Your site’s bounce rates might spiral out of control if you don’t deal with issues that cause 404 errors. This HTTP status code indicates that the visitor’s web browser successfully communicated with your site’s server but failed to locate the requested content. Technically, Error 404 is a frontend issue, but the root of the problem [...]
The post Preventing Server Issues That Cause 404 Errors in WordPress appeared first on Learn WordPress with WPLift.
Do you want to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress?
Unlike XML sitemaps that are submitted to search engines for better crawling, HTML sitemaps present an organized list of your pages and posts for your website visitors.
In this article, we’ll show you how to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress.
An XML sitemap is a file that lists your website content in an XML format for search engines like Google and others.
You can submit your XML sitemap in webmaster tools to improve and control how the search engines crawl your website.
On the other hand, an HTML sitemap is for your actual website visitors. It is a simple page that lists all your posts and pages in an organized way.
Now that you know the difference, let’s take a look at how to add an HTML sitemap page to WordPress using two different WordPress plugins. You can use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.
We recommend using the All in One SEO plugin to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress. It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market used by over 3 million websites and lets you create an HTML sitemap with a couple of clicks.
Note: There is a free version of All in One SEO Lite available which includes the HTML sitemap feature below, but we will be using the premium version in our screenshots because it includes powerful features like smart sitemaps, redirection manager, SEO schema, and more.
The first thing you need to do is install the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, the AIOSEO setup wizard will open, which will guide you through setting up the plugin and getting your SEO settings right.
Simply click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button and follow the steps.
After that, you’ll be taken to the WordPress admin dashboard, where you’ll have a new menu option called ‘All in One SEO’.
Then, you need to go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps, click on the ‘HTML Sitemap’ menu option, and make sure the ‘Enable Sitemap’ toggle is turned on.
Next, you can choose how you want to display your HTML sitemap.
For this tutorial, we’ll select the ‘Dedicated Page’ option, but you can also add it as a shortcode, block, widget, and more.
Then, enter the page URL where you want the HTML sitemap to display. The plugin will automatically create a new page for you.
Once you’ve done that, scroll down to the ‘HTML Sitemap Settings’ section.
Here you can customize how your HTML sitemap will display. You have control over what posts and pages will display, taxonomies such as categories and tags, sort order, and more.
You can also turn on ‘Compact Archives’ to display your HTML sitemap in a compact date archive format.
This is similar to how we display our compact archives on our 404 pages here at WPBeginner.
After you’re done customizing your HTML sitemap settings, make sure to click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Now your visitors can view your HTML sitemap and more easily navigate around your website.
If you chose the ‘Dedicated Page’ option above, then you can visit the page by clicking the ‘Open HTML Sitemap’ button.
Simple Sitemap is a free plugin that lets you easily add an HTML sitemap to your WordPress website.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Simple Sitemap plugin. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once the plugin is activated, you can open an existing page, or create a new HTML sitemap page by navigating to Pages » Add New.
Adding an HTML Sitemap With Simple Sitemap Using Blocks
This plugin has newly added Gutenberg blocks that you can use to simply add an HTML sitemap page.
All you need to do is click the ‘Plus’ icon, then select the ‘Simple Sitemap’ option.
Another block included with this plugin is the ‘Simple Sitemap Group’ that creates a branching visual sitemap. But, we’re going to use the ‘Simple Sitemap’ block for this tutorial.
Once you add the block, it will automatically create your HTML sitemap.
On the right-hand menu, you have customization options where you can choose to display ‘Posts’ or ‘Pages’, or both together.
In the box under ‘Select post types to display’, simply enter ‘Post’ or ‘Page’ to choose what you want to display.
Next, you can change how the list displays by changing the ‘Orderby’ or ‘Order’ drop-downs.
You can also display the excerpt for the pages or posts listed, and enable or disable links. However, we’re going to keep the default plugin settings to keep our HTML sitemap simple and easy to browse.
Once you’ve finished customizing your HTML sitemap page, click ‘Publish’ or ‘Save’ if you’re updating an older page.
When your visitors go to your HTML sitemap, they’ll see a navigation page that looks similar to the one below.
Adding an HTML Sitemap With Simple Sitemap Using Shortcodes
Another way to add an HTML sitemap to WordPress is by using a shortcode. This gives you more control over the placement of your HTML sitemap and works for those who are using the classic editor.
Simply create a new page by navigating to Pages » Add New, then give your new page a name.
After that, click the ‘Plus’ icon to add a new block to your page.
Then, type ‘shortcode’ into the search box and select the ‘Shortcode’ block.
After that, simply copy and paste one of the following shortcodes into the text editor. The first shortcode will list your posts by category, and the second shortcode will list your pages.
[simple-sitemap-group]
[simple-sitemap]
Once you’ve done that, click ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ to save your changes.
