Tag: wordpress seo

13-Point WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners
Do you want to make sure that your WordPress site is properly optimized for search engines?

Going through a search engine optimization (SEO) checklist can help you follow best practices and ensure you don’t miss out on small details. This way, you can rank higher on Google and grow website traffic.

In this article, we will share a WordPress SEO checklist for beginners.

Why Follow a WordPress SEO Checklist?

Search engines are often the largest source of traffic for many websites. However, the idea of optimizing your site for WordPress SEO can be intimidating, especially for beginners.

There are many technical terms, SEO tactics, and new trends that can put off new website owners from optimizing their sites and ranking higher in search engines.

This is where a WordPress SEO checklist can help you out. It covers all the basics and makes sure you follow SEO best practices. Plus, there are many tools and plugins that can optimize your site and take care of technical SEO for you.

You can use the checklist by going through each point step by step. After that, make changes to ensure search engines can easily crawl and index your content.

That said, let’s look at the WordPress SEO checklist for beginners. Here are all the things we’ll cover, so you can simply click the links below to jump ahead to your preferred section:
1. Install a WordPress SEO Plugin

An SEO plugin can help configure your WordPress site for search engines. It ensures that you follow the best practices and handles all the technical SEO optimizations.

You can use All in One SEO (AIOSEO) for your website. It is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and helps you optimize your site for search engines without technical knowledge or hiring a developer.

It is also the SEO plugin we also use on WPBeginner.

AIOSEO offers lots of powerful features. For instance, you can use it to create an XML sitemap, add schema markup, integrate social media, breadcrumb navigation, TruSEO On-Page analysis score, robots.txt editor, local SEO, WooCommerce SEO, link assistant, track broken links, and much more.

You can also use AIOSEO to conduct an SEO audit. The plugin will monitor and highlight crucial issues. Plus, you’ll get actionable insights for resolving these issues and boosting organic traffic on your site.

To learn more, you can follow our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

2. Set Up Search Engine Webmaster Tools

Next, you’ll need to set up different search engines’ webmaster tools, like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yandex Webmaster Tools.

These free tools help you track your site’s organic search performance. You can use them to see which keywords people are using to find your website, check rankings, submit sitemaps, uncover errors that might be preventing your site from ranking in search engines, and more.

For example, Google Search Console shows which pages are indexed in the search results. You can then find out why Google doesn’t index other pages, fix any issues, and submit pages for indexing.

You can follow these guides to add your WordPress site to each webmaster tool:
3. Add Google Analytics to WordPress

Another vital tool to set up on your WordPress website is Google Analytics. It is a free tool that shows how people behave on your site, where they’re coming from, which pages they view, and a lot more.

Google Analytics can help you track your WordPress SEO efforts and see the number of visitors that come from organic searches. It is an excellent tool for tracking website traffic and keeping an eye on all the traffic spikes and dips.

Besides that, you can use it to find high-converting pages and improve their SEO, look for opportunities to boost organic traffic, track 404 errors, and more.

The easiest way of setting up Google Analytics in WordPress is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Analytics solution for WordPress, and you don’t have to edit any code or hire a developer to configure Google Analytics.

The best part, you can get started with the MonsterInsights Lite version for free to add analytics to your site. The plugin also offers a premium version and helps set up advanced tracking features like eCommerce tracking, form conversions, and more.

To learn more, you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

4. Do Keyword Research for Your WordPress Site

Keyword research is a technique that content creators and SEO experts use to discover topics your audience is interested in using search engine data.

Many beginners will use their best guesses to come up with topics that they think people might like. Instead, you should do proper keyword research and find search terms for each page on your website.

It is important that you define a primary target keyword for your blog post or landing page. Having too many different search terms can make it harder for search engines to understand the content.

You can use many keyword research tools to find a primary search term. We recommend Semrush because it offers in-depth keyword data, keyword position tracking, competitor analysis, related keywords, questions, and more.

For more details, please see our guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress blog.

5. Use LSI Keywords and Check for Keyword Stuffing

Now that you’ve found a focus keyphrase for your content, the next thing to do is find Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. These are related search queries to your primary keyword.

The easiest way of finding LSI keywords is through Google Search. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the search results and see the ‘Related searches’ section.

You can then use these terms throughout your content and cover the overall topic in depth. This also helps search engines better understand your content.

That said, it is vital that you don’t stuff the keywords. Using the exact search term repeatedly doesn’t provide a great reading experience for users, and search engines are pretty clever at detecting keyword stuffing.

6. Optimize Your SEO Title and Meta Description

The next WordPress SEO checklist item is whether your SEO titles and meta descriptions are optimized.

The title of your WordPress blog post or product page plays an essential role in search rankings. A compelling title will encourage the user to click on the link.

The meta description also provides more information to users about the page and helps improve the organic click-through rate (CTR). As more people click on your site’s link, it will send a positive signal to Google and help you achieve higher rankings.

It is an SEO best practice to include the primary keyword in your SEO title, meta description, and URLs. Plus, you should ensure that your titles are not more than 55 characters and meta descriptions are not more than 155 characters. Otherwise, Google will truncate your headline and description.

If you’re using AIOSEO, then you can use the headline analyzer to create engaging title tags. It shows a score for your headline and offers tips for improving your SEO title.

You can check out our guide on how to use a headline analyzer in WordPress to improve SEO titles.

7. Use SEO-Friendly URLs

You should also optimize the URLs of your blog posts and landing pages for SEO.

Creating short and descriptive permalinks helps searchers to understand what’s the page about in the search results. Besides that, it is also a good practice to include the primary keyword in your URL.

For example, here is what an SEO-friendly URL should look like:
```
https://www.wpbeginner.com/start-a-wordpress-blog/
```
On the other hand, here’s what a URL that’s not optimized for SEO would look like:
```
https://www.wpbeginner.com/articles/651472
```
You can change these in your WordPress permalink settings.

8. Make Sure to Add Alt-Text to Your Images

Optimizing your images for search engines is also important in WordPress SEO. One way of doing that is by ensuring that your photos have descriptive alternative or alt text.

Alt text helps Google and other search engines understand the image’s subject matter. This way, your pictures can appear in Google Images and help you get more organic traffic.

In WordPress, you can easily add alt text to your images. When you upload a picture in the WordPress content editor using the Image block, you’ll see the Alt Text option in the settings panel on the right.

You can also go to Media Â» Library from the admin panel.

After that, simply select any image and enter the ‘Alt Text’ in the right side panel.

Aside from that, you can also use an image compression tool to reduce the size of your pictures. This will help your site to load faster and provide a great user experience.

Note: Using the block editor to add alt text will only add it to that specific use of the image. If you want to add the same alt text to the image no matter where on your site it’s used, use the media library.

For more details, you can read our beginner’s guide to image SEO.

9. Add Internal Links to Your Content

When going through the WordPress SEO checklist, another important thing to check is the internal links in your content. Internal links are pages you link from your own website.

Search engines use these links to find and index content on your website. It also helps pass authority from one page to another.

Additionally, it assists your visitors in navigating your website, reading related posts, finding sources for statistics, and discovering old articles and pages.

If you’re using AIOSEO, then you can use its Link Assistant feature to uncover internal linking opportunities. It will show orphaned pages with no internal links, provide suggestions and anchor text, and allow you to insert links in a single click.

If you’re not sure how to insert internal links, then please see how to add links in WordPress.

10. Improve the Readability of Your Content

When checking for on-page SEO, it is essential that your content is easy to read. It plays a massive role in getting higher rankings because blogs that are easier to read often rank higher than those that are hard to read.

Studies show that people spend less than a second deciding whether to exit or stay on the page. This means they scan through your content, and you have a very short time to convince them to stay on your website.

By improving the readability of your content, you can help users quickly scan your articles. A simple way of doing that is by grouping sections of your content under headings (H2, H3, H4, and so on).

Besides that, you can write short sentences, use bulleted lists, break long chunks of paragraphs into smaller paragraphs, and add a table of contents. Adding images, videos, and other multimedia can also enhance readability and make your content more engaging.

With AIOSEO, you can analyze readability issues inside the content editor and get suggestions on improving your content.

You can also use grammar checker tools like Grammarly to make sure your content is free from spelling mistakes, missing punctuation, and grammatical errors.

11. Ensure that Search Engines Can Easily Find Your Website

Now that your content and on-page SEO is optimized, there are a few technical elements you should also check as part of the WordPress SEO checklist.

First, you should make it easier for search engines to find your website and index your site. WordPress has a built-in option that stops search engines from crawling your site. If it is enabled, Google and other search engines will not list your site in the search results.

You can check this by heading to Settings Â» Reading from your WordPress dashboard, and scrolling down to the ‘Search engine visibility’ section. Just make sure that the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is not checked.

Another way you can help search engines find content on your site for crawling and indexing is by creating a sitemap.

An XML sitemap tells search engines about the most important pages on your site, so they can quickly discover new content and index them in the search results.

With AIOSEO, it is very easy to create a sitemap. The plugin lets you set up sitemaps for videos, news, RSS feeds, and HTML.

Once the sitemap is ready, you can submit it to search engines using different webmaster tools.

12. Check Your WordPress Website Speed

Next, your WordPress website speed is critical in ranking higher in Google. That’s because page load time is now a ranking factor, and Google will rank faster-loading sites higher compared to slow-loading sites.

A simple way of checking load time is by using MonsterInsights. It lets you run a website speed test and shows a Site Speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.

You can see an overall score for mobile and desktop, along with other important metrics for measuring how fast your site loads.

The plugin also shows suggestions and benchmark goals for improving each metric. For example, you can use a content delivery network (CDN) to improve site speed,

You can find more tips by going through our ultimate guide to boosting WordPress speed and performance.

13. Your WordPress Site Should Be Mobile Ready

The last WordPress SEO checklist item you need to check is whether your site is mobile responsive.

Google has now gone mobile-first. What that means is that it will use your site’s mobile version for indexing instead of the desktop version. You will lose out on higher rankings if your site is not mobile-ready.

Using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool is an easy way of checking mobile responsiveness.

The free tool will analyze your site and tell you whether the website is mobile-responsive or not.

You can simply enter your site’s URL in the tool and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

If your site isn’t mobile-ready, then you can start by changing the theme. There are many responsive WordPress themes designed for mobile. You can follow our guide on how to change a WordPress theme without losing data or traffic.

We hope this article helped you learn about the WordPress SEO checklist for beginners. You may also want to see our guide on how to get free SSL certification for WordPress sites and the ultimate guide to WordPress security.

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-Point WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners first appeared on WPBeginner.
13.04.2023
Internal Linking for SEO: The Ultimate Guide of Best Practices
Are you looking for the best practices to maximize the SEO benefits of internal links?

Internal links play an important role in search engine optimization (SEO). They help search engines discover your content and rank them higher in search results.

In this article, weâ€™ll list the best practices to use for internal linking for SEO.

How Does Internal Linking Improve SEO in WordPress?

Internal links are links between posts on your own website. Having internal links is important for your WordPress SEO. They help search engines like Google crawl your website and discover new content to index and rank.

Generally, the more links a page has pointing to it, the more likely it is to rank higher in search results. That means that you can use internal links to point to important pages on your site as a way to increase their traffic.

Internal links also help your visitors easily find related articles and provide a better user experience overall. This can also help increase pageviews and reduce your bounce rate.

That being said, letâ€™s take a look at the best practices for improving SEO by adding internal links in WordPress. Since this is a comprehensive guide, we have included a table of contents for easier navigation.
1. Make Internal Linking a Habit

We recommend that you make a habit of linking to your older articles from your new articles.

Itâ€™s a great way to develop a contextual relationship between your new and old posts. It also allows you to pass relevant link juice to your older articles.

Because internal links play such an important role in SEO, we have even made it part of our pre-publish blog post checklist for WPBeginner writers.

You can also edit your older articles to add links to your newer content whenever you publish. Many successful bloggers dedicate time to adding internal links that point to new articles on a weekly or monthly basis.

This will help you boost your pageviews, increase the time users spend on your site, and ultimately will improve the SEO score of your individual blog posts and pages.

WordPress makes it easy to search for your old posts right inside the post editor. Simply select the text you want to link and click on the link button in the toolbar that appears.

A text pop-up will appear below your highlighted words. Then, you can start typing to search for the older articles you want to link to.

To learn more, see our beginnerâ€™s guide on how to add a link in WordPress.

2. Monitor Your Internal Link Performance in WordPress

It’s helpful to see your website’s SEO performance in terms of links by using a tool such as the Links Report in Google Search Console. This is a helpful starting point for working out how to improve internal linking on your site.

The Links Report will show you how many pages are linking to this page. You can compare it with other pages and see whether pages with more internal links are ranking higher than posts with many internal links.

If you find that posts with more links do rank higher, then you can go ahead and start adding internal links to pages that you want to rank higher. For the details, see our guide on using Google Search Console to effectively grow your website traffic.

Just make sure you are only linking to the article when it makes sense. Adding links where they donâ€™t make sense creates a bad user experience.

Another way to monitor the impact of internal linking is to see which keywords are gaining or losing position. All in One SEO makes this extremely easy with the Search Statistics feature.

Once you connect the plugin with Google Search Console, All in One SEO will fetch your Google Search Console data and present it under All in One SEO Â» Search Statistics.

The keyword positions chart shows a graph of your siteâ€™s keyword positions.

Below this, youâ€™ll see the Keyword Rankings overview box. This shows your top 10 keywords, and if you use them for internal links they are very likely to be clicked.

3. Improve Your WordPress Siteâ€™s Internal Linking With a Plugin

If youâ€™re not sure which posts you want to link to, then you will often find it faster to add internal links in WordPress using an internal linking plugin.

We recommend using All in One SEO. It includes a unique Link Assistant feature that lets you add links to your old and new content without having to open up the post. Plus, it provides link recommendations, detailed link reports, and much more.

To set up the plugin, see our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly. After that, simply navigate to All in One SEO Â» Link Assistant in your WordPress dashboard.

Link Assistant will crawl every link on your website and then show a comprehensive list report.

The report will show you an overview of the links with total counts for internal, external, and affiliate links. It will also show you the number of orphaned posts that have not yet been linked to from another post or page.

You can switch to the Links Report tab for detailed information on all your links. Here youâ€™ll see a list of all your posts and pages with columns for internal, external, and affiliate links.

It will also show a number of suggestions where you can add links.

For more details, you can click on the right arrow button next to a post or page. This will show all links organized in different tabs. From the suggestions tab, you can quickly view link suggestions and add links without directly editing a post or page.

