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June 14, 2024

How to Add the Ultimate SEO Dashboard in WordPress

Do you want to add an SEO dashboard to your WordPress admin area?

An SEO dashboard acts like your personal command center, giving you a clear view of your website’s SEO health. It allows you to track your SEO progress, identify areas for improvement, and ultimately drive more organic traffic to your site.

Here at WPBeginner, we’re all about making search engine optimization easy for everyone. And we’ve found a fantastic way to add a powerful SEO dashboard to WordPress in just a few minutes.

In this article, we will show you how to add the ultimate SEO dashboard to your WordPress website.

How to Add the Ultimate SEO Dashboard in WordPress

Why Add an SEO Dashboard to Your WordPress Website?

If you run a WordPress website, then you may want to add an SEO dashboard directly to your admin area. This means you don’t need to switch between different platforms, saving you plenty of time.

An SEO dashboard can provide valuable insights into your website’s health. It helps you understand how your website performs in search engine results pages (SERPs) so you can identify areas for improvement and improve visibility.

For eCommerce stores, an SEO dashboard can help you identify which product pages are ranking well and which ones need a boost. You can track keyword rankings for your most important products and optimize content to attract more potential customers.

Similarly, for lead generation, an SEO dashboard allows you to see how well your landing pages are optimized for their target keywords. This ensures they are SEO-friendly, maximizing their potential to bring in qualified leads.

Expert Tip: Prefer to leave your SEO to the experts? Our WPBeginner SEO Service can optimize your content for keywords, do a technical SEO audit, and help you get guest posts published on high-profile websites. That way, you just need to worry about running your business.

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at how to add an SEO dashboard in WordPress.

How to Set Up a WordPress SEO Dashboard With All in One SEO

We’ve experimented with various WordPress SEO tools, including the popular Yoast SEO plugin. But for accessing the ultimate SEO dashboard, our top pick is All in One SEO (AIOSEO).

There are two main reasons for this choice. First, AIOSEO is incredibly beginner-friendly. It is super easy to navigate its features, even for people new to WordPress SEO.

Second, this SEO plugin has comprehensive dashboards. You won’t just get a single snapshot of your website’s health. Instead, you’ll see a detailed breakdown of your links, be able to track your keyword rankings, and even monitor your SEO changes.

On top of that, AIOSEO offers a suite of other valuable SEO settings, including customizable XML sitemaps, schema markup support, 301 redirect setup, and more.

Note: We will be using the premium version of AIOSEO in this guide, as it unlocks all the dashboard features we need. That said, feel free to start with the free version to explore its capabilities before upgrading.

To set up AIOSEO, simply download the plugin from your AIOSEO account page and install it on your WordPress dashboard. You can read our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for more information.

Then, follow the setup wizard. By the end of it, you will need to activate your license key, which you should receive after purchasing a premium plan.

For a detailed installation walkthrough, you can read our guide on how to set up AIOSEO for WordPress.

Click let's get started AIOSEO setup wizard

With AIOSEO set up, you are ready to move on to the next section and explore the SEO dashboard features. You can use the quick links below to skip to your preferred topic:

Check Your TruSEO and SEO Site Scores
Check Your Website’s Ranking Stats
Look For On-Page SEO Audit Opportunities
Monitor Your External and Internal Linking
Bonus Tip: Add a Google Analytics Dashboard to WordPress

Check Your TruSEO and SEO Site Scores

The main AIOSEO dashboard is located at All in One SEO » Dashboard. This is where you’ll find a clear overview of your SEO performance.

This dashboard features two key widgets: ‘AIOSEO Overview’ and ‘SEO Site Score.’

The All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin for WordPress

The AIOSEO Overview showcases your TruSEO scores for all published posts and pages. TruSEO is AIOSEO’s way of providing personalized recommendations to enhance your content’s on-page SEO.

These include things like the existence and length of meta titles and descriptions, content readability, and the use of a focus keyphrase.

The TruSEO scores fall into five categories: Needs Improvement, Okay, Good, and Without a Focus Keyphrase.

Ideally, you want most of your posts, pages, and custom post types to get a ‘Good’ score. You can check the score for each post type by using the ‘Choose a Post Type’ dropdown menu.

Moving on, the SEO Site Score provides a broader picture of your website’s performance, not just individual pages and posts.

This score takes into account various technical aspects, including site speed, sitemaps, and the use of HTTPS. AIOSEO recommends aiming for a score of 70 or above.

The widget breaks down the scoring into three parts: Important Issues (critical problems requiring immediate attention), Recommended Improvements (areas for enhancement), and Good Results (areas performing well).

If you click on ‘Complete Site Audit Checklist,’ you will get a more detailed breakdown, which we’ll explore in a later section.

Check Your Website’s Ranking Stats

Staying on top of your website’s rankings in search engines is super important for any SEO strategy. Understanding how your content is performing in search results can help you find areas to improve your keyword research and drive more organic traffic.

AIOSEO provides an easy way to check your website’s ranking stats directly within your WordPress dashboard. What you need to do is head over to All in One SEO » Search Statistics in your admin sidebar.

Here, we will focus on the ‘Dashboard’ tab. To see data in this section, you’ll need to connect your website with Google Search Console.

For step-by-step instructions, check out our guide on how to add your WordPress website to Google Search Console.

The Dashboard tab offers a quick overview of how your website is performing for rankings and click-through rates (CTRs).

At the top, you can conveniently set the timeframe for the data you want to see (Last 7 days, Last 28 days, Last 3 months, or custom).

Changing the dates in the Search Statistics dashboard in AIOSEO

The Dashboard has 5 key areas.

First is SEO Statistics. This section provides graphs to help you visualize your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and the number of people who clicked through to it.

It includes:

Search Impressions: The total number of times your website appeared in search results within the selected timeframe.
Total Clicks: The total number of clicks your website received from search results during that period.
Average CTR: The average click-through rate of your content in search results.
Average Position: This graph shows the average keyword position of your content in search results for the selected timeframe.

Additionally, hovering over each graph allows you to see specific numbers for any date within the timeframe.

