is my WordPress website not ranking high? By InMotion Hosting //

You have likely started to research SEO best practices if you want your website to rank high in search engines.

You may have learned all you need about technical SEO but your WordPress site is still not ranking well. This is why you want to find the root cause.

WordPress websites are the most searched for CMS globally.

Continue reading to learn the top reasons WordPress sites don’t rank and how you can fix them.

Search engines should not be able to find your site.

It might surprise some users that WordPress installs block search engines by default.

To prevent search engines from finding a site that has not been fully constructed, the Search Engine Viability setting is available in WordPress. Once your WordPress site is ready for public, you can easily disable this setting.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard to turn off this setting. Locate Settings in the left menu. Next, navigate to .

Scroll down on the Reading webpage to locate the Search Engine Viabilitysetting.

Check the Search Engine Viabilitybox, and make sure you Save All Changes.

Select the best keywords to target

If your site isn’t ranking as high as you would like, it should be researched to find content that matches your industry.

Keywords help engines find your content and determine where to index it. Your keyword research phase will be easier if you are clear about your company’s goals and target keywords.

It’s possible that keywords you target may be used by companies in your industry. Include competitor analysis in your research.

You can conduct competitor analysis using a variety of free and paid tools, such as Semrush or Moz. These tools allow you to conduct content audits and find out where your competitors are excelling.

A keyword gap analysis will reveal the sharing and missing keywords that you and your competitor are using. You can optimize your content with shared keywords, and identify new topics by looking for missing keywords.

Remember that adding one keyword to your website will not increase its ranking. For relevant and thorough content, you will need to make sure your company follows SEO best practice.

Google’s search console will show you how it sees your website

To understand how Google crawls your website and what keywords it shows up for, create a Google Search console account.

You can check Google Core Web vitals and the URL Inspector tool to see if your site is being indexed.

Inspector for URL and page

The URL inspector tool gives you insight into your indexed webpages.

The inspector will notify you if there are any warnings or errors in markup. The inspector will also explain why the error occurred.

You can also see when your page was last crawled and indexed.

Google Core Web Vitals

SEO optimization of your WordPress site will be a key part of your website’s SEO strategy.

Google Core Web Vitals gives you detailed information about any site issues.

When making changes to your theme or plugins, keep in mind the results of your website testing. Your site optimization will be affected by any changes you make to content.

InMotion Hosting offers premium web hosting and tools for over 20 years. InMotion’s new managed WordPress plans will optimize your website’s performance.

A fully isolated VPS will give users 40x faster WordPress hosting speeds. Users will enjoy dedicated resources, caching profiles and the power Redis. A server designed to speed up WordPress will improve Core Web Vital scores.

Themes and plugins

WordPress plugins and themes are WordPress’s bread and butter. However, they have a greater impact on SEO rankings than users might think.

To understand the impact of these factors on your website’s performance, you can use a performance testing tool.

Theme solutions

Although thousands of themes can be used for any type of website, not all are suitable for search engines.

It is a good idea to test the theme’s effect on your Google Core Web Vitals.

A demo website for a theme you are interested in can be used to test its optimization.

To review the site’s performance and SEO readiness, copy the URL from the demo site to Google PageSpeed Insights.

It is important to remember that your website will probably have more content than any demo site. It is important to check if there are any issues with the theme before installing it.

Page builders are another option to consider when designing or updating your website. These plugins allow you to build your website with a visual drag and drop interface.

These editors can reduce your Web Core Vitals score due to their size. Gutenberg, WordPress’ native block editor, can be used to speed up your site while still maintaining the aesthetics of your theme.

WordPress plugins

Many users first install SEO plugins on their WordPress sites.

Before installing your favorite plugin, here are some things to look out for:

• You can customize metadata and open graph tags.
• Supports structured or schema data
• Scores your keyword density.
• Your content quality, readability, and internal linking are graded.

Yoast SEO and All In-One SEO are recommended plugins for SEO.

For advanced tools to track and monitor your SEO, we also recommend the tools mentioned in the keyword research section.

Caching plugins

Some of the most popular plugins to add to your WordPress installation are cache plugins.

Caching plugins improve performance by showing users a previously saved version of site content. This reduces the time it takes to connect to the server.

Some caching plugins only focus on caching. Some will include settings for CDNs and minification of files.

W3 Maximum Cache WPSuper Cache, WPOptimize are recommended plugins for caching.

To find the right plugin for you, we recommend that you try out several plugins. You should only test one plugin at a time as you may experience compatibility and slower speeds.

Final thoughts

Sometimes, going back to basics is the best way to solve problems. SEO is no exception.

Your search engine ranking will improve if your website is properly set up and rich in quality content. Your website should be ready for any situation. InMotionCentral will revolutionize how you use WordPress.

Search Engine Land – The first post Why my WordPress site is not ranking? was published on Search Engine Land .