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SEO is an important topic right now, and there are tons of articles out there with tips and tricks. But many people overlook common mistakes that can happen with WordPress sites. It’s important to be aware of these errors before you dive into SEO strategies. If you’re spending time and money on SEO without fixing these issues, you might be wasting your effort.

The good news is that it’s usually easy to avoid most WordPress SEO mistakes if you know what to watch for. Want to make sure you’re not making these mistakes on your WordPress site? Check out this list to learn how to avoid them!

1. Not Paying Attention to Speed

One common mistake in SEO is not focusing on how quickly your site loads. The faster your site, the better it ranks on Google. Page speed is now a key factor for Google’s search rankings. To keep your site showing up in search results, make sure your pages load quickly. Google PageSpeed Insights is a handy tool that shows you how fast your site is and what you can do to make it faster.

A simple tip to speed up your site is to optimize your images. Large images can slow down your site. Reducing their size can make your site load faster. If you use WordPress, there are plugins that can help you with this.

Another tip for WordPress users is to review your active plugins. Are you using all of them? Maybe some can be replaced with a single plugin that offers the same functions. Generally, fewer plugins mean a faster site. Stick to only what you need.

2.Weak External Linking:

External links are very important for your website, just like internal links are. To put it simply, external links are links that go from your site to other websites. They help build your site’s reputation and make it look more trustworthy to search engines like Google. If you link to well-known, reliable websites, it can improve your site’s credibility and help it rank better in search results.

Here’s how to use external links effectively:

1. Link to Reliable Sites: Choose websites that are reputable and have good authority. For instance, if you’re writing about financial topics, link to well-known financial sites.
2. Open Links in New Tabs: Make sure external links open in a new tab or window. This keeps users on your site and makes it easy for them to come back.

To help you find good links, you can use these tools:

• Google Search Console: Helps you track how your site appears in Google search results and find linking opportunities.
• Google Keyword Planner: Find relevant keywords and see where you might add external links.
• SEOWorkers Tool: Offers SEO insights and can help you find useful external links.
• Woorank: Gives a detailed review of your website, including tips for improving your links.
• Mozbar Anchor Text Generator: Helps you check the anchor text in your links to make sure they are relevant and effective.

3. Publishing Low-Quality Content

As a content writer, it’s important to remember that your primary audience is your readers, not just search engines. High-quality content should always be your top priority. To ensure your content stands out, it must be both unique and informative. 

If your content doesn’t address your visitors’ needs or queries, they will quickly return to the search results, which signals to search engines that your content is subpar or irrelevant. To improve your content’s effectiveness, follow these guidelines:

1. Focus on Quality: Ensure your content is well-written and valuable to your audience. Avoid generic or superficial information.
2. Be Informative: Provide useful, in-depth information that answers your readers’ questions and adds value to their experience.
3. Improve Readability: Make your content easy to read and understand. Use clear headings, short paragraphs, and bullet points where appropriate.
4. Match Visitor Queries: Address the specific questions and needs your audience is searching for. Perform keyword research to align your content with what users are looking for.
5. Maintain a Minimum Length: Aim for at least 300 words to provide sufficient detail and depth on the topic.

4. Not Submitting an XML Sitemap:

An XML sitemap helps search engines find and index all the content on your WordPress site. This makes it more likely for your pages, posts, and media to show in search results, leading to more traffic and better SEO rankings. 

The sitemap lists everything on your site in an organized way and provides extra details like the last update time and how important each page is. If you don’t create and submit your sitemap, your SEO efforts might not work as well.

How to Submit an XML Sitemap in WordPress

1. Install a Sitemap Plugin: The easiest way to create and submit an XML sitemap in WordPress is by using a plugin. Popular options include Yoast SEO and Google XML Sitemaps.
2. Generate Your Sitemap: Once you’ve installed your chosen plugin, it will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your site. You can usually find it by adding /sitemap.xml to the end of your domain name (e.g., yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml).
3. Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines: Go to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap. This helps search engines quickly find and use your sitemap to index your content.
4. Monitor and Update: Regularly check your sitemap to ensure it’s up-to-date and reflects any changes you make to your site. Most plugins will automatically update your sitemap as you add new content.

By following these steps, you’ll make it easier for search engines to find and index your WordPress site, ultimately leading to more traffic and better search engine rankings. Need help? Contact us for expert WordPress SEO services!