For example, in the screenshot below, hovering over the ‘Total Clicks’ graph on May 7, 2024, shows that our demo website received 1.1k clicks that day.

Seeing how many clicks a website has gotten on a particular date in AIOSEO

You can also hover over the number that shows an increase or decrease to see more details about what happened to the data compared to the previous period.

Like so:

Hovering over the search impressions graph in AIOSEO

You can click on the ‘Open Report’ button for a more detailed breakdown of this data.

Next is ‘Keyword Positions.’ This section uses a line graph to illustrate how your keyword positions fluctuate over time using color codes.

Here’s how to interpret the data:

Blue: Shows how much of your content ranks in the top 3 positions.
Green: Content ranking between positions 4-10.
Yellow: Content ranking between positions 11-50.
Red: Content ranking between positions 50-100.

In the screenshot below, the graph shows a high concentration in the yellow zone.

This indicates most of our content falls within the 11-50 keyword position range. You can also hover over the graph to see the exact dates when your keyword positions decreased or increased.

Checking pages' keyword positions in AIOSEO

Scrolling down, you will see ‘Keyword Rankings’ and ‘Post Optimizations.’

Similar to the AIOSEO Overview tab in the main dashboard, the ‘Post Optimizations’ section shows your TruSEO scores for all published posts and pages.

On the other hand, the ‘Keyword Rankings’ widget shows what keyphrases your content is ranking for and how they are performing.

There are two tabs here. The ‘Top Keywords’ tab lists your highest-ranking keywords and the clicks you have received from them.

On the other hand, the ‘Winning/Losing’ tab highlights keywords gaining or losing ranking positions.

If you hover over any of the keywords in this tab, then you can get information on how much your rankings have increased or decreased compared to the previous period.

Finally, there is ‘Content Performance.’

This section focuses on which individual posts and pages perform the best.

The performance is based on a combination of factors:

TruSEO score
Indexed status (whether Google has indexed the page)
Clicks
Impressions
Position
Differences in ranking over time

There are three tabs here:

Top Pages: Shows your best-performing pages.
Top Losing: Highlights pages that are losing ranking positions.
Top Winning: Identifies pages gaining ranking positions.

All in all, the Search Statistics tab is a pretty powerful AIOSEO feature. Check out these articles to see how you can make the most of it:

Look For On-Page SEO Audit Opportunities

Next, head over to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis and navigate to the ‘SEO Audit Checklist’ tab. This section offers an in-depth look at your overall SEO health.

At the top, you’ll see your SEO Site Score, just like before.

Here, a very good score falls between 50 and 75, but ideally, you should aim for 70 or above. This score is based on various criteria, which will be shown as you scroll down the ‘Complete SEO Checklist’ section.

The SEO Audit Checklist dashboard in AIOSEO

The Complete SEO Checklist is divided into four categories: Basic SEO, Advanced SEO, Performance, and Security.

Basic SEO tackles fundamental on-page SEO elements and checks if they’re already implemented on your website. These include SEO page titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, image alt text, and internal links.

If an element is missing, simply click the arrow button next to it. A button will appear, allowing you to address the issue immediately.

For example, a missing meta description can be fixed by clicking the ‘Edit Meta Description’ button. This will take you directly to the block editor for your homepage, where you can add one.

Adding a missing meta description in AIOSEO

The Advanced SEO report dives deeper into technical SEO. Here, AIOSEO checks things like:

Canonical link tag usage
If there are noindex headers or meta tags. This is usually used to ask Google not to crawl your website.
That both the www and non-www versions of your URL redirect to the same site
Open Graph meta tags
Robots.txt file
Schema.org data

Here’s what it looks like:

Similar to Basic SEO, if an element is missing, you can click the arrow button next to the issue for more information.

A button will be available to help you address the problem.

Adding missing Open Graph tags in AIOSEO

‘Performance’ focuses on website speed. AIOSEO will identify any speed issues or areas where your website excels.

In our case, AIOSEO found that the page size is small enough to load quickly, generates few requests, and boasts a response time under 0.2 seconds. However, unminified JavaScript and CSS files are slowing things down.

AIOSEO isn’t a dedicated speed optimization plugin, so it can’t help you address these problems.

However, clicking the arrow next to the issue will provide information on how to tackle it.

You can also check out our ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance for more information.

Pro Tip: Want to speed up your website with no effort? Our WPBeginner Pro Services offer a site speed optimization service that takes care of all the technical details.

Let our team of experts analyze and speed up your website so you can sit back and focus on growing your business.

WordPress security is all about safety and user experience, such as checking your website for malware and verifying whether it uses HTTPS encryption.

If you go to the top of the Complete SEO Checklist section, then you can click on ‘Important Issues’ to view only the most urgent problems you need to address.

On the other hand, ‘Recommended Improvements’ are issues that are not as urgent but should be considered.

Once you have made improvements to your website, you can click the ‘Refresh Results’ button to see if AIOSEO can detect those changes.

The Complete SEO Checklist tabs in AIOSEO

Monitor Your External and Internal Linking

The next dashboard we will check out is at All in One SEO » Link Assistant. The dashboard is in the ‘Overview’ tab, which shows information about the links on your site.

Search engines discover new content by following links. Broken or poorly structured links can prevent search engine crawlers from efficiently indexing your website, which can hurt your rankings.

Plus, well-maintained links ensure a smooth user experience for your visitors. Broken links lead to dead ends, frustrating users and potentially damaging your website’s credibility.

Let’s go through each section of this dashboard one by one. On top is a bar that shows the numbers for your Posts Crawled, Orphaned Posts, External Links, Internal Links, and Affiliate Links.

‘Posts Crawled’ indicates how many posts and pages Link Assistant has scanned so far.

Depending on the number of links, you may see a percentage indicator at the top right corner that tells you how many links have been scanned.

If all links have been scanned, then you won’t see the percentage indicator.

The Posts Crawled information graph in AIOSEO

Next up is ‘Orphaned Posts,’ which are posts or pages lacking internal links from other parts of your website. By finding and addressing orphaned content, you can help search engines properly discover and index all your pages.

