Are you worried about the declining performance of some of your website’s content? This could be a sign of content decay.
Content decay is the decline in organic traffic and search rankings over time. Unless you update the content, you will continue to lose rankings and traffic.
In this article, we will explain content decay and how to find and fix it.
Here is a quick overview of the topics we will cover in this guide:
‘Content decay’ describes the decline in organic traffic and search rankings for a particular piece of content over time.
Every time you publish new content on your WordPress website, search engines crawl it. Then, after some time, this content may start ranking for specific search terms and bring new traffic to your website.
However, sometimes this traffic may start declining, and certain content may drop in search rankings. This can happen even if you don’t change the content itself.
It is important to understand that content decay doesn’t necessarily mean old articles on your website. An old article may consistently rank and continuously bring traffic to your website.
At the same time, some newer content may start decaying. This decayed content can start affecting your business, sales, and profits if left unchecked.
What Causes Content Decay on Your Website?
Several factors can cause content decay on a website. Here are some of the top reasons for content decay:
Better content from competitors – Your competitors may be targeting the same keywords with more detailed and helpful content.
Declined interest – The keyword is no longer searched as often as it used to be. There may be a decline in search volume for several reasons.
Keyword cannibalism – Your WordPress blog may have similar content targeting the same keyword, which splits your search traffic. Google might be unable to guess the search intent and match it to the right content.
Change in search intent – The reason why people are searching for the keyword may have changed. For instance, you might have an article about different types of solar panels, but the user intent has now changed to buying a solar panel.
Search features – Google is continuously changing search results to match user intent. For instance, shopping results, featured snippets, places, and other search features can divert search traffic to those snippets.
However, before you can find out what has caused your content to decline, you will need to see which pieces of content on your website have decayed.
How to Find Decayed Content in WordPress
Content decay happens gradually and over time, which is why many site owners don’t notice it right away.
However, if it is left unchecked, other articles can start decaying. Soon, you will end up with a large number of posts and pages that are all decayed, and it will take you a long time to fix them.
With that being said, we will now show you two ways to find decayed content on your website.
Method 1: Find Decayed Content Using All in One SEO (Recommended)
All in One SEO has a Search Statistics tool that helps you connect your website to Google Search Console. It then fetches data from Google Search Console and presents it in an easily-readable format. This includes data showing how much your content has declined in search over a period of time.
Once you have added your website to your Search Console account, the next step is to connect All in One SEO to Google Search Console.
You need to go to the All in One SEO » Search Statistics page and click the ‘Connect to Google Search Console’ button.
This will take you to your Google Account, and you will be asked to give the plugin permission to access your Search Console data.
Simply click on the ‘Allow’ button to continue.
If you have multiple websites on your Google Search Console account, then you will be asked to select a site.
After that, just click on the ‘Complete Connection’ button to continue.
Once connected, you can view the Google Search Console data by visiting the All in One SEO » Search Statistics page in your WordPress admin dashboard.
You will see a quick overview of your site’s performance in Google Search.
Next, you need to switch to the ‘Content Rankings’ tab.
From here, you will see a list of your content in Google Search with the loss or gain points, drop percentage, and last updated information.
To find out which pieces of content have dropped the most points, you can sort the list by ‘Loss’ and ‘Drop’ values.
The Loss value shows your content rankings in points, while Drop shows the advantages and gains as a percentage.
You can see the content that has dropped the most in rankings during the last 12 months. Content with the most drop or loss in points is the content that has decayed the most.
You can also see quick stats about a post or page, including internal links, outgoing links, and affiliate links. Hovering your mouse over will also show you links to edit or view a post.
This allows you to view a post to see why it may have declined and edit it if needed.
Method 2: Find Decayed Content Using Google Search Console
This method is not as easy to use as All in One SEO. However, it will help you find content decay, and you can then manually start fixing it.
If you haven’t already done so, then you will need to add your WordPress website to Google Search Console and give it some time to collect data. For more details, you can see our guide on how to connect your website to Google Search Console.
After that, you need to log in to your Google Search Console dashboard and switch to the ‘Performance’ tab.
From here, you need to click on the ‘Date Range’ label.
This will bring up a popup. Just switch to the ‘Compare’ tab and then select a custom date range for your comparison.
