Tag: wordpress seo

How to Properly Add SEO-Friendly â€˜How toâ€™ Schema in WordPress

Are you wondering how to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress?

By adding ‘how to’ schema to your content, you can show images, videos, and detailed step-by-step instructions directly in the search results. This can make your content stand out and get you more clicks and visitors.

In this article, we will show you how to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress.

Why Add ‘How To’ Schema in WordPress?

‘How to’ schema markup is a type of HTML code that’s added to your WordPress website.

Instead of appearing on your site, ‘how to’ schema gives search engines more information about your tutorial articles. This can include detailed step-by-step instructions, a list of tools and supplies the reader will need, and how long the tutorial takes to complete.

This helps the search engines understand your pages and posts and show them to people who are looking for content just like yours.

Even better, search engines such as Google may use the ‘how to’ schema to create rich snippets and results. For example, Google might show your ‘how to’ steps in an ordered list.

Depending on how your schema is set up, search engines may even display this information in the ‘people also ask’ section.

These boxes appear for many search queries and offer a list of additional questions, each linked to a website for more information.

This section appears at the very top of the search results, so they can get you even more clicks and increase your blog traffic.

Some rich results even include useful information, such as a list of required tools or how much money readers need to spend to complete the guide. This can help people quickly decide whether your ‘how to’ guide is right for them, which will improve the user experience.

It’s important to note that adding ‘how to’ schema in WordPress will not guarantee that your content appears as a rich result. However, it will improve your chances, especially if your website is already SEO-optimized.

Google’s ‘How To’ Schema Guidelines

Before adding ‘how to’ schema to your pages and posts, it’s important to understand Google’s content guidelines.

Firstly, you can’t use the ‘how to’ schema for advertising purposes or include any content that’s obscene, explicit, or violent. You also shouldn’t add ‘how to’ schema to any content that promotes dangerous or illegal activities.

You can only use ‘how to’ schema once per page, and all the content in your schema markup must also be visible on that page. This means you can’t type out unique instructions or add images that don’t appear in the actual ‘how to’ guide.

Finally, you can’t use the ‘how to’ schema for recipes. For this type of content, you will get much better results by using the SEO-friendly recipe schema.

How To Add ‘How To’ Schema in WordPress

The easiest way to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress is with All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress, used by over 3 million sites.

AIOSEO allows you to add a growing number of schema types to your pages, posts, custom post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, and more. This can help search engines understand your content and increase your chances of getting rich snippets.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate AIOSEO. For more details, see our guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.

Note: There is a free version of AIOSEO that allows you to optimize your site no matter what your budget is. However, you will need the premium version to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress.

Upon activation, the plugin will run a setup wizard, so simply follow the onscreen instructions. If you need more detailed instructions, then you can see our guide on how to properly set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

Once you have completed the setup wizard, AIOSEO will take you back to the WordPress dashboard. Now that All in One SEO is installed and activated, simply open the page, post, custom post type, or any other content where you want to add the ‘how to’ schema.

After that, scroll to the bottom of the WordPress content editor, where you will see a new ‘AIOSEO Settings’ section.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Schema’ tab.

Here, you will see the schema settings are enabled by default.

To add the ‘how to’ schema, just click on the ‘Generate Schema’ button.

This will open AIOSEO’s Schema Catalog, where you can choose from a wide range of different schema types. For example, you can add FAQ schema in WordPress, add GTIN, ISBN, and MPN schema, and more.

Here, simply find the ‘how to’ option and click on its ‘Add Schema’ button.

This opens a window where you can type in all the information you want to use in the schema.

By default, AIOSEO adds a ‘Post Title’ smart tag to the ‘Title’ field. AIOSEO automatically replaces all its smart tags with real values, so you can create unique markup without having to manually type in all the information you want to use.

If you want to use a different title, then simply delete the ‘Post Title’ smart tag. You can then type in the information you would like to use instead.

Next, you will need to add a description. Search engines like Google typically show the description below the post title and above the list of steps, so it’s a great way to introduce the guide to potential readers.

You can either type this information into the ‘Description’ box or click on any smart tag you want to use. To see the full list of smart tags, click the ‘View all tags’ link.

If the reader needs any specialist equipment or resources to complete the guide, then you should type them into the ‘Supplies’ field.

After each item, press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard to add it to the schema.

Similarly, if the reader needs any specialist tools, then just type these into the ‘Tools’ section.

With that done, you can specify how long it will take readers to complete the ‘how to’ guide. Simply type the correct numbers into the fields marked ‘Days’, ‘Hours’, and ‘Minutes’.

Sometimes, you may want to show the finished result. For example, if you are writing about how to create an email newsletter, then you might show a professionally-designed newsletter. If readers like what they see, then they are more likely to visit your website.

Unlike other images that must be unique, you can reuse this image in the final step of your ‘how to’ schema. However, as always, the image must appear somewhere on the page or post.

Simply click on the ‘Upload or select image’ button and then choose an image from the WordPress media library.

Sometimes, readers will need to spend money to complete a ‘how to’ guide. For example, if you are writing a post about how to start a WordPress blog, then readers will need to buy WordPress hosting.

In this case, simply type the total cost into the ‘Price’ field and select the currency.

With that done, you are ready to add each step to the ‘how to’ schema.

According to Google’s guidelines, each step must only include the information readers need to complete that step. With that in mind, you shouldn’t include any non-step data, such as an introduction section or a list of related posts.

To start, type in a title for the step and enter the instructions into the ‘Description’ section.

Have you added anchor links in WordPress? For example, you might help readers find their way around the page by creating a table of contents where each step is an anchor link.

If this is the case, then you can add the step’s anchor link to the ‘URL’ field.

You may also want to add an image that represents this step. This image must be unique and be visible on the page or post.

According to Google’s guidelines, you should never use images that don’t reflect the step’s content or use the same image for multiple steps.

When you are happy with how the first step is set up, just click on the ‘Add Another Step’ button.

This creates a section where you can add a title and description, plus an optional anchor link and image. Simply repeat this process to add all the steps to your ‘how to’ schema.

When you are happy with how the schema is set up, go ahead and click on the ‘Add Schema’ button.

You can now go ahead and publish or update the page to make the schema live on your WordPress website.

If you want to test whether your ‘how to’ schema markup is working correctly, then scroll down to our section on how to test your WordPress ‘how to’ schema.

Optional: Create a Reusable’ How To’ Schema Template

If you publish lots of ‘how to’ guides, then you might create your own schema template. You can then apply this template to any page, post, custom taxonomy, custom post type, or other content with the click of a button.

Schema templates tend to work best when you use smart tags. For example, tags can add the post’s title, excerpt, author, publication date, and other content automatically. In this way, you can create unique schema without having to manually type in all the information.

Sometimes, you may even use the same tools, pricing, currency, or other information on all your posts.

For example, if you run a photography blog, then you might always recommend that readers use your favorite camera model or lens. By typing this information into the template’s ‘Tools’ field, AIOSEO will automatically apply this schema to your content, which saves you even more time.

Even better, you can override these default settings every time you use the template, so you can still customize the template for individual pages.

To create a reusable template, you need to open any page or post and then click on the ‘Generate Schema’ button.

In the popup that appears, click on the button next to ‘How to’.

This takes you to a screen where you can build the template. By default, AIOSEO will use the post’s title as the name.

To change this, simply delete the ‘Post Title’ tag and then click on ‘View all tags.’

You can now choose any tag from the dropdown menu.

You can also use a combination of plain text and tags or multiple tags.

For example, you might use ‘Post Title’ and ‘Post Date.’ AIOSEO will then replace these tags with real values every time you use the template.

When you are happy with how the title is set up, you can add a description.

Often, it makes sense to use the ‘Excerpt’ tag so that AIOSEO will use the WordPress post’s excerpt. However, you can use any smart tags you want or even type plain text into the ‘Description’ field.

With that done, you may want to add some plain text to the other fields. For example, there may be some tools and supplies that you use in all your ‘how to’ guides.

Using WPBeginner as an example, it might make sense to add a domain name or Bluehost WordPress hosting to the ‘Tools’ field since most of our ‘how to’ guides require a domain and web hosting.

Remember, you can override these settings each time you use the template.

After typing in any extra information you want to use, it’s time to go ahead and create the template. Simply click on the ‘Save Schema as Template’ button.

You can now type in a title for the schema template. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything that helps you identify the template in your WordPress dashboard.

With that done, click on the ‘Save Template’ button.

To apply the template to your content, simply click on the ‘Generate Schema’ button to open the schema catalog as normal.

Then, click on the ‘Your Templates’ tab.

You will now see the template you created earlier.

If you want to apply the template without making any changes, then click on its ‘+’ button.

However, we recommend customizing the template as it typically creates more SEO-friendly schema. This can improve your WordPress SEO and help you get valuable rich snippets in the search engine results.

To do this, simply click on the ‘pencil’ icon.

You can now make changes or type in any extra information you want to use for this specific ‘how to’ guide.

With that done, click on ‘Add Schema’.

Simply repeat these steps to use the same template anywhere on your online store, website, or WordPress blog.

How to Test Your ‘How to’ Schema in WordPress

Since the ‘how to’ schema doesn’t appear on your website, you will need to test it using a free Google tool.

To check that the schema is formatted correctly, head over to Google’s Rich Results Test page. Here, simply type in the URL where you added the ‘how to’ schema and then click on ‘Test URL.’

Google will now analyze your page for all kinds of schema markup. With that in mind, you may see multiple results if the page uses other kinds of schema, such as local business schema and FAQ schema.

Once the test is complete, click on the section marked ‘How to’.

You should now see all the information you added to this page or post. If this data is correct, then your ‘how to’ schema is working perfectly.

If the information is wrong or it’s formatted incorrectly, then you will need to open that page or post in the WordPress content editor. Then, scroll to the AIOSEO Settings and select the ‘Schema’ tab.

Here, find the ‘how to’ schema you added earlier and click on its pencil icon.

You can then edit the schema by following the same process described above.

When you are happy with the changes you have made, just click on ‘Update Schema.’

You can now re-test the URL using Google’s Rich Results Test page.

If you are still seeing the wrong information, then try clearing your WordPress cache because caching plugins may show an outdated version of your content to Google.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to make money online blogging with WordPress or see our expert pick of the best SEO plugins and tools that you should use.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Properly Add SEO-Friendly â€˜How toâ€™ Schema in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

27.09.2023
How to Appear in Google Answer Boxes with Your WordPress Site
Do you want your articles to appear in Google answer boxes?

Google uses answer boxes to answer questions directly on the search results page. Getting featured in them can help you get more organic clicks and boost website traffic.

In this article, we will explain how to make your WordPress website’s content appear in Google answer boxes.

What Is a Google Answer Box?

The Google answer box is part of Google’s knowledge graph. It is an algorithm that tries to answer user’s questions right on the search page like a featured snippet, and it appears at the top of the page.

Google uses carousels, side boxes, lists, tables, and answer boxes to display the most relevant information at the top. This information is gathered from various sources, and the algorithm decides which results should be displayed inside an answer box.

According to research done by Advanced Web Ranking, answer boxes have an average click-through rate of 32.3%. This makes them extremely important for your WordPress SEO strategy.

How Google Displays Information in the Answer Box

The purpose of answer boxes is to offer instant information to users. This works particularly well when people are looking for factual data like public figures, distances, conversion rates, scores, and similar information.

If users get the exact information they need, then they can move on and search for something else. For many queries, Google can just display a sidebox from the web’s most reliable knowledge sources, like Wikipedia.

