Posted on

6 Best Online Grammar Checker Tools for WordPress (2024)

We’ve been blogging for a long time, so we know how important it is to write content that is both helpful and sounds good. That’s why we frequently use grammar checker tools to help us out.

Most web browsers have a built-in spellcheck tool. However, this feature doesn’t check for grammar errors or readability.

While we personally like to use Semrush and Grammarly, we know that other bloggers may have different needs. That’s why we tested all the most popular grammar checkers for WordPress bloggers and looked for the best options for all kinds of users.

In this article, we have hand-picked the best online grammar checker tools that you can use with WordPress.

Best Online Grammar Checker Tools for WordPress

For a snapshot of our expert choices, this table can help you find the best grammar tool quickly. For more detailed examples and discussion, continue reading.

#ToolReason for ChoicePricing (Starting)
🥇GrammarlyComprehensive grammar, plagiarism, and style checking, beginner-friendly.Free / $12/month
🥈SemrushMultiple tools help with readability, grammar, and SEO optimization.Free / $119.95/month
🥉GingerFree, web-based editor with a readability focus, ideal for authors.Free / $8.99/month
4QuillBotMultiple paraphrasing modes, plagiarism checker, summarizer, and more.Free / $9.95/month
5Hemingway EditorSupports 25+ languages and detects grammar and style issues in multiple languages.Free / $19.99 (desktop app)
6Language ToolSupports 25+ languages, detects grammar and style issues in multiple languages.Free / $5.83/month

Why Add a Grammar Checker Tool for WordPress?

Even the most experienced writers make mistakes. Proofreading your own articles often leads to making small, careless errors because we tend to rush through the pre-publish checklist.

Typos and grammar mistakes in your blog posts can make your content look unprofessional. It can also make your articles hard to understand, which is bad for the user experience.

One way to overcome this issue is to read your articles out loud. Listening to your voice can help you find mistakes and improve the overall readability score of your blog posts.

To help you with grammar and spelling, you can also use a grammar checker tool. These tools can detect spelling and grammar mistakes as you type. This saves you time on proofreading while improving content across your WordPress site.

That being said, let’s take a look at the best grammar checker tools that you can use on your WordPress website.

Note: When choosing grammar checker tools for this article, we tried each of these tools in our browser and test website. This helped us explore all the features, pros, and cons to provide you with the best recommendations.

1. Grammarly

Grammarly

Grammarly is a popular online grammar checker tool that you can use as a browser addon for Google Chrome, Firefox, and even Microsoft Edge. There is also an option for using a standalone tool, too, on the Grammarly website.

The tool detects and automatically corrects grammatical, spelling, and tonal errors directly in the WordPress block editor to improve sentence clarity.

Grammarly usually displays an indicator in the bottom right corner of the writing area. Clicking on it will show you the number of spelling, grammar, and contextual errors that will be highlighted with an underline as you write.

Pros

  • The tool offers suggestions for sentence rephrasing, vocabulary suggestions, style checks, citation support, and more.
  • It is the best plagiarism checker tool on the market.
  • Grammarly is super beginner-friendly, and it will work well with minimal setup.
  • The AI-powered suggestions are spot-on and help improve readability and clarity.

Cons

  • Grammarly offers a free plan, but it is very limited. To get more advanced suggestions and error checking, you will need to subscribe to the pro version.
  • The plagiarism checker does not work in the browser extension, so you will have to use the Grammarly website.

Why we recommend Grammarly: We recommend Grammarly if you are looking for a tool that can detect grammatical errors, plagiarism, and other issues at the same time. If you have just started a WordPress blog, then you can opt for the free plan to detect basic errors.

2. Semrush

Semrush

Semrush offers a couple of top-notch grammar checker tools. Each has a powerful set of features, including a readability checker that provides actionable tips for improving your content.

One tool is a free online proofreader that analyzes your blog post’s readability and tone of voice. It will suggest rewordings, instances to use a more active voice, and other ways to clarify and enhance your text.

Semrush proofreader tool

Additionally, Semrush has an SEO Writing Assistant in their main product to improve the overall SEO score of your content.

You can use it to optimize your article headlines for SEO, adjust article length, perform a plagiarism check, and make your content sound more natural.

Both free and paid accounts can use the writing assistant, but paid accounts get many more features.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to use the SEO Writing Assistant to improve SEO in WordPress.

Pros

  • Semrush comes with Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and WordPress add-ons that you can use to get real-time grammar suggestions in your WordPress content editor.
  • It offers a free Paraphrasing tool where you can add your text, and AI will rephrase it for better readability and engagement.
  • Semrush can catch your grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors in real-time. It also addresses common errors like misused words, sentence fragments, and more.
  • The SEO Writing Assistant provides a Flesch reading score and lets you compare your readability score with your top 10 competitors.

Cons

  • Semrush’s free plan is pretty restricted. Some features are available to free users in a limited capacity, while others are entirely locked behind a pro subscription.
  • If you want to add the tool to your WordPress content editor, you must buy it.

Why we recommend Semrush: Semrush has two different grammar tools that work well together. Semrush’s SEO writing assistant and free proofreading tool give users access to a readability checker, proofreader, summary generator, sentence rewriter, and more. This combination makes Semrush a complete package to help improve your content quality.

3. Ginger

Ginger

Ginger is another powerful spelling and grammar checker tool that you can use to enhance your writing skills and boost productivity. It is available as a browser addon and offers a great user experience.

Ginger comes with a sentence rephrasing tool that suggests other ways to express your ideas more clearly. It even has a personal dictionary where you can add custom phrases and words to help the tool understand your writing style.

Additionally, Ginger helps you identify clunky sentence structure by reading your blog posts out loud with natural pronunciation. This practice can make your content more engaging and natural for your audience.

Pros

  • It displays a tiny icon where you can access the grammar checker features in the bottom right corner of writing areas, including WordPress post editor, Gmail, Facebook, and more.
  • Ginger can translate your text in real time into over 60 languages.
  • It comes with a text-to-speech feature, an emoji keyboard, and a thesaurus.

Cons

  • Its free plan offers limited functionality.
  • Some users have reported glitches and bugs with the software.

Why we recommend Ginger: If you create and sell courses online, then Ginger’s grammar checker, rephrasing, and thesaurus tools can help you create concise and clear content for your students. It’s also a great option for multilingual websites due to its translation features.

4. QuillBot

QuillBot

QuillBot is an amazing AI writing assistant that offers a grammar checker for English, French, Spanish, and German. It also comes with a free extension for Google and Microsoft Word.

Besides that, the tool also has a built-in plagiarism checker that ensures your work is original and can scan up to 20 pages per month.

It even offers a summarizer that can condense your content into bullet points or a shorter paragraph. You can also adjust the length of the summary according to your liking by using the slider at the top of the tool.

Pros

  • QuillBot has a paraphrasing tool that comes with multiple modes for accuracy and a synonym slider. It can paraphrase your content in up to 23 languages.
  • It has a citation generator and a language translator.
  • The tool also gives insights into your content tone and lets you view your paraphrasing history.

Cons

  • The plagiarism checker tool is only available in the pro plan of QuillBot.
  • Its grammar checker only corrects basic typos and grammatical errors and cannot catch more complex mistakes like dangling modifiers or incorrect punctuation.

Why we recommend QuillBot: It is a great choice for small businesses looking for a free grammar checker and paraphrasing tool.

5. Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway is a free editor that you can use to check your articles for readability, grammar, and spelling errors. However, since it is web-based, it doesn’t work directly inside your WordPress post editor.

The tool shows you a readability score of your content and suggests improvements. The web app also has a clean and distraction-free layout, which can help you assess your content quickly before hitting the publish button in WordPress.

Hemingway uses different colors to identify various issues, making editing easier for users.

Pros

  • The tool helps with passive voice detection, adverb usage, and formatting suggestions.
  • It provides a word count and analyzes sentence structures for improvement.
  • Hemingway is also available as a paid desktop app for both Windows and Mac, which allows you to post directly to WordPress.

Cons

  • Hemingway often overly simplifies all the sentences in the content and sometimes removes the complex ideas completely.
  • It only supports the English language.
  • It does not provide as much comprehensive grammar correction as other tools on the list.

Why we recommend Hemingway Editor: If you are an author on a WordPress site, then Hemingway can be a great choice due to its robust readability checker. If you write technical topics and want to simplify the language for readers, then you can opt for this tool as well.

6. LanguageTool

LanguageTool

LanguageTool is an amazing grammar and paraphrasing tool that is available as a free add-on for Chrome, Firefox, Google Docs, and LibreOffice. It is also available as a web-based editor and a complete desktop app.

LanguageTool supports more than 25 languages including English, German, Polish, and Russian, making it a great choice for multilingual websites and multilingual authors.

The software can detect grammatical errors, style issues, word choice, punctuation, and sentence structure issues.

Pros

  • It has a text-to-speech feature.
  • It lets you create a personal dictionary.
  • LanguageTool can also provide suggestions for typography.

Cons

  • The free plan has a 20,000-character limit per text check.
  • Its integration with tools like Microsoft Word and Google Docs can be a bit clunky.

Why we recommend LanguageTool: It is the ideal grammar checker if you have a multilingual website and want to check your content for grammatical errors in multiple languages.

Which Is the Best Grammar Checker Tool for WordPress?

In our expert opinion, Semrush is the best grammar checker tool for WordPress due to its SEO Writing Assistant, proofreader, paraphrasing tool, and more. The tool easily fixes grammatical errors and effortlessly boosts your content’s SEO and readability.

However, if you have a simple WordPress blog, then you can opt for Grammarly or Ginger instead. Both of these tools are reliable grammar checkers that come with a suite of other tools like paraphrasing, personal dictionaries, plagiarism checkers, and more.

Similarly, if you are on a budget, then Hemingway and QuillBot are also good choices.

Frequently Asked Questions About Online Grammar Checker Tools

Here are some questions about WordPress grammar checker tools that are frequently asked by our readers:

Does ChatGPT check grammar?

ChatGPT does not have a built-in grammar checker. However, you can type in a prompt that asks the tool to proofread and optimize your content for readability.

For example, you can use a prompt like this:

“I want you to act as SEO editor and copywriter. I need you to proofread and analyze the following text and optimize it for the focus keyword. I also need you to correct any grammar mistakes in the article. Ask me to provide you with the article text and focus keyword.”

After submitting the prompt, you can copy and paste your blog post into the ChatGPT text box, which will then detect and fix any grammatical mistakes.

For more ideas, see our beginner’s guide on the best ChatGPT prompts for bloggers, marketers, and social media.

Does Google have a grammar checker?

Google does not have a grammar checker that can be used as an extension on your browser or WordPress editor.

However, it does offer a built-in grammar checker for tools like Google Docs and Google Search.

How do I check for spelling and grammar errors in Microsoft Word?

You can easily check for spelling and grammatical mistakes in Microsoft Word by downloading Semrush’s extension for the software.

However, if you are looking for a free solution, then you can also use LanguageTool with Word.

Best WordPress Guides for Improving Writing

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 6 Best Online Grammar Checker Tools for WordPress (2024) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

How to Get More Global Visitors (WordPress International SEO Tips)

Wouldn’t it be great if you could attract more visitors from around the world to your website and increase traffic?

As the president of a popular WordPress SEO plugin, I’ve seen a growing trend toward the need for localization (adapting your content to a specific target audience) on websites and in online marketing.

I believe that many businesses can unlock tremendous potential by combining basic localization techniques with SEO best practices.

In this article, I will share proven international SEO tips that have helped me and many others, including entrepreneurs, marketers, and bloggers, to attract a global audience.

Note: This is a guest post by Benjamin Rojas, the president of All in One SEO, the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. This is an expert column that we publish on Thursdays, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

Tips on getting more international visitors

I will break down the article into step-by-step tips that you can use. If you want, you can also jump to a section by clicking the links below:

Why Target Global Audiences With International SEO?

As the president of one of the biggest WordPress SEO plugins on the market, I have customers from all over the world.

To earn these customers, my team ensures that All in One SEO can be translated easily (50+ languages and counting).

This is just one way to get more global customers, and there are plenty of ways that other businesses can do it.

Here are some of the benefits of targeting global audiences:

  • More traffic: Anyone from anywhere can visit your website. Why limit yourself? Going international means your audience can explode in size.
  • Understand broader customer needs: It’s not just about getting hits. It’s about understanding what different people need and want. This can help you tailor your content and marketing to convert more users.
  • Boost engagement: When you speak someone’s language, literally and culturally, they’re more likely to listen. That means more shares, more sales, and more feedback.
  • Stay ahead of competitors: Many businesses aren’t making the most of international SEO yet. Start now, and you’ll be steps ahead.

How to Target Users in Different Regions With International SEO

Over the years working in the SEO industry, I have learned that tiny changes in your SEO strategy can often lead to big and meaningful results.

One misconception about offering localized experiences is that it requires too much time and resources.

My experience has been totally different.

International SEO does require some effort, but it is quite easy, and the benefits are worth your time.

1. Choose Regions You Want to Target

Not all businesses and websites target international audiences.

However, for most websites, a huge chunk of visitors are coming from abroad, even when you are not specifically trying to reach any region in particular.

That’s not to say that you have to make your website available in every language. However, you can determine and target which languages and regions are the easiest low-hanging fruit.

The perfect tool for this is Google Analytics. It tracks your website visitors and shows you who they are, where they are coming from, and what they are interested in.

Many users have reported difficulty finding the reports they need in Google Analytics. I recommend that you use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

I use MonsterInsights because it makes Google Analytics so easy. You get all your important reports right inside the WordPress dashboard.

For instance, you get this ‘Top 10 Countries’ report showing where your visitors come from.

MonsterInsights showing top 10 countries

In this example screenshot, you can easily see countries where most people speak a language different than your website’s language.

You also see countries where users may speak the same language but have regional differences, such as currencies and cultural and geographical factors.

Reaching those customers by providing them with a more localized experience can bring in more users and revenue from these regions.

For more details, you can read this guide on how to track visitors to your WordPress website.

2. Translating Websites into Local Languages

Once you have found the regions you want to target, translating your website into local languages is the easiest way to offer a better user experience.

Only a decade ago, creating multilingual websites was not easy. However, now you have excellent tools and resources that make it a breeze.

The easiest way to serve multilingual content in WordPress is by using a WordPress translation plugin like WPML.

Is WPML the right multilingual plugin for your WordPress website?

It is one of the best translation plugins for WordPress and allows you to create a multilingual WordPress website easily.

You can translate your website by yourself or outsource translations. It is not too expensive, and the quality of human translations is typically high.

WPML also offers AI-powered automatic translations on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is built using state-of-the-art language models from Microsoft, Google, and DeepL.

Alternatives: MultilingualPress and TranslatePress

What Should You Translate?

The big question that comes next is whether you should translate a select few pages or your entire website.

From an SEO point of view, here is how I see it:

Translating just a handful of pages means you’re missing out on ranking opportunities in other languages. Having a higher number of translated pages creates more chances to climb the search engine ladder.

Remember, internal linking is a major player in SEO. To make it work on a multilingual site, you need enough translated content to create meaningful links between pages.

So, my advice is: Go for a full site translation. This will boost your SEO and enhance the user experience, which search engines love.

3. Choose URL Structure

When offering different versions of a website to different regions, your WordPress translation plugin will ask you to choose a URL structure.

You can use any of the following URL structures:

  • Subdomain URL structure (Example: https://en-uk.yourwebsite.com). The disadvantage of this method is that search engines consider subdomains to be individual websites. Your root domain will not benefit from this structure.
  • Subdirectory URL structure (Example: https://yourwebsite.com/en-uk/) This URL structure takes advantage of your root domain’s authority and is good for rankings in many cases.
  • Country-level domain names (Example: https://yourwebsite.co.uk). For this method, you will need to register domain names for each country you want to target. The advantage is that ranking in a country with a local domain name is easier. The disadvantage is that this will be treated as a standalone website with little benefit to your main domain name.
  • Language parameter in URL (Example: https://yourwebsite.com/?lang=en-gb). This method is not recommended because it makes it difficult for you to manage URLs and for users to realize they are seeing a geo-targeted page version.

In my opinion, a subdirectory URL structure offers the most SEO benefits for small businesses. It is also easier to manage and set up redirects.

4. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the technique used by SEO experts and marketers to find the search terms their target audience is using.

It applies to international SEO as well.

For example, while your website might rank for “Sneakers” in the United States, in the UK, your customers could be searching for “Trainers,” and in Canada, they might use the term “Runners.”

You can see this in action on the Nike website. It has highly optimized pages for ‘Trainers’ on the Nike U.K. store, ‘Sneakers’ on the Nike U.S. store, and ‘Shoes’ on Nike India.

Using keywords for different regions

You can select countries while doing your keyword research to find the search volume.

I recommend using SEOBoost for keyword research. It is an all-in-one tool for on-page SEO and keyword research.

SEOBoost keyword research

Simply enter your main keyword and then select the region you want to target.

It will generate a comprehensive analysis of search rankings, content analysis, and what you need to outrank the competition.

Alternative Tools: Semrush, LowFruits, WPBeginner Keyword Generator

If you haven’t done keyword research before, then you may find WPBeginner’s keyword research tutorial a solid starting point.

5. Optimizing Pages for Multi-Regional SEO

I have seen many businesses beating the competition with effective on-page optimization.

This becomes even more important if you are offering multilingual content targeting different regions.

This is where your WordPress SEO plugin comes in handy.

