Table of content

• 1. Introduction to WordPress
• 2. Getting started with WordPress
• 3. Customizing your site
• 4. Creating content in the Block Editor
• 5. Structuring your site
• 6. Managing your WordPress site
• 7. WordPress SEO

1. Introduction to WordPress

WordPress is a content management system (CMS), which means it allows you to build a website and publish content that you want to share with the world. There are basically three elements that are central to what WordPress does:

1. It is a text editor that allows you to create content
2. It offers ways to manage and structure your content
3. It has options to customize how your site works and what it looks like

One of the cool things about WordPress is that there are gigantic libraries of ready-to-use templates and features that people have created for you to hand-pick and use on your site. Some of those are free, and for some you’ll have to pay.

WordPress itself is free, which means you won’t have to pay license fees to use it: you can just download it. WordPress is open-source software. Open-source software is a software that is developed within a community. Everyone can use, alter and distribute the code.

Read more: What is WordPress? »

The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

There are two different versions of WordPress: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. In short, WordPress.com is basically a site where you can create an account and, like that, create your own site or blog. WordPress.org allows you to download the WordPress software so you can install it on your own site. While the latter sounds more difficult, we also think it has a lot of advantages.

We recommend using WordPress.org. This option has much better customization options, and you can install any theme, plugin, and do just about anything with your site.

2. Getting started with WordPress

Getting WordPress up and running

Hosting

When setting up a WordPress.org site, the first thing you’ll have to decide is what hosting company and what hosting plan suits your needs. You can think of the following elements:

1. the server location
2. the type of site you’re building
3. how much storage space and bandwidth you need
4. what type of hosting you need (shared, dedicated or VPN)

Keep reading: WordPress hosting »

Select a domain name

When you’ve decided which hosting party is fit to take care of hosting your site, you should think about which domain name you want to have for your site. A domain name is a convenient way to point people to that specific spot on the internet where you’ve built your website. Domain names are, generally, used to identify one or more IP addresses. So for Yoast, that domain name is yoast.com.

Domain names are a very important aspect of building a brand and thus require some thinking. You want people to be able to recognize you and find you if they’re looking for you. That’s why it’s often a good idea to have a short domain name. If it’s catchy, that helps as well, of course. Ideally, you also want a domain name that’s easy to spell. If you have a company, you’ll probably want your company name as a domain name.

Read on: Domain names and their influence on SEO »

Choose a TLD

Another very important thing to consider is what top-level domain (TLD) you choose. A TLD is, to keep it simple, the last part of the domain name. So for yoast.com, Yoast is obviously the brand, and .com is called a TLD. Generally speaking, we distinguish between several types of TLDs:

• Country code TLDs (ccTLDs):
  Each country has its own TLD, e.g. .nl for the Netherlands, .fr for France, and .de for Germany
• Generic TLDs (gTLDs)
  These are basically all other domains, like .com, .info, .net, .edu and .gov
• Infrastructure TLDs
  Infrastructure TLDs are TLDs like .arpa. You can’t register a domain under .arpa, it’s only used for infrastructure purposes.

Keep on reading: Top-level domains (TLD) »

Setting up your site

Pick a strong username and password

When setting up your site, you have to pay attention to picking a strong username and password for the admin account. The administrator (also: admin) account in WordPress is the first account you set up. It’s the most powerful user role, which is reserved for site owners and gives you full control of your WordPress site. Make sure that you never use admin as a username!

Read more: Why you shouldn’t use admin as a username »

Make sure your website is on HTTPS

You also have to make sure your website is on HTTPS. When users engage with your site, they do so over what’s called an HTTP or HTTPS connection. The difference between these two connections is that, under HTTPS, all the connections between your site and the visitor are encrypted. This means no one else can read what’s going on between the visitor and the website. Thus, using HTTPS is a safer way of sending data than HTTP.

Navigating the WordPress backend

Now that you have installed WordPress, it’s time to explore the WordPress back end! You can see the WordPress back end as your control room: this is from where you can add, edit, and remove the content on your site, as well as control what your site looks like.

Logging in

To access the WordPress Dashboard, you need to follow these steps:

1. Go to your WordPress login URL. If you haven’t changed this, this URL is www.yoursite.com/wp-admin
2. Enter your WordPress username and password and click ‘Login’. If you’re already logged in, you’ll be taken to your WordPress Dashboard without having to enter your login credentials.

This takes you to a screen like the image below, where you see the WordPress Dashboard (1), the admin toolbar (2), and the admin menu (3).

The WordPress Dashboard

The WordPress Dashboard gives you an overview of what’s happening with your site. It’s the control room of your site, where you have a bird’s eye view of operations. The Dashboard contains widgets, which you can customize to make the Dashboard fit your needs. You can rearrange the widgets, simply by dragging and dropping them. Here we’ll discuss the default widgets:

At a Glance
As the name already implies, the At a Glance widget offers an ‘at-a-glance’ look at your site’s posts, pages, comments, and theme. As you can see in the image, it shows you the number of current posts (1), pages (2), and comments (3). It also shows you what version of WordPress you’re running (4) and which theme is active on your webpage (5).