In a way, it might sound like Google is trying to keep all the traffic for itself. However, not all users are looking for information that Google’s knowledge graph can answer with accuracy.

If a user’s keywords require an opinionated, well-thought-out, or research-based answer, then Google relies on other web sources.

If you are among the top 10 results for a keyword, then you are already closer to appearing in a Google answer box.

Google answer box results change quite often, and you can easily appear as the best answer by simply improving your WordPress website content.

Let’s explore a number of content optimization steps that you can take to appear in the answer box. You can click the links below to jump to our different tips:
1. Add Short and Helpful Answers in Your Content

The purpose of answer boxes is to provide quick answers to users.

To help grab a Google answer box, you will want to make sure that your article answers a specific question as early in the article as possible. You also need to make your answer short, concise, and easy to understand.

You can also add a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section to your blog post and pages. This will allow you to answer as many questions as possible for a particular topic and increase your chances of getting featured in an answer box.

If you are using All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO), then it is super easy to add a FAQ section to your content. AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress, and it automatically optimizes your site for featured snippets.

Another advantage of using AIOSEO is that it lets you easily add FAQ schema in WordPress. FAQ schema is a smart markup code that allows Google to identify a FAQ section in your content.

As a result, Google may reward you by listing your site in answer boxes, people also ask sections, and other rich results.

2. Include Keywords in the Form of Questions

It also helps to include your keywords in the form of a question followed by a short answer. After that, feel free to add as much detail to your answer as you want.

Adding more information will allow you to use the keyword throughout the article. You can even use the article to answer other questions your users may have about the same topic.

To find keywords that are in the form of a question, you can use any keyword research tool.

For instance, we recommend Semrush as it shows a lot of information about a search term. This includes questions about the topic, which you can include while writing the article.

Expert Tip: Looking for a free way to do keyword research? Our WPBeginner Keyword Generator tool can help you find hundreds of keyword ideas in just seconds.

To learn more, please follow our guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress blog.

3. Use Lists, Tables, and Table of Contents

Users love properly formatted content because it helps them quickly get the information they need. You can publish informative content in a viral listicle format that is easier for visitors to consume and share.

For example, here’s how Google picked numbered bullets from OptinMonster’s exit-intent popup hacks article and showed it as an answer box / featured snippet in the search results.

Google understands that list and table formatting makes content easier to read and tends to highlight the websites that use this formatting.

This includes:
- Pages that use tables to list items
- How to articles that use step-by-step instructions
- Top lists that simply list items
- Lengthy articles that use a table of contents
- And more
This does not mean that you must always use one of these formats to write your articles. However, if using formatting can help your users get to the information quickly, then it’s a good idea to use it.

In other cases, Google will use descriptions from your list post and show them in answer boxes.

For example, Google picks small details from our article about WordPress form plugins and displays them in the search results.

4. Optimize Content With Data-Driven Decisions

Data is the most important thing you need if you want to create an effective content strategy. Without knowing information about your visitors, you won’t be able to write content that they want to read.

This is where Google Analytics comes in. Its detailed data helps you understand your audience and plan accordingly.

You will need MonsterInsights to properly track user engagement in WordPress. It is the best Google Analytics plugin on the market, and it will help you learn where your users are coming from and what they do while they are on your site.

These stats provide you with a clear picture of what’s already working on your website. You can then expand on it and make informed decisions for better SEO.

5. Optimize Your Page’s Meta Description

A meta description is a brief description explaining what your page is about. It is added in the <head> section of your site’s HTML. At times, Google will use it as an answer and show it in its answer boxes.

You can easily add meta descriptions to your articles by using the All in One SEO plugin. When you are in the content editor, simply scroll down to the AIOSEO Settings meta box and enter a meta description.

Make sure that your meta description includes your target keyword. It also needs to explain what questions or topics this particular page or post will be answering.

6. Follow SEO Best Practices

Apart from answering user questions, you also need to make sure that Google can find your content and understand it easily.

This means you still need to optimize your posts for SEO just like you would normally do:
- Include your keywords in the SEO title, description, and keywords.
- Add your focus keyword in the content and sub-headings in your article.
- Properly use categories and tags.
- Make sure there is enough content to cover the topic.
- Make internal linking a habit and link to your other posts and pages.
- Add title and alt tags to your images.
For more details, you can see our complete guide on how to optimize your WordPress blog posts for SEO.

Are Google Answer Boxes Worth the Effort?

Yes, absolutely. As we mentioned earlier, the click-through rate for results in the answer box is way higher than other content. Depending on the topic and your content, it could go as high as 51.2%.

However, we do not recommend you overthink it. The purpose of answer boxes is to help users find information quickly. If you focus on answering questions through helpful and informative content, then search results will start picking up your content.

Google’s search features are always changing. There are no shortcuts that will help you win forever. But building your website as an authority/reliable source of useful information will help you win in the long run.

We hope this article helped you learn how to appear in Google answer boxes. You may also want to see our list of the best WordPress SEO plugins and our guide on how to use Google Trends to improve SEO and grow your business.

The post How to Appear in Google Answer Boxes with Your WordPress Site first appeared on WPBeginner.
22.09.2023
How to Easily Add Emojis to Your SEO Title in WordPress
Are you looking to add emojis to your SEO title in WordPress?

Boosting the click-through rates (CTR) on your blog posts can make a huge impact on your traffic and your bottom line. Emojis are visually appealing and help your page stand out.

In this post, we will show you how to add emojis to your SEO title in WordPress so you can stand out in search results and bring more traffic to your website.

Why Add Emojis to Your SEO Titles?

Emojis are small digital icons used to communicate emotions, objects, activities, and other concepts. They can either replace text or enhance the message, giving it more meaning.

On a page filled with words, colorful and bright emojis help your page stand out.

By using emojis, you draw attention to your page and make your brand seem more human, attracting your target audience and boosting click-through rates.

While increasing your CTR isn’t guaranteed to help you rank better on Google, getting more traffic to your website is always a good thing.

That’s not the only reason. Search engines also support search queries with emojis. Try typing ‘🍕recipe’ into the search bar of Google.

You’ll find a few search results with the ‘🍕’ emoji as Google likes to either find the best pizza recipe pages or pages with the exact ‘🍕’ emoji.

How to Use Emojis in Your SEO Titles

Emojis can negatively impact your click-through rates and SEO if they are seen as misleading or spammy.

Before you start embedding emojis all over your titles, there are some ground rules to follow:
- Consider your audience: Without a doubt, emojis work better for some niches than others. For example, including emojis on a recipe page for the best cocktails to make in the summer might be appropriate. But adding a heart or syringe to a page related to health care may hurt your brand’s reputation.
- Don’t use emojis to replace words: It doesn’t matter how clear or descriptive your emojis are. They should never replace words because users are forced to interpret the meaning of the emoji instead of being told.
- Use clear emojis: Avoid ambiguous emojis that people can misinterpret. Instead, stick to simple ones that are widely known to all audiences.
- Use emojis that work on both light and dark backgrounds: Don’t use light emojis on a light background. For example, a yellow hand emoji works better on light backgrounds than a white hand emoji. This is especially important for SEO titles since Google’s default results background is plain white.
Now that you know how to use emojis responsibly, you are ready to begin using them on your web pages.

Let’s take a look at how you can add emojis to your SEO titles.

How to Add Emojis to Your SEO Titles

Adding emojis to your titles is incredibly easy once you have a good plugin. Without it, you’d have to scour the internet to find the right emoji code, which overcomplicates the process.

The first step to adding emojis to your SEO titles is using the free All in One SEO plugin.

AIOSEO offers on-page analysis so you can optimize your blogs to rank higher in search results. You can also use the built-in emoji picker to add emojis to your SEO titles.

AIOSEO also comes with an SEO checklist tool, a link assistant, and many other features you can use to optimize your website to boost your rankings.

Start by installing the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once that’s done, you are ready to edit your blog posts and pages and add emojis to your SEO title.

Edit Your SEO Title

Optimizing your metadata is super simple with the AIOSEO plugin. In the left-hand menu of the WordPress admin dashboard, select Posts.

You can also do this for pages on your WordPress blog, but for this tutorial, we are just going to edit a post as an example.

Find the blog post you’d like to update. Then click the ‘Edit’ link. If you have both the Block and Classic editors enabled, then either will work.

Simply scroll down the WordPress content editor until you get to the ‘AIOSEO Settings’ tab.

From there, you can edit the post title field.

Choose Your Emoji and Add It

Now, you are ready to add your emoji to your metadata. To do that, scroll down a little further below the AIOSEO Settings.

Under Post Title, click on the emoji icon next to the tags in each field.

It’ll open up a window with a selection of emojis for you to choose from.

Browse through and pick the emoji of your choice, or just use the search bar to find what you are looking for.

Lastly, make sure to hit ‘Update/Publish’.

After that, the emoji will appear in the SEO title and display in search results.

Now, select your emoji of choice, and that’s it! Congratulations, you’ve just added emojis to your SEO title!

Frequently Asked Questions

Now that you know how to add emojis to your SEO titles, you may have a few more questions about how to effectively use emoticons to enhance your WordPress website.

How Do You Add Emojis to HTML Titles?

To add emojis to HTML titles, you can use the Unicode character codes for emojis directly within the title tag. You can find these codes on various websites that provide emoji Unicode references. Look for the emoji you want to use and then copy its Unicode code.

Inside the <title> tag, you can include the Unicode character code for the emoji. You must use the code &#x followed by the emoji code. For example, to add a smiley face emoji (😊) with the Unicode code U+1F60A, you would use &#x1F60A.

Do Emojis Affect SEO?

Google says you can use emojis in your SEO pages, including titles, but it won’t help or harm your search rankings in any way. However, emojis indirectly help your SEO efforts by improving click-through rates.

Emojis can humanize your brand, and if users spend more time on your site or interact with your content, these signals could boost your search ranking position.

Do Emojis Go Before or After Your Title?

Most emojis should generally come after text and never before. You want people to get the message first. Using emojis before the title can give a bad user experience, especially for anyone using a screen reader.

We hope this article has helped you learn how to add emojis to your WordPress SEO titles. You may also want to read our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners and the most useful WordPress plugins for all websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Add Emojis to Your SEO Title in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.
19.09.2023
How to Use AI for SEO in WordPress (12 Tools)
Do you want to use AI for SEO in WordPress?

Artificial Intelligence is making a significant impact on the SEO industry. There are already excellent AI SEO tools that you can use to improve your SEO rankings without much effort.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use AI for SEO in WordPress with our hand-picked selection of tools and software.

Why Use AI for SEO in WordPress?

Most AI tools for SEO use a type of artificial intelligence that uses machine learning technology to teach itself.

These incredibly powerful computer programs are trained over a massive amount of data with access to millions of resources and websites.

With this powerful range of knowledge, natural language capability, and lightning-fast speeds, AI SEO tools can make SEO a breeze for WordPress website owners.

Artificial Intelligence powered SEO tools can help you with the following:
- Research and optimize your content
- Keyword research and finding related topics
- Comparing your content with the competition for better search rankings
- Understanding your audience
With that said, let’s look at some of the best AI tools for SEO on the market and what they can help you with.

Best AI SEO Tools for WordPress

There are many AI SEO tools available on the market. However, not all of them are equally capable or suitable for day to day SEO tasks of a WordPress website owner.

