WordPress SEO for 2026- How can we get our WordPress website on page one of Google?

Date: 09/01/2026

Author: Ryan Walsh

Subject: WordPress SEO

WordPress is quite simply the most popular CMS platform in the entire world. WordPress actually accounts for 43.2% websites globally and therefore is a CMS that countless business relies on for their website to function.

In a world where business now need to compete for viability in AI answers, AI Overviews, in organic rankings as well as local business results its important that you choose the right CMS.

Its one of our personal favourite CMS is work on, if you were to ask most agencies which CMS they prefer, often WordPress is cited.

However, what is important to remember is that practically any type of CMS, that’s content management system could potentially rank number 1 on Google.

Any of type of content management system could also be cited by an LLM and be frequently mentioned as a citation.

Therefore, the CMS is just wanting bricks are to a brick-layer or a construction business. They can be used to create something truly vast and massive, or just a small structure. WordPress gives you the building blocks that you can use to build your online business success, yet how vast that business becomes, how much viability the website obtains, well that boils down to often a decision regarding which SEO agency you plan on using.

It comes down the quality and authority of the website

If your currently sipping copious amounts of espresso and thinking, what CMS should I invest in for my business?

Well, sure it’s an important consideration to make.
Choose the wrong CMS and you could be locked into a system that’s incredibly difficult to optimise moving forwards.

However, it’s important to note that the CMS is only going to serve the business well if its placed into the hands of an experienced SEO consultant or agency. The website will only rank high on Google with it has well written, well structured content marketing. Then everyman and his dog believes that they are the best at what they do, so, then how does Google decipher how important a business is?

Well, that’s comes to the authority aspect, how authoritative is the website?
For it to be an authority, it has to have a lot powerful links, mentions, and also be an established brand or as SEO consultants refer to as an “entity” in the semantic web.

Now, we know that this is a lot to take in and digest, but it’s important to give you some practical content. That sure choosing right CMS is important, but that’s just the first in many important decisions along the road of getting your company onto page one of Google.

 

Table of contents:

• What exactly is WordPress SEO?
• Why is content marketing such an important part of the SEO process?
• Why is both external and internal linking such an important part of the SEO process?
• Can you tell us bit more about why the quality of the SEO is so important?
• What exactly is WordPress technical SEO?
• Can WordPress plugins help with the SEO process

 

What exactly is WordPress SEO?

Whether it’s an LLM, Google’s AI Overviews or ChatGPT an answer to a question will have originated from reading text. The text quite simply gets read by a bot and then inputted to an algorithm.

It’s the algorithm that basically decides how good an answer that page is to a question.

For example, Google’s complex algorithm looks at over 200 data points to fathom how good that page is and where it should rank in Google’s index.

For example, Google’s algorithm will ask the following questions:

– Google EEAT- How much expertise, knowledge, wisdom does the author have over that particular subject they are writing about
– Google RankBrain- when the business gets a visitor, how long is there interest kept for, what is the dwell time of the page?
– How important is that page? How many incoming backlinks does that particular page have?

 

What SEO advantages does WordPress offer?

It used to be the case that for the slightest web design amendment a business would have to contact their web designer. WordPress changed this for the better, its now a CMS where someone with no coding knowledge can simply make web design changes.

For example, plugins can be integrated into WordPress in a matter of seconds to help the owner to customise and make changes to the website. These plugins are sometimes offered for free and sometimes are paid for. More often than not the WP plugins work on the basis of offering a version for free and also a paid for version as well. This is exactly how Yoast SEO works, and its one of the most popular WordPress plugins on the market.

Plugins are just aspect of what makes WordPress such as good CMS option- here are some more reasons to choose WordPress:

XML Sitemaps can easily add
Internal links can be easily added
Content marketing can be easily added and updated
What are the main areas that we concentrate on when improving our WordPress SEO

 

Keywords

Without good definition and application of the right keywords, well, your website simply won’t appear for the terms that you want it to.

You could be some circumstances offering quality advice, yet because of the way the page is constructed and set out, it could just be a sheer massive block of text.

Google and the LLMS need certain cues for example from H1-H6 tags, from a page title, from also for example the alt text to gain an understanding of what the page is selling.

Therefore, is an SEO agency’s role to sprinkle this information throughout the page. You don’t want to over do it however, this is a common mistake, especially when a business is first investing in a website. What they often do is, over optimise the website using the keywords in a way which is described as keyword stuffing.

Now instead of keyword stuffing which excessively mentions the same keywords over and over again instead you should add the keywords in more white hat friendly way.

 

Structure

The structure of the page is important. You want to add as much detail and information as you can in order to answer the shopper’s question.

