Do you want to add your WordPress products to Google Shopping?
Adding your online store products to Google Shopping can help you increase traffic, reach more customers, and generate greater revenue.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add WordPress products to Google Shopping.
Why Should You Add WordPress Products to Google Shopping
Google Shopping is a virtual marketplace like Amazon and Etsy, where users can search, view, and compare products from different online stores that have paid to advertise their products.
If you have a WooCommerce store, then adding your products to Google Shopping can prove to be extremely beneficial for your business.
Your products will be shown to all users browsing through Google shopping which will increase traffic on your WordPress website, generate more revenue and bring in more customers.
That being said, let’s see how you can add WordPress products to Google Shopping.
How to Add WordPress Products in Google Shopping
Step 1: Creating a Google Merchant Account
To add your products to Google Shopping, you have to start by creating an account in the Google Merchant Center. This is the place where your product information will be stored for viewing by Google Shopping.
First, go to the Google Merchant Center page and click the ‘Sign up for free’ button.
After that, Google will ask you about your online business.
Just check the answers that apply to you, and then provide your website’s URL.
After you’ve provided the details, you’ll be redirected to another page.
Here, you simply have to click the ‘Create a Google Merchant Account’ button at the bottom of the page.
Now, you will be asked to provide your business details. You can start by writing your business name.
Next, select the country where your business is based from the dropdown menu below the ‘Registered Country’ option.
After that, click the ‘Continue to Merchant Center’ button.
You’ve successfully created your Google Merchant Account. Now all you have to do is provide your business info and shipping details.
Once you’ve filled in those details, simply click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom to store your settings.
Step 2: Linking Your Google AdWords Account
Now you’ll have to link your Google AdWords account to your Google Merchant Center account so that you can show your products via Google Shopping.
To link your account, simply go to the Google Merchant Center dashboard and click the gear icon at the top of the page.
Clicking it will open up a ‘Tools and Settings’ prompt. Here you simply have to choose the ‘Linked Account’ option present.
This will take you to the ‘Linked Accounts’ page.
Now you simply have to click the ‘+’ button to create your Google Ads account.
This will open up a ‘Create Your Google Ads Account’ prompt.
Simply choose your preferred time zone and currency and then click the ‘Create’ button.
You have now successfully created your Google Ads account.
This is how it will look once your account has been created.
Step 3: Adding WordPress Products to Google Shopping
To add your WordPress products to Google Shopping, we will be using the ELEX Google Shopping plugin to display your WooCommerce products in Google Shopping.
Upon activation, head over to the Google Shopping Feed » Create Feeds page from the WordPress admin sidebar.
From here, simply fill in your business details and click the ‘Continue’ button at the bottom.
Next, you’ll be taken to the ‘Map Category’ page. Here you simply have to select your product categories.
Simply type your product categories in the ‘Google Categories’ tab and click ‘Continue’
After that, you’ll be directed to the ‘Map Attributes’ page.
This is where you’ll have to fill in your product details including product id, product description, product link, pricing, image, and more.
Here select and fill in as many attributes as possible for more visibility in Google Shopping and click the ‘Continue’ button.
Now that you’re on the ‘Filtering Options’ page, simply fill in the details as required for your online store.
For example, you can include how many items you have in stock or note how many have sold already.
Next, simply click the ‘Generate Feed’ button at the bottom.
After you’ve created your Google Shopping feed, go to the Google Shopping Feed » Manage Feeds page from the admin sidebar.
Here you will be able to view your Google Shopping Feed. Now you have to simply click the ‘Download’ button beside it.
Once you’ve downloaded your feed as an XML file, go back to the ‘Google Merchant Center’ dashboard and click the Products » Feeds option from the sidebar.
This will open up the ‘Primary Feeds’ page where you have to click the ‘+’ button to add a new feed.
This will take you to the ‘New Primary Feed’ page where you can start by filling in basic details. First, start by adding all your target countries.
Next, select your preferred language and then click the ‘Continue’ button.
Then, you have to choose a name for your feed and select a method to connect your data to the Merchant center.
For this tutorial, we will be uploading the feed XML from WordPress.
After that, just click on the ‘Continue’ button.
Now that you’re on the ‘Setup’ page, simply type the name for your Google Shopping Feed.
Next, just upload the Feed file you got from WordPress and click the ‘Create Feed’ button.
You have now successfully added your WordPress products to Google Shopping.
Bonus: How to Add Google Merchant Center Schema in WordPress
To improve your product search visibility in Google Shopping and increase conversion rates, you should add a Google Merchant schema in WordPress.
Schema markup is an HTML code that provides more details about your products to search engines.
A GMC listing schema will make your search snippets more prominent and will allow your products to be featured as popular products for the relevant search terms.
The easiest way to add a Google Merchant Center listing schema to WordPress is by using the All in One SEO for WordPress.
Upon activation, a setup wizard will open up. Simply go ahead and click the ‘Get Started’ button.
After that, you need to follow the onscreen instructions in the setup wizard to configure the plugin. If you need help, please see our guide on how to properly set up AIOSEO in WordPress.
After the AIOSEO plugin has been set up, you need to visit the Products » All Products page from the admin sidebar.
From here, simply click on the ‘Edit’ link below a product to open up the ‘Edit Product’ page.
Once there, you need to scroll down to the ‘AIOSEO Settings’ section and click on the ‘Schema’ tab.
Now, you need to make sure that the schema type is set to ‘Product’ by default.
If that is not the case, then simply click on the ‘Generate Schema’ button.
It will open up the Schema Catalog which will list all the available schema templates.
From here, you need to click the ‘Add Schema’ (+) button beside the Product option to set it as your primary schema.
Note: You may see the ‘Article’ schema already applied. If so, you can remove it as you add the new one because this particular page isn’t an article or blog post in Google’s eyes.
Next, you will need to fill in the product information to add the GMC listing schema.
For that, you need to click the ‘Edit Schema’ button next to the ‘Schema in Use’ option.
This will open up the ‘Edit Product’ modal where you will need to fill in the product details.
If you’re using WooCommerce, then AIOSEO will automatically pull most of the product data from your product information.
However, if you want to fill in the information manually, you need to simply toggle the ‘Autogenerate Fields’ switch to ‘No.’
The product attributes that you will need to add include the product name, description, image, ISBN, price, material, color, shipping details, and more.
We recommend that you provide all the details so that the schema markup can make your product snippets more engaging.
Once you’re done, simply click the ‘Update Schema’ or ‘Add Schema’ button to store your settings.
You have now successfully added the Google Merchant Center listing schema to WordPress, and your products can now be featured on the platform and hopefully earn you more sales.
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Do you want to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress?
Unlike XML sitemaps that are submitted to search engines for better crawling, HTML sitemaps present an organized list of your pages and posts for your website visitors.
In this article, we’ll show you how to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress.
What’s the Difference Between XML and HTML Sitemaps?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists your website content in an XML format for search engines like Google and others.
On the other hand, an HTML sitemap is for your actual website visitors. It is a simple page that lists all your posts and pages in an organized way.
Now that you know the difference, let’s take a look at how to add an HTML sitemap page to WordPress using two different WordPress plugins. You can use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.
Method 1. Add HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress With All in One SEO
We recommend using the All in One SEO plugin to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress. It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market used by over 3 million websites and lets you create an HTML sitemap with a couple of clicks.
Note: There is a free version of All in One SEO Lite available which includes the HTML sitemap feature below, but we will be using the premium version in our screenshots because it includes powerful features like smart sitemaps, redirection manager, SEO schema, and more.
Upon activation, the AIOSEO setup wizard will open, which will guide you through setting up the plugin and getting your SEO settings right.
Simply click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button and follow the steps.
After that, you’ll be taken to the WordPress admin dashboard, where you’ll have a new menu option called ‘All in One SEO’.
Then, you need to go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps, click on the ‘HTML Sitemap’ menu option, and make sure the ‘Enable Sitemap’ toggle is turned on.
Next, you can choose how you want to display your HTML sitemap.
For this tutorial, we’ll select the ‘Dedicated Page’ option, but you can also add it as a shortcode, block, widget, and more.
Then, enter the page URL where you want the HTML sitemap to display. The plugin will automatically create a new page for you.
Once you’ve done that, scroll down to the ‘HTML Sitemap Settings’ section.
Here you can customize how your HTML sitemap will display. You have control over what posts and pages will display, taxonomies such as categories and tags, sort order, and more.
You can also turn on ‘Compact Archives’ to display your HTML sitemap in a compact date archive format.
This is similar to how we display our compact archives on our 404 pages here at WPBeginner.
After you’re done customizing your HTML sitemap settings, make sure to click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Now your visitors can view your HTML sitemap and more easily navigate around your website.
If you chose the ‘Dedicated Page’ option above, then you can visit the page by clicking the ‘Open HTML Sitemap’ button.
Method 2. Add HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress With Simple Sitemap
Simple Sitemap is a free plugin that lets you easily add an HTML sitemap to your WordPress website.
Once the plugin is activated, you can open an existing page, or create a new HTML sitemap page by navigating to Pages » Add New.
Adding an HTML Sitemap With Simple Sitemap Using Blocks
This plugin has newly added Gutenberg blocks that you can use to simply add an HTML sitemap page.
All you need to do is click the ‘Plus’ icon, then select the ‘Simple Sitemap’ option.
Another block included with this plugin is the ‘Simple Sitemap Group’ that creates a branching visual sitemap. But, we’re going to use the ‘Simple Sitemap’ block for this tutorial.
Once you add the block, it will automatically create your HTML sitemap.
On the right-hand menu, you have customization options where you can choose to display ‘Posts’ or ‘Pages’, or both together.
In the box under ‘Select post types to display’, simply enter ‘Post’ or ‘Page’ to choose what you want to display.
Next, you can change how the list displays by changing the ‘Orderby’ or ‘Order’ drop-downs.
You can also display the excerpt for the pages or posts listed, and enable or disable links. However, we’re going to keep the default plugin settings to keep our HTML sitemap simple and easy to browse.
Once you’ve finished customizing your HTML sitemap page, click ‘Publish’ or ‘Save’ if you’re updating an older page.
When your visitors go to your HTML sitemap, they’ll see a navigation page that looks similar to the one below.
Adding an HTML Sitemap With Simple Sitemap Using Shortcodes
Another way to add an HTML sitemap to WordPress is by using a shortcode. This gives you more control over the placement of your HTML sitemap and works for those who are using the classic editor.
Simply create a new page by navigating to Pages » Add New, then give your new page a name.
After that, click the ‘Plus’ icon to add a new block to your page.
Then, type ‘shortcode’ into the search box and select the ‘Shortcode’ block.
After that, simply copy and paste one of the following shortcodes into the text editor. The first shortcode will list your posts by category, and the second shortcode will list your pages.
[simple-sitemap-group]
[simple-sitemap]
Once you’ve done that, click ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ to save your changes.
In this case, you would want your HTML sitemap to show pages in the proper hierarchical order.
Here is how you can add an HTML Sitemap with only pages.
