How to set SEO in WordPress

Start by installing an SEO plugin—Yoast SEO and Rank Math are the industry standards, though Ranktracker and SEMrush also offer WordPress integrations. Yoast is more beginner-friendly with its traffic light system, while Rank Math offers more advanced features like schema markup automation and better integration with Google Search Console. Once installed, configure your permalink structure before you start creating content. Go to Settings > Permalinks and choose the Post name option, which creates clean, keyword-friendly URLs like yoursite.com/article-title rather than yoursite.com/?p=123. This matters for both user experience and crawlability. Then set your site's base URL in the plugin settings and ensure you have a sitemap configured—most plugins generate this automatically, but verify it's accessible at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

Next, focus on on-page optimization fundamentals within the plugin. For each post or page, your plugin will guide you to include your focus keyword in the title tag, meta description, and first 100 words of content. The title tag should ideally be 50-60 characters, and your meta description around 155-160 characters—the plugin will flag if you're outside these ranges. Set your primary category and add tags strategically rather than treating them as throwaway fields. Internal linking is critical here; your plugin will suggest relevant older posts to link to, which distributes link equity throughout your site and helps establish topical authority.

Don't overlook technical SEO settings. In your plugin, ensure XML sitemaps are enabled, breadcrumb schema is activated, and you're removing thin content from search indexes. Most plugins let you set which post types and taxonomies appear in search results—typically you want to exclude tags and archives if they're thin. Connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics to the plugin so you can see search performance data directly in WordPress. Finally, set up a robots.txt file and check that your htaccess isn't blocking crawlers. Many WordPress hosts provide robots.txt templates, but you typically want to allow all crawlers unless you're specifically hiding sections. Test your setup with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test and Core Web Vitals assessment to catch any issues before they impact rankings.