Activity
For a more detailed preview of your posts and comments, you should take a look at the Activity widget. As you can see in the image below in this widget, you see your most recent published posts (1) and the recent comments (2). In the recent comment section, you can see who commented and clicking on the user link lets you visit their profile. If you hover over a comment with your mouse, a list of actions will appear. From here, you can choose to approve or disapprove, reply, edit, see the history, mark as spam or put it to the trash. You can reply to a comment from the WordPress Dashboard. Simply click ‘reply’ and a form in which you can type your comment will appear.

Quick Draft
The Quick Draft widget contains a mini post editor that allows you to create drafts instantly from the Dashboard. If you have a new idea, and you want to jot it down quickly, you can do this via the Quick Draft widget. All you have to do is enter a title, write a piece of text and click ‘Save Draft’. As the title already suggests, this is just a draft, and therefore it won’t be published on your site yet. Clicking on the link of the draft will take you to the post editor, where you can edit the draft and write a longer and complete version of your idea.

WordPress Events and News
Finally, in the WordPress Events and News widgets, you are offered a quick glimpse of what’s happening in the WordPress world. It shows an overview of WordPress-related news and upcoming WordPress events, like Meetups and WordCamps.

The admin toolbar

At the top of the WordPress Dashboard, you see a black bar. This is your administrator toolbar, or in short: admin toolbar and it’s just visible to you, not to people visiting your site.

The admin menu

The admin menu is the sidebar on the left side of your screen. As shown in the image below, you can view the admin menu expanded or collapsed. The admin menu consists of various menu items. In this lesson, we’ll go into the default menu items of the admin menu. Please note that if you have any plugins installed, there may be extra, plugin-specific, items in your admin menu. For example, in the image below, you’ll see the menu item of the Yoast SEO plugin at the bottom of the list.

3. Customizing your site

Settings

When you start with WordPress, you’ll probably want to brand your website and give it a personal touch. Eager to start customizing your website? The settings menu in WordPress is a great place to start!

Themes

A theme handles the way your WordPress site looks. It serves as a representation for your brand, but – at the same time – takes care of the visual representation of WordPress content and data, like pages and posts. Simply put, a theme is what a person will see when visiting your website.

Keep reading: How to find the perfect WordPress theme »

The Customizer

With the Customizer, you can quickly make changes to the design of your site or the elements on your pages, such as your site branding, menus, and widgets. And you won’t have to touch any code!

Widgets

A WordPress widget is a simple, pre-built block you can add to your site that serves a specific function, like a search bar, a list of your most recent posts, or an archive of your posts. Widgets can only be put into so-called widget areas. These areas are defined by your theme and are usually located in the sidebar(s) and the footer of your site.

Plugins

WordPress plugins are pieces of software that you install to add extra features and functionalities to your WordPress site. They allow you to go beyond what a basic WordPress installation has to offer. There are tons of plugins with a lot of different functionalities, like speed up your site, filter out spam comments, secure your website, and set up an online shop.

4. Creating content in the Block Editor

The difference between posts and pages

In WordPress, there are two primary content types: posts and pages. Depending on the type of content you want to have, and how you plan to use that content, choosing between posts and pages can make a difference. Four main things set posts and pages apart:

1. The time of publication is relevant for posts, but not for pages.
2. Post feature an author and pages don’t.
3. Posts are archived in WordPress and pages aren’t.
4. You can leave comments on posts. Comments on pages are disabled by default.

How to write a post in WordPress

Writing a post is one of the most exciting and creative things you can do in WordPress. And luckily, it’s relatively easy too. Let’s dive into how it works.

How to write a page in WordPress

Now that you know how to write posts, writing a page will be very easy. To start writing a page, you will need to follow the steps below. Once you access the page editor, writing a page works exactly like writing a post. Just like posts, you also use blocks to create pages.

1. Click on the Pages menu item in the admin menu (1 in the image)
2. Click the Add New button in the Pages screen (2 in the image)

5. Structuring your site

Organizing your website

When creating a website, it’s crucial to think hard about how you will structure it. An organized website is one that contains posts and page, which are grouped and linked in a structured manner. A disorganized website is just a pile of content with no apparent order. Surely, you would like to have an organized site that your visitors will find easy to navigate.

Let’s start by looking at an ideal situation: if you’re starting from scratch, how should you organize your site? We think a well-organized website looks like a pyramid with a number of levels:

1. Homepage
2. Categories
3. Subcategories (only for larger sites)
4. Individual pages and posts

The homepage

It goes without saying that your homepage should act as a navigation hub for your visitors. You should link to the essential pages from
your homepage. By doing this:

• your visitors are more likely to end up on the pages you want them to end up on;
• you show search engines that these pages are essential.

Of course, if your site gets bigger, you won’t be able to link from the homepage to all of your important pages. For example, if you write a lot of articles or have a lot of essential articles, you cannot link to all of them from your homepage. That would be bad for two reasons:

1. It would lead to clutter, which will make it hard for your visitors to notice the pages you want them to visit.
2. It would weaken link value for every individual link. With too many links on a page, every link is just a little less valuable for the page it links to.

Navigation

In addition to having a well-structured homepage, you should also create a clear navigation path on your site. Your site-wide navigation consists of two main elements:

1. The menu
2. The breadcrumbs

The website menu is the most common aid. for navigation on your website, and you want to make the best possible use of it. Find out how you can optimize your website menu for your users and for SEO. If you want to make your site’s structure even more explicit you can add breadcrumbs to your pages. Breadcrumbs are clickable links that are usually visible at the top of a page or post. Find out what breadcrumbs are and why they are important for SEO.