External Links are links directing visitors to websites other than yours. Including external links to relevant and authoritative sources can enhance your content’s credibility and user experience.

On the other hand, Internal Links connect your website’s different pages and posts. They help search engines understand your website’s structure and improve user navigation.

You can use internal linking plugins to improve your linking strategy.

If you participate in affiliate marketing programs, then the Overview displays the number of Affiliate Links on your website.

Right below this bar, you will see a graph called Internal vs External vs Affiliate Links.

This visual representation helps you maintain a healthy balance of link types on your website. Too many external links can send visitors away from your content, while a lack of internal linking can hurt navigation and SEO.

You can check out the entire report by clicking on the ‘See a Full Links Report’ button.

The Internal vs External vs Affiliate Links graph in AIOSEO

Additionally, you’ll see a chart that shows your Most Linked to Domains. This information is handy if you want to review your outbound linking strategy.

For instance, are you linking to relevant and authoritative websites? Are there any competitors you’re linking to excessively?

For a more detailed look at this, you can click the ‘See a Full Domains Report’ button.

The Most Linked To Domains graph in AIOSEO

Finally, you will find the Linking Opportunities graph. It has two tabs: Inbound Suggestions and Outbound Suggestions.

The first tab highlights pages or posts that could benefit from having more internal links pointing to them. Meanwhile, the second points out pages or posts that should include more internal links to other relevant pages.

The ‘Count’ column shows how many inbound or outbound links you can add.

To see the full list, you can click on the ‘See All Linking Opportunities’ button.

You can also read our ultimate guide on internal linking for SEO for more information.

The Linking Opportunities list in AIOSEO

Bonus Tip: Add a Google Analytics Dashboard to WordPress

AIOSEO gives you a great SEO dashboard inside WordPress, but you can take things a step further with Google Analytics and MonsterInsights.

MonsterInsights makes it super easy to connect your WordPress site to Google Analytics in just a few clicks. This unlocks a ton of info and metrics about your website, like how many people visit and which pages are the most popular.

Plus, you can add notes directly to these reports to remind yourself about any changes you make to your website.

For example, if you give your site a makeover, then you can jot down a note and then see if it affects the number of visitors in the following weeks.

Ever wonder if more people find your site through social media, search engines, or maybe even ads?

The MonsterInsights Traffic reports show you exactly where your visitors come from. This helps you figure out where to put most of your effort to get even more blog traffic.

MonsterInsights also has a Site Speed report. While this doesn’t directly affect the number of people who visit your site, it’s still important for optimizing Core Web Vitals and keeping your visitors happy.

Faster loading times mean people are more likely to stick around and explore what you have to offer.

If you want to learn more, you can read our tutorial on how to add a stats dashboard in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add the ultimate SEO dashboard in WordPress. You may also want to check out our ultimate guide to WooCommerce SEO and our expert pick of the best SEO rank tracker tools.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add the Ultimate SEO Dashboard in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

December 15, 2023

How to Avoid Keyword Stuffing & Fix Over Optimization in SEO

Are you worried that you’ve stuffed too many keywords into your content?

When it comes to optimizing your site for search engines, many new users have a tendency to stuff their content with keywords. However, this is not a good practice and could lead to over-optimization, which can then lead to being penalized by search engines like Google.

In this article, we will show you how to avoid keyword stuffing and fix over-optimization in SEO.

What is Keyword Stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is filling a web page with keywords to manipulate search engines in the hopes of getting higher rankings.

In the early days of search engine optimization (SEO), it was easy to exploit search engines and use keyword stuffing to boost ranking. However, search engines like Google have become a lot smarter and can penalize sites that use this as an exploit.

There are different ways you can do keyword stuffing in your content. For instance, repeating words and phrases unnecessarily, listing or grouping text together unnaturally, or inserting blocks of keywords that appear out of context.

Here’s an example of how using the same keyphrase repeatedly in a single paragraph can lead to keyword stuffing.

Another way site owners can stuff search terms is by adding hidden text to the source code of the page. Users won’t be able to see this, but search engine crawlers will. Google does not like this practice.

That said, let’s look at how keyword stuffing can impact your site’s SEO.

Why is Keyword Stuffing Bad for SEO?

If you’re starting out with WordPress SEO, then it can be easy to get carried away and add the same keyword lots of times in the content. However, you should know that it goes against the web search policies of Google.

This could lead to a penalty from Google, where your site can be demoted in rankings. In worst cases, Google can also remove your page from its search engine results.

Besides that, keyword stuffing also leads to poor user experience because the content can be come hard to read. People might not find your content useful and exit the website. As a result, your site might look spammy and you won’t be able to build a healthy relationship with your audience.

Having said that, let’s look at different ways you can fix over-optimization and avoid keyword stuffing.

1. Measure Your Content’s Keyword Density

The easiest way of avoiding keyword stuffing is by measuring the keyword density of your content. Keyword density checks how many times a search term is used within the content.

You can use WPBeginner Keyword Density Checker to get started. It is a free tool that doesn’t require signup, registration, or installation.

Simply enter the URL or text of your content into the tool and click the ‘Check’ button.

Next, the tool will analyze your content and show you the results.

You can then see how many times a keyword is being used on the web page. For instance, in the screenshot below, you can see the word ‘parrotfish’ occurs 28 times or has a 13.66% density.

The Free WPBeginner Keyword Density Checker Tool

After finding the density of the search term, you can then edit your content and remove words and phrases that are repeated multiple times.

A best SEO practice suggests that keyword density should be around 2%. You can use this as a guideline and ensure your content isn’t over-optimized.

2. Assign a Primary Keyword to Each Content

Another way you can fix over-optimization for SEO is by assigning a primary keyword or phrase to each blog post and page.

You should conduct keyword research and pick a search term that best represents the main topic of your content. This way, your content will focus on a specific issue and you’ll be better able to fulfill the search intent

If you try to optimize a web page with multiple keywords with different intent, then you’ll leave your site in a big mess. It will confuse search engines from understanding your content and who it is for, which will prevent your page from ranking for the right keyword.

