WordPress SEO

Content
Chapter 1
Don’t Launch a WordPress Site 9
Before You Go Through This
Checklist
Anna Crowe, Assistant Editor, Search Engine Journal
Chapter 2
How to Build a WordPress 62
Site in 24 Hours
Brian Harnish, Lead SEO, iLoveSEO
Chapter 3
7 Ways to Improve SEO on 90
Your WordPress Site
Anna Crowe, Assistant Editor, Search Engine Journal
SEJ Partner
The 4 Most Important SEO 113
Strategies for Large-Scale
WordPress Websites
Stormy Scott, Content Marketing Team Lead,
InMotion Hosting
Chapter 4
5 Common WordPress 136
Duplicate Content Issues
& How to Fix Them
Adam Riemer, President, Adam Riemer Marketing
Chapter 5
7 Local SEO Best Practices 150
for WordPress Websites
Aleh Barysevich, Founder and Chief Marketing Officer,
Link-Assistant.Com
Chapter 6
How to Choose WordPress 170
Plugins
Roger Montti, Owner, Martinibuster.com
SEJ Partner
Local SEO For WordPress 179
Blogs: What Every Marketer
Needs to Know
Laura Bernardes, Content Editor, Rock Content
Chapter 7
WordPress SEO Without an 192
SEO Plugin
Chapter 8
13 Best WordPress SEO 226
Plugins
Jon Clark, Managing Partner, Moving Traffic
Media, LLC
Chapter 9
Just Say No to Hackers: How 268
to Harden Your WordPress
Security
Vahan Petrosyan, Director, IT and Infrastructure,
Search Engine Journal
Chapter 10
How to Protect a WordPress Site 306
from Hackers
Chapter 11
11 WordPress Mistakes to 327
Avoid
Jeremy Knauff, CEO, Spartan Media
WordPress SEO Guide: Everything You Need to Know
Chapter 1
Don’t Launch a WordPress

Site Before You Go Through
This 17-Step Checklist
Anna Crowe
Assistant Editor,
Raise your hand if you work on your WordPress

website every day.
Keep it raised if you have an embarrassingly

large amount of plugins, unpublished blog
content from early 2015, too many broken links to
count, spam-filled comments, and multiple ugly
URLs.
Don’t worry; I’m guilty, too. Between my 9-to-5

gig and helping my freelance clients, ignoring my
WordPress site has somehow become the norm.
But it doesn’t have to be.
10
Like doing taxes or crafting the perfect business plan,

there are some things every small business owner
should know how to do. And those must-have skills
should extend to your WordPress website.
You don’t need to stress, though – I have you

covered. In order to streamline your WordPress site
(without ditching the stuff you actually need), I’ve
rounded up my favorite SEO tips that pull double or
even triple duty – meaning you can do more with
less.
From choosing an SEO-friendly theme that’ll juice

up multiple devices to one-and-done plugins,
this checklist will have you upgrading your
underperforming website for a sleek ROI-boosting
website in no time.
Your current level of WordPress prowess doesn’t

matter. By the time I’m through, you will be a boss at
all the things that matter in 2021 and beyond.
And, in case you want to get a quick glimpse, here’s a

checklist for you to use.
11
12
3 Steps Before You Launch

WordPress
To put it simply, I find maintaining my WordPress
intimidating.
Now, I know it can’t be that difficult to do – the site

wouldn’t have 70 million new posts each month,
after all, if it were so impossible to figure out.
13
Despite the fact that so many people sing its praises,

some things need to come as second nature for
WordPress users and their SEO.
Over the last year or so, I started optimizing my

client’s websites with better plugins, migrating to
faster web hosting, and more.
That’s when I realized; WordPress is a

goldmine for SEO:
No other platform has all the same

capabilities.
You don’t have to code to get started.
But getting into the SEO groove and seeing ROI

doesn’t just happen overnight. It requires getting
started with the foundation of your website to learn
how to navigate successfully the deepest, darkest,
corners of WordPress.
Here’s what I learned (it’s a lot!), and consider this

your beginner’s checklist to jumping (headfirst!) into
the WordPress SEO action.
14
1. Web Hosting
The first key to successfully navigating WordPress is
setting up web hosting.
I’m all about handling my virtual private server

(VPS) and backing up my data, but there are some
cases you just don’t have time for – and ones you
definitely should make time for.
So, when it comes to time, resources, anyone-can-

set-it-up website, I’m all about spending the extra
money on a hosting solution.
15
If I have a slow, unresponsive site, my bounce rate will

increase, and users will drop off.
There’s a massive difference between a site that takes

one second to load versus ten seconds, and if you’ve
got the latter, you’re more likely to lose users. The
engineers at Google uncovered that a page load time
of 0.4 milliseconds is long enough for users to search
less.
Before you make the leap to a hosting

service provider, ask yourself these
questions:
Do they have support for plugins?
What type of backup support do they

offer?
Is there a staging environment?
What is the volume of bandwidth?
Which operating system are they using?

Linux? Windows?
What other sites are in your IP range?
16
For more information on choosing a web hosting

provider, read this post on SEJ.
Web hosting provider SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Increased website
Kinsta. speed.
Flywheel.
SiteGround.
Cloudways.
17
2. CDN
For anyone who needs a little added boost of
speed to its website knows the power of a CDN
(Content Delivery Network).
A CDN changes the way your site handles static

content like images, javascript, and CSS. A CDN
caches your static content to create faster page
loading, lower response time, and an overall
speedier website – which helps you rank higher in
the search engines.
18
Sound cool? It is. I love anything that makes it look

like I put more effort into my site getting speedy
than I did.
And after extensive road-testing, I’ve found that

having a CDN is legitimately the easiest and fastest
way to make your site speed look rad to the search
engines.
19
CDN recommendations: SEO benefits:
Cloudflare. Increased website

MaxCDN. speed.
Incapsula. Lower response time.
20
3. SEO Friendly Theme

Let’s face it: Most of us aren’t typically concerned
with finding the most SEO-friendly WordPress
theme.
It would be good, but in reality, it’s more likely

you’ll spend your time just trying to figure out
what theme looks the prettiest. Major kudos to the
business owners who do make the effort to find an
SEO-friendly theme.
21
To help you transition from gawking at

lovely designs to downloading perfectly
SEO-optimized themes; I’ve put together an
incredible line-up of essential features that
will have you clearing out your bookmarked
themes in no time.
Clean and fast code: With a clean code

structure, you can decrease the load
of time on pages and increase the
crawlability of your pages.
CSS and Javascript files: With Google, less

is more, and having a limited number of
CSS and Javascript files will help. Plus, you
won’t have to worry about minifying them
later.
Simple layout: A simple design will make

it easy for users to navigate from page to
page.
Responsive: As we know Google gives an

edge to responsive sites in searches from
mobile devices so choosing a WordPress
theme that is responsive will give you an
overall better user experience.
Schema Markups: Schema Markups tell

search engines where the most relevant
content is on your theme.
22
SEO-friendly WordPress SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Increased website
Divi theme. speed.
Genesis theme. More pages indexed.
Astra theme.
GrowthPress theme.
23
4 Steps When Getting Set-Up

on WordPress
Around this time of the process, you’ll want to start
combing through the basics and digging through
WordPress tutorials as we embark upon the basic
SEO traditions of setting up your WordPress website.
Often you find old content to trash or plugins to

deactivate, but sometimes you come across new
treasures that are worth using.
Below I’m talking about the steps you just can’t

overlook when launching a WordPress site.
24
4. Cache Plugin
A caching plugin takes your website (especially
on mobile) from “meh” to “great” with one
simple click.
Unlike most plugins, a caching plugin is rarely

considered an unnecessary download.
Instead, this plugin takes page load time to the next

level, with amped-up website performance and
changes dynamic content to static.
It may sound like a whole lot to embrace

(especially if you’re a non-plugin type of site), but
this is one of those things you need to adapt your
style for.
25
Cache plugin SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Increased website
WPRocket (my speed.
personal favorite).
Increased site
W3 Total Cache. performance.
Cache Enabler.
WP Fastest Cache.
WP Super Cache.
Remember, once you activate the plugin, head over

to the settings to enable your cache for mobile
devices.
26
5. Categories
The last time I took over a client’s website, they had
a category called “Travel” and a tag called “Travel”
which created duplicate content and duplicate
titles. I ended up noindexing the Tags and started
to manually clean the Tags up (this was one big
headache).
If your pages are of no use to searchers (e.g.,

archived pages), then noindex it.
27
Within WordPress, your categories are broad topics

of your blog posts – whether you’re writing about
food, travel, fashion, whatever.
Think of categories as your table of contents. And,

on WordPress, you must categorize your post
otherwise, you’ll end up in the “uncategorized”
section which is of no help to anyone.
28
Category SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Improved user
Stick to generic topics. experience.
Personally, I pick five
generic items that will Provides easy
have fresh content access to pages to
monthly. get indexed.
Keep each post to 1 to 2

categories max.
Remember to add
content to taxonomy
and archive pages.
All categories should
represent a keyword
that a user would
search for.
29
6. Tags
Gone are the days when tagging your content
in WordPress meant you were either keyword-
obsessed, confused or just enjoyed listing 20+
relevant words.
Whether you’re looking to know the basics or fix

your current tag status, your WordPress tags need
to experience a resurgence that goes way beyond
keyword stuffing.
30
If you’re not already on board, keep reading; a client

of mine gets 100,000 unique visitors per month. More
than 3% of those are referred to by tags listed in the
SERPs.
Tag recommendations: SEO benefits:
Limit your tagging to Improved user

relevant topics you experience.
covered in the post.
Increased
Not every post needs engagement.
to be tagged.
Keep tags short and
sweet; no more than
two words.
Delete overused
and underused tags
monthly.
31
7. Permalinks
Permalinks on WordPress are great for lots of things
– structuring your URLs with keywords, creating
short links, increasing search rankings, and more.
Whether you just like to ogle SEO-friendly URL

structures, are thinking of changing your URLs, or
are looking to send a little nudge to your search
rankings, there are endless options to update this
on WordPress.
32
Example of an SEO friendly permalink:

www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-optimize-
wordpress/
Example of a not-so-SEO-friendly permalink:

www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=2043
Permalink recommendations:
The default WordPress plugin is not SEO friendly

according to Google, so update your settings.
33
Post name option is a safe choice because this makes

URLs short.
If you’re a larger site, you may want to include dates or

categories before the post name option.
Leave out “&,” “?,” “!” characters in the URL.
Use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_).
SEO Benefits:
Increased crawlability with search engines.

Better search rankings when keywords are used.
34
8. Spam Comments
Spammers, your time is almost over. The newer
versions of WordPress are nofollowing links posted
in comments – viagra, words I didn’t know existed,
things only seen on Booble, I won’t miss you.
A whole slew of spam comments packed into one

blog post that doesn’t offer anything relevant to the
topic can damage your site.
At the end of the day, your website will not

perform well with spam comments.
35
Spam comment SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Improved site
Disallow anonymous
credibility.
posting.
Use CAPTCHAs to prevent
automated spamming.
Use the “nofollow”
attribute.
Disallow hyperlinks.
Use the Askimet
plugin to monitor spam
comments.
Here’s a screenshot of what you get with the

Askimet plugin:
36
7 Steps When Optimizing

WordPress
It seems as though everything WordPress touches
(or rather, creates) turns to gold.
From themes to plugins, the platform knows exactly

what connected, business-minded customers want
– and how to solve any website problems they may
be facing.
37
And these features below optimize for SEO in every

way.
For those who can’t seem to find the time to

learn SEO from scratch (we’ve all been there), this
section is for you.
38
9. Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions,

& More
Let us start by saying this: I love the Yoast SEO
plugin.
I like the meta titles, meta descriptions, the well-

organized placement of XML sitemaps, and let’s not
forget the bulk editor – all of it.
Meta titles and descriptions have proven to

increase traffic and engagement, and they deserve
a spot in 2021.
39
Meta titles and SEO benefits:

descriptions
recommendations: Increased click-through
in SERPs.
Download the Yoast
SEO plugin.
Optimize your Content
Type settings.
40
41
10. XML Sitemaps

As mentioned above, the Yoast SEO plugin offers a
sitemap feature, and you need to know how to use
it.
Having a sitemap is a necessary evil when it comes

to SEO. A sitemap contains all your posts and pages
in a list that the search engines can easily read.
42
XML Sitemap recommendations:
In the Yoast SEO plugin tab, go to General, then Features.