Link Assistant also helps you discover more internal linking opportunities.

You can switch to the â€˜Linking Opportunitiesâ€™ tab to see suggestions about how to improve the internal linking on your website, and also see the list of orphaned posts so you can add links to them.

Another plugin useful for internal linking is Semrush SEO Writing Assistant because it can help you keep track of links inside your article.

For example, it lets you know when your article has too many or too few internal links and also suggests ways you can improve your links.

This tool also comes in handy if you have other authors working on articles. Editors can quickly see if the article includes internal links to other posts on your website.

We show you how to use this plugin step-by-step to improve your SEO in our guide on how to use the SEO Writing Assistant in WordPress.

4. Display a List of Your Most Popular Posts in WordPress

You can use a WordPress popular posts plugin to point users toward the articles that other users have already found helpful. These plugins automatically create a list of internal links to your most popular content.

Popular posts are usually your most successful content, which means they are more likely to increase user engagement, conversions, and sales. They are also a good opportunity for internal linking to your other less popular articles.

For example, MonsterInsights has a feature that allows you to show your popular articles anywhere on your WordPress site. You can use also use inline popular posts to show articles inside your content.

If you want to show articles in the sidebar or at the end of your content, then you can select the Popular Post Widget. MonsterInsights even lets you display your top-performing products anywhere on your eCommerce store.

You can learn more in our guide on how to display popular posts in WordPress.

5. Create List Posts That Roundup Other Articles in WordPress

Another way to increase the number of internal links on your WordPress blog is to create roundups of your existing content. You do this by creating a new post that mentions your best articles on a certain subject to give a detailed overview of the topic.

In fact, you’re reading a post like that now.

Luckily, there are some plugins that make this job easy. For example, WP Tasty Roundups allows you to quickly repurpose your existing content into beautiful roundup posts that rank in search results.

All you need to do is type one or two keywords into the built-in search functionality, and the plugin will automatically pull images, titles, descriptions, and links from relevant posts into your roundup list.

6. Get Google Sitelinks for Your WordPress Site

Sitelinks are a feature on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) where additional sub-pages appear under a website in the search results.

These are often internal links to the most popular pages of that website.

The top 3 spots on Google get the most clicks. When sitelinks are shown for a website, it takes up the same amount of space as three regular search listings.

Having this much screen space dedicated to your site significantly increases your overall click-through rate. Simply put, more visitors will visit your website from the keyword.

While there is no guaranteed way to get Google to show sitelinks for your website, it certainly helps to create lots of internal links to your most important posts and pages.

You can learn more in our guide on how to get Google sitelinks for your WordPress site.

7. Preload Links in WordPress for Faster Loading Speeds

Link preloading is a browser technology that will load links in the background before a site visitor clicks them. This makes your website seem faster, which can improve SEO.

Because loading speed is one of the top indicators for search engine rankings and user engagement, when your internal pages are preloaded, your visitors are more likely to stay on your website longer.

They are more likely to view more pages because they’re loading instantly.

The easiest way to preload links is by using the Flying Pages plugin. It simply adds intelligent preloading to make sure preloading wonâ€™t crash your site or even slow it down.

We show you how to set up the plugin step-by-step in our guide on how to preload links in WordPress for faster loading speeds.

8. Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress

Broken links are bad for your websiteâ€™s SEO. Search engine crawlers find new content on your website by following internal links, so a broken link can stop them from indexing a new post.

They also negatively impact user experience because broken links will return a 404 error. If a visitor clicks on a link and is unable to find a page theyâ€™re looking for, then they may leave.

You can easily find and fix broken links on your WordPress website using All in One SEO.

AIOSEO offers a powerful redirection manager that helps track 404 errors on your website and lets you set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links.

To learn more, see our detailed guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

9. Update Internal Link URLs When Moving a Site to a New Domain

If you ever move your WordPress site to a new domain name, then it is important to update all internal link URLs. Otherwise, you will have lots of broken links.

You should start by changing the WordPress address and site URL by visiting the Settings Â» General page from your WordPress dashboard.

But you will also need to change the URLs of every internal link added to your posts and pages.

You’ll find the simplest way to do this in our step-by-step guide on how to easily update URLs when moving your WordPress site.

10. Use MediaWiki Syntax to Quickly Add Internal Links to WordPress

If you want to make internal linking a habit, then it helps to use the most efficient method. Since WordPress 6.0, WordPress has supported standard MediaWiki syntax to quickly add internal links when creating or editing a post.

You can now quickly add links by adding two square brackets followed by the post title. The animated gif below shows you how easy this feature is to use inside WordPress.

The link will automatically add the correct URL to the post, and use the post title as an anchor link.

If you know the title of a post (or even just part of it), then using the double square bracket method is the fastest way of creating an internal link.

11. Track Which Internal Links Are Clicked in WordPress

One of the best ways to uncover how users interact with your website is to track which internal links your visitors are clicking. Tools such as MonsterInsights can help you see which internal links your visitors are the most interested in.

You can then use these insights to improve the way you add internal links to your posts and pages.

We offer detailed instructions on tracking different types of links in our guide on how to track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress.

You might also like to see our guide on how to track user engagement in WordPress.

12. Enable Breadcrumbs in WordPress or WooCommerce

Breadcrumb navigation is a term used to describe a hierarchical navigation menu presented as a trail of links.

Itâ€™s often used as a secondary navigation that allows users to go up in the websiteâ€™s hierarchy of pages.

Breadcrumbs are great for internal linking because they define a clean path or trail to the page you are on.

These breadcrumbs also appear in search results giving your site an extra advantage in rankings.

We cover two ways to add breadcrumbs in our guide on how to display breadcrumb navigation links in WordPress. Most users will find Method 1 easier, using All in One SEO.

You can also use All in One SEO to enable breadcrumbs for your WooCommerce products. For details, see the fifth tip in our guide on WooCommerce SEO made easy.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how the best internal linking practices for SEO. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress security guide, or check out our list of tips on how to increase your blog traffic.

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 Internal Linking for SEO: The Ultimate Guide of Best Practices first appeared on WPBeginner.
21.03.2023
14-Step Technical WordPress SEO Framework (Proven Checklist)
Do you need a technical search engine optimization (SEO) checklist?

Optimizing your site for search engines can be a challenge if you’re not sure what to look for. Many website owners will ensure basic SEO practices but overlook technical elements.

In this article, we will show a WordPress technical SEO framework and share a checklist you can use for your business.

Why Do You Need a WordPress Technical SEO Framework?

Technical SEO is a key component of your WordPress SEO strategy. You could be creating the world’s best content, but if search engines can’t find and understand your content, then all your efforts are wasted.

That’s why it is important to have a WordPress technical SEO framework.

Our WordPress SEO framework checklist will ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your content. Plus, you can also evaluate other technical aspects of your WordPress website that might be preventing you from achieving higher rankings.

For example, your website might be taking a long time to load. This would result in poor rankings since the page load time is a ranking factor.

Similarly, you might have mistakenly added nofollow tags and prevented search engines from crawling and indexing your content.

How to Evaluate Technical SEO in WordPress

There are many SEO tools that let you conduct SEO audits and find out if your site is technically optimized. However, not all tools will show details inside your WordPress dashboard.

The easiest way to evaluate technical SEO for your WordPress site is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It is the best WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.

It offers a free SEO Analysis tool that you can use to conduct a technical SEO audit. The tool is available in the AIOSEO Lite version, which you can use for free. There are also premium AIOSEO plans that offer more features like schema markups, sitemaps, redirection manager, and more.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO Â» SEO Analysis from your WordPress admin panel. Under the ‘SEO Audit Checklist’, you’ll see an overall score for your website.

Next, you can scroll down to the Advanced SEO and Performance sections.

Here, the plugin will evaluate the technical SEO aspects of your website based on different parameters and ranking signals. It will then highlight missing elements and critical issues that could stop your site from ranking higher.

You can use AIOSEO to continuously monitor your site’s technical SEO and fix issues. Similarly, you can also perform a competitor analysis and see what they’re doing differently for their technical SEO optimization.

That said, let’s look at our WordPress SEO framework checklist that you can use to ensure higher rankings and organic traffic. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section:
1. Ensure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines

The first thing you need to check is whether search engines are able to find your WordPress site.

You can simply enter site:example.comÂ in the search engine and see if your website appears in the search results. Just replace ‘example.com’ with your own domain.

If your site isn’t showing up, then you can check the visibility settings in WordPress.

Go ahead and visit the Settings Â» Reading page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, scroll down to the Search engine visibility setting and be sure the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is unchecked.

This option is usually enabled if your website is under construction or is put in maintenance mode.

2. Uncover Crawling and Indexing Issues

If your website is visible to search engines, then it is important to check that your content is crawled and indexed.

Crawling is the process where Google, Bing, and other search engines discover and understand your website. Indexing is the process where search engines collect and store information about your website.

A simple way of checking crawling and indexing issues is using webmaster tools. For example, Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that shows your site’s performance on search results, helps uncover bugs, and allows you to submit your site to Google.

If you haven’t connected to the webmaster tool, then see our guide on how to add a WordPress site to Google Search Console.

In Google Search Console, you can head to the ‘Pages’ report. Here, you’ll see pages that are indexed and not indexed.

Next, you can scroll down to the ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’ report.

Google Search Console will show you crawling and indexing errors on your website and which pages are affected by them. You can then resolve these issues, so your web pages can appear in Google search results.

Besides that, you can also check indexing and crawling issues for individual URLs.

Simply enter the page link in the URL inspection tool at the top. Google Search Console will then show you a report on whether the URL is indexed and on Google.

If it is not, then you’ll see a ‘URL is not on Google’ message. To fix this, you can click the ‘Request Indexing’ button so Google can crawl and index your page.

3. Make Sure Your Website is Secure with HTTPS

Another important thing to check from a technical SEO framework standpoint is whether your website is secure or not.

Google and other search engines will give preference to sites that use HTTPS over those that use HTTP. To secure your site, you will need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection between your website server and the user’s browser.

You can check this by looking for the padlock sign in your browser’s search bar at the top.

Most WordPress hosting companies now offer free SSL with all their plans. You can ask your host to see if they offer that.

For more details, please see our guide on how to move your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS.

4. Find and Fix Broken Links

Broken links are bad for your website’s SEO framework, and it negatively impacts your user experience. These are links that no longer exist and will return a 404 error.

Since search engine crawlers find different pages on your website by following internal links. A broken link can stop them from discovering new content. As a result, your page might not get indexed in the search results.

Similarly, if a visitor clicks on a link and is unable to find a page they’re looking for, then they might exit your website.

With All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily find and fix broken links on your WordPress website.

It offers a powerful redirection manager that helps track 404 errors on your website and lets you set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links.

To learn more, you can follow our detailed guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

5. Look for Duplicate Versions of Your Site

It is important that Google and other search engines only index one version of your website.

Your website can have different versions, but they should all point to one version. For example, you can have a site that has www and non-www version or HTTP and HTTPS version:
```
https://www.example.com
https://example.com
http://www.example.com
http://example.com
```
Whether you choose a www or non-www version, all the URLs should redirect to the primary WordPress URL. Otherwise, Google will consider each version as a different website.

This can negatively impact your overall SEO rankings. Search engines won’t know which version to index, and it could cause duplicate content issues.

You can check the primary URL for your site by going to Settings Â» General from the WordPress dashboard. Next, look at the web address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.

With AIOSEO, you can automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, so search engines will know your preference.

6. Use SEO-Friendly URL Structures

After setting a primary URL for search engines to index, you can now check the URL structure of your website.

URL structure plays an important role in your SEO. Having an SEO-friendly URL structure will help Google, Bing, and other search engines easily crawl your pages and understand your content.

Here’s an example of a bad URL structure:
```
https://www.example.com/category.php?id=42012
```
Instead, you should be using URLs that describe the content, like:
```
https://www.example.com/blog/how-to-start-a-wordpress-website
```
You can create SEO-friendly URLs by making sure that they are short and descriptive. Besides that, don’t forget to include a keyword in the permalinks, use hyphens to separate words, keep all the words in lowercase, and don’t use stop words.

Pro Tip: Don’t include numbers in your URL slugs, either. That way, you can update your content in the future

7. Ensure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

The next item in the technical SEO framework checklist is to ensure your WordPress site is mobile responsive.

With Google now going mobile-first, it will now index your site’s mobile version instead of the desktop version.

You can check your site’s mobile responsiveness by using the free Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Simply enter your website URL and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

The tool will then show results for your website. You can see if it is mobile-ready or not.

If your site is not mobile-friendly, then you can start by changing to a responsive WordPress theme.

You can also follow our guide on how to change your WordPress theme without losing any data or traffic.

8. Check Your Website Speed and Improve Performance

Your website speed is also a critical part of your WordPress technical SEO framework. Google uses page load speed as a ranking factor and will rank fast-loading sites higher compared to slow-performing websites.

You can check website load time by running a site speed test. For instance, you can use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin that shows a site speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.

You’ll first need to install Google Analytics to your WordPress site using MonsterInsights.

After that, you can head to the Insights Â» Reports page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, you can go to the ‘Site Speed’ tab. Here, you’ll see an overall score for your website speed for desktop and mobile.

The report will also show other metrics that are important for measuring your website speed.

If you scroll down, then MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals for each metric you should target.

To improve website load time, you can see our ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

A quick tip that you can use to improve your website speed is minifying your CSS and JavaScript files.

The term minified means reducing the size of website files by removing white spaces, lines, and unnecessary characters. When a user visits your website, different files are sent to the user’s browser, which includes CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.

By reducing the file size, you can significantly improve website speed and performance. There are many WordPress plugins and hosting services that allow you to minify CSS and JavaScript files, like WP Rocket and SiteGround.

For more details, you can check out our guide on how to minify CSS and JavaScript files in WordPress.

9. Improve Your Internal Linking Structure and Remove Orphaned Pages

Internal links play an important role in your website’s technical SEO framework. Search engines reward websites that have a proper internal linking structure without too many orphaned pages.

AIOSEO has a powerful SEO Link Assistant feature that makes it easy for you to discover link opportunities and even automate the process for you.

It is the best internal linking plugin for WordPress that crawls the links on yourÂ WordPress websiteÂ and provides a detailed report. You can see the number of internal links, outbound links, and affiliate links for each post and page.

You can see all the link suggestions in one place, and it can even automatically go back and add internal links in your older posts with a single click.

10. Generate XML Sitemaps and Submit Them to Search Engines

Another important part of technical SEO framework is making it easier for search engines to find your content. One of the ways you can do that is by creating an XML sitemap.

