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Basic SEO for WordPress
Basic SEO for WordPress SEO What is SEO Site performance URL structure Page Title Meta description XML Sitemaps Popular WordPress SEO Tools Integrating Google Analytics Adding your site to Google Webmaster tools (Search Console) WordPress SEO Best Practices Create unique, high quality content Create a content structure with categories and tags Leverage social media Internal Links External links Image optimization Comments optimization
SEO
You have set up a great WordPress site, and learned to incorporate functionalities like eCommerce capability into it. In order to make your website successful, you still have to understand a few more more essential aspects. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of these. In simple terms, with SEO, you are making your site more accessible to search engines. So when a user types a relevant keyword on the search engine, your site shows up in the search results. By following the industry standards of search engine optimization, and regularly updating high quality content, you can surely get good ranking and traffic in due time.
Now, WordPress is considered as one of the most SEO-friendly content management systems at the moment. You can take advantage of this to create an optimized site that scores high in
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search engine rankings if you follow the expert advice on SEO. This tutorial will guide you on the basic concept of SEO, and introduce some of the popular tools and best practices.
What is SEO SEO is a set of site optimization strategies that would make your site more accessible to search engines. The strategy involves optimizing the code, content and formatting of the site to make it more search engine friendly. And, it is also about maintaining user friendly content that helps users find what they are looking for easily. Some of the important aspects on your site that makes a difference in terms of SEO are good quality content, site performance, url structure, titles, descriptions, sitemaps and images. Let’s look into some of these terms in more detail to understand them better.
Site performance How fast your site loads is an important aspect of SEO. If users click a button on your site, and it takes a bit longer to load, there are chances that they will leave your site immediately. This is especially relevant to eCommerce sites, as the customer wouldn’t have the patience to wait. According to statistics, a one second delay can impact your conversions by 7%, and customer satisfaction by 16%. Site performance is an important criteria that search engines consider for your page ranking as well. So it is important to look for any issues with site performance, and immediately fix those.
You can use tools like P ingdom or G Tmetrix to understand the performance of your site. Some of the determinants of page load speed are your hosting service, the number of plugins, external code on the site, page size, etc. You need to consistently test these aspects to optimize the performance of your site.
URL structure The blog posts on your site are accessed by users through their permalinks, which is automatically set by WordPress when you create a post. You may have noticed this while creating a blog post. The below screenshot shows a permalink:
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Now, this permalink structure plays a big part in SEO. Let’s know what all ways you can optimize this.
Simplify the permalink structure The structure of the permalink should not be very technical or complicated. It should have a user friendly format where users can get an idea on what the post is about. Keeping the permalink structure simple with the title of your article (post name) is a good practice. And if you have a category structure on your site, you can also set it up with the category name and post name. You can change the permalink structure from the navigation panel (S ettings > Permalinks) .
You can select a suitable permalink structure for your site. For example, you can choose post name as below:
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Or, choose a custom structure with category and post name. You can select the field ‘Custom Structure’ and then use the available tags for category and post name.
Decide on ‘www’ You can also decide whether you want to keep ‘www’ in your url or not. That is, your site url will be either h ttp://yoursite.com/ or h ttp://www.yoursite.com/. You can choose the preferred option by going to S ettings > General.
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Remove stop words Stop words are words like ‘a’, ‘and’ ‘the’, etc. Having these words in the url is not really advisable. So, experts advise to remove these. If you are using an SEO tool, it will automatically remove stop words from the permalink.
Get an SSL certificate Having an SSL certificate offers a minor advantage in search engine rankings. Basically when you have this, your site url changes from ‘http’ to ‘https’, which is more secure. Though this is not a mandatory requirement, you can definitely use it if your hosting service provider is offering it for free.
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Page Title The page title is the one that appears on search results, and naturally it is the first thing that catches attention to your post or page. You have to optimize this title search engines. According to experts, you can keep the relevant keywords at the start of the title, for search engines to get the topic readily. Some of the common SEO tools allow you to modify this title, which we will discuss later in this tutorial.
Meta description Another important aspect that search engines look for in a post is its meta description. This will be a short write-up that has the main keyword of the article and relevant information about the post. Search engines use this description to display in the snippet that is visible on search engines.
XML Sitemaps XML sitemaps help to intimate search engines that you have updated your site with a new page or post. With the help of an SEO tool, you can easily manage these. Once you enable the option for sitemaps, it is presented to search engines every time you publish a new post or page.
These are the fundamental aspects of WordPress SEO that you need to look into when you start out with a new site. Now let’s see what are the popular tools available to help you with SEO.
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Popular WordPress SEO Tools There are quite a few popular SEO tools in the WordPress plugin repository. Let’s take a quick look at the top four
Yoast SEO Yoast is one of the most popular SEO tools for WordPress with over 5 million active installs. It offers a comprehensive solution that helps you get to the top spot in search rankings. It helps you optimize the basic SEO aspects of your website and content.
All in One SEO Pack This is another great option you can use for search engine optimization. It is quite simple for beginners as you can just install and it will work out of the box. However, for WooCommerce support, you need to purchase the premium version of the plugin.