There are different keyword research tools you can use to find the primary search term for your content. We recommend using Semrush, as it is a complete SEO tool that offers powerful features.

You get a detailed overview of the keyword along with other valuable information. For instance, Semrush shows search volume, intent, keyword difficulty, and more for the search term.

Once you’ve found a primary keyword, you can use the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin to optimize your content for the search term. AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress that lets you add focus keyphrases to each post and page.

Adding focus keyphrase for your blog post

The plugin analyzes your content for the keyphrase, shows a score, and provides tips to improve keyword optimization. AIOSEO also integrates with Semrush to help you find more related keywords.

To learn more, please see our guide on how to properly use focus keyphrases in WordPress.

3. Use Synonyms and Related Keywords

You can avoid keyword stuffing by using LSI (latent semantic indexing) or related keywords for your content.

These are search terms that are closely related to the primary keyword. Related keywords also help search engines better understand your content.

Using different variations of keywords, synonyms, or long tail phrases can also help avoid keyword stuffing. It gives you more flexibility in incorporating different topics into your article.

You can find related keywords using the WPBeginner’s Keyword Generator tool. Simply enter your main search term or topic in the search bar and click the ‘Analyze’ button.

The tool is 100% free to use and generates over 300 keyword ideas.

You can then use different variations in your article to avoid keyword stuffing.

Besides that, you can also search the primary keyword on Google and then scroll down to see related searches.

This will give you even more keyword variations to use in your content and fix over-optimization issues.

4. Add Value by Extending the Word Count

Next, you can create long-format content to cover the topic in detail and help achieve higher rankings.

Extending the word count gives you the opportunity to cover multiple sub-topics, answer different questions users might have, and easily use keyword variations to avoid stuffing.

This also helps you use different search terms naturally instead of forcing them in every sentence. Plus, it offers a better reading experience for users.

While extending the word count will help avoid keyword stuffing, you should also focus on content quality. Google and other search engines emphasize creating content that’s valuable. So, we recommend writing for your users instead of focusing on keyword placement.

One way of extending the word count and diversifying the use of keywords is by adding a FAQ section at the bottom of the post.

5. Include Keywords in On-Page SEO Optimization

You can also avoid keyword stuffing and fix over optimization by placing the target search term in different places during the on-page SEO process.

On-page SEO is optimizing a webpage for search engines and users. It refers to anything you do on the page itself to boost its rankings in search engine page results (SERP).

By spreading the placement of keywords across different page elements, you can easily fix keyword stuffing issues. For instance, there are different page elements where you can add the main keyword. These include the title, meta description, subheadings, permalink, and more.

With AIOSEO, it is very easy to perform on-page SEO and ensure your content is properly optimized. You can add meta descriptions, focus keyphrases, build internal links, and get suggestions for improvement.

Similarly, adding keywords to image alt text lets you rank for image search and allows you to diversify the use of primary search terms across the content.

It can help show screenshots from your blog post as featured snippets, helping you get more traffic.

Adding alt text, a description, caption, and more to images in WordPress

You can learn more by following our tips to optimize your blog posts for SEO.

We hope this article helped you learn how to avoid keyword stuffing and fix over-optimization in SEO. You may also want to see our guide on a 13-point WordPress SEO checklist for beginners and must-have WordPress plugins for business sites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Avoid Keyword Stuffing & Fix Over Optimization in SEO first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 13, 2023

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:

Install a WordPress SEO Plugin
Set Up Search Engine Webmaster Tools
Add Google Analytics to WordPress
Do Keyword Research for Your WordPress Site
Use LSI Keywords and Check for Keyword Stuffing
Optimize Your SEO Title and Meta Description
Use Short and SEO-Friendly URLs
Make Sure to Add Alt-Text to Your Images
Add Internal Links to Your Content
Improve the Readability of Your Content
Ensure that Search Engines Can Easily Find Your Website
Check Your WordPress Website Speed
Your WordPress Site Should Be Mobile Ready

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.

Adding alt text to an image in the WordPress block editor

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

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

Viewing or editing the alt text for your image in the WordPress media library

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 » 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.

Search Engine Visibility Setting in WordPress

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 our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 13-Point WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners first appeared on WPBeginner.

January 6, 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.

How to 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
Method 2: Checking Keyword Rankings With Google Search Console
Method 3: Checking Keyword Rankings With Ahrefs
Using Keyword Rankings to Get More Traffic in WordPress
Learning What Your Visitors Do on Your Website

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.

Using Semrush to check that your blog is ranking for the right keywords

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 website’s performance in search results.

Finding your keyword positions in Google Search Console

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

The Ahrefs keyword research and SEO tool

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 our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Check If Your WordPress Blog Posts Are Ranking for the Right Keywords first appeared on WPBeginner.

September 14, 2022

How to Add Your Website to Bing Webmaster Tools

Do you want to submit your WordPress site to Bing Webmaster Tools?

Bing is among the top search engines in the world. Submitting your site to its webmaster tool helps you monitor your site’s performance and keyword rankings and fix indexing issues.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add your websites to Bing Webmaster Tools.

How to add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools

What is Bing Webmaster Tools?

Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service by Microsoft that allows you to add your website to Bing search engine results.

This free tool helps your WordPress SEO by optimizing your site for Bing, so you can get more traffic.

The webmaster tools help you monitor and track your site’s performance in Bing. You can find out which keywords people use to find your site, so you can optimize those search terms in the content and get more traffic.

You can also see how Bing crawls and indexes your content. This helps to uncover and resolve indexing issues that might be preventing a blog post from appearing in Bing search results.

Aside from that, Bing Webmaster Tools shows your site’s backlinks and which websites you are linking to. It also helps remove content that you don’t want to display on Bing search results and scan for potential malware or spam issues that can threaten your WordPress website security.

That said, let’s see how you can add a website to Bing Webmaster Tools using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) and WPCode plugin. We’ll also show how you can use the webmaster tool and import your site from Google Search Console.