Swipe to turn on the XML sitemap.
43
Head over to Google Search Console, under Crawl,

then Sitemaps.
Click Add Sitemap and submit.
SEO Benefits:
Faster crawlability.
44
11. Internal Linking

Between internal, external, and my favorite posts,
I never stop to think “Hm, if only I could link to the
best content possible on my site.“
But, the Yoast SEO plugin will provide examples of

how to do just the way to do that. And, I’m loving it.
Rather than randomly linking to posts, this plugin

allows me to create a smooth site architecture and
send link love to the appropriate pages on my site.
45
Internal linking SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Creates a clean site
Link to pages deep on architecture.
your website.
Distributes page
Link as naturally authority throughout
as possible for the the site.
reader.
Use a reasonable
amount of links (i.e.,
100 internal links for a
1,000-word blog is not
reasonable).
46
12. Image Alt Tags

The great thing about WordPress is you don’t need
to understand smancy HTML or Javascript to edit
your image alt tags.
Not only can I optimize images with a simple click

of a button, but I can do it without adding a plugin.
47
Image alt tag SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Better user
Name your image experience.
file name a natural
Higher chances to
keyword-rich phrase.
show up in image
I always include my
search.
brand name.
Write a descriptive
image alt tag
description.
Complete the image alt
attribution description
with your brand name.
48
13. Header Tags

Not that I have anything against long-form articles
without breaks, but when it comes to my articles, I
want things to feel a little more engaging.
Sorry, minimalists, but my philosophy is more is

more. I never tire of seeing articles filled with H1, H2,
and H3 tags from beginning to end.
49
Header tag SEO benefits:

recommendations:
More readable, easy-
Name your image to-digest content for
file name a natural readers.
keyword-rich phrase.
Increased user
Write a descriptive engagement.
image alt tag
description.
Complete the image alt
attribution description
with your brand name.
50
14. The rel=”canonical” Tag

Nobody likes having their content stolen (or, at
least, I sure don’t). And, I don’t know about you, but
I always worry about my content being stolen by
one of those scrapers.
To help combat this, I’ve enabled the

rel=”canonical” tag for pages on my client’s
websites. It tells the search engines where the
source URLs of content exist on their site. This
eliminates duplicate content issues.
51
rel=”canonical” tag SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Eliminate
If your content is duplicate content
being published on issues.
another website, then
use the Yoast SEO
plugin to add the
rel=”canonical” tag.
52
15. Robots.txt
If we had a dollar for all the robots.txt I’ve had to fix
that were blocking the search engines from quality
content, I’d be making it rain money right now.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term,

robots.txt is essentially a file that tells the search
engines what to look at and what not to look at on
your site.
On search engines like Bing and Google, where

websites run rampant, this method of guiding the
SERPs can save you a lot of time and money.
53
robots.txt SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Eliminate duplicate
Disallow wp-admin in content issues.
your robots.txt file.
Allow all other quality
content to be indexed
in the robots.txt file.
Add your sitemap to
the bottom of your
robots.txt file.
Edit your robots.txt file
in Yoast SEO plugin >
Tools > Editor.
54
2 Ongoing Steps to
Maintaining WordPress
When business owners expand into new WordPress
territories, it’s typically in the form of content
upgrades and lead generation forms. This helps
boost higher price tags and content more
sophisticated than we’re used to seeing.
55
But, let’s not forget the basics that got us here.
Between backing up your website, optimizing

your headlines, and cleaning up meta titles and
descriptions that would make, maintaining your
WordPress site can be draining.
Below discover some of the biggest – and

easiest – ways to secure your WordPress site.
56
16. Broken Links

No matter how my broken links go down – ending
with a shiny server error or the requisite semi-
awkward not found – the broken link rite of passage
will always live fresh in my mind (and cringe-
worthy Integrity report): the 504, the 404, and, most
importantly, the soft 404.
So, I got to thinking about what I’d do differently.

Nowadays, running a report on Integrity (team
Mac) or Xenu (team PC) will pull all the nostalgic-
inducing links you may need to fix.
57
Broken links SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Better user experience.
Download Integrity
or Xenu and fix
whatever external
links are popping up.
Use Yoast SEO’s
Redirection to fix
your 404 errors listed
in Google Search
Console’s crawl
errors.
58
59
17. Backup Your Site

Being good at backing up your website doesn’t
necessarily mean you’re enhancing your online
presence. It means you’re saving all your SEO
efforts.
When you choose to backup your site – daily,

weekly, monthly – everyone wins.
60
Broken links SEO benefits:

recommendations:
Peace of mind.
Backup your website
using the cPanel if
you’re feeling tech-
savvy.
If the cPanel sounds
like something out
of Short Circuit, then
opt for a plugin like
Backup Buddy.
Keeping up with the pace of WordPress technology is

rough. Even those of us that are tuned into the newest
plugins and software can find it overwhelming. (Sucuri?
Come on; I just figured out Wordfence!)
So it’s no wonder that small business owners may

stumble a bit as they navigate the increasingly
connected WordPress world. Sometimes even the most
well-meaning and tech-savvy entrepreneurs can slip up.
From caching your website and comment etiquette to

robots.txt, this article has it all.
61
Chapter 2
How to Build a WordPress

Site in 24 Hours
Brian Harnish
Lead SEO, iLoveSEO
WordPress is a fantastic platform for building

websites on-the-fly with little to no development
time required to get up and running.
In addition, WordPress has fantastic customizability

ranging from being able to fully customize your
theme, to finding plug-ins that have functionality to
do just about anything you want.
The list of what you can do to customize WordPress

is endless and is generally limited only to your
imagination.
You can install a newsletter plug-in to manage your

newsletter subscriptions. You can install analytics
plug-ins that seamlessly integrate with WordPress
and Google Analytics.
Other WordPress plugins allow you to customize

your SEO such as your title tags, meta descriptions,
and meta keywords. Still, some plug-ins will also
let you add noodp and noydir tags, and dive deep
enough into their functionality to allow for full
control over noindex/nofollow on individual pages.
63
1. Choose a Good Domain Name

This should go without saying, but choosing a good
domain name is half the battle toward creating a
good website.
A good domain name should generally be:

Short.
Catchy.
Describe your business.
Be generally keyword-related.
Be related to your brand.
64
Short domain names are generally defined as

domain names that are three words or less. Ideally
two words or less.
These words should communicate and encompass

three areas: your brand, your industry, your
keywords.
Now, if you’re just creating a company site, your

domain name should be a branded domain name
for posterity reasons.
You wouldn’t easily be able to sell your

site if you created the domain name to be
“JohnsWebsitesRUS.com.” So, that consideration
should come into play as well.
Now, it’s necessary to mention this: the exact match

domain name update does tend to work against
domain names with exact-match phrases.
Be careful about using exact match keyword

phrases as the domain name. You may get
away with it for a few months, but the choice will
eventually come back to haunt you.
65
2. Choose a Good Host

Choosing a good web host for WordPress presents
several challenges. A web host should be a positive
addition to your website’s arsenal.
Things like additional websites, bandwidth, or things

like no WHM control panel can be (and should be)
dealbreakers. Find a host that will suit your needs
and let you upgrade your monthly bandwidth as
necessary.
66
As you drive more traffic to your site, you want to

make sure that your host has some way for you to
upgrade that bandwidth. Almost nothing can be
worse than obtaining thousands of visitors a month
and find that your website is suddenly down due to
lack of bandwidth.
Make sure that your host will give you the security you
need as well. This will help you rest easy, knowing that
you will not be hacked in a moment’s notice.
Find out more about WordPress security through

our article: 10 Tips For Keeping Your WordPress Site
Secure.
For this tutorial, we are assuming that you have

selected a Linux web host with CPANEL + WHM
combination as your hosting stack. There are other
implementations and types of hosts, but for the
purposes of this article, this is what we are using.
67
3. Inventory Your Existing Website

Here, you can figure out whether or not you want to
start over. If your existing website is so horrible you
want to start over, then I totally get it: I would not
want to add that site to my portfolio either!
Take a look at your existing website and figure

out what you want to keep and what you want to
throw away. Depending on what you uncover in this
step, it will be necessary to perform a full website
migration, which will take longer than 24 hours and
is beyond the scope of this article.
68
4. Download WordPress
Go to WordPress.org and download the install files
for WordPress. After downloading, you can unzip the
files.
Then, logon to your web host. Upload the files.

You can add the files anywhere you want on the
website.
69
If you want to upload them to the root folder and

have your entire site based on WordPress, that can
be done.
If you’d rather just a section of your site hosted off

a subdomain be the WordPress version, then that is
possible as well.
70
5. Create a MySQL Database

Before proceeding with the WordPress installation,
it will be necessary to create a MySQL database in
cpanel. Without a MySQL database, your WordPress
installation will all be for naught.
Follow the documentation here (or follow your

hosts’ help files if they have them) in order to create
a new database with the MySQL Database Wizard.
Be sure to take down your username and password

for the SQL database. We will be using them in the
next steps.
71
Need-to-know: When creating your username and

password the MySQL database wizard usually creates
a username with the database name + user like so:
user_databasename.
So, username_db1 would be the full username you use

when modifying wp_config.php. Don’t worry – we’re
getting to that in just a little bit.
72
6. Install WordPress in
15 Minutes
There are some changes you need to make to the
WordPress install files before you move forward
with installing WordPress.
First of all, it is necessary to make changes to wp_

config.php in order to ensure that your installation
will work. Without these changes, your installation
will have problems.
73
Please note as well that the items in the wp-config.php

file are all in a specific order. This order does matter and
if you make changes and you don’t know what you’re
doing, you can introduce problems into your installation.
Using your FTP solution, let’s navigate to wp-config-
sample.php. We have to re-name this file to wp-config.
php for the file to work.
Next, we are going to make changes to some items in

the file: the database name, the database username,
database password, and database host.
Remember that need-to-know item we discussed in the

last step? That applies here.
So your database name will be the full name of the

database you created.
The Database Username will be “username_db1”. Enter

your password.
Now, the Database Host is set by your hosting provider.

It will be necessary to contact their support and obtain
this information for that wp-config.php item.
74
For further details, here is the official documentation for

editing wp-config-sample.php.
Now that we have renamed wp-config-sample.php,

and we have entered in our database’s information, it is
time to go to the main install URL, and proceed with the
installation.
In a few seconds, you should have a welcome screen

that shows, “Congratulations! WordPress is now
installed.” This entire process should take around 5-10
minutes total.
Some maintenance tips: You will want to change

your admin directory on your site, in order to prevent
hackers from hacking into your back end. In addition,
using strong passwords like “7$192^98asv097!@#E41” is
recommended just for the security alone.
Please, don’t use the word “password” or other

identifiable easy-to-guess information as your
WordPress password. It’s better to be thorough and a
little cautious at the outset than be sorry later.
75
7. Find a Good Theme

Now that WordPress is installed, it is important to
find a good theme for our project.
Finding a good theme means that:

It will meet our needs.
It is generally light weight and loads fast.
It has valid HTML along with valid CSS.
It includes compatibility with not only the
most popular plug-ins, but also most plug-
ins that you plan on using.
It includes high quality support along with
thorough documentation.
76
When you do find a theme you like, you should look

at things like its customizability, your requirements,
whether or not you will outgrow the theme, as well
as integration with your brand’s colors.
Now, most every theme will give you the

opportunity to change colors after installation, so I
wouldn’t worry too much about this part at first.
While finding a theme remember to be on the
lookout for the theme’s customizability and
compatibility with plug-ins.
77
8. Install the Theme

When you do find your theme, it’s generally a
simple matter of downloading the files, extracting
the files, and uploading them to your server.
You can then go into WordPress themes and
change the theme over to the new one so you can
test it out.
78
9. Customize Your Theme

Looking at customizations of your theme, it is
important that you can customize everything. There
are different levels of customization available that
can make or break your website efforts.
If you have a theme that doesn’t let you customize

your content with your own coding, or you have to
code in such a way that mimics the coding being
used on the theme, then the theme is not coded
well and you could run into issues with this later
with cross platform and cross display compatibility.
79
A theme should not limit you in what you can do

with your site. Instead, it should help enhance your
website efforts and make things easier.
If, for whatever reason, you find that your theme

does not allow you to accomplish what you want,
it may be time to find another theme. Revisit step
7 and make sure your theme fits the goals of your
project before you move forward.
If you find that available themes do not do what

you want your website to do, it may be necessary
to move on to custom theme development, which
can take more than 24 hours.
Here are some good tutorials on how to create

custom WordPress themes.
10. Find & Install Good Plug-Ins

Finding good plug-ins is necessary to make sure
that you not only have the functionality that
you need, but that enhanced functionality runs
smoothly.
From SEO plug-ins, to newsletter and analytics

plug-ins, make sure your theme is compatible.
Some of my favorite plugins to use include:

Redirection (for implementing 301 redirects
the easy way).
Yoast’s SEO Plugin (for implementing all of the

SEO basics easily).
Tribulant Newsletters (easy creation and

management of newsletters along with
newsletter subscriptions).
Google XML Sitemaps (for easy

implementation of XML Sitemaps on
WordPress sites).
W3 Total Cache (for minifcation, speed

optimization).
Disqus Comment System (a widely-used

comment system across the web).
Social media sharing plug-ins (if they are not

already part of your theme).
Social media analytics plug-ins (for social

analytics).
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11. Configuring the SEO Basics
Permalink Structure
In order to implement effective SEO, the first thing
that should be changed is the structure of your
permalinks. You can find these settings under
Settings > Permalinks.
I prefer using the following permalink structure:

domainname.com/category/postname/ where
category includes the blog post’s category
(keyword-optimized for the topical focus of your
blog), and then a keyword-rich postname.
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If you wish to include the category like recommended

above, select Custom Structure and use the following:
/%category%/%postname%/.
If you have had your site for a while, it is likely that you
have links in place. Don’t panic!
WordPress will automatically implement the redirects

for you so you don’t have to set them up manually.
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Changing From WWW To Non-WWW

You will find this option under Settings > General.
It will be necessary to take a bit of time and think
about what you want your site to show up as: WWW
or non-WWW.
If you are migrating an existing site over to

WordPress, I recommend that you use the existing
site URL. Changing from WWW from non-WWW in
that instance will only cause more harm than good,
and you can introduce serious SEO performance
issues as a result.
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Make Sure You Allow Search Engines to