5. Ignoring Mobile

The common SEO mistake is not focusing on mobile. Google now uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it checks the mobile version of your site to decide your ranking. If your site works great on desktop but isn’t mobile-friendly, it will hurt your rankings.

To check if your site is mobile-friendly, use Google’s mobile-friendly test. But don’t stop there. Also, visit your site on your own phone. Click on buttons, links, and images to see if everything works smoothly. Check how easy it is to make a purchase and if all pages display correctly.

Since many users browse on mobile devices, it’s important to ensure your site offers a good experience on all devices.

How to Solve Mobile SEO Issues

1. Use Responsive Design: Ensure your website uses a responsive design, which automatically adjusts the layout to fit different screen sizes. Most modern WordPress themes are responsive, but you can check your theme’s settings or consult with your developer.
2. Improve Mobile Navigation: Make sure your site’s navigation is easy to use on mobile devices. Menus should be simple and accessible, and buttons should be large enough to click easily without zooming in.
3. Check Mobile Usability: Regularly test your site on various mobile devices to ensure everything works as expected. Look out for issues like text that’s too small to read, buttons that are hard to click, or content that doesn’t fit the screen.
4. Optimize Touch Elements: Ensure that all clickable elements (buttons, links) are easy to tap. They should be adequately spaced to avoid accidental clicks.
5. Test for Mobile Friendliness: Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to analyze your site. This tool provides feedback on how your site performs on mobile devices and highlights areas for improvement.

6. Haven’t Set Up Permalinks

Permalinks are the permanent URLs (web addresses) for your WordPress pages and posts. They help both visitors and search engines understand what your pages are about. If you don’t set up permalinks correctly, your URLs might look confusing or not very helpful for SEO (search engine optimization).

Here’s how to fix it:

1. Go to Permalink Settings: In your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings and then click on Permalinks.
2. Choose a URL Structure: You’ll see several options for how your URLs can be structured. You can choose to include the date, post name, or numbers. For the best results, choose a structure that includes both the category and the post name. This will make your URLs clearer and help with SEO.
   For example, you can set your URLs to look like this: sitename.com/blog/post-name. This setup includes “blog” as the category and “post-name” as the title of the post.
3. Match Keywords: Make sure the keywords in your permalink are also in your page or post title. This consistency helps Google understand that your page is relevant to those keywords, which can improve your search engine rankings.

By setting up permalinks correctly, you make your URLs more readable and help both visitors and search engines understand your content better. Have questions? Visit our FAQ page for answers!

7. Didn’t Optimize Your Images

Many website owners forget to optimize their images. This means not setting a relevant title and alt text (which is a description of the picture) for your images. If you don’t do this, search engines won’t be able to understand what your images are about.

For people with visual impairments or those using mobile devices, if an image can’t be displayed, they will see the alt text instead. This makes it important to provide meaningful descriptions.

Here’s how you can optimize your images in WordPress:

1. Use Image Optimization Plugins: There are plugins available that can automatically optimize your images. For example, you can use reSmush.it Image Optimizer or Compress JPEG & PNG Images. These plugins will help reduce the file size of your images, making your website load faster.
2. Add Alt Text with Plugins: The Quick Alt Editor plugin adds an alt text field to the images in your Media Library. This makes it easier to add and edit alt text for your images.
3. Learn More About Image Optimization: Check out our guide on optimizing images for additional tips and techniques to make sure your images are accessible to everyone.

8. Not Removing Broken Links

Broken links are links on your website that lead to pages that no longer exist, showing a “404 not found” error. These broken links can be links to other pages on your own site or to other websites. It’s normal for websites to have some broken links, but it’s important to check and fix them regularly so your visitors and search engines have a good experience.

Here’s how you can handle and fix broken links on your WordPress site:

Use a Plugin to Find Broken Links: There are plugins available that can help you find broken links on your website. If you have an SEO plugin, it might include this feature. If not, you can install a plugin called Broken Link Checker. 

This plugin will scan your entire site and give you a list of broken links. You can then look through this list and fix or remove the links that don’t work.

Check Regularly: Even if you use a plugin, it’s a good idea to check for broken links from time to time. Keeping your links working properly helps ensure that your website runs smoothly and your visitors don’t run into problems. Fixing broken links also helps your site perform better in search engines.