The SEO Framework This is another automated SEO solution that is quite good for beginners. It helps you improve your search presence quite efficiently. You can simply install and it will be up and running.
SEO SQUIRRLY This plugin offers a solution that helps you optimize content to suit both search engines and actual readers. It also offers assistance in determining the best keywords for your site as well.
How to integrate Yoast SEO Now, let’s see how to install the most popular SEO solution for WordPress sites - Yoast SEO.
You can install Yoast SEO plugin from the Plugins section on your site (P lugins > Add New) .
Once you install and activate the plugin, you can run the Setup Wizard to guide you through the installation process. Once that is complete, you can use the plugin to optimize your site and content.
You will see a new section on your WordPress navigation panel for Yoast SEO.
Any issues that require your immediate attention will be displayed on the dashboard (S EO > General) .
For example, the visibility settings of your site is an important aspect that you need to configure when your site is live.
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When your site is still in development stage, there is an option to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’. However, when your site is live you should change this option to encourage search engines to index your site. This is important, as with SEO you are trying to get better in search engine rankings.
To uncheck this, you can go to S ettings > Reading. Uncheck the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option.
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You can enable or disable specific features of the Yoast plugin.
Go to S EO > General and click on the Features tab. You will see several options including XML sitemaps here. These are all enabled by default, and you can disable if you don’t want a particular feature.
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On your Post edit page, you will see an option for Yoast SEO, which will help you optimize your content.
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Here, you can set a focus keyword for your post, as well as a page title and meta description.
Yoast plugin comes with a lot of documentation and tutorials, which you can go through to understand further optimization options.
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Integrating Google Analytics Another important step that you need to do to get in control of your SEO is integrating Analytics to your website. With the help of Google Analytics, you will know the traffic statistics on your site, and also understand user behavior. The data from analytics will be a crucial pointer in deciding the content strategy on your site. You can make modifications looking at how users are engaging with your content. Factors like traffic sources, location of visitors, time spent on each article, bounce rate, etc., can be quite insightful to your content strategy. Based on the data, you can always develop and iterate new approaches to increase traffic and users to your site.
It is a good idea to incorporate Google Analytics right from the start. That way, you can very well gauge the growth of your traffic and understand specific strategies that has helped along the way. Now, let’s see how to integrate Google Analytics to your WordPress site.
Sign in to Analytics If you already have a Google account, you can use the login details of this account to sign in to Analytics too. You will see a screen as below; click the Sign up button.
Once you sign up, you will be directed to a screen where you have to enter some basic information regarding your site. First you have to specify if it’s for a website or a mobile app. Then, you need to enter the Account Name, Site Name as well as your site url. You also need to select an Industry category and your time zone. Also, there are some options to control how you share your analytics data with other Google products. All these options are enabled by default. You can specifically disable these options if necessary.
After entering all the required information, click the G et Tracking ID button.
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Now you can see the Tracking ID and the Tracking code on the next screen.
Now you can copy the tracking code and paste it on the theme’s header file. You can find the theme’s header file by navigating to A ppearance > Editor > Theme Header.
Once you are on the Theme header file, locate the tag < /head> , and paste the tracking code just before it. And, click the U pdate File button.
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Though it might look like a straightforward process, this manual step is really a risky process. Experts advise against modification to your theme files. Also, there is a chance to lose the tracking code if you change your theme.
An easier alternative will be to use one of the popular plugins for Analytics integration. You can find a list of good plugins below:
● Google Analytics by MonsterInsights
● Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
● WooCommerce Google Analytics Pro
● Google Analytics by ShareThis
Some of these plugins will help you monitor your Analytics data on your WordPress site itself. If you have added the tracking code manually, you will be able to view analytics data only on your Google Analytics account.
After integrating Google Analytics to your website, the Analytics page for your site will look like the screenshot below. It will take some time before your site gets a steady number of visitors. Once your site starts getting visitors, you can start by analyzing the different traffic channels they are coming from.
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For example, if you go to A cquisition > All Traffic > Channels, you can view from which all sources traffic is coming to your site. Depending on your site’s specific data, you can improvise your strategies for each channel.
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Adding your site to Google Webmaster tools (Search Console) Now once you have set up your analytics account, you will understand more about different traffic channels that bring in traffic to your site. These channels include Organic search, Direct, Social, Referral, Email, etc. One of the most important part that determines the success of your SEO efforts will reflect in the Organic Search channel. It means the number of customers reaching your site when they type in a keyword on one of the popular search engines. It is a crucial thing to know what keywords your users are using to reach your site. You can know this and more about how your users are searching Google, by adding your site to Google Webmaster tools or Search Console.
We will look into the process of adding your site into Google Search Console now.
First, you need to need to log in to Search Console using your Google account. Once signed in, click the A dd Property button. Enter your website url and click the A dd button.
Now, you will see a screen with two tabs - Recommended method, and Alternate method. Choose the Alternate methods tab and select the first option - HTML tag.
Now you will see a piece of code as below. Copy this code.