Simply add this shortcode to the page where you want to display your HTML sitemap. Follow the same steps above to add the shortcode to a new WordPress page.
[simple-sitemap]
This is how it will display your HTML sitemap with all your WordPress pages listed in a hierarchical list.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking for a way to keep spammers and scammers from stealing your WordPress blog posts using content scrapers?
It is very frustrating as a website owner to see that someone is stealing your content without permission, monetizing it, outranking you in Google, and stealing your audience.
In this article, we’ll cover what blog content scraping is, how you can reduce and prevent content scraping, and even how to take advantage of content scrapers for your own benefit.
What Is Blog Content Scraping in WordPress?
Blog content scraping is when content is taken from numerous sources and republished on another site. Usually, this is done automatically via your blog’s RSS feed.
Unfortunately, it is very easy and very common to have your WordPress blog content stolen in this way. If it’s happened to you, then you understand how stressful and frustrating it can be.
Sometimes your content will be simply copied and pasted directly to another website, including your formatting, images, videos, and more.
Other times, your content will be reposted with attribution and a link back to your website, but without your permission. Although this can help your SEO, you may want to keep your original content hosted on your site only.
Why Do Content Scrapers Steal Content?
Some of our users have asked us why scrapers are stealing content. Usually, the main motivation for content theft is to profit from your hard work:
Affiliate commission: Dishonest affiliate marketers may use your content to bring traffic to their site through search engines in order to promote their niche products.
Lead Generation: Lawyers and realtors may pay someone to add content and gain authority in their community, and not realize it is being scraped from other sources.
Advertising Revenue: Blog owners may scrape content to create a hub of knowledge in a certain niche ‘for the good of the community’ and then plaster the site with ads.
Is It Possible to Completely Prevent Content Scraping?
In this article, we’ll show you some steps you can take to reduce and prevent content scraping. But unfortunately, there is no way to completely stop a determined thief.
That’s why we finish this article with a section on how you can take advantage of content scrapers. While you can’t always stop a thief, you may be able to gain some traffic and revenue through the content they have stolen from you.
What Should You Do When You Discover Someone Has Scraped Your Content?
Since it’s not possible to completely stop scrapers, you may one day discover that someone is using content they stole from your blog. You may wonder what to do when that happens.
Here are a few approaches that people take when dealing with content scrapers:
Do Nothing: You can spend a lot of time fighting scrapers, so some popular bloggers decide to do nothing. Google already sees well-known sites as authorities, but that’s not true of smaller sites. So this approach is not always the best in our opinion.
Take Advantage: While we actively work at having content scraped from WPBeginner taken down, we also use a few techniques to get traffic and make money from scrapers. You can learn how in the ‘Take Advantage of Content Scrapers’ section below.
With that being said, let’s take a look at how to prevent blog scraping in WordPress. Since this is a comprehensive guide, we have included a table of contents for easier navigation.
1. Copyright or Trademark Your Blog’s Name and Logo
Trademark and copyright laws protect your intellectual property rights, brand, and business against many legal challenges. This includes illegal use of your copyrighted material or your brand’s name and logo.
You should clearly display a copyright notice on your website. While your content is automatically covered by copyright laws, displaying a notice will let you know that your content is copyrighted and that they cannot use your protected properties for business.
This may discourage some users from stealing it. It will also help in the case that you do need to send a cease and desist letter or file a DCMA complaint to take down your stolen content.
You can also apply for copyright registration online. This process can be complicated, but luckily there are low-cost legal services that can help small businesses and individuals.
Since blog content scraping is usually done automatically via your blog’s RSS feed, let’s look at a few helpful changes you can make to your feed.
Don’t Include the Full Post Content in Your WordPress RSS Feed
You can include just a summary of each post in your RSS feed instead of the full content. This includes an excerpt as well as post metadata such as the date, author, and category.
There is certainly debate in the blogging community about whether to have full RSS feeds or summary feeds. We won’t get into that now except to say that one of the pros of having a summary only is that it helps prevent content scraping.
You can change the settings by going to Settings » Reading in your WordPress admin panel. You need to select the ‘Excerpt’ option, and then click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Now the RSS feed will only show an excerpt of your article. If someone is stealing your content through your RSS feed, then they will only get the summary, not the full post.
There are other ways you can optimize your WordPress RSS feed to protect your content, get more backlinks, increase your web traffic, and more. One of the best ways is to delay posts from appearing in the RSS feed.
The benefit is that when you delay posts from appearing in your RSS feed, you give the search engines time to crawl and index your content before it appears elsewhere, such as on scraper’s websites. The search engines will then see your site as the authority.
The safest and easiest way to do this is using WPCode because it has a recipe that automatically adds the correct custom code to WordPress.
In the early days of blogging, trackbacks and pingbacks were introduced as a way for blogs to notify each other about links. When someone links to a post on your blog, their website will automatically send a ping to yours.
This pingback will then appear in your blog’s comment moderation queue with a link to their website. If you approve it, then they get a backlink and mention from your site.
This gives the spammer an incentive to scrape your site and send trackbacks. Luckily, you can disable trackbacks and pingbacks to give scrapers one less reason to steal your content.
4. Block the Scraper’s Access to Your WordPress Website
One way to stop scrapers from stealing your content is to take away their access to your website. You can do this manually by blocking their IP address, but most users will find it easier to use a security plugin such as a web application firewall.
Block the Scraper Using a Security Plugin (Recommended)
Blocking scrapers manually is tricky and a lot of work. Especially since many hacking attempts and attacks are made using a wide range of random IP addresses from all over the world. It’s almost impossible to keep up with all those random IP addresses.
That’s why you need a Web Application Firewall (WAF) such as WordFence or Securi. These act as a shield between your website and all incoming traffic by monitoring your website traffic and blocking common security threats before they reach your WordPress site.
For the WPBeginner website, we use Sucuri. It is a website security service that protects your website against such attacks using a website application firewall.
Basically, all your website traffic goes through the security service’s servers where it is examined for suspicious activity. They automatically block suspicious IP addresses from reaching your website altogether. See how Sucuri helped us block 450,000 WordPress attacks in 3 months.
Manually Block or Redirect the Scraper’s IP Address
Advanced users may also wish to manually block a scraper’s IP address. This is more work, but you can specifically target the scraper’s address once you learn it. Web developer Jeff Star suggests this approach when he wrote about how he handles content scrapers.
Note: Adding code to website files can be dangerous. Even a small mistake can cause major errors on your site. That’s why we only recommend this method for advanced users.
You can find the scraper’s IP address by visiting ‘Raw Access Logs’ in the cPanel dashboard of your WordPress hosting account. You need to look for IP addresses with an unusually high number of requests and keep a record of them, say by copying them into a separate text file.
Tip: You need to make sure that you don’t end up blocking yourself, legit users, or search engines from accessing your website. Copy a suspicious-looking IP address and use online IP lookup tools to find out more about it.
Once you are confident that the IP address belongs to a scraper, you can block it using the cPanel ‘IP Blocker’ tool, or by adding code like this in your root .htaccess file:
Deny from 123.456.789
Make sure you replace the IP address in the code with the one you want to block. You can block multiple IP addresses by entering them on the same line separated by spaces.
Instead of simply blocking the scrapers, Jeff suggests you could send them dummy RSS feeds instead. You could create feeds full of Lorem Ipsum and annoying images, or even send them right back to their own website, causing an infinite loop and crashing their server.
To redirect them to a dummy feed, you will need to add code like this to your .htaccess file:
It’s not just your written content that you need to protect. You should also prevent image theft in WordPress.
Like text, there is no way to completely stop people from stealing your images, but there are plenty of ways to discourage image theft on a WordPress website.
For example, you can disable hotlinking of your WordPress images. This will mean that if someone scrapes your content, their images will not load on their site.
While most scrapers use automatic tools, some content thieves may try to manually copy all or part of your content.
One way to make this more difficult is to prevent them from copying and pasting your text. You can do this by making it harder for them to select the text on your website.
However, this will not completely protect your content. Remember, tech-savvy users can still view the source code or use the Inspect tool to copy anything they want. Also, this method will not work with all web browsers.
Also, keep in mind that not everyone copying your text will be a content thief. For instance, some people may want to copy the title to share your post on social media.
That’s why we recommend you only use this method if you feel it’s truly needed for your site.
7. Take Advantage of Content Scrapers
As your blog gets larger, it is almost impossible to stop or keep track of all content scrapers. We still send out DMCA complaints. However, we know that there are tons of other sites that are stealing our content that we just cannot keep up with.
Instead, our approach is to try to take advantage of content scapers. It’s not so bad when you see that you’re making money from your stolen content, or receiving a lot of traffic from a scraper’s website.
Make Internal Linking a Habit to Gain Traffic and Backlinks from Scrapers
But there is a second benefit when it comes to scraping. Internal links will get you valuable backlinks from the people who are stealing your content. Search engines like Google use backlinks as a ranking signal, so the additional backlinks are good for your SEO.
Lastly, these internal links allow you to steal the scraper’s audience. Talented bloggers place links on interesting keywords, making it tempting for users to click. Visitors to the scraper’s website will also click the links, which will lead them straight back to your own website.
Auto Link Keywords With Affiliate Links to Make Money from Scrapers
If you make money on your website from affiliate marketing, then we recommend enabling auto-linking in your RSS feeds. This will help you maximize your earnings from readers who only read your website via RSS readers.
Even better, it will help you make money from the sites that are stealing your content.
You can use the All in One SEO plugin to add custom items to your RSS footer. For example, you can add a banner that promotes your own products, services, or content.
The best part is that those banners will appear on the scraper’s website as well.
In our case, we always add a little disclaimer at the bottom of posts in our RSS feeds. By doing this, we get a backlink to the original article from the scraper’s site.
This lets Google and other search engines know we are the authority. It also lets their users know that the site is stealing our content.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to add an SEO Editor role in WordPress?
If you have hired an SEO specialist to work on your website, then adding them as an SEO editor is the safest way to give them access to your WordPress website.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add an SEO editor role in WordPress.
Why Add an SEO Editor Role in WordPress?
WordPress comes with a user role management system that defines what a user can and cannot do on your website. You can assign different user roles to your team members depending on their job descriptions.
By adding an SEO Editor / Manager role to your WordPress website, you will be providing secure access to the SEO features and tools to some specific members of your team.
An SEO Editor role has access to the SEO settings for all your posts and pages. This allows them to optimize posts for SEO and work on search rankings.
An SEO Manager tends to have access to sitewide SEO settings including sitemaps, redirects, local SEO, and more.
By default, WordPress doesn’t offer either the SEO Editor or SEO manager user roles.
Note: You’ll need the Pro version of the All in One SEO plugin to unlock SEO user role features.
Upon activation, the plugin will launch the setup wizard which will walk you through the setup. If you need help, then you can follow our guide on how to set up All In One SEO in WordPress.
Now you can simply add a new user to your WordPress website by visiting Users » Add New page or you can edit an existing user account by visiting the Users » All Users page.