It tells search engines about the important pages on your website. This way, search engine bots can crawl your site faster and index your content. While a sitemap won’t boost your rankings, it will improve the overall crawling and indexing process.

You can create and customize the sitemap using AIOSEO. The plugin will automatically generate a sitemap upon activation. Besides, it also lets you create a video sitemap, a news sitemap, an HTML sitemap, and an RSS sitemap.

Once you’ve created a sitemap, you can then submit it to different search engines using their webmaster tools.

For instance, Google Search Console gives the option to enter the sitemap URL and submit it to the search engine. To learn more, you can see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.

Similarly, you can also add your site to Bing Webmaster Tool and then submit an XML sitemap to improve crawling and indexing.

11. Use Schema Markup for Rich Snippets

The next technical SEO framework item you should check is schema markup. It helps search engines understand your content better and how it will appear on the search results.

You can use schema markup for recipes, reviews, events, organizations, FAQs, blog posts, product pages, multiple locations for local businesses, and more.

Search engines can use this information and display rich results. It also helps capture Google featured snippets, which can increase organic clicks and traffic.

For example, here’s how Google shows recipes, ingredients, ratings, cooking time, and other information for blog posts that use a recipe schema markup.

You can easily add a schema markup in WordPress and WooCommerce using AIOSEO.

The plugin lets you choose the schema type depending on your content, and it takes care of the rest.

With AIOSEO, you can also add completely custom schema markups based on your needs using the WordPress custom schema generator feature. This can help you get star ratings, and other rich snippets in Google.

12. Optimize Your Robots.txt File for SEO

Robots.txt is a text file that specifies instructions for search engine bots on how to crawl your website. You can tell which pages to crawl and which pages to skip while crawling.

Here’s what a robots.txt file would look like for a WordPress site:
```
User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /readme.html
Disallow: /refer/
 
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml
```
Adding a robots.txt file helps save the crawl quota. A search engine crawler will crawl a certain number of pages during a session. If they don’t finish crawling all the pages on your site, they will resume crawling in the next session.

This can slow down the indexing of your content, and it will appear in search results after some delay. That’s why optimizing the robots.txt file is an important component of the technical SEO framework.

You can disallow pages unnecessary pages like the WordPress admin area, theme folder, plugin files, and more. This way, you get to save the crawl quota and allow search engine bots to crawl even more pages.

On the other hand, you can add sitemaps and other important pages to robots.txt. This way, search engines will crawl and index them as quickly as possible.

A simple way of optimizing the robots.txt file is by using AIOSEO. You can enable custom robots.txt using the plugin and add rules to allow or disallow search engines to crawl.

To learn more, please see our guide on how to optimize your WordPress robots.txt for SEO.

13. Make Sure Google Doesn’t Flag Your Site for Malware

Another important technical SEO checklist item is to ensure your site isn’t flagged by Google for malware or unwanted software.

If your website is a security risk for users, then Google will show the following warning message:

This can be really bad for your WordPress SEO. It will keep people away from visiting your website, and impact your rankings, and overall website traffic.

To scan for malicious files on your website, you can use a WordPress security scanner. At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. It checks for vulnerabilities like malware, spam injection, malicious code, and helps clean up the website.

You can also take a look at our guide on how to fix â€˜this site ahead contains harmful programsâ€™ error in WordPress, if Google flags your site for malware.

14. Use Server Side Rendering vs Client Side Rendering

Another technical SEO best practice is ensuring that your site’s JavaScript renders on the server side and not on the client side.

Server-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render on the website server. While client-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render in the user’s browser.

Client-side rendering is bad for your site’s user experience and SEO. All the burden of loading your site quickly falls on the visitor. Plus, search engine bots use JavaScript resources for crawling and indexing your content. This could result in JavaScript content being missed by crawlers and not included in the search engine index.

With server-side rendering, your website server ensures everything loads quickly. This way, you get a better user experience, faster page load speed, and reduce any risk of content being missed from indexing.

One way of ensuring that JavaScript is rendering on your site’s server is by running a site speed test. If your website speed is low, then it could be because of this issue. You can also look at crawled pages in Google Search Console and see if Google missed any content while crawling. If it did, then it could be because of JaveScript-related SEO issues.

That’s it. You’ve made it to the end of the list. You don’t need to go through each and every point in the technical SEO framework at once. Simply go one step at a time and work your way through the list.

We hope this article helped you learn about WordPress technical SEO framework. You may also want to see our comparison of the best keyword research tools, and our proven tips on how to increase your blog traffic.

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 14-Step Technical WordPress SEO Framework (Proven Checklist) first appeared on WPBeginner.
13.02.2023
15 Best WordPress SEO Plugins in 2023
Despite how great your website may be, people won’t just stumble upon it accidentally (for the most part). You have to drive traffic to your site. In addition to paying for advertising, there’s also organic (i.e. non-ad) traffic to think about, which requires search engine optimization (SEO). There’s a lot to learn if you want to become an SEO expert, and no single method is going to cover everything there is to learn. However, some aspects are made easier on you by using the best SEO plugin for WordPress that caters to your specific needs.

What Are SEO Plugins?

In general, an SEO plugin will help you optimize your web pages so they’ll rank higher in search engines. Out-of-the-box WordPress already has a lot of SEO optimization features built in. You can write titles and headings, create metadata, add tags and alt text, customize URLs, and more. But SEO plugins make juggling these tasks â€“Â and other ones â€“ much easier, especially if youâ€™re not at an expert level yet.

An SEO plugin isn’t going to guarantee that your content will rank higher with search engines. However, it will help you optimize your content for search engines so it has a better chance to rank highly. You still have to do the work, but itâ€™s like having a coach there who already knows the field and can guide you through.

14 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

The following plugins will help you implement an SEO strategy on your website. Some are simple, tackling just an element or two of SEO, while others are more comprehensive. Just about all of them, though, will clue you into audience and traffic stats so you can improve your content and boost engagement. And remember, the actual optimization is still up to you whether you use the best SEO plugin for WordPress or not â€“ the plugin just holds your hand a bit as you make updates.

1. Rank Math

Rank Mathâ€™s leading feature is that it offers real-time insights that tell you about your posts so that you can optimize them as you write. On top of that, the SEO data that you can see on your dashboard includes the keywords you’re ranking for, the search impressions your website is getting, and errors that Google spots on your site. The plugin is speed-optimized, too, so it won’t impact the speed of your website.

Rank Math also includes deep integration with Divi, bringing powerful SEO features right into Divi’s visual builder!

Key Features of Rank Math
- Integrates with Google Search Console to bring SEO info to your WordPress dashboard.
- Snippet preview to optimize titles and metadata so SERPs wonâ€™t display errors.
- Additional tools for 404 monitoring, link building, redirections, local and WooCommerce SEO, sitemaps, and more.
- Integrates with Divi Theme
Rank Math is for you if…
- Youâ€™re a team of one that writes content, manages SEO, and is solely responsible for the health of your site.
- You currently use multiple SEO plugins but are looking for a more compact solution.
- You use Divi.
Rank Math Pricing: Free; paid plans start at $59 per year | Learn More About Rank Math

2. All in One SEO (AIOSEO)

The All in One SEO plugin is primarily used for improving on-page SEO, and itâ€™s best for local small businesses that have a high reliance on search. The plugin will analyze your entire site, alert you to errors and offer recommendations so you can improve SEO. Along with its sitemaps generation, AIOSEO helps make your website more present on the web, no matter which search engine is being used.

Key Features of AIOSEO
- SEO audit checklist to analyze your site.
- Recommendations that guide you to improve SEO.
- Sitemap generation and submission to various search engines.
AIOSEO is for you if…
- Youâ€™re a local or small business owner focusing on on-page SEO.
- Your company relies on online searches, especially local ones.
AIOSEO Pricing: Starts at $49.50 per year | Learn More About AIOSEO

3. HubSpot

You need good data to create an SEO strategy, and the HubSpot pluginâ€™s main purpose is to collect and present that data. Analytics are shown on user-friendly dashboards that are easy to read. With the info you collect, you can figure out where to spend time improving SEO â€“ and which areas are working just fine for now. Check out our guide on how to integrate Hubspot with WordPress.

Key Features of HubSpot
- Marketing performance analytics.
- Monitor your site or a single page for web traffic.
- Additional SEO tools, like email marketing, forms, and live chat.
HubSpot is for you if…
- Youâ€™re scaling a small business.
- You use other HubSpot products, like its CRM.
HubSpot Pricing: Free | Learn More About HubSpot

4. Internal Link Juicer

Adding internal links to your post can be a pain, especially as your website grows. Internal Link Juicer is possibly the best SEO plugin for WordPress for automating internal linking so each post is optimized. Implementing a solid internal linking strategy is great for SEO. But it also makes it easier for visitors to find the content on your website and stay there.

Key Features of Internal Link Juicer
- Set anchor keywords for posts so that related internal content will be automatically linked to them.
- Limit the number of links added to each post.
- Block content that you never wanted to be linked to.
Internal Link Juicer is for you if…
- You have a large library of content and find it difficult to find the best articles to link to.
- You want to view stats for your internal links.
Internal Link Juicer Pricing: Free, $69.99 for Pro | Learn More About Internal Link Juicer

5. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is one of the best Google Analytics plugins around. The plugin brings you Google analytics website performance data right to your dashboard. This lets you know how to improve your site so that the visitor experience can be enhanced. Youâ€™ll be able to see your Google Search Console reports on how people find your site and how they use it once they’re there. No code is needed to install the Google Analytics tracking script, either.

Key Features of MonsterInsights
- Tracks website analytics and performance.
- Google Analytics is brought to the WordPress dashboard so you donâ€™t have to open another site.
- Content report shows the pages that are most visited.
MonsterInsights is for you if…
- Youâ€™re a marketer or stakeholder who wants to optimize your website for conversions.
- You get overwhelmed by Google Analytics and want a more streamlined way to view the data.
MonsterInsights Pricing: Starts at $99.50 per year | Learn More About MonsterInsights

6. Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP

Rich snippets in Google display search results with additional content, like the author of a post, photos, pricing, or ratings. You need schema markup to customize how your content appears in rich snippets, though. The Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP plugin helps you choose the schema to add for all sorts of content, including blog posts, news articles, product pages, and recipes.

Key Features of Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP
- Auto-assign schema to 35+ types of content.
- Manually select the markup to add to a post or page.
- Exclude certain types of content and not include schema markup for them.
- Supports AMP and AMP for WP for optimizing your site for mobile devices
Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP is for you if…
- You have a blog, review site, or small business site that needs a better presence in SERPs.
- You want an easy way to display multiple schema types in SERPs according to Schema.org guidelines.
- You use AMP for WP or AMP by Automattic plugins
Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP Pricing: Free | Learn More About Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP

7. WP Meta SEO

If youâ€™re redesigning your website and need a quick, efficient way to optimize the new pages, consider installing WP Meta SEO. It provides across-site optimization all at once instead of having to do it on each page. You can also use Google data to decide how to handle your keyword strategy.

Key Features of WP Meta SEO
- Meta information bulk editor.
- Integrates with Google Search Console for keyword suggestion features.
- Other SEO features include a redirection manager and a sitemap generator.
WP Meta SEO is for you if…
- Youâ€™re an entrepreneur in charge of content, SEO, and your website overall.
- You want to speed up your workflow so you can focus on content creation.
WP Meta SEO Pricing: Free or $49 for Pro | Learn More About WP Meta SEO

8. SEO Press

SEO Press offers a free WordPress plugin that provides all the necessary features to improve the SEO of your WordPress site. You can manage meta titles and descriptions, generate XML and HTML sitemaps, track your site’s visitors with Google Analytics, and optimize your social media presence, among other features.

Key Features of SEO Press
- Management of meta titles and descriptions
- Generation of XML and HTML sitemaps
- Integration with Google Analytics to track site visitors
- Optimization of social media presence
SEO Press Pro offers advanced features for optimizing your business’s WordPress site, including configuring WooCommerce SEO, targeting local audiences, generating video and news XML sitemaps, managing redirects, checking broken links, and monitoring 404 errors. The Pro plan also allows you to install the plugin on unlimited sites and includes 1 year of support.

SEO Press is for you if…
- You need an all-in-one SEO solution.
- You want a plugin for managing SEO on multiple sites.
SEO Press Pricing: Free or $49 for Pro | Learn More About SEO Press

9. Ahrefs SEO WordPress Plugin

Ahrefs is a leader in the world of website optimization, and the SEO WordPress Plugin focuses mainly on backlinks but also has a few other optimization features. Backlink analysis is powered by its backlink indexâ€¦and thatâ€™s the largest one you can find online. You can get a good look at your backlink profile to uncover guest collaboration and partnership opportunities so that you can increase traffic to your site.

Key Features of Ahrefs
- Content audit tool offers recommendations as you create.
- SEO analysis based on Google Analytics data.
- Actionable insights on your dashboard.
Ahrefs is for you if…
- Youâ€™re a PR pro or a social media manager who needs to dig into data.
- You want to know the websiteâ€™s backlink profile.
Ahrefs Pricing: Free | Learn More About Ahrefs

10. Premium SEO Pack

Premium SEO Pack has advanced SEO features that many other plugins donâ€™t include. For example, it will give you insight into your internal linking structure. It also helps you maximize performance even if you have a lot of images on your site by making them more SEO-friendly.

Key Features of Premium SEO Pack
- Foundational tools include Google Analytics monitoring and sitemap generation.
- Minifies CSS to help your site load faster.
- Additional SEO tools include 404 checkings, page speed monitoring, and rich snippets.
Premium SEO Pack is for you if…
- You use your WordPress website as an image-heavy portfolio.
- You use a lot of media on your site and donâ€™t want to affect performance.
Premium SEO Pack Pricing: Free light version or paid starting at $44 | Learn More About Premium SEO Pack

11. Rankie

Rankie is the best SEO plugin for WordPress to help you make wise optimization decisions. Its insights guide you to smartly modify your pages, without the need to go into Google Analytics or track everything (like keywords) on your own.

Key Features of Rankie
- Track target keywords to monitor performance.
- Add the keywords that visitors are using to find your content.
- Generate reports for a broader view of performance.
Rankie is for you if…
- Youâ€™re a marketing or SEO data analyst.
- You want to know how both the SERPs and visitors feel about your siteâ€™s performance.
Rankie Pricing: $21 | Learn More About Rankie

12. Redirection

301 redirects are an important part of an SEO strategy, allowing you to maintain what a page has achieved in the ranks without keeping it active on your site. You specify the new URL that the old page should link to and set up a 301 redirect so Google knows to look at another page instead of that one. The plugin’s URL manager lets you implement 301 redirects without having to use other redirect methods like modifying the .htaccess file or creating manual entries for each redirection.