For this example, we are comparing the last 6 months to the previous 6 months. You can also choose custom ranges by selecting dates.
Simply click on the ‘Apply’ button to continue.
Search Console will now show you a comparison of your site’s performance in the search results for the selected period.
Make sure to check all the boxes at the top of the Performance overview columns so that you can see positions, impressions, clicks, and the click-through rate (CTR).
After that, scroll down to the data table section and switch to the ‘Pages’ view. This will allow you to see exactly what content has decayed.
In the results, you can sort the ‘Position Difference’ column to find the content that has dropped the most in search rankings.
Tip: If you can’t see the Position Difference column, use your keyboard’s right arrow key to scroll through the columns horizontally.
Similarly, you can also sort content by Impressions Difference or CTR Difference. This may help you find content that appears less in search or has dropped in click-through rate.
You can also switch to the ‘Queries’ tab to see which keywords your site rankings are decaying for.
You can also click on the ‘Export’ button at the top to download this data in CSV format, which you can then open in your preferred spreadsheet software.
How to Fix Content Decay on Your Website
Now that you know which content has decayed on your WordPress website, it is time to fix it.
Before you do that, you need to figure out what has caused a piece of content to fall in rankings or lose its organic click-through rate.
You can try searching for the keywords where that content used to rank and analyze the results.
The most common cause of content decay is newer, more detailed content outranking yours. To fix this, you need to update your content to make it better.
Here are some quick tips to make your content more comprehensive:
Optimize your post for SEO – While optimizing your post for SEO, you can also update your post to add new, more helpful content that you may have missed before.
Embed a video– Adding images and videos is great for building user engagement.
Add a table of contents– This helps users easily navigate longer content. Plus, the table of contents can also be picked up by Google in the featured snippet.
Add FAQ schema markup – Answering general user questions in an FAQ section can help your readers and make your content show up in Google FAQ search results.
Sometimes, the reason for content decay can be a lack of user interest or the search intent not matching your content.
In that case, you may consider changing your content to address the new audience intent. Alternatively, you can rewrite and optimize it for a similar topic that still has search volume.
We hope this article helped you learn about content decay and how to fix it on your WordPress site. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO guide or our expert picks for the best WordPress plugins to grow 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 steal keyword ideas from your competitors ethically?
Have you ever wished there was an easy way to fix over optimization on your site and boost search rankings WITHOUT hiring an SEO consultant?
If you’re like me and most other smart website owners, then you have at least wished for this solution a couple of times in your WordPress journey.
Today, I’m excited to release a free WPBeginner tool, Keyword Density Checker, which enables you to check the most optimized keywords on any content or URL, either yours or competitors’ sites.
We built this tool to help you boost your SEO rankings by identifying the right keywords to rank for.
Why Use a Keyword Density Checker?
WPBeginner’s Keyword Density Checker is a powerful online tool that makes it easy to find the most optimized keywords from any content or URL.
The best part is that using this tool is totally free… no signup, installation, or registration is required!
One of the reasons most website owners fail to rank their site on search engines is that it’s not easy to find the right keyword to rank for. Although there are several keyword research tools available on the market, most are either crazy expensive or come with a search limit.
This is why I decided to create an online tool without any search limits and make it free for all WPBeginner readers.
Our free tool reviews your content or website URL and shows you the most optimized keywords from the submitted content to boost your rankings.
It provides you with a list of one word, two word, and three word phrases, ranked by their frequencies and density.
Some of the benefits of our Keyword Density Checker are…
Get 30 highly optimized keywords from every article you submit
Unlimited search for free without any restrictions
It warns you if it finds a keyword with a high-density percentage
Next, submit the URL or content to check the keyword density.
Our tool analyzes the entire content and gives you 30 highly optimized keywords in that content. That is, you’ll get 10 keywords each for a one word phrase, two word phrases, and three word phrases.
You’ll also be shown the total time each of those keywords was used in the content and its density percentage.
It also gives you an overoptimization warning if the tool finds any of those keywords have a high density percentage.
Competitor Analysis with Keyword Density Tool
Ever wondered what keywords your competitors were trying to rank for?
Performing an SEO competitor analysis and extracting the most used keywords from your competitor’s website is one of the cool things you could do with our Keyword Density Tool.
Let’s figure out how to do it.