You can use the links below to jump to the method you want to use.

Method 1: Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using AIOSEO
Method 2: Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using WPCode
Import Your Website from Google Search Console
Bonus: How to Use Bing Webmaster Tools

Method 1: Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using AIOSEO

The best way to add a website to Bing Webmaster Tools is using All in One SEO (AIOSEO).

It is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and helps you optimize your site search engines without technical knowledge or the need to hire an expert.

Note that we’ll use the AIOSEO Lite version for this tutorial because it is free and includes the ‘Webmaster Tools Verification’ feature. There is also an AIOSEO Pro version which includes more advanced features like link assistant, redirections, video sitemaps, and more.

Next, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO » General Settings from your WordPress dashboard. Next, head to the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab and select the ‘Bing Webmaster Tools’ option.

Next, you’ll need to enter the Bing Verification Code. Let’s see how you can access the code in the webmaster tool.

How to Get Verification Code in Bing Webmaster Tools

First, you’ll need to visit the Bing Webmaster Tools website and click the ‘Get started’ button.

We suggest opening the Bing Webmaster Tools website in a new browser window or tab because you’ll need to switch back to your WordPress admin dashboard to complete the verification process.

After that, you’ll need to sign in to your account.

You can use Microsoft, Google, or Facebook accounts to log in. Simply click on any options and choose your email address to sign in to the webmaster tool.

Next, Bing Webmaster Tools will show you 2 options to add your website.

You can import your sites from Google Search Console or manually add your website.

We’ll use the manual method to get the verification code.

Go ahead and enter your website address under the ‘Add your site manually’ section and then click the ‘Add’ button.

When adding your WordPress website, make sure to enter the URL used by WordPress. That’s because Bing will see HTTP and HTTPS as different sites. It will also consider your domain’s WWW and non-WWW versions as two separate websites.

To check which URL is used by WordPress, simply login to your WordPress admin area and head to Settings » General. Then look for the link in the ‘Site Address (URL)’ field.

Once you add this website URL in Bing Webmaster Tools, a window will slide in from the right.

Here you will see different methods for verifying your website, including an XML file, HTML meta tag, and adding CNAME records to DNS.

For this tutorial, we’ll use the HTML Meta Tag method. When you click the ‘HTML Meta Tag’ option, Bing gives you a validation code you need to install on your website.

Go ahead and click the ‘Copy’ button to copy this line of code.

Different methods for verifying your site

Next, you’ll need to add the code to your WordPress website.

Add Verification Code & Verify Your Site in Bing Webmaster Tools

You can now head back to the WordPress admin browser window or tab.

After that, simply go to All in One SEO » General Settings from your WordPress dashboard.

Now, head to the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab and enter the HTML Meta Tag you copied earlier in the ‘Bing Verification Code’ field.

When you do that, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Change’ button at the top.

After adding the HTML meta tag to your website, go back to the Bing Webmaster Tools tab or window and click the ‘Verify’ button.

Verify your site after entering meta tag

Next, you’ll see a message in Bing Webmaster Tools that your verification was successful.

You can then close the message and view your Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Method 2. Add Website to Bing Webmaster Tools Using WPCode

Another method of adding your website to Bing Webmaster Tools is using WPCode. It is the best WordPress code snippet plugin and helps you manage your website’s scripts. You can easily use WPCode to add the Bing Webmaster Tools HTML code to your website.

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

Upon activation, you can go to Code Snippets » Header & Footer from your WordPress admin panel. Here, you’ll need to add the HMTL code provided by Bing Webmaster Tools.

Paste code into the header box in WPCode

Access HTML Meta Tag & Verify Your Website

You can find the HTML code by going to the Bing Webmaster Tools website and logging into your account.

Once signed in, simply add your website URL under the ‘Add your site manually’ field and click the ‘Add’ button.

On the next screen, Bing will show you multiple methods for verifying your website in the webmaster tool.

Go ahead and select the ‘HTML Meta Tag’ option and copy the code.

After copying the code, you can head to your WordPress admin panel and go to the Code Snippets » Header & Footer page.

Next, you’ll need to paste the HTML meta tag into the ‘Header’ section.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Now that you’ve added the HTML meta tag to your site, simply go back to the Bing Webmaster Tools tab or window and click the ‘Verify’ button.

Bing Webmaster Tools will now show a message that your verification was successful.

Simply close the message to view the webmaster tool dashboard.

Import Your Website from Google Search Console

You can also add your WordPress site to Bing Webmaster Tools by importing it from Google Search Console.

If you use this method, then you don’t have to worry about verifying your website by adding an HTML code. However, Bing will need access to your Google account, which could be a security risk if either your Webmaster Tools or Google account gets compromised.

To start, you can log in to Bing using your Microsoft, Bing, or Facebook account.

Next, go ahead and click the ‘Import’ button under the Import your site from the GSC section.

After that, you’ll see a message showing you what data will be imported from the Google Search Console account and how Bing will use it.

Simply click the ‘Continue’ button to move ahead.

Next, you’ll need to select your Google account to sign in.

Go ahead and select the account that you use for logging into Google Search Console.

On the next screen, Bing will request access to your Google account.

Simply click the ‘Allow’ button to continue.

Next, you will see websites that are connected to Google Search Console.

Go ahead and select any websites you’d like to import into Bing Webmaster Tools and click the ‘Import’ button.

You’ll now see a message that your website has been successfully imported.

You can click the ‘Done’ button to close the window and view the Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Bonus: How to Use Bing Webmaster Tools

In the Webmaster Tools dashboard, you have access to many different tools and options. Do note that Bing will take up to 48 hours to reflect data in its webmaster tools reports after setting it up on your WordPress site.

For example, you can view your site’s search performance by going to the Search Performance tab. You can then use this data to see which search terms people use to find your website and perform keyword research to develop new content ideas.

Similarly, the tool also lets you inspect a specific URL to see if there are any crawling issues. You can simply enter the post or page link in the URL Inspection tab and view the errors.