You will need an SEO plugin like All in One SEO, which helps you optimize each page with different SEO titles and descriptions.

Aside from the copy on your page, post, or product content, you will need to pay attention to SEO settings.

Depending on which translation plugin you are using, you can edit the SEO settings in the translation editor. For example, here is the WPML translation editor, where the AIOSEO settings are highlighted.

Translating AIOSEO settings in WPML

Ensure you optimize each page for the focus keyword you chose for that region.

Basically, you will repeat the steps to optimize your blog posts for SEO but for a different locale and region.

Submit Multilingual Sitemaps

Once you have started translating your content into other languages, you need to tell search engines about the translated content.

The best way to do this is with XML sitemaps. These documents tell search engines about all the content on your website, which makes it easier for them to crawl and rank your posts and pages.

If you are using All in One SEO for WordPress, then you can go to the AIOSEO » Sitemaps page to configure sitemaps.

AIOSEO sitemaps

All in One SEO replaces the default WordPress XML sitemaps with advanced features. It automatically includes all your translated content in your sitemaps and even supports RSS, video, news, and HTML sitemaps.

After that, you can go ahead and submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.

Create Multilingual Landing Pages and Homepages

Unfortunately, many businesses often overlook their landing and home pages when thinking about regional user experience.

Including cultural references and location-specific content on your pages can help with conversions. However, overlooking these elements may cause your landing and home pages for different regions to be less effective in converting traffic into customers.

I recommend creating pages using a page builder like SeedProd. It is a beginner-friendly WordPress page builder with an intuitive drag-and-drop design tool.

What the SeedProd page builder interface looks like

This way, you can easily create duplicate landing pages and translate them. You can also create separate home pages for different regions.

Basically, this approach significantly reduces the amount of work required without compromising on conversions.

6. Redirecting Users to Regional Content

In my experience, a personalized user experience is great for conversions. For that reason, you might be considering automatically sending users to content made for their region and language.

That’s a big NO!

Google and other search engines discourage setting up automatic redirects for translated versions of your website by detecting users’ IP addresses or cookies.

This is because automatic redirects may stop search bots from crawling all versions of your site and prevent users from viewing content they originally found.

Instead, it’s better to set up a language or region switcher for your multilingual and multi-region content. This will inform users that the content is available in their language or region and give them an opportunity to switch.

Prompt users to switch language

Note: All top WordPress translation plugins come with language switchers.

What About Manual Redirects?

In some cases, you may need to set up manual redirects. For instance, if you change the URL structure from a subdomain to a directory URL.

These types of redirects may be necessary because the old URL structure would result in 404 errors.

You can use the All in One SEO redirection manager to set those redirects. It lets you set up site redirects and use REGEX to save time.

All in One SEO redirects

Alternatively, you can use the free Redirection plugin to set up redirects. For instructions, see how to set up redirects in WordPress.

7. Let Google Know About Different Versions

Google is pretty good at detecting content in different languages and showing it to users in those regions. However, I still recommend explicitly telling search engines about the language or region of your content.

This can be done using the hreflang HTML tag. Most WordPress translation plugins will automatically add that to the header of your site. It is a tiny string that looks like this:

Hreflang tag added to the HTML

Why Is It Important?

Let’s say you have three versions of a page, all in English, but they show prices in regional currencies.

The content of those pages may appear quite similar to search engines and could be considered duplicate content.

By adding the hreflang tag to the HTML code, you tell search engines about the different versions of the page to avoid duplicate content.

I hope this article helps you attract a more global audience with your international SEO strategy. You may also want to check out whether AI content is bad for SEO or look at these case studies of websites that doubled their traffic in 6 months.

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 Get More Global Visitors (WordPress International SEO Tips) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

The Ultimate WordPress SEO Migration Checklist (For Beginners)

Many of our readers are worried that moving a WordPress website or switching to a different SEO plugin will affect their website search rankings.

Search is the primary traffic source for most websites, so you want to be extremely careful when migrating.

In this tutorial, we will share the ultimate WordPress SEO migration checklist. It will ensure that all your SEO settings are preserved during the migration without hurting any of your search rankings.

A handy checklist to assist you during WordPress SEO migration

Here is a list of topics we will cover in this guide:

What Is SEO Migration?

SEO migration is a set of best practices for maintaining search rankings and SEO settings while moving or making major changes to a website.

Search is the #1 source of traffic for most websites. It would be bad to lose some or all of that traffic during a migration.

Here are some common scenarios when you will need SEO migration:

  • Moving a WordPress website to a new domain name
  • Moving your website to a new WordPress hosting provider
  • Switching to a better WordPress SEO plugin

You need to ensure that you take proper precautions to preserve all your website data and SEO.

Following this step-by-step checklist will allow you to do proper WordPress SEO migration without losing rankings and traffic.

Preparing Your Website for Migration

First, you need to prepare your WordPress website for migration. You will do that by setting up proper SEO tracking and making a complete website backup.

Step 1: Track Your SEO Performance

First, you want to make sure that you can properly understand how your website is doing in search before you begin the migration.

This will help you compare your search performance after the migration and determine if the migration had any negative or positive impact on your traffic.

You’ll need two tools to track this data.

1. Set Up Google Analytics

The easiest way to track and monitor your website traffic is by using MonsterInsights. It helps you easily install Google Analytics on your website, which monitors your website traffic and shows you where your users are coming from.

MonsterInsights

For more details, see our tutorial on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Note: If you haven’t used Google Analytics before, then it will take some time before it starts showing any data.

Once you have set up MonsterInsights, you will be able to see your website traffic performance by visiting the Insights » Reports page.

dashboard-reports-monsterinsights

For more details, see our guide on how to track website visitors in WordPress.

2. Set Up Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that helps website owners track their performance in Google search results.

First, you will need to sign up and add your website to Google Search Console.

After that, you will be asked to verify ownership of your website. You can do that by adding a code snippet to your site’s header.

We recommend using All in One SEO for WordPress to verify your site’s ownership. It makes it easy to add a Google Search Console verification code.

All in One SEO - Google Search Console verification

More importantly, All in One SEO has the most powerful XML sitemaps, which you can then add to your Google Search Console account to improve how Google crawls your website.

Once your website is verified, you will be able to access a treasure trove of data. You can see it in your Google Search Console dashboard under the Performance tab.

Google Search Console performance

It will show you how often your site appears in search results, how many clicks you get, which keywords you are ranking for, and search ranking positions.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to add your WordPress website to Google Search Console.

3. Download XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap lists all your website content in XML format so search engines like Google can easily discover and index it.

WordPress generates a basic XML sitemap by default. However, this sitemap is quite basic and not customizable.

For better XML sitemaps, we recommend using All in One SEO For WordPress. It generates comprehensive sitemaps that you can customize manually.

For details, see our tutorial on creating an XML sitemap in WordPress.

XML sitemaps

Once you have created XML sitemaps, you need to download them to your computer.

Simply open an XML sitemap and select ‘Save as’ from the right-click menu.

Save sitemaps

Repeat the process to download all sitemap XML files.

3. Download URLs Using Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Paid)

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an app for SEO professionals. It allows you to crawl any website, like search engines, and collect important data for SEO.

It crawls all your website URLs, external links, image URLs, JavaScript and CSS files, and more.

Open the app on your computer, go to File » Settings, and change the ‘Storage Mode’ to ‘Database Storage’.

Switch Screaming Frog Storage Mode

After that, you need to enter your website URL in the top bar and click on the ‘Start’ button.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider will start crawling your website. Wait for it to finish the crawl, which may take some time, depending on your website’s size.

Perform crawl to collect your website URLs

Once finished, your crawl data will be stored in the app’s database.

After the migration, you can crawl your website again and then compare the data to find missing URLs, broken links, images, and other files.

Note: A free version of Screaming Frog software is available for download. However, it is limited to 500 URLs, and most other features are locked. You will need the paid version to perform a full crawl and unlock all features.

4. Compare with Semrush Site Audit (Paid)

Semrush is one of the best SEO platforms used by marketers and SEO professionals.

You can perform a complete site audit before and after the migration, which will highlight the changes in your SEO performance.

Semrush site audit

Semrush will also let you catch missing files, broken links, URLs that are not indexable, 404 errors, and other SEO warnings.

Note: Semrush has a free version, but it is limited. For a comprehensive SEO site audit, you’ll need a paid plan.

Step 2: Back Up Your Website

A backup is one of the most important tools in your arsenal for securing all your data.

Generally, you should set up automatic backups on your website so that a complete, fresh copy of your site is always safely stored. This is handy if something bad happens to your website and you need to restore it quickly.

You must also create a complete WordPress backup before initiating major site changes, such as a migration.

There are several WordPress backup plugins that you can use.

We recommend using Duplicator because it is a complete backup and migration plugin for WordPress.

Duplicator

Making a backup using Duplicator is super easy.

First, you need to install and activate the Duplicator plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to the Duplicator » Packages page and click the ‘Create New’ button.

Creating a new package in Duplicator

Duplicator will start the new package wizard. Simply follow the on-screen instructions to create the package.

Once you have created a package, you can download it to your computer.

Duplicator download package and installer files

If you are migrating your WordPress website to a new server or domain name, then you can also download the package and installer files to your computer.

Step 3: Migrating Your WordPress Website (Optional)

If you are not migrating your WordPress website to a new host or to a new domain name, then you can skip this step.

Now that you have downloaded Duplicator packages to your computer, you can migrate your WordPress website.

Migrating WordPress to a New Host

If you haven’t already done so, you first need to sign up for a new host.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

They offer WPBeginner users a generous discount on hosting and a free domain name. You can get started for $1.99 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

You are ready to migrate your website once you have set up your new hosting account.

Follow the instructions in our step-by-step tutorial on how to move WordPress to a new host.

Migrating WordPress to a New Domain

This section is for users migrating WordPress to a new domain name.

Please keep the following points in mind before migrating a website to a new domain name.

  • Switching to a new domain may temporarily impact your search rankings as Google and other search engines adjust to the changes.
  • Switching to a new domain may also temporarily reduce your search traffic. This is normal when switching domain names.

However, you can reduce the impact and quickly recover by properly switching the domain name and following this SEO migration guide.

Continue with our step-by-step tutorial on moving WordPress to a new domain name.

Once you are done, return to this guide and follow the remaining steps.

Post Migration SEO Checklist

After moving your WordPress website (either to a new host or a new domain), it is time to perform the post-migration SEO checks.

These steps will prevent any negative SEO impact of the migration and fix potential issues before they become a problem.

Step 4. Setting Up Redirects

If you have migrated your WordPress site to a new domain name, you must redirect users from the old domain name to the new one.

This step is crucial for a successful SEO migration.

These redirects properly send users from your old domain to the new one, and they also let search engines know that your website has moved to this new location.

There are two easy ways to do this in WordPress. We’ll show you both.

Method 1. Set Up Full Site Redirect Using All in One SEO for WordPress

For this method, you’ll need the All in One SEO for WordPress. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and allows you to optimize your WordPress website for SEO.

First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin on your old domain. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: You’ll need at least the Pro version of the plugin to access the redirect manager addon.

Upon activation on your old domain, you need to visit the All in One SEO » Redirects page and click on the ‘Activate Redirects’ button.

Activate AIOSEO Redirects

Next, you need to switch to the ‘Full Site Redirect’ tab and turn on the ‘Relocate Site’ toggle.

After that, you need to enter your new domain name next to the ‘Relocate to domain’ option.

All in One SEO full site redirect

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

Method 2. Set up Redirects Using Redirection

You can use this method if you are not using All in One SEO for WordPress.

First, install and activate the Redirection plugin on your old domain name. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to the Tools » Redirection page and switch to the Site tab.

Redirection full site redirect

Under the Relocate Site section, add your new domain name and click the Update button to save your settings.

The Redirection plugin will now redirect users and search engines to your domain name.

Step 5. Compare URLS

Next, you need to perform a comprehensive website crawl to compare all URLs on the new website with the old data.

This is the data you collected in the first step to benchmark your SEO performance before the migration.

1. Compare URLs Using XML Sitemaps

Set up XML sitemaps on your new website using All in One SEO. After that, download the XML Sitemaps to your computer.

Simply compare the new sitemap URLs with the old sitemaps you downloaded earlier.

2. Compare URLs Using Screaming Frog SEO Spider

If you have a paid subscription to Screaming Frog SEO Spider, then you can compare the two crawls.

Open the App and perform a full crawl of your new website. After that, switch to the Mode » Compare tab and select the current and previous crawl.

Compare crawls

You can also perform more comprehensive analyses by examining both crawls in different Modes, such as List and Spider mode.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider website has a detailed tutorial on comparing crawls.

3. Compare URLs Using Semrush

Another easy way to compare URLs is with Semrush using the Site Audit tool.

If you have set up Semrush before migration using a paid subscription plan, then you can compare it with the new craw post-migration.

Semrush crawl issues

Semrush will automatically report any issues it finds under the Issues tab.

You can also compare before and after crawls automatically.

Compare crawls in Semrush

All you have to do is switch to the ‘Compare Crawls’ tab to compare a past crawl with the latest crawl.

Step 6. Fixing Crawl Issues and URLs

When comparing URLs, you may come across some issues. The most common problems are:

  • Missing URLs – A post or page on your old site is unavailable on your new site. To fix this, you may need to create a new post or page or create a redirect (see Step 4 for redirect tools).
  • Missing Media – An image, audio, or video file failed to import. To fix this, try to manually import the missing media file or set up a redirect.

Go through any issues you find and fix them manually if needed.

Step 7. Migrating WordPress SEO Data

WordPress SEO plugins save important SEO data in your WordPress database. This includes plugin settings, SEO metadata, redirects, focus keyphrases, and more.

However, since you backed up your entire WordPress website during the migration, your SEO plugin and all its SEO data should start working out of the box.

This step is for users who want to switch their WordPress SEO plugin and want to migrate SEO data from one plugin to another.

For example, a while ago, we switched from Yoast to All in One SEO, and preserving all our SEO data was crucial during the switch.

Luckily, all good WordPress SEO plugins come with built-in SEO data importers.

For instance, All in One SEO will automatically detect other WordPress SEO plugins and will give you an option to import SEO during the setup wizard.

All in One SEO prompting to import SEO data from Yoast SEO

You can also manually import SEO data in the plugin settings.

Simply head over to the All in One SEO » Tools page and switch to the ‘Import / Export’ tab.

All in One SEO import SEO data

Under the ‘Import Settings From Other Plugins’ section, choose your older SEO plugin and then check ‘All Settings’.

Click ‘Import’ to continue, and All in One SEO will import all your SEO data from your previous SEO plugin.

Other WordPress SEO plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO also have built-in SEO data importers and exporters that you can use.

Step 8. Monitor SEO Performance Post Migration

Now that you have completely migrated WordPress while preserving SEO, you need to ensure that you are tracking important marketing data, including analytics and Google Search Console.

If you didn’t change your domain name, then your older Google Analytics and Google Search Console integrations will continue working.

Keep an eye on those reports to monitor your website for any post-migration traffic loss or drop in search rankings.

On the other hand, if you migrated WordPress to a new domain name, you will need to reconfigure Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Reconfigure Google Analytics

Those using MonsterInsights can go to the Insights » Settings page and scroll down to the Google Authentication section.

MonsterInsights reconnect Google Analytics

Click the downward arrow to expand the Website Profile section, and then click the ‘Reconnect MonsterInsights’ button.

MonsterInsights will then reauthenticate your website to Google Analytics and automatically add a new data stream configured with your new domain name.

Users who have manually installed Google Analytics in WordPress will need to add their new Domain Name as a Data Stream in Google Analytics.

Login to your Google Analytics account and click the gear icon at the bottom left corner to switch to the admin view.

Google Analytics data streams

Next, go to the Data collection and modifications » Data streams and then click on the ‘Add stream’ button.

Select Web as your stream type, and then add your new domain and website title.

Add new domain stream

Click the ‘Create stream’ button to save your settings.

Google Analytics will now start tracking data from your new domain name.

Reconfigure Google Search Console

Next, you need to reconfigure Google Search Console and inform Google about the change of address.

Note: This step is important because otherwise, Google may consider your new site a mirror or duplicate, which will make it much longer to rank for your new domain name.

First, add your new domain name as a new property in Google Search Console. Simply follow the instructions in our guide on how to add your site to Google Search Console.

Important: Ensure you use the same Google account you used for your old domain name.

After adding your new domain to Google Search Console, switch to your old domain name profile in Google Search Console.

Google Search Console Change of Address tool

On the next screen, you will be asked to set up 301 redirects from your old domain to your new site address. You have already done that earlier, so you can move on to the next step. If you missed that step, we suggest going back and doing it now.

Below that, select your new domain name from the drop-down menu and click on the ‘Validate & Update’ button.

Adding new domain to Google Search Console

That’s all. You have now informed Google about the change of address.

This may take a while, but gradually, your new domain will start appearing in search results instead of your old domain name. During this time, you won’t lose any traffic due to the 301 redirects you set up.

Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress SEO Migration

Following are some of the most commonly asked questions about SEO migration for WordPress websites.

1. How do you do an SEO migration?

First, back up your website and track performance with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Then, move your website data, including SEO data.

If you are migrating to a new domain name, ensure that you set up 301 redirects. Finally, use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console to notify Google about the new URL.

2. How can I migrate my website without losing SEO?

By setting up proper redirects and using the Google search console, you can migrate your website easily without losing SEO.

