Businesses previously forced to rely on the use of third party plugins will no doubt be rejoicing at the news that WordPress have released a number of SEO tools for their platform. Users eager to improve their website’s page rankings in Google, Bing and other search engines can now do so more easily through WordPress, rather than having to download the likes of Yoast.
So, what exactly are these new features?
Editable meta descriptions
WordPress users will now be able to edit and customise the ‘snippet’ of a page, also known as the meta description. This means users can now optimise the way their webpages appear in the search engine result pages and ensure they’re including the keywords and phrases they want to rank for, which is a major SEO ranking signal. Before this update website owners had to rely on third party plugins, such as the aforementioned Yoast.
Customisable page titles
The structure of a website’s page titles is now also a customisable feature; pages and posts on WordPress sites can now be displayed in a number of ways. These include; site name, page title, post title, tagline and date. Again, this will affect how a website appears in the browser tab and also in the search engine results page (SERPs) and give users more flexibility in how they appear.
Preview across multiple platforms
The update will also allow WordPress Business Plan customers the ability to see a preview of how a new page or post will look across multiple networks before they push the ‘publish’ button. The new preview feature will allow users to see how their content will look not only in traditional browsers and the WordPress reader, but also as posts on social media websites Facebook and Twitter.
This new update could mark the start of website hosting platforms such as WordPress handing their customers the tools they need to succeed online. It’s certainly a step in the right direction.
When can you start using these new SEO features? Right away. They’re already available to anyone who has a WordPress business account.
