Is Your WordPress Website SEO-Friendly? Website SEO Checklist

More and more people choose to useWordPress Website Building. One reason is that WordPress is suitable for beginners to learn website building on their own, and another reason is that WordPress is SEO-friendly. But is your website really SEO-friendly? The actual situation is not necessarily so; just because you use WordPress to build a website doesn't mean it's SEO-friendly. You still need to make some settings yourself to be truly SEO-friendly. In this article, Naiba will introduce how to perform an SEO check on WordPress. If you have just finished setting up your WordPress website, you can directly readWordPress SEO OptimizationAn article to systematically understand how to do WordPress SEO work. If your website has been established for a long time, but you don't know if it is SEO-friendly, then follow Naiba to check it out.

Slow website speed

Website speed has a significant impact on both website SEO and user experience. After all, no one wants to visit a website that takes forever to load. So, first, check the website's loading speed.

Regarding website speed, Naibabiji has previously shared the following articles:

1. Website running slow? 10 WordPress optimization methods to help you speed up
2. What Factors Affect Website Speed_8 Aspects That Impact Slow Website Performance
3. The simplest way to improve WordPress website speed and performance

Considering that most friends visiting Naibabiji areForeign Trade Website Building, many people use some online speed testing websites to test their website speed, such as: Pingdom, GTmetrix, and Google PageSpeed Insights. These speed testing websites will give your website a score. However, Naiba personally believes that the relationship between this score and the actual speed is not very reliable. Naiba prefers to believe in the actual user access speed. Usually, Naiba directly uses a browser (for foreign trade websites, test with a proxy) to see if the actual website loading speed gives the feeling of taking forever to load. As long as users actually access your website from a computer browser and the loading speed does not feel noticeably slower than other websites, then Naiba considers this website speed to be acceptable. Why is this the viewpoint?Because achieving a high score is very difficult for ordinaryself-taught website buildingusers, involving professional technical skills. At the same time, the scoring criteria of those testing websites are usually related to the size of website resources and the number of requests. Nowadays, servers basically have HTTP 2.0 technology enabled, which allows downloading multiple files simultaneously, unlike the old HTTP 1.0, which required queuing downloads one by one. Therefore, merging requests is not necessary. InWP Rocket's settings, there is also this suggestion. Generally, foreign trade enterprise websites have a homepage with a slideshow plugin. This plugin indeed consumes more resources, but the effect is more attractive than a single banner image. Reasonable use of some effects can enhance the overall website effect and improve user visual experience. To get a high score, adopting purely static page design and reducing image usage are actions that oppose user experience. Naiba does not recommend doing this. Additionally, if the website runs Google ads and uses Google Analytics code, it will also affect the score and website speed. But this code you have to add. There is a saying: blind faith in books is worse than no books.Summary on website speedSo, to judge how fast a website loads, Naiba suggests you directly access it with a browser and follow your actual feeling. If it is noticeably slower than other websites, then your website is indeed slow. As for the scores from those speed testing websites, if conditions permit, you can try to improve them, or you can simply ignore them. You can check the leading websites in your industry and see their scores; they probably won't be too high either. To improve website speed, the most direct method is to switch to a server with better performance. Beginners are advised to start withWordPress Shared Hostingand consider transitioning toVPSafter becoming familiar.

Non-responsive design

Responsive design is explicitly recommended by Google as a web design direction and is SEO-friendly.What is responsive design?Simply put, your website can be normally opened and accessed, and its content can be viewed, whether on a mobile phone, tablet, or computer. It does not appear as the desktop version on mobile, requiring zooming, nor does it redirect to a mobile website when accessed on a phone. You can directly adjust the size of your computer browser window to see if the website remains readable as the window size changes to determine if it is responsive design.It is well known that we are now in the mobile internet era. Even if you have a foreign trade website, you have to consider the mobile access effect. Fortunately, WordPress Theme templates in recent years are basically responsive. If yours is not a responsive Theme,go buy a responsive WordPress Theme.

Confusing URL structure

The URL structure here mainly refers to WordPress Permalinks. Setting reasonable Permalinks helps with website SEO.

