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 reality is not quite so. Using WordPress for website building does not automatically make it SEO-friendly; you 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 OptimizationThis article provides a systematic understanding of how to perform SEO work for WordPress. If your website has been established for a long time and you are unsure whether it is SEO-friendly, then follow Naiba to check it together.

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. Therefore, first check the website's loading speed.

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

1. Website slow? 10 WordPress optimization methods to help you speed up
2. What is Website Speed Related To? 8 Aspects Affecting Slow Website Speed
3. The Simplest Method 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 sites will give your website a score. However, Naiba personally believes that the relationship between this score and the actual speed is not very trustworthy. Naiba prefers to believe in the actual user access speed. Usually, we directly use 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 where files had to be downloaded one by one in a queue. 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 does consume more resources, but its 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 a 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. However, this code must be added. There is a saying: blind faith in books is worse than having no books at all.Summary on Website SpeedSo, to judge how fast a website loads, Naiba recommends 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, it means your website can be normally opened and accessed, and its content viewed, whether on a mobile phone, tablet, or computer. It does not look like 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 browser window size on your computer and see if the website remains readable as the window size changes to determine if it is responsive design.Everyone knows that we are now in the mobile internet era. Even if you have a foreign trade website, you have to consider the mobile access experience. Fortunately, WordPress Theme templates in recent years are basically responsive. If yours is not a responsive Theme,go buy a responsive WordPress Themenow.

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. WordPress Best Permalink Settings_Which Pseudo-Static Rule is Better
2. Set separate Permalink URLs for different WordPress Post types

Naibabiji currently uses a custom format, but it is best to recommend everyone choose the post name or numeric format.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 URL will automatically become your Post title. For Chinese websites, using a Chinese Post title as the Permalink will look very ugly. For foreign trade websites, although the 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.Additionally, 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 diagram below.

No SEO Plugin installed

Foreign Trade Website BuildingSince then, Naiba has encountered many WordPress websites built by foreign trade professionals themselves or through web development companies. Many of these sites either have no SEO plugin installed or have multiple SEO plugins installed. Even those with SEO plugins are often not configured correctly.

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

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

The functions of SEO plugins are largely similar; there's no definitive conclusion that one is necessarily better than another. However, some advanced 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 for secure https connections, it's really somewhat unacceptable. A single browser showing an 'unsafe' warning can also affect your website users' confidence, not to mention conversions. Therefore, SSL security certificates are highly recommended for installation.

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 Security Warnings
4. Method for Adding 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 I specifically added for a client was criticized for looking like a template-built site, which is really disheartening T_T...

Comment moderation

If your website has the comment feature enabled, then 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 detrimental 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 Rankingso I won't elaborate further here. If you notice that when accessing your website, the browser tab displays 'HOME' or just the website name, then you definitely 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. This is ineffective for Google SEO; it's better to delete them early. Others might publish dozens of articles with different titles but centered on the same core content. This counts as duplicate content and is not beneficial for SEO; deletion is recommended.

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 articles under theGoogle SEOcategory.