Key Features of Redirection
- Create conditional redirects based on browser, IP address, login status, page type, or other conditions.
- Change the site’s permalink structure.
- Track 404 errors.
Redirection is for you if…
- You want to delete pages but theyâ€™re ranking highly.
- Youâ€™re part of a development or marketing team that’s redesigning a website.
Redirection Pricing: Free | Learn More About Redirection

13. The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework plugin is a powerful SEO plugin that includes many useful features. What makes it unique is its automation. IT can show you SEO ratings (how well your pages are doing) based on your content and that of the competition, all while making sure your website speed stays fast. Their extension manager plugin gives your more functionality including the ability to guide you through the process of creating content with a focus on keywords and synonyms, automatically adding schema structured data to your articles, and much more.

Key Features of The SEO Framework
- Keyword targeting includes synonyms, which are aligned with how SERPs analyze content.
- Colored scale shows you how close the content is to being optimized.
- Extensions for the plugin add functionality, including local SEO and spam comment caching.
- Built-in support for custom Social Sharing of content
The SEO Framework is for you if…
- Youâ€™re just getting started with writing SEO-optimized content.
- Youâ€™re sick of trying to fit in awkward keywords and want to write more naturally.
- You want an easy way to identify SEO errors automatically and make optimizations.
The SEO Framework Pricing: Free | Learn More About The SEO Framework

14. XML Sitemaps

A lot of SEO plugins will create XML sitemaps for you, but if that’s the only feature you need, then there’s no need to have all of the other features you won’t use. This is a super-simple plugin that will generate sitemaps and, if you want, let the SERPs know whenever your website has been changed in some way.

Key Features of XML Sitemaps
- Generates complete sitemaps.
- Can also create HTML sitemaps.
- Decide if you want the plugin to notify search engines every time there’s an update to your site.
XML Sitemaps is for you if…
- You have the rest of the SEO covered and only need to create sitemaps.
- You want some control over when SERPs are made aware of site updates.
XML Sitemaps Pricing: Free | Learn More About XML Sitemaps

15. Yoast SEO

To many, Yoast is the absolute best SEO plugin for WordPress, powering many of the big sites you visit all the time. Once you set up Yoast on your site, it includes pretty much everything you need to optimize your site for SEO including content optimization to redirect management, SERP previews, XML sitemap creation, and more. Itâ€™s best known for its on-page insights feature that tells you how to include your target keyword and what you may be doing wrong in different areas, from the body copy to the metadata.

Key Features of Yoast SEO
- Readability score to make your content more pleasing to readers.
- View what the Google result is going to look like and adjust as needed.
- Duplicate content detector.
Yoast SEO is for you if…
- You have a team of writers and want to hold them all to the same quality level.
- Youâ€™re not sure where youâ€™re going wrong when writing content.
- Want powerful SEO optimization site-wide and easy-to-access SEO page optimization when creating content per page/post
Yoast SEO Pricing: Free; Premium is $99 per year | Learn More About Yoast SEO

Final Thoughts on the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

While a plugin may not be necessary to optimize your pages if you have a good understanding of SEO and stay up to date with industry changes, using a quality SEO plugin can provide valuable guidance and help streamline the monitoring process, even for experts. Additionally, if your website starts experiencing a drop in rankings, an SEO plugin can track data and provide insight when it’s most needed.

We suggest Rank Math for maximum value due to its extensive range of features for local, mobile, and WooCommerce SEO optimization, its intelligent sitemap and SEO audit features, as well as its seamless integration with Divi. In our view, its TruSEO on-page SEO evaluation is unparalleled. If you’re looking for a complete SEO solution for your WordPress site, you can’t go wrong with All in One SEO.

Now that you’ve decided on the best SEO plugin for WordPress, letâ€™s lighten the mood a bit. Here are seven fun (and weird) WordPress plugins.

Featured Image via Sammby / shutterstock.com

The post 15 Best WordPress SEO Plugins in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
09.02.2023
Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress: An Easy Setup Guide
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of any website. It works side by side with writing good original content, and keyword research, and is crucial to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). While WordPress does have some search engine friendly aspects to it, you’ll need a little help to truly score a higher ranking. This is where the Yoast SEO Plugin comes in.

In this post, we’ll give you an overview of what it is, walk you through its first-time configuration of it, and show you how to use it by giving you a step-by-step overview. Let’s get started.

What is Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress is an all-in-one SEO solution for your website. It provides in-depth SEO analysis, snippet previews, robust readability tools, and webmaster tools to make configuring SEO a less daunting task. With so many tools in its arsenal, Yoast is considered one of the top WordPress SEO plugins.

There are two options for the plugin – a free version that is available on WordPress.org and a premium version, which has advanced features such as multiple keyword phrases, social previews, and link suggestions during writing. Yoast also has other SEO plugins to optimize your SEO strategy even more.

How to Use Yoast SEO Plugin in WordPress (Step by Step)

In this section, we’ll give you all of the information you need to configure Yoast SEO. We’ll cover installation, the first-time configuration wizard, how to set up on-page SEO, and give you an in-depth look at the SEO dashboard.

Install and Activate the Yoast SEO Plugin

Start by logging in to your WordPress dashboard. Next, navigate to Plugins > Add New.

Type Yoast into the search bar. When the page refreshes, select the plugin then click the Install Now button.

Finally, click the Activate button to activate the plugin.

When the page refreshes, you’ll be directed to the welcome screen, where you can start the first-time configuration.

Complete First-time Configuration

The first-time configuration of the Yoast SEO plugin optimizes your data to allow search engines to find your site easier, enter important site information, add social media profile pages, and configure your personal preferences.

Click the Start first-time configuration button to get started.

SEO Data Optimization

Yoast SEO helps give search engines such as Google a better understanding of your site. First, you’ll want to start SEO data optimization. Yoast will store all metadata for all pages and posts in a database table called the indexibles. It streamlines the indexing process into one database request, reduces page speed loading times, and helps search engines find your site.

Site Representation

The next set of settings will help search engines identify your website by site type, site name, your organization’s name, and logo.

Social Profiles

Yoast displays Facebook and Twitter by default, but you can add as many additional profiles as needed here.

Yoast SEO Personal Preferences

Next, select whether you want Yoast to track your data. Yoast tracks plugins, themes, information on your website’s server, and some user data.

At this point, you should have most of what you need already in place. We’ll get to the dashboard options in more detail later. But for now, let’s take a look at how Yoast SEO works for on-page SEO.

How to Use the Yoast SEO Meta Box (for on-page SEO)

The Yoast SEO meta box is an on-page SEO tool that allows you to optimize your SEO content for each post/page on your site in real-time. Using the meta box increases the chance of better rankings in SERPs.

You can find the meta box in at the bottom of the page editor.

If you are using a block editor, click the Yoast icon at the top right to access the Yoast SEO meta box.

SEO

The SEO tab gives you an analysis of your post’s content in real-time. It uses the green light system which rates your post content as good, okay, or needs improvement. Once a keyword is inserted, Yoast gets to work analyzing the content and suggests improvements.

Focus Keyphrase

A keyphrase (or keyword) is the main word or phrase you want your content to rank for in search results. You’ll want to do keyword research beforehand to find the right focus keyphrase.

You can also click the Get related keyphrases button in the meta box to add more related keywords you wish to rack for as well.

Google Preview

Google Preview gives you a glimpse of how your post will appear in search results in both desktop and mobile formats.

SEO Title & Slug (URL)

The SEO Page Title and the URL slug can be optimized in this section for best results. Make sure both are not too long and include your keyphrase for the best results.

Meta Description

The meta description is one of the most important parts of optimizing on-page SEO. It can give your potential visitors a reason to click. Therefore, it’s important to write a perfect meta description that is concise, includes your keyword(s), and describes the content accurately.

Yoast allows you to insert variables into the meta description such as site title, post title, primary category, and separator.

SEO Analysis

Under SEO analysis, Yoast provides an on-page SEO score and a checklist that you can use to optimize specific tasks to achieve a green light. It identifies problems, improvements, and good results.

To achieve a green light, the best approach is to write good content from the start. For some great tips, check out how to write quality SEO content.

For more ways to optimize your post for SEO, check these advanced SEO techniques.

Cornerstone Content

If the post is considered cornerstone content, you mark it as such here. If you’re not sure what this means, check out How to Optimize Cornerstone Content for SEO.

Advanced Features

Under Advanced, you have additional SEO options for your post. You can choose whether or not to allow search engines to show the post in search results, set follow links, select robot options, assign a breadcrumb title, and insert a canonical URL.

Insights

Here you can view the Flesch reading ease score of the post. This gives you insight as to how difficult it is to read your post, contains the word count, and estimated reading time. Premium options give you a breakdown of the most used words in your content, so you can cross-check your most used words with prominent words in search results focused on the same subject.

Readability

Yoast uses a proprietary algorithm to make readability results quite accurate. In most cases, you should try to get a readability score of 8, since the majority of people are comfortable reading at that level, according to the Flesch reading ease scale.

Like with SEO analysis, the scores are based on factors that are highlighted as problems (red), improvements (orange), and good results (green). In the example below, a section length issue is detected. Plus you can easily locate problem areas by clicking the “eye” icon next to each item in the list.

To learn more readability tips, check out How to Get the Perfect Yoast SEO Readability Score.

Schema

Under Schema, you can use Schema markup to optimize your site’s SEO so that it is easier to index by search engines. In Yoast SEO, you can change schema settings in the dashboard or on individual posts and pages here.

Social

The Social tab allows you to control how your post’s preview is displayed on social media platforms. You can assign a custom image, title, and description for each. Because social media platforms have a different display for posts on their platforms, it’s worth considering an upgrade to premium.

Explore the Yoast SEO Plugin Dashboard

The dashboard allows you to configure settings by assigning them to four major groups – general settings, content types, categories and tags, and advanced settings.

In the general settings, you can view potential problems and notifications such as release notes, and upcoming features.

Yoast SEO General Settings Tab

Out of the box, the most important features are enabled. However, others such as inclusivity â€“ which detects content that may be offensive to certain groups â€“ are available.
- SEO analysis: Measures on-page SEO
- Readability Analysis: Gain insight on your siteâ€™s readability.
- Inclusive language analysis: Detects derogatory content with options to correct it.
- Insights: Reveals information about reading ease score, estimated reading time, and word count.
- Cornerstone content: Enables the ability to assign a particular post as cornerstone content.
- Text link Counter: Detects the number of internal links in posts.
- Link suggestions: A premium feature that suggests internal links to posts or pages on your site.
- Open Graph data: Allows social media to display a preview with images and text.
- Twitter card data: Allows Twitter to display a preview when your site’s link is shared.
- Slack sharing: Shares an author byline and reading time estimate in Slack channels.
- Admin bar menu: Grants access to Yoast tools on the front end of your WordPress site.
- REST API endpoint: Gives headless WordPress sites the ability to add metadata to individual URLs.
- XML sitemaps: optimize what to include in your XML sitemap and submit it to Google.
- IndexNow: A premium feature that enables automatic pings on Bing and Yandex.
Setup Social Settings

One major change to Yoast involves the social settings. Formerly located in its own tab in the WordPress toolbar, it’s now located under the site representation > other profiles section in general settings.

For most users, there won’t be a need to modify settings here. The information you added in the first-time configuration was automatically added to this section once the configuration was completed. That being said, you aren’t limited to just Facebook and Twitter. Unlike other plugins, Yoast allows you to add other social platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, or LinkedIn.

Content Types

This tab controls the search appearance options for posts and pages. You can enable all post types, enable only some, and configure the settings for each. Basic settings include options to streamline SEO titles and meta descriptions. If entered in the content types tab, your posts and pages will use the same SEO title structure and meta description.

The options include:
- Title & Meta Description
- Social image
- Social title
- Social description
Categories and Tags

In this section, the settings are identical to the content types section, except they apply to taxonomies.

Yoast SEO Advanced Settings

Under this tab, you can configure crawl optimization settings (with a premium license), breadcrumbs, other pages such as author archives, date archives, format archives and special pages. There are additional settings for media pages and RSS feeds.

Breadcrumbs

The breadcrumbs settings in Yoast SEO allow you to customize the appearance of breadcrumbs on your site. There are plenty of options that allow you to customize the display of your breadcrumb navigation, choose which taxonomies to show for content types, and more.

Archives

Under the Archives tab, you can disable the author, date, or special page archives in the search results. Plus, you have additional settings to allow you to either show or hide the authors without posting the results. Like other search appearance tabs, you can create a custom SEO title and meta description as well. Those with a premium version of the Yoast SEO plugin can configure how these types of pages will display on social media platforms.

Media

By default, Yoast disables media page URLs because they serve no purpose in SEO. If you wish to enable media URLs, you can do so here. Once enabled, you’ll be able to configure search appearance options, schema, and SEO controls and assessments, which determines whether Yoast SEO tools and controls are visible in the attachment editor.

RSS

The Yoast SEO plugin has an automatic tool that allows you to add content to your RSS feed. You can assign content to appear before each post in the feed, as well as add content after each post. Additionally, you can input variables that perform various options such as adding a link to the post, where the title is the anchor text and more.

Integrations

Under Yoast SEO > Integrations you’ll find a list of integrations including SEMrush, Wincher, WooCommerce, Jetpack, and more. Some integrations are only available with Premium.

Yoast SEO Tools

There are a few handy tools available with Yoast that allow you to speed up your site, save time editing, and configure important SEO files on your server.
1. Import and export: Import settings from another SEO plugin, or export your settings for use in other sites.
2. File editor: Create a robot.txt file or edit your .htaccess file.
3. Bulk editor: Bulk edit SEO titles and meta descriptions.
4. Optimize SEO data:Give your site a speed boost by running the data optimization tool.
Yoast SEO Plugin FAQs

Since Yoast SEO is a broad topic, so you’re bound to have questions. Hopefully, these will help.

Does Yoast SEO Have Tutorials I Can Follow?

Yes! The Yoast SEO academy is free for you to learn the basics of SEO, as well as the Yoast SEO plugin. If you require more advanced training, they offer a paid version of the courses with your purchase of the premium plugin.

How Do I Add My Website to the Google Search Console?