Taxonomies

WordPress uses so-called taxonomies to group content. Two major elements that help you with organizing your site are categories and tags. Categories and tags are examples of taxonomies.

Read on: What is the difference between tags and categories? »

Archive pages

Archive pages are generated when you create a category, tag, or another taxonomy (in WordPress, at least). They have their own unique URL on your site. Posts or (product) pages that belong to that taxonomy are presented in a list on these archive pages. So, these archives can be based on various things: this could be categories and tags, but also the post date and post author, or something else if you created a custom taxonomy or use a plugin that creates one.

Keep on reading: A tutorial on WordPress archive pages »

6. Managing your WordPress site

User roles in WordPress

You could be managing your WordPress site with multiple users. To make this easier, WordPress created a number of user roles. A user role determines what someone can do on your site. There are six predefined user roles to choose from:

1. Super Admin
2. Administrator
3. Editor
4. Author
5. Contributor
6. Subscriber

Next to these predefined roles, developers can also create extra user roles. You can assign and change user roles via the Users menu item in your WordPress admin menu.

Read more: Roles and Capabilities »

Updates and backups

Updating WordPress core, themes and plugins is important for three reasons:

1. Security;
2. Bugfixes;
3. New features

However, updating comes with risks. To minimize risks, use high-quality plugins and themes, look at what is updated in the version details, and make a backup of your site before updating. WordPress also offers an updates overview, which you can access via the admin menu (Dashboard > Updates). Here, you’ll find all the updates available for your site.

It is important to make backups of your site because they allow you to go back to an earlier version of your site when an update causes issues, but they could also be useful when you experience trouble with your hosting provider or get hacked. There are basically three ways to create backups of your WordPress site:

1. Manually;
2. Through your host;
3. By using a WordPress plugin.

Keep reading: How to backup your (WordPress) site »

Common mistakes

By now, you have probably noticed that WordPress is relatively easy to use. Even with no prior experience in building websites, creating a website with WordPress can be a piece of cake. Still, even with all the features that make WordPress easy to use, sometimes people can make mistakes. In this post, we explore the most common beginner’s mistakes in WordPress. And, of course we’ll also give some tips on how to avoid these mistakes.

Security

Securing your website may sound like a daunting process. But there is good news! You can improve the security of the website yourself. You do not even need to have technical or coding skills. Even some small adjustments can make the difference between a hacked site, and a happy and healthy website. You can think of the following things:

1. Make sure you always keep your WordPress core, plugins and themes up to date!
2. Make sure that your WordPress password is complex, long and unique (CLU)
3. Use a password generator to create safe passwords
4. It’s safer to use two-factor authentication
5. Use a secure, HTTPS connection
6. Pick a host with solid security features

Read on: WordPress security in a few easy steps »

7. WordPress SEO

We’ve discussed how you can create a great site with WordPress. But, what is a great site without visitors? Creating a great site is unfortunately not enough to make people visit your site. And that’s where the real challenge begins. Creating a WordPress site is only the first step on your way to stardom. For the other steps, you need to work on your SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s the process of improving websites and content to get more traffic from search engines. It has an on-page and off-page part. So, let’s go through the things that WordPress does for your site’s SEO out of the box.

1. A strong foundation
   WordPress helps you get going quickly and it’s a pretty solid platform to work on. A basic setup can provide a strong foundation – even without extensive customization, theme optimization and plugins.
   
2. Pretty permalinks
   It supports so-called pretty permalinks so you can use SEO-friendly URLs.
   
3. Title tag
   WordPress also supports the title tag. This makes sure that the title you entered is also rendered in the code, so the search engines know exactly where to find the all-important title of your post.
   
4. Duplicate content
   Also, WordPress automatically deals with some cases of duplicate content on particular pages. By that, we mean that your site sometimes shows the same content on different URLs. WordPress doesn’t fix all of it though, but luckily Yoast SEO helps you out with the rest.
   
5. Site Health
   Lastly, a recent addition is the Site Health dashboard that shows you how your site is doing in a technical sense.

WordPress SEO is an exciting, but also gigantic subject to tackle. That’s why we made a definitive guide to WordPress SEO. This guide gives you a lot of stuff you can do on your WordPress site. It goes from technical SEO and conversion tips to content and marketing best practices, and a whole lot in between. So, make sure you check out this guide to higher rankings for WordPress sites.

Conclusion

That’s it! It was probably a lot to take in, which is why we recommend taking the WordPress for beginners training course. You’ll find everything you need to know if you’re a WordPress newbie. The training includes quizzes that test whether you have mastered the subject. And, it’s online and on-demand, so you can get started whenever you want! Good luck!

The post How to make a WordPress website appeared first on Yoast.

Why change a URL?

A good way to optimize your URL is to create a user-friendly slug. So, what exactly is a slug? A slug is the part of a URL that comes after the domain name and contains the post or the page title. In the example in the video, the initial slug is: how-to-change-a-URL-in-WordPress-without-screwing-up. In other words, the slug is the part of the URL that explains the content of the post or the page. 