After that, simply click on the Edit link below the user account that you want to change.
On the Edit user screen, scroll down to the Role option and select SEO Editor or SEO Manager user role from the drop down menu.
Don’t forget to click on the Add / Update User button to save your changes.
These users will now be able to access SEO features based on the user role assigned to them.
For instance, SEO Editor will be able to see and edit SEO Settings for a post or page by simply editing them.
On the other hand, a user with the SEO Manager role will also be able to view the General SEO settings on the WordPress admin sidebar.
They will be able to make changes to site-wide SEO settings that may affect your entire website.
How to Customize SEO User Roles in WordPress
By default, All in One SEO selects the best access control settings for each SEO user role.
However, sometimes you may want to add or remove permissions from the SEO editor or Manager user roles.
All in One SEO lets you customize SEO user roles so that you can select which options they’ll have access to.
Simply head over to the All in One SEO » General Settings page and switch to the Access Control tab.
Caution: Be very careful when giving a user role access to any option under the General SEO Settings. These options may allow them to apply SEO changes that will affect your entire website.
From here, scroll down to the ‘SEO Editor’ option and toggle the switch next to the ‘Use Default Settings’ option.
This will reveal the Default Settings that All in One SEO has chosen for the SEO Editor role.
As you can see that by default the SEO editor user role only has access to Post SEO settings.
From here, you can check or uncheck items that you want to allow the SEO editor to have access to.
For instance, you can remove access to the Manage Redirects option or give them access to the Search Statistics feature.
Similarly, if you want to change settings for the SEO Manager user role, then you will need to switch off the ‘Use Default Settings’ toggle next to the SEO Manager option.
This will reveal the default settings that All in One SEO has chosen for the SEO manager user role.
By default, the SEO manager user role has access to several options under the General SEO settings as well as all the options under the Post SEO settings.
You can change that by checking the items that you want them to have access to or unchecking to remove access from specific items.
Once you are finished, don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you need a technical search engine optimization (SEO) checklist?
Optimizing your site for search engines can be a challenge if you’re not sure what to look for. Many website owners will ensure basic SEO practices but overlook technical elements.
In this article, we will show a WordPress technical SEO framework and share a checklist you can use for your business.
Why Do You Need a WordPress Technical SEO Framework?
Technical SEO is a key component of your WordPress SEO strategy. You could be creating the world’s best content, but if search engines can’t find and understand your content, then all your efforts are wasted.
That’s why it is important to have a WordPress technical SEO framework.
Our WordPress SEO framework checklist will ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your content. Plus, you can also evaluate other technical aspects of your WordPress website that might be preventing you from achieving higher rankings.
For example, your website might be taking a long time to load. This would result in poor rankings since the page load time is a ranking factor.
There are many SEO tools that let you conduct SEO audits and find out if your site is technically optimized. However, not all tools will show details inside your WordPress dashboard.
The easiest way to evaluate technical SEO for your WordPress site is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It is the best WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.
It offers a free SEO Analysis tool that you can use to conduct a technical SEO audit. The tool is available in the AIOSEO Lite version, which you can use for free. There are also premium AIOSEO plans that offer more features like schema markups, sitemaps, redirection manager, and more.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress admin panel. Under the ‘SEO Audit Checklist’, you’ll see an overall score for your website.
Next, you can scroll down to the Advanced SEO and Performance sections.
Here, the plugin will evaluate the technical SEO aspects of your website based on different parameters and ranking signals. It will then highlight missing elements and critical issues that could stop your site from ranking higher.
You can use AIOSEO to continuously monitor your site’s technical SEO and fix issues. Similarly, you can also perform a competitor analysis and see what they’re doing differently for their technical SEO optimization.
That said, let’s look at our WordPress SEO framework checklist that you can use to ensure higher rankings and organic traffic. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section:
1. Ensure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines
The first thing you need to check is whether search engines are able to find your WordPress site.
You can simply enter site:example.com in the search engine and see if your website appears in the search results. Just replace ‘example.com’ with your own domain.
If your site isn’t showing up, then you can check the visibility settings in WordPress.
Go ahead and visit the Settings » Reading page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, scroll down to the Search engine visibility setting and be sure the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is unchecked.
This option is usually enabled if your website is under construction or is put in maintenance mode.
2. Uncover Crawling and Indexing Issues
If your website is visible to search engines, then it is important to check that your content is crawled and indexed.
Crawling is the process where Google, Bing, and other search engines discover and understand your website. Indexing is the process where search engines collect and store information about your website.
A simple way of checking crawling and indexing issues is using webmaster tools. For example, Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that shows your site’s performance on search results, helps uncover bugs, and allows you to submit your site to Google.
In Google Search Console, you can head to the ‘Pages’ report. Here, you’ll see pages that are indexed and not indexed.
Next, you can scroll down to the ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’ report.
Google Search Console will show you crawling and indexing errors on your website and which pages are affected by them. You can then resolve these issues, so your web pages can appear in Google search results.
Besides that, you can also check indexing and crawling issues for individual URLs.
Simply enter the page link in the URL inspection tool at the top. Google Search Console will then show you a report on whether the URL is indexed and on Google.
If it is not, then you’ll see a ‘URL is not on Google’ message. To fix this, you can click the ‘Request Indexing’ button so Google can crawl and index your page.
3. Make Sure Your Website is Secure with HTTPS
Another important thing to check from a technical SEO framework standpoint is whether your website is secure or not.
Google and other search engines will give preference to sites that use HTTPS over those that use HTTP. To secure your site, you will need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection between your website server and the user’s browser.
You can check this by looking for the padlock sign in your browser’s search bar at the top.
Most WordPress hosting companies now offer free SSL with all their plans. You can ask your host to see if they offer that.
Broken links are bad for your website’s SEO framework, and it negatively impacts your user experience. These are links that no longer exist and will return a 404 error.
Since search engine crawlers find different pages on your website by following internal links. A broken link can stop them from discovering new content. As a result, your page might not get indexed in the search results.
Similarly, if a visitor clicks on a link and is unable to find a page they’re looking for, then they might exit your website.
With All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily find and fix broken links on your WordPress website.
It offers a powerful redirection manager that helps track 404 errors on your website and lets you set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links.
It is important that Google and other search engines only index one version of your website.
Your website can have different versions, but they should all point to one version. For example, you can have a site that has www and non-www version or HTTP and HTTPS version:
Whether you choose a www or non-www version, all the URLs should redirect to the primary WordPress URL. Otherwise, Google will consider each version as a different website.
This can negatively impact your overall SEO rankings. Search engines won’t know which version to index, and it could cause duplicate content issues.
You can check the primary URL for your site by going to Settings » General from the WordPress dashboard. Next, look at the web address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.
With AIOSEO, you can automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, so search engines will know your preference.
6. Use SEO-Friendly URL Structures
After setting a primary URL for search engines to index, you can now check the URL structure of your website.
URL structure plays an important role in your SEO. Having an SEO-friendly URL structure will help Google, Bing, and other search engines easily crawl your pages and understand your content.
Here’s an example of a bad URL structure:
https://www.example.com/category.php?id=42012
Instead, you should be using URLs that describe the content, like:
You can create SEO-friendly URLs by making sure that they are short and descriptive. Besides that, don’t forget to include a keyword in the permalinks, use hyphens to separate words, keep all the words in lowercase, and don’t use stop words.
Pro Tip: Don’t include numbers in your URL slugs, either. That way, you can update your content in the future
7. Ensure Your Site is Mobile Friendly
The next item in the technical SEO framework checklist is to ensure your WordPress site is mobile responsive.
With Google now going mobile-first, it will now index your site’s mobile version instead of the desktop version.
8. Check Your Website Speed and Improve Performance
Your website speed is also a critical part of your WordPress technical SEO framework. Google uses page load speed as a ranking factor and will rank fast-loading sites higher compared to slow-performing websites.
You can check website load time by running a site speed test. For instance, you can use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin that shows a site speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.
After that, you can head to the Insights » Reports page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, you can go to the ‘Site Speed’ tab. Here, you’ll see an overall score for your website speed for desktop and mobile.
The report will also show other metrics that are important for measuring your website speed.
If you scroll down, then MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals for each metric you should target.
A quick tip that you can use to improve your website speed is minifying your CSS and JavaScript files.
The term minified means reducing the size of website files by removing white spaces, lines, and unnecessary characters. When a user visits your website, different files are sent to the user’s browser, which includes CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.
By reducing the file size, you can significantly improve website speed and performance. There are many WordPress plugins and hosting services that allow you to minify CSS and JavaScript files, like WP Rocket and SiteGround.
9. Improve Your Internal Linking Structure and Remove Orphaned Pages
Internal links play an important role in your website’s technical SEO framework. Search engines reward websites that have a proper internal linking structure without too many orphaned pages.
AIOSEO has a powerful SEO Link Assistant feature that makes it easy for you to discover link opportunities and even automate the process for you.
It is the best internal linking plugin for WordPress that crawls the links on your WordPress website and provides a detailed report. You can see the number of internal links, outbound links, and affiliate links for each post and page.
You can see all the link suggestions in one place, and it can even automatically go back and add internal links in your older posts with a single click.
10. Generate XML Sitemaps and Submit Them to Search Engines
Another important part of technical SEO framework is making it easier for search engines to find your content. One of the ways you can do that is by creating an XML sitemap.
It tells search engines about the important pages on your website. This way, search engine bots can crawl your site faster and index your content. While a sitemap won’t boost your rankings, it will improve the overall crawling and indexing process.
You can create and customize the sitemap using AIOSEO. The plugin will automatically generate a sitemap upon activation. Besides, it also lets you create a video sitemap, a news sitemap, an HTML sitemap, and an RSS sitemap.
Once you’ve created a sitemap, you can then submit it to different search engines using their webmaster tools.
For instance, Google Search Console gives the option to enter the sitemap URL and submit it to the search engine. To learn more, you can see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.
Similarly, you can also add your site to Bing Webmaster Tool and then submit an XML sitemap to improve crawling and indexing.
11. Use Schema Markup for Rich Snippets
The next technical SEO framework item you should check is schema markup. It helps search engines understand your content better and how it will appear on the search results.
Search engines can use this information and display rich results. It also helps capture Google featured snippets, which can increase organic clicks and traffic.
For example, here’s how Google shows recipes, ingredients, ratings, cooking time, and other information for blog posts that use a recipe schema markup.
The plugin lets you choose the schema type depending on your content, and it takes care of the rest.
With AIOSEO, you can also add completely custom schema markups based on your needs using the WordPress custom schema generator feature. This can help you get star ratings, and other rich snippets in Google.
12. Optimize Your Robots.txt File for SEO
Robots.txt is a text file that specifies instructions for search engine bots on how to crawl your website. You can tell which pages to crawl and which pages to skip while crawling.
Here’s what a robots.txt file would look like for a WordPress site:
Adding a robots.txt file helps save the crawl quota. A search engine crawler will crawl a certain number of pages during a session. If they don’t finish crawling all the pages on your site, they will resume crawling in the next session.