However, at the same time, you want to use page structure, in terms of page titles to ensure that you split the text into relevant sections.

 

Google EEAT and Content Marketing

Using Google EEAT, you want to convey in the text that you are an expert. Whether your giving tips on organic dog food, or perhaps which is most luxurious car of 2026, you need to convey that you’re an expert on this subject.

Now to do that you need to think about Google EEAT.
In terms of Google EEAT, you need to think about how you show in the text that you’re an expert, you have experience of what your writing about, as well as why you’re an authority. You also have to make the information accurate as well.

 

Link Building

Link building, regardless of which CMS you choose, whether it be WordPress, Drupal or Joomla for that website to rank high in Google’s organic results, the pages will need backlinks. The backlinks should come from high quality and leading websites. This website will have strong DA score, therefore if they link to your website, plus the link is also set as do-follow, then this can send link equity causing that page to rank higher.

 

Using WordPress for local SEO

Perhaps one of the most commonly uses of WordPress is by local businesses. WordPress is free, the premium themes can be bought, however the cost is very low. This means that a business can obtain a high-quality content management system for very little in the way of expenditure.

And this is why so many businesses, local companies use WordPress.

Here’s how you can use WordPress in order to improve your local SEO. In matter of fact around 80% of shoppers use Google to find a local company.

 

Google Map Pack

Although a Google Business account is created separately from your WordPress website, the two need to tie-in with each other.

The reason is because of NAP information. Google will crawl and index the NAP information on your website’s footer or on the contact page.

This simply means that Google will use Googlebot to crawl the name, address and the phone number of the business. Then it will cross check this with the Google Business account.

This will be used to ensure that the NAP information matches. For example, does the NAP information that is on the footer of the WordPress website, does that match, is that the same as the businesses Google Business account?

If it does match completely the same, then what this tells Google is that the business is actually more likely to be based at that location.

 

Near me questions

If you partner with a really and switched on SEO agency, what they will do is often craft content marketing that starts to answer commonly asked questions regarding your products or the services you sell. WordPress is Brillant for this as built into its CMS is a really good text editor.

Now, what this allows you to do is to craft content marketing to start to address local “near me searches”. For example, imagine how effective a piece of content marketing would be for a wedding dress company. For example, in the content marketing they could address how the fitting procedure works, how long it takes to obtain the dress as well as other questions such as “who offers tailored wedding dresses near me”.

 

Keywords

Keyword research is quite an intricate process in itself.

Before you even start designing that WordPress website, what you need to carry out is some keyword research.

Use a good quality tool, such as Ahrefs, Moz Pro.

Start then to have a look at the keyword difficulty.

How hard would be to rank on page one of Google for that term. Your appointed agency would be able to help you to analyse that and then come up with a set of keywords that you could start to optimise your website for. Some businesses also ask their agency to create a content calendar and to have the copywriters write the text.

This means that the copywriters’ efforts will be used to target a range of different keywords.

 

Organic Results

One of the main reasons our team love working with WordPress is very simple, it allows the SEO strategist to adjust and fine-tune the following areas:

 

URL slug / extension

WordPress makes it particularly simple and effortless to modify and change the URL extension.
This is commonly referred to as the URL slug, what it can do is give the search engines such as Bing and also Google a very good idea of what that page is about.

For example, let’s say the page URL slug extension states / Bosch-Window-Wipers-Ford
Instantly through very minimal effort you have helped the search engines, Googlebot for example to crawl and index the XML sitemap, see instantly that there’s a new URL that’s referred to with the SEO keywords included can be an effective way of informing the search engines such Google what that page is about.

 

The blog posts

Adding blog posts is an incredibly important way of crafting and sculpting your website. It’s a way of offering advice in regards to questions that are asked about your product or service.

As you answer more and more of these questions, you start to gather more visitors, more of an audience to your business. They may return from time to time as they see that your website is a place to gain high quality information. As they do Google Analytics sees that the traffic is increasing, plus that a large amount of these are returning visitors. Which shows that you are managing to attract more visitors, but also make them want to return because the information you are offering is good quality.

Use Google Analytics therefore to monitor incoming visitor numbers, yet also pay particular attention to how many returning visitors do you have?

If don’t have many returning visitors, then start to consider how you can further improve your returning visitor numbers. For example, perhaps your WordPress SEO needs to improve that bit more?

Perhaps it’s more to do with the overall user experience?

How can you improve the design and the U.X of your WordPress website?

Should you have bought a different theme?

Is the WordPress hosting that you are using too slow?