Index Your Site
This is a biggie and can lead to SEO performance
issues if you don’t configure this. You can find
this setting in Settings > Reading > Search Engine
Visibility.
Normally, this box is checked. In order to allow full

crawling of your site, always make sure that this box
is unchecked.
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Site Speed
Speed is king, and can make or break your website
performance where conversions are concerned.
Look into how you can speed up your theme. It is

preferable to eliminate as many calls to the server
as possible.
If you have 15 CSS files in your theme, consider

condensing them down to 1-3 CSS files. The same
thing holds true with JS files.
If you have 15 JS files as part of your theme, either

look for another well-optimized theme, or manually
condense them down into 1-3 files maximum.
In addition, installing the WP Total Cache plug-in

can help make your site faster with its offerings of
page caching, database caching, offering minify
options, and integration with a range of CDNs
(content delivery networks), further increasing your
opportunity for speed.
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Be Sure to Noindex, Follow Archive Pages

and Disable Archives You Don’t Need
Archive pages are the king of duplicate content

in WordPress. They can make or break a site,
especially when the site reaches hundreds of
pages.
You don’t want to address that headache in the

future.
Setting this SEO basic now will help make your

optimization efforts easier. You can find this setting
in Yoast’s SEO plug-in under: Yoast > Titles & Metas
> Other. Select the setting that says “Noindex
subpages of archives.”
In addition, I recommend adding the NOODP and

NOYDIR meta robots tags sitewide. These tags will
prevent Google and other search engines from
automatically using the DMOZ and Yahoo Directory
descriptions.
For those who continue integration of meta

keywords, I suggest checking “use meta keywords
tag” here as well.
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Building a WordPress site is easy. It can take less

than 24 hours to build a competent site that looks
like a brand you want to do business with.
It will take much longer, however, to build a great

online presence that drives traffic on a consistent
basis. So play around with it. Enhance your
creativity. See what you can come up with. It’s by
experimentation and testing that we truly find the
right path through the SERPs.
Additional Sources:
The Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings for

WordPress Sites
How To Create a Custom WordPress Theme
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Chapter 3
7 Ways to Improve SEO on

Your WordPress Site
Anna Crowe
Assistant Editor,
Chances are that right now, you’re reading

this while attempting to improve SEO on your
WordPress website. Am I right? Are you looking
for other ways to improve your WordPress SEO
outside of Yoast?
I’m not a psychic. I’ve just been in the same

situation before.
I’d say it’s a pretty good bet that there are tons
of us WordPress users out there trying to clean
up our page speed or choose an SEO-friendly
theme.
91
I mean, WordPress is used by 64% of all

websites whose CMS is known. That’s 40.6% of
all websites.
If you flip a coin, you have a 40.6% chance of a

website being built on WordPress. That’s a lot.
Maybe that’s why websites like TechCrunch,

Star Wars blog, Beyonce, Playstation,
Facebook’s Newsroom, eBay, etc.
Even Search Engine Journal is built on
WordPress. And, we get over 2 million organic
visitors per month.
92
But, when it comes to improving SEO efforts

on WordPress, I’m often left scouring blogs for
a few hints and tips that all center around the
Yoast plugin. So, what about all of the other
elements that Yoast does not control?
After 11+ years of working on WordPress sites,

I’ve put together these actionable tips to help
other WordPress site owners improve their SEO
strategy.
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WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com

– Which Is Better?
WordPress.org is the clear winner when it comes to
choosing between WordPress.org vs. WordPress.
com.
WordPress.org provides the ability to fully customize

your themes, widgets, and plugins. It is open-source,
self-hosted, and ideal for improving SEO. It’s the same
platform used for the websites mentioned above.
WordPress.com has limited storage, no FTP access,

and not ideal for SEO.
94
1. Choose a WordPress
Theme Best for SEO
Let’s be real. When you’re choosing your WordPress
theme, SEO is usually at the bottom. I get it – the
visual designs and interactions are much more
exciting to think about when designing your
website.
But while choosing an SEO-friendly theme for

WordPress may be easy to overlook, having an
SEO friendly theme is vital for the success of your
website.
When it comes to choosing a WordPress theme

best for SEO, these are my favorites.
Astra.
Genesis.
Divi.
GeneratePress.
OceanWP.
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2. Determine Your
Preferred Domain
When choosing your preferred domain, you’re
choosing between two things:
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www vs. non www
Let’s set this record straight, there is no SEO

benefit to having www or non www when
setting your preferred domain.
I don’t use www on my personal website

(https://annaleacrowe.com).
In the past, www came standard when

creating your website.
If you’re a larger company with a lot of site

traffic, you may want to opt for the www
version of your preferred domain. With a www
version, you can have a CNAME record to help
redirect traffic for failovers.
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3. Change Your Permalink

in WordPress
Pop quiz! Which of the two URLs below is more
readable?
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101/
what-people-search-for/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-
101/?p=12345
The first option is a more readable and the preferred

canonical URL.
These are the types of URLs that visitors want to see.
Also, keeping a clean and SEO-friendly URL

structure may have a slight impact on your
content.
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, “The SEO

effect of keywords in the URL is minimal once the
content is indexed.”
While you may see a teeny

tiny impact, it’s worth it to the
user experience.
To change your default

permalink settings in
WordPress, go to Settings >
Permalinks.
99
Then, select Post Name as the option. Post

Name typically works for most sites. However,
you can implement a custom structure
depending on your preferences.
100
4. Turn on Breadcrumbs
SEO amateurs and pros alike know that
breadcrumbs are often as forgotten as printing
those Mapquest directions back in the early 2000s.
101
It’s important to understand that I’m not

talking about the breadcrumbs you use on
chicken parm. I’m talking about the type of
breadcrumbs you find at the top of a website
or under the navigation bar.
Like this.
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If you’ve got the Yoast SEO plugin installed,

implementing breadcrumbs can be done in less
than 5 minutes.
Simply go to Yoast SEO > Search Appearance >

Breadcrumbs > Enabled.
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5. Decide to Enable or Disable

Comments in WordPress
Do you enable or disable comments in
WordPress? This is a tough decision and
depends on the current state of your
WordPress website.
104
If you’ve already got comments on your

site, Google’s John Mueller says removing
comments does impact rankings. So, you may
want to keep them depending on how spammy
the comments are.
If you don’t have comments enabled, you may

want to keep it that way. Google’s Matt Cutts
shared that comments with bad spelling and
grammar can affect rankings.
In short, it’s up to you to decide whether your

site vision is coupled with comments.
To enable or disable comments in WordPress,

head over to Settings > Discussion.
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6. Choose SEO-Friendly
Plugins
For those of you who get plugin happy and
start installing plugin after plugin, please
stop.
This is almost as bad as watching people

apply too much self-tanner (almost).
106
When you start overloading your WordPress

website with plugins, you bring all their
baggage with them. Too many plugins
can cause unnecessary code bloat, heavy
markup, and non-semantic code that can
cause a drop in page speed.
So, when it comes to choosing SEO-friendly plugins

for WordPress, keep it simple.
Yoast SEO.
Rank Math.
Broken Link Checker.
WP Super Cache.
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7. Block Pages Using Your

Robots.txt File
When it comes to playing around with your
robots.txt file, there is a line. And any SEO
marketer knows that crossing that line feels like an
11-hour trip on a tequila train – a hot mess.
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I can’t tell you how many clients have reached

out to me to run a technical audit on their site
because it’s not ranking, but the only issue is a
messed up robots.txt file.
The key to editing your robots.txt file is

understanding the basics.
If your robots.txt looks like this and you want your

site indexed by search engines, stop everything
you’re doing right now to fix your robots.txt.
If your robots.txt file looks like this, no one will

find you in the search results.
There are a few pages that you’ll most likely

want to add to the disallow sections in your
robots.txt file.
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Here are the pages I’d recommend reviewing:
Archive.
Tags.
Admin-level pages (ex: login pages).
Thank you pages.
Categories (unless you have unique

copy on each category page).
Pro tip: Avoid using robots.txt file to choose

how Googlebot crawls your site, according to
Google’s Matt Cutts.
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Improving Your WordPress

SEO Just Got Easier
It’s no secret that in the past, attempting to
improve my SEO on WordPress was trying in
every possible way: Emotionally, physically, and
financially.
111
Now that I’ve started digging into WordPress myself

and implementing the changes, I can smell the victory
baking in my metrics.
I’ve used multiple platforms in the past, from Shopify

and Bigcommerce to Joomla, Drupal, Wix, and
Squarespace, but WordPress has been one of the most
SEO-friendly platforms.
WordPress is not the next best thing. It is the best thing.
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Sponsored
The 4 Most Important SEO

Strategies for Large-Scale
WordPress Websites
Stormy Scott
Content Marketing Team Lead,
InMotion Hosting
(SEJ Partner)
You have a large-scale WordPress website and life

is great.
You’re publishing content regularly and your site is

packed with useful information.
But is your website content strategy optimized for

the unique needs of a large website?
Though you may know the basics of search

engine optimization, making sure your growing
WordPress website is organized and maintained
per best practices for large sites will keep you
ahead of the competition.
This includes re-evaluating your information

architecture, managing content and comments,
writing for E-A-T, leveraging internal linking, and
improving website performance and security.
114
Continue reading to learn more

about:
Planning Your Information Architecture
Managing Content and Comments for SEO
Internal Linking
Large Website Logistics
Planning Your Information

Architecture
For positive end user experience and good
SEO, planning your information architecture,
or the structure of your website content is a
must for all websites, especially large-scale
WordPress sites.
Clean information architecture will allow end

users and bots to easily navigate and find
your site content – which can boost your end
user retention and will positively affect your
SEO.
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Pillar Pages
Pillar pages are the main content pages that
introduce, summarize, and/or outline a main
topic. Within WordPress, these pages are usually
category pages built out to explain the category
subject.
116
For example, if you run a site about using WordPress

and one main category is SEO, then a pillar page
would be yourwebsite.com/seo or yourwebsite.
com/wordpress-seo.
Instead of leaving your category page as a running

blog roll that shows the most recent posts for that
category, build out the page to guide the end user
journey and search engines.
Add relevant content, related SEO phrases and

sub-topics, and contextual links to relevant pages
or posts that will help show users and bots alike
the content that you feel is most important for that
topic.
117
As your site grows into a large-scale WordPress

website, pillar pages for categories and
subcategories will build authority and expertise,
which is critical for competitive and higher volume
phrases.
They will increase SERP visibility for your chosen

topics, increasing your website traffic and potential
for a higher ranking on search engines.
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Structured URLs
When planning your URL structure, think about the
best way to organize your content without having
too many ‘folders,’ content levels, or hoops to jump
through.
Instead of creating one category with two, three,

and even four subcategory levels, break the
category down into multiple main categories with
only one or two subcategory levels.
For example, if an article URL is example.com/

maincategory1/subcat1/subcat2/subcat3/subcat4,
think about how you can restructure your content
to make the article URL simply /maincategory2/
subcat.
The more folders a piece of content lives in, the

less important it becomes and the harder it will
be for search engines to crawl and end users to
navigate.
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Managing Content &

Comments for SEO
Managing content and comments for SEO on
a large-scale WordPress site is very important
for the success and growth of your website.
Posting then never touching your content

again will lead to SEO issues as Google
consistently updates its algorithm.
Issues can include outdated or irrelevant

content, spam comments with untrustworthy
links, broken images and links, and old links
within your content that may no longer be
relevant.
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Create an Editorial Calendar

There are many free resources and platforms
available for creating an editorial calendar and
for good reason – it works.
An effective editorial calendar will not only help

you keep track of content ideas, content created,
and content creators, but you can also use it to
track content keyword topics and updates.
Source: Airtable
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Once you find an editorial

calendar template or platform
you like, make sure you add the
following columns:
Primary Keyword or Topic (and volume if
you wish)
Secondary and Related Keywords
Publish Date
Last Update
The keyword columns will help you focus your

content for the post and ensure you keep track
of the keywords you’re targeting so you don’t
cannibalize or duplicate your content – which
can be a challenge for large sites.
The date columns assist with content update

planning. If you notice that an article was
published or last updated six months ago,
consider reviewing it for small updates or tweaks.
Most importantly, constant updates ensure you’re

keeping your pages as relevant to search intent
and queries as possible.
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You can review topic relevance by Googling

related keywords to see which topics are
produced in the results, or using Google Search
Console to identify trends and impact.
Content updates also help protect your SEO

efforts from Google algorithm updates that
could negatively impact your progress if gone
unchecked.
E-A-T
When creating your content, make sure you and
your team are following E-A-T guidelines. E-A-T,
which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and
trustworthiness, comes from Google’s Search
Quality Rater document that outlines how Google’s
human quality raters assess the quality of the
content that appears within Google’s search
results.
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Overall, Google wants to ensure the information at

the top of their search results come from expert,
authoritative, and trustworthy sources.
The guidelines make sure, for example, medical

advice is answered with articles from reputable
sources – hopefully keeping the inquirer from
potentially harmful information.
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To follow E-A-T for authoritative

content, make sure you:
Write as an expert.
Build an authoritative reputation.
Foster trust with your end users.
Once the above is implemented, even though

there isn’t an easy way to directly measure your
E-A-T efforts, you can review related data points
to make sure you’re effectively using E-A-T to
boost your SEO and SERP rankings.
Reviewing elements like the time end users spend

on your page or site, CTA interactions, SERP rank,
and page authority can show you how E-A-T is
affecting your expertise.
Unique domain backlinks, backlinks with high