If you need more help, then see our guide on how to add a shortcode to WordPress.
This is how the plugin will display your sitemap to your website visitors.
Creating an HTML Sitemap With Simple Sitemap for Top Pages Only
Many site owners use WordPress as a CMS with their main content published as pages instead of posts. For more details, see the difference between posts and pages in WordPress.
In this case, you would want your HTML sitemap to show pages in the proper hierarchical order.
Here is how you can add an HTML Sitemap with only pages.
Simply add this shortcode to the page where you want to display your HTML sitemap. Follow the same steps above to add the shortcode to a new WordPress page.
[simple-sitemap]
This is how it will display your HTML sitemap with all your WordPress pages listed in a hierarchical list.
It also includes your parent and child pages listed in a nested fashion. For more details, see our guide on how to create a child page in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you learn how to add an HTML sitemap page in WordPress. You may also want to see our expert picks of the best virtual business phone number apps and our expert guide on how to choose the best blogging platform.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Add an HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress (2 Ways) first appeared on WPBeginner.
Do you need a technical search engine optimization (SEO) checklist?
Optimizing your site for search engines can be a challenge if you’re not sure what to look for. Many website owners will ensure basic SEO practices but overlook technical elements.
In this article, we will show a WordPress technical SEO framework and share a checklist you can use for your business.
Technical SEO is a key component of your WordPress SEO strategy. You could be creating the world’s best content, but if search engines can’t find and understand your content, then all your efforts are wasted.
That’s why it is important to have a WordPress technical SEO framework.
Our WordPress SEO framework checklist will ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your content. Plus, you can also evaluate other technical aspects of your WordPress website that might be preventing you from achieving higher rankings.
For example, your website might be taking a long time to load. This would result in poor rankings since the page load time is a ranking factor.
Similarly, you might have mistakenly added nofollow tags and prevented search engines from crawling and indexing your content.
There are many SEO tools that let you conduct SEO audits and find out if your site is technically optimized. However, not all tools will show details inside your WordPress dashboard.
The easiest way to evaluate technical SEO for your WordPress site is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It is the best WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.
It offers a free SEO Analysis tool that you can use to conduct a technical SEO audit. The tool is available in the AIOSEO Lite version, which you can use for free. There are also premium AIOSEO plans that offer more features like schema markups, sitemaps, redirection manager, and more.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress admin panel. Under the ‘SEO Audit Checklist’, you’ll see an overall score for your website.
Next, you can scroll down to the Advanced SEO and Performance sections.
Here, the plugin will evaluate the technical SEO aspects of your website based on different parameters and ranking signals. It will then highlight missing elements and critical issues that could stop your site from ranking higher.
You can use AIOSEO to continuously monitor your site’s technical SEO and fix issues. Similarly, you can also perform a competitor analysis and see what they’re doing differently for their technical SEO optimization.
That said, let’s look at our WordPress SEO framework checklist that you can use to ensure higher rankings and organic traffic. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section:
The first thing you need to check is whether search engines are able to find your WordPress site.
You can simply enter site:example.com in the search engine and see if your website appears in the search results. Just replace ‘example.com’ with your own domain.
If your site isn’t showing up, then you can check the visibility settings in WordPress.
Go ahead and visit the Settings » Reading page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, scroll down to the Search engine visibility setting and be sure the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is unchecked.
This option is usually enabled if your website is under construction or is put in maintenance mode.
If your website is visible to search engines, then it is important to check that your content is crawled and indexed.
Crawling is the process where Google, Bing, and other search engines discover and understand your website. Indexing is the process where search engines collect and store information about your website.
A simple way of checking crawling and indexing issues is using webmaster tools. For example, Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that shows your site’s performance on search results, helps uncover bugs, and allows you to submit your site to Google.
If you haven’t connected to the webmaster tool, then see our guide on how to add a WordPress site to Google Search Console.
In Google Search Console, you can head to the ‘Pages’ report. Here, you’ll see pages that are indexed and not indexed.
Next, you can scroll down to the ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’ report.
Google Search Console will show you crawling and indexing errors on your website and which pages are affected by them. You can then resolve these issues, so your web pages can appear in Google search results.
Besides that, you can also check indexing and crawling issues for individual URLs.
Simply enter the page link in the URL inspection tool at the top. Google Search Console will then show you a report on whether the URL is indexed and on Google.
If it is not, then you’ll see a ‘URL is not on Google’ message. To fix this, you can click the ‘Request Indexing’ button so Google can crawl and index your page.
Another important thing to check from a technical SEO framework standpoint is whether your website is secure or not.
Google and other search engines will give preference to sites that use HTTPS over those that use HTTP. To secure your site, you will need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection between your website server and the user’s browser.