Therefore, you have to consider that WordPress is a fantastic CMS, yet its only as good and as effective as the design that you use.
If the design means that websites difficult use, full of glitches, and is very slow, this is going to offer a very poor user experience. So even though the website might be built on the WordPress CMS, its final design that’s used could be low quality.
If the user experience is poor, then this simply that the dwell time will be low. This means that website is likely not to rank on page one of

Google.

 

The alt text

The alt text is important; it simply is used often with just a few words of text to describe what the picture is.

For example, if your selling lets say a certain brand of bike, and model. Now a lot people may want to purchase that brand of bike and model, so why not add that information directly into the alt text. This will then be crawled and indexed by Googlebot, which will know that the product that’s being shown is a make and model of bike.

The alt text is therefore important, don’t just upload pictures of your stock and make the picture description just random text or numbers.

Instead use the alt text as an opportunity for you to better inform Google what products or services your business is selling.

 

The Meta title and description

The meta title and the meta description is the same a physical store front- let us explain what we mean by that.

If a store front is well set out, well organised its enticing.

Your going to want to step inside, and start browsing the stock.
A good shop front therefore brings in more shoppers.

Now a top SEO agency well they understand that a well optimised WordPress meta title and meta description can have a similar effect. A well written and optimised meta title can attract the attention of a shopper; therefore, it can obtain more clicks.
By using Yoast SEO, you can customise the meta title and meta description simply. This can better inform the shopper regarding what the page is about. For example, if the customer wanted buy let’s say a chain saw, if they see the brand they want to buy, accompanied by a “free next delivery” offer, then that might be all that is needed to attract that shopper to the page.

However, without optimising that text, that simply would have happened, the sale could have therefore been lost.

 

The H1-H6 tags

The great part about using WordPress, is that built into the Dashboard, is a text editor. The text editor really hasn’t changed much over the last 10 years, but what allows is for a business to simply add H1-H6 tags very quickly. This helps to better structure the text, giving Googlebot as well as the LLM’s such as ChatGPT a much clearer and better understanding of what that page is about and what its selling.

 

Good use of internal links

Internal links are sign signposts, just as signposts help you to better navigate a city, they can also be used in the form of internal links. This helps a shopper to be directed to the page or the information that they want.

By doing this you are helping the shopper to get to the item or service that they want to buy. You therefore increasing the number of page visits by a shopper, which is analysed by Google Analytics. They will notice that for example, in regards to your e-commerce website, your attracting more page visits, therefore the shopper is more interested.

 

Bold text

By using WordPress and the inbuilt word editor you can bold text.

 

Adding new pages

Some CMS make it well, very difficult to add something as simple as new page or blog post.
Then when trying to edit the post, well it can sometimes a CMS that full of glitches. This makes hard sometimes to get something as simple as the picture where you want within the text. Now, this is why our agency really like using WordPress instead. It’s a CMS which, well simply makes web design and SEO that simpler. For example, adding a page is a piece of cake, then editing the layout, well that is so straightforward it can practically be done with your eyes closed!

 

Schema mark-up

Adding schema mark-up, or a form of structured language, well that sounds confusing, doesn’t it?
It sounds like by adding schema mark-up to a page that this is going to be an extremely long process, that’s often going to come accompanied by an expensive web design bill.

However, again this is why in 2026 we would strongly encourage to think about selecting WordPress as your chosen CMS. The reason is simple; WordPress offers thousands of free WordPress plugins which are often built by highly talented web developers across the globe.
Some of the WordPress plugins are offered for free, for example, there are many WordPress plugins which allow you to add schema mark-up to the website. This is a form of structured language; schema can therefore be easily understood by Google.

Anchor text

Using WordPress makes it a piece of cake to add anchor text to a paragraph or to a website’s main pages. Adding anchor text is simple and can be completed in WordPress text editor.

 

Adapting and changing existing pages

If you were to talk to one of the best SEO experts in the entire world, they will tell you that a piece of content marketing that’s ranked number 1, gaining millions of visitors, might not be in that position next month.

The content marketing is constantly competing with other companies; those companies will have the ambition ranking number one.

Therefore, content marketing needs to be updated every now and then. Now most CMS allow you to edit say the main pages or the blog posts.

However, what our agency would actually say is that its particularly straightforward and easy to update the text within WordPress. The reason is simple; it has a range of functionality that makes this easy and straightforward. From its inbuilt text editor, to innovative web design builders such as WordPress Bakery Builder, which actually allows you to make web design changes in the front end of the website.

 

WordPress updates to improve security

WordPress actually allows for free CMS updates; this can help to improve the website security.

Would you like to improve your WordPress SEO?

If your business owns WordPress website and you would like to improve your SEO then do give the team a call today.