3. Will domain migration increase SEO traffic?

Depending on the domain you use for migration, it may cause an increase in SEO traffic. For instance, if your new domain is more relevant to your website topics or you are using a country domain to reach a more targeted audience.

We hope this WordPress SEO migration checklist is helpful in migrating your websites. You may also want to take a look at our complete WordPress SEO guide for a more detailed SEO walkthrough and our expert picks of the best domain name registrars if you are looking to switch to a new domain name.

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 The Ultimate WordPress SEO Migration Checklist (For Beginners) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

How to Create an Effective Content Plan in WordPress (9 Expert Tips)

Are you hitting a brick wall trying to plan upcoming content for your blog or business website?

A WordPress website is a powerful tool. But so many business owners waste their potential by not being intentional about the content they create.

The right content will attract the right visitors. It will answer their questions and provide the information they are searching for. Plus, it can help you grow a community of people who appreciate the types of products or services you provide.

So, here are my top tips on how to create an effective content plan in WordPress.

Note: This is a guest post by Chris Christoff, the Awesome Motive partner in charge of MonsterInsights, the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. This is an expert column that we publish every Thursday, where we invite a WordPress expert to share their experiences with our readers.

How to Create an Effective Content Plan in WordPress

I will cover quite a few topics in this post. Here’s a handy list so you can jump to the section you are most interested in:

  1. What Are Users Searching For?
  2. Which Search Terms Are Bringing Visitors to My Website?
  3. Who Is Visiting My Website?
  4. What Is Working on My Site?
  5. What Is Declining in Traffic on My Site?
  6. What Is Missing From My Site?
  7. What Are My Competitors Doing Well?
  8. Use AI Tools to Discover More Content Ideas
  9. Schedule Your Content Plan on a Content Calendar

1. What Are Users Searching For?

Internet users perform 5.9 million Google searches per minute. Wouldn’t it be great to know what they are looking for so you can provide the answers? That’s what keyword research is all about.

Keywords are the specific words and phrases that users type into Google and other search engines to find the content they are looking for.

You can explore the top keywords related to your blog’s niche using free and paid keyword research tools. Throughout this article, I’ll touch on how to use a number of these tools.

Let’s start with Semrush. This is one of my favorite keyword research tools because it makes it easy to discover keywords related to your WordPress blog.

You simply type in any word or phrase related to your business, and Semrush will give you a list of keyword variations, questions, and related keywords.

A list of related keywords in the Semrush platform

These will reveal topics you should plan to write about. Make sure you include these keywords in a natural way within the content of your blog posts.

Alternative: The WPBeginner Keyword Generator is another great and free option.

Another useful tool is Google Trends, which shows you how the popularity of a keyword varies over time. This can show you whether a specific keyword is becoming more or less popular, or if it is searched for more often at certain times of the year.

Google Shopping ads trends

This will help you spot topics that are quickly growing in importance and topics that are best written about at certain times of the year.

For example, you will want to schedule some topics for summer or winter or during certain holidays, like Christmas or Thanksgiving.

2. Which Search Terms Are Bringing Visitors to My Website?

Now you have a useful list of the relevant keywords that users are generally searching for, you should spend some time learning about the phrases people are using to find your WordPress site right now. This will be a list of search terms you are already ranking for.

One of the best tools to uncover this information is Google Search Console. It’s a free tool that lets you monitor your site’s presence in Google search results.

However, like many online tools, Google Search Console is quite technical and can be difficult for beginners to use.

That’s the problem MonsterInsights intends to solve. It connects with Google Search Console and Google Analytics to let you view easy-to-understand reports right from your WordPress dashboard.

For example, MonsterInsights offers a Search Console report that lists the top 50 Google search terms that bring visitors to your site.

Viewing Google Search Console Report in MonsterInsights

This data shows you which topics your current visitors are interested in. Since you are already getting traffic on those keywords, you can improve your search performance by creating new content on those topics.

Next, I recommend asking yourself whether your WordPress blog posts are ranking for the right keywords. If you have already written content that targets specific keywords but are not getting much traffic for them, then you will need to concentrate on creating better content.

3. Who Is Visiting My Website?

I always suggest that business owners plan their content around their target audience. This is the group of people you want to reach with your products and services.

They are likely to have similar demographics, needs, and interests, and understanding what they are will help you write more engaging content.

The best tool for understanding your website visitors is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that collects all sorts of information about your website visitors, including the country they live in, the operating system and browser they use, and even their screen resolution.

You can view this information right from your WordPress dashboard using the MonsterInsights Demographics report. It displays visitor information from Google Analytics in a friendly and helpful way.

You can see your visitors’ ages and genders at a glance. This information will help you plan more compelling content.

Age and gender demographic charts

For example, you will probably want to write with a different style and voice for young female visitors compared to a website that attracts mainly middle-aged men.

This report also lists your visitors’ interests, revealing the topics your target audience is most interested in. This data is also very helpful when planning content.

For more details, just see this article on how to track website visitors in WordPress.

Interest report

You may be surprised by this demographic data because you are trying to target a completely different audience. In that case, something has gone wrong with your content, and you should keep these insights in mind when planning new content and updates.

4. What Is Working on My Site?

Another important consideration when creating an effective content plan is looking at the website content that is already working well. These are the posts that are receiving the most traffic and that your visitors spend the most time on.

For example, it’s always a good idea to look for your most important pages and posts.

MonsterInsights Top Posts/Pages Report

Once you know which posts are performing the best, you can plan to create more content on similar topics and grow your traffic.

I also recommend checking keyword rankings for your top articles. You may be able to improve their rankings by scheduling updates and optimizations.

You can uncover more detailed insights by installing the MonsterInsights Custom Dimensions addon. This will let you create reports of your most popular authors, top categories, top focus keywords, and most popular post types.

In turn, this information will help you build a data-driven content strategy that works.

For example, if one author’s posts are performing well, then you can train the rest of your team to follow their techniques. Or discovering your top categories will show you popular topics on your website that you should plan more content for.

5. What Is Declining in Traffic on My Site?

Content planning isn’t just about deciding on new articles to write. It’s also about regularly updating existing content to stay relevant and accurate.

Content decay is where your posts decline in traffic and search rankings over time. They will continue to lose traffic unless you update that content.

This can happen when your content becomes old or outdated, or your competitors write better content targeting the same keywords. It may also be that those keywords are no longer being searched for as often, or that Google has changed their algorithm.

In my opinion, content decay is one of the biggest problems faced by website owners and online businesses.

That’s why it’s a good idea to monitor how individual posts are ranking using a WordPress SEO plugin. All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is one of the best options, and it helps you easily optimize your website for search engines.

It has a Content Performance report that displays your best-performing posts and pages and shows whether their search engine rankings are rising or falling.

AIOSEO's Content Performance feature

You can quickly see which posts have lost the most rankings in the ‘Top Losing’ tab.

AIOSEO also offers a more detailed Content Rankings report. This displays the date you last updated all of your website content, the change in ranking, and a helpful graph of how each post has performed over the last year.

All in One SEO Content Rankings Report

Once you identify the posts on your website that are declining, you can schedule updates so they will start to rank well again.

You should update any information that has changed since the post was written and optimize it for SEO. For example, you might update the images, embed a video, or add a table of contents or FAQ section.

6. What Is Missing From My Site?

Your WordPress blog is a work in progress. That means there will be lots of topics that users are searching for that you haven’t written about yet.

One of the best things you can do when planning new content is to perform a content gap analysis. This process involves comparing the keywords your audience is looking for against your website content and planning to write new posts to fill the gaps you haven’t covered yet.

I showed you earlier how Semrush can help you discover important keywords that you should cover in your articles.

It also offers a Keyword Gap report that can automatically show you which keywords are missing from your website or not performing well.

Keyword gap tool

You simply enter the URLs of your top competitors to discover the keywords they are ranking for but you are not.

Then, you can easily filter the list to find keywords that are missing or weak on your blog.

Missing keywords

Once you identify which topics are missing, you can plan to create helpful content to fill those gaps and improve your website’s search performance.

Now, I want to show you some other ways you can get content ideas from your competitors.

7. What Are My Competitors Doing Well?

I’ve been working in the content marketing space for a long time, and it’s more competitive than ever. You can only stay ahead of the game if you keep your eye on what others are doing in your industry.

Chances are, some of your competitors’ content is outperforming yours. Performing a competitor analysis lets you study what they are doing well so you can improve your own website and ultimately outrank them on search.

You’ve just seen how the Semrush Keyword Gap report shows you the keywords your competitors outrank you on. You can also use their Domain Overview report to discover a more complete analysis of competing websites.

Semrush Domain Overview Tool

Once you enter your competitor’s URL, you’ll be able to see its authority score, organic search traffic, paid search traffic, backlinks, and a whole lot more.

You’ll also see the countries that provide the most traffic and a graph of their traffic over time.

Enter competitor URL in domain overview

Besides that, you can discover their top-performing pages and tons of other useful data that you can use to improve your content strategy.

I appreciate how Semrush lets you dig in and explore each aspect of the report to give you fresh insights into your competitor’s SEO strategies.

Now, you can use that information to set goals for your website and identify areas for improvement.

8. Use AI Tools to Discover More Content Ideas

Marketers who use AI (artificial intelligence) see an average of 70% increase in ROI (return on investment). When brainstorming new content ideas, artificial intelligence tools can help by identifying relevant trends, topics, and keywords.

This can spark new content ideas and help you stay on top of current industry discussions.

It can be as simple as typing the right prompt into ChatGPT.

With practice, you’ll start using longer and more precise prompts to get the exact help you are looking for. Here are a few of my own examples that you can use when creating a content plan.

This prompt simply asks for 10 blog post ideas on certain topics, along with a title for each post:

Create a list of at least 10 blog post ideas on the topics of stress management and mental health. Suggest an SEO-friendly title for each post, and use an emotional and persuasive tone in post titles.

Below, you can see the ideas that ChatGPT gave me in response:

ChatGPT Prompt to Generate Content Ideas

If you are planning to write product reviews, then you can ask the AI for the most popular products used in a particular area, and a brief explanation of how they can help, like this:

Create a list of the most popular equipment needed in a home office, along with the pros and cons of each one.

In the same way, you might ask for a list of problems people typically have when trying to accomplish a particular task:

Create a list of problems people typically experience when performing a content gap analysis. Provide three tips on how to overcome each problem.

Specific questions like this will provide a more helpful list of suggestions than generic prompts.

Once you have generated a list of new content ideas, artificial intelligence can help you write powerful headlines for each post. For example, I recommend starting by using a free headline analyzer tool on websites like WPBeginner and MonsterInsights.

After that, you can use tools such as All in One SEO to optimize your headlines. With the click of your mouse, you will be offered 5 optimized post titles that are designed to capture your audience’s interest using up-to-date best practices.

AI generated headlines

For more details, just see this tutorial on how to write powerful headlines with AI.

9. Schedule Your Content Plan on a Content Calendar

If you followed all my tips above, then you should now have a very long list of ideas. This will include new blog post topics, optimized titles and keywords, and articles that need to be updated.

It’s now time to make a plan. The problem is that a large list of keywords can overwhelm beginners, so they simply give up.

You can make sure those posts actually get written or updated by scheduling them on your content calendar. This will act like a roadmap, giving you a clear overview of your content strategy and keeping you on track.

You can use popular online task management tools like Asana or Trello. You may already be familiar with these web apps, and they come with powerful features that help you stay on track.

Additionally, if you have a multi-author blog, then solutions like PublishPress Pro can improve your editorial workflow. This WordPress plugin lets you create a content calendar with custom post statuses, editorial comments, and email notifications.

Just make sure that your publishing schedule is consistent and achievable. Your goal is to create a bird’s eye view of your content strategy that keeps you organized and productive.

I hope these practical tips help you create an effective content plan for your WordPress blog. You may also want to see these guides on how to increase your blog traffic and the best analytics solutions for WordPress users.

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 Create an Effective Content Plan in WordPress (9 Expert Tips) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

8 Best Writing Assistant Software for WordPress (Compared)

Are you looking for the best writing assistant software for WordPress?

Writing assistant software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help users improve their creative process. This can help you produce more polished and professional writing for your WordPress blog.

In this article, we have handpicked some of the best writing assistant software that you can use to improve the content on your WordPress site.

Best writing assistant software for WordPress

Why Use Writing Assistant Software in WordPress?

Using writing assistant software on your WordPress website can help you find and correct grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, which can make your writing more clear and concise.

The software can even provide feedback on the writing style and tone of your blog posts, helping you to improve your writing skills over time.

Plus, you can also brainstorm new ideas for articles, product descriptions, and copywriting using your writing assistant software.

For example, if you want to write a product description for gardening equipment that you are selling in your online store, then you can use the writing assistant to create a simple draft, make your writing easier to read, optimize it for specific keywords, and more.

Using this software can also improve your website visibility by helping you optimize your WordPress blog for search SEO, increase readability, and check your content for plagiarism.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best writing assistant software for WordPress.

1. All in One SEO for WordPress

All in One SEO

All in One SEO for WordPress is the best WordPress SEO plugin that can also be used as a writing assistant.

The plugin comes with a powerful keyword research tool that can help you find the right keywords to target in your content.

AIOSEO encourages authors to improve their writing by providing suggestions to use active voice, insert transition words, distribute subheadings better, and hit a specific Flesch reading score.

It is the best writing assistant that comes with a built-in content analysis tool that analyzes your blog posts for keyword density, readability, and title tags.

Page analysis tool

The plugin also comes with a headline analyzer tool that helps you write SEO headlines to drive more traffic to your website.

This tool checks the word balance, sentiment, power words, and emotional words used in the heading to help rank your blog post higher.

Click the SEO headline analyzer button

Pros

  • The plugin allows you to generate AI titles and meta descriptions for your WordPress posts.
  • All in One SEO helps you optimize your content for both SEO and readability.
  • It comes with a schema markup feature for content improvement.
  • It lets you add a title, description, and image for your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
  • All in One SEO comes with a Chrome extension that lets you evaluate your content’s SEO on the front end.

Cons

  • Its schema markup feature is only available in the paid plan.

Why we recommend using All in One SEO: All in One SEO is the best AI writing assistant on the market because it allows you to improve the overall content quality directly in the block editor. It helps you target the right keywords and improve your site’s SEO.

Plus, it also offers other features like HTML sitemaps, redirects, social media integrations, and a broken link checker. These features make it the perfect choice if you want a writing assistant tool designed specifically for search engines.

2. Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Semrush offers a complete suite of SEO tools that help you improve your search engine rankings. It comes with an SEO Writing Assistant that provides real-time SEO suggestions for your content to improve the overall SEO score.

With Semrush’s writing assistant, you can see your content’s readability and make it more natural sounding, identify text that needs to be rewritten, and also get an estimate of the ideal content length.

It also recommends keywords, adds alt attributes to images, finds and fixes broken links, and even provides suggestions to avoid keyword stuffing.

Pros

  • The SEO writing assistant comes with a plagiarism checker.
  • You can easily integrate Semrush’s writing assistant with WordPress using a free plugin. For detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to use the SEO writing assistant in WordPress.
  • It is the best keyword research tool on the market.
  • Semrush helps you optimize the article headline for SEO.
  • Semrush’s other features include competitor analysis, site auditing, domain analysis, social media management, topic research, traffic analytics, and much more.

Cons

  • Semrush’s paid plan can be expensive for small businesses.
  • It has a learning curve and can be a bit difficult to use for beginners.

Why we recommend using Semrush SEO Writing Assistant: We recommend using this tool if you are looking for a powerful writing assistant that prioritizes SEO and helps increase your website’s rankings.

3. Rytr

Rytr website

Rytr is another AI writing assistant software that allows you to easily create high-quality content for your WordPress site.

It comes with over 40+ templates that can be used to make content for blog posts, product descriptions, social media posts, and more.

This software can easily be integrated with popular website builders like WordPress using an API.

It even optimizes your content for SEO using its powerful text editor, which automatically fixes, rephrases, and improves the sentences that you write.

Pros

  • It comes with a built-in plagiarism and grammar checker.
  • Rytr has keyword research and SERP analysis features for improving content for SEO.
  • It comes with a Chrome extension and can also integrate with platforms like Semrush.
  • Rytr has a chat mode that can be used to interact with AI in a more natural way to brainstorm content ideas and receive feedback.

Cons

  • Rytr is not an ideal choice if you want to generate long-form content, as it starts creating repetitive sentences for longer blog posts.
  • Its user interface is a bit clunky and can use some improvement.

Why we recommend using Rytr: Overall, Rytr has all of the features that you’ll need to boost your efficiency. The tool allows you to easily create SEO-optimized, clear, and natural-sounding content for your WordPress blog.

It also offers a free plan that lets you generate 10k characters per month, and even its paid plan is affordable.

4. Writesonic

Writesonic website

Writesonic is an AI-powered writing assistant tool that can be used by writers, eCommerce stores, marketing teams, and entrepreneurs.

This copywriting tool comes with over 100+ templates that you can use to create content for articles, blog posts, ads, social media posts, and product descriptions.

If you have a WooCommerce store, then you can also use Writesonic to create AI chatbots that can interact with your customers.

Pros

  • Writesonic can create content in around 25 languages.
  • It comes with a built-in plagiarism and grammar checker.
  • Writesonic has a voice-your-text command feature.
  • The software has expander and shortener features that can be used to add more details or shorten your content to improve quality.
  • It can integrate with popular platforms like Zapier, Surfer SEO, and Semrush.