There are different reasons why you’d want to change the slug. It may be that the slug is very long, like in this example. Or, maybe the old slug doesn’t fit the content on your post/page and now you’ve come up with a better one.

Don’t just go changing URLs for the sake of it. Better not touch URLs of posts or pages that already rank high. When a post does well in the search engines, there is no need to fix it!

How to change your URL: step-by-step

Luckily, there is an easy way to change and/or improve the slug. When you use Yoast SEO Premium, the redirect manager instantly helps you whenever you change the slug, so you can easily create a redirect and prevent 404 errors! Here’s how:

1. Go to post editing screen
2. Search for the post you’d like to change
3. Click ‘quick edit’
4. Change the slug in the ‘change slug’ field 
5. Click update

The redirect manager now automatically creates a redirect. So, you do not need to worry that readers will end up on a 404 page! 

There is also another way to change the slug, in the post editor screen. Click on the post to open the post editor. 

1. On the right-hand side, in the sidebar, you’ll see ‘Permalink’
2. Click to unfold
3. Change the slug under ‘URL slug’
4. Make sure to click update if you’re happy with your new slug

Again, the redirect manager automatically redirects the URL, so you’re good to go! Did you know, by the way, that the redirect manager isn’t the only handy feature of Yoast SEO Premium?

Creating a good slug

Now you know how editing the slug works. But, do you know what makes a good slug? If you want to optimize your slugs, we recommend including your keyword and to keep them short and descriptive. Make sure to check if there are any unnecessary words. If there are, edit them out! Good luck!

Read on: What is a slug and how to optimize it? »

The post How to change a URL in WordPress appeared first on Yoast.

In this video, Annelieke explains how to create a dashboard to analyze where traffic to your posts and pages is coming from. Below, you’ll find a brief summary of the steps.

1. Formulate a question you want to answer with your dashboard

You’re not just making a dashboard for the fun of it, you want to know things. Perhaps you want to compare your blog posts to your product pages? Or see how your site is doing, compared to last year. Take some time to think about what you want to know and what the purpose of your dashboard will be, so you can make optimum use of it.

In the video, we’ll build a dashboard to analyze traffic sources. It’s very useful to know where most of your traffic is coming from, and if your main traffic sources are always the same or differ a lot. Could you perhaps improve your mobile site? Which region do most of your visitors come from, and is that the region you’re targetting? This is how you find out!

2. Make a sketch of your report and what you want to include

Now that you know what question you want your dashboard to answer, it’s a good idea to make a preliminary sketch of how your report should look. Just take a piece of paper and make the outline, before you open a new report in Google Data Studio. You don’t have to stick to it to the letter, but you should think about what you want to see. For example, what will answer your question best, a pie chart, or a table?

If you want to make the dashboard to analyze traffic sources we discuss in this video, you can stick to the outline from the video.

3. Open a new report in Google Data Studio and select Google analytics as your data source

In the video, we’re using the Google Analytics demo account (you’ll understand we can’t just give away our own stats ;)). But of course, you can just use your own Google Analytics account. Make sure you select the ‘view’ that you also use when analyzing data in Google analytics.

4. Name your report and add things on your dashboard

These are the steps you should take if you want to recreate the dashboard in the video:

• First, add the ‘Date range’. You add this first, just to be sure that everything you add afterward changes accordingly if the date changes.
• Add a chart to show Landing pages. Make sure it uses the right data, the video explains how.
• The next step is to add a map, to see which regions deliver the most traffic.
• Then we add a pie chart to see how traffic is distributed over different devices.
• To track traffic sources (Google, direct, etc.) we add another pie chart.
• Finally, add scorecards to see how things are compared to last week.

5. Using your dashboard

Now that you’ve got your shiny new dashboard, what do you use it for? That depends, of course, on the purpose you formulated in step 1. The dashboard we created in this video can be used to get to know the traffic to your site. And if you know what your traffic usually looks like, it’s easier to notice when something’s off and take action. For example, if you suddenly get much less traffic from mobile users, you should investigate what could be causing that sudden drop. You can share this dashboard with your colleagues so everyone in your team knows how the site is doing.

Read more: How to track your SEO with Google Analytics »

The post How to create a dashboard in Google Data Studio appeared first on Yoast.

About the project

About a year and a half ago, I initiated a new project at Yoast. As someone with a background in scientific research, I wanted to back our SEO analysis with some proper research. In the case of Yoast SEO, a lot could actually be backed up with data, it just hadn’t been collated yet. I wanted to be sure, I wanted to be able to explain to our users why the checks in Yoast SEO are there, what the ideas behind the checks are.

That’s why I put together a team of experts: SEO-experts, developers, and linguists. Since August of 2017, we’ve been working together. The main goal of our team was to check whether what we’re saying in our SEO checks still makes sense and to base that on actual data. A lot of urban myths exist in SEO, so we were trying to clear up any misconceptions.

What did we change?

The recalibration project has led to some changes in Yoast SEO. For instance, we added a check on keyword distribution. It checks whether or not you use your keyword, and whether it’s evenly distributed throughout your text. While working on the recalibration, we also came up with the new functionality to recognize word forms (plurals, past tense, different word order). As Google is getting better at understanding texts and context, we felt that we needed to update our SEO analysis and make it smarter. That’s probably the most visible result of our recalibration-project.

