WordPress is already well optimized for SEO in its basic form, but we can take it one step further by implementing a number of methods. A common way is to set up friendly permalink structure. You should check the default permalink structure and make sure that it doesn’t contain random symbols, numbers and letters. A SEO friendly permalink should have a straightforward structure, such as “yourdomain.com/post-title”. With this arrangement, you should be able to ensure that primary keywords will always be included in the URL and it will become more SEO friendly. You may find a permalink format that includes date and month, in many cases, this information is irrelevant for your SEO efforts. In many cases, handling SEO is complicated enough and you need to make it straightforward whenever possible.
In some cases, you already use permalink structure that’s less friendly to SEO effort and changing it will result in 404 Errors with all your current inbound links. It means that you will need to start from scratch with your SEO effort. The solution is to use manual redirection and editing .htaccess won’t work, because WordPress may automatically rewrite it. Create permanent redirect for each page, so it will become more SEO friendly. Spiders will soon update the index with new URL of your webpage. It is also important that you use proper H2 tags, because they have some SEO significance, especially by emphasizing on the keywords of your webpages. Always choose good title and keywords for your H2 tags.
You may make your post appears more organized by adding <li> tags in proper locations. Also, you should use H2 tags carefully and use them for sections, like “Leave a comment”, because it doesn’t contribute to the overall content. These tags should be used for anything significant in your WordPress post. Your goal is to ensure that search engine bots are aware about the focus of your webpage. You should also consider using related-post plugin, which will boost your SEO effort further. People will be encouraged to see other interested and related webpages in your website and the overall page views will increase. Because each page seems to have increased views, it is another strong SEO indicator and spiders will see your webpages as more reliable, which contribute to higher rank.
In some cases, instead of competing, it is better to work together with websites that have related topics. Direct link exchange with them may not be an appropriate thing to do, because it will be easily detected by search engines. As an alternative, you may swap original, unpublished content and include URL in each. To make things look more natural, both contents shouldn’t be posted at the same day. You may need to wait at least a week to post the other content, so it will look much more natural. You need to make a network in groups, forums and other online platforms, so they will know about your website and your quality content.