Cons

  • It can be difficult to maintain the tone and style of your content when using the tool.
  • It does not offer a free plan for users.
  • It only allows you to have a limited number of users on your Writesonic account.

Why we recommend using Writesonic: Writesonic is the perfect choice if you are a blogger who wants to generate more content or if you have a WooCommerce store, as the tool lets you create AI chat interfaces, images, and content easily.

5. Jasper

Jasper

Jasper (formerly known as Jarvis) is another popular tool used for AI text generation.

It comes with a library of over 50+ templates that can be used to create articles, social media content, ads, landing page text, emails, video scripts, and artwork.

The tool even provides conferences, courses, and training to help new users learn how to use the AI-based writing assistant tool.

Pros

  • It comes with a built-in content editor.
  • Jasper offers a variety of features, including spell-checking, grammar-checking, and style suggestions.
  • It comes with a content rewriter that improves the readability, clarity, and SEO of your content.
  • Jasper offers a Chrome extension and can integrate with Surfer SEO and Grammarly.

Cons

  • Jasper does not have a free plan and only offers a 7-day free trial.
  • It struggles with creating long-form content
  • Jasper is a bit expensive compared to other tools on this list, as its pricing plan starts at $49/per month.

Why we recommend using Jasper: Jasper is an ideal choice for businesses and marketers as it can help create effective marketing content like ad copy, email copy, and landing page copy. It can also improve marketing campaigns by ensuring that the right messages are communicated to the right audience.

6. Frase

Frase

Frase is a great AI writing software that can help improve your content creation process.

It allows you to research your target keywords by analyzing the top search results for them. It can even create content briefs for the top results related to a specific keyword and provide some ideas for your content.

Pros

  • It offers a content analysis tool that provides suggestions and feedback for content improvement.
  • It has a long-form editor that lets you write content.
  • Frase optimizes your content for SEO using natural language processing (NLP).
  • It tracks your content performance using a Google Search Console integration.

Cons

  • The tool does not offer any live chat support.
  • You cannot use the Frase AI writer without installing the Frase SEO addon.
  • It does not offer a free trial.

Why we recommend using Frase: Frase is a great choice for bloggers or content marketers who want to increase their content visibility. With its Google Search Console integration, Frase helps you rank well and even shows you content decay warnings.

7. Copy.ai

Copy.ai website

Copy.ai is another popular writing assistant tool that can help you create content for blog posts, emails, sales copy, product descriptions, social media, and more.

It can create content in 25+ languages and comes with more than 90 copywriting tools to improve your content quality. It can also rewrite your existing content to improve its clarity, readability, and SEO.

Pros

  • It has an intuitive user interface.
  • Copy.ai comes with built-in features like a grammar-checker and paraphrasing tools.
  • It offers a meta description generator, slogan generator, and content idea generator.

Cons

  • Copy.ai can sometimes produce incorrect information and needs a lot of fact-checking.
  • It’s difficult to create a long-form copy.
  • It takes a bit longer to generate content using Copy.ai compared to other tools on this list.

Why we recommend using Copy.ai: Copy.ai is a good choice for salespeople and larger teams as its paid plan offers unlimited words, unlimited projects, and 5 user seats for a single account.

8. Grammarly

Grammarly

Grammarly is the best writing assistant software for language correction. This tool can be used to detect and correct grammatical, spelling, and tonal errors. Using its Chrome extension, you can edit your content directly from the WordPress content editor.

Other than that, the tool also offers suggestions for improving the clarity of your writing, such as breaking up long sentences and using simpler language.

Pros

  • It comes with features like plagiarism detection, sentence rephrasing, vocabulary suggestions, and more.
  • Grammarly has a Chrome extension and can also integrate with WordPress, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Gmail.

Cons

  • The free version of Grammarly has very limited features.
  • It can occasionally overlook mistakes or make inaccurate corrections in your content.

Why we recommend using Grammarly: Overall, Grammarly is an ideal choice for content creators as it helps write engaging blog posts. If your native language is not English, then you should also try out Grammarly, as it helps learners improve their writing and grammar skills.

What Is the Best Writing Assistant Software for WordPress?

In our expert opinion, All in One SEO is the best writing assistant software as it is a complete package that can help you improve your content quality and SEO.

Alternatively, you can opt for the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant, as it also focuses on your site’s SEO and improves your website rankings.

Similarly, if you have a small business, then Jasper is a good choice because it can be used to create articles, social media content, ads, landing page text, emails, and more. It can even help improve marketing campaigns.

Alternatively, if you want to create an AI chatbot for your online store, then we recommend using Writesonic.

Frequently Asked Questions About Writing Assistant Software

If you still have any questions about using writing assistant software in WordPress, then we will answer them here.

What is writing assistant software for WordPress?

Writing assistant software can help you write better content for your WordPress website.

This software can optimize your content for search engines, check for plagiarism, identify grammatical mistakes, and proofread your work. This can help you create more professional and polished content for your WordPress blog.

What are the benefits of using writing assistant software for WordPress?

There are many benefits of using writing assistant software for WordPress, including:

  • The software can help you write content faster and more efficiently.
  • It helps produce higher-quality content by catching errors and suggesting improvements.
  • It can save you time by eliminating the need for manual proofreading.
  • Writing assistant software often provides suggestions for improving your writing style, such as using better vocabulary or more concise and effective sentences.

Best WordPress Guides for Writing Blog Posts

If you are looking for more ways to write and improve your WordPress blog posts, then you can check out the following guides:

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 8 Best Writing Assistant Software for WordPress (Compared) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

How to Quickly Generate 100+ Blog Post Ideas (3 Methods)

Are you wondering how to come up with new blog post ideas without spending too much money, time, and resources?

Many bloggers struggle to find blog post ideas to keep their audience engaged. Even more experienced bloggers face this issue regularly.

In this guide, we will show you quick and easy ways to generate 100+ blog post ideas. This will help you consistently create helpful content that brings you more search traffic.

Generate dozens of blog post ideas easily

What Makes a Good Blog Post Idea?

Whether you are just starting a blog or have been blogging for some time, you will learn that not all blog post ideas are equal. Plus, coming up with new articles requires effort, time, and resources.

Here are some simple rules to consider when choosing a blog post idea.

1. Topical Relevance

The blog post ideas you choose should be relevant to the main topic of your blogging niche or industry. For example, if you run a travel blog, then it wouldn’t make sense to start writing articles about pet care.

Choosing topics relevant to your blog niche helps you build topical authority. This means that search engines consider you an expert within your niche, which can improve your search rankings.

2. Search Volume / Audience Interest

Another important thing to consider when choosing blog ideas is your audience interest.

To do that, you need to first understand your blog’s target audience. Who are they, and what kind of content are they looking for?

Next, you will want to see if there is any search volume for the topic you want to write about. Search volume is the average number of searches for that keyword in top search engines.

3. Competition in Search Rankings

A quick Google search for a blog post idea can show you what your competitors are writing about that topic.

This helps you see what information they have covered in their articles. After that, you can build upon it to create more comprehensive content and outrank your competition.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily find hundreds of blog post ideas within minutes.

Quick and Easy Ways to Generate Blog Post Ideas (Free and Paid)

There are multiple online tools that can help you quickly generate blog post ideas. Some of them are paid, but plenty of them are available for free.

Let’s look at three of our favorite tools to generate blog post ideas.

1. Keyword Generator (Free)

Keyword generator tool

Keyword Generator is a free keyword research tool that we made at WPBeginner. It allows you to perform in-depth keyword research to find dozens of blog post ideas to write about.

Simply enter a topic or keyword that you want to work on and click on the ‘Analyze’ button.

The tool will then generate 300+ new keyword ideas from Google that you can browse or download as a CSV file.

Keyword results

These ideas can be sorted by the following:

  • Alphabetical – Related keywords that people search for in Google in alphabetical order.
  • Prepositions – Related keywords that include prepositions like for, near, is, to, and so on.
  • Questions – Related long-tail topics organized as questions.

To see blog post ideas organized as an SEO topical entity graph, simply click the ‘Show graph’ button in any section.

You can also copy the SVG file of the graph to your clipboard.

View topic graph

You can combine several article ideas in one blog post or create multiple content pieces to build authority around a topic over a period of time.

2. Semrush (Detailed Search Data)

Semrush website

Semrush is one of the best SEO tools on the market. It offers the most comprehensive set of search engine and social media marketing tools.

Note: Semrush also offers a limited free account, which is suitable for beginners on a budget.

Semrush includes two tools that both work great for generating blog post ideas. We will now take a look at both of them.

1. Topic Research Tool

First, there is the Topic Research tool. It allows you to enter a topic or keyword, and Semrush will generate content ideas around that topic.

Topic research tool

The results will show you related topics as cards that you can click to expand and view all the content ideas for that topic.

You will also see the subtopic search volume, how easy it is to rank for (the difficulty level), and the topic efficiency. Topic efficiency is calculated by considering both the search volume and the difficulty level.

Subtopic headlines and questions

For each subtopic, you will see results as article headlines. You can click on each headline to view the article on a competitor’s website. This gives you a good idea of the information you will need to cover in your blog post.

Next to headlines, you will see questions commonly asked by users about that subtopic. You can pick a question to answer in your article or combine several to make a more comprehensive blog post.

2. Keyword Magic Tool

The Keyword Magic tool is a powerful keyword research tool built into the Semrush toolkit. It allows you to simply enter a keyword or topic to find related keywords with a ton of useful data.

Keyword Magic tool

From here, you can sort the results by questions, broad, phrase, exact, or related matches.

Next to each keyword, Semrush will show you search volume, keyword difficulty, cost per click or CPC (for pay-per click ads), and more.

You can also click on a keyword to view more detailed information about it, including the intent of visitors who search for this keyword. For example, users might only be looking for informational content, or they may be looking to buy a product (transactional intent).

Keyword overview

If you are using a paid Semrush account, then you will also see Keyword Clusters. These are semantically related keywords, which are different phrases related to a single topic. You can use them to create more authoritative content on any topic.

3. Blog Post Idea Generator (Free)

Blog Post Idea Generator

Blog Post Idea Generator is a free tool that we created at WPBeginner to help our readers generate blog post ideas.

Simply enter your main topic or a related noun in the search field and click on the ‘Get Ideas’ button. The generator will then create a list of blog post ideas that you can write about.

Blog topic ideas

You can copy the ideas you want to work on and create your own list.

Then, you can customize the blog headlines and refine the ideas on your own. You can also use this list together with the WPBeginner Keyword Generator tool to further explore a topic idea.

Bonus Tips to Find Blog Post Ideas

The three tools we talked about in this article can help you very quickly generate hundreds of blog post ideas. However, there are a few other things you can do to refine these ideas and find more related topics to write about.

First, you can put your blog post idea in a Google search to see the competition.

As you type in your keyword or blog post idea, Google will start suggesting relevant topics that other users searched for.

Search suggestions

You can include those topics in your blog post or save them to check later.

On the search results page, you will see your top competitors. Visiting these results will give you an idea of how your competitors have covered this topic.

You may also see the ‘People also ask’ section. This shows related questions people are looking for about a particular topic.

Look into people also ask section

These questions can be separate blog post ideas, or you can include them in your topic and make it more comprehensive. You might even include them in a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section to target the specific phrases within your content.

Finally, you will find related searches at the bottom of the page. These are relevant keywords and search terms that can be used as separate blog post ideas.

additional searches

Optimizing Your Blog Post Ideas

The tools we have talked about usually just show you raw data. You may still need to come up with your own blog post title, content outline, and more. You will also need to optimize your blog post to outrank the competition and get more search traffic.

The easiest way to do all this is by using the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin.

It is the best WordPress plugin on the market that allows you to easily optimize your blog posts for SEO.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the All in One SEO for WordPress plugin. For more details, see our article on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There is also a free version called All in One SEO Lite that you can use. However, we recommend upgrading to a pro plan to unlock the plugin’s full potential.

Upon activation, you can edit the blog post that you are working on.

Then, just go to the All in One SEO panel at the bottom of the WordPress content editor and enter a focus keyword for your blog post.

Adding focus keyphrase for your blog post

All in One SEO will now show you an SEO score for your blog post based on your main focus kephrase. A higher score tells you that your content is well optimized for your main keyword.

The plugin will also show you practical recommendations to improve the SEO score.

All in One SEO showing SEO score for blog post

You can also refine your blog post title by switching to the headline analyzer panel.

This free tool helps you optimize your blog post title to improve your organic click-through rate in the search results.

Analyze blog post headline

We hope this article helped you generate blog post ideas to fill up your editorial calendar for weeks. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO guide or take a look at the best blog examples to follow for inspiration.

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 Quickly Generate 100+ Blog Post Ideas (3 Methods) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

10 Best Long Tail Keyword Generators (Compared)

Are you looking for the best long-tail keyword generators?

Long tail keywords are more specific search terms that users may try to narrow down their search results. Using them in your content can help you bring more traffic to your website.

In this article, we’ll show you the best long-tail keyword generators to find content ideas for driving traffic and conversions to your website.

The best long tail keyword generators for beginners

What Are Long Tail Keyword Generators?

Long tail keyword generators are online tools that help you find specific search terms or keywords related to a topic or phrase.

If you are starting a blog or making a website, then creating content around long-tail keywords can help you bring traffic to your site.

Long-tail keywords often show the user’s intent to make a purchasing decision and can help bring more targeted traffic and sales.

The easiest way to understand long-tail keywords is by using Google search itself. The search box will start suggesting long tail keywords as soon as you start typing.

long tail keyword suggestions in Google Search

You’ll also find more long-tail keyword ideas in the search results.

For instance, you’ll see the ‘People also ask’ section. This shows questions people are asking that are relevant to the search term you entered.

People also ask

At the bottom of search results, you may also see a Related Searches section.

This will show further topics and related keywords which may not necessarily be long-term keywords but could further expand a search.

Related searches

Google Search will give you a general idea of commonly used long-tail keywords related to a given search.

However, there are other third-party tools that can help you dig deeper and find more useful keyword ideas.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best long tail keyword generators on the market.

1. All in One SEO for WordPress

The AIOSEO SEO plugin for WordPress

All in One SEO for WordPress is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It allows you to easily optimize your WordPress website to get more search traffic.

You’ll need All in One SEO to optimize your content for focus keywords as well as any long tail keywords you find.

The best part about using it is that you can generate long-tail keywords right inside the WordPress admin area.

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

Note: You can also use the free version of All in one SEO. It does allow you to generate keyword ideas but you’ll need pro version to add and analyze your content.

Simply edit the post or page you want to optimize and scroll down to AIOSEO Settings.

From here, look for the Focus Keyphrase section and enter your main keyword as the Focus keyphrase. After that, you need to click on the Get Additional Keyphrases button.

Focus keyphrase

All in One SEO will then bring up a popup and ask you to connect with your Semrush account.

Don’t worry, you can sign up for a free Semrush account and use that as well.

Once you are connected, All in One SEO will fetch and display long tail keyword ideas that you can use.

Simply click on Add Keyphrase button to include one.

Add more keywords

You can now start optimizing your content to cover new long-tail keywords you added.

All in One SEO is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit for WordPress. It has powerful custom sitemaps, advanced redirects, SEO titles and descriptions, multiple keyphrases, and full Schema support.

Pricing: Free version. The premium plans start at $49.60 per year.

2. Semrush

The Semrush keyword research tool

Semrush is the most powerful search marketing platform on the market. It comes with powerful keyword research tools that allow you to easily find long-tail keywords.

When looking for long-tail keywords, you can sort them by search volume, keyword difficulty, cost per click, and other matrices.

Semrush helps you easily track SERPs and your site’s performance for different keywords. You can also see do the SEO competitor analysis and find which keywords are generating the most traffic for your rivals.

Semrush also has a free plan which is good for finding long-tail keywords. However, the paid plans give you access to incredibly powerful tools and are totally worth the premium price tag.

Pricing: Limited free plan. Paid plans start at $119.95 per month.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another popular search marketing platform with a powerful set of tools to help you grow search traffic.

It comes with a powerful Keywords Explorer tool that helps you find long-tail keyword ideas. It shows keyword difficulty, search volume, estimated clicks, and more.

You can also see top-ranking pages for a keyword and see what other keywords that particular page rank for. This gives you a more in-depth list of long-tail keywords to target.

Apart from keyword explorer, Ahrefs comes with keyword monitoring, site audit, technical SEO analysis, and detailed competitor analysis.

They also have a free Ahrefs Search Console tool, which is similar to Google Search Console with a few extra features.

Pricing: Starting from $99 per month.

4. Answer The Public

Answer The Public

Answer The Public is a search insights tool popular among SEO professionals and marketers. It allows you to enter a keyword and see the questions users are looking for on search engines.

This gives you long-tail keyword suggestions with practical ideas on how to make your content more comprehensive for a wider audience.

Simply enter your main keyword or topic in the search field and it will generate a chart of questions. You can mouse over a question to highlight it.

Answer the public charts

Less popular questions have a lighter background color and more popular questions will be highlighted with a slightly darker color.

Charts are organized in questions, prepositions, and comparison queries. Below the charts, you will also see the questions in list format.

Answering some of these questions in proper FAQ schema can help your content appear in Google rich snippet results.

Pricing: Free for over 500K searches per month. Paid plans start at $99

5. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool provided by Google for advertisers to find keywords. It is an immense resource for marketers even if you don’t want to run paid advertisements.