Now, you can use Yoast SEO plugin to help your verify your site on Google Search Console. Go to Y oast SEO > General. Here you will see a tab W ebmaster Tools.
Paste the code copied from Search Console in the Google verification code field.
Click the S ave changes button.
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Now you can go back to Search Console, click the V erify button.
You will see a screen informing you that the verification was successful. Click ‘Continue’.
You will be able to see the screen of Search Console, with different data that shows the correlation between your site traffic and Google searches.
Once your site is live and you have successfully submitted the XML sitemaps, Search Console will start showing data on the Search Console.
It will take some time before data is displayed on the Search Console. If there are any issues with the search engine’s access to your site, you will be able to figure that out here.
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By regularly monitoring the different sections of Search Console, you will get an idea of things that you need your attention. For example, in the Search Appearance section, you can see something called ‘HTML Improvements’. This will give you an idea of any issues with your content, such as duplicate meta descriptions, or non-indexable content.
Similarly, in the Search Analytics section (S earch Traffic > Search Analytics) , you can see Clicks, Impressions, CTR (Click through rate), and Position, with regards to Queries, Pages, etc. These are important parameters that you can use to assess the progress of your site. You can check which query is getting the most click, and think of possibilities to improve your content. For example, on LearnWoo site, we identify articles that get more clicks and impressions and enhance the content by adding more information, or even videos.
Constantly monitoring the Search Console will also help you identify Crawl errors, 404 errors, broken links, CSS and JS file blocking, etc.
WordPress SEO Best Practices Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. You need to consistently follow some of the useful SEO strategies for continued positive results. Here is a quick look at some of the WordPress SEO best practices.
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Create unique, high quality content One of the most obvious factors that would influence search engines to display your site is the relevance of your content. Basically, if you consider a search engine like Google, it is looking to find the most relevant content to a query by a particular user. So it is important that you are creating content taking into account what users are searching for. If Google’s search algorithm finds that for a particular keyword your site has the most relevant information, it will show it in results. Some of the tools that will help you find most searched keywords in your domain would be Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer.
Once you get an idea of relevant keywords, you can create good quality, original articles related to those keywords. You should take care to not duplicate content from another site, and the content itself should be structured well.
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Create a content structure with categories and tags Organizing your content in a systematic way is equally important for search engines as well as actual readers. It helps users to find answers and solutions for specific queries. Every time you write a blog post, you can create a new category or add it to one of the existing categories. You can organize content into multiple categories and subcategories according to the content on your site. For example, if your post is about Mobile Phone operating systems, a possible structure can be Mobile phones > operating systems.
Tags on the other hand is not as important as categories. It helps to group content based on keywords that are present in a particular post. For example, if the post on mobile phone operating systems mention Android, iOS, Symbian, etc., these can be your tags.
Leverage social media Social media is a huge aspect in getting your content across your intended audience. Making your content shareable in social media is an important aspect that would help with its reach. When your content gets shared in multiple social media platforms, the traffic increases and naturally there will be a positive impact on search engine rankings as well.
Internal Links Another recommended practice to boost your site’s ranking is consistent internal linking. Every new post that you publish on your site should be linked to a few other existing posts on your site. This will increase the time users spend on your site, and reduce bounce rate, which will help search engines to rank your site better.
External links An optimized WordPress post is supposed to have a mix of both internal and external links. However, when it comes to external links, there is an aspect that you need to take care of - link juice. Basically, link juice means a share of search engine ranking capability you are passing on to the linking domain. So by linking to an external domain, you are sharing some of your ranking prospects to that domain. This won’t be a positive trend in the long run, and experts suggest to put a ‘nofollow’ tag in the external link that you are adding.
If you switch to the text editor, you can see the link like this - Checkout this link
You can make it ‘nofollow’ like this - Checkout this link
This should help you from passing on valuable link juice to other sites.
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Image optimization You can also optimize the images you use on your site for better search engine rankings. You can add a relevant ‘title’ and ‘alt text’ to all your images. This would help in these images getting indexed in image searches. Also, ‘alt text’ is a description for differently abled users who are using screen readers.
Comments optimization When you publish a post, one of the sureshot ways to measure its success is by looking at the comments it got. Getting a lot of relevant comments means your readers are responding to what you are saying in the post. However, it can be a double edged sword too. Blog comments is an area of specialization of spammers. If your comments section is featuring spam comments from sites of low reputation, it is going to affect your site’s search ranking. There are two options to deal with that. As we have seen in an earlier tutorial, editors and administrators can moderate comments on your site. So, you can make sure only relevant comments are approved.
The problem here is if the volume of spam comments are really large, it will prove to be a lot of manual work to Trash them. Using a plugin like A kismet is the other solution. It will block spam comments and contact form submissions by comparing it with a huge collection of spam.
Overall, your SEO strategy should be a combination of several factors. You can gain valuable insights about popular search words from the keyword planner tool, and your own site data from Google Analytics and Search Console. With the available data, you can create a content strategy, and an editorial calendar, and regularly add new, original content. At the same time work on internal and external link building, and social sharing. In due time, search engines will display your site more often in results, and consequently you will notice a surge in your traffic and users.
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