This can slow down the indexing of your content, and it will appear in search results after some delay. That’s why optimizing the robots.txt file is an important component of the technical SEO framework.
You can disallow pages unnecessary pages like the WordPress admin area, theme folder, plugin files, and more. This way, you get to save the crawl quota and allow search engine bots to crawl even more pages.
On the other hand, you can add sitemaps and other important pages to robots.txt. This way, search engines will crawl and index them as quickly as possible.
A simple way of optimizing the robots.txt file is by using AIOSEO. You can enable custom robots.txt using the plugin and add rules to allow or disallow search engines to crawl.
13. Make Sure Google Doesn’t Flag Your Site for Malware
Another important technical SEO checklist item is to ensure your site isn’t flagged by Google for malware or unwanted software.
If your website is a security risk for users, then Google will show the following warning message:
This can be really bad for your WordPress SEO. It will keep people away from visiting your website, and impact your rankings, and overall website traffic.
To scan for malicious files on your website, you can use a WordPress security scanner. At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. It checks for vulnerabilities like malware, spam injection, malicious code, and helps clean up the website.
14. Use Server Side Rendering vs Client Side Rendering
Another technical SEO best practice is ensuring that your site’s JavaScript renders on the server side and not on the client side.
Server-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render on the website server. While client-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render in the user’s browser.
Client-side rendering is bad for your site’s user experience and SEO. All the burden of loading your site quickly falls on the visitor. Plus, search engine bots use JavaScript resources for crawling and indexing your content. This could result in JavaScript content being missed by crawlers and not included in the search engine index.
With server-side rendering, your website server ensures everything loads quickly. This way, you get a better user experience, faster page load speed, and reduce any risk of content being missed from indexing.
One way of ensuring that JavaScript is rendering on your site’s server is by running a site speed test. If your website speed is low, then it could be because of this issue. You can also look at crawled pages in Google Search Console and see if Google missed any content while crawling. If it did, then it could be because of JaveScript-related SEO issues.
That’s it. You’ve made it to the end of the list. You don’t need to go through each and every point in the technical SEO framework at once. Simply go one step at a time and work your way through the list.
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If you have been reading WPBeginner for a while, then you know that we believe All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market.
It is our #1 recommendation as the must-have SEO toolkit, and this is the exact tool that we use on our website. For beginners, All in One SEO provides the most comprehensive SEO features in one plugin.
In this article, we’ll share some of the AIOSEO power hacks that will help you take your WordPress SEO to the next level.
What Makes All in One SEO The Best SEO Toolkit for WordPress Users?
Currently over 3 million websites use AIOSEO including WPBeginner, and it is one of the top 20 most installed WordPress plugins of all time.
There’s also a free version of AIOSEO available that you can use if you’re just getting started.
All in One SEO was first released in 2007, just a few years after WordPress introduced the ability to install plugins to extend WordPress functionality.
In 2020, AIOSEO was acquired by Awesome Motive (the management company of WPBeginner). Since then, it has evolved into the most powerful and modern WordPress SEO plugin.
We use it on all our websites to improve our WordPress SEO rankings, including WPBeginner. That’s because the features are unmatched by any other SEO plugin on the market.
That being said, let’s take a look at some of the coolest things that you can do with All in One SEO.
Here is a list of topics we’ll cover in this guide.
1. Ability to Add Dynamic SEO Title and Descriptions
SEO titles and descriptions are highly important when optimizing your content for SEO. Search engines assign them slightly more weight than other parts of your content.
The SEO title also appears in search results and can help you get more clicks and bring more traffic to your site.
Many site owners often go back to old posts and edit their SEO titles to help optimize them. For instance, you may have mentioned the Current Year or pricing in the title which may become outdated.
All in One SEO allows you to use smart tags in SEO title and description fields. These tags dynamically update to match the conditions they are used for.
For instance, you can add the ‘Post Title’ tag, and it will automatically use your post or page’s title as the SEO Title.
Similarly, you can use the ‘Current Year’ or ‘Current Month’ tags, and it will automatically display the current year or month in your post title.
AIOSEO comes with the following smart tags that you can select by clicking on ‘View all tags’.
Author First Name: The first name of the post author.
Author Last Name: The last name of the post author.
Author Name: The display name of the post author.
Categories: All categories that are assigned to the current post, comma-separated.
Category Title: Current or first category title.
Current Date: The current date.
Current Day: The current day of the month.
Current Month: The current month.
Current Year: The current year.
Custom Field: A custom field from the current post.
Permalink: The permalink for the current post.
Post Content: The content of your post.
Post Date: The date when the post was published, localized.
Post Day: The day of the month when the post was published, localized.
Post Excerpt: The excerpt defined in your post settings.
Post Excerpt Only: The excerpt defined in your post.
Post Month: The month when the post was published, localized.
Post Title: The original title of the current post.
Post Year: The year when the post was published.
Separator: The separator is defined in the search appearance settings.
Site Title: Your site title.
Tagline: The tagline for your site, set in the general settings.
Taxonomy Name: The name of the first term of a given taxonomy that is assigned to the current post.
Want to make your SEO title even more attention-grabbing?
How about adding emojis into your post title or description? All in One SEO makes it super easy to use Emojis in your SEO title and descriptions.
Simply click on the emoji button to search and add an emoji.
2. Helps You Write Good Headlines and SEO Titles
Now you might already know that CTR (click through rate) plays an important role in SEO rankings.
This means that you have to write good headlines and SEO titles that encourage users to click when your site appears in search results.
All in One SEO comes with a built-in headline analyzer tool. It will automatically show you a score for your post title or headline.
Plus, it will also show you practical tips to improve the effectiveness of your title.
For instance, it may recommend using power words or removing stop words from your SEO title.
3. Comes with a Dynamic and Customizable Table of Contents Block
Reading longer articles can be difficult for your users, and they may lose interest in scrolling down while looking for the information they need.
This is where the Table of Contents block comes in.
It creates a list of topics covered in an article, and you may have seen them in articles here at WPBeginner. In fact, this post has an AIOSEO table of contents at the top!
Clicking on an item in the list takes you to that section in the article.
Not only does a table of content help users, but it also improves SEO.
Search engines like Google may display your table of content items as ‘Jump to section’ links in search results.
A table of contents can also make your website appear as the featured snippet for a search keyword.
Google may display it above all results with a much larger excerpt.
Previously, WordPress users had to use a separate plugin to generate tables of contents or manually create them.
All in One SEO comes with a dynamic Table of Contents block. Simply add the Table of Contents block to your post or page, and it will automatically generate a table of content based on the headings present in your article.
You can edit any item in the table by simply clicking on it or hide an item by clicking on the hide button.
You can also reorder items by clicking on the Reorder button. This only adjust the order of the list, not the placement of content in your article.
Optionally, you can choose a list style for your table of contents.
Currently, it allows you to choose from a plain bulleted list or a numbered list style.
4. Easily Add NoFollow Attribute to External and Referral Links
Links or backlinks are an important search engine ranking factor.
When you link to an external website, search engines consider that as a ranking signal. They will pass a small portion of your domain authority (link juice) to the other website.
Many SEO experts believe that they can rank higher in search results by adding the nofollow attribute to external and referral/affiliate links.
All in One SEO makes it super easy to add the nofollow attribute to links in your posts and pages.
Simply select the text that you want to link to and then click on the link button in the block toolbar.
You’ll see the option to add the link URL and a check box to add the nofollow attribute.
All in One SEO gives the most comprehensive and practical SEO score to your content.
It appears as a button on the top right corner of the post editor, clicking on it will bring up the TruSEO panel.
You will see a snippet preview and below that, you’ll find tips divided into the following areas:
Focus Keyphrase and Additional Keyphrases
Basic SEO
Title
Readability
You can click on any of them to expand and view the suggestions.
Errors will be highlighted in red with helpful descriptions to fix them.
SEO score is just a recommendation tool and does not guarantee search rankings. Any score above 70 is good for most types of content.
7. Comes with The Most Comprehensive Schema Markup Support
Schema markup is a special type of HTML code that you can add to your WordPress website to tell search engines more about your content.
For instance, you can tell the search engines that a particular page is a blog post, a recipe, a FAQ page, a news article, or a product page. Search engines can then use this data to display rich results.
Other WordPress SEO plugins only ship with limited schema markup support. Users had to install separate plugins to add proper schema markup for different content types.
All in One SEO solves this problem by adding the most comprehensive Schema markup support available.
It allows you to easily add schema markup in WordPress and WooCommerce. You can set the default Schema markup for different content types from plugin settings.
You can also change schema markup for individual posts and pages.
This comes in handy if you want to use your blog posts for different types of content such as recipes, product reviews, articles, and more.
Apart from content, All in One SEO also adds structured data required to be listed in Google My Business and Google Maps searches.
This allows your business to appear in Google Maps and business searches. Your listing gets an extended information panel with directions, phone numbers, business hours, and more.
Simply switch to the All in One SEO » Local SEO page and provide your business information.
If your business has multiple locations, then you can turn on the Multiple Locations option.
After that, the plugin will add a new Locations menu item to your WordPress admin sidebar.
You can now go to the Locations » Add New page to add a business location.
This will bring you to the Location editor page. First, you need to provide a title for your location and then add a little description.
You can also review options in the left column to set the location category and featured image.
After that scroll down to the AIOSEO Local Business section.
From here, you can add structured data for your location such as business name, logo, address, phone number, opening hours, and map.
Once you are finished, go ahead and click on the Publish button to save your location settings.
You can now repeat the process to add more business locations as needed.
Social media platforms are a big source of traffic for many website owners.
All in One SEO comes with super easy and extensive social media integration.
1. Easily Add Social Network Profiles and Default Settings
First, you can go to the All in One SEO » Social Networks page. From here, you can provide social media profile URLs.
If you use the same handle in all your social media profiles then you can simply check the ‘Use the same username for multiple social networks’ option.
After that, provide your username and All in One SEO will fill in the URLs for you.
The plugin also allows you to easily configure your website for popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
These options allow you to enable Open Graph metadata and provide default information that social media platforms can use when someone shares your content.
For instance, you can choose which image to use when someone shares a post. All in One SEO provides a bunch of options to automatically pick an image for Facebook and Twitter.
You can choose the featured image, the first image in the content, any attached image, the author image, any first available image, and more.
After configuring Facebook and Twitter, you can switch to the Pinterest tab. From here, you can also easily add the Pinterest verification code to verify your website on Pinterest.
2. Social Settings for Individual Posts and Pages
Once you have finished the default social networks setup, All in One SEO also provides you options to override these settings for individual posts and pages.
Simply edit a post or page and switch to the Social tab under the AIOSEO Settings section.
From here, you’ll see a preview of how your post will look on Facebook and Twitter.
Below that, you can override the default settings and change the post title, description, and social image.
If you change the data for Facebook, then you can use it for Twitter as well.
Simply switch to the Twitter tab and toggle the ‘Use Data from Facebook Tab’ option.