We also critically evaluated all of the checks. When exactly should a bullet turn green and why? We’ve made some changes in the checks. Every check now has a page on which we explain what the check does and when exactly it turns orange or green.

Yoast will continue to study SEO

Google is changing its algorithm regularly. That’s why we need to stay on top. This project started out as an evaluation of all the Yoast SEO checks, but we realized that we can never stop evaluating. Yoast has always been on top of the SEO news. What’s more, we have regular meetings with Google and Bing and we’ll continue to have these. And, we’ll evaluate our SEO checks regularly, making sure that they are as up to date as can be.

Before releasing our new SEO analysis, we invited all of our customers to participate in a beta test. We’ve received some great feedback! But feedback does not stop after the beta-phase. So feel free to tell us what you think! Send an email to feedback@yoast.com if you want to give some feedback.

A big thanks to my wonderful team!

This new SEO analysis was a team effort. Working together with a group of SEO experts on one side and linguists and developers on the other side has been truely inspiring.

The SEO team was primarily in charge of research, seeking out the latest thinking and what that means for our plugin. We had two linguists when we started the project, who are also competent coders, so they have an instinct for what is and isn’t feasible within the existing plugin. Since much of our plugin has to do with text and language, their input has been so very valuable. They really upped our game! Since then, we’ve even hired more linguists. In fact, we have an entire team of linguists that also learned how to code.

Want to know more: check out our documentary!

We’ve actually made a documentary about the research behind the new SEO analysis. Want to know even more? Go check it out, it’s at the top of this post!

Read on: Premium SEO analysis »

The post New SEO analysis: a look behind the scenes appeared first on Yoast.

Unfortunately, to you as a website owner, there are some disadvantages to PDFs. Today, we’re answering two questions on using PDFs on your website. First up: what are the disadvantages to PDF files, and are there any risks to placing PDFs on your website?

Stijn Vogels asked us the following question:

In my current mission, I’m confronted with many links directing to PDF files instead of HTML pages. There are some clear disadvantages of PDF files, but I was also wondering if there are any risks. What risks do links to PDF files pose?

Risks of links to PDF files?

“There’s no real risk in terms of links to PDF files. But PDF files are generally just not as useful as web pages. They indeed have some disadvantages: you can’t have easy links on them, you can’t make them as interactive, you can’t track them and you don’t really know what the user is doing when he is looking at a PDF file.

If you can turn that into a web page, you can see what users are doing, and you can guide them to other content on your site, or make them convert more easily (buy something, subscribe to your newsletter etc). That becomes a whole lot more useful, than just having a still bunch of PDF files on your site.

So my suggestion is, if you have the choice, to always use web pages instead of PDF files. Good luck!”

PDFs and canonicals

On to the second question! Things can get a bit more complicated when you also have the content from your PDF somewhere else on your site, or on another website. To avoid duplicate content, you need to set a canonical URL. But how do you do that for a PDF document? And what is the best way to do that?

Karen Schousboe emailed us her question:

I plan to publish a PDF magazine under medieval.news. Some of the articles in each issue will also be freely available on a sister website. How should I handle that? Do I link canonical from the articles to the PDF magazine or from the magazine to the website?”

Watch the video or read the transcript further down the page for the answer to this question!

Canonicalization and PDFs

“Well, you can have a canonical HTTP header and what I would suggest doing is canonicalizing from the PDF magazine to the sister website, because HTML pages just rank a lot better than PDFs, usually.

In fact, I would suggest publishing everything in HTML and not necessarily in PDF because PDF is just not very easy to land on from search. You can’t do any tracking, you can’t do a whole lot of things that you can do with HTML. So I would seriously consider doing all of it in HTML pages and then canonicalizing between them. Good luck.”

The post PDFs on your website appeared first on Yoast.

If your site has been around for a while and is doing well, it can feel like a big step to switch to another theme. Still, there are many good reasons to change your theme: whether you picked something that turned out not to fit your needs after all, or just want to change the look of your website. So, let’s take a moment to discuss the SEO-implications of changing your WordPress theme and how to go about it.

Consultoria Passaporto emailed us her question on the subject:

I want to change my WordPress theme without altering my content. Could changing my theme harm my rankings?

Check out the video or read the answer below!

Changing your WordPress theme and SEO

“Yes, because changing your theme changes all the code on your site. At the same time, if the theme that you’re switching to is well coded, there is nothing to worry about.

The problem is that defining ‘well coded’ is pretty hard. What I would do is switch the theme, do a fetch & render in Google Search Console, see if everything turns out right and if it says everything’s okay, then you’re good to go. Good luck.”

The post Changing your WordPress theme appeared first on Yoast.

Yoast.com has guides on switching to non-www, as well as on moving your site to HTTPS. But what should you do if you want to make both these changes? What’s the best way to do this? Is there a preferred order?

We received an anonymous question for this Ask Yoast:

“I want to move my site from www and HTTP to non-www and HTTPS… what should I do?
1. Strip www and then force HTTPS;
2. or force HTTPS and then strip www?”

Check out the video or read the answer below!

How to switch from HTTP to HTTPS and www to non-www?

“You should do both at the same time. You should redirect the HTTP link straight to the HTTPS version without the www. Don’t try to do that with two 301 redirects, you should do that in just one 301 redirect.