With Bing Webmaster Tools, you can submit your website sitemap in the Bing Webmaster Tools to help the search engine to discover new content quickly.

For more details, please see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.

Plus, you can scan for any errors that could be preventing your content from appearing in Bing search results.

If a blog post or landing page isn’t appearing in the search results, then you can go to the ‘URL Submission’ tab and manually submit your content for indexing.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools. You can also see our guide on WooCommerce SEO made easy, and our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools to grow your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Your Website to Bing Webmaster Tools first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 11, 2021

11-Point WordPress SEO Audit Checklist to Boost Your Rankings

Do you want to perform an SEO audit of your WordPress website so you can improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic?

Search engine optimization can be tricky if you don’t know what’s working and what’s not. By performing an SEO audit, you can analyze your site, find opportunities for improvement, and resolve critical issues.

In this article, we’ll go through a WordPress SEO audit checklist to boost your rankings.

What Is an SEO Audit?

Optimizing your WordPress website for search engines is important for attracting more visitors and growing your audience. However, many business owners don’t know if their SEO strategy is working or not.

This is where SEO audit comes in handy. It is a process of finding out if your website is properly optimized to rank better in search results.

By conducting SEO audits, you can also uncover critical issues on your WordPress website that might be stopping you from ranking higher in search engine results.

Then, based on the results from the audit, you can make adjustments to your WordPress SEO strategy, resolve any issues, and optimize your site.

How to Perform an SEO Audit in WordPress

There are many SEO tools in the market that can help you audit your WordPress website. However, not all of them will let you conduct an audit inside WordPress, so you don’t have to leave your site.

To perform an SEO audit of your WordPress website, we recommend using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) WordPress plugin.

It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress and helps you optimize your site for search engines without any technical knowledge.

The plugin offers an SEO Analysis Tool that allows you to perform a complete website SEO audit in your WordPress dashboard. It monitors your site and highlights critical issues, and then offers actionable insights to help you boost your organic traffic and keyword rankings.

You can get the SEO Analysis Tool in the AIOSEO free version. There is also a premium version of AIOSEO that offers advanced features like a redirection manager, schema markup, local SEO, powerful sitemap tools, and more.

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

Once the plugin is active, you can head over to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress dashboard.

Then under the SEO Audit Checklist tab, you’ll see an overall site score and a complete SEO checklist. A score of 70 or above is good, and it means that your site is well optimized for search engines.

AIOSEO will check your website on different parameters. It will then highlight critical issues on your site that could hurt your SEO and provide suggestions for improving your rankings.

AIOSEO is a great tool to use to continuously monitor your site, so you’re aware of any big SEO issues that could hurt your rankings and traffic.

Besides that, it’s smart to do your own SEO audit once or twice a year to make sure everything on your site is working as expected.

The SEO audit checklist below can also help you troubleshoot any sudden drops in traffic, so you can fix the issue and recover your rankings.

That being said, let’s look at the SEO audit checklist for your WordPress blog.

1. Make Sure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines

When conducting a WordPress SEO audit, first you’ll want o make sure that your website is visible to search engines like Google and Bing.

WordPress has a built-in option to prevent search engines from crawling your website. If you’ve enabled that option, then Google or any other search engine will not list your site in the search results.

To view the setting, you can head over to Settings » Reading from your WordPress dashboard. After that, ensure that the ‘Search Engine Visibility option is not checked.

If it is enabled, then simply uncheck the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

You can check and see if your site is indexed in Google by searching site:example.com in Google. Just replace “example.com” with your own domain.

If you just launched your site or recently changed the setting above, then it may take a few days to get indexed. You can also see our guide on how to get new content indexed faster.

2. Ensure That Your Site is Using HTTPS

The next SEO audit checklist item is to find out if your website has an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between your user’s browser and your website server.

Google and other search engines will give priority to secure website that use HTTPS over those that are still using HTTP.

You can check if your site is secure by looking for a padlock sign in your browser’s search bar.

If you don’t have an SSL certificate, then see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site and how to move your site from HTTP to HTTPS.

3. Check If All Versions of Your URL Lead to the Same Site

Now, you should check that the www and non-www versions or HTTP and HTTPS versions of your URL are redirected to the same website.

For example, if someone enters https://www.example.com, https://example.com, http://www.example.com, or http://example.com in their browser, then they should see the same website.

You can check your primary WordPress URL by going to Settings » General and then look at the address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.

If different versions of your site’s URLs don’t redirect to the same location, then Google will consider the two URLs as separate websites.

As a result, it won’t know which URL to prioritize while indexing and could lead to duplicate content issues.

If you’re using AIOSEO, then it will automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, which will let Google know of your preference and prevent any issues.

4. Improve Indexing with an XML Sitemap

The next thing to check is whether there’s an XML sitemap and if it’s submitted to search engines.

An XML sitemap helps search engines to find and index your website pages easily. It also allows website owners to tell search engines about the most important pages on their website.

While having a sitemap won’t instantly boost your search engine rankings, it will help search engines crawl your website better.

For example, suppose you’re starting a new website. In that case, a sitemap will help Google or Bing to quickly discover new content on your website, as you won’t have many backlinks initially.

To create sitemaps, you can use the AIOSEO WordPress plugin. Simply head over to All in One SEO » Sitemaps from your WordPress dashboard and go to the ‘General Sitemap’ tab.

After that, make sure that the toggle for ‘Enable Sitemap’ is switched on.

You can also preview the sitemap and use different options provided by the WordPress plugin to edit the sitemap. Besides that, the plugin also allows you to create video, news, and RSS sitemaps for your WordPress site.

Once the sitemap is created, you can submit it to different search engines like Google and Bing. For more details, check out our guide on how to create a sitemap in WordPress.

5. Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website

A broken link or dead link occurs when a link goes to a page that no longer exists at that URL. In such cases, you’ll see a 404 not found error when you click on the broken link.

Some commons reason why you see a 404 error is because the WordPress site was moved to a new domain, the page was deleted, or it was moved to a new location.