3. Add Social Profiles for Authors
You can also let search engines know which profiles are associated with an author or user on your website.
This allows search engines to discover and display social media profiles when someone searches for a specific person.
To add this, administrators can go to the Users » Profile page and other users can simply click on the Profile menu from the WordPress admin sidebar.
From here, switch to the social profiles tab and enter your social media profile URLs.
9. Add New Links or Cleanup Bad Links with AIOSEO Link Assistant
Links play a significant role in a website’s SEO rankings. However, as your website grows, you may add more internal links to some older posts than newer posts.
Going back to individual posts and adding links can become a tedious task. Particularly, if you have hundreds of articles.
All in One SEO solves this problem with the Link Assistant. It allows you to easily add links or clean up bad links with one click.
Here is how it works.
First, it automatically crawls your website and shows you a comprehensive link report.
From here, you can see an overview of the links with total counts for orphaned posts (posts that are not linked from any other post or page), external links, internal links, and affiliate links.
You can switch to the Links Report tab for detailed information on all your links.
You’ll see a list of all your posts and pages with columns for internal, external, and affiliate links.
It will also show a number of suggestions where you can add links.
For more details, you can click on the right arrow button next to a post or page.
This will show all links organized in different tabs. From the suggestions tab, you can quickly view link suggestions and add links without directly editing a post or page.
Want to discover more internal linking opportunities?
Switch to the ‘Linking Opportunities’ tab for more internal linking suggestions or check out the orphaned posts and add links to them.
Clean up Bad Links with 1-Click
You can view all external links that your website links to by clicking on the Domains Report tab.
From here, you can select a domain and delete all links to it with a single click.
This makes it super easy to clean up your website if it has been affected by malware that has added links to spam websites.
It also comes in handy when you no longer wish to link to a third-party website and immediately want to remove all links pointing to it.
10. Comes with Extensive XML Sitemaps with Powerful Customization Options
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all your website content in an XML format, so search engines like Google can easily discover and index your content.
WordPress comes with built-in XML sitemaps, but these are too basic and you don’t have any tools to customize them.
All in One SEO comes with extremely powerful XML sitemaps.
These custom XML sitemaps are highly customizable. For instance, you can easily include or exclude individual post types or taxonomies.
Plus, you can disable sitemaps for date and author archives.
Below that, you can add any standalone page to your sitemap under the Additional Pages option.
News results may not only appear prominently on the main search page but can also appear on the News tab or in Google Discover on mobile devices.
All in One SEO allows you to easily create a News Sitemap which is a requirement for Google News results.
Simply switch to the News Sitemap tab and turn it on.
After that, you can provide a title for your news publication.
Next, you need to choose which post types you want to include in your news sitemap.
Need even more control over your news sitemap?
All in One SEO allows you to easily exclude specific items from your news sitemap.
Simply toggle the Advanced Settings switch to show more options. From here, you can search for the post or page you want to exclude and click on the + button to add it.
12. Easily Create Customizable HTML Sitemaps
HTML Sitemaps are sitemaps for your users and can be added anywhere on your website.
They help users easily navigate a website and find the information they need. Many organizations, government websites, and small businesses find them quite helpful.
All in One SEO lets you easily create HTML sitemaps.
Simply go to the All in One SEO » Sitemaps page and switch to the HTML Sitemap tab.
From here, you can switch to the toggle next to Enable Sitemap to turn on HTML sitemap.
Below that, you can choose how you want to display the sitemap by choosing one of the following options.
Dedicated Page
Gutenberg Block
Shortcode
Widget
PHP Code
Click to select your option and it will tell you how to use it.
For instance, choosing the Dedicated Page option, you will be asked to provide URL for a page where you want to display the Sitemap.
Below that, you can choose which post types and taxonomies to include, sorting options, and enable compact archives.
Want to exclude some posts or pages from your HTML sitemap?
No worries, you can simply click on the Advanced Settings section to exclude any content from your HTML sitemap.
13. Appear in Video Results with Video Sitemaps
Videos are the most engaging type of content and for some search keywords, Google may automatically include video results at the top.
Now, if you regularly publish video content or add video embeds to your posts, then this gives you a huge opportunity to rank higher.
Research shows, that users are more likely to click on a result with a video thumbnail than just plain text.
All in One SEO’s Video Sitemaps help you get ready to appear in video search results.
Simply go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps page and switch to the Video Sitemap tab.
From here you can turn on Video Sitemap and choose which post types or taxonomies to include.
By default, the plugin will divide your sitemap into indexes. These are smaller files containing a limited number of links.
You can also adjust how many links you want to include in a sitemap.
Just like any other sitemap, you can click on the Advanced Settings section to exclude any content that you don’t want to appear in video sitemaps.
14. Get Indexed Faster with RSS Sitemaps
Unlike regular XML sitemaps which have a complete set of links to your content, RSS sitemaps provide search engines links to recent changes on a website.
This helps search engines more easily discover recent changes on a website. Google recommends using both XML sitemaps and RSS sitemap for optimal crawling.
All in One SEO allows you to easily generate an RSS sitemap for your website.
Simply go to the AIOSEO » Sitemaps settings page and switch to the RSS Sitemap tab.
From here, toggle the Enable Sitemap switch to turn on the RSS sitemap.
Below that you can choose the number of posts and which post types to include.
15. Easily Add Your Site to Webmaster Tools & Google Search Console
All top search engines provide website owners with easier tools to see how their website is performing in search and get alerts if something goes wrong.
Once you sign up for them, you will be asked to verify your ownership by adding a code snippet to your website.
All in One SEO makes it super easy to add the verification code for all webmaster tools under one place.
Simply go to the All in One SEO » General Settings and switch to the Webmaster Tools tab.
Now simply click on a search engine, and then add the verification code.
Below that you will also find a text field called Miscellaneous verification. This allows you to add verification codes from any other third-party platforms to your website.
SEO crawl budget is the number of times search engines like Google will crawl pages on your website.
Google sets a crawl budget for different domains based on its own algorithms. However, sometimes this budget is wasted if search bots spend most of the budget crawling less important pages on your site.
All in One SEO helps you fix that problem with the Crawl Cleanup feature. Simply go to the All in One SEO » Search Appearance page and switch to the Advanced tab.
From here, you need to scroll down to the bottom and switch the toggle next to the Crawl Cleanup option.
This will expand the section and will show you a bunch of options that you can exclude from crawling.
For instance, each WordPress category, tag, comments, archive, and author pages has its own RSS feeds. These get crawled, too, but are not highly important.
You can Disable them so that they are excluded from the crawl budget.
A 404 error occurs when a user visits a page on your website which is not there anymore. Perhaps it was deleted, the user entered an incorrect URL, or followed an incorrect link.
These errors create a bad user experience and can negatively impact SEO rankings.
Often, they go unnoticed by website owners until a user reports them.
All in One SEO fixes this problem by keeping a log of 404 errors on your website.
Simply go to the All in One SEO » Redirects page and switch to the 404 logs page to view them.
Now some of these links may be misspelled URLs with few hits, you can safely ignore those. Others would be links to posts that you may have deleted or changed their URLs.
In that case, you can simply click on the Add Redirect button and point that URL to the new location or any other relevant page.
21. Easy Full Site Redirects when Moving Site to Different Domains
Are you moving your WordPress website to a new domain name and worried about the SEO consequences?
All in One SEO’s redirect manager comes with super easy Full Site Redirects.
Basically, you can just paste the URL of your new domain name and it will redirect all users coming to your old domain to the exact pages on your new domain name.
This helps your new domain to rank quickly in search engines and also reduces the negative SEO consequences of moving to a new domain name.
WordPress comes with a built-in redirects system written in PHP. Many redirect plugins take advantage of it, including All in One SEO.
WordPress is used on many different types of servers and they can have different configurations that may affect redirects. Using PHP avoids dependency on server settings and makes sure that redirects work.
However, these PHP redirects are a bit slower. It is a small compromise and for most users, it is not even noticeable.
Still, some users may want to use the server to set up redirects for improved performance and speed.
All in One SEO gives those users an option to use faster redirects using the web server instead of PHP.
Note: This is a method for advanced users only, as you will need to edit not only your .htaccess file, but also your server configuration files for Apache or NGINX.
To use this method, you’ll need access to your server’s configuration files. You’ll also need to know how to safely make changes to those files.
To set it up, you can go to the All in One SEO » Redirects page and switch to the Settings tab. From here, you can click on the Web Server option under Redirect Method.
The plugin will then detect your web server and will show you an option to export redirect rules files for your web server which you can then manually place in your .htaccess file or your Nginx config file.
Next, click on the save change button to store your settings.
After that, the plugin will display a line of code that you need to add to your server’s configuration file.
If you’re using Apache as your web server, then the line should be included in the Apache virtual hosts file. You will then need to restart Apache.
If you’re using NGINX as your web server, then the line should be included in your nginx.conf file. You will then need to restart NGINX.
Keep in mind, too, that using server redirects will prevent AIOSEO from keeping logs of all redirects that occur.
23. Easily Import / Export Redirects
Want to import redirects you set up earlier using some other redirects plugin? Or perhaps you want to export your All in One SEO redirects to use elsewhere?
All in One SEO’s redirects manager can magically import redirects from other popular redirects and SEO plugins.
Simply go to All in One SEO » Redirects page and then switch to the Import / Export tab.
From here, you can import redirects from other plugins. All in One SEO can automatically import redirects from the following plugins:
Redirection
Yoast SEO Premium
Simple 301 Redirects
Safe Redirect Manager
301 Redirects Pro
30 Redirects
Page Links To
SEOPress Pro
It can also import redirects from All in One SEO as well.
In the right column, you’ll see options to export All in One SEO redirects data. You can choose to export different types of redirects or export all of them.
Lastly, the plugin also allows you to export your 404 error logs in CSV format. This comes in handy if you want to analyze the data in spreadsheet software like Google Sheets.
24. Advanced Yet Easiest Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumb navigation is a navigational aid that provides users links in relation to where they are on a website’s navigational layout.
It’s like a path to show them how to get back to earlier parts of the website they may have visited before landing on their current page or post.
This provides users context, helps them discover more sections of your website, and improves user experience.
Search engines also use this information in the result snippet next to the URL.
All in One SEO comes with the easiest and most customizable breadcrumb navigation settings of any WordPress plugin on the market.
First, it automatically adds markup required by search engines to display breadcrumbs without you having to do anything.
It also gives you a full set of tools to customize breadcrumbs and display them on your website.
Simply go to the All in One SEO » General Settings page and switch to the Breadcrumbs tab.
From here, you’ll see different ways to easily display breadcrumbs on your website.
You’ll also see a link that will show you how to use these methods to display breadcrumbs.
Scroll down a little and you’ll find customization options for your breadcrumbs navigation links.
For instance, you can choose which separator you want to use, include a home link, set a prefix, and more.
Want to edit the Breadcrumbs template?
Scroll down to the Breadcrumbs template section. There you’ll see tabs for content types, taxonomies, and archives sections.
