WordPress SEO Tips – 4 Mistakes to Avoid

One of the easiest ways to get your feet wet when setting up a website  for the first time all by yourself is to take advantage of the literally thousands of free (and paid!) WordPress themes. They are easy to set up and almost always user-friendly. Unfortunately, for those trying to monetize their sites it takes some understanding of search engine optimization, SEO, and this is where they need a bit of expert help. If you are setting up your first-ever WordPress site, here are four mistakes to avoid.

WordPress SEO Tips

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1. Failing to Adequately Research Keywords

It is common for new website owners to target in on keywords that are either too competitive or those which no one searches for. Keyword research is vital and if you don’t hire a pro for any other reason, make sure you find someone to help you target keywords that are relevant to your business with just the right amount of competition. Companies like Reality Checker SEO Las Vegas can help you outrank the competition in your market through strategic use of just the right keywords that will gain rank and of course, traffic!

2. Keyword Stuffing

Another common mistake is something referred to as keyword stuffing. This is when you use too many keywords in the same piece of content. Google frowns upon this and it may just work against you rather than for you. The object of building a website that brings in money is to get visitors there ready to buy. This is done through gaining visibility with the search engines but if you get penalized and Google fails to ‘see’ you due to keyword stuffing, you’ll never make it to the coveted first page of the search results. This means no one will see you and that’s not good when you need traffic.

3. Not Using Keywords in URLs

One of the biggest WordPress SEO mistakes is not using the main keyword you are targeting in your site or page URL. The easiest way to avoid this? Use the keyword in your title! For example, the title of this article begins with WordPress SEO tips and that is the keyword we want users to find. We want to help new users learn how to build a profitable site, so that term will invariably be in the WordPress URL.

4. Changing Site URL

You’ve finally built a great site and decided you just don’t like the name or you want to change URLs within the site for internal pages. Before changing anything it would be to your advantage to do some research! A few things can happen here. If you set up a new site without taking down the first and simply move the content over, you will have duplicate content which breaks a cardinal rule of Google. Also, if you go changing URLs by site names, you will invariably lose any traffic you have built because Google will not have indexed anything yet. Here again, before changing any URLs, get some expert advice.

These, then, are the four most common and often the worst SEO mistakes made by new users and ones you should avoid at all costs. It may cost a bit to get expert help, but if you want to build a profitable site, it pays in the long run. Avoid these mistakes and you should be off to a really good start. Good luck and have fun with WordPress!