You can check this by looking for the padlock sign in your browser’s search bar at the top.
Most WordPress hosting companies now offer free SSL with all their plans. You can ask your host to see if they offer that.
For more details, please see our guide on how to move your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS.
Broken links are bad for your website’s SEO framework, and it negatively impacts your user experience. These are links that no longer exist and will return a 404 error.
Since search engine crawlers find different pages on your website by following internal links. A broken link can stop them from discovering new content. As a result, your page might not get indexed in the search results.
Similarly, if a visitor clicks on a link and is unable to find a page they’re looking for, then they might exit your website.
With All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily find and fix broken links on your WordPress website.
It offers a powerful redirection manager that helps track 404 errors on your website and lets you set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links.
To learn more, you can follow our detailed guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.
It is important that Google and other search engines only index one version of your website.
Your website can have different versions, but they should all point to one version. For example, you can have a site that has www and non-www version or HTTP and HTTPS version:
https://www.example.com
https://example.com
http://www.example.com
http://example.com
Whether you choose a www or non-www version, all the URLs should redirect to the primary WordPress URL. Otherwise, Google will consider each version as a different website.
This can negatively impact your overall SEO rankings. Search engines won’t know which version to index, and it could cause duplicate content issues.
You can check the primary URL for your site by going to Settings » General from the WordPress dashboard. Next, look at the web address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.
With AIOSEO, you can automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, so search engines will know your preference.
After setting a primary URL for search engines to index, you can now check the URL structure of your website.
URL structure plays an important role in your SEO. Having an SEO-friendly URL structure will help Google, Bing, and other search engines easily crawl your pages and understand your content.
Here’s an example of a bad URL structure:
https://www.example.com/category.php?id=42012
Instead, you should be using URLs that describe the content, like:
https://www.example.com/blog/how-to-start-a-wordpress-website
You can create SEO-friendly URLs by making sure that they are short and descriptive. Besides that, don’t forget to include a keyword in the permalinks, use hyphens to separate words, keep all the words in lowercase, and don’t use stop words.
Pro Tip: Don’t include numbers in your URL slugs, either. That way, you can update your content in the future
The next item in the technical SEO framework checklist is to ensure your WordPress site is mobile responsive.
With Google now going mobile-first, it will now index your site’s mobile version instead of the desktop version.
You can check your site’s mobile responsiveness by using the free Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
Simply enter your website URL and click the ‘Test URL’ button.
The tool will then show results for your website. You can see if it is mobile-ready or not.
If your site is not mobile-friendly, then you can start by changing to a responsive WordPress theme.
You can also follow our guide on how to change your WordPress theme without losing any data or traffic.
Your website speed is also a critical part of your WordPress technical SEO framework. Google uses page load speed as a ranking factor and will rank fast-loading sites higher compared to slow-performing websites.
You can check website load time by running a site speed test. For instance, you can use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin that shows a site speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.
You’ll first need to install Google Analytics to your WordPress site using MonsterInsights.
After that, you can head to the Insights » Reports page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, you can go to the ‘Site Speed’ tab. Here, you’ll see an overall score for your website speed for desktop and mobile.
The report will also show other metrics that are important for measuring your website speed.
If you scroll down, then MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals for each metric you should target.
To improve website load time, you can see our ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.
A quick tip that you can use to improve your website speed is minifying your CSS and JavaScript files.
The term minified means reducing the size of website files by removing white spaces, lines, and unnecessary characters. When a user visits your website, different files are sent to the user’s browser, which includes CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.
By reducing the file size, you can significantly improve website speed and performance. There are many WordPress plugins and hosting services that allow you to minify CSS and JavaScript files, like WP Rocket and SiteGround.
For more details, you can check out our guide on how to minify CSS and JavaScript files in WordPress.
Internal links play an important role in your website’s technical SEO framework. Search engines reward websites that have a proper internal linking structure without too many orphaned pages.
AIOSEO has a powerful SEO Link Assistant feature that makes it easy for you to discover link opportunities and even automate the process for you.
It is the best internal linking plugin for WordPress that crawls the links on your WordPress website and provides a detailed report. You can see the number of internal links, outbound links, and affiliate links for each post and page.
You can see all the link suggestions in one place, and it can even automatically go back and add internal links in your older posts with a single click.
Another important part of technical SEO framework is making it easier for search engines to find your content. One of the ways you can do that is by creating an XML sitemap.
It tells search engines about the important pages on your website. This way, search engine bots can crawl your site faster and index your content. While a sitemap won’t boost your rankings, it will improve the overall crawling and indexing process.
You can create and customize the sitemap using AIOSEO. The plugin will automatically generate a sitemap upon activation. Besides, it also lets you create a video sitemap, a news sitemap, an HTML sitemap, and an RSS sitemap.
