is the first sc... More.
For SEO purposes, it’s a good idea to choose a permalinkIn WordPress, a permalink is a permanent URL that points to a specific post or page on a website. It is the we... More structure that includes the postA post is a type of content in WordPress, a popular open-source content management system used for creating an... More name. Personally, I like the basic “Post name” format:
Customizing the permalink structure is one of the first things I do on every new site. It’s important to get this right from the start so you don’t have to change it later and break your existing links.
Easy Content Creation
Content is the cornerstone of SEO. If you don’t have good content, nothing else matters.
This is precisely where WordPress shines. It started as a simple blogging platform, so content has always been at the core of the experience.
And now, with the GutenbergGutenberg is the name of a modern WordPress editor that was introduced with the release of WordPress 5.0 in De... More block editor, creating valuable, beautifully formatted content is easier than ever before.
You never need to edit a single line of code. The editor can handle everything visually, from using proper heading tags to optimizing images with alt attributes.
Responsive Design
In today’s world, the reality is that most of your traffic will likely come from mobile devices. In fact, more than 60 percent of all Google searches happen on mobile.
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Google now uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This means responsive sites will typically outrank non-responsive sites in the mobile search results.
If you want your website to succeed in search, it needs to be mobile-friendly.
The good news is that responsive design has become a standard in the WordPress community, so almost any modern theme on the market today will automatically adapt to the smaller screen of a smartphone or tablet.
Site Speed
Google also uses pageIn WordPress, a page is a content type that is used to create non-dynamic pages on a website. Pages are typica... More speed as a ranking signal for both desktop and mobile search results, so it’s important that your website loads as quickly as possible.
WordPress can be a double-edged sword when it comes to page speed. On one hand, a poorly optimized website with lots of content and plugins can easily become slow and bloated. But on the other hand, with the right hosting, a good caching plugin, and a few simple optimizations, WordPress can be lightning fast.
Check out our WordPress speed tutorial to see how we achieved <1s load times with WordPress.
Ping-o-Matic
By default, WordPress uses a service called Ping-o-Matic to automatically alert various search engines when your site has been updated. You can also add other update services by going to Settings > Writing in your dashboard.
Thanks to WordPress, your new content is always discoverable, with no action required on your part.
SEO Plugins
While WordPress plays pretty well with search engines right out of the box, you can go the extra mile and further optimize your site using a free SEO pluginA plugin is a software component that adds specific features and functionality to your WordPress website. Esse... More like Yoast SEO.
Yoast makes it easy to manage your HTML title tags, meta descriptions, sitemaps, and other technical SEO data, right from your WordPress dashboard.
To learn more about Yoast and how to configure it, check out our full WordPress SEO tutorial.
If you want to improve your technical SEO without editing the code yourself, SEO plugins like Yoast are a godsend.
Security
One of the biggest SEO disasters you can face is having your website suspected of spamming or distributing malware.
Even if you’re not doing anything shady, a security breach could put your users at risk. If this happens, Google will warn potential visitors that your website has been hacked, and your search rankings will tank.
The good news is that WordPress is extremely secure. Whenever a new vulnerability is discovered, the WordPress security team pushes an automatic update to patch it. There are also plenty of security plugins to lock down your security and monitor for threats.
Check out our WordPress security guide to learn some best practices.
Final Thoughts
From its search engine-friendly content framework to the many SEO plugins available, WordPress provides a solid foundation for achieving high search rankings. If you’re looking for an SEO-friendly CMS, look no further.
Ready to build your own WordPress website? Check out our step-by-step tutorial here. 👨💻
If you have any questions about WordPress SEO, please feel free to leave a comment below!
Author: Brad Merrill
Brad Merrill is the CEO of Merrill Media and Editor in Chief of GigaPress.