We looked at many of them and here is our expert pick of the best AI tools for SEO.
1. All in One SEO for WordPress
2. Clearscope
3. Semrush
4. ChatGPT
5. Jasper
6. Grammarly
7. Surfer
8. Link Whisper
9. Rank Math
10. WordLift
11. Outranking
12. Frase
1. All in One SEO for WordPress

All in One SEO for WordPress is the best WordPress SEO toolkit on the market. It is the most comprehensive SEO software for WordPress, used by over 3 million websites.

It has powerful SEO features, including some powered by artificial intelligence.

It comes with an AI-powered title and description generator. This allows you to use AI to generate SEO-optimized titles and descriptions for your articles.

Simply click on the robot button next to the Post Title and Meta Description fields. All in One SEO will generate up to 5 ideas based on your post’s content.

You can then click to select the one that you want to use and then further improve it if needed.

Internal links play a massive role in SEO. However, it becomes difficult to internal link to your newer articles as your website grows.

To solve this, All in One SEO includes an AI-powered link assistant, which helps you manage internal links.

It crawls your website and analyzes all your links. You can then view your links reports to see the results.

Switch to the Link Suggestions tab and you will see a list of opportunities for creating internal links.

Recommendation: Best overall for WordPress users with the most comprehensive set of SEO tools for website owners. After testing many AI tools, we feel that AIOSEO provides the most value for money as it comes with multiple tools that cost a lot more when purchased individually from other providers.

Pricing: Starts at $49.60. A free version is also available called All in One SEO Lite.

2. Clearscope

Clearscope is an AI powered content optimization software that helps website owners optimize their content for higher search rankings.

You can start by typing in a keyword. Clearscope will then show you a list of relevant terms, competitors that already rank, and questions users commonly ask.

Clearscope’s AI-powered content optimizer allows you to edit your content for higher rankings.

It will show you a list of relevant terms. You can sort them by importance and include them in your content. You also get questions users commonly ask under the Research tab. Including answers to these questions in your content makes it more comprehensive and useful.

As you optimize your content, Clearscope will grade your work.

Your aim should be to get at least an A+ grade to ensure that the content you are working on is comprehensive and covers all the relevant information your audience may be looking for.

Clearscope saves all your reports and optimizations you make for your content. Next, time you are working on an article, you can compare it with the previous version and only update newer information missing from the content.

Clearscrope also offers a Google Docs extension, which allows you to collaborate with team members in Google Docs without missing Clearscope’s optimization features.

It also has a WordPress plugin that lets you optimize inside the default WordPress editor as you write new content or update older articles.

Recommendation: Best for enterprise users, larger editorial teams, and anyone who needs to get to the top of highly competitive keywords.

Pricing: Starts at $170 per month.

3. Semrush

Semrush is an all-in-one search marketing platform for SEO professionals.

Often ranked as one of the best SEO tools, Semrush offers a comprehensive set of content marketing tools including several tools powered by AI.

Sermsuh includes keyword research, competition analysis, track search rankings, and AI-powered writing assistance to optimize content for specific keywords.

Semrush also helps you track PPC keywords for paid marketing campaigns. You can also monitor your social media campaigns, track social postings, and manage your social media postings in an editorial calendar.

The AI-powered writing assistant isn’t as powerful as Clearscope, but Semrush comes with many more features for the price.

Recommendation: Best for power users and small businesses who need a suite of different tools for SEO in one place.

Pricing: Starts at $129.95 per month. A free plan is available with limited features.

4. ChatGPT

ChatGPT by OpenAI is a powerful generative AI software. It comes as a chatbox where you can enter your questions as prompts, and the AI will respond to them using natural language processing.

ChatGPT can help you in multiple ways to improve your SEO. It can be used as a research assistant, article outline assistant, proofreader, and more.

Many marketers and bloggers use ChatGPT to write content for their blogs. However, we don’t recommend ever simply copying and pasting content generated by AI. It is often inaccurate and not optimized for conversions and user experience.

Responses from ChatGPT depend a lot on how good you are at writing the prompts. To help with that, we have compiled a comprehensive list of the most useful ChatGPT prompts for bloggers and marketers.

Recommendation: Best for content analysis, article outlining, proofreading, and assistance in writing. It is not good for one-click content generation.

Alternatives: Bing Chat and Google Bard. You can also see our list of even more ChatGPT alternatives.

Pricing: ChatGPT Plus starts at $20 per month.

5. Jasper

Jasper is an AI-powered writing assistant for bloggers, marketers, and SEO teams. It uses GPT 3.5 and a custom natural language understanding model to train the AI.

Jasper is trained to work for brands by adapting your brandâ€™s voice and style to create blog post outlines, article drafts, landing pages, and more.

It comes with a powerful template library with ready-to-use commands for writing articles, social media posts, photo captions, and more.

It also offers tools to generate AI images, translations for content in over 30 languages, brand memory, and style training.

Recommendation: Best for brand-conscious marketing teams and small businesses. In our opinion, the pricing for the number and quality of tools is very good.

Pricing: Starts at $39 per month.

6. Grammarly

Grammarly is a must-have tool for any SEO team. It started as a grammar and spelling checker and has evolved into an AI-powered writing assistant.

Grammarly’s AI-powered writing assistance is called Grammarly Go. It allows you to choose a tone for your writing, edit it as you write, and switch tones as needed. It can help you rewrite and rephrase whole articles using AI.

It also includes a plagiarism checker, which helps you avoid search penalties and catch plagiarized articles before they appear live on your site.

The best part is that Grammarly works everywhere you work. It is available for all operating systems, mobile phones, browser extensions, and more.

It also works inside the WordPress block editor and helps you improve your content as you write.

Recommendation: In our experience, Grammarly is a tool all users can benefit from using.

Pricing: $12 per month. A free forever plan is also available with fewer features.

7. Surfer

Surfer is an AI-powered, on-page SEO optimizer tool. It allows you to perform keyword research, generate article outlines, and optimize your content for better rankings.

It is made for SEO professionals and editors and uses AI to generate headlines, article guides, in-depth topic research, and more.

Surfer is also available as a WordPress plugin and integrates with the block editor to optimize your content as you write it.

With the keyword research tool, Surfer can help you find topic clusters and semantically related keywords. You can then sort them by the level of difficulty, search intent, and monthly search volume.

Once you have chosen a topic cluster or a keyword, you can launch the Surfer SEO editor to prepare your content.

Surfer SEO Editor uses AI to analyze your content and recommends improving it. It will show you an article outline, competitors, questions to answer, and keywords to include.

Recommendation: Useful for bloggers, content writers, editors, and SEO professionals with a medium budget.

Pricing: Starts at $69 per month.

8. Link Whisper

Link Whisper is a WordPress-specific, AI-powered, internal linking plugin for SEO professionals, marketers, and bloggers.

It allows you to discover internal linking opportunities as you write. This helps you link to the newer posts that may not get as many internal links as some of your older content.

It uses Artificial Intelligence to find relevant content and keywords. This makes link suggestions highly relevant and useful. You can also enter a keyword to find relevant internal linking opportunities.

You can also set automatic linking for specific keywords. This ensures you can link to some of your pillar content without editing any articles.

If you are already using a WordPress SEO plugin like All in One SEO, RankMath, or Yoast, then Link Whisper will automatically use focus keywords set for your articles to suggest relevant internal linking opportunities.

Plus, it shows you very useful internal linking reports, where you can monitor internal links, find internal linking opportunities, and catch errors like broken links or 404 errors.

Recommendation: Useful for optimizing and automating internal link-building tasks.

Pricing: Starts at $75 per year.

9. Rank Math

Rank Math is a popular WordPress SEO plugin that comes with AI powered features to help automate your SEO workflow.

Like All in One SEO and Link Whisper, RankMath has an internal linking assistant.

However, unlike All in One SEO and Link Whisper, Rank Math doesn’t automatically add internal links. You’ll need to edit a post and manually copy and add the internal link suggested by the plugin.

Rank Math also offers a Content AI module which offers AI-powered writing assistance on a pay-as-you-go basis.

The content AI tool uses Rank Math’s proprietary algorithms that run on their own servers to analyze your content. After that, the data is stored for that particular analysis on your web hosting server.

Besides AI-powered features, Rank Math is a good WordPress SEO plugin for day-to-day SEO tasks like adding SEO titles, descriptions, schema markup, Google Search Console integration, and more.

Recommendation: Useful for small businesses without large budgets and writers who may not need to pay for AI assistance all the time.

Pricing: Pricing starts at $59 per year. A free version is also available with limited features.

10. WordLift

WordLift is another AI SEO plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily add structured data and schema markup to your WordPress posts automatically.

Similar to other AI-powered SEO tools, WordLift shows you suggestions inside the block editor to improve your content.

These suggestions include schema markup, relevant sources that you can link to, images you can use, and building topical authority by building content clusters.

WordLift also offers a product knowledge graph builder that helps your eCommerce products appear in Google Shopping results.

Recommendation: Useful if you need to add structured data to your website without using a full-featured WordPress SEO plugin like AIOSEO.

Pricing: Starts at â‚¬49 per month. However, the starter plan doesn’t include some of the AI-powered features, so you may want to upgrade to a higher plan.

11. Outranking

Outranking is another useful AI SEO tool for WordPress websites. It comes with content optimization, analysis, and planning features that help you improve and maintain your search rankings.

It helps you optimize content based on search intent, incorporate semantic search terms, and perform in-depth content optimization.

It helps you generate facts and stats to start your draft with a solid outline. With a built-in plagiarism checker, you can easily check content submitted by authors to be sure it is original and won’t hurt your search rankings.

Recommendation: Good for in-depth on-page SEO and content optimization. Outranking is especially good for writers who need a boost with the first steps of generating content and outlines.

Pricing: Starts at $59 per month.

12. Frase

Frase is a powerful AI SEO tool designed for content marketers and writers. It helps you generate content using AI by including facts and background research from search results.

It makes content research simplified and helps you quickly come up with great article outlines. The outline builder helps you easily drag and drop headings to plan your content.

It also helps you discover relevant search terms to include, perform competitive analysis, and communicate with your team.

Recommendation: Best for users who need a standalone AI-powered content writing assistant.

Pricing: Starts at $14.99 per month.

Which AI SEO Tools to Use in WordPress?

We recommend using All in One SEO for WordPress as the best overall AI SEO tool for WordPress users.

All in One SEO comes with powerful AI integrations, and it is the most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin on the market.

It includes schema markup support, local SEO, powerful sitemaps, a redirection manager, SEO audit, competitor analysis, AI headline writing, and more. With such a comprehensive set of features, AIOPSEO for WordPress is the best value for your money.

You can also combine All in One SEO with other AI SEO tools.

For instance, you can use Grammarly for proofreading, Semrush for powerful keyword tracking, and Jasper for AI-powered content writing.

We hope this article helped you learn how to use AI for SEO with the best tools for the job. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO guide or take a look at how to create automated workflows in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Use AI for SEO in WordPress (12 Tools) first appeared on WPBeginner.
22.08.2023
13 WordPress Site Settings That are Critical for SEO Success
Do you want to learn about WordPress site settings that are most critical for SEO success?

Many different plugins can improve your search engine rankings and drive more people to your website. However, it is vital that you get your siteâ€™s foundations right by fine-tuning the WordPress site settings.

In this article, we will look at all the WordPress site settings that are critical for SEO success.

Why Are WordPress Site Settings Critical for SEO Success?

Search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites, so itâ€™s important to optimize your site for SEO.

There are countless tips, tricks, plugins, and best practices that can boost your search engine rankings. However, the wrong site settings can completely undermine all your SEO efforts, and may even stop your WordPress blog from showing up in search results.