Simply click on ‘Discover new keyword ideas’ and enter your main keyword. Keyword Planner will then fetch a list of keyword ideas related to your main keyphrase.

Keyword ideas

You can see average monthly searches, changes in search volume over recent months, advertiser competition, and more.

The keyword planner data does not provide keyword difficulty range like Semrush or Ahrefs.

However, you can assume that keywords with higher search volume and advertisement costs would have tougher competition.

Pricing: Free

6. Question DB

Question DB

Question DB is another free and simple search insights tool. Similar to Answer The Public, it allows you to see the questions users are asking for a keyword.

You can view the results in questions or keywords format. The results are not formatted in any specific order and there are no other metrics to compare them with.

For instance, you wouldn’t know how many people are looking for a long tail keyword or question. You’ll have to use other tools to find this information.

Pricing: Free

7. KWFinder

KWFinder

KWFinder is another excellent tool for generating long-tail keyword ideas. Unlike Semrush and Ahrefs, KWFinder focuses on keyword research.

It offers comprehensive keyword analysis with search volume, historical data, keyword difficulty, and visits.

You can search for specific geographic locations and languages. You can also track keywords and monitor your SERPs.

Pricing: $29.90 per month

8. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is another useful tool for keyword research and finding long-tail keyword ideas for your business.

It sources keyword data from autocomplete feature in Google, YouTube, Bing, and more. You can narrow your search with location and language filters.

The basic keyword tool is free but only provides a keyword list. You will need to subscribe to the pro plan to see search volume, competition, and CPC cost.

Pricing: Free. Paid plans start from $69 per month.

9. Google Trends

Google Trends

Google Trends helps you compare search trends over time. It is not exactly a long-tail keyword generator but can help you see user interest in search terms over time.

You can also compare multiple keywords to see which one has more searches. It can also be used to compare brands, products, people, and more.

Google Trends compare

Below that you can also get a list of related queries and clickable maps to see interest in different regions.

Pricing: Free

10. LSIGraph

LSIGraph

LSIGraph is another highly useful content planning and keyword research tool on the market.

It helps you easily find low-hanging long-tail keywords with opportunity scores. This helps new websites quickly find keywords that are easy to rank for.

Each keyword also shows user intent, this allows you to sort your keywords by user intent when planning your content strategy.

Pricing: Starting from $29 per month.

We hope this article helped you find the best long tail keyword generators. You may also want to see our article on how to improve your organic click through rate or check out these Google Search Console tips to drive more search traffic.

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 10 Best Long Tail Keyword Generators (Compared) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz – Which One is Better? (Pros and Cons)

Are you comparing Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz?

Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz are the top three SEO tools on the market. They allow you to do keyword research, competition analysis, track SEO rankings, monitor backlinks, and more.

In this guide, we’ll compare the pros and cons of Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz to find out which one is better.

Comparing Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz

Why Use an SEO Tool for Your Online Business?

An SEO tool helps you improve your website’s performance on search engines. Choosing the right SEO tool helps you get more traffic from search engines and grow your business.

Following are just a few things that you can do with Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz.

Track Your Search Engine Rankings

All three platforms allow you to easily track your search engine rankings. You can simply add your website URL to see how your site is doing in search. You can also manually track keywords and monitor your search rankings.

Optimize Your Content for Higher Rankings

All three SEO software tools help you optimize content for higher rankings. They include site and content audit tools that provide easily actionable tips to improve your SEO.

Track Competitors

You can also spy on your competitors just as easily as you would monitor your own website. You can see who is linking to your competitors, what keywords they are ranking for and then beat them on all those keywords.

Find Keyword Ideas

Struggling with keyword ideas to get more traffic? All top SEO software tools help you find keyword ideas with higher search volumes that you can easily rank for.

Track Backlinks

These SEO software help you track backlinks to any URL on your website or your domain name. You can see who links to your website and improve your link-building strategy with real insights.

These are just the top advantages of using an SEO software tool for your website.

Depending on which platform you choose you would also get many other features such as keyword ideas for paid advertising (PPC), Social Media analysis, local SEO, content marketing tools, keyword research, on-page SEO, and more.

That being said, now let’s take a look at each one of these top three SEO platforms and how they stack up in terms of features, ease of use, and pricing.

1. Semrush

Semrush website

Semrush is one of the best SEO tools on the market. It was founded in 2008 as a Firefox SEO extension called SEO Digger, which was later renamed SeoQuake, and then became Semrush.

Semrush offers an incredibly powerful all-in-one platform to manage your search and content marketing strategy under one roof.

Let’s take a look at some of the Semrush features.

Semrush Features:

  • Keyword research tool – Find keyword ideas and track your performance on any keywords.
  • Competition research – Spy on your competitors, see their organic and paid keywords, and top content. Not sure about who your competitors are? Simply enter your own domain name to find out your competitors.
  • Local SEO monitoring – Manage your listing, perform a site audit, track search position, and more.
  • Comprehensive advertising monitoring – PPC keyword tool, domain monitoring, advertising research tool, and more.
  • Social Media – Directly post ads to social media platforms, track social media postings, and research social media ads.
  • Content analysis tool – Check your content for SEO performance with practical tips to improve it.
  • Beautiful reports – You can generate and download beautiful reports for individual projects. You can also create custom reports for different domains, URLs, or Keywords.

When it comes to features, Semrush is the most comprehensive SEO software on the market.

Ease of Use:

Semrush offers a ton of data which could be overwhelming for a new user.

Luckily, it offers the most easy-to-use dashboard that just works. There is a search bar at the top where you can just add any domain, keyword, or URL to get started.

Semrush dashboard

On the left, you get all the tools in a neatly organized layout. Each section comes with its own dashboard that works similarly to the main search tool. For instance here is the content marketing dashboard.

Content marketing dashboard in Semrush

Semrush offers a robust help center with tons of how-to guides and tutorials to help you get started. They also a knowledge base and Semrush Academy where you get access to dozens of SEO courses.

Semrush support

Semrush Pricing: Starting from $99.5 / month

Our Rating: A+

Semrush offers the most comprehensive SEO software toolkit on the market. The data behind Semrush’s platform is massive which gives you access to incredible insights into search engine marketing.

Most importantly, we find Semrush to be the most beginner-friendly SEO tool. Once you enter a URL or keyword, it gives you all the information you need in an easy-to-understand format.

WPBeginner users can use our Semrush coupon to get a 30-day free trial.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs website

Ahrefs is another top SEO tool on the market with a comprehensive toolkit. Founded in 2010 as a site explorer tool, Ahrefs has grown into a full-fledged SEO platform for businesses, agencies, and SEO professionals.

It comes with all the features that you would get with any other SEO software in a simpler interface and tons of learning resources.

Ahrefs Features:

  • Site Audit – Ahrefs comes with a powerful site audit tool that you can use to optimize your website
  • Site Explorer – Spy on your competitors’ websites with Ahrefs site explorer tool. Unlock their top keywords and content and learn why they rank higher on those search terms.
  • Keyword Explorer – Find out keyword ideas for your domain name and track your search performance on different keywords.
  • Content Explorer – Find the most popular content for any keyword / topic. See exactly why they rank higher and replicate their strategy in your own content.
  • Clicks data – Ahrefs provides click data for keywords which helps you understand not just search volume but an estimated click rate too.
  • Keyword Tracker – Easily track SERPs for specific keywords. You can filter the tracking by geographic location, desktop and mobile.

Ahrefs provides all the tools you would want in your SEO toolkit. However, it lacks PPC advertising data for keyword research. It also lacks social media monitoring tools when compared with Semrush.

Ahrefs Ease of Use:

Ahrefs is very easy to use out of the box. They offer a simple dashboard with all the tools neatly tucked into different sections.

Ahrefs dashboard

Navigating around each tool is quite easy and you can find on-screen help as you explore different areas. They also have an instant help icon on each page so you can get to the support team much quicker.

Ahrefs support

Ahrefs has an extensive library of articles, how-to guides, video tutorials and SEO resources. These come in handy if you are unfamiliar with a specific tool and want to learn how to make the most out of it.

Ahrefs Pricing: Starting from $99 per month.

Our Rating: A

Ahrefs offers a complete toolkit to manage SEO for your website and online business. It is easy to use and offers more proactive help across the platform than other tools. It does lack social media monitoring and PPC campaign features offered by Semrush, which may be a deal-breaker for some users who want to track those inside their SEO platform.

3. Moz

Moz website

Moz is another popular contender for the best SEO software toolkit on the market. Founded in 2004 as an online community called SEOmoz which later became a consultancy agency and then an SEO toolkit.

They offer a professional toolkit for small businesses, SEO professionals, and agencies.

Let’s take a look at some of the features of Moz and see how they stack up against the competition.

Moz Features:

  • Keyword research tool – Moz offers an easy-to-use keyword research tool. Simply enter a domain name to get the top-ranking keywords.
  • Site audit tool – Perform a complete site audit to see how your website is doing in search. The tool shows you errors, crawl issues, and makes actionable recommendations
  • On-page SEO – Get content optimization tips for keywords and URLs, find similar topics, and follow a step by step guide to improve existing content
  • Backlink research – Moz comes with a link tracker tool that allows you to monitor your website’s backlink.
  • Generate reports – You can download the automatic reports or create your own custom reports. Moz also provides templates to easy generate reports for domains, URLs, and keywords.

Moz offers all the basics that you will need to manage your website’s SEO. However, it lacks many features included in the other two platforms.

Ease of Use:

Moz offers a similar dashboard to the other two SEO tools mentioned above. Upon login, you get a quick overview of your projects with charts and a summary.

Moz dashboard

Different SEO tools are organized in a sidebar column. Each section comes with an easy interface that makes it easy to understand and follow along.

Moz keyword explorer

The platform also has an extensive help section with detailed how-to guides, tutorials, and articles.

Moz support

Pricing: Starting from $99 per month

Our Rating: B+

Moz offers a robust platform to manage your website SEO. However, it lacks many of the features available in the other contenders on the list. For instance, advertising tracking, social media monitoring, content optimization tool, and more.

Bonus Tool: All in One SEO

AIOSEO

All in One SEO for WordPress is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It is the perfect companion for the top 3 SEO software mentioned above.

It helps you easily optimize your WordPress website for SEO. It is beginner-friendly and works out of the box for users who don’t have any technical SEO skills.

All in One SEO Features:

  • TruSEO On-Page Analysis – All in One SEO gives you an on-page SEO score as you create content on your website with easy tips to improve SEO before publishing it.
  • Rich Snippets – Comes with complete Schema markup support that allows your website to appear in rich results.
  • XML Sitemaps – Advanced XML sitemaps for your WordPress site that you can easily configure
  • Local SEO – Comes with Local SEO support to improve your site’s performance in local searches.
  • Ecommerce SEO – All in One SEO works out of the box for eCommerce websites.
  • SEO Audit – Perform a site-wide SEO audit with an actionable checklist

For more details, see our complete guide on how to setup All in One SEO for WordPress.

Ease of Use:

All in One SEO is incredibly easy to use. It comes with a setup wizard that walks you through the basic setup regardless of skill level and SEO expertise.

All in One SEO set up wizard

It integrates with your WordPress website. This allows you to make SEO an integral part of your routine and prepare your content for SEO as you work on your site.

Title and Meta tag settings in AIOSEO

It gets out of your way and allows you to focus on creating content. At the same time, advanced users can configure settings and use a more hands-on approach to tweak SEO settings for different parts of their site.

Pricing: Starting $49.50 per year (free version available)

Our Rating: A+

We recommend using All in One SEO for WordPress on all websites. It helps you easily manage on-site SEO and works really well with any of the top 3 SEO software mentioned above.

Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz – Which One is Better?

We found Semrush to be the best SEO software tool on the market. It outperforms the competition in terms of features, ease of use, and value for money.

For site owners, we recommend using Semrush with All in One SEO. This gives you incredible tools to manage both on-site and off-site SEO.

Our second choice would be Ahrefs. While it is missing a few features offered by Semrush, it is still a great SEO toolkit.

We hope this article helped you compare the pros and cons of Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz. You may also want to check our complete WordPress SEO handbook or follow our guide on how to track conversions on 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 Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz – Which One is Better? (Pros and Cons) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Posted on

14 Best Market Research Tools in 2021 (w/ Free Options)

Are you looking for the best market research tools?

Market research tools can help simplify your research process and make it easy to collect, analyze, and put customer and market data to use.

In this article, we’ll share the best market research tools for your business, so you can make data driven decisions.

14 best market research tools in 2021 (w/ free options)

Why Do You Need to Use Market Research Tools?

Market research is the process of understanding your customer’s behavior, preferences, and industry as a whole.

Market research tools simplify this process and make it easy to understand your target market, refine your marketing strategy, and gather helpful customer feedback.

By doing market research, you give your business a better chance at success. When you deeply understand your customers and market, you can create better content, products, and better serve your customers.

Using a market research tool can help streamline your workflow and help give you additional insights:

  • Uncover gaps in the market and launch new products and services
  • Understand market trends, so you can be the first business in new niches
  • Create more compelling content and website copy to turn visitors into customers
  • Study your competition to see what they’re doing well, and where you can improve
  • Use data to better serve your customers, so they stay with you over the long-term

With that said, let’s take a look at some of the best market research tools you can use along with your WordPress website.

1. WPForms

WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress survey form plugin and contact form plugin in the market used by over 4 million websites.

It’s very beginner friendly and lets you build out online surveys, polls, questionnaires, and user feedback forms simply with the drag and drop builder.

You can also use one of the 100+ pre-built templates to quickly create the exact form you need.

WPForms survey templates

The powerful survey and polls addon lets you easily create engaging survey forms to collect customer and market data.

You can combine this addon with other useful features like conditional logic, multi-page forms, and even conversational forms to make your forms feel more human.

You can add all kinds of survey form fields, like checkboxes, radio buttons, net promoter score (NPS) field, ratings, and more.

WPForms survey fields

Best of all, WPForms automatically creates beautiful reports with graphs and charts to help you better understand your data. You can also export these graphs as images to share on social media or embed them into your website.

For more details, see our guide on how to create a survey in WordPress with beautiful reports.

The free version of WPForms lets you simply create contact forms in WordPress, but if you want to create advanced surveys and more, then you’ll need a premium plan that currently starts at $199 per year.

2. Think with Google Research

Think with Google

Think with Google Research is a collection of tools that will help you understand your market, uncover new trends, and gain valuable insights to give you an advantage.

This group of tools offers high-level insights into your market, useful statistics, and other marketing tools to put your insights to work.

For example, there’s a Market Insights tool that can help you find new regional and global markets.

Think with Google recommended markets

You’ll also find a Rising Retail Categories tool that will show you trending eCommerce categories, like Google Trends for eCommerce.

You can filter this data by different countries and view it on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.

Think with Google retail categories

For those who edit videos, or have a YouTube channel, you can use the Find My Audience Tool to uncover new audiences on YouTube and learn how you can easily reach them.

3. Semrush

Semrush

Semrush is the best keyword research tool and content marketing research tool in the market. It’s used by everyone from SEO professionals to beginner bloggers.

Note: we use Semrush here at WPBeginner for a lot of SEO and content tasks like tracking keyword rankings and keyword research.

You can use the keyword research features to see how many people search for a given keyword and if it’s growing in popularity or becoming less popular.

If you’re using Google Analytics, then you can also use that to get additional insights about your website visitors.

Semrush keyword overview

It also provides in-depth data on other relevant and popular search terms, your competitor’s search engine ranking positions, and a lot more.

To get a big picture view of your market and competitors, you can use the competitive research toolkit to see your competitor’s traffic, authority sites, up and coming websites, and more.

Semrush traffic analysis

If you want access to detailed content and keyword research data, then the pricing for premium plans starts at $119.95 per month and gives you full access to keyword, SEO, and traffic data.

Deal: our readers can get an extended 30-day free trial by using our Semrush coupon code.

4. Statista

Statista

Statista is a data research platform that provides easy to digest data across multiple industries and niches.

The reports, graphs, and data are continually updated with the most recent information, so you’ll never be viewing data that’s out of date.

The data this tool provides is very specific. No matter how niche your industry you’ll be able to access valuable data you can use to create buyer personas, unique content, and more.

Statista specific data

Plus, the same chart is updated as new data becomes available. So, you can continue to view the same graph and see how market data changes as time goes on.

This tool provides a ton of free data, while the more niche reports and data are only available on premium plas that start at $39 per month when billed yearly.

5. BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great content research and market insight tool used by brands like Hubspot, Buzzfeed, and more. It lets marketers take a deep dive into what content is the most popular in certain niches.

When you’re creating a new article for your WordPress blog you want it to be successful. A great way to do this is to see what content your audience already loves and create something similar.

Buzzsumo lets you dig deep into the top performing articles across the web, so you can see what gets the most social shares and the types of content that are the most popular.

Buzzsumo content research example

You also get access to data from the past 5 years, so you can see which topics are trending.

It can also help you find influencers in your space and uncover keyword opportunities you might have missed.

Buzzsumo has a free forever plan that gives you 10 free searches per month. If you want access to unlimited searches and more tools, then pro plans start at $99 per month.

6. US Census Bureau

US Census Bureau

The US Census Bureau has a free resource that lets you search all US census data.

This can provide you with a lot of useful demographic information. You can filter your searches by income, age, year, and location.

US Census Bureau data example

There are also built-in data visualization tools so that you can see the size of potential markets across the US.