For instance, under Content Types, you can change templates for posts, pages, products, and attachments.
To edit the template switch the toggle next to ‘Use a default template’ option to reveal the settings.
You can then edit the default breadcrumbs template by switching toggles to show or hide the homepage or taxonomy links.
You can also use smart tags and even some HTML if needed. Simply insert the smart tags inside the HTML code anywhere you would put the same static information.
All in One SEO allows you to turn on REST API for headless WordPress development.
Simply go to the All in One SEO » Feature Manager page and activate the REST API feature.
This allows you to use the All in One SEO metadata and output it into the front end of your website.
See the notes on All in One SEO website on how to fetch SEO data with REST API and output it in your source code.
26. Control Which Users Have Access to SEO Features and Settings
Want to hire an SEO expert to work on your website? All in One SEO gives you powerful access control features so that you can control which parts of your website they can access.
Simply go to the All in One SEO » General Settings page and switch to the Access Control tab.
First, you’ll see access control options for default WordPress user roles such as Editor, Author, and Contributor.
By default, they will have access to SEO settings for the content that they are allowed to edit in WordPress. To learn more see our WordPress user roles and permissions guide.
Editors also have permission to access SEO settings for General Settings, Search Appearance, Social Networks, and Redirects.
You can change options for each user role by switching the User Default Settings toggle next to a user role.
All in One SEO also adds two new custom user roles that you can use.
SEO Manager – By default, they can access SEO settings for General Settings, Sitemaps, Link Assistant, Redirects, Local SEO, and individual pages and posts.
SEO Editor – By default, they can access SEO settings for individual pages and posts.
You can also change their access by switching the Use Default Settings toggle.
To assign a user an SEO role on your website, you will need to add them as a new user in WordPress and set their user role to SEO manager or SEO Editor.
All in One SEO will then immediate apply the right permissions for them to do their job and boost your site’s rankings.
27. Seamless E-commerce Integration
All in One SEO provides the easiest WooCommerce SEO features. It allows you to add an SEO title, description, and product image which is then used by search engines.
It automatically applies schema markup which gives search engines more information to display in rich results for your products.
Plus, it includes product sitemaps, breadcrumbs, image SEO, and local SEO features. This makes All in One SEO the most comprehensive toolkit for eCommerce stores.
Google image search can be a major source of traffic for many websites.
However, many users forget to add image alt and title tags when uploading images. If you have multiple authors then it becomes harder to notice if someone has missed those tags.
All in One SEO comes with an extensive image SEO addon that allows you to fix this by automatically generating these tags. To keep the software lightweight, it is not enabled by default.
You’ll need to activate it by visiting the All in One SEO » Feature Manager page.
After that, you need to visit the All in One SEO » Search Appearance page and switch to the Image SEO tab.
The first option here is to redirect attachment URLs.
All in One SEO automatically redirects attachment URLs back to the attachment because the attachment page itself only contains an image and does not have any SEO benefit.
Below that, you will find options to set up Image SEO settings. The two most important options here are the Title and Alt tags.
Under the Title tab, you can choose a default title scheme using the smart tags. AIOSEO will use your image file name as the title.
You can choose to remove punctuation like dashes or underscores. This allows you to convert your image title from ‘our-family-picnic’ to ‘our family picnic’.
Below that, you can also choose the casing for the tags. For instance, you can use all lowercase, title case, or sentence case.
Optionally, you can exclude posts, pages, or terms where you don’t want the plugin to automatically generate from image titles.
Next, you need to switch to the Alt tag tab and repeat the process.
Similarly, you can also generate captions and descriptions and modify filenames upon upload in a similar manner.
29. Safely Edit Robots.txt and .htaccess Files From WordPress Admin
You may sometimes come across tutorials asking you to edit your robots.txt or .htaccess file.
Editing these files can be difficult for beginners. Not to mention that a mistake there can break your website or affect its SEO.
To make this easier and safer for beginners, All in SEO comes with a built-in file editor where you can edit your robots.txt and .htaccess files without using FTP.
You can do that by visiting the All in One SEO » Tools page. For the robots.txt file, you can click on the button to view your current robots file.
You can also enable a custom robots.txt file and create an all new one.
Below that, you can allow or deny any user agents, and they will be added to robots.txt.
The .htaccess Editor tab will display the contents of your current .htaccess file.
You can simply edit it right there.
Note: You need to be very cautious about editing these files. A tiny mistake can break your website or damage its SEO.
30. Perform a Quick SEO Audit for Your Site
A lot of businesses hire SEO specialists and pay them to perform SEO audits for their websites.
All in One SEO helps you save money by allowing you to do a quick SEO audit for your website. This allows you to save money by fixing important SEO issues on your own.
Simply go to the All in One SEO » SEO Analysis page and the plugin will show you an SEO score of your website.
Below that, it will show you a checklist of SEO recommendations.
From here, you can see the issues that it found. Clicking on them will display a description of how to fix them.
As you can see in the image above, AIOSEO often has a button directly on the audit screen for you to use and fix the issues immediately.
31. Compare Competition with Built-in Competitor Analysis
Want to see how your competition is doing in terms of SEO?
All in One SEO can perform a quick SEO audit of your competitor’s websites too.
You can simply go to the All in One SEO » SEO Analysis page and switch to the Analyze Competitor Site tab.
32. Easily Add No Index to Content You Want to Exclude from Search Engines
Want to exclude some posts or pages from search engine?
All in One SEO makes it super easy to No Index any content on your website with a click.
Simply edit the post, page, product, custom post type, or taxonomy that you want to remove or exclude from search engines and scroll down to the AIOSEO settings section.
From here, you need to switch to the Advance tab and toggle the switch next to the Use Default Settings option. This will reveal a bunch of options.
You can check No Index and No Follow to make sure that search engines don’t include this item in search results.
Additionally, you can block any archival of this page, translation, image index, snippet, or no ODP (open directory project). You can also set Max video preview to -1 to ensure that no embedded video preview is displayed.
33. Easily Import SEO Data from Other SEO Plugins
Want to switch from your old WordPress SEO plugin to All in One SEO for WordPress?
The good news is that All in One SEO comes with a built-in SEO data importer tool that fetches SEO data from your old plugin and imports it into All in One SEO.
Once you install and activate the All in One SEO plugin it will launch the setup wizard. During this, it will detect your old SEO plugin and give you the option to import SEO data from that plugin.
It will automatically detect your old SEO plugin when you run the setup wizard and offers to import your SEO data.
You can also manually import SEO data by visiting the All in One SEO » Tools page and switching to the ‘Import/Export’ tab.
Find the ‘Import Settings From Other Plugins’ section and select your old SEO plugin from the drop-down list and then select the items you wish to import.
After that, simply click on the ‘Import’ button to fetch the data.
All in One SEO can fetch the following SEO data.
Your plugin’s SEO settings
Post meta such as SEO title and description
Term meta such as SEO title and descriptions for your categories and tags.
Bonus: Getting Started with All in One SEO for WordPress
Did you know that getting started with All in One SEO for WordPress is super easy?
We hope this article helped you discover unique things that you probably didn’t know about All in One SEO. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO handbook for beginners or take a look at our pick of essential WordPress plugins for all websites.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to use AI (artificial intelligence) to write content in WordPress?
Artificial Intelligence tools like ChatGPT and GPT3 can produce well-researched content in natural language. Many users want to explore it to see if it can help with writing content.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to write content using artificial intelligence like ChatGPT and GPT3 in WordPress as well as the pros and cons of it.
What are ChatGPT and GPT3 AI?
ChatGPT is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to have conversations in a chatbot-like interaction environment.
GPT3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) is a similar artificial intelligence based computer program that is designed to be more generic and broader than ChatGPT.
Both programs use a type of machine learning called Natural Language Processing that allows them to understand and respond to user input.
In simpler words, they learn by going through vast amounts of information publicly available, so they can answer your questions in a well-thought out manner.
You can visit the OpenAI website and try both tools for free. Following are a few examples of what it can do.
Example 1:
You can provide more details in your prompt to adjust the response according to your given parameters.
For instance, here we asked it to write an essay about black holes at a 6th grade reading level, using simple words, and keeping the response between 600-800 words.
This is how it responded.
Example 2:
ChatGPT can also write code, poetry, music, explain mathematical equations, and more.
Are ChatGPT and GPT3 AI Good Enough to Write Content?
ChatGPT and GPT3 are really good at providing detailed responses that are very well written. This leads many users to believe that it can be used to write content for their websites or be used as an autoblogging tool.
However, before you put it to the test on your actual website, the following are a few things that you need to be mindful of.
1. Accuracy of Information
The information provided by ChatGPT could be outdated or sometimes even false. It’s critical that you double-check all the information included in the article.
2. No Recent Events Are Considered
ChatGPT is trained on resources up to the year 2021, so it has limited knowledge of events after that. This may get fixed soon, but if the content you want to generate is time sensitive, then keep this in mind.
3. Doesn’t Give Strong Opinions
ChatGPT is trained to be impartial and unbiased. Unlike a human writer, it lacks the creativity required to argue for a particular opinion, be passionate, and have preferences.
Can ChatGPT AI be Good for SEO?
ChatGPT AI can generate content in a web-friendly format. However, it does not specifically follow any SEO best practices.
Researchers at Google have worked for years to detect content generated by artificial intelligence tools. In the past, they have penalized them for being low quality.
We feel that artificial intelligence tools like GPT3 can be used as writing assistants rather than full writers.
For instance, GPT AI can be used to create an article outline, gather information, and pick up some key research points.
After that, a human writer can work on it to make it more comprehensive, opinionated, factual, and SEO-friendly.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to use ChatGPT AI to create content in WordPress.
Using ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence to Write Content in WordPress
Upon activation, you need to click on the GPT3 AI Content Generator menu from the admin sidebar to view plugin’s settings page.
From here, you need to provide an API key. You can get one by creating a free account on the OpenAI website.
After copying and pasting your API key, don’t forget to click on the Save button to store your plugin settings.
Other default options would work for most users but you can review and change them if needed.
For instance, you may want to change the image size generated by the AI or leave it blank if you would want to generate AI images by yourself or add other images.
Now you are ready to start generating AI content.
Simply create a new post or page, and you will find the GPT 3 Content Generator settings below the text editor.
First, you need to choose a language for your article.
Currently, the plugin supports English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Dutch, Indonesian, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Romanian, Greek, Czech, Bulgarian, Swedish and Hungarian.
Below that, you can provide a title for your article. The Pro version of the plugin also allows you to add or exclude keywords.
After that, you can set the number of headings you want to include in your article and which heading tag to be used.
Next, you can choose a writing style and tone for your article. For example, you can choose an informative writing style with a casual writing tone.
Below that, you can add an anchor text and set a link. However, we’ll recommend that you manually enter internal links when you are editing the article.
The plugin also allows you to add a call to action and choose position where you want to display it.
Finally, click on the Generate button to start generating content.
The plugin will then begin generating content using artificial intelligence.