First of all, list down the top pages from your competitors’ sites that you think are most popular.
Then enter those URLs into our density tool one by one.
With each search, you’ll get a list of 30 keywords that your competitors were trying to rank for. This report tells you what keywords you can potentially focus on when creating new content or optimizing existing ones.
Fix Over Optimization and Boost Your SEO
Over optimization can hurt your search rankings.
In case you’re wondering, over optimization is the practice of adding too many SEO improvements, which eventually leads to backfiring your SEO efforts.
Well-optimized content remains a top ranking factor, but sometimes Google might suspect your site for over optimization, like keyword stuffing. Once you identify the pages that have recently dropped in search rankings and traffic, you’ll need to start de-optimizing those pages.
With Keyword Density Checker, you can identify keywords that are over optimized. We also recommend doing an SEO analysis to discover other SEO errors that could be hurting your SEO.
Perform an SEO Audit Right Within WordPress
If you want to perform an SEO audit right inside your WordPress dashboard, we recommend using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) WordPress plugin.
Its free plugin comes with all the basic features that help you optimize your site for search engines, including the SEO Analysis tool.
There is also a premium version of AIOSEO that offers advanced features like a redirection manager, schema markup, powerful sitemap tools, and more.
Alternatively, if you’re looking for an online tool that helps you do SEO analysis free of cost, you can take a look at our SEO Analyzer Tool.
Analyze Your Keyword Density Today!
Our Keyword Density Checker is a great tool to help you discover your competitors’ keyword research strategy and fix your content if it’s over optimized.
This is just one of the tools we’ve recently launched. We also launched several other free tools to help small businesses grow and compete with big guys. Here are some of them …
Free Website SEO Analyzer: Audit your site, find critical SEO errors, and create a detailed SEO action plan on how to fix those errors.
If you have ideas on how we can make WPBeginner’s Keyword Density Checker or other tools more helpful for you, then share your thoughts in the comments.
As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner, and we look forward to continue serving you for years to come.
Are you looking for a way to add recipe schema to your WordPress website?
If you have a food blog, then you can display your recipes as snippets in search engine results using schema markup. This can help you get more clicks and traffic to your site.
In this article, we will show you how to add SEO-friendly recipe schema in WordPress.
What Is Recipe Schema and Why Use It?
Recipe schema markup (structured data) is a special type of HTML code that’s added to your WordPress website. It offers more information about your content to search engines.
This information isn’t displayed on your website. Instead, it’s added to source code for search engine bots to read.
Google, Bing, and other search engines use the schema markup to display additional information as featured snippets. These are highlighted results with extra info that are shown at the top of the search results pages.
For example, Google may show ingredients, ratings, cooking time, nutritional value, and other information from your recipes in the featured snippets.
Google gets this extra info from the recipe schema markup on the page.
Featured snippets are a great way to get more clicks to your website from organic search results and increase your traffic.
That being said, let’s look at how you can easily add recipe schema in WordPress.
Adding SEO-Friendly Recipes With Schema in WordPress
The easiest way to add recipe schema markup in WordPress is by using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin for WordPress.
It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market that helps you optimize your website for search engines without needing to hire an SEO expert.
Note: You will need the AIOSEO Pro version as it includes the Schema Generator feature, which allows you to add any type of schema markup to your content. Plus, there are other powerful features like sitemaps, redirection manager, and more. There is also a free version of AIOSEO that you can try.
First, you will need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin on your site. If you need help, then just follow our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, the plugin will automatically launch its setup wizard. You can go ahead and click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button to set up the plugin on your website.
After setting up AIOSEO on your site, you must now go to AIOSEO » Search Appearance from your WordPress admin area and then click on the ‘Content Types’ tab.
Under the Content Types section, you can edit the schema markup for posts, pages, products, groups, memberships, and all other types of content on your WordPress blog.
Go ahead and select the ‘Schema Markup’ tab for Posts. You can now click on the Schema Type dropdown menu and choose the ‘Recipe’ option.
You can do the same for pages, products, custom post types, and all other content types.
After selecting ‘Recipe’ as the schema type, don’t forget to save your changes. You can do this by clicking the blue ‘Save Changes’ button at the top right of the page.