If you ignore some basic WordPress site settings, then youâ€™re almost certainly missing out on easy ways to fine-tune your SEO and get more visitors to your WordPress website. Plus, these settings are built-in so you don’t need to worry about installing any extra plugins, making them an easy win even if you’re just getting started with SEO.

With that being said, letâ€™s look at all the WordPress site settings that are critical for SEO success. Simply use the quick links to jump straight to the setting you want to learn about.
1. Be Sure Your Site Is Visible to Search Engines

Before you start changing any WordPress site settings, itâ€™s important to check that search engines can see your content. This is particularly important if youâ€™ve just created a website, or previously made your WordPress blog private.

To do this, go to Settings Â» Reading in the WordPress dashboard. Then, find the following checkbox: â€˜Discourage search engines from indexing this site.â€™

If the box is checked, then uncheck it. Then, click on â€˜Save Changesâ€™ to store your settings.

Now, search engines such as Google should have no problems finding your website, and showing it to people who are searching for content just like yours.

2. Set WordPress Plugins and Themes to Auto-Update

WordPress themes and plugins are a big reason why WordPress is so popular and has such a huge CMS market share. However, if you donâ€™t keep this software up to date, then it can damage your websiteâ€™s search engine rankings.

When a security vulnerability is discovered in a theme or plugin, the developer will usually release an update that fixes the issue and keeps users safe.

With that in mind, outdated themes and plugins can put your site at risk. In fact, hackers often target websites that are running older versions of themes and WordPress plugins.

If your website gets hacked, then it can have a big impact on your rankings and traffic. Search engines such as Google may even remove a hacked website from its index, so your content stops appearing in relevant search results.

Google Chrome and other browsers will even block visitors from accessing your site if they believe it has been compromised, even if it hasn’t been hit with an SEO penalty yet.

Outdated software also has a higher chance of causing crashes, conflicts, and many other common WordPress errors. It may even affect your websiteâ€™s speed and performance. All of this can hurt your siteâ€™s SEO.

The good news is that you can set both themes and plugins to update automatically using the built-in WordPress site settings. For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to enable automatic updates for WordPress plugins and themes.

3. Organize Your Content With Categories and Tags

Categories and tags help organize your posts and make it easier for visitors to find what theyâ€™re looking for. You can even add categories to a custom post type in WordPress.

For step-by-step instructions, please see our beginnerâ€™s guide on how to add categories and tags for WordPress pages.

Categories and tags donâ€™t directly affect your siteâ€™s SEO, but they can boost your rankings by improving the user experience and giving you internal linking possibilities. By helping visitors find relevant and interesting content, you can often increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.

This is a strong sign that visitors are enjoying your content. When ranking pages and posts, search engines such as Google try to show the best content first. In this way, anything that improves the user experience and keeps people on your site can indirectly boost your SEO.

Once youâ€™ve added relevant and helpful tags to your WordPress posts, you may want to fine-tune how this information appears in the search results.

The easiest way to do this is by using AIOSEO. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and gives you complete control over your WordPress tags and categories.

AIOSEO stop can also search engines from indexing your WordPress website’s category and tag archive listings.

In this way, you can avoid duplicate content, which confuses search engines and forces them to choose which duplicate page should rank higher than the other. This is a waste of crawl budget, since the search engines will spend time analyzing and indexing identical content while ignoring your siteâ€™s unique content.

For a complete guide on how to create SEO-friendly categories and tags, please see our SEO best practices for sorting your content.

4. Add Descriptions to Your Category Pages

Whenever you create a category, you have the option to add a description. This will appear on the category archive page, and can introduce the content to visitors.

It can also help the search engines understand the category’s content, and show it to people who are looking for content just like yours.

To add a category description in WordPress, simply go to Posts Â» Categories.

You can now type in the category name, create a slug, and add an optional parent category.

To add a description, simply type into the ‘Description’ field.

When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on ‘Add New Category.’

Do you want to add a description to a category that already exists? Then simply click on the ‘Edit’ link next to that category.

You can then go ahead and type in a description.

Finally, click on ‘Update’ to save your changes.

5. Optimize Your WordPress Permalink Structure

When analyzing your pages, search engines donâ€™t just look at the page content. Instead, they use many different factors to rank and display your content including permalink structure.

By optimizing your URLs, you can help search engines understand what the page is about, so they can show it to the right people at the right time.

Note: If your site is over 6 months old, then changing the permalink structure will most likely damage your SEO. If you do decide to change the permalinks on an established website, then itâ€™s important to setup proper redirects.

By default, WordPress uses the post name in its URL. For example, a post with the title â€˜How to Install WordPressâ€™ will usually have a URL like this:
```
www.wpbeginner.com/how-to-install-wordpress
```
This is a great start, but itâ€™s still worth reviewing your websiteâ€™s permalink structure to make sure itâ€™s working well for your content. To do this, head over to Settings Â» Permalinks in the WordPress dashboard.

Here, youâ€™ll see all the different permalink structures that you can use:
- Plain (https://www.wpbeginner.com/?p=123). Sometimes also called the Ugly Permalink, this uses the postâ€™s unique ID in the WordPress database. This ID doesnâ€™t give search engines any information about the postâ€™s content, so we donâ€™t recommend using this permalink structure.
- Day and name (https://www.wpbeginner.com/2016/01/22/sample-post/). This adds the month and year to the URL. This may be a good option if you post time-sensitive content, such as articles on a news website. However, this structure can create very long URLs and your content will start to look outdated very quickly. With that in mind, we don’t recommend using the day and time structure, especially if youâ€™re trying to create evergreen content.
- Numeric (https://www.wpbeginner.com/archives/123). This option uses the post ID from the row in your databaseâ€™s wp_posts table. Similar to the Plain structure, this information doesnâ€™t mean anything to the search engines, so this isnâ€™t an SEO-friendly permalink structure.
- Post name (https://www.wpbeginner.com/sample-post/). This uses the title of the page or post. Post name is a good choice for most websites, especially if youâ€™re using a headline analyzer to improve your titles.
- Custom (https://www.wpbeginner.com/%category%/%author%/%postname%/). The final option is a custom structure that uses various different tags. This is a particularly good option if you have lots of different content organized into categories. By adding the category name to the permalink structure, you can help search engines understand your content and organize it correctly in the search engine index. Adding the author to the permalink structure can help boost your site’s expertise and authority score with Google, too.
For more detailed instructions, please see our guide on how to create custom permalinks.

6. Install an SSL Certificate on Your WordPress Website

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s an internet protocol that helps you securely transfer data between a user’s browser and your website.

An SSL certificate is essential if you collect sensitive visitor data, for example if you accept credit card payments in WordPress. However, it can also improve your SEO.

With an SSL certificate in place, visitors will see a padlock next to your website’s address in their web browser. They can click on the padlock to see information about your SSL certificate, plus a confirmation that the connection is secure.

By making them feel safe, an SSL certificate can keep visitors on your site for longer, which sends positive signals to the search engines. There is also evidence that search engines such as Google use SSL certificates as a ranking factor.

If you’re just getting started and have a limited budget, then you can get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website.

However, many of the top WordPress hosting providers offer an SSL certificate as part of their packages. For example, SiteGround, Hostinger, and Bluehost all offer free SSL certificates to their customers.

Once you have an SSL certificate, you’ll need to add it to WordPress. For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to properly move WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS.

7. Add Alt Text to Your Images

When uploading an image, itâ€™s a good idea to add alt text. Also known as alternative text, this is an HTML attribute that WordPress adds to the imageâ€™s â€˜imgâ€™ tag.

Accessibility tools such as screen readers use alt text to help visually-impaired users understand a siteâ€™s images.

Even though itâ€™s an important accessibility feature, search engines also use alt text to understand an imageâ€™s contents. With that being said, itâ€™s smart to use descriptive alt text and include relevant keywords wherever possible.

Google also includes the alt text in its image search, so helpful and interesting alternative text may increase your blog traffic.

Usually, alt text wonâ€™t be visible on your WordPress website, but it may appear if the image is broken or canâ€™t be found.

In this way, alt text can help visitors understand the imageâ€™s contents, even when they canâ€™t see the image due to an error or a poor internet connection.

When uploading an image to the WordPress media library, simply type your alternative text into the â€˜Alt textâ€™ field.

WordPress will now use this alternative text every single time you add that image to a WordPress page or post.

If youâ€™ve already added an image to the WordPress content editor, then simply click to select the Image block.

Then, type into the â€˜Alt Textâ€™ field in the right-hand menu. Just note that adding alt text to an image through the block editor will not add it to the media library.

For more detailed information on alt text, please see our beginnerâ€™s guide to image SEO.

8. Create a User-Friendly Navigation Menu

The longer people stay on your website, the more likely you are to rank highly in search engine results. With that in mind, it’s important to create helpful, eye-catching, and logical navigation menus.

These menus will help visitors find interesting content, which will keep them on your WordPress website for longer. It can also improve important metrics, such as the average number of pages visited.

The exact location of your menu will vary depending on your WordPress theme, but most themes have several options. This means you can create different menus and then show them in different places.

For example, most WordPress themes come with a primary menu that appears on the top of the screen. Some themes may include a secondary menu, a footer menu, or a mobile navigation menu as well.

To create a navigation menu, simply go to the Appearance Â» Menus page in your WordPress admin dashboard.

Here, you can create multiple menus, and add pages, posts, and even custom links to those navigation menus.

For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to add a navigation menu.

If you have lots of content, then the default navigation menu can quickly become confusing and overwhelming for visitors. If your menu is starting to look cluttered, then you can easily turn the default menu into a dropdown menu.

9. Protect Against Comment Spam

A lively comment section can keep people on your website for longer, and encourage them to pay repeat visits, which can indirectly improve your SEO. Even better, if commenters use relevant keywords then their conversations can directly boost your SEO, too.

This is all good news for your search engine rankings, but thereâ€™s still a big problem every website owner should know about: comment spam.

Spammers and spambots may try to post off-topic, low-quality comments and malicious links on your website. If you publish these comments, then it can hurt your search engine rankings. In the worst-case scenario, your site may even get blacklisted by Google.

With that being said, itâ€™s important to moderate your comments using the WordPress site settings. To get started, go to Settings Â» Discussion.

Here, youâ€™ll find lots of WordPress settings that give you more control over comments. For example, you can help combat spam by making it mandatory for comment authors to provide a name and email address.

For a detailed look at these settings, please see our beginnerâ€™s guide on how to moderate comments in WordPress.

Another option is to disable comments completely. This will make it more difficult for visitors to engage with your content, but itâ€™s also a guaranteed way to block all spam comments.

If you do decide to disable comments, then uncheck the option that says â€˜Allow people to submit comments on new articles.â€™

For a more in-depth look at this topic, please see our guide on how to completely disable comments in WordPress.

If you do make any changes in the WordPress site settings, then make sure you click on â€˜Save Changesâ€™ to store your settings.

10. Review the WordPress User Permissions

Some website owners share the WordPress dashboard with multiple people. For example, you might run a multi-author WordPress blog or allow users to submit posts.

In this case, itâ€™s important to control the actions that users can take on your site, and the information they can access.

If people have unlimited access to your WordPress dashboard, then they might make changes that affect your SEO. For example, they may change the settings in an important SEO plugin, publish a blog thatâ€™s not properly optimized for SEO, or approve spammy comments.

Thankfully, WordPress comes with built-in site settings that allow you to control what a user can and canâ€™t do. By default, there are 5 roles to choose from: admin, editor, author, contributor, and subscriber.

