Content management software can help even the most novice of webmasters create phenomenal websites. Whether it be functionality or aesthetics, these solutions have revolutionized the website game. Ultimately, complete newbies can create awesome websites in just a couple of hours. Arguably the single biggest driving force in the CMS game is WordPress, which offers an unprecedented number of plug-ins and themes.

Yet WordPress out-of-the-box doesn’t include all of the optimizations that brands want – especially as it pertains to SEO. To get the most search engine benefit out of your WordPress website, keep reading to find out about some simple tweaks that’ll amp up your SEO potential.

Add an XML Sitemap

In the old days, users needed a straightforward way to find content and pages on websites. While standard menus could be helpful, the concept of a sitemap was just as useful. Search engines also required this in order to properly scour each page on a website and index it in search results.

Today, search engines still rely upon proper navigation, with sitemaps offering the simplest solution. By creating an XML sitemap, you can ensure that you’re pinging URLs to search engines and subsequently submit its creation to search engines for optimal indexing.

Configure Link Structure Properly

Elements such as permalinks matter immensely in the world of SEO. After all, if users and search engines can’t find your content, it won’t be ranked prominently for very long. While the existence of valid links is very important, so is the need for using that real estate effectively.

By default, many content management solutions generate less-than-ideal link structures. This means you might be pinging URLs to search engines with a variety of random numbers or letters, the date it was published, or other information that – while maybe useful – isn’t the best link structure.

Be sure to adopt a permalink structure that includes keywords and (ideally) bases links on the name of each page or post.

Choose Between Tags and Categories

In order to extract maximum SEO benefit, the use of elements such as tags and categories are highly recommended. However, some websites are currently using both tags and categories, which can be conflicting for search engines.

Generally, it is advised to pick one or the other. If you are running a WordPress installation, then both options will be active by default (they are easy to enable and disable). Most will suggest that using categories is better than using tags, though there are situations for each.

Add a SEO Plugin

There are numerous SEO plugins available that can help optimize various segments of your website. Whether it be post titles, page descriptions or keyword inclusion, solutions such as Yoast SEO can help optimize – in some cases, automatically – content across the entirety of your website.

Many free solutions such as the aforementioned Yoast plugin are available and will also help you to better understand the dynamics of SEO across each page and post more effectively.

You can easily put these tips to work for you and extract maximum value from your SEO efforts. While improving SEO outcomes usually takes time, you can improve the trajectory almost immediately by adopting these simple solutions.

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