Once you’ve created a sitemap, you can then submit it to different search engines using their webmaster tools.
For instance, Google Search Console gives the option to enter the sitemap URL and submit it to the search engine. To learn more, you can see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.
Similarly, you can also add your site to Bing Webmaster Tool and then submit an XML sitemap to improve crawling and indexing.
The next technical SEO framework item you should check is schema markup. It helps search engines understand your content better and how it will appear on the search results.
You can use schema markup for recipes, reviews, events, organizations, FAQs, blog posts, product pages, multiple locations for local businesses, and more.
Search engines can use this information and display rich results. It also helps capture Google featured snippets, which can increase organic clicks and traffic.
For example, here’s how Google shows recipes, ingredients, ratings, cooking time, and other information for blog posts that use a recipe schema markup.
You can easily add a schema markup in WordPress and WooCommerce using AIOSEO.
The plugin lets you choose the schema type depending on your content, and it takes care of the rest.
With AIOSEO, you can also add completely custom schema markups based on your needs using the WordPress custom schema generator feature. This can help you get star ratings, and other rich snippets in Google.
Robots.txt is a text file that specifies instructions for search engine bots on how to crawl your website. You can tell which pages to crawl and which pages to skip while crawling.
Here’s what a robots.txt file would look like for a WordPress site:
User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /readme.html
Disallow: /refer/
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml
Adding a robots.txt file helps save the crawl quota. A search engine crawler will crawl a certain number of pages during a session. If they don’t finish crawling all the pages on your site, they will resume crawling in the next session.
This can slow down the indexing of your content, and it will appear in search results after some delay. That’s why optimizing the robots.txt file is an important component of the technical SEO framework.
You can disallow pages unnecessary pages like the WordPress admin area, theme folder, plugin files, and more. This way, you get to save the crawl quota and allow search engine bots to crawl even more pages.
On the other hand, you can add sitemaps and other important pages to robots.txt. This way, search engines will crawl and index them as quickly as possible.
A simple way of optimizing the robots.txt file is by using AIOSEO. You can enable custom robots.txt using the plugin and add rules to allow or disallow search engines to crawl.
To learn more, please see our guide on how to optimize your WordPress robots.txt for SEO.
Another important technical SEO checklist item is to ensure your site isn’t flagged by Google for malware or unwanted software.
If your website is a security risk for users, then Google will show the following warning message:
This can be really bad for your WordPress SEO. It will keep people away from visiting your website, and impact your rankings, and overall website traffic.
To scan for malicious files on your website, you can use a WordPress security scanner. At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. It checks for vulnerabilities like malware, spam injection, malicious code, and helps clean up the website.
You can also take a look at our guide on how to fix ‘this site ahead contains harmful programs’ error in WordPress, if Google flags your site for malware.
Another technical SEO best practice is ensuring that your site’s JavaScript renders on the server side and not on the client side.
Server-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render on the website server. While client-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render in the user’s browser.
Client-side rendering is bad for your site’s user experience and SEO. All the burden of loading your site quickly falls on the visitor. Plus, search engine bots use JavaScript resources for crawling and indexing your content. This could result in JavaScript content being missed by crawlers and not included in the search engine index.
With server-side rendering, your website server ensures everything loads quickly. This way, you get a better user experience, faster page load speed, and reduce any risk of content being missed from indexing.
One way of ensuring that JavaScript is rendering on your site’s server is by running a site speed test. If your website speed is low, then it could be because of this issue. You can also look at crawled pages in Google Search Console and see if Google missed any content while crawling. If it did, then it could be because of JaveScript-related SEO issues.
That’s it. You’ve made it to the end of the list. You don’t need to go through each and every point in the technical SEO framework at once. Simply go one step at a time and work your way through the list.
We hope this article helped you learn about WordPress technical SEO framework. You may also want to see our comparison of the best keyword research tools, and our proven tips on how to increase your blog traffic.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post 14-Step Technical WordPress SEO Framework (Proven Checklist) first appeared on WPBeginner.
A lot of content on the web includes images. However, not many website owners optimize their images for speed or better search rankings.
Even though WordPress comes with the option to add alt text and an image title, often beginners do not understand the difference and how to use them.
In this article, we will share the difference between image alt text vs image title in WordPress, so you can improve your image SEO.
Here’s what we’ll cover in this tutorial:
‘Alt text’ is short for ‘alternate text’ and is an attribute that is added to an HTML image tag. The text describes the image, so visitors who can’t see the image and search engine bots will understand what the image is about.
If an image on your WordPress website can’t be found or displayed for some reason, then the alt text will be shown instead, as you can see in the following screenshot.
Alt text is different from the image’s title. The title will be displayed in a small popup box when you bring your mouse cursor over the image.
