8 Common WordPress SEO Issues To Address

Building a website without a content management system (CMS) is like assembling a piece of furniture without a manual. You can do it, but it’s going to be much, much harder. That’s why most businesses opt to use a CMS like WordPress for their website.

Odds are your company is among those businesses. But even with a CMS like WordPress at your side, there’s no guarantee that your site will rank well in search results. There are still search engine optimization (SEO) problems that can crop up. 

What are those problems, though, and how can you address them?

That’s what we’re here to discuss. Here are eight ways to address WordPress technical SEO issues:

1. Practicing E-E-A-T
2. Optimizing for Core Web Vitals
3. Correctly naming permalinks
4. Using internal and external links
5. Fixing any broken links
6. Making your site accessible
7. Creating your sitemap
8. Setting up your schema markup

Read on to learn more about each of those WordPress to-dos. Then subscribe to Revenue Weekly to get more helpful marketing info from the experts!

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1. Practicing E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T is a set of guidelines from Google. It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. The guideline basically says that if you want to gain the last word in that acronym (Trust), you first need to earn the other three (Experience, Expertise, and Authoritativeness).

So, how do you go about doing that when it comes to technical SEO in WordPress? Well, one of the best ways to increase those three things is to show the faces behind your team. For example, if you have a company blog, set it up to show who wrote each page. Maybe even include a short bio for each writer.

You should also be sure to show when each page was written (or last updated) so users will know how current the information is.

2. Optimizing for Core Web Vitals

Another set of Google guidelines to follow are Core Web Vitals, which relate primarily to page speed optimization. Basically, the faster your pages load for users, the higher those pages are likely to rank in Google. 

One of the best ways to optimize page speed is compressing all the images that you use. Images with large file sizes will significantly slow down your page load times. You should also try to use system fonts on your site instead of using custom fonts, which load more slowly. 

Other things you can do include:

• Limiting redirects
• Minifying code
• Caching web pages

3. Correctly naming permalinks

Another WordPress technical task to carry out is to correctly name your permalinks. When we talk about naming permalinks, we’re referring to the process of coming up with URLs for individual pages on your site. Your permalinks should accurately reflect the content of your pages.

For example, if your company is called Orthanc Industries and you have a blog post entitled “30 Manufacturing Facts You Might Not Know,” you don’t want the URL to be:

www.orthanc.com/blog/73287a90209fds

You want it to be something like:

www.orthanc.com/blog/30-manufacturing-facts

That’s a preferable URL, since it helps users better understand what type of page they’ll be visiting if they click on a link to it.

4. Using internal and external links

Speaking of links, you want to make sure to include plenty of them across your site. In fact, linking to your web pages is one of the most important WordPress to-dos for SEO.

For that reason, be sure to incorporate internal links across your site. To do that, you simply link to pages on your site from other pages on your site. The goal is to keep users on your site longer by allowing them to jump from one page to another.

However, internal links also help Google view your pages as more reputable since other pages are linking to them. Consequently, it ranks them higher.

5. Fixing any broken links

One more link-related WordPress technical task: Make sure to watch for any broken links and fix the ones that come up. One of the worst things for your SEO is 404 errors. If someone gets directed to a page on your site that doesn’t exist, they probably won’t be interested in coming back.

To avoid this, always monitor for 404 errors and fix them as soon as they crop up. These might happen for various reasons, such as if a page’s URL changes or it gets taken down, but other pages are still linking to it. 

You can preemptively avoid 404s by always removing or changing links to a page as soon as you take it down. 

6. Making your site accessible

Another of the biggest WordPress SEO issues is accessibility. Not only will your website lose out on traffic with poor accessibility, and not only will you frustrate people with disabilities like visual impairment, but you’ll also struggle to rank as high in Google.

To curb those problems, make sure to harness all the options WordPress has for accessibility. Among other things, make sure you do the following:

• Make all your site text accessible to screen readers
• Use adequate color contrast across the site
• Don’t stuff your image alt text with keywords

7. Creating your sitemap

One of the WordPress SEO issues that can absolutely cripple your site traffic if you don’t address it is sitemap setup. A sitemap is just what it sounds like — a layout showing how all the pages on your site are connected.

By creating a sitemap and submitting it to Google, you allow it to find, crawl, and rank all the pages on your site. That means they’ll start showing up in search results much more quickly and ranking higher. Without a sitemap, Google won’t be sure which pages belong to your site, and many of them won’t get crawled.

8. Setting up your schema markup

Finally, be sure to use schema markup on your site. What is schema markup? Basically, it’s where you add code to each of your pages to tell Google what they’re about.

This has two benefits. First, it means Google knows which searches to rank your pages for, which helps you reach the right audience. And second, it allows Google to give your pages rich snippets in search results, which are results that feature more detailed info about the page and attract more clicks.

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We have over 28 years of experience with SEO and web development, so we know exactly how to get your site on Google’s good side and put it in front of users. When you partner with us for our SEO services, you won’t regret your decision.

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