To learn more about these default roles, please see our beginnerâ€™s guide to WordPress user roles and permissions.

To change a userâ€™s role, simply go to Users Â» All Users. Here, hover over the account that you want to change, and click on the â€˜Editâ€™ link when it appears.

With that done, scroll to the â€˜Roleâ€™ section and open the dropdown menu.

You can now choose a new user role from the list.

When youâ€™re happy with these changes you’ve made, click on the â€˜Save Changes’ button.

Pro Tip: Want to change these default user roles? Then see our guide on how to add or remove capabilities to user roles in WordPress.

11. Check Your WordPress Sitemap

A sitemap is a file that lists all your siteâ€™s content in a machine-readable format. This acts as a roadmap that helps search engines discover all your pages, and index them properly.

A sitemap also tells search engines which links are more important, and how frequently they get updated. In this way, you can encourage search engines to prioritize indexing your siteâ€™s best or highest-value content, so it appears in search results more quickly.

The good news is that WordPress creates a sitemap automatically. To see your sitemap in action, simply type in your domain name and then add /sitemap.xml to the end. For example, www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

The default sitemap may be a good fit for some small business websites, or sites that only have a small amount of content. However, thereâ€™s no way to customize the default sitemap, which can be a problem for many website owners.

The best way to create a powerful, fully customizable sitemap is by using AIOSEO. You can use this plugin to add or remove post types, categories and tags from your sitemap. You can also enable XML sitemaps for date-based archives and author archives.

AIOSEO even allows you to add external pages to the WordPress sitemap.

This is perfect if you have stand-alone pages like a contact form, a landing page, or Shopify store pages. With a custom sitemap, you can tell search engines to crawl this content, even if theyâ€™re not part of your WordPress website.

For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to create a sitemap in WordPress.

12. Test the Mobile Version of Your WordPress Website

More than 50% of visitors will access your site using a smartphone or tablet, so your WordPress website must be mobile-friendly. In fact, Google will most likely index your siteâ€™s mobile version rather than its desktop version.

Even if youâ€™re using a responsive WordPress theme, itâ€™s still important to check how your site looks on mobile.

You can preview the mobile version of your WordPress site using the WordPress theme customizer. In the dashboard, head over to Appearance Â» Customize.

At the bottom of the screen, simply click the mobile icon.

WordPress will now show a preview of how your site looks on mobile devices. You can use this view to locate any mobile-site issues that might cause Google or other search engines to penalize your website.

For example, if your content is unreadable or doesn’t display at all, Google will note that and potentially deem your site’s UX to be bad for visitors and move you down in search results.

For more detailed instructions, please see our guide on how to view the mobile version of WordPress sites from desktop.

13. Install an SEO WordPress Plugin (BONUS)

In this guide, we showed you how to improve your SEO using the built-in WordPress site settings. This is a great start, but there are lots more ways to fine-tune your content for the search engines, improve your rankings, and get more visitors to your WordPress website.

If you want to take your SEO to the next level, then we recommend installing AIOSEO. AIOSEO adds a new area to the WordPress content editor where you can type in the exact post title and meta description that should appear in the search engine results.

You can also type in the focus keyphrase that you want to rank for.

AIOSEO will then scan your content and show a list of actions you can take to improve your ranking for that focus keyword.

The key to SEO success is to monitor your siteâ€™s performance, and then constantly make changes to improve that performance.

AIOSEO can analyze your site and show an overall SEO score. In this way, you can quickly and easily check if your website is SEO optimized.

Itâ€™ll also create an SEO checklist of any critical issues you need to address, and improvements you can make to boost your overall score.

For help getting started, please see our ultimate guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

We hope this article helped you learn the top WordPress site settings that are critical for SEO success. You may also want to see our guide on how to install Google Analytics WordPress, or see our expert picks for the best web push notification software.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post 13 WordPress Site Settings That are Critical for SEO Success first appeared on WPBeginner.
14.08.2023

WordPress SEO: The Ultimate Beginnerâ€™s Guide for 2023

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial to the success of your website from the very start. Website owners often make the mistake of ignoring SEO until long after their site is launched. This often leads to frustrating and costly problems down the road. That’s why it is so important to start now! Despite the perceived difficulty of SEO, beginners can benefit from simple SEO tasks that, in time, could help their site rank #1. In this step-by-step guide to WordPress SEO, we will provide a step-by-step approach to equip your site to rank higher in search engines.

What is SEO?

Millions of people use Search engines like Google daily to view the top results for their searches. SEO is the ongoing process of improving your website ranking in search results pages (SERPs). How high search engines rank your content is determined by various factors, including quality of content, keyword optimization, links, page speed, and more. SEO involves using simple and advanced techniques to address these factors to produce high-quality content relevant to users and easy for search engines to index. Of course, the ultimate goal of SEO is to get more organic traffic to your site, which can lead to many benefits.

How Do Search Engines Work (in Simple Terms)?

It is the job of search engines to serve the best relevant results for users. To determine what content is the best match for what a user types in a search bar, search engines like Google use bots that “crawl” websites for content and links to store and index that data in their database. When a search query is made, the data is analyzed to serve the most relevant content.

What are the Benefits of WordPress SEO?

You wouldn’t be reading this article if you weren’t already aware of at least some of the benefits of SEO. Here are a few of the most potent benefits of optimizing your WordPress site for search engines.

Increase Organic Traffic
Save money with less PPC Advertising
Increase leads and sales with higher conversion rates
Increase Brand Awareness/Authority
Get Featured Listings in the SERPs
Provide a better overall website for users

Investing in SEO for WordPress now is one of the most influential and cost-effective marketing tools that can pay off handsomely in the long run.

A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress SEO (Step by Step)

1. Get Reliable Hosting

Choosing the right hosting provider is a critical factor in WordPress SEO mainly because it can affect website speed and performance. So taking the time to understand WordPress Hosting and the solutions available will be worth it in the long run. The main types of WordPress Hosting include

Shared WordPress Hosting – These provide the best cheap WordPress Hosting options.
Dedicated Hosting – Dedicated Hosting providers are best for large sites that need high performance and dedicated space.
VPS Hosting – VPS hosting providers are a good alternative to shared, offering better performance and security.
Cloud Hosting – Cloud hosting services provide more flexibility and scalability, so you can only pay for what you need.
Managed WordPress Hosting (recommended) – This is the best overall solution for most. It ensures great performance for WordPress at an affordable price. Here are our top choices.

Additional perks come with WordPress Managed Hosting providers that can help SEO. For example, with Siteground, you get a free SSL (more on this below), a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and other built-in site tools.

When looking for the right hosting platform, at minimum, you will want to ensure they support the current WordPress hosting requirements and the latest version of PHP. Ideally, using a free trial to test your site speed and performance metrics beforehand would be best. For best results, look for a fast host.

For more, check out our complete guide on how to choose your WordPress Hosting. Here are our top picks to help point you in the right direction.

	ðŸ¥‡ SiteGround	ðŸ¥ˆ Hostinger	ðŸ¥‰ Cloudways
Starting Price	$14.99/month	$9.99/month	$11/month
Storage	10GB	50GB	25GB
Bandwidth	Unmetered	100GB	1TB
Monthly Visitors	10,000	Unmetered	Unlimited
Free Domain	âŒ	âŒ	âŒ
24/7 Support	âœ”ï¸	âœ”ï¸	âœ”ï¸
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	Visit SiteGround	Visit Hostinger	Visit Cloudways

2. Get an SSL & Use HTTPS

Modern browsers and Google no longer consider website URLs using HTTP or http:// (without the “S” at the end) to be secure. If you want your site URL to be protected, you need to use HTTPS (https://). This lets Google and your users know that your URL (or browser link) uses a secure (encrypted) server to share information. To use HTTPS in your URL, you’ll need to use an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or its more secure version, TLS (Transport Layer Security).

SSL Manager in SiteGround

An SSL certificate is often provided for free with your hosting provider, and you can also get a free SSL using a plugin or other third-party service like Cloudflare.

For more, check out our Ultimate Guide to HTTPS and SSL for WordPress.

3. Choose an SEO-Friendly WordPress Theme

When choosing a theme for your WordPress site, it is vital to choose one that is SEO-friendly. Ideally, you will want a WordPress theme that is fast and lightweight. But, with the rising popularity of page builders, you will likely need to find a balance between speed and design options. Even robust page builders, like Divi, have taken strides to maximize performance by eliminating unnecessary bloat.

In addition to speed, look for themes that use proper SEO headings, have clean code, are responsive, and are updated regularly.Â Themes like GeneratePress will have these features built in. Also, make sure that your theme works seamlessly with popular SEO plugins that will take care of your technical SEO needs (including structured data and Schema markup).

To help you get started, here’s our list of top SEO WordPress themes.

4. Allow Search Engines to Index Your Website

Don’t make the mistake of skipping this small step before launching your WordPress Website. Simply navigate to Settings > Reading. Next to the option Search Engine Visibility, there is a check box that reads, “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” Make sure this box is unchecked. If not, you are asking Google to ignore you.

Note: It may be beneficial or recommended to keep the search engines from indexing the site during development so that Google doesn’t start indexing poor or inconsistent content before it is ready.

5. Choose WWW or non-WWW

When you first install WordPress and go through the setup process, you can pick the preferred format of your website address or URL. In addition to “https://,” you can choose whether or not to include “www” in the URL.

To see what format your site is using, you can find it in your WordPress dashboard under Settings > General.

WordPress Settings General Website WWW URL

Both WWW and non-WWW versions are acceptable. Although some argue that there may be a slight edge in favor of using www over non-www, most SEO experts agree that you can use either format as long as you keep it consistent throughout your site. Google will treat www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com as separate URLs, resulting in duplicate content that may negatively affect your SEO.

In short, pick one and stick with it. For more, check out our guide on WWW vs. non-WWW versions for SEO.

Note: Do not change this if you already have a live site. This applies only to brand-new sites in development. Changing the format on an existing site will hurt your SEO.

6. Set SEO-Friendly Permalinks & Slugs

In WordPress, permalinks refer to the URL structure of your site. Setting your permalinks to the “Post Name” format is common practice for WordPress SEO. This structure provides search engines and users with more text that describes the content of your page or post. For example, if you are writing a post on “WordPress SEO,” it is better to have “wordpress-seo” in your URL instead of a number like “?p=123”, especially if you are trying to rank for that keyword/phrase.

To change your permalink setting, go to your dashboard under Settings > Permalinks. Then select Post Name.

WordPress Permalink Settings

With this structure in place, you can change your permalink slug when editing your page or post in WordPress to include your keyword phrase for better on-page SEO.

Permalinks, as the name suggests, should be considered permanent. That means you should never change the permalink settings on your live site or the permalink of a page or post. This will result in broken links and hurt your SEO. If you must change a permalink, use a proper 301 redirect.

You can learn more in our posts on how permalinks affect SEO and how to configure WordPress permalink settings.

7. Use Categories & Tags for SEO

Categories and tags are the default taxonomies in WordPress that allow you to organize posts and pages. Using them properly can positively affect user experience, allowing users to sort and filter content to find what they need within a particular topic. In general, it is best to use categories for large groups of content under a broad topic (like “WordPress,” “Business,” “Design,” etc.). Posts or pages should be kept to 1 category to avoid possible SEO drawbacks like duplicate content or unnecessary web crawling. Tags can be helpful for users to find more specific topics. You can add multiple tags to a post as long you use them purposefully and consistently.