It may take a while depending on your settings and the topic of your article. Once finished, you will see the generated text in the box.
From here, you can simply click on the Save Draft button. The plugin will then load the text inside the WordPress editor wrapped in the Classic block.
This will allow you to edit the text using the block editor. You can convert the text inside the Classic block into regular blocks and start editing.
Tips on Editing AI Generated Content
GPT3 AI content generator will write a comprehensive article covering different aspects of the topic you choose as your article title.
However, it is far from perfect.
It can be easily identified by search engines as AI generated content, and you could get penalized and lose your search rankings.
We recommend only using GPT3 AI content for research and quick outlines. Once you have an outline, you can then thoroughly review, fact check, and edit it by yourself to expand the article further.
Following are a few things you can do to make the article unique and in your own voice:
1. Check All Information for Accuracy
Depending on your topic, GPT3 can make mistakes and may sometimes include information that is incorrect.
2. Create and Use Your Own Images
GPT3 AI Content Generator can generate images using artificial intelligence. However, for most topics these images they do not look very good. Here’s an example image that it generated for us.
GPT3 AI doesn’t know which articles on your website are related to the topic and it cannot automatically generate internal links.
You need to manually add internal and external links to provide more context and make your article more user-friendly.
4. Use Table of Content, FAQs, and Lists
GPT3 is a text generator and does not concern itself with formatting to make the reading experience better.
You need to manually add any table of contents, lists, and FAQs needed make your content more user-friendly.
5. Personalize the article with your expertise & knowledge
As AI-content gain in popularity, it will become more critical for authors to add their own voice, expertise, and experiences. This differentiator will play an important role in determining authentic content vs not.
It’s important to personalize the article with your experience and make it more coherent, so it’s user-focused.
6. Optimize Content for SEO
By default, GPT3 generates easy to read text. However, this text is not exactly optimized for on-page SEO.
This is just the beginning, and there will be many other tools that will come to the market in the coming months and years.
If you don’t want to use an AI content plugin for WordPress, then you can directly go to ChatGPT website and write the prompts there to experience the technology for yourself.
We hope this article helped you learn how to write content using AI in WordPress. You may also want to see our pick of the most useful WordPress plugins, or see our complete WordPress SEO handbook to grow traffic on your website.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to change, move, or delete WordPress categories?
Categories help organize your content and make it easy for visitors to find interesting posts. However, as your website grows and you learn more about your audience, you may need to change your categories.
In this article, we will show you how you can easily change, move, and delete the categories on your WordPress website.
Why Change, Move or Delete WordPress Categories?
Categories help sort your blog posts and make it easier for users to find what they are looking for. This will keep them on your website for longer and encourage them to convert.
However, it can be difficult to plan all your categories in advance. This is especially true if you’re just getting started with WordPress, or aren’t sure which direction to take your new blog, online store, or small business website.
You may also want to try out different categories and content, and then analyze what works the best by installing Google Analytics in WordPress. You can then use this insight to fine-tune your categories.
With that being said, at some point, you may need to change your WordPress categories. This might involve renaming a category to include the keywords that got the most clicks during A/B split testing, or fixing a spelling mistake.
You might even organize your categories and subcategories into new parent-child relationships to help visitors discover new content.
If you don’t make these changes carefully, then it could hurt the visitor experience, damage your SEO, and make it more difficult for visitors to navigate your website.
With that being said, let’s see how you can properly change, move, and delete WordPress categories. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the change you want to make.
To start, you can change a category’s name, assign it to a different parent category, or display a category description to help other authors understand how to use that category.
To make any of these changes, head over to Posts » Categories.
Here, find the category that you want to change and hover the mouse over it.
When the ‘Edit’ link appears, give it a click.
This will take you to a screen where you can rename the category, add a parent or subcategory, or write a category description. For example, if you’ve used a keyword research tool to find some new keywords or phrases, then you may want to change the category’s name to include these words.
To rename a category, simply type the new title into the ‘Name’ field.
When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, don’t forget to click on ‘Update’ to store your settings.
After that, WordPress will automatically update all the posts within this category.
How to Properly Move a WordPress Category (Without Causing Broken Links)
Sometimes you may want to change where this archive page is located. For example, if you’ve renamed a category, then you might also change its archive URL to avoid confusing visitors.
However, changing the slug means that anyone who tries to visit the original URL will get a 404 error.
This is a bad user experience and can impact your WordPress SEO. Thankfully, you can easily fix this problem by creating a redirect.
With that in mind, go ahead and change the slug by going to Posts » Categories. Then, find the category that you want to edit and hover the mouse over it.
When the ‘Edit’ button appears, give it a click.
In the ‘URL’ field, you’ll see the current slug for this category’s archive page.
Simply type in the new URL that you want to use. Just be aware that you can only use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens in the URL.
When you’re happy with how the slug looks, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Update’ to store your changes.
Now, you’ll see the archive page if you visit the new URL, but you’ll get an error if you type in the original link.
The easiest way to redirect from the old URL to the new link is by using AIOSEO.
AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and can help you get more visitors from search engines like Google. It even has a setup wizard that will help you choose the best SEO settings for your website and improve your rankings, even if you’re completely new to search engine optimization.
For this guide, we’ll be using the AIOSEO Pro version because it has the Redirection Manager that you’ll need to set up a redirect. However, there is also a free version of AIOSEO that you can use to optimize your website no matter what your budget.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, AIOSEO will automatically launch the setup wizard. You can simply click on ‘Let’s Get Started’ and then follow the onscreen instructions to improve your site’s search engine rankings.
Since we want to use the plugin’s premium features, you’ll need to enter a license key when asked. You can find this information under your account on the AIOSEO website.
After entering the license key, click on the ‘Finish Setup’ button to save your settings and close the setup wizard.
With that out of the way, head over to All in One SEO » Redirects in the WordPress dashboard. You can then go ahead and click on Activate Redirects.
Now you’ve activated the Redirection Manager, you can start by typing in the source URL. This is the category archive’s original web address, and will usually start with /category/ followed by the original category name.
Here, we’re redirecting anyone who tries to visit /category/search-engine-optimization.
After typing in the source URL, make sure you click on the small cog icon to see some extra settings that you can configure.
You’ll need to check the box next to ‘Regex.’
Now, it’s time to move to the target URL, which is our new category archive page.
In the following image, visitors will be redirected to /category/seo.
Your next task is choosing the type of redirect that AIOSEO should use. There are various types of redirects that are identified with numbers such as 301, 302, and 307.
If you’re permanently moving the archive to a new location, then you’ll want to use a 301 redirect as this tells search engines that the page will always be at this new location. This way, all the old archive’s traffic and backlinks are transferred to the new page.
Simply open the ‘Redirect Type’ dropdown and choose ‘301 Moved Permanently.’
If you’re only temporarily moving the category archive page to a new URL, then you should choose ‘307 Temporary Redirect’ instead.
When you’ve done that, go ahead and click on the ‘Add Redirect’ button.
Now, if you try to visit the original category archive page, AIOSEO will automatically redirect you to the new target URL.
How to Properly Delete a WordPress Category
Sometimes you may no longer need a particular category. For example, you may have accidentally created two very similar categories or changed the direction of your WordPress blog so you no longer cover the same content.
Before deleting a category, it’s important to think about how this will affect your WordPress website. Firstly, WordPress will remove the deleted category from all your posts. Any posts that no longer have a category, will be marked as ‘uncategorized.’
Lots of uncategorized content will make it more difficult for visitors to explore your website. With that being said, you may want to look through all the posts within the category you plan to delete, to make sure they have at least one alternate category.
You can also set up a redirect for that category’s archive page by following the same process described above. This can help you fix any broken links before they hurt your search engine rankings or the visitor experience.
When you’re ready to delete the category, simply go to Posts » Categories. You can then hover the mouse over the category and click on the ‘Delete’ link when it appears.
How to Change the Default Uncategorized Category
If you don’t assign a category to a post, then WordPress will assign one automatically. By default, this is ‘uncategorized’ but you may want to change this to an alternative category.
Another option is to continue using the ‘uncategorized’ category, but give it a more descriptive and useful name.
This change is particularly important if you run a WordPress multi-author blog or accept guest contributions, as these people may forget to add a category to their posts.
Changing the default category can also improve your WordPress SEO by making sure that every post has a descriptive category.
Let’s start by renaming the uncategorized category by going to Posts »Categories.
Here, find ‘Uncategorized’ and hover your mouse over it. When the ‘Edit’ link appears, give it a click.
You can now type a new title into the ‘Name’ field.
After that, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Save.’
Another option is to change the default category. This can be useful if you’ve already created a general category, and now want to use it as your default.
To make this change, head over to Settings » Writing in the WordPress dashboard. You can then open the ‘Default Post Category’ dropdown and choose any category from the list.
After that, don’t forget to click on ‘Save Changes’ to store your settings.
How to Add a Subcategory in WordPress
WordPress allows you to add category hierarchy, so you can add sub categories as needed.
You can do this easily by using the Parent category dropdown on the Add New Category screen.
Categories and tags are both important ways to organize and group your posts. However, to help visitors find their way around your site, you should use them in slightly different ways.
Categories are great for broadly grouping your posts, while tags are meant to describe the specific details of each post.
Visitors can use categories to quickly find the type of content they’re interested in, or their favorite subject. They can then use tags to pinpoint the exact post within that category.
At WPBeginner we have a Beginner’s Guide category, which is aimed at new WordPress users. Each post in the Beginner’s Guide has different tags, such as custom taxonomy, SEO, and sorting your content.
It’s easy to get categories and tags mixed up, especially if you’re just getting started with WordPress. Your website may also change over time, to the point where one of your tags would now work better as a category.
You can easily turn categories into tags, using the Categories to Tags Converter plugin. For example, you can turn a ‘Beginner’s Guide’ category into a ‘Beginner’s Guide’ tag with the click of a button. Even better, all posts that were categorized as ‘Beginner’s Guide’ will be assigned the new ‘Beginner’s Guide’ tag automatically.
This can save you a ton of time and let you test different ways of organizing your content.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the Categories to Tags Converter plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Tools » Import. Here, find ‘Categories and Tags Converter’ and click on its ‘Run importer’ link.
You’ll now see all the different categories and tags you’ve created for your website, organizied into tabs.
To convert a category into a tag, simply check the box next to it. You can then click on the ‘Convert Categories’ button.
After a few moments, you’ll see a ‘Converted successfully’ message. To turn more categories into tags, simply repeat the process described above.
To turn a tag into a category, select the ‘Tags’ tab. You can now check the box next to the tag that you want to change, and click on the ‘Convert Tags’ button.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking to improve the search engine rankings of your site’s multilingual pages?
Creating a multilingual sitemap helps Google, Bing, and other search engines easily find your content and index it. You can get more international search traffic simply by giving search engines an easy way to find multilingual content on your WordPress site.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create a multilingual sitemap for WordPress.
Why Create a Multilingual Sitemap in WordPress?
A sitemap is a file that contains all the important content on your WordPress website. It is in the XML format and is targeted toward search engines instead of people.
