Setting up a website based on WordPress is a great idea. Not only is this CMS cool and easy to use, it’s also very effective for promoting your site’s ranking in search engines.

There are some basic things you can do in order to improve your site’s SEO with WordPress. Here are some ideas:

WordPress SEO Tips and Tricks

Install All-in-One SEO

All-in-One SEO is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress, and with good reason. This plugin is packed with important SEO features like titles, meta tags, advanced canonical URLs and more.

Install Google XML Sitemap Generator

Google XML Sitemap Generator is another very useful WordPress plugin. It will automatically generate an XML file with a sitemap of your site, and will send pings to all major search engines when you update the site.

Install SEO Friendly Images

This plugin will do the dirty work for you when it comes to images. SEO Friendly Images will automatically add titles and alt attributes to all of your site’s images.

Check for Valid XHTML

Although WordPress code is usually good, certain themes and plugins might mess it up a bit. Check your site for errors and fix them for a better search engine position.

Avoid Linkware Themes

Sponsored themes, or linkware themes, are WordPress themes which are distributes for free, but with a catch – there are paid links at the footer, which you are not allowed to remove. Google doesn’t like these links, so you are better off avoiding such themes.

Use Permalinks

WordPress has a wonderful advanced option for creating custom permalinks. Choose “Custom Structure” and enter “/%postname%/ “.  This will make your URLs look like this: www.example.com/post-name/.  This puts your post directly at the root level and uses keywords that are in your post title.

Make Sure Post and Page Titles are H1

H1 will simply make the title of the page or post the most important title on the page.

Update Frequently

Make sure you insert fresh content into your site on a regular basis. This is one of the most important aspects of improving your site’s rank on search engines.