The most significant impact that taxonomies can have on SEO is how search engines see them. Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, we suggest you not include categories or tags in your permalinks. This makes it much easier to manage permalinks in the future and avoid possible cases of duplicate content or broken links when adding or changing categories.

You can change this setting easily using an SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math.

Yoast Remove Category from WordPress URL

For more, check out our best practices for using categories and tags for SEO.

8. Choose Your WordPress SEO Plugin

Once you have the basic WordPress SEO structure in place, it’s time to look into a quality SEO plugin. This is by far the easiest and most effective way to take your WordPress site’s SEO to the next level. Popular SEO plugins (like Rank Math or Yoast SEO) will include most of the features, tools, and flexibility you need. These plugins can help optimize your entire website. We recommend RankMath because of its powerful SEO features, tremendous community support, and seamless integration with popular WordPress themes. With its easy-to-use interface, you can use Rank Math to optimize your on-page SEO on the front or back end.

$Analytics Rank Math Demo WordPress$

Here is a list of our best SEO plugins for WordPress, with all the features you need to boost your rankings.

9. Submit an XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is an XML file on your website that provides a structured map of all of the pages and posts throughout your site. Unlike HTML sitemaps that may help with user experience and navigation, XML Sitemaps can be submitted directly to search engines. Once submitted, search engines will have an accurate map of your site so they can more effectively read and index your content. In WordPress, you can submit your sitemap to Google directlyÂ or use a sitemap plugin.

SEO plugins like Yoast and RankMath will have a built-in feature to generate your XML sitemap.

$Rank Math Configure Sitemaps$

Rank Math Sitemap Configuration

For more, check out our complete guide on XML sitemaps and SEO. And here is our list of the best sitemap plugins for WordPress.

10. Use Keyword Research to Plan Content

Keywords are the terms or phrases users enter to search for content within a browser or search engine. These keywords should be a driving force that determines what content you should create. Keyword research helps you determine what keywords people are currently searching so you can find the right ones to target when planning your content. To learn how to do it the right way, check out our complete guide on how to do keyword research.

Semrush keyword research for WordPress SEO

Semrush Keyword Research Tools

SEO tools can be a lifesaver when it comes to keyword research. There are tools to help with keyword grouping, mapping, tracking, and more. Some SEO tools like Semrush provide an all-in-one SEO and keyword research solution to ensure you cover the right topics and adequately address user intent.

For more, check out our top SEO tools for Keyword Research.

11. Write High-Quality SEO Content

There really is no way around this one. High-quality content is still the most essential aspect of your SEO strategy. Whether you are writing blog posts or sales copywriting, your goal is to create content that outperforms your competition and meets the needs of your visitors. You can start by following these key steps to writing quality SEO content.

Use AI SEO Tools and Plugins for Better SEO Content

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), many AI SEO tools are becoming more mainstream. Some of the best AI SEO tools are now using AI to help with the entire SEO content creation process. AI writing software like Jasper AI can help you generate content in seconds using simple text prompts, and SurferSEO can optimize your content for search engines. Or you can use both with an integration.

WordPress also has AI plugins that will help streamline the writing process and optimize your content for SEO.

Check out our list of the best AI writing tools to help you write high-quality with more speed and efficiency.

12. Optimize Your Post or Page Content for SEO

Writing high-quality content is only half the battle of WordPress SEO. You will also need to optimize your content for SEO. This involves several on-page SEO tasks, including optimizing HTML structure, keywords, syntax, readability, schema markup, internal/external links, images, etc. This may sound like a lot, but your SEO plugin can help streamline this process. RankMath will allow you to optimize these elements in real time while writing your post. And you can use its AI-generated suggestions based on your content to improve your SEO score for each page or post.

$WordPress SEO Using Rank Math$

For example, you can start by entering your target keyword or keyphrase to let RankMath know what you are trying to rank for. (IMPORTANT: Don’t use the same focus keyphrase on any other page or post. Only use it once because you don’t want to compete against yourself for that key phrase.)

Here are a few more key suggestions to optimize our page or post:

Make sure your page title includes the keyphrase and the permalink slug includes your focus keyphrase.
Organize your heading tags properly and include your keyphrase in headings and subheadings when appropriate.
Add the focus keyphrase and other related or semantic keywords strategically throughout your page content.
Use the plugin’s SEO widget to ensure your content gets a passing score for readability and SEO.
Consider your word count compared with other top-ranking articles for the same keyword.
Add a meta description for SERPs that is concise, enticing, and includes your focus keyword.
Add schema markup to get featured/rich snippets in the SERPs with a plugin like Schema Pro.

For more, here is a detailed checklist for on-page SEO.

13. Optimize Images for WordPress SEO

Images can have a big impact on your SEO. However, it probably has more potential to harm your ranking than it does to improve it. Here are a few tips to help optimize your images for SEO:

Compress and Resize – Large image files can drastically slow down your website. This will turn visitors away and hurt your SEO ranking. Try to keep all images below 100kb. You’ll need to balance quality and size using lossless compression with free tools like tinypng.com or an image optimization plugin.
Use the correct file types – Webp is the best format for the web these days for the best performance. Some plugins like EWWW Image Optimizer can convert your images to Webp for you. But you can also use JPG and PNG for good results. Avoid large file types like GIFs.
Add Lazy Loading to Images for faster page loads.
Add Image Alt Text – The Alt text describes the image on your site in text form. Not only does it help with accessibility and screenreaders, but it can also allow you to add helpful keywords for better overall SEO.

For more, check out these best practices for optimizing images for SEO and the top plugins you can use.

14. Optimize Links for WordPress SEO

Links are essential for SEO in a lot of ways. The two types of links that you can include on your website are internal links (links to other pages on your site) and external links (links to pages on a different site). The other important link type is called backlinks (or inbound links) which are links to your site from other websites. Earning quality backlinks involves a link-building strategy that is more difficult to achieve because it involves convincing other websites to link to your content. All three are important for SEO. You can learn more from our SEO Links Beginner’s Guide. But for this post, we will give you a few tips on using the two types you have more control over – internal and external links.

Use Internal Links

Understanding how internal links help SEO is important. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Ensure you add internal links to content that is relevant to the subject matter. Users and search engines will recognize when an internal link is forced or doesn’t make sense in the context.
Use various (different) internal links. Don’t keep sending the user to the same few pages.
Use proper HTML link structure.
Use keyword-rich anchor text. Avoid using less informative text like “click here” or “learn more” to make links more optimized for users and search engines.

Use “NoFollow” and “Follow” External Links

When adding external links to your post, you can choose to have that link “followed” or “not followed” by search engines. By default, all external links in WordPress will be followed. Search engines will crawl the link to help both parties rank higher. But sometimes, using “nofollow” links is beneficial to avoid negative SEO results. For example, WordPress may add the “nofollow” tag to comment links to prevent search engines from crawling spam links or other links that could harm your domain authority. They are useful for linking to sites you don’t fully trust or want to endorse. You’ll also want to use “nofollow” links when using affiliate links or if you’re receiving payment from people clicking the link.

To create a “nofollow” link in WordPress, you can add the rel=”nofollow” tag to the HTML as follows:

<a href=”https://elegantthemes.com” rel=”nofollow”>anchor text</a>

For more, check out our guide on how to use nofollow and follow links.

Use a Plugin to Add Links for SEO (The Easy Way)

Managing your internal and external links can get overwhelming, especially for beginners or larger websites. Rank Math will give you some help options for how links operate on your site.

Rank Math Link SEO Settings

But if you need more help, using a plugin like LinkWhisper can automate the process of adding, removing, and optimizing links throughout your site. With LinkWhisper, you can add links in WordPress automatically based on your keywords and monitor them easily. This is the best way to ensure you get the most SEO link juice possible from your links sitewide.

15. Avoid Creating Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is the same (or very similar) content that can be found in multiple locations or URLs. This can often happen through the misuse of permalinks, using HTTP and HTTPS, pagination, or URL variations (like tracking code parameters). Having the same content on two different URLs can sometimes lead to Google crawling multiple versions of the same content. This can lead to each variation competing against each other in the ranks or the wrong version being indexed. Check out our guide to duplicate content and SEO for more details.

You can easily check your website for duplicate content by looking up your indexed pages in Google Console or by searching your site pages in Google (i.e., “site:elegantthemes.com”).

The number of pages should match the number of pages you created in WordPress. If not, you may have duplicate content that needs to be fixed.

Use Canonical URLs and Redirects

One way to avoid duplicate content is to use canonical URLs on your website. A canonical URL is defined by a link tag in the HTML of your header with the rel=”canonical” tag. It looks like something like this:

This suggests to search engines that this is the main URL for this content. That way, if the same content is found on a different URL, Google will know which one to index. You can add a canonical URL to any page in WordPress using an SEO plugin.

$Set Page Canonical URL Rank Math$
In addition to canonical URLs, you can 301 redirects to avoid duplicate content and keyword cannibalization. For example, if you change the permalink of a blog article, you will want to make sure and add a 301 permanent redirect to the new URL to avoid losing all of the organic traffic and ranking earned for that post.

For more, check out our list of the best Redirect Plugins for WordPress.

16. Optimize Speed and Performance for WordPress SEO

Optimizing your website for speed and performance is essential for SEO. So, understanding how page speed affects SEO is a must for beginners. Search engines like Google use several core web vitals and metrics to determine how well your site performs, which can significantly impact your rankings. The easiest way to check your website’s speed and performance metrics is to use a free online tool like GTMetrics or Google’s PageSpeed Insights. These tools will give you an overall score and a list of improvements that can be made to improve your score.

website speed and performance metrics example

WordPress SEO Speed and Performance Tips

Here are some best practices to improve the speed and performance of your WordPress website:

Get fast hosting – Using a Fast WordPress hosting provider can take seconds off your page load times without doing anything else.
Use reliable WordPress themes and plugins – Some WordPress themes and plugins will perform better and load faster than others. You must use a theme that performs well out of the box and integrates well with other popular WordPress plugins. Even robust themes and page builders like Divi have built-in speed optimation to give you a head start.
Use a content delivery network (CDN) – A CDN provides a cached version of your website at various servers throughout the world for faster load times. You can use CloudFlare to add a CDN to your site manually or use a plugin. Some hosting providers, like Siteground, will provide a free CDN solution.
Use Site Caching – Site caching drastically improves site speed by saving a static version of your website pages for faster delivery. You can add caching to your site easily with a WordPress cache plugin.
Keep Your Database Clean – Keep your database clean and optimized for the best performance. WP-Optimize is a top database plugin for speed optimization.
Minify Your Site Files – Minification makes your site files smaller (taking out blank spaces), reducing the time it takes to load a page. For better performance, you can use a minification plugin like Autoptimize to minify yourÂ CSS, HTML, and Javascript files.
Optimize for Mobile – How well your website performs on mobile devices sp perhaps more important than how it performs on desktop. Ensure your website is responsive and optimized for speed on mobile as well. For more, see our ultimate guide to mobile SEO.

Speed and Performance Plugins

This may seem a bit overwhelming. However, the right plugin can do a lot of this for you. If you are serious about performance, we recommend using a premium plugin like WP Rocket that provides an all-in-one solution for speed and performance. For more, check out our list of the best WordPress Speed and Performance Plugins.

Wrapping Up

You don’t have to be an SEO expert to optimize your WordPress site for search engines. There are simple steps any beginner can follow to set their site up for success. It starts with choosing the right host, theme, and SEO plugin(s) that make the process much easier. With the right tools, you can spend more time less time on SEO and more time on your business. Hopefully, the steps in this post can help you climb in the rankings to get the traffic you have always dreamed of having.