Alt text and image titles are also used to improve the accessibility of your website for those with poor vision and who use screen reader devices to read your site’s content.
When the screen reader comes to an image, it will read the alt text. Depending on the user’s settings, it may also read the title text.
For both accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO), alt text is more important than title text. This is why we strongly recommend including alt text for all your images.
WordPress allows you to easily add alt text to your images. You can do this from the block editor, the classic editor, or the WordPress Media Library.
Adding Alt Text in the Block Editor
Simply create a new post or page or edit an existing one, and add an Image block.
If you’re not sure how to add a block or you need some extra help with the block editor, then just check out our tutorial on how to use the WordPress block editor.
Now you need to upload your image or drag and drop it into the Image block. You can then set the alt text on the right-hand side of the page.
Adding Alt Text in the Classic Editor
If you’re still using the classic WordPress editor, then you can add image alt text when adding the image.
First, click on ‘Add Media’ above the posting box.
After that, you should either upload the image from your computer or click the ‘Media Library’ tab to view images you’ve already uploaded.
Next, click on the image you want in order to select it, and then type the alt text you want into the ‘Attachment Details’ of your image.
Adding Alt Text in the Media Library
You can also add alt text to an image by going to Media » Library and clicking on the image to edit it.
Remember, this won’t change the alt text for any instances of that image that you’ve already inserted into posts or pages. However, if you add the image to a post or page after adding alt text here, then the alt text will be included with it.
It’s important to understand that there are two types of titles that you can add to your images.
First, there is the default image title WordPress uses internally to identify media files in the Media Library and attachments pages. Second, there is the HTML image title attribute added to images in your posts and pages.
Let’s take a look at how to add both types of titles.
Adding the WordPress Image Title in the Media Library
You can add WordPress media titles to your images using the Media Library. When you edit an image in the Media Library, you will see a ‘Title’ field.
This title is used by WordPress to identify the image. When you click the ‘View attachment page’ link at the bottom of the screen, you’ll see the title is used as the title on that page.
The WordPress media title isn’t necessary for image SEO or for users with screen readers. While it may be helpful in some cases, it’s not as useful as the image’s HTML title attribute. So how do you create that?
Pro Tip: Would you like to automatically use the WordPress media title as the image’s title attribute in your posts and pages? Take a look at the section below where we show you how to do this using All in One SEO Pro.
Adding an HTML Image Title Attribute in the Block Editor
It’s easy to add a title attribute in the block editor. Simply click the image and then click the down arrow next to ‘Advanced’ to show the advanced image options.
Now you can simply type the title in the ‘Title Attribute’ field.
Adding an HTML Image Title Attribute in the Classic Editor
Adding a title attribute using the old classic editor is similar. You can add the title attribute by clicking on an image and then clicking the pencil icon.
You’ll then see the ‘Image Details’ screen. To set the image title attribute, you need to click the little down arrow next to ‘Advanced Options’ at the bottom.
You can then set the image’s title attribute. Make sure you click the ‘Update’ button at the bottom of the screen when you’re done.
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It will add a proper image sitemap and other SEO features to improve your SEO ranking. It also lets you automatically set your alt text and image titles, and more.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin. To use the Image SEO feature, you will need the Plus plan or above.
Upon activation, the plugin will launch the setup wizard automatically. You can learn how to configure the plugin in our guide on how to set up All in One SEO correctly.
Now you need to navigate to All in One SEO » Search Appearance and then click on the ‘Image SEO’ tab. After that, you’ll have to click the ‘Activate Image SEO’ button to enable the premium image SEO features.
Setting Image Titles Using All in One SEO
Make sure that you are looking at the ‘Title’ tab of the Image SEO page. Here you can choose tags that will set the format used to automatically generate title attributes for your images.
For example, if you include the ‘+ Image Title’ tag, then each image in your posts and pages will automatically use the WordPress media title in the HTML title attribute.
You can also add other tags, such as your website title, to your image title attribute. All in One SEO can even strip punctuation from the title and change its capitalization.
Setting Alt Text Using All in One SEO
Next, you need to click the ‘Alt Tag’ tab on the AIOSEO’s Image SEO page. Here you can automatically format the alt text of your images.
By default, AIOSEO will simply use the image’s alt text. If you like, you can also add your website’s title and other information to the alt text of each image on your website.
We strongly recommend using alt text for all images. Here on WPBeginner, we also add a title to all images. However, this is less important than the alt text.
Alt text is important because Google focuses on it as a ranking factor for images. It is also used by screen readers to help visitors with impaired vision to fully engage with your content.
You should never just stuff keywords into alt and title tags. It’s important that you make them descriptive and helpful so that they’re useful for visitors who need them. You can use your keywords where relevant, but don’t overdo it.