If you’re looking to expand your business into different areas across the US, then you can see where your industry is already oversaturated and where there are still gaps in the market.

7. NielsenIQ

NielsenIQ

NielsenIQ offers retail and consumer insights to help grow your business. If you’re considering launching a new product line, then the data and insights here will help you launch more effectively.

You get access to product forecast metrics which will help to predict how well your products will sell when you launch. It will also help you determine the right channels to distribute your products.

If you don’t have a lot of customer data to work with, then you can run a market research survey to NeilsenIQ’s list of partners.

However, NielsenIQ is a more expensive solution, so businesses with a smaller budget will want to try different business intelligence solutions on this list first.

8. Gartner

Gartner

Gartner provides incredibly accurate and detailed industry reports that experts create. One of the most popular offerings is Magic Quadrant, which helps you identify industry trends, gaps in the market, and much more.

There are various other reports too, like the Critical Capabilities report that compares competing products and services against each other.

The goal of the reports is to help make your business decision making much easier.

Gartner example graph

You’ll also find data analysis and visualization tools to give you a big-picture understanding of your market. Plus, in-depth research reports to help you stay ahead of your competition.

9. Tableau Public

Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a free data visualization tool. This tool can help you make sense of the complex data you’ve gathered and better understand your market.

You can import data from a ton of different sources including, excel spreadsheets, PDFs, text, and more. The tool will then analyze the data and present the data in an interactive dashboard.

Here you can customize the data with colorful tables and charts.

Since it’s a free public platform, you can share this data with your team across mobile, desktop, and even email.

10. Upwave

Upwave

Upwave (formerly Survata) is a market research and analytics platform to help measure the success of your marketing campaigns.

It lets you easily visualize your marketing data in real-time, so you can see what areas of your marketing are the most successful.

Upwave includes predictive analysis to help forecast the success of your campaigns and let you make changes on the fly.

Beyond gathering data for your current campaigns, they offer a platform called Instant Insights by PureSpectrum. This lets you launch your own customer study to gather valuable respondent data.

Your unique data is updated in real-time and presented in an easy to understand graph format.

11. Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is a nonprofit that provides in-depth and accurate data across a wide range of industries.

The research and in-depth reports cover industries like social trends, science, technology and the internet, global interests, social media, online privacy, and much more.

Each report also includes graphs and a demographic breakdown of each industry, like this one on social media use for US adults.

Pew Research Center graph example

Included with each report is a detailed breakdown of how they conduct their studies, which can help you understand how the data can apply to your business.

All of this information will help you find new opportunities to expand and better understand your market.

12. LivingFacts

LivingFacts

LivingFacts is created by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the same company behind The Pew Research Center.

The focus of this data is on Americans and how they live. If you have a website with a US audience, then this website will help you understand current demographic trends.

For example, you’ll find research covering US demographics, faith and religion, overall health, money and work, and upcoming trends.

LivingFacts data and stats

Best of all, the data is presented in an easy to read format filled with statistics, infographics, and fun facts.

13. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is the most advanced WordPress form builder and best WordPress calculator plugin in the market. It helps you build complex form solutions quickly.

One great feature is the ability to create custom calculators. When most people think of a calculator, they think of math class or an app on their phone.

However, Formidable Forms lets you create unique calculators that can provide you with all kinds of unique data about your audience.

For example, you can create mortgage calculators, request a quote calculators, car payment calculators, and much more.

Formidable Forms calculator example

These calculators are not only a great way to get backlinks and get more traffic but can be a very useful source of data you can use to improve your website and business.

You can also format, filter, and display your user-submitted data on the front end of your website.

To get access to the powerful calculator features, you need to purchase the Business plan that’s currently $199.50 per month.

14. Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook Audience Insights is a tool that gives you access to data about your Facebook page and Facebook as a whole.

As the largest social media network in the world with nearly 2.5 million monthly active users, this data can be very useful to your brand.

It gives you information like age, gender, job title, hobbies, location, relationship status, and more.

Facebook Audience Insights data

This data will help you deeply understand your target audience and find new ways to expand your audience across Facebook.

Which is the Best Market Research Tool? (Expert Pick)

After using the most popular market research tools we believe that WPForms, Think with Google, and Semrush are the best tools in the market.

WPForms lets you easily collect customer data that you can use to create better content, improve your website and business, and more.

Think with Google is a great market research platform that helps online store owners and new startups gather useful market data.

Semrush can help you understand what brings your competitors traffic, and what your customer’s are searching for online easily.

If you’re looking for detailed statistics you can use throughout your content, or just gain insight into your market as a whole, then Statista is also a great option.

We also tried other market research platforms like Qualtrics, TypeForm, SurveyMonkey, Make My Persona, and Social Mention, but we decided to keep the list short to make your decision easier.

We hoped this article helped you find the best market research tool for your business. You may also want to see our list of the best email marketing services and our expert picks of the best business phone 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 14 Best Market Research Tools in 2021 (w/ Free Options) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Posted on

6 Best SEO Checker and Website Analyzer Tools Compared (2021)

Are you looking for the best SEO checker and website analyzer tool?

An SEO checker tool can help you get a clear picture of your SEO, give you ideas to improve, and help you increase website traffic from SEO.

In this article, we’ll share our expert picks of the best SEO checker and website analyzer tools.

Best SEO checker and website analyzer tools compared (2021)

Why Use a SEO Checker and Website Analyzer Tool?

An SEO checker and website analyzer tool can help you see if your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is working.

There are many moving pieces when it comes to SEO, and it can be hard to keep track of everything.

By using an SEO checker, you can see if your website is optimized for SEO and what changes you can make to help you get more traffic.

SEO checker and website analyzer tools can help your website in a lot of ways.

  • Help you fix any SEO errors holding your site back
  • Simply get more traffic by making improvements
  • Keep track of offsite SEO strategies like backlink building
  • Uncover areas where you can outrank your competition

That being said, let’s take a look at the best website SEO checker and rank tracking tools you can use to grow your business.

1. AIOSEO

AIOSEO

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best SEO plugin for WordPress used by over 2 million websites. It is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that will analyze your website and let you know how you can improve your SEO.

It’s very beginner-friendly and has a setup wizard that will walk you through the process of choosing the best SEO settings for your website.

It will analyze your entire WordPress website and give you an SEO score, along with a detailed report of what you can change.

AIOSEO site score

For example, it might tell you to add internal links, external links, fix broken links, change your headers, add a meta description and meta tags, and much more.

Even if you’ve never done any SEO before, this plugin will educate you and show you what to fix.

AIOSEO checklist

You can also fully optimize every post and page on your WordPress website by customizing the meta title, meta description, and more. Each page will be given a TruSEO score, as you make improvements the score will get higher.

By making all the changes this plugin suggests, you’ll have nearly perfect on-page SEO and will easily get more traffic to your website.

There’s also a competitor research feature that will show you how well your competitor’s are optimized for SEO.

AIOSEO competitor research

AIOSEO also comes with smart XML sitemaps, Rich snippet schema markup, robots.txt editor, built-in social media integration, and a ton of other useful features to grow your search engine visibility.

2. SEMRush

SEMRush

SEMRush is one of the best SEO tools in the market. It’s used by WordPress blogs, SEO experts, and business owners of all sizes.

We use SEMRush here at WPBeginner for a lot of SEO tasks like tracking keyword rankings and keyword research.

You can use this tool to analyze your website and conduct an SEO audit.

SEMRush SEO audit

There’s an in-depth backlink checker that will show you all the sites linking to yours, along with their authority and the anchor text.

This will show you if your link building efforts are working and even find potential partnerships. It can also help you spot spam links before they negatively impact your SEO.

SEMRush backlink analysis

As you work on your SEO strategy, you can use the keyword tracker to see if your rankings improve.

You can even track specific keywords that are the most valuable to your business.

SEMRush keyword tracking

You can take advantage of the 7-day free trial or the limited free plan that gives you access to basic SEO and website data.

If you want detailed SEO reports and SEO analysis features, then premium plans start at $119.95 per month and gives you full access to website, SEO, and traffic data.

3. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress used by over 3 million websites. It allows you to easily set up Google Analytics in WordPress and view your traffic metrics directly in your WordPress dashboard.

You can also monitor your keyword rankings directly in your WordPress dashboard. You can view your Google Search Console report and see the top 50 search terms your website ranks for.

To access this report you need to connect Google Search Console with Google Analytics first.

MonsterInsights search console data

It also shows you the number of impressions, clicks, click through rate, and the average position for each keyword.

You can use this data along with the optimization tips provided by AIOSEO to boost your rankings. For example, if you find an article that ranks in the 11 or 12th position, then you can optimize it to bring it to the first page.

There is a free version of MonsterInsights available, but the pro version gives you advanced tracking, additional data, eCommerce integrations, and much more.

4. Serpstat

Serpstat

Serpstat was a wide range of different SEO tools that can provide in-depth website analysis. It’s very feature rich but still has a great user experience.

There are features that let you check your website traffic and SEO performance, conduct an SEO audit on your site, analyze your backlinks, and check the rank of specific keywords.

The site audit tool will show you any technical SEO issues affecting your website’s visibility and performance. The analysis report displays the most important issues first and gives you recommendations for fixing the problem.

There’s also a page audit tool that lets you compare a page on your website to a similar web page of a competitor’s website.

This lets you see if your optimizations can help you outrank your competitors in the search engine result pages (SERPS).

You’ll also find a backlink analysis tool for checking and monitoring your website backlinks.

Plus, there’s a keyword rank tracker, so you can watch your rankings improve over time.

The free seo tool gives you access to a portion of the website data available for your domain name. The premium version starts at $69 per month and gives you access to all the data provided by the tool.

5. Google Search Console

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free SEO site checkup tool from Google that helps you monitor and maintain your website’s presence in the search engines.

Since Google is the world’s largest search engine, you’ll want to make sure your site displays correctly in Google search and has no search errors.

It will show you how your website appears in organic search, if it has any crawler, mobile usability, or indexing issues, and even problems with duplicate content.

Google Search Console errors

This tool will also displays the keywords that your website currently ranks for, along with the impressions, position, click through rate, and more. You can use this information to improve your click through rate and get more traffic.

You can also use this data to come up with new blog post ideas and get even more traffic.

For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to use Google Search Console effectively.

Pro tip: you can use MonsterInsights to track your keyword rankings directly inside your WordPress admin area using data from Google Search Console.

Google Search Console also has a page speed report that shows you if any pages on your site are having speed and performance issues.

6. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free and premium SEO ranking tool from Neil Patel that can give you a ton of useful SEO and organic traffic data.

When you create an account, you can add a website to the tool and run an SEO check. This will check your website against common ranking factors to see if your site has any issues.

Ubersuggest SEO audit

It’s not as in-depth as other tools like AIOSEO and SEMRush, but it still gives you valuable data.

This tool also includes a traffic analyzer that provides you with a detailed breakdown of your competitor’s traffic levels, keywords, and backlinks.

You can use this information to improve your offsite SEO strategy and content marketing efforts.

The free version of the tool gives you full access to the SEO audit tool, along with three free searches per day. Premium plans start at $29 per month and gives you access to unlimited searches and traffic data.

Which is the Best SEO Checker and Website Analyzer Tool? (Expert Pick)

After using the most popular SEO checker and website analyzer tools we believe that AIOSEO and SEMRush are the two best tools in the market.

AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin and toolkit. It makes optimizing your website for SEO super simple.

SEMRush is a more advanced tool that can help you with more technical SEO errors and help you build your entire SEO strategy.

Our team uses both AIOSEO and SEMRush to improve our SEO rankings.

We also tried other SEO analyzer and website audit tools like Ahrefs, WooRank, and Moz, but we decided to keep the list short to make your decision easier.

We hope this article helped you find the best SEO checker and website analyzer tools for you. You may also want to see our list of the best email marketing services, and our expert picks of the 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 6 Best SEO Checker and Website Analyzer Tools Compared (2021) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Posted on

How to Check if Your Website is SEO Optimized (2 Easy Ways)

Do you want to check if your website is SEO optimized?

By analyzing your WordPress website’s on-page SEO setup, you can easily find and fix SEO errors, so you can improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can check if your WordPress website is SEO optimized, step by step.

How to check if your website is SEO optimized (2 easy ways)

Why Check if Your Website is SEO Optimized?

By checking if your website is SEO optimized, you’ll know if there are any improvements that you can make to grow your search engine traffic.

Since search engines are often the largest source of website traffic, this can be very valuable to your WordPress business website.

However, when it comes to SEO there’s a lot you need to get right, including a lot of technical SEO jargon that can be confusing for beginners.

Luckily, there are a variety of SEO tools you can use to see if your website is SEO optimized and the steps you can take to improve your SEO.

With that said, let’s look at two ways you can check if your website is SEO optimized.

Method 1: Use AIOSEO to Check and Optimize Your WordPress SEO

All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market used by over 2 million users. It lets you easily improve your search engine rankings and optimize your site without having to learn the ins and outs of SEO.

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

Note: there is a free version of AIOSEO available, but we’ll use the pro version since it gives us even more SEO optimization features.

Upon activation, you’ll have a new menu item called ‘All in One SEO’. You need to go toAll in One SEO » Dashboard, and it will take you to the main settings panel.

After that, click the ‘Launch the Setup Wizard’ button.

AIOSEO launch setup wizard

This will walk you through the process of setting up the plugin for your website.

For more details, see our guide on how to setup All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

Once the plugin is set up, navigate to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis.

The ‘SEO Audit Checklist’ tab will give you a breakdown of your overall SEO score.

AIOSEO score

Under that, you’ll see the ‘Complete SEO Checklist’.

You can think of this as your checklist for properly optimizing your WordPress website.

Complete SEO checklist

The ‘Critical Issues’ are what you need to fix first because they will have the biggest impact on your SEO score.

Simply click the ‘Arrow’ to the right of an SEO issue, and a box will drop down that explains the problem, and what you can do to fix it.

Expand critical issues section

In this case, clicking the blue ‘Edit Your Page’ button will take you to the page where the change needs to be made.

After you make the changes, you need to navigate back to the ‘SEO Analysis’ page and click the ‘Refresh Results’ button.

Refresh your SEO results

This will update your results and reflect the positive SEO improvements you have made.

You can see here the red ‘Critical Issue’ has now changed into a green ‘Checkbox’.

Critical issue change

Now, you need to follow the same steps for any of the ‘Critical Issues’ found by the plugin and make the ‘Recommended Improvements’ if there are any suggestions.

Check the SEO of Any Competitor Website

Another great feature is the competitor analyzer that will show you how SEO optimized are your competitor’s websites.

To use this, you need to go to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis and click the ‘Analyze Competitor Site’ menu item.

Simply enter the competitor URL into the box and click ‘Analyze’.

Check competitor website SEO

The results you’ll get for your competition are similar to the SEO analysis results for your website.

By seeing what they’re doing right and wrong, you can easily outrank your competition in the search engine results pages.

Competitor website SEO results

Improve Your Individual Page SEO with TruSEO

Now that you’ve made changes to your website to improve your onsite SEO and fix any errors, the next step is to use the TruSEO analysis feature to see how well your posts and pages are SEO optimized.

Simply open up the post or page that you want to optimize and scroll down to the bottom of the content editor. There you will see the SEO settings area.

Headline and meta description

First, you can optimize your ‘Post Title’ and ‘Meta Description’. This is what will display in the search results.

There’s a built-in headline analyzer that will help you maximize your click through rates to get more traffic.

Next, you can enter your ‘Focus Keyphrase’ into the box.

Enter focus keyword

This keyword is what you want the post or page to rank for.

After you enter the keyword, the plugin will analyze your content and give you tips to improve.

You can also enter multiple keywords into the ‘Additional Keyphrases’ box.

Enter additional keywords

This lets you optimize your content for multiple keywords and bring in even more traffic.

After that, you’ll get a detailed ‘Page Analysis’ that will tell you how well your page is SEO optimized.

The ‘Basic SEO’ tab will tell you how well your content is optimized for common SEO guidelines.

Page analysis basic SEO

The ‘Title’ tab will tell you how well your title is optimized for the search engines.

Click this tab to see how well your title is performing.

Page analysis title

Next, you have the ‘Readability’ tab.

This gives you a detailed breakdown of how easy your content is to read. It offers you suggestions to improve your content and tells you what you’re doing well.

Page analysis readability

After you’ve finished making changes to optimize your content, make sure you click ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’.

You’ll also notice your TruSEO score in the upper right corner of the page. The higher this number, the better your content is optimized for the search engines.

TruSEO score

Method 2: Use SEMRush to Get Advanced WordPress SEO Data

SEMRush is one of most popular SEO tools, and they offer the best keyword research tool in the market.

This is the tool that we use for WPBeginner and our other companies. You have to use it along with a WordPress plugin like AIOSEO.

With the help of SEMRush, you can see how well your SEO strategy is working.

First thing you need to do is visit the SEMRush website and click ‘Sign Up’ to create an account.

You can create a free account that will give you a limited amount of website SEO data. You will need to sign up for a paid SEMRush subscription to get all the features (it’s totally worth it).

SEMRush sign up

Next, you’ll be asked to provide an email address, password, and phone number.

After that, you’ll be taken to your SEO Dashboard, where you can start checking if your WordPress site is optimized.

The first tool we’ll use is the ‘Site Audit’ feature. This will give you a detailed breakdown of any SEO errors that exist on your website or WordPress blog.

Click on ‘Site Audit’ under the On Page & Tech SEO menu option and then enter your website domain name and click ‘Start Audit’.