If you have a physical business, you will definitely want to create a Google My Business profile and explore local SEO.

Featured image via Overearth / shutterstock.com

The post WordPress SEO: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide for 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

02.08.2023

How to Add SEO-Friendly Recipe Schema in WordPress (Easy Way)

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.

That’s why adding recipes with schema can help you capture these snippets and boost your WordPress search engine optimization (SEO).

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.

For more details, you can read our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

After setting up AIOSEO on your site, you must now go to AIOSEO Â» 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.

For more information, you can see our guide on how to make nutrition facts labels in WordPress.

We hope that this article helped you learn how to add SEO-friendly recipes with schema in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website and our expert picks for the best WordPress themes for recipe and food blogs.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Add SEO-Friendly Recipe Schema in WordPress (Easy Way) first appeared on WPBeginner.

20.06.2023
Introducing Free Keyword Research Tool: Generate 300+ Keyword Ideas in a Click
Have you ever wondered how your audience finds you on Google?

Ever wished there was an easy way to figure out the exact terms your target audience type in on search engines WITHOUT the high costs?

If youâ€™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 am excited to release our free WPBeginnerâ€™s Keyword Research Tool, which lets you figure out what your users are searching for on Google.

We built this tool because we want to make it easy and free for everyone to grow their organic traffic with keyword research.

What is WPBeginnerâ€™s Keyword Research Tool?

Our Keyword Research Tool is a powerful FREE online platform that lets you generate 300+ keyword ideas for your website in a click.

With this tool, you can quickly find every possible combination of keywords that your potential customers type in on Google. That way, you’ll get to know what keywords youâ€™ll need to rank for on Google to boost your SEO and drive organic traffic.

Most keyword research tools available on the market are either crazy expensive or limit the number of keywords you can discover.

This is why we decided to build a keyword research tool and make it free for our WPBeginner readers.

With our keyword tool, all you need to type in is a seed keyword, and youâ€™ll instantly find hundreds of keyword ideas. Plus, you can even download all the keyword ideas in a CSV file for future use.

And it’s absolutely free of cost. No signup or registration is required to use it.

Some of the benefits of using our keyword research tool are:
- Ease of use: Youâ€™re just 1 click away from generating hundreds of keyword ideas.
- Free unlimited access: Get unlimited access for free. Generate as many keyword suggestions as you want.
- Save resources: It saves you time and money. To make it even easier for you, keywords are well organized in several groups.
How to Use WPBeginnerâ€™s Keyword Research Tool?

To find keyword ideas you need to rank for, the first thing youâ€™ll need to do is to head over to our Keyword Research Tool page. Then type in your seed keyword, which is a short-tail keyword generally consisting of 1- 3 words. Then click Analyze.

The tool will instantly generate hundreds of ideas, which you can copy and save on your computer. To make it easy for you to brainstorm and analyze keywords, all the keywords are organized into these sections.
- Alphabets: All keywords will be arranged in alphabetical order from A to Z.
- Prepositions: In this section, youâ€™ll get keywords with prepositions like for, is, near, to, and so on.
- Questions: You can find long tail keywords with questions.
Aside from generating keyword ideas, our keyword tool also helps you see keywords organized with a graph in SVG. You can copy SVG to your clipboard. Alternatively, you can download the keywords in a CSV file for future use.

Finding the Right Seed Keywords for the Best Results

In a keyword research process, coming up with a seed keyword is always the starting point. And to find the right seed keywords, you’ll need to ask yourself a few questions:
- What is my WordPress website about and what do I sell?
- What keywords do I want to rank for?
- What core topics do I want to cover on my site?
Write your answers down. Then try to come up with a few seed keywords, each of them consisting of 1 to 3 words.

Our keyword analyzer gives you unlimited access to the tool, meaning you can generate as many keyword ideas as you want based on any number of seed keywords.

Just because you’ll get tons of keyword suggestions doesn’t always mean you need to choose all of them. Keep in mind that filtering out those ideas that donâ€™t matter to your business is also an important part of keyword research.

Create Blog Post Ideas Based on the Keywords

Now that you know how to generate keyword ideas for your site, it’s your turn to bring them into action, like creating blog posts targeting those keywords. To be able to publish great blog posts consistently, youâ€™ll first need to generate some blog post ideas.

With WPBeginnerâ€™s Blog Post Idea Generator, you can instantly generate around 250 content ideas, which otherwise would take a few hours, if not days. Backed by data, our free tool analyzes the keyword you entered and provides you with content ideas that are proven to attract your target audience.

Just like our Keyword Research Tool, the blog post idea generator is also a free online tool. No installation or email signup is required!

Start Your Keyword Research Today!

Our Keyword Research Tool is a great platform to help step up your SEO game.

It will only take a couple of minutes to get going with our tool and youâ€™ll be on your way to generating keywords that can drive more organic traffic.

Here are a few of our free tools that will help you grow your SEO even further.
- Free Headline Analyzer Tool: Write captivating headlines that improve click-throughs on Google Search.
- Free Website SEO Analyzer: Audit your site, find critical SEO errors, and create a detailed SEO action plan on how to fix those errors.
- Free Blog Post Idea Generator: Generate a year worth of content ideas in a second, so you can easily create an editorial calendar for your blog.
- Check Out Our Free Business Tools: Take a look at the full list of our free business tools here.
If you have ideas on how we can make WPBeginnerâ€™s Free Keyword Research Tool 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.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

The post Introducing Free Keyword Research Tool: Generate 300+ Keyword Ideas in a Click first appeared on WPBeginner.
20.06.2023
How to Write Powerful Headlines Using AI (Explained)

Do you want to write powerful headlines using AI (artificial intelligence)?

Many bloggers have already started using AI tools like ChatGPT to improve their content creation process. However, some people still wonder how to use it safely in their workflows.

In this article, we will explain how to write powerful headlines using AI on your WordPress blog.

Why Is Writing Powerful Headlines Important?

Did you know that 4 out of 5 people will not click on your website even when it appears on the first page of search results?

Users don’t typically read pages as much as they scan them. It takes them just a couple of seconds to decide which search result they will click on.

As a publisher, your job is to make sure that your search listing is displayed more prominently to get user attention.

To do that, you can optimize your blog post for SEO, use schema markup, and write better headlines.

The headline or the SEO title is one of the most prominently-displayed parts of a listing in the search results.

Writing irresistible headlines encourages more users to click on your website, which brings you more visitors, conversions, and sales.

Plus, the benefits of powerful headlines are not just limited to search results. They also encourage users to view more pages when they are on your blog and help them discover more of your content.

This leads to a superior user experience and more revenue for your business.

What Kind of Headlines Work Best?

Now the big question is: how do you know which headlines are more effective?

Luckily, marketers have been perfecting headline-writing techniques for decades. Even before the internet, headlines played a significant role in newspapers, magazines, television, advertising, and more.

The most popular headline writing technique is Emotional Marketing Value (EMV). It recommends using headlines that generate an emotional response among your readers.

Other things you may need to consider are the headline’s length and making it more helpful, relevant, and discoverable by search engines for your target keyphrases.

Now, you may wonder how to handle all these things when writing headlines.

The good news is that there are already plenty of tools available which can help you optimize your headlines. For instance, you can use WPBeginner’s free Headline Analyzer tool to improve your headlines.

However, you will still need to write different headlines to optimize and test them. This is where AI can help.

Artificial intelligence is excellent at recognizing patterns and reproducing them. You can use AI to come up with headline ideas and then manually edit them to make them more powerful.

How to Write Better Headlines Using AI

There are several ways to generate headlines using artificial intelligence.

We will talk about the two easiest ways, and you can choose the one that works best for you.

Both methods will be using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In our tests, it came up with the most useful headline ideas.

Note: ChatGPT and other AI apps do not create content that can be copied and pasted without any human edits. When you use an AI tool, you must thoroughly review the results to make sure that all information is correct and that the messages are appropriate for your audience.

Method 1: Use All in One SEO to Generate AI-Powered Headlines

This method is recommended for most users because it works inside your WordPress admin dashboard.

One of the easiest ways to write better headlines using AI is by using OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a machine learning-based artificial intelligence software. It answers users’ queries using plain language in a chatbox-like interface.

To instruct ChatGPT, you must phrase your question as a ChatGPT prompt. You will need to write a prompt that can generate headlines using your content and other criteria we mentioned above.

However, this process means you will need to open a separate browser tab, copy and paste your content, and optimize your prompt based on the results.

This is where All in One SEO for WordPress comes in. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market that allows you to easily use AI to generate powerful headlines for your posts and pages.

First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will be prompted to follow the setup wizard to configure plugin settings. Just follow the on-screen instructions to finish the setup.

After that, you need to edit a post or page where you want to create a new headline.

On the post edit screen, scroll down to the AIOSEO Settings section and click on the robot icon next to the ‘Post Title’ field.

This will show a popup where you will need to provide API keys for your OpenAI account.

Note: You will need the premium version of ChatGPT to use this feature.

You can generate API keys on the OpenAI website by visiting the API Keys page in your account.

Simply generate a new Secret key and copy and paste it into the AIOSEO settings.

Once AIOSEO is connected to OpenAI, you will see the option to generate SEO titles.

Simply click on the ‘Generate Titles’ button to continue.

All in One SEO will now generate SEO-friendly titles for your post using artificial intelligence.

You will see five post titles on the screen. They all automatically use the most up-to-date best practices for writing effective headlines.

Just click on the ‘+’ button next to the headline you want to use. It will then appear in the SEO Title field in the All in One SEO settings.

You can also use AI to generate SEO-friendly meta descriptions by clicking on the robot icon next to the ‘Meta Description’ option.

Once you have chosen a headline, you can then use AIOSEO’s built-in Headline Analyzer to test and further improve your headline.

Simply click on the ‘Headline Analyzer’ button in the top right corner of the screen.

It will show you a score for your headline based on the recommended best practices with practical tips to improve your score.

Basically, any score above 70 is considered good for an effective and SEO-friendly headline. For more details, you can see our guide on how to use the Headline Analyzer in WordPress.

Method 2: Using ChatGPT AI to Write Powerful Headlines for WordPress Posts and Pages

This method is recommended for users who don’t have the premium version of ChatGPT or don’t use All in One SEO.

The downside of this method is that you will need to design your own prompt. You will also need to copy and paste your post content into ChatGPT so that it can analyze it.

First, you will need to visit OpenAI’s ChatGPT website. You can sign up for a free account to try out ChatGPT or log in to continue.

Once you have signed up, you will see a chat window with a text field at the bottom where you can type your instructions.

The AI will then respond to your instructions by replying to your prompts.

You can ask ChatGPT to help you come up with headline ideas for your content by typing a prompt into the box.

For example, you can use the following prompt to generate a powerful WordPress post or page headline:

“I want you to act as an SEO expert and copywriter. Suggest at least 5 SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions for the following blog post [Enter your blog post text here].
You must use the following focus keyword at least once in each title and description: [Enter your Focus Keyword Here]
Use a persuasive and intriguing tone. Make sure that each title is no more than 60 characters long. Make sure that each description is no longer than 160 characters.”

You will need to replace [Enter your blog post text here] with the contents of your blog post or page. You must also replace [Enter your Focus Keyword Here] with the focus keyword you want to use for your blog post.

After that, just hit ‘Enter’ and wait for ChatGPT to respond.

You can then select any of these headlines and descriptions to use as your blog post title and description.