Trying to figure out how to do things in Google can be a bit daunting. Thankfully, we have everything you need to know in our ultimate guide to Google Search Console.

Is Configuring SEO Different If I Have a WooCommerce Site?

While the concept of SEO is relatively the same, there are some added components to consider. You’ll still need to configure on-page SEO for your posts and pages, but there are the added elements of products, product categories, and your shop. Yoast has a WooCommerce SEO plugin you can use. But there are other alternatives you can consider as well. Check out WooCommerce SEO: A Complete Guide to Ranking #1 on our blog to learn some tips and best practices to help you dominate the eCommerce market.

How Important is Google Preview Where SEO is Concerned?

Taking the time to write a good SEO title, use a captivating feature image, and write an attention-grabbing meta description are crucial for SEO. This is true for desktop users, but for mobile users as well. Since roughly 60% of the internet’s users utilize a mobile device for internet surfing, it is more important than ever. Taking the time to learn the difference between desktop and mobile SEO is a critical aspect of your site’s success. Take a look at our ultimate guide to mobile SEO to learn more.

Yoast SEO is WordPress’ Best Friend

SEO is a highly advanced topic that requires quite a bit of understanding to master. You’ve taken the first step in that journey by learning how to use Yoast SEO. Thankfully, we offer countless resources to aid you along the way. By brushing up on your SEO techniques , gaining a better understanding of linking strategies, and recognizing the importance of mobile SEO in today’s digital landscape, you’ll have the tools necessary to up those rankings. With those additional resources, you’ll be ready to reach the top of the proverbial SEO mountain in no time.

Do you use Yoast SEO on your website? Let us know by dropping a comment below.

The post Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress: An Easy Setup Guide appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
02.02.2023
How to Add Internal Links in WordPress the Easy Way (Using Link Whisper)

When it comes to SEO, internal links are critically important to the success of your website. That being said, adding internal links to WordPress can be a daunting task, especially if you have tons of content that needs to be optimized. Thankfully, there is an easy way to set internal links in WordPress automatically with the Link Whisper plugin. In this post, we’ll demonstrate how to use Link Whisper as an essential part of your SEO link strategy. Let’s get started.

What are Internal Links?

Internal links are links that guide a user to another post or page on your website. They can be inserted into posts, pages, images, menu items, or projects in WordPress. Without them, your missing opportunities to send your site’s visitors to other areas of your website you wish them to visit.

Why are Internal Links Important to SEO?

Using internal links in WordPress is a huge piece of the SEO puzzle. Internal links help SEO by alerting your site’s visitors to other areas of your site that may be of interest to them. You can use them to highlight products, services, or a post or page that is relevant. You see, when search engines crawl your site, they aren’t only looking for keywords. They also look for both internal and external links. Internal links help Google to understand which posts and pages are most important on your website. Plus, pages with internal links are much more likely to be indexed, increasing the chances of your content ranking higher in SERPs. In short, Google likes them.

Using internal links is typically a good way to increase traffic to your site, but there are caveats if not done properly. You should ensure that you don’t put too many links in one page. Doing so can frustrate and confuse your site’s visitors. Also, make sure your links are relavant. If not, you could actually hurt your SEO. Knowing the importance of internal linking, you’re probably thinking to yourself, this could take forever with all the content I have on my site. No worries. We’re going to show you how to add internal links to your site automatically, using the Link Whisper plugin.

What is Link Whisper?

Link Whisper is a WordPress plugin that helps you add internal links to your content. Link Whisper will offer suggestions on where to add links, as well as what anchor text to use. Additionally, it helps to identify orphaned pages in your site, which can limit your chances of ranking high in SERPs. Link Whisper can also suggest links as your write new content, which is a huge time saver. Also, you can run a site scan to help identify which pages actually need them.

Link Whisper is offered in two variations. First, you can download the free version in the WordPress repository. It comes with some very basic features that provide you with automatic links suggestions as you write, a well as internal link reporting. In the reports, you’ll get insight on pages with orphaned content, as well as outbound internal and external links.

With the premium version of the plugin, you’ll get a few added bonuses. In addition to the features on the free version, you’ll get more in-depth reporting on links, as well as a robust auto-linking feature that enables you to add links in one click. You just input the keyword of your choice, specific the URL, and Link Whisper does the rest for you.

For this post, we’re going to show you how to add internal links using both the free and premium versions of the plugin.

How to Add Internal Links in WordPress Using Link Whisper Free

In order to use Link Whisper correctly, there are a few steps to take. Let’s walk through them one by one so you can get comfortable using it on your website.

1. Install the Plugin

Log in to your WordPress website and navigate to Plugins > Add New. Enter for Link Whisper in the search bar. When the plugin appears, click Install Now to install the plugin.

2. Configure Link Whisper Settings

Next, navigate to Link Whisper > Settings in the WordPress dashboard. There are a number of settings here, some of which you may want to adjust depending on your setup. First, you can choose whether to ignore numbers. By default, this setting is enabled. Next select your language. Then, you can choose from a list of common words you can ignore. Under Post Types to Create Links For, choose any that you wish to omit from Link Whisper. This will vary depending on what taxonomies you have on your site. The next setting lets you choose the term types to create links for.

The next setting is a pretty important one. Link Whisper allows you to choose how many sentences to skip when it adds links. By default, there is selected. The reason this is important is to not add too many internal links to any one post or page. As previously mentioned, having too many links can confuse your site’s visitors and Google. Too many links can’t keep your site from ranking well. The last option, Delete all Link Whisper data, should only be enabled if you plan to start over on your links, or when planning to delete the plugin.

When finished with your settings, click the SAVE button.

3.Internal Link Reporting

Next, navigate to Link Whisper > Report. When the plugin was installed, it automatically ran a report of all posts and pages on your site. On the reporting page, you can see a list of any inbound internal, outbound internal, and outbound external links on your site.

4.Review Link Suggestions

In the free version of Link Whisper, you can navigate to any post or page on your site and scroll down to the Link Whisper settings underneath your content. You will find suggestions for internal links to other posts or pages depending on keywords. Link Whisper will highlight the text in your content where it thinks an internal link should be.

5.Adding an Internal Link

With the free version of Link Whisper, you take the link suggestions given in the previous step and add the suggested links to your page or post. Although it won’t add it for you, you can easily copy the link in the suggested links area then place the link in the corresponding suggested text on your page.

Adding Internal Links with Link Whisper Premium

The premium version of the plugin makes it simple to add internal links in WordPress, both inbound and outbound. Repeat the steps to run the initial link scan after plugin installation, then navigate to the links report in Link Whisper > Reports.

Next, choose whether you’d like to add inbound internal links or outbound internal links. Then, click Add on the post or page you’d like to add links to. For this example, we will add outbound internal links to a post.

Link Whisper will open the post using the page editor. Scroll down to the Link Whisper settings. By default, it will suggest target keywords for your post, and provide link suggestions for it. There are a number of other settings you can configure as well. You can scan your page content for keywords, or add custom ones. Additionally, you can choose to show link suggestions for the same category, or select certain post types. Link Whisper will provide its suggestions for links, and enable you to add them with the click of a button.

To add all links, simply click Check All. Alternatively, you can select one or more by selecting the checkbox next to the suggested link. Finally, to add the link, click the Insert Links Into Post button.

Adding Internal Links to WordPress Is Easy With Link Whisper

Internal links are an important component to your site’s success in SERPs. Thankfully, using Link Whisper makes that a much less tedious task. The free version of the plugin has some nice features that will allow you to identify keywords in your posts and pages, then offer link suggestions. The premium version takes those suggestions to a different level with its auto-linking capability. Either way, Link Whisper provides an easy way to add internal links to your website.

For more, you may like these tips for SEO link building.

Do you have a tool or method you use to add internal links to your site? Let us know in the comments below.

The post How to Add Internal Links in WordPress the Easy Way (Using Link Whisper) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

07.01.2023
How to Check If Your WordPress Blog Posts Are Ranking for the Right Keywords
Do you want to check if your WordPress posts are ranking for the right keywords?

Most beginners manually check rankings for their articles by typing keywords in Google. This does not give you an accurate idea of where your articles stand for the target keyword.

In this article, we will show you how to easily check if your WordPress blog posts are ranking for the right keywords.

Why Check Keyword Rankings for Your WordPress Posts?

If you follow our complete WordPress SEO guide, then you will learn how to optimize each article on your website for specific keywords. This helps you get more traffic to your website.

Most beginners simply search on Google to see if their posts are appearing for those keywords. Even then, they usually only check the first or second page at best.

The issue is that sometimes your article might be ranking way below the first two pages or worst it may not even be ranking for the keyword that you want.

If you rely on manually checking your keyword rankings, then you are missing out on useful information that you can use to improve your SEO rankings and increase traffic.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to properly check keyword rankings for your WordPress blog posts. We’ll cover three different keyword reference tools, and then show how to use keyword ranking information to increase traffic to your site.
Method 1: Checking Keyword Rankings With Semrush

Semrush is one of the best SEO and keyword research tools on the market. It’s a comprehensive SEO suite with all the useful tools you’ll need.

It comes with a powerful organic research tool that can show keyword rankings for any domain name. You don’t need to type in URLs for individual articles. It will automatically fetch results for all URLs on that domain name.

Simply enter the domain name you want to look up and Semrush will get a ton of information. After that, click on the organic research tab to view the full list of all keywords your website is ranking for.

You can sort the results by position, URL, traffic, and more. You can also export the results to a CSV file and research offline using your favorite spreadsheet program.

You can also track specific keywords with Semrush, and they will track those keywords on your dashboard, so you can instantly see their performance.

Semrush can also do these things for any domain name. That means you can enter your competitor’s domain name and see which keywords they are ranking for.

You will also be able to see their paid search traffic, paid keywords, and other useful information that you can use to outrank them.

Method 2: Checking Keyword Rankings With Google Search Console

Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a set of tools offered by Google to help webmasters improve their website for search. See our guide on how to add your website to Google Search Console.

At the top of the Performance tab, you will see a graph of your websiteâ€™s performance in search results.

As you scroll down, you will see the keywords data. Next to each keyword, you will see how many clicks and impressions it gets, and its position on the search results page.

You can sort this data by clicking on any column.

If you sort the list by position, then you will be able to see your top ranking keywords. As you scroll down the list, you will see keywords where your site appears lower on search engine results pages.

You can also export this data and open it with your favorite spreadsheet software.

Method 3: Checking Keyword Rankings With Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another popular SEO tool among professional marketers. It comes with an easy to use interface and tries to make information understandable even for new users.

Simply enter your website domain name in the search box, and it will create a neatly organized report with beautiful graphs and charts.

You will find all your keyword rankings under the organic keywords report.

Next to each keyword, you’ll be able to see its search volume, keyword ranking position, keyword density, and more.

Using Keyword Rankings to Get More Traffic in WordPress

Now that you have learned how to check keyword rankings for your WordPress site, let’s talk about improving your rankings.

How to Analyze Which Keywords Need Improvement

When you’re deciding which keywords to improve, it’s important to note that not all keywords are created equal.

For example, ranking #5 on a high traffic keyword is way better than ranking #1 for a low traffic keyword.

Also, appearing in the #1 position won’t always bring you the most traffic. You might notice that while some of your keywords rank pretty well, they don’t get a significant number of clicks or impressions.

During your research, you might also find some surprise keywords that you didn’t know you were ranking for.

If these keywords have a significant number of impressions and search volumes, then you should see if you can make strategic changes to your content to improve the rankings for those keywords as well.

How to Improve Rankings for Specific Keywords

After you decide which keywords you need to work on, you can go ahead and see which of your articles are ranking on those keywords and what you can do to optimize them better.

Here are a few tips.

You can find helpful suggestions on how to improve these important keywords by using the All in One SEO plugin. When editing a post, simply scroll down to the AIOSEO settings at the bottom and you will find fields for your ‘Focus Keyphrase’ and ‘Additional Keyphrases’.

Simply enter the most important keyword for the post in the ‘Focus Keyphrase’ field then click the ‘Add Focus Keyphrase’ button. You can add other keywords as additional keyphrases.

All in One SEO will now analyze your content for that particular keyphrase and will show you a score along with practical tips to improve your content for that keyphrase.

To learn more, see our beginner’s guide on how to use a focus keyphrase in WordPress.

Next, you should look for articles that are old, don’t have enough content, or contain outdated information. Updating these articles with newer information and just improving the content can give them an SEO boost.

Finally, see if you can improve your internal linking, where you link to an article from other pages of your site. Linking to an article from other related posts can give it an SEO bump. Use your target keyword as the anchor text when linking to it from other articles on your website.

For more details on this topic, please see our article on how to optimize your WordPress blog posts for SEO.

Learning What Your Visitors Do on Your Website

Semrush and Google Search Console can help you find your keyword positions, but they can’t show you how many visitors are coming to your articles, where they are from, and what they do when they are on your website.

This information is crucial when planning your content strategy to rank for certain keywords.

This is where Google Analytics comes in. It shows you the number of pageviews for your articles, your top content, your visitor information, and more.

Google Analytics can be difficult to set up for beginners, that’s why we recommend using MonsterInsights. It’s a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress that will help you easily install Google Analytics and see all reports inside your WordPress dashboard.

To learn more, see our guide on how to track website visitors to your WordPress site.

We hope this article helped you check if your WordPress posts are ranking for the right keywords. You may also want to see our list of actionable tips to drive traffic to a new WordPress site, and learn how to keep your website secure.

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 Check If Your WordPress Blog Posts Are Ranking for the Right Keywords first appeared on WPBeginner.
06.01.2023
What is Keyword Research? (& How to Do It Right)

Keyword research is an essential part of content creation for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For many businesses, it’s considered the top priority. In fact, Google has recorded over 2 trillion searches so far in 2022. With such an eye-popping statistic, you can see why conducting keyword research is required. Reaching more consumers is important, but you need to reach the right ones in order to benefit from them. In this post, we’ll discuss what keyword research is, why it’s important to your website or business, and all the tips you need to do it right.

Let’s jump in!

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase that defines what your content is about. When it comes to SEO, a keyword is a term that an internet user inputs to search for something they are interested in. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that when searching for things on Google or other search engines, you type in search words to get results.

For example, if you are interested in becoming a casual runner, you might search for running tips. Perhaps you’re looking for the best shoes for running. It is likely that you will search for the term best running shoes. Those search terms are keywords, and anyone using a search engine utilizes them.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research is the process of determining what keywords you should use in your written content that will aid in getting visitors to your site. Keyword research is a technique that businesses and marketers use to determine what people are searching for. It’s how they gauge which words are most popular.