SEMRush site audit

The report will run automatically.

After it’s complete, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of any SEO errors your site has.

SEMRush site audit report

Scroll down until you see the ‘Top Issues:’ category, and this will show you the main issues your website has.

You can click to expand any of these areas, and it will show you all the pages that have that issue.

Top SEO issues

For example, on this website, 2 external links are broken.

If you’re not sure what the problem is or how to fix it, then click the ‘Why and how to fix it’ link.

Top issues more information

This will bring up a popup that’ll describe the issue in-depth.

It’s important to fix all of the ‘Errors’ and ‘Warnings’ that your site has. Fixing these issues alone will go a long way towards improving your SEO.

Uncover Your Backlinks and Advanced Website Analytics

Beyond helping you find and fix technical SEO errors, SEMRush is one of the best backlink checker tools.

To use this feature, select ‘Backlink Analytics’ from your SEMRush dashboard and then enter your website URL and click ‘Check it’.

SEMRush backlink analytics

This will bring up lots of information about your domain name and your backlinks.

In general, the more high-quality relevant backlinks you have pointing towards your website, the higher you will rank in the search engines.

SEMRush backlink report

If you click the ‘Backlinks’ menu option, then you’ll see a detailed breakdown of the domain names that are linking to your website.

This can be useful because it can help you pinpoint any issues, such as low quality links.

You can see the total number of links that a page linking to you has. If it has hundreds of links, then it could be a spammy website.

SEMRush list of backlinks

Track Your Traffic and Keyword Rankings Over Time

Another very useful tool is the keyword rank tracking feature. This will let you know if your SEO optimization changes are helping you get more traffic.

Navigate to ‘Organic Research’ in the Competitive Research section of your SEMRush dashboard.

Then, enter your domain name and click ‘Search’.

This screen will give you detailed information about the performance of your website.

SEMRush organic research

You can click on the ‘Positions’ tab to get an overview of what keywords bring your website the most traffic.

These keywords are the most valuable to your website.

SEMRush keyword overview

As you optimize your WordPress SEO, you’ll want to pay attention to the ‘Position Changes’ tab.

This will tell you the changes that are happening in the organic search results. As you optimize your website, you should see your website ranking higher for certain keywords and getting more traffic.

SEMRush keyword changes

One final useful SEO tool from SEMRush is called the SEO Writing Assistant.

This can help you write SEO optimized content, format your articles, write in a casual tone, and more.

For more details, see our guide on how to use the SEO Writing Assistant in WordPress to improve SEO.

We hoped this article helped you check if your website is SEO optimized. You may also want to see our expert picks of the must have WordPress plugins for business websites, and the best drag and drop page WordPress builders to create custom pages.

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 Website is SEO Optimized (2 Easy Ways) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Posted on

How to Check Website Traffic for Any Site (7 Best Tools)

Do you want to check website traffic for any site, including your own?

Checking website traffic allows you to see how well your site performs and how it compares to your competition.

In this article, we’ll show you how to check website traffic for any website using various online tools.

How to check website traffic for any site (7 tools)

Why Should You Check Your Website Traffic?

By checking your website stats, you can easily see how your website is performing.

Your website traffic data will show you where your traffic is coming from, how visitors engage with your site, and what digital marketing strategies are working.

If you want to get more email subscribers, more sales for your online store, or just more traffic overall, then you need to regularly check your website analytics.

By tracking your site’s traffic, you’ll know where your site currently stands and what you can do to improve.

Why Should You Check Your Competitor’s Website Traffic?

Analyzing your competitor’s website traffic statistics can reveal a lot of helpful information such as:

  • The pages and posts bringing your competitors the most traffic
  • Which keywords your competitors are ranking for
  • The channels that are driving them the most traffic

All of this information can be used to improve your content marketing strategy, link building, keyword research process, and more.

By understanding what brings your competition the most traffic, you’ll be able to target those same keywords and topics to generate more traffic for your website.

Best Tools to Check Any Website Traffic (including Competitors)

There are a lot of free and paid traffic checking tools that you can use. Each one has unique features that set them apart.

Most experts use multiple tools to check website traffic estimates for their competitors. We always recommend readers to try at least two different tools to analyze web traffic stats.

By using various tools, you’ll be able to fill in the gaps and get more accurate traffic stats for any website.

As your WordPress site and budget grow, you can invest in multiple tools to gain more insights and dominate your market.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the best tools to check how much traffic a website gets.

1. SEMRush

SEMRush

SEMRush is an all-in-one traffic analysis and competition research tool. It’s the best tool for analyzing and monitoring traffic for any website.

We use this tool at WPBeginner for keyword research, tracking keyword rankings, and a lot more.

Once you enter a competitor URL, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of your competitor’s total traffic.

You’ll be able to see important website metrics like the volume of monthly traffic over time, traffic distribution by country, the keywords that bring them the most traffic, and more.

SEMRush Domain Overview Stats

The Traffic Analytics tab gives you the number of unique visitors, total visits, average visit duration, number of pageviews, and the bounce rate the site receives.

This feature is like looking into your competitor’s Google Analytics account.

SEMRush Traffic Analysis

Another excellent feature called Bulk Traffic Analysis lets you analyze traffic levels for multiple competitors at once.

Depending on your pricing plan, you can compare up to 200 websites. This gives you a big picture view of your niche, the websites getting the most traffic, and any traffic opportunities you can act on.

You’ll also find detailed traffic analytics reports that give you information like which sites are sending the most referral traffic, which pages on their site are the most valuable, and which locations bring them the most traffic.

You can take advantage of the 14 day trial, or the limited free plan which gives you access to basic website data.

If you want full reports, then the premium plans start at $119.95 per month, which gives you full access to competitor traffic sources, rankings, social media, and more.

2. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is an online website traffic checker that gives you an overview of your competitor’s traffic and which channels are the most valuable.

Instead of just providing traffic from search, you’ll get detailed reports of a website’s entire traffic strategy.

Once you run a website through the tool, you’ll get a breakdown of the overall traffic, including a country by country report.

SimilarWeb Traffic Overview Screenshot

You’ll get engagement metrics like bounce rate, number of pages viewed per visit, average visit duration, and the top traffic sources for that website.

Beyond organic search traffic, you’ll find what paid keywords bring the website traffic, what social channels are the most valuable, and the display networks the site uses to monetize.

SimilarWeb Social Media Overview

Finally, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of the site’s audience, what kind of other sites they’re interested in, the top referring sites, and a list of competitor sites for you to research further.

The free version of the tool provides you with useful traffic data. If you require more detailed reports, then you can create an enterprise account with custom pricing.

3. Google Search Console

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that lets you analyze your search engine traffic.

This tool gives you a complete picture of how your site is viewed by the search engines.

Google Search Console website traffic data

It shows the number of impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and the average position of your keywords in the search engines.

This helps you understand what keywords you’re ranking for and the search volume they’re bringing in. This information can help you improve your traffic.

For example, if you find that you’re ranking in position 11, then you can optimize the blog post to try to move it to the first page of the search results.

You can also see which pages are indexed, if any errors are present, and more.

Once you add your site to Google Search Console, you can start viewing your website data.

The easiest way is to connect your Google Search Console account with All in One SEO. For more details, see our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

You can also use the MonsterInsights tool, mentioned below, to view your keyword rankings inside the WordPress admin area using Google Search Console data.

For more details, see our guide on how to see keywords people use to find your WordPress site.

4. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free and premium tool from Neil Patel that offers a ton of useful website traffic data.

It’s straightforward to use and the interface is built for beginners. If you’ve never done keyword research or traffic analysis before, then this tool makes it incredibly simple.

The traffic analyzer feature gives you a detailed breakdown of your competitor’s traffic over time, the keywords bringing them the most traffic, and the most popular pages on the site.

All you have to do is enter the website URL you want to analyze and click ‘Search’.

Ubersuggest traffic overview

The ‘Traffic Overview’ page gives you the total number of organic keywords the site ranks for, the organic monthly traffic, domain authority, and the total number of backlinks.

You can also dive deeper into each section of the traffic report. For example, you can expand the ‘Top Pages’ results to get a breakdown of each published page on the site and the estimated amount of traffic it brings in every month.

UberSuggest Top Pages

The results also give you the estimated number of backlinks, along with the number of Facebook and Pinterest shares. This data gives you a general overview of what you’ll have to do to outrank that page in the SERPs.

The free version of the tool gives you access to the last 3 months of data. Premium plans start at $29 per month, making it one of the cheapest tools on this list.

5. Serpstat

SERPStat

Serpstat offers a wide range of different SEO tools. What started as a simple keyword research tool has grown into an all-in-one website analysis tool.

Even though it’s packed with features, it’s still very easy to use. Just enter the URL and the tool will generate a traffic report.

There are traffic checking features along with backlink analysis, site auditing, and rank tracking tools.

The traffic analysis features give you all kinds of useful website data, including the organic and paid keywords that are driving traffic, the average number of visitors the site gets per month, and the pages that get the most traffic.

Serpstat Keyword Preview

You’ll also find trend information, so you can see how the site’s rankings, traffic, and keywords are performing over time.

The free version of the tool gives you access to a portion of the total data that’s available for a domain name. Premium plans start at $69 per month and give you access to all of the data the tool provides.

6. Ahrefs

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most popular SEO tools in the market trusted by brands like Netflix, Uber, and Facebook. It helps you see how much traffic your competition is getting and why they’re ranking so high.

Ahrefs crawls more than 6 billion web pages every day, with more than 200 million websites in their index. It’s a lot of data, but this gives you actionable insights to help you outrank your competitors and get more traffic.

The interface is very simple and user friendly. Simply enter the website URL in the search field and the tool will pull all available website information.

The search overview report gives you an overview of the organic search traffic a site receives, the domain authority, biggest competitors, and much more.

Ahrefs Traffic Stats

You can filter the report to view the traffic stats for the year, last 30 days, or all time.

Even though there’s a ton of data present, it’s easy to filter and find the website metrics you’re looking for.

Keep in mind that the traffic data only shows organic search data and not other sources like social media.

There’s a 7 day trial for $7, after that plans start at $99 per month. Considering the amount of data you have access to, it’s surprisingly affordable.

7. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights

If you want to analyze your own traffic, then the only tool you should be using is Google Analytics. However, setting up Google Analytics on your own and analyzing your own data can be difficult.

We recommend using MonsterInsights, it’s the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and used by over 3 million sites, including Microsoft, Yelp, PlayStation, and more.

It allows you to easily set up Google Analytics in WordPress and view your traffic data directly in your WordPress dashboard.

MonsterInsights website statistics

You’ll be able to see your top performing posts, pages, landing pages, homepage traffic, and more. This helps you understand user behavior and makes it much easier to grow your WordPress blog.

Final Thoughts on How to Check Traffic on Your Website

There are all kinds of tools you can use to check your website traffic and competitor website traffic.

Checking competitor traffic will give you insights into your market and what you can do to get more traffic. While, monitoring your own website traffic will show you if your SEO, social media, and other traffic generation strategies are working.

The best way to check your own website traffic is with MonsterInsights. In a couple of clicks you can view your website traffic data directly in your WordPress dashboard.

If your goal is to do in-depth competitor research, and you want to check traffic on any website, then SEMRush is our top choice. Not only will it give you accurate traffic data, but it’s one of the best SEO tools in the market.

We hoped this article helped you learn how to check website traffic on any site. You may also want to take a look at our ultimate WordPress SEO guide, and our expert list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

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

The post How to Check Website Traffic for Any Site (7 Best Tools) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Posted on

How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress (Step by Step)

Everyone agrees that broken links are bad for user experience. But did you know that broken links can significantly hurt your WordPress SEO rankings?

Yes, it’s proven that having broken internal links on your website negatively impacts SEO.

In this article, we will show you how to easily find and fix broken links in WordPress so that you can improve your user experience and SEO rankings.

How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress (Step by Step)

What Is a Broken Link?

A broken link, also known as a dead link, is a link that no longer works.

Broken links can happen for many reasons, but the most common reason is when a page is either deleted or moved to a different location, which causes the server to show a ‘404 not found’ error message.

On WordPress sites, broken links typically occur when moving a site to a new domain name or when deleting a post or page without proper redirection.

Sometimes, broken links can also happen due to a typo, and they can go unnoticed for months, if not years.

This is why it’s extremely important to regularly monitor broken links on your WordPress website and fix them so you can keep them from hurting your SEO rankings.

In this guide, we will share the top 5 methods to find broken links in WordPress. After that, we will show you an easy way to fix those broken links.

Here’s a table of contents for easy navigation:

  1. Finding Broken Links in WordPress Using Broken Link Checker (Quick & Easy)
  2. Finding Broken Links Using Semrush (Full Site Audit)
  3. Finding Broken Links Using Ahrefs (Complete Backlink Profile)
  4. Finding Broken Links Using MonsterInsights (Advanced Tracking)
  5. Finding Broken Links in WordPress Using Google Search Console (Free)
  6. How to Properly Fix Broken Links in WordPress
  7. Bonus: Our Best Guides on Internal Links

Ready? Let’s get started.

The Broken Link Checker plugin by AIOSEO is an essential tool for making sure all of the links on your WordPress site are functioning correctly.

It regularly scans for broken links on your website, including internal and external links that result in a 404 error.

Unlike some other broken link checker plugins, it’s built as a SaaS service, so it won’t slow your website down. It also won’t be blocked by managed WordPress hosting companies like WP Engine because it uses an external private server to ping for broken links.

First, you will need to install and activate the Broken Link Checker plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: The free version of Broken Link Checker allows you to scan up to 200 internal links. You can upgrade to the Pro version to scan more internal and external links.

Upon activation, the Broken Link Checker Setup Wizard will start automatically to help you set up your account.

The Broken Link Checker Setup Wizard Will Start Automatically

On the next page, you can choose to create a free account or connect to a plan that you already purchased.

To create a new free account, simply click the ‘Create a Free Account’ button. You will need to fill in your name, email address, and phone number. You will also need to enter your credit card details so you can be upgraded when you go over the free 200 link limit.

Connect Your Site to a Free Broken Link Checker Account or an Existing Account

If you already purchased the Pro version, then you can click on the ‘Connect to an Existing Account’ button. You will be asked to sign in to your account, and then you can click the ‘Connect’ link next to your plan.

The plugin will now start working in the background to find links in your posts, pages, and custom post types.

You can go to the ‘Broken’ tab to view the full report. The links are categorized into broken, redirects, and dismissed.

Find broken links and edit URLs with Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO

If you have been running your WordPress blog for a long time, then this report will include broken links to third-party websites as well.

You can quickly fix any broken links right inside of the plugin by clicking the ‘Edit URL’ link. Or, you can remove the link by clicking ‘Unlink.’ Once you are finished, don’t forget to click the ‘Update’ button.

Editing a Broken Link Using Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker will also give you ‘Status Details’ about each link when you click the Information ⓘ icon.

The information displayed includes how long the link has been broken, its HTTP status code, response headers, and more.

View status details on broken links

The plugin’s Settings tab lets you control which post types (posts, pages, custom post types) and statuses (published, draft) you want to monitor or exclude.

Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO will automatically scan your site every 3 days, so you won’t have to worry about broken links in the future.

Semrush is one of the best SEO tools on the market. It allows you to easily monitor your website’s SEO rankings and overall health.

It also includes a powerful site audit tool that crawls your website to find common errors and prepare a detailed report for you.

First, you will need to sign up for a Semrush account.

It is a paid service, but they offer a limited free account that allows you to crawl up to 100 pages on one domain name. Paid plan limits start from 100,000 pages a month.

Once you are logged in, you need to click on the ‘Site Audit’ link from the left menu.

This will bring you to the Site Audit page. From here, click on the ‘Create project’ button at the top to add your website.

Adding a New Site Audit Project in Semrush

You will be asked to enter the domain name you want to audit, and then you need to click the ‘Create project’ button.

After that, you will be asked to configure the site audit settings.

Type a Domain for Your New Site Audit Project

Semrush will now begin crawling your website for the site audit. This may take a few minutes, depending on how many pages you selected for the crawl.

Once finished, you can click on your domain under the ‘Site Audit’ section to view your report.

Semrush Report Showing Broken Links

Notice that the number of broken links is written in blue. That’s because it’s a link you can click to see more information.

You will see a list of broken links found on the crawled pages of your domain.

Broken Links Report in Semrush

You can now click on the ‘Export’ button at the top right corner of the screen to download your crawl report. You will need it when fixing broken links on your website.

Ahrefs is an excellent all-in-one SEO tool for marketers, businesses, and SEO professionals. It offers detailed SEO insights into your own website or any of your competitors.

You can use it for keyword research, competition analysis, organic and paid keyword ideas, and site health monitoring, including broken links. With the Site Explorer tool, you will get a complete backlink profile of your website.

First, you will need to sign up for an Ahrefs account. Note that it is a paid service.

Once you are logged into your Ahref’s dashboard, you need to enter your domain name into the ‘Site Explorer’ tool.

The Site Explorer tool will now crawl your website to prepare reports. This may take some time, depending on how much content you have on your website.

Once it is finished, you will see an overview of your Site Explorer results. From here, you need to click on the Pages » Best by links menu and then sort your report by 404 status.

Finding Broken Links Using Ahrefs

You can now export your report in CSV format to find and fix the broken links on your WordPress website.

MonsterInsights is the best analytics solution for WordPress. It automatically tracks broken links and 404 errors on your website by using Google Analytics.