domain authority, your own domain authority,
social shares, and Wikipedia articles will give you
a pulse on your authority. Ratings and reviews,
schema enhancements, and HTTPS can show
your trust.
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In addition, large sites can improve their E-A-T

efforts by avoiding duplicate and thin content –
neither of which shows expertise, builds authority,
or gains trust.
However, how would you start the process of

evaluating thousands of URLs, then consolidating
and updating the content to build E-A-T?
To get the process started, you can complete a

content audit, review and organize articles and
topics that can be merged, then add those article
topic merges to your editorial calendar. This will
also allow you to track the target and/or ranking
keywords for those topics.
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Comment Management
It’s easy to overlook comments when managing
your content, but it’s an important part of your
website since it’s still crawled and used as an SEO
factor by bots.
An active comments area shows user

engagement and encourages more time on page,
which can help your SEO. It also cultivates trust and
goodwill with your end users, allowing them to see
you interact with your audience – helping you gain
the ‘T’ of E-A-T.
To effectively manage your comment section,

create a schedule similar to the content update
schedule mentioned above. In fact, it can be built
into your overall content update schedule. When
reviewing pages and posts, review the comment
section as well.
127
In addition, come up with a standard

for interacting, monitoring, and
managing comments.
What comments will be approved?
How will you interact with approved
comments?
Will you automatically remove all links
posted by an end user or keep relevant
links with a high domain authority?
Etc.
Of course, also review your comment template to

ensure the code is free from SEO issues.
Internal Linking
Strong internal linking can boost your SEO by
helping Google determine which of your pages
are most important. It also helps your end user
experience by linking to contextual content that
sends them to relevant articles for additional
information.
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Internal links are links within your content or

navigation that link to another page or post on
your website.
Though you can use any internal links throughout

your content, the best practice is to use main
or pillar page links to boost their importance to
Google. Of note, navigation links have more weight
than links within your content.
Here are some more internal linking

best practices:
Wrap your main navigation and footer
navigation in the SiteNavigationElement
schema. This helps Google identify and use
your navigational menus as a map for your
site. This is a very important step.
Use the native WordPress menu

functionality to easily update links globally.
Instead of a custom navigation, using the
native functionality to quickly edit your
menus when needed.
129
Add sub-navigation or sidebar navigation

to help Google and end users navigate
between main and subcategories.
Within your content, add a Call to Action,

or CTA – which suggests a next step for the
end user – with a link you deem important,
like a pillar page, sign up form, additional
content, etc.
When updating or rewriting old content, use

the opportunity to link to newer pages as
well as update all broken or old links.
In addition to linking internal pages and

posts within your content, make sure you’re
using a table of contents with anchor links
to section headers within the content as
well. Google can also pick up on your table
of contents and anchor links and use that
information toward boosting your overall
ranking.
In relation, links at the top of the page are

deemed more important to Google than
links at the bottom of the page.
130
Large Website Logistics

Of course, technical SEO isn’t the only
important maintenance task for maintaining
a large-scale WordPress website. You also
need to make sure your website is available
whenever an end user requests it.
This means the website needs to load quickly,

lest lose end users who aren’t going to wait for
your website to load.
In addition, you need to make sure you have

a plan in case your website does experience
downtime, as well as ensure your security and
performance tasks are meeting industry best
practices and the needs of your website.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when

planning the logistics of your large scale
website:
131
Website Performance
Reviewing and maintaining your website
performance means ensuring your website is
always quickly available when needed.
Using site performance tools like Google

PageSpeed Insights, you can receive information
on how well your website performs as well as
suggestions on how to improve the performance.
132
Also, because of the open source nature of

WordPress, there are many caching plugins
available that assist with improving and
maintaining your website performance. Of note,
a popular site performance plugin is W3 Total
Cache.
W3 Total Cache is packed with features but overall,

it improves both your SEO and end user experience
by using a content delivery network (or CDN) to
reduce your website’s load times. This encourages
end users to not only engage with your site, but
return as well.
Website Security
There are many layers to website security but
you want to make sure you’re employing both
proactive and reactive security measures. This
means having processes in place that actively
protect your website and can provide support in
case of a disaster.
133
In addition to enabling an SSL certificate and

other server-side security measures, adding a
security plugin to your large-scale WordPress
website will help you easily manage your website
security proactively. To protect against events
that bring your website down, like a hack, installing
a WordPress backup plugin will help you restore
your website quickly without much fuss.
UpdraftPlus, for example, allows you to schedule

(and forget) website backups that include site
files and the database. Giving you the ability to
bring your website back online with a single click.
134
To Sum Up
Creating and maintaining SEO for your large-scale
WordPress website is essential to ensure the health
and growth of your business.
By integrating the above into your SEO strategy,

you can easily streamline your workflow and
master SEO for your large website.
135
Chapter 4
5 Common WordPress
Duplicate Content Issues
& How to Fix Them
Adam Riemer
President, Adam Riemer
Marketing
WordPress makes life easy for small businesses,

bloggers, and large news sites. You have best
practices automatically applied in many cases
like canonical links and there are plugins for
practically everything else you need.
With the ease of publishing content and designs,

you also have a new issue:
Duplicate Content.
137
Content duplication is a common reason why a

WordPress website won’t rank. Although it’s different
from what we traditionally know in SEO as duplicate
content (an exact replication of content from
wording to code), it is very similar and needs to be
addressed.
Here are the five most common types of duplicate

content issues in WordPress and how to fix them.
138
1. Tags
Tags are a huge problem for many WordPress
websites. When you tag an article it creates a
unique page that is full of other content you feel
is relevant.
The page will feature snippets from articles or

full articles. If the tag is the same as a category
or main page on your core website (assuming
it’s not a blog), then you’ve now created a
competitor to that page on your own site.
139
Tags are also usually modified versions of

themselves, which creates incredibly similar content
that will compete with itself. When this happens,
none of the pages will rank and it can potentially
devalue the site.
Good news! This is an easy fix.
You can either get rid of the tags altogether, or you

can add a meta robots noindex dofollow.
The noindex dofollow tag will tell search engines this

is a thin page but follow the links and continue to
crawl and index my site.
Now search engines will know that the page isn’t

as useful as others and you’ve shown them how to
discover your good content – the individual posts
and pages.
140
2. Categories
Category pages tend to feature numerous posts
and articles like a tag.
They’ll have H1 tags that are the same as the

articles, they don’t always answer a question or
provide a good solution since they are article
snippets and they may not be good to show for
people looking for answers. That is why they’re
usually considered thin content.
There is an exception, though.
141
Search Engine Journal, for example, is a WordPress

website where the categories are dedicated to
channels and niches within a channel. A user
searching for information on a channel, in general,
may find a category very useful. Because of this, you
want to approach it differently than you would a tag.
In this case, you add a meta robot index and

dofollow tags, but also create unique titles and copy
for the category to introduce it – and, if schema is
relevant, add that in as well.
Now you’ve helped to define the types of queries and

people to show the page to. You may be rewarded
by the search engines for it. Just make sure they
aren’t competitive with your core website pages if
you’re a business.
142
3. Competing Topics
The next thing that I see when auditing WordPress
sites is a lack of unique content.
Let’s think about food bloggers. Yes, recipe schema

and other things will help to differentiate the
recipes, but what if you aren’t using that or didn’t
know in the beginning?
143
If you have 20 recipes for chocolate chip cookies,

chances are many of them are using similar wording
and ingredients, which is what could be creating
competition. Each recipe is unique and can serve a
different purpose, but if you don’t put in the extra work,
they may not be able to show up because they’re
competing with each other. In this case, you may want
to do a category or subcategory for the cookies. If you
can’t, revisit them and add modifiers (e.g., spicy, savory,
chewy, for parties, for large groups).
Next, begin adding copy (not necessarily to the top,

because you want to deliver the actual recipe quickly
to the user) about the finished product. Make sure the
copy stays relevant to the topic and shows why, how,
and where it is unique from the others.
Need other examples?
Have you done a themed gift guide or holiday post?
144
Has anything changed aside from the year?

Mother’s Day craft ideas? Romantic Valentine’s
Gifts for XYZ?
These are not unique enough. If you have

multiple posts, they could all compete.
If you add a year to your title (e.g., 2016, 2017),

people may pass you by in the search engines
for not being relevant this year. That’s where the
strategies above can help.
145
4. Search Box URLs

I haven’t come across this one as often, but
search boxes on WordPress sites may generate
URLs.
If someone externally links to one of these URLs, or

if search engines can crawl and find them, they
might be indexable.
146
Although you could try to automatically add a

meta robots noindex dofollow like in the tags, that
probably doesn’t have you covered.
To address this one you need to find the unique

identifier that the search box URLs have in
common. It’s usually a “?” after the main URL.
Now go into your robots.txt and add a disallow to

this parameter. In theory, and if done correctly, this
will help to reduce the thin or duplicate content
issues from these.
147
5. Other
With systems that automate a lot of work and
make life easy, other issues can arise that
create duplicate or thin content issues.
Look at your site and see if you may have other

ones.
They could include creating PDF versions of

content for printing that are also indexable, or
alternate versions in quotes which can be bad
for short posts.
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You may have an RSS feed that posts content

pages instead of snippets and only feeding titles
or descriptions (I think I’ve only found this once, so
it isn’t something a huge issue to worry about).
Summary
Overall, most of these WordPress issues are easy
to detect and solve using the strategies above.
By eliminating your duplicate content you should
get the organic search rankings you want.
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Chapter 5
7 Local SEO Best Practices

for WordPress Websites
Aleh Barysevich
Founder and Chief Marketing
Officer, Link-Assistant.Com
WordPress is one of the most flexible open

source Content Management Systems (CMS)
in the world.
Its rich functionality, low barrier to entry, and

unbeatable price tag (it doesn’t get better
than free, does it?) have all led to its meteoric
rise as the web’s most popular CMS.
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So it’s no surprise that WordPress has been

downloaded more than 32.6 million times or that it
powers 40% of all websites.
WordPress is also SEO-friendly, to the point where

even non-techies can easily implement some
simple optimization techniques. This is great news
for small local businesses which may not have the
budget for sweeping SEO improvements, but still
want to rank better in local search.
In this article, I’ll show you seven simple SEO

improvements you can make to boost the local
search ranking of your WordPress site.
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1. Optimize Your Content

Your content offerings are the most important
assets on your website. Having a great site
structure, lightning-fast load times, and tons of
security measures won’t help you if your content
isn’t up to par.
So, before you can think about optimizing your

content, you need to start with something your
audience finds valuable.
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To do this, you’ll need to understand your audience’s

pain points and know how your products solve their
problems. Once you understand this, you can turn
your solutions into all sorts of compelling content,
from videos to blog posts to infographics, which keep
them coming back for more.
Once you have great content, the next step can

seem a little daunting: on-page optimization.
Fortunately, we can enlist the help of some basic
tools like the Yoast SEO plugin.
While normally you’d need to consider up to 20

different SEO factors for each landing page, Yoast
SEO simplifies your job by giving each page a color-
coded score that will help you track your on-page
optimization and pointing out areas for improvement.
Yoast SEO also points out some important on-

page factors such as word count and keyword
occurrences.
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2. Review Your Link Profile

We know from recent studies that links are still the
#1 most important ranking signal when it comes to
localized organic rankings.
The number of domains linking to your site, the

quality of your backlinks, and the optimization of
your link anchor text are all strongly correlated to
your local ranking.
Good organic link building takes time to cultivate,

but here are a few simple steps you can start with:
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Focus on Quality Over Quantity

The number of domains, IPs, and C-blocks linking
to your site are important, but one high-quality
backlink from an industry leader in your niche is
worth far more than dozens of irrelevant, low-
quality links. Use link tracking software to find and
eliminate low-quality links.
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Find & Fix Broken Links

Use a plugin such as Broken Link Checker to identify
and correct broken links. This plugin checks posts,
pages, and even comments for broken links.
Optimize Anchor Text

Optimize some of your anchor text for local
search by including your city’s name. Just be
careful not to over-optimize (e.g., changing all of
your anchor text, too many exact matches, etc.).
There’s no ideal percentage for location-optimized

anchors, so conduct some competitor analysis to
figure out what’s generally accepted in your niche.
Identify Potential Link

Building Opportunities
Use a competitive analysis tool to find
potential link building opportunities, such
as relevant sites in your industry that link to
your competitors but not you.
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3. Speed up Your Website

The tortoise may beat the hare in children’s tales, but
you can’t say the same in the SEO world.
Site speed remains one of Google’s most important

“technical” ranking factors, and if you want to beat out
your competitors in local search, then you’ll need to
make sure that your site is as fast as possible.
Possible techniques include:
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Compressing Large Images

Large image files are the biggest offender when it
comes to slow websites. Use a plugin like WP Smush to
compress and optimize your images.
Clean up Your WordPress Theme

Get rid of outdated page elements (e.g., unnecessary
database calls, functions, JavaScript, etc.). And make
sure you delete old themes – hackers may use these to
infiltrate your site.
Reduce Server Load With a

Caching Plugin
Caching plugins create state HTML versions of
dynamic pages which significantly reduce server
load times. There are a number of options for
you to consider, including free options such as
WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache, and paid
options such as WP Rocket.
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Don’t Go Too Plugin Crazy

You can find a plugin for practically any function, but
try to stick to essential plugins that provide real value
to your site. Too many plugins will slow your site down.
Alternatively, you could make your life easier by

investing in website auditing software. Quality
products will analyze your on-page speed factors for
you and suggest ways to speed your site up.
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4. Optimize for Mobile