The results of good keyword research are incorporated into new content (or existing content) to help boost their SEO rankings in the search engine ranking pages (SERPs). Keyword research is beneficial for SEO as well as general marketing purposes. Additionally, keyword research can help marketers discover words that they might not have thought of, which can be beneficial when creating new page content or products.

Why Keyword Research is Important for SEO

Keyword research has many benefits. Among them is gaining valuable insight into your audience, the possibility of increased organic traffic, and improved search engine results rankings.

Reveals Valuable Insight into Your Audience

Keyword research will help you understand what your target audience wants by showing you what they are searching for. You’ll learn what questions they are asking search engines to help solve problems they are facing. If your business sells running shoes, keyword research can connect you with potential customers who are looking to purchase them. One good way to measure this is to use a keyword research tool. They are great tools to help you determine what people are searching for based on a specific search term. There are many tools out there that can help. We’ll touch on those a bit later.

Increases Your Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is traffic that is earned by the quality of your SEO content. And the more organic traffic you get, the higher your search engine ranking grows. Also, organic traffic is free, so from a marketing standpoint, investing in a good keyword strategy and other SEO techniques is worth the time and energy. This allows you to get to the top of the search rankings without having to resort to PPC advertising. Plus, if your content is reaching the top organically, you will have a much better click-through rate than even paid ads.

Improves Ranking in SERPs

Keyword research can help put you in a better position in search results. With the right keywords, more people will be able to find you based on what they are searching for. When you move higher in search engine rankings, you increase the likelihood of not only being seen, but getting more clicks to your website.

Acquires more Customers

If your website has good SEO copywriting with keywords that target the right consumers, you are better suited to meet their needs. Researching keywords based on search intent rather than volume is a great strategy in acquiring more business.

Building a SEO Keyword Strategy

When it comes to keword research, it helps to have a good strategy in place beforehand. Doing so increases the chances you’ll choose the right keywords, earn better results in search engines, increase traffic to your site, and gain new customers. A good keyword strategy will be integral to your overall SEO strategy which will involve creating SEO Content and good SEO techniques. Here are a few important elements to building a keyword strategy for your site.

Know Your Business (what you are offering)

Having a deep understanding of your website or business and what you offer (products, services, content, etc.) is a great first step for keyword research. This helps identify what kind of topics and content you want to include on your site. If you are a hosting company, your website will likely include content (landing pages, blog posts, etc.) about your hosting services (like “WordPress Hosting” or “Page Speed Optimization”). gives you an idea of where to start your keyword research.

Know your Audience (what they are searching for)

In addition to understanding what you have to offer, you will also need to consider what your audience (or potential customer) is searching for. Before researching keywords that a general audience is looking for, it’s probably better to first understand what your specific target customer is looking for on your site. You may already have a good idea of what this based on customer personas and or customer journey maps. Having this insight into your audience will help you find the right keywords that will not only drive more traffic to your site but also boost conversions.

Know Your Competition

Knowing what your competition is doing can help you determine what to do, and not to do when it comes to keyword research. If you don’t know who your main competitors, take the time to find out. Researching your direct competition is key to beating them in the search ranks. Look at the kind of content they are producing, the topics they are covering, and which ones are performing the best. This will help you develop a keyword strategy that, in many ways, reverse engineers the strategy of your competition. Plus, you will be able to take note of their highest-ranking keywords and determine if they’re missing any high-volume keywords that would work for your business.

Know Your Search Engines

Understanding how search engines index top-ranking content according to keyword usage will help you recreate the process for your own keyword strategy. It is also a good idea to familiarize yourself with Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs) and how they index and display featured snippets based on the keywords used and the structure (or schema markup) of your content.

Know Your Data

Analyzing your website’s data using Google Analytics and the Google Search Console will help you evaluate your current content and give you ideas for new topics or keywords to pursue. Use the analytics tools at your disposal to learn everything you need to know about the current state of your content and the content of your competitors.

Finding the Right SEO Keyword Research Tools

There are tons of free SEO tools available to assist you in SEO and keyword research. Tools such as SEMrush, Ahfers, Moz, and Google Ads: Keyword Planner are all excellent tools to consider.

SemRush

For a complete list, check out these best keyword research tools for SEO.

How to do Keyword Research (Essential Steps)

In order to be successful when conducing keyword research, there are a few tips you can follow. Let’s discuss them individually so that you can gain a better understanding of how to get better SEO on your website.

Make a List of Topics that Make Sense for you and your Audience

Before doing in-depth research on keywords, you need a good idea of what topics and to target. The best ones will make sense both for your business and also for your potential customers. This is why having a good understanding of both your business and your target audience will help.

Brainstorm some keywords based on your most relevant content. Start by identifying 5-10 topics to begin your research. These are likely to be repeated throughout your site and hold the most weight in your content (like main categories for a blog). Also, research trending topics to see what people are searching for that would make sense for you to create content for.

Consider Search Intent and Related Search Terms for Topic Ideas

Google is the master of matching searches to user intent. Because of this, you can use Google’s search bar to conduct keyword research for your own brand. Using this method can provide you with quite a few topic ideas for your site, and it can help you discover some fantastic secondary keywords as well. Google offers 3 features that can produce high volume keywords including autocomplete, people also ask, and related searches.

Google Autocomplete

Autocomplete occurs when you start to type a keyword into the Google search bar. Google will do its best to predict what you’re going to type in next using a collection of popular searches by other users. As you type, predictions are adjusted based on the characters entered. Let’s use our running shoes example. When you start to type running shoes, Google will autcomplete a list of most searched terms related to it.

You can get a wealth of information just by using this one Google feature.

People Also Ask

After typing a search term into the search bar, you’ll see a people also ask section under the first few results. Clicking through those results will results in even more questions or terms. These are the most commonly asked questions related to that exact search term. Talk about great search volume! Let’s take another look at our search term running shoes. Upon executing the query, Google provides us with this group of terms.

As we click through the results, Google presents us with even more questions chock full of high volume keyword options.

Using this method not only provides keyword options, but perhaps blog post ideas as well.

Related Searches

In addition to user intent, consider checking out related search terms to get some ideas for keywords. As an example, try searching for running shoes on Google. Underneath the top search results, Google provides you the ‘people also ask’ section with some common search terms posed by other users. This is an often overlooked step in a good keyword research strategy. These are known as seed keywords. They are basically a starting point for developing longer keywords with modifiers. A seed keyword can consist of one or two words, and they are keyword gold.

Google will try and anticipate your next question by providing you with some common searches related to the topic you searched for. There is much to be gained by this gift from Google. Using this example, you could concentrate on researching trending running shoes, or best running shoe brand, along with best rated running trainers.

Additionally, Google will provide you with related searches. These are potential searches based on the original running shoe keyword search. In some cases, you’ll even be given some brands that you can incorporate into your keyword research. A lot of times, good marketers will put keywords into their titles and meta descriptions. Dig through the top Google search results and pay attention to those areas of search results as well.

Once you have a good list of topics and potential keywords, you can start researching how these keywords are currently performing in the search engines so you can cut down your list.

Important Factors to Look for When Researching Keywords

There are a few important factors to consider when researching keywords. Considering keyword difficulty, search volume, and search intent go a long way when developing keywords for your site.

Keyword Difficulty

The first is Keyword Difficulty. This refers to how hard it will be to rank for a particular keyword. The higher the score, the more difficult it will befor your term to rank in search results. Once you determine how high the ranking is, you can decide whether or not to tweak your content to use that particular keyword.

Ahref has a free tool called Keyword Generator that will help you during your research. Simply type in a keyword, and the free version will provide you with the first 100 keywords related to your term. You’ll also be able to see questions posed by searches related to your keyword, which is a great tool to determine keywords to use. The first 10 results will give you the keyword difficulty rating.

Search Volume

This refers to the number of times a particular keyword is searched for in any given period of time. A good place to start is by looking for the average number of searches per month. You can learn quite a bit from search volume, but you should take the results with a grain of salt. Even though searches can be high for a keyword, that doesn’t mean that it’ll result in increased traffic to your site. A high search volume generally means more competition.

For example, let’s say that the keyword running shoes gets 20,000 searches per month. While this is a high number, it doesn’t measure the intent of those searching. Another thing to remember is that doesn’t mean that everyone who searched for it actually clicked on it. A lot of times people will get the result they want right in Google, so they move on.

That being said, your content does need to be relevant to what people are searching for. So, it’s a good idea to keep search volume in mind when doing keyword research.

Search Intent

Moving forward, Google is placing a lot more emphasis on search intent. If you don’t consider a user’s search intent in your keywords, you’re going to have a lot harder time ranking in search engines. Many of the SEO plugins and tools will provide the search intent of a particular keyword. Familiarize yourself with the types of search intent and use that to help you when choosing keywords for your site. The types of search intent are as follows:

Navigational: Are they Googling using a navigational intent? For example, someone searching for the terms login or sign up rather than going directly to a URL.

Informational: This means they are searching for information about a topic or answer they seek.

Investigation: A user is looking for a type of product, or a particular one. They are likely looking for reviews or comparisons in order to determine which product is right for them.

Transactional: This user knows what they want, and they are ready to pull the trigger on the purchase. At this point, they are likely searching for the best deal.

In practice, you will want to make sure the user’s search intent for a keyword matches the goal for your content. For example, you don’t want to try and rank for a keyword that has a transactional (or commercial) search intent when the goal of your content is informational. Even if your traffic increases temporarily, ultimately it will prove less helpful to users.

Start Grouping Keywords by Topic

Once you have your main topics/keywords, you can start grouping keywords under each of the main keyword topics. Keyword grouping is the process of grouping, or clustering a group of keywords together. Make sure to include different related keywords and keyword variations including short (stem) keywords, long-tail keywords, and questions. Using a keyword research tool should be able to give you a ton of results with relevant data to help group your lists of keywords.

One simple way to start grouping keywords is to use a spreadsheet. List you main keywords (or topics) at the top with related keywords under each one. Then you can color code each keyword according to there keyword difficulty and add an additional column for search volume. This will help you identify the ones you want to start creating content for.

In addition to keyword grouping, consider mapping your keywords. Keyword Mapping is effective because it allows you to create a map of related keywords for your site. This would require using a keyword research tool like SEMRush to make this process easier to track.

Grouping keywords will help you create clusters of topics/content. These clusters will help support and create cornerstone content which is an important part of your SEO keyword strategy.

Be Realistic about the Keywords you Choose

If you have high domain authority, you may be able to choose more competitive keywords with a higher volume and difficulty. If you are just starting out, you will want to look for those keywords that are less competitive but still have a search volume that is worth your time. In general, it is best to start with those you know you have a chance to rank first. Then as you build more content and authority, you can go after those difficult keywords.

Most Keyword research tools will show you different keyword variations with their current volume and difficulty so that you can choose the best one for your keyword strategy.

Usually, the keywords that are most difficult to rank for are the stem (or seed) keywords. Don’t be afraid of going after those long-tail keywords, especially those in the form of a question. Sometimes these will give you the best results considering how important Google factors in user intent (not to mention how many voice searches are being conducted in the form of a question on mobile these days).

Look for short and long-tail keyword variations for your content

Using the same keyword/phrase on a post or page too much will raise a flag with Google. This is considered to be keyword stuffing. To avoid this, it is best to mix up your target keyword with different keyword variations including short and long-tail keywords. That’s why it is important to research keyword variations of your keyword.

Keep in mind, when writing your SEO content, try to use your target keywords only when it makes sense. If it seems forced or confusing to the user, most likely Google will notice. One good way to do this is to take advantage of keyword stemming which allows you to break up a target keyword phrase across an entire sentence and still be recognized as that target keyword.

Take a Long Hard Look at Your Competitors

Now that you know what your keywords are and how to balance long-tail and short-tail keywords, conduct a keyword gap analysis, or competitive keyword analysis, to get a leg up on your competition. Take note of their highest ranking keywords and determine if they’re missing any high volume keywords that would work for your business. On the other hand, you could aggressively combat your competitors by using their highest-ranking keywords in order to lure business away from them.

There are several tools you can use to find out what your competitors are using. Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or simply by utilizing the competitor website’s source code. For example, in Chrome, right-click on the page and choose View Page Source. Once you have access to the source code, look for elements such as the title, meta, and h1 tags.

Keep track of your keyword performance

When you’ve taken steps to research keywords that will help you in your quest for high rankings, it’s essential to keep track of how your keywords are performing. Adjustments may (and probably will) need to be made to get the results you are looking for. Keyword tracking tools can help you to improve your content strategy, which can result in increased traffic to your site. In addition to monitoring your current keywords, keyword tracking can provide you with new keyword ideas to incorporate into your content.

Bonus Tip: Keyword Research by Location

Knowing where your visitors are and what they search for can give you insight into purchasing patterns, search patterns, and allow you to deliver relavent content to them. For example, if your website gets a lot of traffic from New York, you might consider using the term sneakers. Terminology can vary based on region. While customers in northern states may call athletic shoes sneakers, those in the South refer to them as tennis shoes.

When you are developing your content, consider using Google Search Trends to research keywords based on region. This will allow you to develop your content with specific regions in mind. This is especially useful if your business is local. You can use your geographical location to determine what search terms your potential customers are using.

For more, check out our Local SEO Guide.

Keyword Research FAQs

With all of the information being thrown at you, you’re bound to have questions. No worries. We have answers.

What’s the Difference in Long-Tail and Short-Tail Keywords?

Long-tail keywords have four or more words, whereas short-tail keywords usually have up to three. Long-tail keywords are for more targeted searches, which is great for identifying consumers who are ready to make a purchase or have a specific question they need an answer to. Short-tail keywords tend to have a high search volume because they are broad. You can use short-tail keywords as seeds, which is a good strategy to help develop keywords over time.

How Do I Determine a User’s Search Intent?

One of the best ways is to sign up for a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs. If you are just starting out and don’t have the cash to throw towards a keyword research tool, your best strategy is to Google your own keywords. Google does a fantastic job of deciphering a user’s intent when they search. As previously mentioned, Google has three different approaches when you type in a keyword including autocomplete, people also ask, and related searches. Using Google’s own search bar is a great way to gain knowledge about the user’s intent. It is a simple way to get started, and can be useful when developing new content.

How Do I Know if a Keyword is Any Good?

Track them. Good SEO is trial and error, and it requires a lot of maintenance. You can’t simply build a website with great content, then sit back and wait for people to flock to it. You need to start out with keywords you’ve researched, then monitor how they perform. A great tool for this is SEMrush. They offer both free and paid plans that are useful for tracking your keywords. The free version of SEMrush is more than enough to assist you in figuring out what is working and what isn’t.