Having a lot of broken links can be bad for your site’s SEO. They can have a negative impact on your keyword rankings and user experience, since search engines and website users won’t find the page they’re looking for.

That’s why when you’re conducting an SEO audit, it’s important to look for dead links and fix them.

To find broken links, we recommend using MonsterInsights. It’s the best Analytics solution for WordPress and it automatically tracks 404 errors on your site in Google Analytics.

MonsterInsights monitors broken links without slowing down your website like other broken link plugins do.

Once you’ve found broken links on your website, you can fix them by setting up 301 redirections.

The easiest way to redirect dead links is by using AIOSEO’s powerful redirection manager. It will also logs 404 errors on your website and allows you to set up redirects.

You can check out our complete guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

6. Check If You Are Missing Meta Tags

Meta tags are snippets of HTML code that help search engines like Google to understand what a page is about, so it can rank it for relevant searches.

There are different types of meta tags, but the two most important tags are the title tag and meta description. Search engines will use this information to understand the content of the page.

Usually the title tag and meta description are displayed in search results, though Google may sometimes change the text depending on various factors like what that user is searching for.

When performing an SEO audit, you should ensure that the meta tags aren’t missing from your blog posts or product pages.

That’s because your title is the first thing people will read in the search engine page results and decide whether they want to click on your link or not.

Similarly, meta descriptions are short text that appears under your post title and URL on search engine page results. They help in describing your article to search engines and users.

You can add meta tags to any blog post or landing page using AIOSEO. Simply scroll down to the ‘AIOSEO Settings’ meta box in your WordPress editor and add your title and description.

7. Ensure You’ve Got Internal and External Links

The next thing to check during an SEO audit is to make sure that the pages you’re trying to rank have internal and external links.

Internal links are links from other pages on the same website, while external links or outbound links are links to other website. They’re are crucial for your SEO success, yet many business owners overlook their importance.

Search engines follow different links to find and index new pages in the search results. Creating internal and external links allows search engine crawlers to discover new content on your website and boost rankings easily.

Not only that, but links also help your readers to navigate your website or find source for stats and other information.

You can use an SEO tool like Semrush to run a site audit, which will show you any pages that could use more internal links.

If you need help adding links to your site, then check out our guide on how to add a link in WordPress.

8. Measure Your Website Loading Speed

Google uses your website loading speed as a ranking factor. When you’re performing an SEO audit, it’s important to check for things that can slow down your website.

First, you’ll need to find out how fast your website loads for your users.

If you’re already using MonsterInsights, then you can check the Site Speed report inside your WordPress admin area.

Once you’ve connected Google Analytics to your WordPress website, simply head over to Insights » Reports from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Site Speed’ tab.

You can see a score for your site’s load time for desktop and mobile. Besides that, the report also shows different metrics that are important for measuring how fast your website is.

Next, if you scroll down, then you’ll notice that MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals that you should aim for on your website.

Using the report, you can audit your site and find how to load your web pages faster. For example, you can use a caching plugin to improve the server response time or use a content delivery network (CDN) to boost website speed.

For more tips, you can check out our guide on how to run a site speed test, and then see our ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

9. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Responsive

The next item to check in a WordPress SEO audit is whether your website is mobile responsive or not.

Google uses your site’s mobile version for indexing, instead of desktop. If you want to boost your rankings, then your website needs to be mobile-ready.

To find out how mobile-friendly your website is, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Simply enter your site’s URL and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

The tool will now analyze your website and show the test results whether your site is mobile-ready or not.

If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, then you can change your website theme and select a responsive WordPress theme. See our guide on how to properly change your WordPress theme so you don’t lose any data or traffic.

10. Scan for Malware and Unwanted Vulnerabilities

Another essential thing to check while conducting an SEO audit is to scan for security risks. If Google Safe Browsing flags your website for malware or unwanted software, then it will show a warning to your visitors.

This can hurt your SEO, as people will avoid visiting your site. Google will also lower your rankings since your site contains malware and harmful programs.

To remove malware and other suspicious files from your website, you’ll need a WordPress security scanner.

At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it’s the best WordPress firewall and security service. It checks your website for malicious code, malware, spam injection, and other vulnerabilities and helps clear your site.

Sucuri also monitors your site for potential threats 24/7 and blocks any suspicious activity, hacking attempts, DDoS attacks, and more. Not only that, but it also helps in protecting the server-side.

If Google Safe Browsing flags your site as unsafe, then check out our guide on how to fix ‘this site ahead contains harmful programs’ error in WordPress.

11. Track Your Keyword Rankings for Drop in Traffic

Finally, it’s important to keep track of your keyword rankings when conducting an SEO audit and check their positions in case there’s a drop in traffic.

Keeping an eye on your keyword rankings not only helps you see which search terms people use to find your website, but you can also find opportunities to get even more traffic.

To track your keyword rankings, you can use Google Search Console. First, you’ll need to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Once that’s done, you can log in to your Google Search Console account and head over to the ‘Performance’ report. Next, scroll down and see the search queries your site is ranking on.

Besides using Google Search Console, you can also use an SEO tool like Semrush to track keyword rankings.

Semrush is a popular keyword rank tracker tool that’s used by many professional marketers and SEO experts. All you have to do is enter your site’s URL in the ‘Organic Research’ option and click the ‘Search’ button.

From here you can view your top keywords, track their positions, and even monitor position changes.

If you’re seeing your rankings decline, you can use our guide on how to optimize your blog posts for SEO so you can recover your traffic and rankings.

We hope this article helped you learn how to perform a WordPress SEO audit using the checklist and boost your rankings. You may also want to check out our guide on the best email marketing services and our comparison of best keyword research tools.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 11-Point WordPress SEO Audit Checklist to Boost Your Rankings appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 14, 2021

How to Rank New WordPress Content Faster (In 6 Easy Steps)

Do you want to rank new WordPress content faster?

Sometimes search engines take some time to index new content, so your WordPress site may not show up in search results or get much traffic at first.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to easily rank new WordPress content faster with practical tips.

Why Is It Important to Rank New Content?