A lot of your potential customers are looking
for local businesses via mobile. This, coupled
with the fact that Google indexes mobile sites
preferentially to their desktop counterparts,
means that mobile optimization is more important
than ever.
The best thing you can do to improve your

mobile site is to focus on page speed and image
compression, but here are a few other tips and
tricks:
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Use a Responsive Theme

At the very least, you should make sure your
WordPress theme is responsive and fits your
content to all mobile devices.
Design Specifically for

Mobile Visitors
Use the built-in wp_is_mobile() function to
detect different devices on the server level
and create custom experiences for your
mobile visitors.
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Launch a Mobile App

According to an eMarketer study, 88% of mobile
media time is spent on apps. Mobile users like
apps that give them a comprehensive way to
engage with their favorite brands.
Create Accelerated
Mobile Pages
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are incredibly
fast pages designed specifically for mobile.
WordPress comes with a default AMP plugin you
can use to create AMP pages that are listed at
the top of SERPs when users search from mobile
devices.
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5. Integrate Google
My Business Into Your
WordPress Site
Google My Business bundles together a number of
key factors related to local rankings. Signals such
as physical proximity, user reviews, and business
descriptions and categories will all impact your
position in SERPs.
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Once you’ve claimed your GMB page, make sure

you add your WordPress site to your profile, plus
other key information, such as hours of operation
and a description of your business. Then look for
plugins and widgets that will let you transfer key
ranking signals such as photos, a business map,
and customer reviews from your GMB page to your
website.
You should also install a plugin that lets you add

your GMB review to your WordPress site, such as
the Google Places Reviews plugin. These will help
increase consumer trust in your business!
You may also want to consider putting an

intractable business map on your website via
a plugin or widget. Google Maps Builder is one
example that will help your customers find you.
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6. Add Structured Data to

Your Pages
Ever wonder why some local business listings seem
so rich – including reviews, star ratings, and robust
descriptions – while others fall flat?
The difference is structured data.
166
Using plugins like Schema, you can feed Google

additional information about your business. This will
give your customers more detail when they find you
in SERPs, including useful tidbits such as hours of
operation, price range, and physical location.
Note that while descriptions don’t inherently

improve your web ranking, including more
information does encourage higher click-through
rates – and CTR can impact ranking on Google and
other search engines.
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7. Include Location Keywords

in Your URLs
Generally speaking, URL structure plays a minor role in
your page’s ability to rank.
When it comes to local search, however, including

location keywords in your URL can help improve the
user experience. This is especially true if you have
multiple landing pages targeting different locations
and you want to assure your customers that they’re in
the right place.
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Previous versions of WordPress didn’t give you a lot

of flexibility when it came to your URLs. They were all
“ugly permalinks,” which looked something like this:
http://mydomain.com/?p=1354.
However, the latest versions of WordPress default

to “pretty permalinks,” which include the date and
name of your posts. They might look like this:
http://mydomain.com/2016/02/28/sample-post/.
You can adjust your URL settings in your WordPress

Admin panel by going to Settings > Permalinks.
From there, you can click Custom Structure to add
a location to your landing page URLs.
Conclusion
Want to take your SEO game even further?
You can make even more improvements to your
WordPress site beyond what I’ve suggested here by
manually creating robots.txt files, generating XML
sitemaps, optimizing your site structure, and more.
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Chapter 6
How to Choose
WordPress Plugins
Roger Montti
Owner, Martinibuster.com
WordPress plugins are helpful. But they can

also slow a site down, invite hackers and even
cause a Google penalty. These are my top five
considerations when choosing a WordPress
plugin.
Five WordPress Plugin Considerations
1. Plugin is vetted by WordPress.
2. It is popular.
3. Changelog indicates plugin is not

abandoned.
4. Support participation and feedback

indicates a healthy plugin.
5. Doesn’t overlap with a currently installed

plugin.
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Plugin Is Vetted by WordPress

Many paid plugins don’t have a free version. But
many of the most respected plugins have a paid
premium version and a free version that is vetted
and included in the official WordPress plugin
repository.
The fact that a free version has been vetted by

WordPress provides assurance (to me) that there
is some kind of quality control.
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A free plugin should ideally be vetted by WordPress.

WordPress provides an official plugin repository
where trusted free plugins can be downloaded.
If a serious issue is discovered with a free plugin,

WordPress will remove the download from its
repository. Typical issues can be coding that results
in a vulnerability or a state of abandonment.
There are many other reasons why a plugin may
be removed, as outlined in the WordPress Plugin
Guidelines.
It’s not a perfect system for being assured that the

plugin is safe to install. But it’s generally safer than
downloading a plugin that is not available through
the official WordPress depository.
There are premium plugins available and those

plugins may undergo their own private testing.
They are generally safe to purchase and download.
However, it may be useful to research the testing
and vetting practices before purchasing.
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Plugin is Popular
I’m not totally convinced of the wisdom of
crowds. However, I do feel a sense of safety in
knowing that a WordPress plugin is popular and
well vouched for by many users.
Popularity by itself does not guarantee that

a plugin is without issues. A few of the most
popular plugins have been the sources of near-
catastrophic issues or larding up web pages with
needless code.
Nevertheless, popularity along with other factors

can contribute to an assurance that the plugin is
likely safe and works reasonably well.
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Changelog Indicates
Regular Updates
Some plugins may be abandoned. Every plugin’s
WordPress page notes when the plugin was last
updated.
A plugin might not be updated because the function

it performs is relatively simple. But in general, this is a
sign that a plugin has been abandoned.
Abandoned plugins should in most cases be

avoided.
WordPress is constantly evolving. Installing a plugin

that hasn’t been updated could cause conflicts with
the current version of WordPress or the version of
PHP that your website runs in.
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Support Feedback
Every plugin page in the WordPress Plugin
Repository has a support page. The support page
may provide evidence of a plugin that has ongoing
issues.
Typical issues might be that the code conflicts with

other plugins. Sometimes the WordPress template
may need changes in order for the plugin to
function.
The support page will reveal any potential issues

you may face before discovering them the hard
way.
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Plugin Doesn’t Overlap With an

Installed Plugin
A common issue I see is when two or more
plugins designed to do similar things overlap. This
generally happens with structured data and speed
optimization plugins.
The usual result is that you have more plugins than

you need.
It’s important to use as few plugins as necessary.

Overloading your site with plugins can slow down
the server.
Even a plugin designed to speed up your site may

slow down your site if you are using too many of
them at the same time.
Before you install a plugin, think hard about how this

plugin will solve your problems. If it doesn’t solve all
of them, will installing a second or third plugin cause
duplication in functions?
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How to Choose a WordPress

Plugin
These five considerations are not a complete list
of considerations. There are other factors that can
be added, like user reviews, the reputation of the
company behind the plugin, if the plugin is over-
engineered and slows down the site, and so on.
Downloading plugins can seem like the shell game,

where a pea is placed under a cup and then
shuffled around.
Are you making an educated guess or just

guessing?
These are what I consider important factors for

judging if a WordPress plugin is trustworthy and will
help take some of the guesswork out of choosing a
trustworthy WordPress plugin.
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Sponsored
Local SEO For WordPress

Blogs: What Every Marketer
Needs to Know
Laura Bernardes
Content Editor, Rock Content
(SEJ Partner)
When it comes to growing your business

online there are many possibilities to generate
awareness, but it can also be difficult to stand out.
Standing out from the crowd is not an easy task
and requires being up-to-date with vital SEO
strategies. In practice, what is one of the most
effective strategies is local SEO.
Surveys show that 46% of Google searches are for

local information. A further study reveals that 88%
of mobile searches for local businesses lead to a
call or visit within 24 hours.
Focusing on local business can bring real results

to your company. As with building online authority
through any organic traffic strategy, it is necessary
to consider the parameters that Google uses.
Having a high-quality site with a good user

experience is an important step. You’ve almost
certainly heard of WordPress before and most
likely employ it for your site.
After all, WordPress is responsible for 40% of all

sites on the internet.
180
With that in mind, if you want to learn

how to take advantage of local SEO for
your WordPress site, keep reading. Here
you will see:
What is local SEO?
How to optimize for local SEO on WordPress?
What are the best WordPress plugins for

local SEO?
What Is Local SEO?

Google uses a series of ranking factors to choose
which content shows up in the top positions on the
SERP.
When you search online, by adding terms like

“close to me” and “near me,” Google will select
businesses’ results within a limited distance from
the user searching.
181
This way, it’s possible for you to establish your

business as an authority in the region, leading to
increased business opportunities.
Also, you can grow your audience by having a

presence on the digital channels where your
audience is.
A Think With Google survey shows that 28% of people

who search online for nearby businesses complete
their purchase and become customers of the brand.
However, to fully take advantage of all these benefits,
you need to make some local SEO optimizations
within WordPress. Find out how below!
How to Optimize for Local

SEO on WordPress?
There are some local SEO techniques that you can
set up to optimize your WordPress site.
We have selected the key ones for you here to test

right away!
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Use Local Keywords

The first step is to find out which keywords people
are using to discover your business.
For example, if you have a barbershop, people

may find your business by looking for “barbershops
in Boca Raton.” You can optimize your ranking
for similar keywords, such as “male salon in Boca
Raton” or “best barbers in Boca Raton.”
You can use keyword search tools, such as SEMrush,

Google Keyword Planner, and Ahrefs, to visualize the
search volume for each of your strategy’s chosen
terms.
Also, keep in mind how your audience is searching

locally. For example, they may use a range of
geographical names, such as “Boca Raton,” “West
Boca Raton,” or “Palm Beach County.”
183
Encourage Consumer Reviews

93% of consumers read reviews before buying
online. Also, customers spend 31% more when the
company has positive reviews.
Assessments are essential to building your online

authority. You can use a plugin on WordPress that
shows Google My Business ratings right on your site.
You can also create a page with testimonials

from your customers, promoting transparent and
informative content to your audience.
So always ask your audience to leave a review after

their purchase. You can even encourage this by
using discount coupons for future purchases.
184
Optimize Your Site for Mobile

Mobile devices have become the main way to
access the internet over recent years.
Studies show that in 2021, smartphones will

influence $1.4 trillion in local sales. Moreover, 79% of
smartphone users have made online purchases on
their devices in the past six months.
This data alone should be enough to understand

how important it is to optimize your site for mobile
devices. But even more important is to know that
since 2019, one of the ranking factors Google
considers is the Mobile-First Index, meaning that
mobile-friendly sites are prioritized in SERP ranking.
This means that if your site doesn’t have a fast-

loading responsive design, you miss out on business
opportunities.
185
Companies like Walmart saw a 2% increase in

conversions by reducing the page load time by
4 seconds.
How can you optimize your website for mobile?
Using WordPress is already a significant first

step. It is a robust CMS that allows you to install
different plugins to compress images and code.
Also, it’s important to have an SSL certificate

to guarantee the security of your page. Finally,
don’t forget to run a PageSpeed Insights audit
to find improvement points in the page load
time.
186
Integrate Google My Business

with your WordPress
To get started, you need to have a Google My
Business account. If you don’t have one yet, don’t
waste any more time and create one now.
List all your business information, confirm your

location and add your WordPress site.
Then, add plugins and widgets that allow you to

upload the ratings, business map, and photos to
your website. Below, in our plugin recommendations,
we have two options that can help you with this.
By doing so, your audience will have access to all

the information about your business, plus finding
opinions from your customers.
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What Are the Best

WordPress Plugins for Local
SEO?
One of the most practical ways to achieve good
results is with useful tools. So we have selected
some of the best WordPress plugins for local SEO.
1. Yoast SEO
The Yoast SEO plugin is one of the best known on
the market. The Yoast Local SEO version, focused
on local businesses, will help you insert your
business into local searches, Google Maps, and the
Knowledge Panel.
The tool tells Google the name of your company,

type of business, address, and business hours. It also
handles the technical aspects, including Schema.
org and routes to Google Maps.
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2. Google Places Reviews

Online assessments are essential to achieving
higher rankings in local searches. A practical way
to get these reviews is through the Google Places
Reviews plugin.
This tool allows you to display your site comments

left by customers on your Google My Business page.
If your business is present at different addresses, it

will even allow you to choose additional reviews for
each lesson.
189
3. WP Google Maps
With WP Google Maps, you can place a map from
Google Maps on your website and choose which
pages it should appear.
It’s even possible to create customizable maps

in the pro version. If you have several business
locations, you can bookmark them all and include a
Google Streetview option.
And why is it essential to have a Google Maps page

embedded on your site? Google itself counts these
accesses, understanding it as a user’s interest in
your business. The more clicks you have, the more
likely you are to appear on the search page.
190
4. WP SEO Structured Data Schema

Structured data and schema are the foundation of
a website’s technical strategy.
And it’s often difficult to get this strategy to work

without proper knowledge in the area. This is where
the WP SEO Structured Data Schema plugin
becomes essential.
The schema aims to classify for Google the

business’s focus and the type of content published.
Using this structured data, the search engine is
more likely to show information from your site
directly on the search page.
Applying this to local SEO, you can use the