For example, if you’re writing an article about the best WordPress hosting, then your target keyword could be “best WordPress hosting”.
You might also have a screenshot in your article showing users how to set up an account with a popular web host like Bluehost. Let’s take a look at some good and bad examples of alt text for that image:
We hope this article helped you understand the difference between image alt text and image title in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to optimize images for the web, and check out our list of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post Image Alt Text vs Image Title in WordPress – What’s the Difference? first appeared on WPBeginner.
Do you want to change, move, or delete WordPress categories?
Categories help organize your content and make it easy for visitors to find interesting posts. However, as your website grows and you learn more about your audience, you may need to change your categories.
In this article, we will show you how you can easily change, move, and delete the categories on your WordPress website.
Categories help sort your blog posts and make it easier for users to find what they are looking for. This will keep them on your website for longer and encourage them to convert.
However, it can be difficult to plan all your categories in advance. This is especially true if you’re just getting started with WordPress, or aren’t sure which direction to take your new blog, online store, or small business website.
You may also want to try out different categories and content, and then analyze what works the best by installing Google Analytics in WordPress. You can then use this insight to fine-tune your categories.
With that being said, at some point, you may need to change your WordPress categories. This might involve renaming a category to include the keywords that got the most clicks during A/B split testing, or fixing a spelling mistake.
You might even organize your categories and subcategories into new parent-child relationships to help visitors discover new content.
If you don’t make these changes carefully, then it could hurt the visitor experience, damage your SEO, and make it more difficult for visitors to navigate your website.
With that being said, let’s see how you can properly change, move, and delete WordPress categories. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the change you want to make.
To start, you can change a category’s name, assign it to a different parent category, or display a category description to help other authors understand how to use that category.
To make any of these changes, head over to Posts » Categories.
Here, find the category that you want to change and hover the mouse over it.
When the ‘Edit’ link appears, give it a click.
This will take you to a screen where you can rename the category, add a parent or subcategory, or write a category description. For example, if you’ve used a keyword research tool to find some new keywords or phrases, then you may want to change the category’s name to include these words.
To rename a category, simply type the new title into the ‘Name’ field.
When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, don’t forget to click on ‘Update’ to store your settings.
After that, WordPress will automatically update all the posts within this category.
Every category has an archive page in WordPress, as you can see in the following image. These pages help visitors find related content, which can increase your pageviews and reduce the bounce rate in WordPress.
Sometimes you may want to change where this archive page is located. For example, if you’ve renamed a category, then you might also change its archive URL to avoid confusing visitors.
However, changing the slug means that anyone who tries to visit the original URL will get a 404 error.
This is a bad user experience and can impact your WordPress SEO. Thankfully, you can easily fix this problem by creating a redirect.
With that in mind, go ahead and change the slug by going to Posts » Categories. Then, find the category that you want to edit and hover the mouse over it.
When the ‘Edit’ button appears, give it a click.
In the ‘URL’ field, you’ll see the current slug for this category’s archive page.
Simply type in the new URL that you want to use. Just be aware that you can only use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens in the URL.
When you’re happy with how the slug looks, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Update’ to store your changes.
Now, you’ll see the archive page if you visit the new URL, but you’ll get an error if you type in the original link.
The easiest way to redirect from the old URL to the new link is by using AIOSEO.
AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and can help you get more visitors from search engines like Google. It even has a setup wizard that will help you choose the best SEO settings for your website and improve your rankings, even if you’re completely new to search engine optimization.
For this guide, we’ll be using the AIOSEO Pro version because it has the Redirection Manager that you’ll need to set up a redirect. However, there is also a free version of AIOSEO that you can use to optimize your website no matter what your budget.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, AIOSEO will automatically launch the setup wizard. You can simply click on ‘Let’s Get Started’ and then follow the onscreen instructions to improve your site’s search engine rankings.
To learn more, please see our step-by-step guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.
Since we want to use the plugin’s premium features, you’ll need to enter a license key when asked. You can find this information under your account on the AIOSEO website.
After entering the license key, click on the ‘Finish Setup’ button to save your settings and close the setup wizard.
With that out of the way, head over to All in One SEO » Redirects in the WordPress dashboard. You can then go ahead and click on Activate Redirects.
Now you’ve activated the Redirection Manager, you can start by typing in the source URL. This is the category archive’s original web address, and will usually start with /category/ followed by the original category name.
Here, we’re redirecting anyone who tries to visit /category/search-engine-optimization.
After typing in the source URL, make sure you click on the small cog icon to see some extra settings that you can configure.
You’ll need to check the box next to ‘Regex.’
Now, it’s time to move to the target URL, which is our new category archive page.
In the following image, visitors will be redirected to /category/seo.
Your next task is choosing the type of redirect that AIOSEO should use. There are various types of redirects that are identified with numbers such as 301, 302, and 307.