Forcing HTTPS is something that you need to test really well. There are all sorts of things on your site that probably aren’t HTTPS ready that you should know of upfront. I know it was a lot of hard work to get yoast.com to HTTPS and we don’t even have ads. Especially ad services can be really tough to get working on HTTPS. But you should do it in one go. So it’s really secret option number three: redirect from one to the other straight away, and don’t think about anything else.

If you really can do HTTPS for everything and it works fine, make sure to add an HSTS: ‘Strict Transport Security Header’, which forces everything to be over HTTPS. And then, if the browser sees an HTTP link to your domain in the content somewhere, it will still automatically grab the HTTPS version, thus the right one.

Good luck! “

Read more: How to remove www from your URL »

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Let’s take a look at what those sitelinks look like:

As you’ll understand, sitelinks can push down the pages of your competitors on the results pages, and provide potential visitors more options to navigate to your site and find what they’re looking for. Of course, this could be beneficial to your traffic.

You’ve probably seen sitelinks in the search result pages at some point, but how do you get Google to add them to your site? As it happens, getting sitelinks isn’t for just anyone, unfortunately. Neither can you influence which links appear as sitelinks. In this Ask Yoast, we’ll go into this some more!

Sergiu Tere sent us this question:

I see that some sites have sitelinks, but not from Google AdWords. How do they do that?

Watch the video or read the transcript for my answer!

Getting sitelinks

Well, it’s very easy. Sitelinks are given to you. It’s not something that you can put in somewhere. Google will give you site links if it thinks you are very ‘authoritative’ for that query, so if you’re a very important result for that query. In that case, it will add site links from your site, based on how people browse your site and how they use your site.

So, it’s not something that you can change; it’s not something that you can opt-in for, it’s not something that you can do specific SEO for. You just have to become very important for that specific query.
Good luck!

Read on: Google’s sitelinks searchbox & Yoast »

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Most of the general rules of SEO still apply, regardless of whether you use WordPress or not to build a website. You need quality content and a proper site structure. To improve these aspects, using WordPress (or TYPO3 or Magento 2, for that matter) gives you the great advantage of being able to use the Yoast SEO plugin ;-).

But what about site speed, one of the pillars of good SEO? Does static site generation have the edge on using a CMS when it comes to speed? Here’s some thoughts!

Erwin emailed us about static site generation and SEO:

Static site generation results in faster load than using a dynamic platform such as WordPress. But the ecosystem for static site generators doesn’t include a good SEO tool, so optimization must be done manually. Which aspects should I pay attention to, to optimize such a website?”

Watch the video or read the transcript for my answer!

Static site generation vs WordPress

“Well, to be honest Erwin, I disagree with your premise. Static site generation is bullshit. It’s literally the case that any WordPress site can be made as fast as any static website.

Look at Yoast.com, it loads in under half a second, every single page. It’s WordPress, it’s a full-blown WordPress in fact, but it’s just cached properly.
There’s really no reason why you would not use WordPress, but use a “modern” static site generator… it really doesn’t work like that. Good luck!”

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But then, life ‘gets in the way’, and for one reason or another, you end up moving to another state or even a different country. Of course, you don’t just want to give up your business! So, how do you make sure your current website will continue to draw in new business? What can you do, besides updating your data in Google My Business, to target a new city?

Ninos Hozaya was in this situation, and emailed us this question:

The website for my business is doing great, but now I’m moving to another country. I want to open the same business and keep the website. What’s the best way to target a new city, in terms of SEO?

Watch the video or read the transcript for my answer!

Changing your site after you’ve moved

“Well, the best way, in all of these things, is to be honest. Change the targeting on your texts, so change where you are located, where you’re coming from, etc. But, also tell them that you’ve moved.

Use the references from your old city for your new city, because that’s the only thing you have right now. So keep all that, but just mention the name of your new city in your title and everywhere. Good luck!”

Want to know all about ranking locally? Read our Ranking your local business series!

The post Moving to a new city and keeping your business’s website appeared first on Yoast.

But, having access to all this data is most useful when you know what everything means. And, you probably can’t make all the necessary changes all at once. So, how do you prioritize, to quickly get some returns on your efforts?

Ana emailed us, wondering about the best place to start improving:

To improve our on-site SEO, we want to update our posts based on Google Search Console data. Which should we update first: low ranking posts or low CTR posts?

Watch the video or read the transcript for my answer!

Quick wins when updating your posts with GSC data

“Well, to be honest, the low CTR posts can probably be improved just by improving the title and the description. Because if you have a low click-through rate but it’s already ranking, then you should just make sure that people see that they’ll get what they want.

For the low ranking posts, you’ll need to adapt the copy as well, to make them rank better. So, I would go with the low CTR posts first as that’s probably less work for the same gain and then start with the low ranking posts. Good luck!”

The post Which posts to update first: low ranking or low CTR? appeared first on Yoast.

If you’re moving to a new domain, for example, you probably want to continue your website, but with a clean slate. So, if you manage your switch right, could it save you time cleaning up? And, is using the WordPress export – import functionality a good way to approach this? Let’s discuss!