“Organizations” and “Local Business” schemas.
As you can see, local SEO is essential to boost
your sales. Using the best WordPress plugins and
optimizing your SEO strategies, the top positions on
Google will be yours!
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Chapter 7
WordPress SEO Without

an SEO Plugin
Roger Montti
I optimize some of my WordPress sites without

an SEO plugin. The reason is because SEO Plugins
have more features than I need for certain
projects. This is how to do WordPress SEO without
an SEO Plugin.
This article is not intended to persuade you to not

use an SEO plugin. It’s purpose is to show you how
to take full control of your SEO without a plugin.
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SEO Plugins Are Useful

SEO plugins are recommended solutions for publishers
who cannot code PHP, who are lost with HTACCESS
files and for whom robots.txt files are a mystery. The
technical side of SEO has a relatively high bar in terms
of coding. SEO plugins democratize web publishing.
A major complaint about SEO plugins is how bloated

with unnecessary features they are. But this isn’t the
case across the board.
There are SEO Plugins that are lean and fast as well as
modular, so you can choose which SEO features you
need.
An example of this kind of SEO plugin is The SEO

Framework. It’s an excellent choice for those who
want more control over their SEO but prefer to pick
and choose the features they need.
SEO plugins are the safe choice for publishers who

are risk averse and don’t want to experiment with
alternatives. A lot is at stake so the best choice is often
the most trusted solution.
194
WordPress SEO Without

an SEO Plugin
This article is not intended as an encouragement
to dump SEO plugins. It’s quite the opposite.
I encourage publishers to stick with their SEO

plugin of choice if that is what makes them
comfortable.
This is for publishers interested in exploring how to

do SEO without an SEO plugin.
195
Why I Don’t Use SEO

Plugins
This year, because of the headaches caused
by an SEO plugin bug, I launched a site without
any SEO plugins. I was happy with my results and
transitioned other sites away from SEO plugins.
The reason I moved away from a single SEO plugin

is because after reviewing existing solutions I
concluded that, for me, I could control a website’s
SEO better. I had made a round trip journey
back to where I originally started with WordPress:
I returned to optimizing WordPress without a
dedicated SEO plugin.
196
Reasons I Do Not Use an SEO Plugin
There are four reasons why I don’t

use an SEO plugin
Features that duplicate what’s already in

WordPress or in a theme.
Unnecessary features that solve presumed

problems.
Complexity of SEO Plugins introduce

numerous bugs and conflicts with other
plugins.
Greater control over SEO.
Reasons why I prefer standalone

solutions
Easier to code a solution that handles one

problem.
Some SEO features don’t need a plugin.
Standalone solutions are easier to maintain.
Leaner WordPress installation without

unnecessary features.
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SEO Features You Need

for WordPress
WordPress has a fairly robust core nowadays. Things like
canonicals are done automatically.
Many WordPress themes contain SEO features like schema

markup, breadcrumb navigation, Open Graph meta data
and so on.
The following are the SEO features you will need. Your
exact needs will vary according to the template you use.
198
Necessary WordPress SEO Features
Breadcrumbs with Schema.org Structured

Data.
Meta descriptions.
Open Graph meta data.
Removal of category base.
Schema metadata.
A way to easily add nofollow attribute to
selected links.
WordPress Plugins for SEO
Breadcrumb NavXT.
Easy WP Meta Description.
Open Graph for Facebook, Google+ and
Twitter Card Tags.
Remove Category from URL.
Schema WordPress Plugin.
Ultimate Nofollow WordPress Plugin.
Optional WordPress SEO Features
Attachment Pages Redirect.

Redirection WordPress Redirect Plugin -
Over 1 million installations.
XML Site Map Over 2 million installations.
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Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs is a useful feature.
Adding Schema structured data to it will get you

enhanced listings if you rank in the SERPs. And the
enhanced listings may help the click through rate.
It’s possible to code a breadcrumb navigation

without a plugin. The code is supposed to go into
your website’s “child” functions.php file.
200
Most tutorials say to add it to your theme’s function.

php file but you’ll lose your breadcrumbs if the
theme is updated and the functions.php file is part
of that update.
Getting the breadcrumbs right can also become

complicated because you still need to associate
schema markup to the breadcrumbs. So that’s
even more coding. It can be done but at this point,
in my opinion, it might be easier to offload the
responsibility of making sure it works to a plugin.
I have found that using BreadCrumbs NavXT

WordPress Plugin is an adequate solution. It handles
the breadcrumbs and the schema data.
The NavXT plugin was the subject of a medium

level vulnerability but it was quickly patched. This
was unusual for this plugin and unlike more serious
events associated with dedicated SEO plugins, this
issue did not cause problems for its users.
201
Meta Description
I have found Easy WP Meta Description to be an

adequate solution for meta descriptions. Meta
descriptions aren’t a ranking factor. But they do
show in the SERPs if you rank.
Google will rewrite your meta description if a

phrase from your web page is a better match.
202
That said, Google does a fine job (in my

opinion) of providing a relevant snippet from
your page.
So it’s up to you. You can add your own meta

description or let Google tell the user why your
site is relevant to the query.
203
Title Tag
I craft an article title that is adequate to use as a
title tag. If it’s good enough to serve as the title of
the article, it should be good enough as the title of
the web page. There are workarounds for coding
this into the theme as well as plugins. But I think
those are superfluous.
Open Graph Meta Data

Strictly speaking, this isn’t an SEO feature. It is a feature
that could influence how much traffic goes to your
site. It allows you to specify an image and wording
to show when your URL is shared on Facebook and
Twitter.
Open Graph Meta Data plugin helps you present a

professional appearance that will appeal to potential
site visitors.
204
Remove Category Base from WordPress
The word “category” isn’t necessary in your URL

structure. Shortening your URL to the domain name,
the actual name of the category, and the page name
is a best practice.
A shorter URL is easier to remember, less likely to be

mistyped, and can tell users and search engines what
the page is about using the least amount of words.
Read more about the Remove Category Base plugin
here.
205
WordPress Plugin for Schema

Structured Data
The Schema WordPress plugin will integrate
most Schema structured data that you’ll need,
including reviews, article schema, and so on.
Schema markup can be coded by hand as well.

For example, you can take the JSON-LD script
for reviews and paste it into the bottom of your
review directly into the WordPress editor while in
Text Mode. Then manually adjust the descriptive
206
fields for rating, product name, etc.
JSON-LD review template with author
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “http://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “Review”,
“itemReviewed”: {
“@type”: “Thing”,
“name”: “NAME OF PRODUCT”
},
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “NAME OF REVIEWER”
},
“reviewRating”: {
“@type”: “Rating”,
“ratingValue”: “ENTER THE RATING
EXPRESSED AS A NUMBER”,
“bestRating”: “ENTER A NUMBER THAT
207
REPRESENTS WHAT THE TOP SCORE IS, LIKE 5

OR 10”
},
“publisher”: {
“@type”: “Organization”,
“name”: “NAME OF YOUR PUBLICATION”
}
}
</script>
Pretty much every element of structured

data can be hand crafted and manually
or even automatically inserted on a post
by post basis or by editing your template
directly.
You don’t have to use a plugin, but the

plugin is clearly the best way to scale this
process and have it up to date no matter
how often WordPress updates.
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Ultimate Nofollow Plugin

The Ultimate Nofollow plugin adds the option to
make a specific URL nofollow at the moment you
are creating that URL. There are additional options
for sitewide nofollows, should you need those. But I
don’t use them.
209
Optional SEO Features

for WordPress
Attachment Pages Redirect
If you have inadvertently created web
pages for every image attachment in your
WordPress site, this plugin will easily solve
your problem.
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The Attachment Pages Redirect plugin will restore

your individual attachments to their correct
behavior. Just install and activate it and that’s it,
your problem is solved.
The Attachment Pages Redirect plugin needs no

setting up. Just activate it and forget it. Fixing rogue
attachment pages couldn’t be easier.
Just make sure that in the future, when uploading

media, to use the correct setting for redirecting
attachments to the post.
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Redirect manager
This is a useful plugin if you feel uncomfortable
editing htaccess files to create redirects. Use this
if you have a legitimate reason to redirect an old
page to a new page.
404 Responses Are Not Unhealthy
Don’t use a redirect manager to redirect a deleted

page to the home page.
Some SEO plugins try to scare you into believing that

404 error codes affect the “health” of your site. But
that is incorrect.
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404 response codes are not

inherently harmful to the “health”
of your site.
Some 404 responses are due to spammers
linking to your site with a partial URL. That’s
normal and nothing to worry about. The 404
response is the perfect response.
Some 404 responses are due to an internal

linking error by the publisher. That’s your error
(you mistyped the URL). That’s something to fix
by updating the URL to the correct URL.
The truth about 404 response codes is that they are

perfectly natural and do not make your website less
healthy.
Google’s John Mueller states that 404 response

codes are not something that needs fixing.
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He also states that 404 response

codes are natural:
“There’s no need to “fix” crawl errors on

your website. Finding 404’s is normal and
expected of a healthy, well-configured
website.
If you have an equivalent new URL, then

redirecting to it is a good practice.
Otherwise, you should not create fake
content, you should not redirect to your
homepage, you shouldn’t robots.txt
disallow those URLs -- all of these things
make it harder for us to recognize your
site’s structure and process it properly.
We call these “soft 404” errors.”
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Google’s John Mueller explains that 404 response

codes will not harm your sites rankings.
Here is more information from Google about 404

response codes.
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XML Site Map

Google uses site feeds to crawl a website. So if
you add a page, Google can find your feed and
discover it in that manner.
That’s why I list XML site map as an optional

solution. Here’s what Google’s developer page
says:
“Use Pubsubhubbub if you use Atom/RSS for your

sitemap and want to broadcast your changes to
other search engines in addition to Google.”
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Google can also discover the web page through

the normal process of crawling from link to link.
Another option is that you can choose to submit

the URL individually or through a site map,
complete instructions from Google here.
If your site is not updated often, you can crawl your

site with an app like Xenu Link Sleuth and choose
the option to create an XML site map. Then you just
upload it to your server, no web hosting resources
are needed to generate the map other than
allowing Link Sleuth to crawl your website.
Or you can use a plugin like the Google XML

Sitemap Generator plugin.
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Redundant SEO Plugin

Features
There are features included in SEO plugins that in my
opinion are redundant or not necessary.
Canonical URLs
Canonical URLs are built into WordPress. You don’t need an
SEO plugin to handle this.
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Robots.txt and htaccess

File Editors
If you have a text editor or an HTML editor, then
you have all you need for editing a robots.txt
file or updating an htaccess file. Additionally,
you should only mess with those files if you
know what you’re doing.
If you are skilled enough to edit these, then you

don’t need a WordPress plugin to handle this.
Just open your text file and an FTP app like a
normal person, right?
404 Status Code Redirection

SEO plugins provide this under the mistaken
belief that 404 status codes are harmful. As
noted above by Google’s John Mueller, 404
response codes are fine. Just fix the ones that
are due to actual errors, like a typo in the URL.
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Sitemap Generators
As noted above, a site map is not strictly necessary
because Google crawls URLs via RSS feeds and links.
However, a site map is useful if you have made

major changes and want Google to discover
them as fast as possible. In this case a manually
generated site map is useful, as you don’t have to
install a plugin to generate it.
You can still install a site map generator plugin and

that makes far more sense to do than installing a
huge SEO plugin to do this one single task.
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Keyword Research and

Word Processing
WordPress and your server resources might not
be the best platform for conducting keyword and
word processing functions. If you want a real world
app for checking your content, use a real software
program like the Hemingway App. If you want to do
web page analysis use a real app that generates a
word cloud.
All of these kinds of functions are limited on an SEO

plugin anyway. A standalone app will do a better
job, in my opinion.
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Why Use Six Plugins

Instead of One?
An all in one SEO plugin might be just a single plugin,
but it’s still behaving as if it’s ten or more plugins.
Count the features on your SEO plugin and count
each one as a single plugin. You’ll be surprised that
you could be larding up your WordPress site with the
features of twelve plugins – features that you may
not need.
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So the question shouldn’t be about whether you

need six plugins versus one. The question should be
how many features do you need?
For me, the clear answer is a lot less features that

are offered by all in one WordPress SEO plugin
solutions.
There are plugins that take a modular approach,

such as The SEO Framework WordPress SEO plugin.
You can pick and choose which components you
want.
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All in One is Not the Same

as All You Need
As you can see, SEO plugins are useful for users who
have little to no skill with coding or WordPress. SEO
plugins accomplish an important task for users who
don’t have the skills to choose what solutions they
need.
A dedicated SEO plugin is a good choice for a large

organization that wants to play it safe and not have to
deal with individual plugins or hand crafted solutions.
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However, for those with more skill or aren’t constrained

by bureaucratic constraints, SEO plugins can be
overkill.
A certain amount of laziness has crept into the

industry where people are installing SEO plugins
without thinking about what they need for SEO. People
are installing SEO plugins by default, essentially
sleepwalking through their WordPress SEO.
This article shows that you don’t need everything a

dedicated SEO plugin offers. There are alternatives to
installing an SEO plugin with features you don’t really
need. An all in one solution may not be what you need.
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Chapter 8
13 Best WordPress
SEO Plugins
Jon Clark
Managing Partner, Moving
Traffic Media, LLC
In 2021, optimizing your web presence is no longer just

a “nice to have” option. It’s a necessity.
With millions of active users interacting across the

Internet at the same time, getting lost in all the noise is
inevitable unless you take steps to stay relevant. And
that’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes
into play.
SEO refers to the steps you take to ensure that your

site or page are the first things to show up when a
user enters a certain keyword. The benefits of this
are tremendous. You’ll see a significant boost in
engagement, generate more leads, make more sales,
and improve your bottom line.
However, competition for the top spots in organic

search results is fierce. Because of the low barrier to
entry, literally anyone can create a site and optimize it
to rank better on Google or Bing.
What separates the best from everyone else is smart

implementation of certain strategies, as well as using
tools to help make optimization much more efficient.
In this article, you’ll learn the best ways to optimize

your WordPress site for SEO, including the tools that will
make that journey substantially easier.
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Pre-Requisites
Before diving into the wild and wonderful world
of WordPress SEO tools, it’s important to get the
basics right first.
SEO plugins are features you add to an already

well thought out and presented package. These
plugins aren’t magic, and they certainly won’t
create sensational results if the base they have to
stand on isn’t strong.
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WordPress is widely regarded as a great site for SEO

optimization as it has Content Management Systems
(CMS) that make the entire process super easy and
intuitive. Take advantage of this user-friendliness and
ensure that the content you post on your site is high
quality and value-added.
Just keep in mind that no plug-in can help you if

your page doesn’t offer great information – even if
you get people to your site, they probably won’t stay
there for very long. It’s also important for you to use
themes/templates that have clean code as that also
helps with SEO.
Another important thing to mention is that you

absolutely don’t need every single plugin from this
list. These are just to give you an idea of the different
options and what they have to offer.
Choosing just one from each of the categories is

more than good enough, especially if you’re new to
optimization.
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Don’t get caught up in all the technology, since you

could potentially reach the point of overwhelm, and
experience analysis paralysis (a.k.a., you become
so caught up with things that you never make any
headway on what you’re trying to achieve).
At the end of the day, always keep the basics in

mind, regardless of whatever stage you’re at right
now.
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1. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is an industry favorite with thousands of

glowing reviews. It’s a premium plugin that offers an
incredible number of powerful features while still being
easy to use and understand.
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Some of these features include:
Internal link suggestions.