If you’re permanently moving the archive to a new location, then you’ll want to use a 301 redirect as this tells search engines that the page will always be at this new location. This way, all the old archive’s traffic and backlinks are transferred to the new page.
Simply open the ‘Redirect Type’ dropdown and choose ‘301 Moved Permanently.’
If you’re only temporarily moving the category archive page to a new URL, then you should choose ‘307 Temporary Redirect’ instead.
When you’ve done that, go ahead and click on the ‘Add Redirect’ button.
Now, if you try to visit the original category archive page, AIOSEO will automatically redirect you to the new target URL.
Sometimes you may no longer need a particular category. For example, you may have accidentally created two very similar categories or changed the direction of your WordPress blog so you no longer cover the same content.
Before deleting a category, it’s important to think about how this will affect your WordPress website. Firstly, WordPress will remove the deleted category from all your posts. Any posts that no longer have a category, will be marked as ‘uncategorized.’
Lots of uncategorized content will make it more difficult for visitors to explore your website. With that being said, you may want to look through all the posts within the category you plan to delete, to make sure they have at least one alternate category.
You can also set up a redirect for that category’s archive page by following the same process described above. This can help you fix any broken links before they hurt your search engine rankings or the visitor experience.
When you’re ready to delete the category, simply go to Posts » Categories. You can then hover the mouse over the category and click on the ‘Delete’ link when it appears.
If you don’t assign a category to a post, then WordPress will assign one automatically. By default, this is ‘uncategorized’ but you may want to change this to an alternative category.
Another option is to continue using the ‘uncategorized’ category, but give it a more descriptive and useful name.
This change is particularly important if you run a WordPress multi-author blog or accept guest contributions, as these people may forget to add a category to their posts.
Changing the default category can also improve your WordPress SEO by making sure that every post has a descriptive category.
Let’s start by renaming the uncategorized category by going to Posts » Categories.
Here, find ‘Uncategorized’ and hover your mouse over it. When the ‘Edit’ link appears, give it a click.
You can now type a new title into the ‘Name’ field.
After that, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Save.’
Another option is to change the default category. This can be useful if you’ve already created a general category, and now want to use it as your default.
To make this change, head over to Settings » Writing in the WordPress dashboard. You can then open the ‘Default Post Category’ dropdown and choose any category from the list.
After that, don’t forget to click on ‘Save Changes’ to store your settings.
WordPress allows you to add category hierarchy, so you can add sub categories as needed.
You can do this easily by using the Parent category dropdown on the Add New Category screen.
For more details, see our step by step guide on how to add subcategories in WordPress.
Categories and tags are both important ways to organize and group your posts. However, to help visitors find their way around your site, you should use them in slightly different ways.
Categories are great for broadly grouping your posts, while tags are meant to describe the specific details of each post.
Visitors can use categories to quickly find the type of content they’re interested in, or their favorite subject. They can then use tags to pinpoint the exact post within that category.
At WPBeginner we have a Beginner’s Guide category, which is aimed at new WordPress users. Each post in the Beginner’s Guide has different tags, such as custom taxonomy, SEO, and sorting your content.
It’s easy to get categories and tags mixed up, especially if you’re just getting started with WordPress. Your website may also change over time, to the point where one of your tags would now work better as a category.
You can easily turn categories into tags, using the Categories to Tags Converter plugin. For example, you can turn a ‘Beginner’s Guide’ category into a ‘Beginner’s Guide’ tag with the click of a button. Even better, all posts that were categorized as ‘Beginner’s Guide’ will be assigned the new ‘Beginner’s Guide’ tag automatically.
This can save you a ton of time and let you test different ways of organizing your content.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the Categories to Tags Converter plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Tools » Import. Here, find ‘Categories and Tags Converter’ and click on its ‘Run importer’ link.
You’ll now see all the different categories and tags you’ve created for your website, organizied into tabs.
To convert a category into a tag, simply check the box next to it. You can then click on the ‘Convert Categories’ button.
After a few moments, you’ll see a ‘Converted successfully’ message. To turn more categories into tags, simply repeat the process described above.
To turn a tag into a category, select the ‘Tags’ tab. You can now check the box next to the tag that you want to change, and click on the ‘Convert Tags’ button.
We hope this article helped you learn how to properly change, move, and delete WordPress categories. You can also go through our guide on the best email marketing services and proven ways to make money online blogging with 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 Properly Change, Move and Delete WordPress Categories first appeared on WPBeginner.
Have you been wondering what rel="noopener" means in WordPress?
When you add a link that opens in a new tab, WordPress will automatically add the rel="noopener" attribute to the link.
In this article, we will explain what rel="noopener" means in WordPress and how it affects your website.