As a WordPress website owner, you’ll miss out on a ton of traffic if you don’t work on ranking your content from day one.

When you do, your content can gain higher search rankings and get more traffic from the start. Later on, your rankings will continue to improve as your site gets more credibility in search engines.

However, many websites struggle to get more organic traffic to their content right away.

Luckily, there are some easy to implement WordPress SEO best practices that can help. Simply follow the steps below to rank your new content and start getting more traffic right away.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily rank your new WordPress content faster.

1. Install All in One SEO for WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate All in One SEO for WordPress. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It allows you to easily optimize WordPress SEO without any special skills.

Note: There is a free version of All in One SEO available as well. However, we recommend using the premium version to unlock its full potential.

Upon activation, the plugin will launch a setup wizard which will walk you through the process to get started. Simply follow the on-screen instructions and you’ll be all set in a few clicks.

Setting up AIOSEO will automatically take care of many important search engine optimization tasks. For instance, if an older blog post is missing an SEO title or description, then the plugin can automatically generate those for you.

However, there’s a lot more that you can do with the plugin that will further boost search rankings for your new content.

For step-by-step instructions and more tips, see our complete guide on how to set up All in One SEO.

2. Add Your Website to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google to help website owners monitor their website performance in search results.

It allows you to track search rankings and get notified when Google is unable to crawl or index any page on your website. You’ll also be able to notify Google of any new content you publish automatically by using a sitemap.

First, you need to visit the Google Search Console website and click on the start now button.

Next, you need to provide your website URL and click on the continue button.

Now, you’ll be asked to verify ownership of your website. There are several ways to do that, but we will show the HTML tag method because it is the easiest one.

Click on the HTML tag to expand it and then copy the code inside it.

All in One SEO for WordPress comes with a built-in tool to easily add this code to your website. Simply switch to the admin area of your WordPress website and go to the All in One SEO » General Settings page.

From here, you need to switch to the Webmaster tools page and click on the Google Search Console box to add your search console verification code.

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

You can now switch back to the Google Search Console tab and click on the Verify button.

That’s all! You’ve successfully added your website to Google Search Console.

3. Add XML Sitemaps to Google Search Console

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all your website content in an XML format, so search engines like Google can easily discover and index your content.

WordPress comes with its own basic XML sitemaps, which you can find by adding wp-sitemaps.xml at the end of your website address (for example, https://example.com/wp-sitemap.xml).

However, if you are using AIOSEO, then it generates its own XML sitemaps that are more powerful. It includes XML sitemaps, video sitemaps, news sitemaps, and RSS sitemaps as well.

AIOSEO sitemaps are also completely customizable, so you can decide exactly which content to include. You can even use your sitemap to help hide specific pages from Google.

You can view and manage your sitemaps by visiting All in One » Sitemaps.

To view your sitemap, simply click on the Open Sitemap button, or you can just add sitemap.xml at the end of your website domain (for example, https://example.com/sitemap.xml).

Next, login to your Google Search Console account dashboard and then click on the Sitemaps menu from the left column. After that, you need to add ‘sitemap.xml’ in the the ‘Add a New Sitemap’ field.

Click on the Submit button to continue.

Add RSS Sitemap to Google Search Console

All in One SEO also comes with an RSS Sitemap feature which contains your most recent blog posts.

Search engines recommend adding an RSS sitemap to your site, too. It is a smaller file and search engines can access it more frequently to look for new content.

First, you need to visit All in One SEO » Sitemaps page and switch to the RSS Sitemap tab.

From here you need to make sure that the RSS sitemap option is enabled. You can click on the Open Sitemap button to view it.

By default, the RSS sitemap URL has sitemap.rss added to your domain name (e.g. https://example.com/sitemap.rss).

Now you can switch back to Google Search Console dashboard and click on the Sitemaps menu. From here, add ‘sitemap.rss’ in the Add a New Sitemap option, and then click the Submit button.

That’s all. Google will now start using your sitemaps to find new content on your website more quickly.

4. Optimize Your New Content for Ranking

The first three tips mentioned above ensure that search engines can quickly find your content. Now let’s talk about how to prepare your new content for ranking faster in higher positions.

All in One SEO allows you to easily add a meta title and description to any post or page under the AIOSEO settings box below your content.

Below that, you can add the Focus Keyphrase that you want to rank for.
This allows All in One SEO to analyze your content for those focus keywords, and give you suggestions to improve your optimization.

You can view your overall SEO score at the top right corner of the screen.

Clicking on it will also show you actionable tips that you can apply to improve your content.

For more details, see our checklist on improving your blog posts for SEO.

5. Add Internal Links

An internal link is a link to another page on your own website. Internal linking to your own content has a huge impact on SEO.

To improve your SEO, it’s smart to make it a habit to add links to your most important content in any new content that you write. This can help to boost rankings for your older content.

However, it’s also important to add internal links that point to your new content when you publish it.

You can do this by editing your older articles to add links to your newer content whenever you publish. Many successful bloggers dedicate time to add internal links to new articles on a weekly or monthly basis.

6. Share Your Content

Another quick way to promote your new blog posts is by sharing them with your followers on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more.

To get the most engagement on social media, you want to make sure that your content looks good on every platform.

That’s where All in One SEO comes in. AIOSEO makes it possible to control how your content looks when it’s shared on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.

You can add Open Graph meta data to include proper thumbnail images for each article on your website.

For more details, see our complete social media cheat sheet for WordPress with step by step instructions on promoting your content on social media.

Bonus: Track Website Traffic

Finally, you need a way to make sure your new content is getting indexed and ranked properly.

The easiest way to track this is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and allows you to easily monitor your website traffic and rankings.

First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Once you have set up MonsterInsights, you can view your website performance directly from your WordPress dashboard.

MonsterInsights also shows you your search engine rankings, so you can track the performance of your content and make sure it’s indexed properly.

We hope this article helped you learn how to rank your new WordPress content faster. You may also want to see our guide on how to start your own podcast, or our expert comparison of the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Rank New WordPress Content Faster (In 6 Easy Steps) appeared first on WPBeginner.