For years, WordPress has been the most popular content management system in the world. With more than one in four websites utilizing WordPress to serve up content, it is no surprise that there are countless resources and plugins available to bloggers and site owners. While these resources can provide immense benefit, some aspects of WordPress are easier said than done.

In the world of SEO specifically, plugins alone won’t deliver great results. A sharp mind and a keen eye for details are also necessary to ensure your website is running flawlessly. Today, we’ll examine some mistakes that can cost you if they are present on your WordPress installation or pages.

Poor Theme Choice

There are countless themes available for WordPress, ranging in price from free to thousands of dollars. Each theme is optimized for various and specific purposes – but it’s also worth remembering that anybody can create and upload a theme. Not all themes are created equally – especially in the case of SEO.

Use of the wrong theme can result in your website pinging servers with poorly-optimized code and formatting, which can be detrimental to your SEO efforts. As such, it is crucial to verify whether or not the theme in question actually aligns with your brand’s needs and provides an efficient platform through which SEO can be used.

Improper Domain Usage

WordPress offers free subdomains for all of its users, making it easy to create and host a website. The only problem with this is that it hampers your brand’s SEO potential and can leave the wrong impression with visitors.

Not only do visitors expect brands to have a professional look and feel in terms of website creation, brand awareness is also important. When operating from a WordPress-provided subdomain, your brand lacks the ability to ensure both of these concepts. As such, it is highly recommended that you pay for hosting and a unique domain, which will provide both a sense of professionalism and a stand-alone opportunity for improved long-term SEO.

Unoptimized Multimedia

WordPress makes it incredibly simple to upload images, files and videos. This is a very useful function of the platform, and one that makes it so popular with bloggers and webmasters. However, this ease of use hides an underlying problem: WordPress doesn’t auto-optimize this content for you.

Everything from meta data to file size can be causing your website to underperform if you’re using an out-of-the-box version of WordPress. Thankfully, there are plugins available that’ll ensure you’re pinging servers with smaller files (which increases page loading speeds) and that each piece of content is optimized with descriptions, tags and other vital components.

Slow Pages

Speaking of page speed, all too many WordPress websites pay no attention to how quickly their pages load. This is a huge component of successful SEO: failure to focus on this can cause high bounce rates, a loss in customers and poorer rankings in search.

The default version of WordPress isn’t exactly known for its lightning speed, so you’ll want to look for optimization solutions that improve the process. While there are plugins to help with load times, also keep this in mind: the more installed plugins on your site, the slower all of your pages will load.

These four mistakes can individually cost your website a lot: combined, they can spell disaster for your efforts. By knowing what to look out for and what to fix, you can produce objectively better results in SEO and beyond.