Regarding Permalinks, articles previously written by Naibabiji:

1. Best WordPress Permalink Settings_Which Pseudo-Static Rule is Better
2. Set separate permalink structures for different WordPress post types

Naibabiji currently uses a custom form, but it is best to recommend everyone to choose the post name or numeric form.Besides setting Permalinks, there are also URL settings for Posts and Pages. By default, if you choose the Post name format for Permalinks, the Post will automatically become your Post title. For Chinese websites, using Chinese Post titles as Permalinks will look very ugly. For foreign trade websites, although Post titles are in English, they often result in URLs that are too long.Google SEONowadays, short URLs are preferred, so it's best to manually modify the URL.Also, some websites have overall page structures that are relatively chaotic and unreasonably set. The conventional page structure for an enterprise website should look like the image below.

No SEO Plugin installed

Foreign Trade Website BuildingSince then, Naiba has come into contact with many WordPress websites built by foreign trade people themselves or by website building companies. Many of these websites either did not install SEO Plugins or installed multiple SEO Plugins. Those that installed SEO Plugins did not configure them correctly.

Regarding WordPress SEO Plugins, Naibabiji has shared the following articles:

1. Recommended WordPress Best Chinese Website SEO Plugin: Smart SEO Tool
2. Advanced WordPress SEO Plugin Rank Math Usage Tutorial (New Version)
3. Free Premium SEO Plugin The SEO Framework Download and Usage Tutorial
4. How to set keywords for a WordPress website? Recommended SEO plugins
5. Yoast SEO Chinese Premium Cracked Version Download and Usage Tutorial (Updated)
6. Foreign Trade Website Post Keyword Layout Method: It's Not Just About Turning the Yoast SEO Indicator Green.

The functions of SEO plugins are largely similar; there is no definitive conclusion that one is necessarily better than another. However, some premium SEO plugins come with additional SEO suggestions and statistics. You only need to install one SEO plugin at a time; do not install multiple. After installing an SEO plugin, some settings are usually required, such as the website's title and description.Website Sitemap。

Use HTTPS secure connection

If a website still does not use an SSL security certificate to establish a secure HTTPS connection, it's really somewhat unacceptable. A browser displaying a 'Not Secure' warning alone can undermine your website visitors' confidence, let alone affect conversions. Therefore, it is highly recommended to install an SSL security certificate.

Regarding SSL security certificates, Naibabiji has shared the following content:

1. SiteGround Free SSL Certificate Setup Tutorial (Applicable to New Panel)
2. Baota Panel SSL Configuration Tutorial_HTTPS Certificate Renewal Failure Solutions
3. Website HTTPS Not Showing Green Lock_Solutions for SSL Certificate Showing as Unsafe
4. How to Add an SSL Certificate to a Website on DirectAdmin Shared Hosting

Enable breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation allows visitors or search engines to clearly understand their location on your website. It helps search engines comprehend your site's structure and hierarchy and can also appear in search results. It looks roughly like the example below.The breadcrumb navigation previously specifically added for a client was criticized for looking like a template-built site, so disheartening T_T...

Comment moderation

If your website has the comment feature enabled, there are likely many comments in the backend. Without a doubt, for websites with little traffic, 99% of them are spam comments. If you have opened comments without requiring moderation, these spam comments are entirely harmful and offer no benefit to your website's SEO.

Set correct titles and keywords

This issue is described in detail in the articleHow to Write Webpage Titles and Descriptions to Improve Google SEO Ranking, so it won't be elaborated further here. If you find that when accessing your website, the browser tab displays 'HOME' or just the website name, then you certainly haven't set the correct title and keywords.

Remove meaningless and duplicate content

Many people hear online that maintaining a website update frequency is good for SEO, so they frantically publish meaningless articles or products. For Google SEO, this is ineffective; it's better to delete them early. Others might publish dozens of articles with different titles but centered around the same core content. This counts as duplicate content, which is not beneficial for SEO and is recommended to be deleted.

Summary

The above are the main checkpoints to determine if your WordPress website is SEO-friendly. Of course, SEO is a relatively systematic project, not just limited to the tasks mentioned above. For more detailed SEO techniques, please refer to the articles under theGoogle SEOcategory.