What is the Best Keyword Research Tool?

That’s a loaded question. There really isn’t an all-in-one solution unless you want to pay for a complete solution. You can use a compilation of tools such as Google Search Trends, Google Search, and SEMrush, or an all-in-one solution like Ahref. You’ll most likely try a few until you find the one that is perfect for you. We’d suggest starting by reading our post on 5 of the Best Free and Premium Keyword Research Tools for SEO. This will be a good starting point to help you make a decision.

Can My Site Rank Without Keyword Research?

Yes, it can…but it’s not likely. Keyword research is a critical component to SEO. Without it, you’re simply rolling the dice and hoping for the best. With the amount of competition on the internet today, the best course of action is to do the work to give you the best shot at high rankings in search results.

I Did Research on X Keyword, and I’m Still Not Ranking. Why Not?

First, make sure that your site is indexed. If your site isn’t indexed, it can’t be crawled, nor can it be ranked. Next, be sure to submit your website to Google’s search console. Then check to make sure you aren’t blocking indexing. If you are on a WordPress site, navigate to Settings > Reading to ensure that the checkbox for Discourage search engines from indexing this site isn’t ticked.

If you’ve gone through the steps above and you still aren’t ranking, find out where you are ranking. Start by searching Google for your business name, primary keywords, secondary keywords, and words and phrases you’ve used in your content. If you aren’t coming up on the first page with those searches, adjust the search results by page on your search engine. Once you find out where you rank, you can take steps to get those rankings higher. Evaluate your keywords to determine if they’re falling in the overall rankings in Google searches by using your favorite keyword research tool. If you have keywords on the decline, it could be time to re-evaluate those failing words you’re using.

One important thing to note is not to change your content too much. Google doesn’t like it when you change things up too much, too often. As we’ve previously mentioned, good SEO takes time so you have to put in the work.

Is It Ok to Reuse a Focus Keyword?

It’s generally not recommended to use focus keywords more than once throughout your site’s pages or posts. You see, a “focus keyword” is a term used to rank your post or page in search results. If you use that same focus keyword on other pages or posts, you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot. The best course of action is to come up with unique focus keywords for each page you’re trying to rank for. Using them multiple times will hurt your search engine rankings, and cause you to actually compete with yourself. This is called keyword cannibalization and it can actually hurt your ranking in the SERPs. Check out our Simple Guide to Understanding and Fixing Keyword Cannibalization for tips and fixes for this common problem in SEO.

How Many Times Should I Use a Keyword in My Content?

Keyword density is an important factor to consider. While there’s no set number of times that you can use a keyword in a page or post, it is possible to overdo it. You can use an SEO plugin like Yoast or RankMath to help you find the right balance. In general, you will only want to use a keyword when it makes sense. Google will know when you are trying to force it.

Conclusion

Keyword Research is an essential part of your overall SEO strategy. Knowing your keywords, then doing the work to determine if they work well with your content goes a long way in getting your website to a good search engine ranking position.

Keep in mind that quality keyword research requires the right tools to help create a list of the right keywords for you. After that, it’s up to you to create the content using those keywords effectively. For Divi users, you might consider using a the Rank Math SEO plugin to help with choosing and adding the right keywords on your product and category pages.

What is your keyword research process? Let us know by sounding off in the comments section below.

The post What is Keyword Research? (& How to Do It Right) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

10.12.2022
Rank Math SEO Plugin for WordPress: An Introduction
Choosing the right SEO plugin for your WordPress site is one of the most important choices you will make. And with so many solutions out there, the best ones can often be overlooked. The Rank Math SEO plugin for WordPress is definitely in the ranking as one of the top SEO plugins for a lot of reasons. In this post, we’ll give a helpful overview of Rank Math SEO and cover the key features, ease of use, pricing, and more, so you can see if it is a right fit for your site.

What is Rank Math SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to ensure that your website appears to as many people as possible via search engines like Google. Rank Math SEO is a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress that makes it simple for anyone to improve the SEO of their content, regardless of their level of expertise. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in India, Rank Math has quickly taken the WordPress plugin world by storm, now boasting over 1 million active users.

Rank Math (self-proclaimed as the “swiss army knife of WordPress SEO”) comes with ostensibly everything you need to make sure your content is optimized to hit the keywords you’re targeting and has a ton of other features that can take your SEO to the next level. It’s easy to use and has a lot of powerful features in the free version (especially for on-page SEO) that make it a plugin worth looking into.

How to Install the Rank Math SEO Plugin

Installing Rank Math from your website’s WordPress account is the simplest method. To begin, choose the Add New option after hovering over the Plugins option in the WordPress menu.

Search for Rank Math in the search bar and select Install.

After a few seconds, Rank Math Plugin will be installed and activated. You can confirm this by checking if it’s listed on your plugin page.

Key Features of Rank Math SEO

Rank Math SEO comes with a free and premium version for those willing to pay $59 per year. Let’s take a closer look at some of the best features of Rank Math SEO.

Easy-to-Use Dashboard

The first feature that stands out for Rank Math is its clean and simple user interface. The dashboard provides you with a ton of great analytics that you can use to improve the content on your site, along with awesome visualization features, the dashboard is a breeze to navigate through and settings are easy to change.

$Rank Math Dashboard$

Visual Interface for On-Page SEO Optimization

The UI is straightforward but effective. The plugin showcases critical details about your SEO content alongside the post itself in real time, This allows you to boost the on-page SEO of your content by using readily available information, all while still in the text editor. It offers a ranking from 0 to 100, with a green number indicating that you have surpassed the 80-point threshold.

$Blog example$

Advanced Keyword Optimization

Along side the awesome in-editor SEO optimization, you can take a deeper look into keyword research from the Rank Math dashboard. You can see how many times your site has been shown in search results, see the total number of keywords your ranking for, see how many clicks your site is getting, and more.

$Keyword research dashboard$

The ability to visualise this information is always welcome, and it let’s you wrap your mind around your website’s trends and how your strategies are performing in practice. Keyword analysis and strategy is paramount to good SEO, so these features are incredibly welcome from Rank Math.

Link Building Recommendations

If you enable the Link Suggestions option, which is a really awesomeÂ feature, Rank Math will offer you link suggestions as you write your posts to help your link building strategy.

You must navigate to Titles & Meta > PostsÂ in the Advanced Mode to enable the Link recommendations meta box. You can find the Link Suggestions option near the bottom. Activate the switch by turning it on.

$Link suggestions toggle$

Link suggestions give you the option to link to other relevant posts that you or your team have previously authored.Â This can be incredibly useful, especially if you’ve written a lot of content in the past, as you can link to relevant content automatically without having to search for specific posts.

Advanced Divi Integration

We are proud to say that the powerful SEO elements of Rank Math are fully integrated with our own Divi WordPress theme’s visual builder! You can check out our in depth guide on to how to optimize your Divi site with Rank Math here.Â

$Rank Math general settings in Divi$

Rank Math’s integration with Divi makes improving the SEO on your website even easier because it’s built right into the Divi visual editor. The controls are easy to use for any skill level and there is plenty of built-in support available if any questions arise. You can review your content’s SEO with ease right as you build your content.

Other Features of Free Version for Rank Math SEO

Some other key features of the accessible version of Rank Math are:
- XML sitemap â€“ Using a separate plugin for your Sitemap is no longer necessary. The XML Sitemap component of Rank Math is ideal for letting search engines know which page you want them to index.
- Analytic integration â€“ You can connect to Google search console and other SEO tools and see all the stats directly on your WordPress dashboard.
- Knowledge graph and local SEO â€“ You can enhance your site to appear more prominently in local businesses’ search results.
- Image SEO â€“ Automatically add alt text and titles to images to rank higher.
- Internal link suggestions â€“ Automatically add SEO links to relevant internal pages.
- AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) – Automatically adds required meta tags to AMP pages.
- Content AIÂ – First-of-its-kind AI automatically suggests related keywords, links, heading tags to help you write SEO content.
- Social media descriptions â€“ Control how your content is presented on social media.
- Redirects â€“ Manage and establish 301 and 302 redirects.
- 404 monitor â€“ This function will keep track of the URLs where users and search engines encounter 404 errors.
- Focus keyword analysis â€“ Content optimization for focus keywords.
- Google Analytics â€“ You can see traffic information from your WordPress dashboard after adding the Google Analytics tracking code.
- Meta descriptions and titles â€“For each post or page, you can either manually edit the SEO titles and descriptions or use templates.
- WooCommerceÂ – If you have an online store, then you can optimize your WooCommerce pages with Rank Math, although there are additional features with the pro version.
- Divi SEO Integration– Integration with the Divi page builder and theme from the page editor.
Premium Features for Rank Math SEO
- Keyword rank tracking – You can view your keywords’ search engine ranks for the previous twelve months using the keyword rank tracking feature. You’ll know more about the effectiveness of your keywords. A convenient on-page solution to similar to more robust keyword tracking tools.
- Google Trend IntegrationÂ – Rank Math offers Google analytics 4 integration along with a keyword rank tracker.
- Multiple Platform LinkingÂ – You can use Rank Math for numerous different websites.
- Schema GeneratorÂ – Access to an advanced schema maker with over twenty different kinds of presets. This might be more convenient than other schema tools.
- Content AIÂ – More advanced features for the AI and gives you extra credits to use the AI.
- More WooCommerce SEO featuresÂ – Dedicated content analysis for pages, custom branding options, etc. It’s always a good idea optimize WooCommerce for SEO.
- Podcast ModuleÂ – Everything you need to start your podcast.
Rank Math Setup Process

Once the plugin has been installed and activated, you will be automatically redirected to the Rank Math registration window; if you haven’t been redirected,Â you can select Rank Math from the WordPress sidebar. Next, you will be directed to the setup wizard and prompted to create a free account. This is recommended because it comes with some added features.

$Screenshot of Rank Math$

Rank Math installation and configuration is a breeze because the step-by-step installation and configuration wizard is automatic for most steps. In addition, the settings on your site are verified by Rank Math after installation, and it makes recommendations for the best configurations.

The steps and SEO settings for your site, social networks, and webmaster profiles are configured via the wizard.

$Rank math installer$

You can link Rank Math with Google Analytics in order to get up-to-date site maps.

$Install Wizard$

Configure your required sitemap settings here.

$Sitemap$

Once you finish your setup you can delve deeper into advanced settings or just leave them in their the default position.

$Wizard ending$

Rank Math User Interface

The Rank Math UI undoubtedly sets it apart from other SEO tools; it’s simple and sleek while still having advanced tools at your fingertips. From the dashboard, you can toggle the features you want to use.

$Screenshot of Rank Math UI$

The analytics tab offers a handful of helpful graphs and charts to easily track your website’s SEO growth and pinpoint what areas you need to work on.

$Screenshot of Rank Math Analytics UI$

An excellent user experience was the focus of this plugin’s design. The pages and tools you require are simple to traverse, and getting familiar with them is easier than you think. But, if you need assistance, you can select the “Help and Support” option from the sidebar.

$Screenshot of Rank Math UI$

Using Rank Math to Optimize a Page or Post

This guide will show you how to use Rank Math to ensure your post is optimized and hits all the keywords your looking for. As soon as you begin writing the content, the optimization process starts. For this example, we’ll use the WordPress Menu > Posts > Add New option to create a new article.

$Screenshot of adding new post on WordPress$

Rank Math is fully integrated into the block editor; you can see it by selecting the red SEO score button on the top-right corner of the editor.

$Screenshot of "How to Throw an Awesome Dinner Party" Blog$

You can see all the suggestions and tools to make adjustments as you write. For example, we’re writing about how to throw an awesome dinner party, so we set our keyword to “dinner party,” and RankMath gives us suggestions on improving our SEO.

$Screenshot of Rank Math Word Editor UI$

Now, we simply follow the guidelines and suggestions from Rank Math until we have as close to a 100/100 SEO score as possible.

$Screenshot of Rank Math Word Editor UI$

Be sure to look at each tab in the Rank Math editor, so you don’t miss any tips for SEO optimization.

$Screenshot of Rank Math Word Editor UI$

Using Rank Math with Divi

We are proud to offer an in-depth and intuitive integration with Rank Math SEO. You can seamlessly use Divi Builder alongside Rank Math; read the guide here.

Pricing for Rank Math SEO Plugin

Currently, Rank Math offers four different tiers for their pricing. The free Version of Rank Math Pro is $59, Rank Math Business $199, and Rank Math Agency $499.

$Screenshot of Rank Math Pricing$

The critical difference between the different price points is primarily an issue of volume. If you’re looking to manage SEO on a single site, the pro version will most likely meet all your needs.

Rank Math SEO vs. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO has been at the top of the SEO mountain for WordPress plugins, but Rank Math is a worthy new challenger. Both plugins have a lot to offer when it comes to boosting SEO. Yoast SEO and Rank Math share many of the same free features, such as sitemaps, internal link counters, and SEO templates for content and titles.

However, Rank Math also comes with Google Analytics integration and keyword analysis for five free keywords.Â While similar here, we can compare the two on five critical factors in deciding which tool to use.
- Setup – Both offer a simple design that’s essentially plug-in-play. Rank Math can distinguish users with toggleable “Easy” and “Advanced” settings, whereas Yoast includes tutorial videos and demos.
- Keywords – Rank Math comes with more keyword tools and a more comprehensive ranking system.
- Features – Rank Math offers more free capabilities than Yoast SEO.
- User-Friendliness – This depends on personal preference. Yoast SEO does provide extra editing options with the meta box and sidebar options.
- Pricing: Rank Math Pro costs $59, which is cheaper than Yoast SEO’s $89.
Rank Math FAQs

Here we’ll answer some frequently asked questions regarding Rank Math SEO.

Is Rank Math Secure?

Yes, the WordPress team carefully examines plugins before adding them to the repository on WordPress.org, where Rank Math is included.

Will Rank Math work with my WordPress Theme?

While any theme using WordPress’s Codex should be compatible, here is a list of themes and plugins that Rank Math has currently validated as being fully compatible with the plugin.
- Betheme
- Deep Theme
- Polite
- Attesa Multi-Purpose Theme
- Blocksy
- Divi
- Flothemes
- Astra
- MyThemeShop
Does Rank Math Integrate with Divi?

Yes! You can read about our integration with RankMath here.

Is Rank Math Better than Yoast?