Muhammad Asaadi emailed us saying,

“I’m moving my WordPress website to another domain. I want to have a clean install of WordPress and move only my posts and pages using the WordPress built-in export import tool and then manage internal links with 301 redirects using Yoast SEO Premium. Is that a good way to approach this?”

Watch the video or read the transcript for my answer!

Handling a clean install and domain switch

“Well, I don’t know which problem you’re solving. You’ve probably got a lot of old stuff hanging around that you think you can get rid of. Importing and exporting using the WordPress import tool can lead to a lot of lost data. It doesn’t always import and export everything right.

I don’t know whether that’s the best way of going about it. Usually it’s better to just go through the database and see like, okay, what can I delete, which pits are no longer needed.

That requires a bit of a professional though, so if you can’t do that yourself, just hire someone to do that for you. Usually, you’re better off doing that than trying to use the import export tool for something that
you really can’t do all that well. Good luck!”

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Take, for example, a wedding photographer, who’s ready to hop in the car, travel to a location and take beautiful pictures for a couple that loves his or her photograpic style. It would be a shame if this couple from another area couldn’t find this photographer in the search results! So, what can you do if you want your service business to be found in a larger area?

Kelly Cammack and Danny O’Neil were struggling with this problem:

I run a nationwide service business but I’m having trouble ranking well for other cities than my own. My competitors have individual pages on their site, targeting large cities by using the city in the URL. These pages have similar copy and are overall thin. Is that really the best strategy to rank for more locations?

Watch the video or read the transcript for the answer!

How to rank your service business nationwide

“Well no, it’s not the best strategy but it’s always a hard thing to do this right. The best strategy would be to actually have locations in all those different locations, but nobody’s going to do that. So it is probably a way of trying to get there and trying to do it well, but I would make sure that they are not thin pages but bridge ones, pages where you show the references you have from that specific location, that show a bit more location specific content. It’s more work but it will end up ranking better in the long run. Good luck!”

The post Ranking your service business nationwide appeared first on Yoast.

But, what if one of your sites isn’t well optimized and contains thin content? Is it still OK if such a site shares pages with a well-optimized website, or will the latter suffer lower rankings by association?

Craig Hamilton Parker emailed us, wondering the same thing:

I have two websites on the same server. They’re on different topics, but need to share some pages, such as the shop and events page and related topics on the two sites. One site is well optimized using Yoast. The other isn’t well optimized and has a few thin pages. Is it safe to link between the sites without using rel=nofollow?

Watch the video or read the transcript for my answer!

Handling sites that share pages

“Yes, it’s safe. In fact, if they have the same pages on both sides, I would pick one – the well-optimized one- and canonicalize the other one to the well-optimized one, so you do not create duplicate content.

You want to show to Google that you’re aware that you have two pages
that are basically the same thing and show them which one they should index. But overall there’s not really that much wrong with having that.

It’s just better to figure out yourselves which ones you want in the search engines and which ones you don’t want in the search engines. If you want both of them in the search engines, you’ll have to give them different content. Good luck.”

The post Related sites sharing pages: what to consider? appeared first on Yoast.

It’s good to keep some things in mind when selecting what comment system you want to use. Do you want integration with social media, for example? Do you want to be able to keep your comments if you ever need to change your comment system, and what features do you require? You may want more functionalities than WordPress’ standard comment system provides and could therefore choose another system. But are there really no downsides to that, keeping the importance of site speed in mind? What about comment systems and SEO? Let’s get into this dilemma in this week’s Ask Yoast!

Max sent us his question on comment systems:

There is no question that the Disqus service takes a little while to load on a webpage. So, do these blog commenting services, like Disqus, affect SEO in some way?

Watch the video or read the transcript for my answer!

The impact of comment systems on SEO

“Do they affect SEO? Well, yes, they do. Because, in fact, they’re so slow to load that most of the time, what you see is that Google doesn’t load the content of those comments, and doesn’t use them to rank that page. Which might be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how good your comments are and whether your comments have a lot of content or not.

I personally don’t like these services because they slow down the page load so much and because they make it slower for people to be able to respond to your content, which is why, on yoast.com, we use the plain vanilla WordPress commenting system with some added features that are in the Yoast Comment Hacks plugin, which we’ve released for free on the repository. So that’s why we use that, and not any service like Disqus. But I know there’s a lot of fans of services like Disqus because of all the other features they have. So it’s a trade-off. We made our choice, you have to make yours. Good luck!”

The post Comment systems and SEO appeared first on Yoast.

Let’s take a practical example: what should you do if you have an eCommerce website with multiple pages about different types of pants? You can do your best to optimize these product pages. But how do you write 300 words for each product page in that case? And is it even worthwhile doing that?

Felisza Nichols was wondering the same thing:

“I want to know if having less than 300 words for your product page is bad. I have a clothing store and it’s difficult to write 300 words about a pair of pants.”

Watch the video at the top of this post or read the transcript for the answer!

Things to consider when optimizing product pages

“That’s something I can relate to, especially if you sell a hundred different type of pants. The funny thing is, on a store, the 300-word length is probably quite a bit. The question is:

A. Should you have that much text on the page or is there a lot of other content on a page that you could count in as well, so you could do with 150 or 200 words?
B. Should you really be optimizing for this specific product or should you be optimizing the category page for which it is usually a lot easier to write 300 words than for the product page.