Adding Schema Recipe Information to Posts & Pages
The next step is to add your recipe information to each WordPress post or page that you want to display in the featured snippets.
To start, go ahead and edit an existing post or add a new one. Once you are in the WordPress editor, simply scroll down to the ‘AIOSEO Settings’ meta box and select the ‘Schema’ tab. Then, click the ‘Generate Schema’ button.
The Schema Catalog will open. This is a popup where you can choose the type of schema you want to add.
Go ahead and click the ‘Add Schema’ button next to the ‘Recipe’ option.
Now, a modal will open up where you can enter details about your recipe and tell Google what it’s about.
You can start by adding the name of the dish, a description, and the author that you want to display in the search results.
You can also scroll down to add relevant keywords.
For example, you might include a season or specific holiday and the image that will display in search results.
Besides that, AIOSEO offers additional fields to add more details about your recipe. Filling out these extra fields is really useful because Google will show different information for different search terms.
You can enter details about the dish type, cuisine type, time required, number of servings, ingredients, calories, instructions, ratings, and much more.
Once you have filled out your recipe information, go ahead and click the ‘Add Schema’ button.
Then, you can publish your blog post. AIOSEO will add the recipe schema with the data you just provided.
You and your visitors won’t be able to see a difference on the front end of your website, but now search engine bots will have all the extra data they need for featured snippets.
Optimizing Your Recipes in WordPress
To optimize your recipes for even more traffic from search engines, you can use our blog post SEO checklist.
We also recommend using a plugin like WP Tasty Recipes alongside AIOSEO.
WP Tasty Recipes is one of the best recipe plugins for food bloggers. It lets you easily create customizable recipe cards to make your recipe posts look amazing.
It comes with six different recipe card themes, step-by-step video integrations, ingredient checkboxes, custom share and save buttons, ‘jump to recipe’ shortcuts, and more.
Additionally, with Nutrifox, you can create nutrition facts labels for your recipes. These will display the nutritional content of your dishes beneath your recipes so that readers can make more informed decisions.
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 fix the issue of redirecting to an old domain?
When you migrate a WordPress website to a new domain, there is a possibility that users will be redirected back to the old domain.
In this article, we will show you how to fix WordPress redirecting to an old domain after migration.
What Causes Redirection to Old Domain After Migration Issue?
When you’re moving your WordPress website to a new domain, it is important to set up redirection. This way, users automatically land on the new location, and you get to keep your keyword rankings and traffic.
However, redirection to a new domain may not work properly, and your visitors would be redirected back to the old domain.
One of the main causes for this issue is that your site URL and home URL values are different in the WordPress database tables. You need to make sure that both these values lead to your new domain.
Besides that, DNS issues can also cause users to redirect to the old domain after migration. If the DNS server is not responding or DNS records haven’t been updated, then your visitors won’t be able to view your new website URL.
That said, let’s see how you can fix WordPress redirecting to the old domain after migration. We will cover different methods, so you can click the links below to jump ahead to your preferred section.
Method 1: Update the Site Address in WordPress Settings
The easiest way to fix this issue is by ensuring that the WordPress address and site address is the same in your WordPress settings.
If your Site Address (URL) still shows the old domain, then users will be redirected to the previous URL after migration.
To fix this, simply head to Settings » General from your WordPress admin panel. After that, enter your new domain under the ‘Site Address (URL)’ field.
Once you’re done, simply save your changes and visit the new domain to see if the problem is resolved.
If, however, the URL fields are greyed out and won’t let you type a new address, continue reading and use one of the other methods to redirect your domain.
Method 2: Changing Site URL in WordPress Database
Another method of fixing the redirecting to the old domain issue is by updating the site URL in the WordPress database tables.
You can easily access the database using the cPanel provided by the WordPress hosting service. For this tutorial, we will be using Bluehost as an example, but the process is similar for other hosting companies like Hostinger, SiteGround, etc.
First, you’ll need to log in to the hosting service control panel. After that, simply click on the ‘Advanced’ tab from the menu on your left.
Next, you can scroll down to the Databases section and click the ‘phpMyAdmin’ option.
You will need to wait for a few seconds until phpMyAdmin opens.
Once it opens, you will need to go to the wp_options table from the navigational panel on your left.
Do note that each hosting service has a different naming convention for database tables. However, the one you’re looking for will always end in ‘_options.”