Focused keyword reports.
A page and content analysis tool.
Built-in Redirect manager (for error
404 URLs).
XML Sitemaps.
The page analysis tool that Yoast offers is very

useful as it provides an all-inclusive snapshot
of how your page is doing. The readability, the
length of the content, alt attributes, keyword
density, title tags, and meta description among
others, are all analyzed to ensure you’re on the
right track.
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2. All in One SEO Pack
As of the time of this writing, All in One SEO Pack

has been downloaded more than 74 million times,
and has cemented itself as a super feature-rich
WordPress plugin that’s perfect for beginners and
experts alike.
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The plugin offers:
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages

support.
XML Sitemap support.
Google Analytics support.
A built-in API.
A redirect manager.
Integration with ecommerce sites
like Shopify.
Automatic blog title optimization.
Automatic meta tags.
More seasoned users can also create custom

headlines, tags, meta descriptions, and
keywords depending on their needs.
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3. Premium SEO Pack
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Premium SEO Pack offers several super useful

modules for you to take advantage of in both the
free and paid versions.
For the regular license, a fairly reasonable $44 gets you:
Focus Keyword Analysis.

Custom permalinks.
Page SEO reports as well as scores.
Page Analysis and
recommendations.
Keyword suggestions.
404 monitoring.
A W3C validator.
Mass optimization.
Local SEO.
A video sitemap.
The price tag might be higher than other services

on this list, but the features and customizability
Premium SEO Pack offers more than justify it. It’s
a great choice for seasoned SEO professionals
looking to take their WordPress site to the next
level.
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4. SEOPressor Connect
This plugin takes your most essential SEO data and

lays it out in one intuitive dashboard. The dashboard
gives you a glance at insights into your site’s search
engine visibility amongst other things. The main selling
point of SEOPressor however is their emphasis on
contextual content instead of keywords.
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A $9 monthly subscription gets you:
Automatic internal linking.

Readability scoring.
Over-optimization checking
(irrelevant keywords, overstuffing,
etc.).
XML sitemap generator.
Dynamic spider control.
The learning curve is steep, but this professional

tool is a mainstay in advanced SEO processes.
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5. Semrush
Semrush is an incredibly popular WordPress plugin

that is adored by SEO experts, marketers, bloggers,
and businesses of every size.
You can use Semrush to find organic keywords

and terms to rank for and the plugin’s competitive
research functionality lets you compare your
competitor’s rankings and find new terms to gain a
leg up on them.
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Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant tool also

improves your overall website content by helping
you write more search-friendly content. It does
this through tight integration with WordPress.
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6. Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO has over 3 million installs and

consistently good reviews. It’s not hard to see
why. The WordPress plugin has over 200 features
to help you optimize your content with updates
keeping things fresh constantly.
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Instead of listing down all the things the program

offers, here’s an incredibly detailed video that runs
through everything from the developers themselves:
The app has subscription tiers starting from $20

for your first month and it goes up from there
depending on your use case and requirements.
242
WordPress Site Speed Plugins

You’ve painstakingly optimized your site for keywords
and search trends and now you have a steady
stream of visitors flocking to your WordPress site. But
your work is far from over. Nothing will put off new
readers more than slow load times and unoptimized
content.
Research shows that 53% of mobile users leave if the

website takes more than 3 seconds to load while 87%
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of online shopping carts are abandoned if the load time

exceeds 2 seconds.
This data proves that the speed of your site is an incredibly

important part of the efficiency puzzle and not paying
attention to it could leave a bad taste in your customer’s
mouths.
Thankfully though, the following WordPress plugins will help

you keep your site snappy and well optimized for years to
come.
244
1. W3 Super Cache
W3 Super Cache is a fantastic tool to help speed

up your WordPress site. It’s made by the company
responsible for WordPress itself, so you know the quality
is going to be exceptional.
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The plugin manages your site’s cache files to ensure

that performance isn’t affected. This improves site
speed and allows the end-user to have a better
experience. Google also uses site speed and cache
metrics in its ranking algorithm so this could be the
difference between you ranking higher or lower.
Oh right, and this plugin is completely free to use.
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2. Media File Renamer
While this plugin might not help your site’s

speed, it certainly helps reduce the time it takes
to optimize your images and files. Going back
through large sites and sifting through file names
and attributes is a huge hassle.
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Media File Renamer solves this issue by renaming

media files based on their image titles. When an
image file is updated, the entire site is updated to
include these references.
The free version of the plugin is an auto renamer

so if you want manual control of your naming
then you’ll have to get the pro version which starts
at $24 for an annual subscription.
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3. WP Smush
This simple plugin allows you to simply and

intuitively reduce the image sizes on your site
without compressing the integrity or quality of the
overall image.
249
WP Smush supports all the common file formats

including JPEG, GIF, and PNG. Besides this, it offers:
Removal of unused colors from

images.
Compatibility with other plugins.
Removal of metadata from JPEG
images.
Ability to handle more than 50
images at a time.
Ability to pinpoint what images are
slowing down your site.
This video from the developer does a good job of

walking you through the process.
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4. WP Optimize
Another simple tool on the list, WP Optimize lets

you optimize and streamline your site’s database.
The plugin has over 17 million installs and a high
rating so the quality is undeniably good.
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Besides cleaning up and optimizing your databases

so they run better, WP optimize also offers:
Scheduled automatic cleanups of

revisions, spam comments, trashed
content, etc.
Defragmentation of MySQL tables.
Database statistics overview.
Image compression.
Granular control over specific
optimizations.
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Mobile Optimization
The vast majority of content produced and
consumed in the world is done on mobile devices
like smartphones and tablets. Statistics show that
90% of the world’s population above the age of 6
will own a mobile phone.
253
This means that not optimizing your site for mobile

will be a huge deterrent to your long-term success.
As previously mentioned, speed is important for sites
to remain competitive, and being mobile-friendly is
another essential part of the equation.
The following plugins will assist in making your site

more mobile-friendly so that the people visiting it will
have no reason not to stick around.
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1. WP Touch Pro
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WP Touch Pro is an obvious first choice for this

particular category of plugins. With over 13 million
downloads, this tool has become a mainstay for
almost everyone.
It replaces your site with a user friendly, mobile-

focused theme. This change enhances the site,
making it easier and faster to read.
It overlays a mobile-friendly theme on your site without

compromising your current theme. Your content and
URL remain the same. The plugin simply optimizes your
content for different screen sizes. You can see just
some of the customizable options the app offers in the
screenshot above.
If you want more validation, WP Touch Pro is actually

recommended by Google itself so implementing it
could mean that your site performs more favorably in
search rankings.
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2. Autoptimize
Regardless of whether your site is hosted through

companies like GoDaddy or simply through WordPress.
com, Autoptimize is a fantastic plug-in that helps
improve your site’s overall web upload speeds.
It does this by optimizing your database, deleting your

caches, and aggregating scripts. These changes can
reduce your site loading times by up to 30%.
This is a huge improvement by any metric and ensures

that your visitors don’t leave your site because of slow
load times.
The plugin is super easy to use with a myriad of pricing

models to choose from.
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Wordpress Analytics
Plugins
Knowledge is power and as a site owner, this
statement should be at the forefront of everything
that you do. Data never lies and will tell you the
cold hard facts on how your site is doing and what
improvements you need to be making.
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Google Analytics is the best way to make sense of

this and if used properly can help you craft effective
strategies for your WordPress site experience. Plugins
designed to optimize this data are therefore a great
idea to use.
Knowing is half the battle and with these plugins,

you’ll be in good hands.
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1. Monster Insights
No list on Google Analytics plugins could ever

be complete without MonsterInsights. The app
has more than 85 million all time installs and is
hugely popular for good reasons.
A big advantage of MonsterInsights is that it is

super easy to install and requires absolutely no
coding knowledge. Once you’re up and running,
the plugin tells you exactly how visitors came
onto your WordPress site. The reasons could be
referrals, keyword search, or a backlink that led to
you.
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This data can help you pinpoint weaknesses or

optimize trends to keep visitors flocking to your site.
Monster insight also lets you get to know your visitors
better. You can find out their age, their country, their
gender, and even what browser they use.
This data comes from the MonsterInsights Website

Audience Report and can be super useful when
planning new campaigns and strategies. You can also
use MonsterInsights to see what kind of content the
audiences are searching for and the volume based
on their demographic.
These features are just the tip of the iceberg when it

comes to the vast array of tools MonsterInsights offers.
Truly a must-have tool for anyone looking to gain
more insight into their site and process.
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2. Google Analytics
Dashboard (Exact Metrics)
29 million installs later, Google Analytics

Dashboard is a no brainer choice for a high-
quality Google Analytics plugin.
The brainchild of Exact Metrics, this powerful

tool intuitively displays your data right in your
WordPress dashboard.
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Installing the plugin is a bit more complicated than

other options but the effort is well worth it. This plugin
not only shows you your site’s bounce rates, views,
keywords, etc, it also gives useful real time statistics. You
can monitor your visitors and traffic as they happen.
Google Analytics Dashboard by Exact Metrics is also

compatible with multisite installs and multiple Google
Analytics accounts as well.
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3. Analytify
What if you want an option that is just as useful

as the others but is much simpler and easier to
understand? Well, that’s where Analytify comes in.
This popular WordPress plugin simplifies Google

Analytics data so that you can get a better overall
grasp of what’s happening with your WordPress site
with just a quick glance.
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The ease of use starts with the installation which

just requires a simple 1-Click Authentication process.
As soon as you’re up and running the app will
display your analytics data right in your WordPress
dashboard.
Analytify, like its contemporaries, helps improve your

site traffic and SEO by giving you insights on how
you can make certain improvements. You can learn
more about your audience, their likes, and dislikes,
your retention rates, the engagement, and the list
goes on and on. Knowing all this helps you craft
better more tailored marketing strategies.
Analytify will also give you automated email reports

of all these metrics too.
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Taking Your SEO Efforts to

the Next Level
These plugins won’t work unless you do. They’re tools,
designed to help make your job easier but they can
never replace the groundwork that has to be laid down
for them to have any effect at all.
266
Don’t get confused by the options and always

keep your business or personal objectives at the
forefront of everything you do. Use your unique
requirements to dictate what plugin is the best
choice for you and utilize them to do what they’re
designed to.
Optimizing any process takes time and your

site is no different. But with these tools and the
knowledge you already have, you’ll be one step
closer to making your most ambitious goals a
reality.
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Chapter 9
Just Say No to Hackers: How

to Harden Your WordPress
Security
Vahan Petrosyan
Director, IT and Infrastructure,
When it comes to security, there is no WordPress-

specific type of security that exists. All problems with
security are common for all websites or applications.
WordPress security problems are of the most

interest because it powers about 40% of the web
and because it is open source. When one finds a
vulnerability either in the WordPress core or plugins,
other websites using it become vulnerable because
they all use the same code.
On the other hand, there are a decent number

of plugins that you can use to harden your
website security. Let’s delve into how to harden
your WordPress site against different types of
vulnerabilities, though the scope of this article is wider
and applies to all types of web applications.
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The common types of vulnerabilities are:
Backdoors.
Pharma Hacks.
Brute-force Login Attempts.
Malicious Redirects.
Cross-site Scripting (XSS).
Denial of Service (DDoS).
These are the common types of vulnerabilities, but

that doesn’t mean they are limited to just these.
When you think about security, in general, you should
think 360-degrees about it.
There is no limited set of ways to hack a website.