So the question you have to ask yourself is twofold: 

A. Should I optimize the specific pants page? Or should I optimize the category page?
B. Could I get away with 150 or 200 words because I have a lot of other content on the page? So, if you have a lot of images or technical information about the product then you can usually get away with less content.

The biggest thing I would say is: optimize the category page and don’t optimize the individual product pages that much.

Good luck!”

Ranking with product category pages

So, as we’ve seen, ranking your shop category pages, rather than individual product pages, can be a good strategy. But this also means these category pages need a sufficient amount of text. You also still want products on that page to catch the eye. Let’s discuss some options for dealing with that!

Stefan Wohlert emailed us this question:

Should I start with a long introduction on my shop’s category page? If I write 400 – 500 words, the actual products will be pushed down a lot.

Watch the video or read the transcript for the answer!

Adding content on product category pages

“This is a question we get a lot. You want content on those pages to be able to rank. At the same time, your products are more important than your content. Now I would suggest having a couple of hundred words up top and then maybe allow people to continue to read by going to the bottom of the page and having a button there that takes them there.

You can play with this. You can also do different tabs. This was a big no-no in the past, but with the advent of mobile, Google has actually started indexing both tabs, even the non visible ones, because on mobile this actually makes sense. So you can play with this, see what works, see what makes your ranking change and then make it as good as possible. I would keep up the 400, 500 words per page, though. That’s a very good thing. Good luck.”

Read more: eCommerce SEO checklist »

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Such an unexpected redirect to your site is unlikely to instantly cause huge SEO problems. Still, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your rankings and check what kind of domain this redirect is coming from. After all, if it’s some super-shady website that’s connected to your website like this, search engines could get suspicious, which might impact your rankings. So, what to do, when you face an (unwanted) redirect to your site? Let’s discuss in today’s Ask Yoast!

Central4all emailed us on this subject:

Someone is redirecting his or her site to my site. Is this harmful, and if so, what should I do?

When someone redirects their site to your site

“Well, it depends. If that site is very bad and has very bad links, then it might be bad for you. But generally, I wouldn’t be too worried. You can always disavow those links in Google Search console later on. For now, I’d say, let it go and see what happens. Good luck!”

Read on: Clean up your bad backlinks »

The post Redirect from a domain to my site appeared first on Yoast.

Sounds like a horrible scenario, right? What’s more, if the other business is in another industry, then undertaking legal action probably won’t be any use. So, what can you do when another company with the same name as your business beats you in the search results, every time? Even when people try to find you?

Leon Wilke was struggling with this problem and emailed us:

Our company has the same name as a large company in another industry. So this company always beats us in the search results, even when people try to find us. Do you have any advice or tips on how to deal with that?

Watch the video, or read the transcript for the answer!

Dealing with competing business names

“Yes, I do, but you’re not going to like it… Change the name of your company. There literally is no other way of dealing with this properly in the long run. It’s always painful to do that. But, you’re always going to be outranked by them… Good luck!”

Read more: 5 tips on branding »

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If you run an online travel agency (and when you offer excursions, or other ‘experiences’ rather than physical products) things are further complicated by dates and times. For example: you want to give your customers a clear overview of available travel dates, and let them pick a date of departure easily. But what’s the best way to implement that on your website? And what can you do to avoid those aforementioned duplicate content problems?

Michael Reiff was struggling with this and emailed us this question:

“We sell voyages on ships and for a better client experience, I want to split them up to single products so they can be filtered by date. That means I’ll have several products with the same description, the only difference being the date of departure. Will Google see that as duplicate content and if so what can I do to fix it?”

Watch the video above, or read the transcript for the answer!

Adding trips with different departure dates on your site

“Yes, that’s duplicate content. It’s also probably not the best way to split your product. You’ll have one type of voyage, you have different departure dates. You can very easily say, “We have these departure dates,” on your page about that voyage. Much more easily than you can say, “Hey we have these 100 trips. They’re really all the same, but they just depart on different days.”

So, I think, honestly, that you’ve made the wrong choice in how you split them up. I would make one page about the product and then just list the departure dates. Good luck!”

Read on: What is duplicate content? »

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In any case, take into account that you may experience lower traffic, the first few weeks after your migration, simply because your new URLs need to be properly indexed again. If everything goes well and you don’t break things, your rankings will improve over time. Let’s discuss a case where this might happen in some more detail in today’s Ask Yoast!

Anthony Spitery emailed us about his situation:

Our website ranks well in Google but it’s a subdomain of another URL that is no longer registered. We want to move to another host and we’re wondering what the SEO impact would be if we turned the subdomain into the primary domain. Do we lose our ranking?

Watch the video or read the transcript for the answer!

The impact of a site migration

“Well, yes, you’ll lose rankings, because you have to migrate it, so you’ll have to take a bit of a hit. It’s probably a better idea in the long run, though, so I would still do it. But you have to realize that for somewhere between three and six months you will take a loss in traffic. That loss in traffic can vary: I’ve seen less than 10%, but I’ve also seen more than 40%. So, it can be quite a painful experience.

But it’s worth it in the long run, especially if that other domain is not used anymore, because otherwise, that reflects poorly on your business as well. So I would take the hit, and do it. Good luck.”

Read more: Domain names and their influence on SEO »

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