For example, in this tutorial, we will click the ‘staging_45f_options’ table in Bluehost’s phpMyAdmin.
Next, you will need to edit the ‘siteurl’ and ‘home’ options.
First, go ahead and click the ‘Edit’ button for ‘siteurl’ option.
After that, you will need to enter the new domain name in the option_value field. Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Go’ button.
Now, you can return to the main wp_options page and edit the ‘home’ option.
Next, you will need to enter the new domain in the option_value field.
After entering the value, click the ‘Go’ button.
Method 3: Flush DNS Cache on Your PC
If you’re still unable to resolve the issue of the old domain redirecting after migration, then you should check the DNS settings.
At times, it can take up to 12 to 48 hours for the change of domain name to take effect. As a result, internet providers that don’t have updated DNS records will redirect users to the old domain.
You simply flush the DNS cache so that it gets the latest information and the new website URL. This also helps resolve the DNS server not responding issue.
Pro Tip: Use SEO Plugin to Perform Full Site Redirect
When you manually perform redirection to a new domain, then there is always a chance of errors. As a result, users would still be redirected to the old domain.
An easier way of setting up redirection is by using an WordPress SEO plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It offers a powerful redirection manager that you can use to redirect your entire site to a new domain without any issues.
This tool was built by our team, and it is what we use when we’re migrating websites to a new domain or merging two sites into one. You can learn more by following our step by step guide on how to properly do a full site redirect in WordPress.
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.
When broken links are found, the plugin makes it easy for you to fix them right from within the plugin without even having to visit individual pages where those links were added.
Why Do You Need Broken Link Checker?
Broken links can frustrate your website visitors and cause them to leave your site. They can even hurt your website’s SEO, conversions, and sales.
On WordPress sites, broken links typically occur when moving a site to a new domain name, or when deleting a post or page without proper redirection.
Sometimes broken links can also happen due to a typo, and they can go unnoticed for months if not years. But worse, if you ever link to an external website that’s not yours, and they change the page, delete it, or shut down the site, then your site will have broken links.
This is why monitoring broken links on a regular basis is important for your WordPress website.
While there are SaaS broken link checkers in the market, most are either crazy expensive or not built specifically with WordPress websites in mind.
So I decided to work with my team to finally create a beginner-friendly broken link checker for WordPress.
With Broken Link Checker, you can…
scan all links on your site every 3 days
detect valid links, broken links, and redirects
set which post types (posts, pages, or custom post types) and statuses (published, draft, and so on) to monitor
exclude certain URLs from being checked
… and a whole lot more.
If you’re serious about your website and want to grow your online business, then you know how important it is to offer a seamless website browsing experience to your visitors.
Upon connecting the plugin with your account, you can turn the toggle on to stop search engines from following broken links. You can even set it not to update the modified date for a page/post when a link is updated via the plugin.
When you click the Broken Links tab, you can see that the plugin has automatically scanned the entire site, and links are categorized into broken, redirects, and dismissed.
The Broken Link Checker plugin lets you fix broken links quickly and easily right within your plugin. To replace a broken link, simply click Edit URL.
Alternatively, if you want to remove the link, just click Unlink and the link will be removed from the page. Â
After updating the link, you can recheck if the link is still broken by clicking the Recheck option. If you want, you can even dismiss the message from the plugin.
Get More Details About Each Link
Broken Link Checker gives you additional details for each link, like how long the link has been broken and response header information, HTTP Status code, and more.
Control Which Types of Pages are Scanned
Another important aspect of Broken Link Checker is its advanced settings, which give you full control over which pages get scanned. Within the plugin, you can set which post types (posts, pages, or custom post types) and statuses (published, draft, and so on) to monitor.
You can also exclude certain pages from being checked.
This helps you better manage the crawl budget, so you can ensure you’re not wasting the link scan credits.
Scanning Your Site the Right Way
Broken Link Checker scans both external (links from your website to others) and internal links (links from one page on your site to another page) on your site.
Unlike other WordPress plugins, Broken Link Checker uses an external private server to scan (or, in other words, ping) for broken links on your site. That’s because repeatedly pinging external sites from your servers can make your site look suspicious to internet service providers, putting your sites at risk of being blacklisted.
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.
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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