Yoast has been the best in the business in terms of SEO for a long time. However, Rank Math may be a better fit for some users, it has a ton of great features and an easy-to-use UI. However, it comes down to taste. If you’re happy using Yoast and already accustomed to its UI, it may be a better option for you to stick with it.

Does Rank Math have Good Reviews?

Rank Math has fantastic reviews, with well over 4,000 5-star ratings.

Should I buy the Premium Version of Rank Math?

We recommend starting with the free version of Rank Math and seeing if that version fulfills your SEO needs before upgrading to the Pro version.

Can I use Rank Math with other SEO plugins?

You can import data from your previous SEO plugins using the Rank Math wizard. After you import, we recommend only using one SEO plugin at a time. This is to avoid duplicate meta tags and negative SEO consequences.

Closing Thoughts on Rank Math SEO

It’s safe to say that Rank Math SEO deserves to be considered as a viable WordPress SEO plugin. The free version of Rank Math provides lots of tools that otherÂ SEO plugins simply don’t have, and their pro version provides even more. When it comes to on-page technical SEO, this plugin is uniquely intuitive and effective. So, if you’re looking to improve your website’s SEO, Rank Math can certainly help you do it.

We want to hear from you. Do you use Rank Math? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Featured Image via Rank Math / RankMath.com

The post Rank Math SEO Plugin for WordPress: An Introduction appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
07.12.2022
9 Best Schema Markup Plugins for WordPress (2022)

Are you looking for the best schema markup plugins for WordPress?

The right SEO plugin will help you properly optimize your content for search engines, so you can outrank your competitors and grow your business. You can also use schema markup plugins to create valuable rich snippets for search engines like Google.

In this article, weâ€™ll share our expert pick of the best schema markup plugins for WordPress.

Why You Should Use Schema Markup Plugins for WordPress

If your site has lots of high quality original content, then youâ€™re already off to a great start. However, you also need to help search engines understand that content, so they can include it in relevant search results and drive more people to your website.

Schema markup is structured data that help your website communicate with search engines behind the scenes. It uses invisible code to clearly label your pages and posts, so search engines know exactly what your content is about, and when to show it to users.

Search engines such as Google also use schema to create rich snippets.

These valuable snippets show additional information about your pages and posts. If you manage to get a rich snippet on a search engine like Google, then your content immediately stands out from the crowd. This can improve your organic click through rate and increase your blog traffic.

Using the right schema markup is important, but it can also be complicated. Thankfully, there are WordPress SEO plugins that can walk you through the process of adding schema markup to your site. Some of these plugins will even generate the right schema automatically.

Using a schema markup plugin doesnâ€™t guarantee that your rich snippets will appear in the search results, but it will improve your chances.

With that being said, letâ€™s take a look at the best schema markup plugins for WordPress.

1. AIOSEO

All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market used by over 3 million websites. This complete SEO toolkit has everything you need to outrank your competitors including support for rich snippets schema.

AIOSEO makes sure your schema markup is properly set up, so search engines can show your content to people who are searching for pages, posts, and products just like yours.

The plugin even has special schema for FAQs, courses, recipes, software, ratings, and dozens more. This helps your customers find your products, services, and digital downloads over your competitors.

If you have a physical store or business, then AIOSEO has local schema markup for your business logo, address, business phone number, opening hours, and more. This gives you the best possible chance of appearing in Google Maps and local search results.

AIOSEOâ€™s Google Map integration has multiple location support, which is perfect for successful businesses that have multiple offices, stores, salons, or other locations.

To learn more, see our guide on how to add multiple locations schema for local businesses.

This powerful WordPress SEO plugin is also easy to set up. To start, simply enter all your website information into the pluginâ€™s settings.

Then, just work your way through the Schema Markup settings for each content type.

For example, youâ€™ll typically map your Posts to the Article schema type, and Pages to the Web Page schema.

AIOSEO is flexible, so you can override these default settings for specific pages, posts, courses, and more from inside the content editor.

When editing your content, simply scroll to the AIOSEO Settings section and then click on â€˜Generate Schemaâ€™ to open the Schema Generator.

Youâ€™ll now see all the different schema that you can add to this particular piece of content.

By simply repeating these steps, you can optimize your entire WordPress website without having to write a single line of code.

AIOSEO has support for all the modern schema types to get you rich snippets including the new FAQ schema. SEO pros can use the custom schema tab to enter any type of schema format they wish.

It also has built-in schema validation to ensure that your website is properly optimized for highest SEO rankings.

To get started with AIOSEO, please see our ultimate guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

Price: AIOSEO Pro licenses start at $49.60 per year for a single website. There’s also a free version that you can use to get started.

2. Schema Pro

The Schema Pro plugin has more than 20 schema types including recipe, article, book, job posting, and more.

You can add all of these schema types to your WordPress blog or website without writing a single line of code. Simply choose a schema type from a dropdown menu and then tell the plugin where to add this schema.

To help you use the correct schema, Schema Pro will even map default data such as page title, featured image, author, and data. You can then simply fine-tune these defaults to suit your content, and Schema Pro will add the correct code across your website.

If this is your first time adding schema, then the plugin integrates with the Google Structured Data Testing Tool and comes with built-in field validation. This allows you to test your schema and see whether youâ€™re likely to get a rich snippet.

If youâ€™re using custom post types or other unique content, then more advanced users may want to try the pluginâ€™s Custom Schema markup tool. This allows you to create your own schema in JSON-LD format, and then test it using the Structured Data Testing Tool or Rich Results Test.

Price: You can buy an annual Schema Pro license for $67 which includes product updates, premium support, and advanced schema types.

3. WordPress Review Plugin

Positive customer reviews can convince shoppers to buy from your online store and will make your website seem more trustworthy. With that being said, youâ€™ll want the search engines to highlight your reviews.

The WordPress Review plugin can add the schema that search engines need to correctly identify your customer reviews, and include them in rich snippets.

You can use this plugin to create both single and multi-criteria reviews. This helps your customers make a decision about your company or products at a glance, and then explore more detailed reviews if they want extra information.

The plugin can also generate rating schema and markup for your WooCommerce products, which makes it a great choice for any WooCommerce user.

The WordPress Review plugin comes with a selection of layouts that you can apply to your reviews plus support for numeric pagination. In this way, the plugin can display your reviews in a way that makes sense to shoppers as well as the search engines.

Despite the focus on eCommerce, this plugin can also create review schema for any page, post, or custom post type. For example, you might encourage visitors to rate their favorite blog post.

If youâ€™re worried about spam and fake reviews, then the plugin comes with built-in support for reCAPTCHA v3. For more information on how reCAPTCHA works, please see our guide on how to add reCAPTCHA to WordPress.

Price: You can download this plugin for free from the official WordPress repository.

4. WP Review Plugin

WP Review is another plugin thatâ€™s perfect for anyone who sells digital downloads, products, or services online.

This plugin adds 9 different schema types and allows you to show reviews in a structured box that features star, point, and percentage ratings. You can also add user comments, affiliate buttons, and more to create an eye-catching layout.

By presenting this data in a box with the correct schema, you can encourage search engines to include the information in their search results. For example, Google often shows star ratings next to each product.

As long as you get a high rating, this can make your products stand out from the competition and should improve your click-through rates.

WP Reviewâ€™s boxes are completely customizable, so you can fine-tune them to perfectly suit your WordPress theme by changing the text color, adding a border, changing the background, and more.

Price: You can download WP Review for free from the official WordPress repository.

5. Structured Content

This plugin allows you to add structured data to any page or post, and it then renders that information as JSON-LD.

In total, Structured Content adds 6 schema types including LocalBusiness, FAQPage, and Person. If you sell online courses, then thereâ€™s a Course structured data type that will help search engines show your training in relevant search results.

If you run a job board in WordPress, then we recommend looking at the pluginâ€™s JobPosting schema as this can help your job listings appear in Googleâ€™s job search experience.

Here, Google will show your job listings along with your logo, plus any company reviews or ratings youâ€™ve received. This instantly makes your job listings more interesting and should get you lots more applicants.

To help you add schema to your website, Structured Content comes with its own blocks. Simply click on any block to add it to your content.

After that, you configure the schema markup by filling out a form.

This makes it easy to add correctly-formatted markup to your website.

Price: A free download of Structured Content is available from the WordPress repository.

6. WP SEO Structured Data Schema

If you want more control over your schema markup, then you may want to look at this free WordPress plugin.

Although WP SEO Structured Data Schema does have some site-wide settings, it places an emphasis on flexibility and manual customization.

This plugin allows you to add schema in JSON-LD format on a page-by-page basis.

WP SEO Structured Data Schema does require a bit more setup compared to some of the other plugins on this list.

However, it is a powerful solution that gives you lots of freedom to fine-tune your schema. This makes it a good choice for users who are more familiar with schema markup.

Just be aware that youâ€™ll need to upgrade to the pro version if you want to add schema to custom post types.

Price: You can download WP SEO Structured Data Schema for free from the official WordPress repository.

7. WPSSO Core

The WPSSO Core plugin supports an impressive 500 schema types and sub-types.

It also stands out from the crowd by providing structured data markup for social media sites including Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, and WhatsApp.

If youâ€™re already using some of the best SEO plugins, then youâ€™ll be happy to hear that WPSSO Core integrates with WP Product Review, WP-PostRatings, and WP Meta SEO. WPSSO Core can even read settings and data from AIOSEO.

Beyond SEO plugins, WPSSO Core also integrates with Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce, so we recommend checking out this plugin if you run an online store.

WPSSO Core is also a good choice if you previously tried to add schema markup manually, but encountered errors. This plugin claims to fix all schema markup errors in Google Search, Rich Results, Merchant Listings, and more.

Price: To download WPSSO Core for free, simply visit the WordPress repository.

8. Five Star Business Profile and Schema

Like many plugins on this list, Five Star Business Profile and Schema can add LD+JSON schema structured data to any page or post.

However, it also has a unique contact card feature that lets you add all your business details with the correct schema markup. This includes a Google Map, opening hours, plus your phone number and WhatsApp number with a click-to-call feature.

Search engines can then discover this information and show it next to your listing.

If you accept appointments and bookings, or own a physical store then this will help customers contact you. In fact, if you have multiple locations then Five Star Business Profile and Schema will automatically add a dropdown menu so customers can choose between the different locations.

Even better, you can add the card to any page, post, or widget-ready area using either a shortcode or a special Contact Card block.

Beyond the SEO-friendly contact card, this plugin has a database of every organization type schema and every rich results type.

Each schema and rich results type comes with the corresponding fields and properties. Simply fill in the default values that you want to use and the plugin will handle the rest.

If you want to use different values on a specific page, then you can easily override these defaults from the post editor.

Price: You can download Five Star Business Profile and Schema for free.

9. Schema and Structured Data

This plugin adds 16 schema types to your WordPress website including reviews, email, and comments, plus support for custom schema.

After activating the plugin, Schema and Structured Data will automatically fetch the data from your website and then enhance it in the Google search results.

If you have an online store, then this plugin is compatible with WooCommerce so you can get your products and services featured on search engines like Google. If youâ€™re using WooCommerce extensions, then this plugin is also compatible with WooCommerce Booking and WooCommerce Membership.

If you want to add schema to lots of content, then the plugin has some useful conditional fields. This allows you to include and exclude posts, pages, and taxonomies from the schema.

Schema and Structured Data has some extra features that can help search engines understand your content. This includes support for breadcrumbs and Google AMP compatibility so you can easily enhance the markup for the AMP version of your site.

For more information about AMP, please see our guide on how to properly setup Google AMP on your WordPress site.

Price: An annual license for a single website is priced at $99.00.

Which is the best WordPress schema plugin?

After carefully evaluating all the popular schema plugins in the market, we believe that AIOSEO – All in One SEO is the best WordPress schema plugin.

In the past, websites will use their main SEO plugin and then a separate schema plugin which would lead to complication, plugin conflicts, and even performance issues.

With All in One SEO, you can use just one plugin that gives you everything you need to grow your SEO rankings.

The free All in One SEO plugin has support for on-page schema markups, but you will need the Pro version to unlock access to their powerful custom schema generator.

Frequently Asked Questions

Being the largest free WordPress resource site on the planet, we have helped tens of thousands of people choose the best WordPress SEO plugins. Below are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

Does schema improve SEO?

Yes, having a proper schema markup will absolutely improve your SEO rankings. Google and other search engines reward websites with rich snippets and higher rankings when they use proper schema tags.

Does WordPress use schema?

By default, WordPress does not add schema markup. That’s why website owners use WordPress schema plugins. You can easily add schema markup in WordPress by using the All in One SEO plugin.

For a more detailed explanation, see our guide on how to add schema markup in WordPress and WooCommerce.

Does Yoast SEO plugin add schema?

Yes, Yoast SEO plugin does offer limited schema support. However they do not have powerful custom schema generators or schema validation like other plugins such as All in One SEO, Schema Pro, and others mentioned in the list above.

Can you add schema to WordPress without a plugin?

Yes, you can absolutely add custom schema markup in WordPress without using a plugin. All you need to do is simply add the custom schema code in your theme’s functions.php file.

Although we don’t recommend this because if you update your theme, then your customizations will be overwritten. This is why it’s better to future-proof your custom snippets using WPCode.

With that said, most professionals use a plugin like AIOSEO to add schema because they keep it updated with new SEO guidelines.

Will schema markup help me get a featured snippet in Google?

Yes, having a proper schema markup will increase your chances of getting a featured snippet in Google, also known as position zero. At the end of the day, Google decides which sites get the featured snippet, but generally only websites with schema markup get the featured snippet.

What’s better JSON+LD Schema vs Microdata?

Modern search engines like Google prefer JSON+LD schema markup over the microdata schema markup. This is why most large websites have switched to using JSON+LD schema, and the plugins we recommend in our list all output as JSON schema markup.

Which is the best review schema WordPress plugin?

The best review schema plugin for WordPress is All in One SEO. It lets you add review schema, so your search listings can get start ratings and other rich snippets. But unlike other plugins, AIOSEO will not force you to use their styles, so you have full control over how your website brand looks.

The second option people often use is Schema Pro which is built specifically for generating schema blocks.

Which is the best custom schema markup generator for WordPress?

We believe that All in One SEO is the best custom schema generator for WordPress. It offers a guided wizard for all schema.org markups, and for true SEO pros, it even has a fully custom schema markup input, so you can experiment further.

We hope this article helped you find the best schema plugins for WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress and our expert pick of the best analytics solutions.

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The post 9 Best Schema Markup Plugins for WordPress (2022) first appeared on WPBeginner.

02.12.2022