Using the plugin, you can set up Google Analytics without editing code. It also lets you set up link and button click tracking, eCommerce tracking, author tracking, and more.

To start, you will need to sign up for a Google Analytics account and connect it with your WordPress website using MonsterInsights. For more details, you can follow our detailed guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Note: MonsterInsights is a premium WordPress plugin, but we will be using the free version for this tutorial. However, you can upgrade to its Pro version for advanced tracking features, dashboard reports, popular posts features, and more.

Once MonsterInsights is active on your website, the plugin will start to track broken links and show you a report in Google Analytics. However, it might take up to 24 hours before you see any data.

To find broken links, you need to create an Exploration report in Google Analytics. This will take information about your broken links from MonsterInsights and display them in a list.

Once you log in to Google Analytics, you will need to navigate to the ‘Explore’ tab and choose a Blank report.

Create a Blank Explore Report in Google Analytics

Now, under Exploration Name, you can type a name for the report, such as ‘Broken Links’.

Next, you need to click the ‘+’ button next to Dimensions.

Creating a New Explore Report in Google Analytics

You will see a full list of the available dimensions for your report.

You need to search for the ‘Page title’ dimension and check its box. After that, you should do the same thing for the ‘Page path + query string’ dimension.

Importing Dimensions to Your Report

Once you’ve done that, just click the ‘Import’ button at the top right of the screen.

Next, you need to import a metric. This time, you should click on the ‘+’ button next to Metrics and import the Sessions metric.

Import the Sessions Metric to Your Report

Now, you can add the items you imported to your report.

First, you need to drag both Dimensions to the Rows box in the second column. After that, drag the Sessions metric to the Values box.

Drag the Variables to the Settings Column

Next, scroll the second column down to the Filters section.

You need to click the box that says ‘Drop or select dimension or metric’. After that, click on ‘Page title’ from the menu.

Create a New Filter Using the Page Title

Now, under Conditions, you need to select ‘contains’ from the dropdown menu and then type the page title for your website’s 404 page, such as ‘Page not found’.

Tip: If you are not sure of the title of your website’s 404 page, then type a random URL after your domain name, such as https://example.com/xyz and then check your browser’s tab for the title.

Page Title Filter Conditions

Once you’ve done that, you can click the ‘Apply’ link.

On the right of the page, you will now see a report of all of the 404 errors that occurred during the report’s time frame. However, in most cases, the ‘Page page + query string’ column will be cut off so that you can’t see the full URL.

404 error pages in Google Analytics 4

To see the URLs, you will need to download the data. Simply click the ‘Download’ icon at the top right of the page.

When you view the downloaded data, you will see that most of the URLs look like this:

/404.html?page=/error-page-url/&from=http://example.com/page/

The part of the URL that shows your broken links comes after ?page=. In the example above, this is https://example.com/error-page-url.

The part of the URL that shows the page containing the broken link comes after &from=. In the example, this is http://example.com/page/.

You can use this information to fix the broken links. We show you how to do that in the last section of this article.

To see this report in the future, simply visit the ‘Explore’ tab in Google Analytics.

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help webmasters manage their sites’ visibility in search results. It also notifies you about errors, including 404 errors that are caused by a broken link.

First, you will need to set up Google Search Console for your website. For step-by-step setup instructions, see our ultimate Google Search Console guide.

After you have logged in to your Google Search Console account, just click on the ‘Pages’ link from the left menu.

Google Search Console Pages Report

Next, make sure the box next to ‘Not indexed’ is checked.

This will make sure that you will see any 404 errors that were encountered by users when visiting your website.

Google Search Console Pages That Aren't Indexed

When you scroll down to the section titled ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’, you will see one reason listed as ‘Not found (404)’.

When you click on this item, you will see a list of all broken links that caused a 404 error.

A List of Pages Not Found in Google Search Console

We have shown you 5 different methods to find broken links in WordPress. Now, let’s talk about how to easily fix broken links in WordPress.

The best way to fix a broken link is to redirect it to another page.

For example, if you moved the contents of an article to a different address, then you will need to redirect it to the newer article.

Similarly, if an article does not exist anymore, then you will want to point users to a similar page that is closely related to the contents of the old article.

You can do this by setting up 301 redirects.

The easiest way to fix broken links and set up redirection is by using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin for WordPress. It offers a powerful redirection manager that helps you track 404 error pages and create 301 redirects.

Note: We will be using the AIOSEO Pro version because it includes the redirection manager addon and offers multiple types of redirections.

First, you will need to install and activate the AIOSEO Pro plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the All in One SEO » Redirects page and then click the ‘Activate Redirects’ button.

Activate AIOSEO Redirects

Next, you will need to go to the ‘Settings’ tab under Redirects and enable 404 logs. You can find the option in the ‘Logs’ section.

AIOSEO will also let you set the time period to record your 404 logs using the dropdown menu. We suggest that you select no longer than one month for smooth and optimal performance.

Enable 404 Logs

After that, go ahead and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

You will now see a ‘404 Logs’ tab appear in the Redirects section in AIOSEO. Go ahead and click on the tab.

When you first enable the 404 logs option, there will be no data on this page. The plugin will only start to monitor and record 404 pages after enabling the settings.

However, once it’s active, AIOSEO will show a list of broken links on your website under the ‘URL’ column. It will also show you how many people visited the link under the ‘Hits’ column and the last accessed date.

404 Logs Under Redirects

You can now click the ‘Add Redirect’ button for any broken link you want to fix. When you click the button, you’ll see redirection options for your 404 error URL.

Simply enter the Target URL where you’d like to redirect your visitors and select ‘301 Moved Permanently’ as the redirection type from the dropdown menu. Once you’ve done that, you should click the ‘Add Redirect’ button.

Redirecting a 404 Error Using AIOSEO

You can now test this by visiting the old broken link, and you will be redirected to the new page.

Just repeat the process for all broken links on your website.

For more information, see our guide on how to set up redirects in WordPress for beginners.

Now that you have found and fixed the broken links on your WordPress site, you may be wondering about other ways to use internal links to improve your site’s SEO. Here are our best guides on internal links:

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily find and fix broken links in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to set up an SEO-friendly URL structure and our expert pick of the best internal linking plugins for WordPress.

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

The post How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress (Step by Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Posted on

14 Best WordPress SEO Plugins and Tools That You Should Use

Often we’re asked about what are the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that we recommend.

That’s because search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites on the internet. Optimizing your website for search engines can help you rank higher in search results and significantly grow your business.

In this article, we will share the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use. Some of these tools offer similar functionalities, so we will also highlight which ones are the best for specific use-cases.

best wordpress seo plugins

Things You Must Know About WordPress SEO Plugins & Tools

When reading SEO WordPress tips or searching for “best free WordPress SEO plugins”, you will come across articles that feature several dozen tools.

This can be quite overwhelming for beginners and non-techy users.

The truth is that you don’t need dozens of top SEO tools to get higher search engine result rankings.

While most blog posts (including ours) will share the top most popular SEO plugins, it is extremely important for you to understand the use-cases of each tool.

For example, you never want to use more than one WordPress SEO plugin on your website. We will mention All in One SEO (formerly All in One SEO Pack), Yoast SEO, SEOPress, and Rank Math. You need to pick only one to avoid plugin conflict.

We’ll mention SEMRush, Ahrefs, and few other powerful tools, but you don’t need them all when you’re first starting out since they have a similar feature set. We will share what tools we use in our business, and which features are the best among each tool.

With that said, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.

1. All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO)

All In One SEO - AIOSEO

All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. Used by over 3+ million users, it is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps you improve search rankings without learning any complicated SEO jargon.

The free version of AIOSEO has all the essential features, but the pro version gives you everything you need to outrank your competitors.

It comes with the easiest setup wizard that automatically helps you choose the best SEO settings for your business. AIOSEO shows you TruSEO on-page analysis with an actionable checklist to optimize your posts and pages.

The on-page SEO checklist includes a smart meta tag generator where you can use dynamic values (current year, month, day, custom fields, author info, and much more) in your SEO title and meta descriptions. This means you don’t need to update a post just to change SEO titles.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) dynamic meta title and description

AIOSEO also comes with Rich snippet schema markup, smart XML sitemaps (with advanced controls), SEO health check, and other useful features to grow your search engine visibility.

There is a built-in social media integration to add Open Graph metadata as well. This means you can choose which image or thumbnail you want to show when your pages are shared on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) social media profiles

AIOSEO also comes with built-in WooCommerce SEO tools for eCommerce sites. This includes features like dynamic optimizations, individual product page optimizations, product image SEO, and other handy features to bring more organic traffic to your online store.

For more SEO savvy users, it includes full control of RSS feeds, Robots.txt editor, local SEO, breadcrumbs, Google News sitemaps, video SEO, advanced redirect manager, 404 tracking, IndexNow integration, and more.

For business owners, it comes with SEO user roles, so you can manage access to important SEO features without handing over control of your website.

Update: Recently AIOSEO added a Link Assistant which is a game-changer for internal linking. It helps identify link opportunities, gives you linking suggestions in real-time, and you can bulk-add internal links with just a few clicks.

Overall, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the most beginner-friendly and comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It’s easy to configure and eliminates the need to install multiple plugins to do things on your WordPress site. It works perfectly for all types of businesses, eCommerce, blogs, news, and other websites.

As a WPBeginner user, you get 50% off AIOSEO Pro.

For those who’re on a budget, you can use the free version of AIOSEO to get started.

2. SEMRush

Semrush review

SEMRush is the best overall SEO tool on the market. Used by professional SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, large and small businesses, it provides a comprehensive set of tools to grow your traffic.

You can use it to find organic keywords and search terms that you can easily rank for. It also allows you to do competitive research and see which keywords your competitors rank for, and how you can beat them.

SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant tool helps you improve your website content to beat the top 10 results for your focus keyword. It integrates with WordPress, and this will help you write more SEO-friendly content.

You can also generate SEO templates and get easy search engine optimization suggestions for your content along with advanced SEO recommendations.

SEMRush seamlessly integrates with All in One SEO (AIOSEO) to help you find additional keyphrases for your focus keyphrase. You can see related keyphrases and their search volume right from WordPress. Then, you can add them to your content with the click of a button.

AIOSEO's Semrush integration

To learn more, see our complete guide on how to do keyword research for your website.

We use SEMRush for our websites because of their competitive intelligence and SEO rank tracker features.

3. Google Search Console

google search console

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners and webmasters monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.

It alerts you when Google is unable to crawl and index pages on your website. You also get helpful tips on how to fix those crawl errors.

Most importantly, it shows which keywords your website is ranking for, anchor texts, average position, impressions, and more. You can use this data to find keywords where you can easily rank higher by simply optimizing your content. You can also use this keyword data to come up with new blog post ideas.

For more details, see our comprehensive Google Search Console guide for beginners.

Tip: You can use MonsterInsights to track your keyword rankings inside WordPress admin area using Google Seach Console data. We will cover this tool later in the article below.

4. Yoast SEO

yoast seo

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your WordPress website for search engines.

It lets you easily add SEO titles and descriptions to all posts and pages on your website. You can also use it to add Open Graph metadata and social media images to your articles.

Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for all your website content which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. It also helps you easily import your SEO data if you have been using another SEO plugin.

Other features include readability analysis, Google and social previews, and faster load times for a better user experience.

For more details, see our complete guide on how to install and set up Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress.

5. Google Keyword Planner

google keyword planner

Google Keyword Planner tool helps you generate your own keyword ideas from Google itself.

No one on the planet has more insights into what people are searching for than the search giant Google. This free tool is offered to Google’s advertisers for free and anyone can use it. Its main purpose is to show advertisers the keywords they can bid on for their advertising campaigns.

It also helps advertisers choose the right keywords by showing them an estimate of search volume, number of results, and difficulty level.

As a content marketer or blogger, you can use this data to find keywords with high search volume, high advertiser interest, and more importantly keywords where you can easily outrank all other sites.

Bonus: See these 103 Blog Post Ideas that your Readers will Love (Cheat Sheet).

6. Ahrefs

ahrefs

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO analysis tool for marketers, bloggers, and businesses. It is a popular alternative to SEMRush and offers a lot of similar tools and features.

It allows you to do keyword research, competition analysis, backlink research, SEO audit, monitor keyword rankings, and more.

It also offers a detailed content analysis tool that helps you improve content while targeting specific keywords.

While there’s a huge feature overlap, what Ahrefs does really well is backlink analysis. We can use it to see which sites are linking to multiple competitors, but not us. This helps us get more backlinks and build more partnerships.

They also help us identify which content multiple of our competitors are ranking for that we aren’t, so we can create content on those subjects to get more exposure.

Last but not least, Ahrefs helps us better identify duplicate content and keyword cannibalization which helps us merge and upgrade the right content to boost our rankings.

For the reasons above, we pay for both SEMRush and Ahrefs because they’re both good for specific use-cases.

7. SEOPress

seopress

SEOPress is another simple yet powerful WordPress SEO plugin. It includes all the features you would expect from an SEO plugin like meta title, description, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps, redirects, and more.

It comes with a straightforward setup for beginners and advanced controls for more experienced users. It is comparable to other top WordPress SEO plugins on the market in terms of features and options.

The paid version of the plugin is cheaper than some other premium WordPress SEO plugins on the market.

Note: SEOPress is a WordPress SEO plugin. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.

8. Rank Math

rankmath

Rank Math is another user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your website for search engines and social media. It comes with a setup wizard and allows you to import data from other SEO plugins during the setup.

You can use it to easily add meta title, description, and Open Graph metadata to your blog posts. The plugin also allows you to generate an XML sitemap, connect Google Search Console, and control access to plugin features based on user roles.

Note: Rank Math is an AIOSEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.

9. Schema Pro

schema pro

Schema Pro allows you to add rich snippets to your website which makes it stand out in search results.

Rich Snippets allow you to make your website stand out in search results by showing star ratings below a review, prices below a product, image or video next to the description, and so on.

Top WordPress SEO plugins, like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) already add structured rich snippets data to your website. However, if you need more schema types or want to extend the functionality of your existing WordPress SEO plugin then Schema Pro is the way to go.

Schema Pro also allows you to use it alongside your existing WordPress SEO plugin by mapping the plugin data to Schema Pro fields.

10. KeywordTool.io

keyword tool io

KeywordTool.io is one of the best free keyword research tools available right now. It allows you to simply generate keyword ideas by typing in a keyword. These keyword suggestions are gathered from Google’s autosuggest feature. It also shows you keyword suggestions from Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and more.

These keyword suggestions are a treasure of information. You can also get search volume, cost per click, and other data for each keyword by upgrading to their paid plan.

11. Redirection

redirection plugin

Redirection helps you set up SEO friendly redirects in WordPress. It is a handy broken link checker that helps you easily fix 404 errors in WordPress by setting up redirects.

Broken links can affect your site’s SEO and create a bad experience for your users. If you have been running a blog for some time, then you should check your site from time to time for broken links and fix them.

There are multiple ways to easily find broken links in WordPress. Once you find a broken link, you may need to fix it by pointing users to the correct link or removing the incorrect link.

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

Alternative: AIOSEO Advanced Redirects is a powerful alternative to the Redirection plugin.

12. SEOQuake

seoquake

SEOQuake is a useful SEO tool for website owners. It is available as a browser add-on for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari web browsers.

It provides SEO related information for any website. This data includes page health, age, last updated, Alexa rank, and many other parameters. It is one of the most downloaded browser addons by SEO professionals.

Apart from that, the SEOQuake toolbar can show you all the same data search results when you type in a keyword. This information can be extremely useful if you are gauging competition for different keywords. You can even download search results in CSV format and prepare your own excel sheets of search data.

Alternative: Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

Bonus Plugins for WordPress Website Owners

These tools give you the additional advantage when optimizing your website for SEO. They do not advertise themselves as SEO tools but they are essential for every website and play a significant role in your website’s search performance.

13. WP Rocket

WP Rocket WordPress Caching Plugin

Site speed is a major factor in search rankings. That’s why you need to monitor your website speed & performance to make sure it’s not affecting your SEO.

The easiest way to boost your website speed is by enabling caching. WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market, which allows you to set up caching without diving into any technical stuff.

Alternative: WP Super Cache

14. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights

Many beginners rely on their best guess to make their marketing decisions. You don’t need to do that when you can easily get the insights you need to improve your website’s SEO strategy.

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily install Google Analytics in WordPress and shows human-readable reports inside your WordPress dashboard.

It tells you where your users are coming from, your top content, what users do on your website, and more. It also allows you to track your eCommerce SEO by seeing which products are popular and where you are losing customers.

Bonus tip: See what other marketing data you must track on your website to grow your business.

Other Powerful Growth Tools:

Aside from the above plugins, we also recommend the following tools to increase your traffic and conversions from SEO visitors:

  • PushEngage – connect and engage with SEO visitors after they leave your website with web push notifications.
  • OptinMonster – convert abandoning visitors into email subscribers & customers.
  • Constant Contact – stay in touch with SEO visitors through email marketing.
  • WPForms – get more leads from your SEO traffic with #1 WordPress form builder.
  • SeedProd – create SEO friendly custom landing pages with drag & drop WordPress page builder (no coding needed).

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools for your website. You may also want to see our proven tips to easily increase your website traffic, and our comparison of best chatbot software to boost conversions.

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 14 Best WordPress SEO Plugins and Tools That You Should Use first appeared on WPBeginner.