If you are not using All in One SEO for WordPress, then you may want to run your headlines through WPBeginner’s free Headline Analyzer tool.

The free Headline Analyzer tool tests your headlines based on a variety of parameters, including sentiment, character count, and word balance. You can then use its suggestions to make your headlines more powerful and effective.

We hope this article helped you learn how to use AI to write powerful headlines. You may also want to see our tutorial on how to use AI to write content in WordPress or see our expert picks for the best AI plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Write Powerful Headlines Using AI (Explained) first appeared on WPBeginner.

16.06.2023
How to Recover a WordPress Site from a Google Search Penalty
Are you looking to recover your WordPress site from a Google search penalty?

Google penalties are a dreaded nightmare for any website owner. Your web pages can be removed from search results or dropped down in search rankings, causing the organic traffic to fall significantly.

In this article, we will show you how to recover a WordPress site from a Google Search Penalty.

What is Google Search Penalty?

A search penalty is a punishment that Google delivers to websites that violate its guidelines.

Google’s goal is to present the best search results to its users. However, sites that try to manipulate or cheat the system to achieve higher search rankings through unethical means are usually given search penalties.

As a result, penalized WordPress sites might see a drop in search rankings or be de-listed from the search results in extreme cases.

Google imposes 2 types of penalties:
- Manual penalties – These are imposed by Google’s internal team, and you are notified of any offense. It can be for things like spam content, cloaked images, hidden text, unnatural internal and external links, and other violations against the Google Search Essentials guidelines.
- Algorithm penalties – An algorithm penalty is when Google rolls out an update to the search algorithm to provide better search results. This type of penalty is hard to diagnose because you don’t get any notification from Google.
Since this is a comprehensive guide, we’ve added a table of contents. You can click the links below to easily navigate to any section you’re interested in:
How to Check for a Google Search Penalty

If your WordPress site is hit with a Google search penalty and you’re not sure how to check it, then there are different ways you can try.

Check for Manual Actions in Google Search Console

First, you can log in to your Google Search Console account and look for manual penalties imposed by the search engine.

Simply head to Security & Manual Actions Â» Manual actions from the Search Console menu on the left. Here, you’ll see any manual penalty given by Google.

If you see the ‘No issues detected’ message, then you’re in the clear.

That said, here’s a list of manual actions that Google can apply to your site:
- Site abused by third-party spam
- User-generated spam
- Spammy free host
- Structured data issue
- Unnatural links to and from your site
- Thin content with little or no added value
- Pure Spam
- Cloaking or sneaky redirects
- Cloaked images
- AMP content mismatch
- Sneaky mobile redirects
- Hidden text or keyword stuffing
- News and Discover policy violations
Check Google Analytics for a Drop in Organic Traffic

Next, you can check your site’s organic traffic in Google Analytics. If there is a considerable drop, then it could be a result of a search penalty.

This method is useful to check for algorithm penalties, especially after Google releases a new update.

In Google Analytics 4, you can go to Reports Â» Acquisition Â» Traffic acquisition and look at the Organic Search figures.

You can edit the date range at the top and compare it to a previous period to look for a decline in traffic.

To drill down further, you can use a keyword tracker tool and see search term rankings for your website. If you notice a drop in different keyword rankings, then it could mean you’ve been hit with a search penalty.

Search Your Website and Content on Google

Lastly, if you’re not seeing your web pages appear in Google search results, then there is a way to check if it’s been banned or delisted.

Simply enter ‘site: example.com’ in Google and see if your site appears. Just replace example.com with your own site URL.

If you don’t see your website appearing in the search results, then it could be delisted due to a search penalty.

You can also search for some of the text from your most important pages on Google. This will also help check for delisting or decline in search rankings for core pages.

Having that said, let’s look at different ways you can recover a WordPress website from a Google search penalty.

1. Perform an SEO Audit to Find Critical Issues

An SEO audit is a process of finding out whether your WordPress website is correctly optimized for search engines.

Running an SEO audit can help uncover critical SEO issues and errors on your site. This way, you can quickly fix them and recover your site from a search penalty.

A simple way to conduct an SEO audit in WordPress is by using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. It is the best SEO WordPress plugin that helps set up your site for search engines without technical knowledge.

With AIOSEO, you can use its SEO Analysis tool inside the WordPress dashboard to run an audit. It checks your site on different parameters and highlights any critical issues. Plus, you get recommendations for fixing errors, which will help recover your site from a penalty.

You get started by following our guide on how to set up All in One SEO in WordPress.

2. Clean Your Backlink Profile

One of the most common reasons why Google issues a search penalty is because of unnatural links to and from your WordPress website.

Sites that have bought spammy links or participate in different link schemes to boost their search engine rankings are mainly penalized by Google. This could be either through a manual action or an algorithm update.

A quick way to recover your site from such penalties is by identifying and removing spammy backlinks. However, this can be a time-consuming task, especially if you have to visit every page on your site to remove the backlink.

An easier way to go about this is by using AIOSEO. It offers a powerful Link Assistant feature that helps you see all the internal and external links on your site.

First, you’d need to go to All in One SEO Â» Link Assistant from your WordPress admin panel. After that, you can click on the ‘Domains Report’ tab at the top.

Next, you can view all the domains linking to your website.

On this page, domains that look unnatural or spammy are highlighted. Next, you can select the domain, click the Bulk Actions dropdown menu, and choose the ‘Delete’ option.

After that, you can click the ‘Apply’ button to remove links from a particular domain.

You can also click on any of the websites to view which pages they’re linking to on your site. Next, you can click the trash can icon to remove a backlink from a particular page or post.

If you are unable to remove an unnatural, spammy, or artificial link, then you can disavow them using Google’s disavow links tool.

Do note that this method is for users with technical knowledge and is unsuitable for beginners. For more details, you read Google’s instructions on how to disavow links to your site.

3. Perform a Content Audit

Another way to recover your website from Google search penalties is by auditing your content.

Here are a few things you can look into and fix on your website.

Fix Thin and Duplicate Content

Google will penalize sites with thin content with little or no value for users. This includes low-quality content that’s auto-generated or spun through software. Or affiliate pages with a few paragraphs and a link to promote the product.

Similarly, if you have duplicate content or articles scraped from other websites, then Google can also hand you a search penalty.

A simple way to fix this is by identifying pages that have relevant or thin content and then rewriting them. You can use Google Analytics to uncover pages with very low or no traffic.

Simply head to the Reports Â» Engagement Â» Landing page in Google Analytics.

After uncovering content with thin content, you can then add more value by covering the topic in depth, making the content engaging using images and videos, and ensuring you have unique content.

On the other hand, you can find pages that have duplicate or auto-generated content and simply remove them from your website. Simply copy some of the text and enter it on Google. The search will show all the pages and posts on your site with the same content.

If other websites have scrapped your content, then you can use tools like Copyscape to find plagiarised content. To learn more, you may also want to see our guide on how to easily find and remove stolen content in WordPress.

Remove Keyword Stuffing and Hidden Text

If your site’s text doesn’t make sense and is filled with search terms to rank higher, then you can also get a search penalty for keyword stuffing. Similarly, websites with hidden text and keywords in your site’s CSS styling can also be penalized by Google.

You can easily fix this issue by removing or editing content that has keyword stuffing. Try using variations and avoid repeating the same search terms. You can also use keyword research tools like Semrush to find different keywords to use on your content.

Semrush also offers an SEO writing assistant tool that helps you discover LSI and related keywords, readability score, language tone, and more to help you create optimized content.

Remove User Generated Spam

Next, you need to check your website for spam comments. These are comments that have advertising links, spammy user names, auto-generated or off-topic comments, and other irrelevant links.

In WordPress, you can simply go to Comments from your WordPress dashboard and then mark the comment as Spam. You can also select the Trash option and remove the comment.

To learn more, please see our guide on tips and tools to combat comment spam in WordPress.

Review Internal Linking on Your Site

Google’s search crawlers use links on your website to find new content and build a contextual relationship between your new and old content.

Auditing the internal links helps recover your WordPress site from an algorithm penalty. For instance, if there are no or few internal links on a page, then you can add internal links to other relevant pages and boost their rankings.

Using the AIOSEO link assistant, you can improve internal linking on your website. It will show you existing links and also provide new linking opportunities. Besides that, you can also highlight orphaned pages that have no internal links.

For more details, please see our guide on internal linking for SEO.

Audit Page Load Speed

When conducting an audit, you should also check your website load time. While a slow-loading site would not lead to a Google search penalty, it will impact your search engine rankings.

That’s because Google now uses page load speed as a ranking factor. Sites that load fast will have an advantage over slow-loading websites.

You can use IsItWP’s free website speed test tool for auditing page load speed. The tool will show an overall score and provide suggestions for improving page speed.

You can find more details by following our guides on how to run a website speed test and the ultimate guide to boosting WordPress performance.

4. Ensure Your Site is Not Hacked

If your WordPress website is hacked and injected with malicious code that can be deceptive to Google’s guidelines, then you can get a penalty.

Usually, hackers would add scripts or pieces of code that would create sneaky redirects on your website. Since this goes against the guidelines, your websites might be deindexed from the search results.

You can check for security issues in Google Search Console by heading to the Security & Manual Actions Â» Security issues section.

Besides that, you can run a WordPress security audit to uncover any issues that might result in a penalty. For example, you can scan your site for malware and other security vulnerabilities.

We recommend using a WordPress security plugin like Sucuri to prevent an attack on your website. It also checks your site’s files for suspicious code and helps clean up your website.

You may want to see our ultimate WordPress Security guide to make your site secure and safe.

5. Research Recent Google Algorithm Updates

Lastly, if you see a drop in traffic or search rankings after a Google update, then you might be hit with an algorithm penalty.

Unlike a manual penalty, it is very hard to diagnose the impact of an algorithm change. Google won’t tell you the reason for the drop in rankings or traffic for your site.

However, you can research the latest Google algorithm update and see what has changed. After that, you can audit your site’s SEO, content, and security to fix any issues.

The best way to stay updated with the latest algorithm changes and adjustments is by following WordPress blogs. There are many popular marketing and SEO blogs that share the latest news, case studies, and other information about Google’s algorithm changes.

Aside from that, you can also follow our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners and make sure your site is properly optimized for Google.

Submit a Reconsideration Request to Lift Penalties

After you’ve fixed an issue that led to Google search penalties, the next step is to submit a reconsideration request and lift the penalties.

This step is fairly simple if you receive a manual penalty. You can head to your Google Search Console account, view the Security and Manual actions section, and request a review for the particle issue.

When submitting the reconsideration request, we recommend that you cover the following things:
- Explain that you understand Google’s guidelines and best practices in detail. You can share links to answers in Google forums, YouTube videos, and other documentation offered by Google regarding the manual action.
- Show that you’ve done everything that you can to fix the issue, like removing unnatural links. You can include screenshots, a list of links removed, and provide other evidence to present your case.
- Reassure that your site is made for users and not search engines, and you won’t make the same mistake again. You can also ensure that all other activities on your website are within Google’s guidelines.
Once you’ve submitted a consideration request, Google will review it. The response time usually depends on the severity of the penalty. It can take days, weeks, and even months to hear back from Google and find out whether your penalty has been lifted or not.

We hope this article helped you learn how to recover a WordPress site from a Google search penalty. You may also want to see our guide on how to increase your blog traffic and the best SEO checker and website analyzer tools.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Recover a WordPress Site from a Google Search Penalty first appeared on WPBeginner.
10.05.2023