When you add links to your WordPress website, you can use HTML attributes to control what happens when you click the link.
For example, when you create a link, there is a toggle switch that allows you to open it in a new tab.
The HTML code generated by WordPress for this link looks like this:
<a href="http://example.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">external link</a>
Notice that some HTML attributes have been added to the link, rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer". These attributes are added to address a security vulnerability.
The problem is that JavaScript code can be used to allow a new tab to get control of its referring window. If you link to an external website affected by the malicious code, then that website can use the window.opener property in JavaScript to change the original page (your website) to steal information and spread malicious code.
WordPress adds rel="noopener" to prevent the new tab from taking advantage of this JavaScript feature. Similarly, the rel="noreferrer" attribute prevents passing the referrer information onto the new tab.
It doesn’t.
Even though the rel="noopener" attribute improves WordPress security, some users avoid using it because they think it will impact their WordPress SEO.
But that’s just a myth.
It has no impact on your site’s SEO rankings or your overall WordPress performance.
It’s easy to confuse rel="noopener" with rel="nofollow". However, they are completely separate attributes.
The noopener attribute prevents your website from cross-site hacking and improves WordPress security.
On the other hand, the nofollow attribute prevents your website from passing on SEO link-juice to the linked website.
Search engines look for and consider the nofollow attribute when following a link on your website. However, they do not give any consideration to the noopener tag.
By default, WordPress does not allow you to add nofollow to your external links. If you want to add nofollow in WordPress, then you will need to use a plugin.
To learn more, see our article on how to add title and nofollow to links in WordPress.
The rel="noreferrer" does not affect affiliate links in WordPress. Some users believe that it does because rel="noreferrer" prevents the referrer information passing to the new tab.
However, most affiliate programs provide you with a unique URL that has your affiliate ID. This means your affiliate ID is passed along as a URL parameter for the other website to track.
Secondly, most affiliate marketers use a link cloaking plugin for their affiliate links.
With link cloaking, the affiliate link that your users click on is actually your website’s own URL, which then redirects users to the destination URL.
There is no need to remove rel="noopener" from links on your website. It is good for your website’s security and has no performance or SEO impact on your website.
However, if you must remove it, then you will have to disable the Gutenberg block editor in WordPress and use the old classic editor.
That’s because if you remove rel="noopener" from the link manually, the block editor will automatically add it back in to keep your website safe.
Once the block editor is disabled, you will need to add a code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file or to the WPCode plugin (recommended). You can learn how to use the WPCode Free Plugin in our guide on how to easily add custom code in WordPress.
Simply copy the following code into a new PHP snippet:
add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init','wpb_disable_noopener');
function wpb_disable_noopener( $mceInit ) {
$mceInit['allow_unsafe_link_target']=true;
return $mceInit;
}
Make sure you change the ‘Active’ toggle on and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.
This will stop WordPress from adding rel="noopener" to new links. You will also need to manually edit any old links to remove the attribute.
Want even more control over which rel attributes get added to your links in WordPress? We recommend using the AIOSEO plugin because it lets you add title, nofollow, and other link attributes right inside the WordPress editor.
We hope this article helped you learn about rel="noopener" in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to get a free email domain, or see our list of tips to speed up WordPress performance.
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 What is rel=”noopener” in WordPress? (Explained) first appeared on WPBeginner.
Have you ever wondered how people are finding your site, which of your pages has the most conversion rate, or which of your campaigns is bringing the most prospective customers? Well, you can measure all of these metrics and more using a simple web-based analytical tool: Google Analytics. If you’re looking for a detailed resource [...]
The post Beginner’s Guide to Understanding GA4 for WordPress Users appeared first on Learn WordPress with WPLift.
Wondering which WordPress plugin is best for sitemap creation? Sitemap helps you ensure your web pages are indexed properly and increases online visibility. Sitemaps are like a “roadmap” of your website, allowing search engines and humans to navigate and read your content more effectively. XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps are two formats of sitemaps created [...]
The post 7 Best WordPress Plugins for Sitemap Creation appeared first on Learn WordPress with WPLift.
If you’re relying on quality search engine-optimized posts to grow your WordPress website but you’re struggling to find the time, energy, and effort to create those posts, this Content at Scale review is worth paying attention to. Launched in late 2022, this powerful AI platform promises to take your keywords and turn them into complete, [...]
The post Content at Scale (Leadfuze) Review: The Easy Way to Improve Your Content Production with Artificial Intelligence appeared first on Learn WordPress with WPLift.
One of the many things that make WordPress the most popular CMS in the world is the huge array of WordPress plugins that can be used to add just about any kind of functionality you can think of. That’s great, but if you’re new to all this, the above statement probably raises more questions than [...]
The post The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Plugins appeared first on Learn WordPress with WPLift.