Creating an XML sitemap for your multilingual website helps search engines find and index your content faster. For instance, if you have different domains or subdomains translated into multiple languages, then you’ll need to create a sitemap for each website.
A sitemap is extremely important for your WordPress SEO. Let’s say you just created a new multilingual website. Your new site won’t have many backlinks, and it can be hard for search engines to discover your new articles and pages.
The sitemap provides a way for search engines to learn about your new content in another language. This way, your multilingual pages will start to get indexed and appear in search results.
That being said, let’s take a look at how you can create a multilingual sitemap in WordPress.
Creating a Multilingual Sitemap in WordPress
By default, WordPress automatically creates an XML sitemap for new websites. You can add wp-sitemap.xml at the end of the domain, and WordPress will display the default XML sitemap.
However, this feature is fairly limited and not very flexible. You can’t control which content to add or remove from the sitemap.
It also automatically creates a sitemap for a multilingual site and gives you more control over which pages and website sections you want to show in the sitemap.
The sitemap feature is available in the AIOSEO Lite version for free. However, if you’re looking for more features like video sitemaps, news sitemaps, redirections manager, and link assistant, then we recommend using the AIOSEO Pro version.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you’ll see the AIOSEO setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button and follow the onscreen instructions. For more details, you can visit our guide on how to set up All in One SEO plugin for WordPress.
After that, you’ll need to go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps from your WordPress dashboard and ensure that the ‘Enable Sitemap’ option is enabled.
AIOSEO will automatically create a sitemap for your multilingual website.
You can click the ‘Open Sitemap’ button to preview it or simply add ‘sitemap.xml’ to your website URL.
Please note that if you’re using WPML to create multilingual sites, then AIOSEO will automatically serve sitemaps across different languages.
For instance, your sitemap URL will be something like /nl/sitemap.xml, /de/sitemap.xml, or /fr/sitemap.xml.
If you’re using TranslatePress to create your WordPress multilingual site, then you will need to install their SEO pack addon which is fully compatible with AIOSEO.
To further customize your multilingual sitemaps, you can scroll down in AIOSEO Sitemaps settings to view more options.
By default, the plugin lets you include all post types and taxonomies in the sitemap. It also gives the option to include date archives and author sitemaps.
However, you can uncheck the ‘Post Types’ and ‘Taxonomies’ options and view more options.
For example, let’s say you have translated content as a custom post type. You can simply check that option to include in the sitemap and exclude other post types.
Besides that, you can also add more pages from your multilingual website to the sitemap.
For example, let’s say you’ve translated a pillar article or an evergreen content into another language. You can add the page URL to the sitemap using AIOSEO and help search engines easily find your content.
Simply scroll down and click the ‘Additional Page’ toggle to enable the option. After that, you can add the page URL, and choose the priority and the frequency.
AIOSEO lets you exclude posts, pages, and specific terms from your WordPress sitemaps.
For instance, you can add different multilingual posts and pages that you don’t to include in the sitemap. These can be contact us page, or terms of service pages translated in another language.
First, you’ll need to enable the ‘Advanced Settings’ option. Then enter the URLs in the ‘Exclude Posts / Posts’ field and the terms in the ‘Exclude Terms’ field.
Submitting Your Multilingual Sitemap to Search Engines
Now that you’ve created a multilingual sitemap, the next step is to submit it to different search engines. This way, Google, Bing, and other search engines can easily find new content.
Submit Multilingual Sitemap to Google
Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that you can use to monitor your site’s performance on search results. It helps you see which keywords people use to find your website and resolve any errors that might prevent you from appearing on Google.
Submitting your multilingual sitemap to the Search Console helps Google quickly discover new content.
You can simply log in to your account and head to the ‘Sitemaps’ option from the menu on your left. Next, enter your multilingual sitemap URL under the ‘Add a new sitemap’ option and click the ‘Submit’ button.
Submit Multilingual Sitemap to Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo
Similarly, you can submit the sitemap to Bing using the Webmaster Tools. The best part is that, when you submit your site to Bing, it’s also automatically submitted to the Yahoo and DuckDuckGo search engines.
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Did you know that every WordPress post or page can have two titles, and they are used for different purposes?
These different post titles help you attract potential readers by showing them what your content is about in a clear and interesting way. They are also used by search engines when it comes to SEO rankings.
In this article, we’ll explain the difference between SEO titles and H1 post titles, so you can better optimize your content for higher rankings.
What’s the Difference Between SEO Titles and Post Titles?
Every post and page on your WordPress website will have two titles, one that visitors will see at the top of the post, and one that search engines use when indexing your site. While these are two completely different use-cases, the two titles will most often be the same.
The title that is displayed at the top of every WordPress post is called the H1 post title, because WordPress will surround it with <h1>HTML tags to show that it is the most important heading in the post.
This title should let your visitors know what the post is about and attract their attention, so they click on the post and read it.
Search engines like Google pay close attention to your <h1> header tags, but they also look for a different title, one enclosed in HTML <title> tags. This is your post’s SEO title and is also known as the meta title.
The SEO title is used when search engines rank your page and display it in search results.
Your visitors won’t see the SEO title anywhere on your website. However, it will be used as the page title in the browser tab, and other websites may use it when linking to your post.
By default, the SEO title will follow the following template: ‘Post Title — Site Title’. This will work fine for most blog posts. However, if you wish to customize the SEO title of a post or page, then you will need to use a WordPress SEO plugin.
With that being said, let’s take a look at how to add H1 post titles and SEO titles in WordPress.
How to Add H1 Post Titles in WordPress
Adding a title to your post is simple. When you add a new post in WordPress, the block editor will ask you to add a post title, and then allow you to create blocks where you can add the content of the post.
You can add a post title by simply typing it on the first ‘Add title’ line of the post.
Your website visitors will see this title displayed at the top of the post on your blog, and it will also be used in the post list on your blog’s home page.
When you view the HTML source of the post, you will notice that WordPress has wrapped the title in <h1> tags to identify it as the post title.
The <h1> tag is the most important heading tag, and should be used only for the post’s title. If you use subheadings in your post, then you should use less important heading tags, such as <h2>, <h3>, and <h4>.
How to Add SEO Titles in WordPress
The easiest way to add and customize SEO titles is with the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. AIOSEO is the original WordPress SEO plugin that’s used on over 3 million websites including our own.
In this tutorial, we’ll use the free version of All in One SEO because it allows you to customize the SEO title. However, AIOSEO Pro offers even more features to help you rank better in search engine results pages.
Now, when you are adding or editing a post or page, there will be an ‘AIOSEO Settings’ section below the post content. Here you will find a section labeled ‘Post Title’ where you can customize the SEO title.
Notice that the default SEO title is the H1 post title followed by a separator and the site title.
You will also see a preview of how the title will look in a Google search and the number of characters you used. This will help you create a title that is not too long. The recommended length of an SEO title is 60 characters so it isn’t cut off on search engine results pages.
You might like to leave the default SEO title as it is, or you can customize it using smart tags (more on that later) or by simply typing a new SEO title like this:
When you view the HTML source of the post, you will notice that WordPress has used <title> tags to identify it as the SEO title.
Visitors to your website will see the H1 post title at the top of the post. They will see the SEO title in their browser tab and on search engine results pages.
How to Customize the Default SEO Title in WordPress
You can customize the default SEO title used for posts and pages using the All in One SEO plugin.
First, you need to navigate to the All in One SEO » Search Appearance page and then click the ‘Content Types’ tab.
Near the top of that page, you will see the ‘Posts’ section. Make sure you’re on the ‘Title & Description’ tab and you will see the default SEO title used for posts next to ‘Post Title’.
By default, you will see smart tags for the post title, a separator, and the site title. You can customize the default SEO title by adding or removing smart tags.
For example, to make the SEO title just the post title without the site name at the end, simply delete the ‘Separator’ and ‘Site Title’ smart tags. You can do this with the backspace key on your keyboard, or by clicking on a smart tag and then clicking the trash icon on the popup.
You can also easily add smart tags to the default SEO title. You can do this by clicking the buttons for commonly used tags found above the Post Title field, or clicking the ‘View all tags’ link to see a list of all smart tags.
Simply click on a smart tag to add it to the SEO title. When finished, make sure you click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the top of the screen to save the new default post title.
You can customize the default page title in a similar way by scrolling down to the ‘Pages’ section below.
Tips for Creating the Best Post Titles in WordPress
Choosing the right title for your blog post can help it rank higher in search results. It can also motivate users to click on your article when they see it in the search results thus boosting your CTR (aka click through rate).
Here are some tips on how to write more effective post titles.
Write Your Posts Titles for Users, Not Search Engines
When you think of a title to use for your post, keep your users in mind, not just search engines.
When you write a title for users, you’re likely to come up with something that’s more engaging, and it will lead to more clicks.
You want to make sure that your title is readable, understandable, memorable, and clearly describes the content of the post.
Make Sure the Title Is Not Too Long
The length of an SEO title is important because if it is longer than 600 pixels, then Google will not be able to display the full title in search engine results. Because of this, we recommend keeping your SEO titles shorter than 60 characters.
You can check the length of the SEO title and see a preview of how it will look in a Google search when you customize it using All in One SEO.
Include the Focus Keyword in the Title
You can make your blog post title more SEO-friendly by using your focus keyword in the title. We also recommend making it catchy and click-worthy. That’s because your organic click-through rate (CTR) plays an important role in SEO.
The best way to improve your titles is with the AIOSEO headline analyzer tool. This will evaluate your headline, give it a score, and offer tips to make your headline even better.
Rank Even Higher by Adding a Meta Description and Keywords
Now that you’ve taken time to craft an effective title, you should also add keywords and a meta description to help your post rank even higher. You can learn how to do this step-by-step in our guide on how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.
When Should You Use a Different SEO Title?
In most cases, your H1 post title and SEO title will be the same. However, there are times when you may want to customize the SEO title so that it is different from the H1 post title.
A More Engaging SEO Title
For example, you may want to tweak the SEO version of the title, so it is more engaging to potential visitors and more likely they will click on it in a Google search. You could then display a more detailed and descriptive H1 title on your website.
A Shorter SEO Title
Another reason to change the SEO title is if you have created the perfect H1 title for your post, but it is longer than 600 pixels. In that case, Google will not have room to display the full title in the search results, and you should create a shorter SEO title.
A Longer SEO Title
On the other hand, if your H1 title is very short, then you can take the opportunity to make your SEO title longer by adding relevant keywords that will improve your page ranking.
Warning: Google Regularly Changes Your SEO Title
There’s one last thing about titles we should warn you about. Google is likely to rewrite your SEO title to try to make it more suitable for those performing searches. In fact, a study has found that Google is changing more than 60% of post titles to improve search quality.
This can be frustrating if you have worked hard on crafting the perfect SEO title.
What we have found is that your title is more likely to be changed when your SEO title is different from the H1 title. When these two titles match, the study found that Google rewrites the title only 20% of the time. This is a good reason to use the same title in both places if you can.
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