Attackers can use many techniques to access your
site.
For example, they can steal your PC and have

physical access to your computer. They can also use
surveillance techniques to see your passwords when
logging in from a public network to your website.
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So think 360 when it comes to security.
Let’s dive into how to harden our WordPress

installs in order to make life a little more difficult for
attackers.
Here are 16 ways to harden your WordPress website

security:
Use HTTPS.
Use a strong password.
Use password managers to store
your passwords.
Enable Captcha on Login forms.
Prevent brute-force login attempts.
Use two-factor authentication.
Keep up-to-date plugins.
Set Security HTTP Headers.
Set the correct file permissions for
WordPress files.
Disable file editing from WordPress.
Disable all unnecessary features.
Hide the WordPress version.
Install a WordPress firewall.
Keep backups.
Use SFTP.
Monitor users’ activities.
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1. Secure Your Site With HTTPS

It isn’t by accident that we’ll start by securing the
website with HTTPS.
Everything you do flows through the network and wire

cables. HTTP exchanges data as plain text between
browser and server. Therefore, anyone who has access
to the network between the server and the browser is
able to view your unencrypted data.
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If you don’t protect your connection, you’re at risk

of exposing sensitive data to attackers. With HTTPS,
your data will be encrypted and attackers will not
be able to read the data transmitted even if they
have access to your network.
So the number one step for securing your website

is enabling HTTPS. If you haven’t moved to
HTTPS yet, you can use this guide to move your
WordPress to HTTPS.
Tools & WordPress Plugins You Can Use to Migrate

HTTP to HTTPS
Better Search Replace.

Database Search and Replace Script.
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2. Use Always Strong

Passwords
It may sound funny, but the most common way
hackers use to access your website are weak
passwords or pwned passwords. These make you
vulnerable against Brute-force attacks.
274
Enhance your security by using strong passwords more

than any other way listed below.
Always use strong passwords and check regularly if they

have been pwned.
WordPress Plugins to Enhance Passwords Security:
Disallow Pwned Password.

Download Password Policy Manager.
Password bcrypt.
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3. Use Password Managers

to Store Your Passwords
When you log in while working from a public
network, you can’t be sure about who is watching
what you are typing on your laptop or recording
your passwords. In order to solve this problem,
use password managers to easily access your
passwords and store them in a secure place.
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Even if your PC is accessed, they will not be able

to get your passwords. Password managers are
browser based and not WordPress plugins.
Password Manager Browser Add Ons:
LastPass.
1Password.
NordPass.
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4. Add CAPTCHA on the

Login & Registration
Form
When you’ve secured your website with HTTPS and
used strong passwords, you’ve already made life
for hackers pretty hard. But you can make it even
harder by adding captcha to login forms.
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Captchas are a great way to protect your login forms

against brute-force attacks.
Plugins to Add Captcha on WordPress Login:
Login No Captcha reCAPTCHA.

Login Security reCAPTCHA.
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5. Protect From Brute

Force Login Attempts
Login captcha will give you protection against
brute-force attempts up to a certain point, but not
completely. Often, once captcha tokens are solved,
they are valid for a few minutes.
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Google reCaptcha, for example, is valid for 2

minutes. Attackers can use those two minutes to
try brute-force login attempts to your login form
during that time.
In order to solve this problem, you should block

failed login attempts by IP address.
WordPress Plugins to Prevent Brute-Force Attacks:
WP Limit Login Attempts.

Limit Login Attempts Reloaded.
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6. Setup Two-Factor
(2FA) Authentication
With secure passwords and captcha on login
forms, you are more protected, yes, but what if
hackers used surveillance methods and recorded
the password you typed on video to access your
website.
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If they have your password, only two-factor

authentication can protect your website from
attackers.
WordPress Plugins to Setup 2FA Authentication:
Two-Factor.
Google Authenticator.
WordPress Two Factor Authentication (2FA ,
MFA).
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7. Keep WordPress Core

and Plugins up to Date
Often for WordPress core and plugins,
vulnerabilities are found and reported. Make
sure to update your plugins with the latest version
in order to prevent websites being hacked from
known and reported holes in files.
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I wouldn’t recommend switching to automatic

updating since it could result in breaking your
websites without your knowledge.
But I strongly recommend that you enable

WordPress core’s minor updates by adding this line of
code in wp-config.php since these updates include
security patches for the core.
define( ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, ‘minor’ );
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8. Set Security HTTP

Headers
Security headers bring an extra layer of protection
by restricting the actions that can be performed
between the browser and server when one
browses website. Security headers aim to protect
against Clickjacking and Cross-site Scripting (XSS)
attacks.
286
Security headers are:
Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS).
Content-Security-Policy.
X-Frame-Options.
X-Content-Type-Options.
Fetch Metadata Headers.
Referrer-Policy.
Cache-Control.
Clear-Site-Data.
Feature-Policy.
We will not go deep into each security header

explanation, but here is how to fix them.
WordPress Plugins to Enable Security Headers:
HTTP headers to improve web site security.

GD Security Headers.
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9. Set Correct File Permissions

for WordPress Files
File permissions are rules on the OS that host
your WordPress files; these rules set how files can
be read, edited and executed. This measure of
security is very important especially when you host
a website on shared hosting.
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If set incorrectly, when one website on shared

hosting gets hacked, attackers can access files
on your website and read any content there –
specifically wp-config.php – and gain complete
access to your website.
All files should be 644.

All folders should be 775.
wp-config.php should be 600.
The rules above mean your hosting user account

can read and modify files and the web server
(WordPress) can modify, delete and read files and
folders.
Other users can’t read the content of wp-config.

php. If setting 600 for wp-config.php takes your
website down, alter it to 640 or 644.
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10. Disable File Editing

From WordPress
It’s a known feature in WordPress that you can
edit files from the admin backend. It’s really not
necessary because developers use SFTP and rarely
use this.
290
So disable it by adding one line of code in

wp-config.php file
define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true);
291
11. Disable All Unnecessary

Features
WordPress comes with many features you may
not need at all. For example, the XML-RPC endpoint
in WordPress was created for communicating
with external applications. Attackers can use this
endpoint for brute-force logins.
292
Disable XML-RPC using the plugin Disable XML-RPC-

API.
Another issue that WordPress has built-in is providing

a REST-API endpoint to list all users on the website.
If you append “/wp-json/wp/v2/users” to any

WordPress install you’ll see a list of usernames and
user IDs as JSON data.
Disable users REST-API by adding this line of code

into functions.php
function disable_users_rest_json( $response, $user,

$request ){
return ‘’;
}add_filter( ‘rest_prepare_user’, ‘disable_users_rest_
json’, 10, 3 );
293
12. Hide WordPress Version

WordPress automatically injects a comment with
the version of WordPress in the HTML of the page.
It gives the attacker the version of your installed
Wordpress as additional information.
294
For example, if you are using a WordPress version

whose core was reported to have a vulnerability, the
attacker knows he can use the technique reported to
hack your website.
Hide WordPress Version Meta Tags Using These

Plugins:
Meta Generator and Version Info Remover.
WP Generator Remover by Dawsun.
295
13. Install a WordPress

firewall
A firewall is a web application which runs on websites
and analyzes any incoming HTTP requests. It
applies sophisticated logic to filter out requests that
potentially may be a threat.
296
One can set up its rules on top of built-in rules of the

firewall to block requests. One of the common types
of attacks is SQL injection.
Say you run a WordPress plugin which is vulnerable

to SQL injections and you don’t know about it. If you
run a firewall even if the attacker knows about the
security flaw in the plugin he will not be able to hack
the website.
This is because the firewall will block those requests

which contain SQL injections.
Firewalls will block those requests from the IP and

prevent successive dangerous requests from coming.
Firewalls are also able to prevent DDoS attacks by
detecting too many requests from a single IP and
blocking them.
It’s also possible to run DNS-level firewalls which

run before requests are made to a web server. An
example is Cloudflare DNS firewall.
The advantage of this method is that it’s more robust

against DDoS attacks.
Application level firewalls which run on the server
let HTTP requests hit the web server and then block
297
it. That means the server spends some CPU/RAM

resources to block them.
With DNS-level firewalls it doesn’t spend server

resources, thus it’s more sustainable to attacks.
WordPress Firewall Plugins You Can Use:

Wordfence Security.
Sucuri.
All In One WP Security & Firewall.
BulletProof Security.
Shield Security.
Note: If you decide to install firewalls, they may have

features such as login brute-force protection or 2F
authentication and you can use their features instead
of installing the plugins mentioned above.
298
14. Keep Backups

If you get hacked, the best way to recover is by
restoring the website from the latest version which
wasn’t infected. If you don’t store website backups,
cleaning up the website may be a time-consuming
operation; and in some cases, it may not be doable
to restore all information because the malware which
was running erased all the data.
In order to avoid such scenarios do regular backups of

your website database and files.
299
If not, you can use these plugins to run backups:

BackWPup.
UpdraftPlus.
BackupBuddy.
BlogVault.
300
15. Use SFTP

I guess most developers already use SFTP to
connect to web servers, but it‘s important to make
a reminder of this, just in case you still don’t.
Like HTTPS, SFTP uses encryption to transfer files

over the network making it impossible to read as
plain text even if one has access to the network.
301
16. Monitor Users’ Activity

We’ve discussed a bunch of ways to secure
your website, but what about when one of your
employees, who has access to website admin,
does shady things such as adding links in
content?
None of the above methods are able to detect a

shady employee.
302
That can be done by watching activity logs. By looking

into the activity of each user, you may find that one
of the employees edited an article which they weren’t
supposed to. You can also look into activity that looks
suspicious and see what changes were done.
WordPress Plugins to Monitor Users Activity:

Activity Log.
User Activity Log.
WP Activity Log.
303
What to Do If You
Get Hacked?
Even with all the advice from security experts and
knowing the ways to harden your websites from
hacks, they still do happen.
304
If your website was hacked, you need to perform

these steps below to recover.
Change all of your emails and other

personal passwords first since hackers may
have gotten access to your email first and
thus be able to access your website.
Restore your website to the latest known
non-hacked backup.
Reset passwords of all website users.
Update all plugins if there are updates
available.
Conclusion
Think 360 when it comes to security. Stress the importance
of security to all of your employees so they understand
the consequences the company may suffer if they don’t
follow security rules.
If you get hacked simply, recover your website from the

backup and change all passwords to your website and
emails asap.
305
Chapter 10
How to Protect a WordPress

Site from Hackers
Roger Montti
WordPress is a frequent target for hacking. Hackers

are targeting the theme, the core WordPress files,
plugins, and even the login page.
These are the steps to take to make it less likely

to be hacked and to be able to recover easier if it
should still happen.
307
How Hackers Attack WordPress

All sites on the web are under constant
attack – whether it’s a phpBB forum or a
WordPress site – all sites are being probed by
hackers. It’s not unusual for a hacker to scan
thousands of pages or try to log in hundreds
of times a day.
308
And that’s just one hacker. Sites are under attack by

several hackers at the same time.
Typically it’s not a person who is trying to hack you.

Hackers employ automated software to crawl the
web to probe for specific weaknesses in the website.
These automated software programs crawling the

web are called bots. I call them hacker bots in order
to distinguish them from scraper bots (software that
is trying to copy content).
309
Secure Your WordPress Site

With a Firewall
A firewall is a software program that blocks an
intruder. In my opinion, the best WordPress firewall
is a plugin called Wordfence.
310
What Wordfence does is to check if a website visitor’s

behavior matches that of an abusive bot. If the bot
breaks certain rules, like asking for too many web
pages in a short amount of time, Wordfence will then
automatically block the bot.
Wordfence is also programmed to allow legitimate

bots like Google and Bing on the site.
There are advanced features that let a publisher see

what bots are attacking a site and to view where
the bot is coming from, like if it’s a bad bot coming
from Amazon Web Services or Bluehost for example.
Wordfence provides the publisher the ability to block
the bot by their IP address, the entire IP address range,
or even by a fake browser user agent that the bot is
using.
311
About User Agents (UA)

A user agent is identifying information that a browser
sends that tells a website what browser it is (Chrome,
Firefox, Vivaldi), and what operating system it is
operating on (Windows 10, Mac OS X).
For example, this is a user agent string for a Safari 11

browser on a Mac OS X computer:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_6)
AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/11.1.2
Safari/605.1.15
Bots use a lot of different user agents in order to

fool websites and sneak in. For example, some bots
pretend to be a browser on Windows XP.
The actual amount of real users on Win XP are close

to zero, I can create a rule with Wordfence to block all
user agents with Windows XP as the operating system
and with that one rule, I can block thousands of bad
bots, regardless of what country they are coming from
or IP address.
312
The bad bots will sometimes respond by changing to

another user agent, so by combining these rules, a
publisher stands a chance of blocking a wide range
of bad hacker bots.
And that’s with the free version of Wordfence.
The paid version can block entire countries. So if

you don’t have legitimate site visitors from certain
countries, you can block every visitor that’s coming
from those countries.
313
WordPress Defense
Against Exploits
Additionally, the paid version of Wordfence will protect you
in advance from many compromised themes and plugins
before those plugins are fixed.
Once Wordfence researchers are aware of an exploit they

will update the premium version of the firewall to provide
subscribers with protection from those exploits, sometimes
weeks before the exploit is fixed by the compromised
theme or plugin developer.
314
Website Security Hardening

Another free plugin that provides an additional layer
of protection is called Sucuri Security. Sucuri (owned
by GoDaddy) helps harden the WordPress security
to block bad bots from taking advantage of certain
kinds of attacks. It also has a malware scanning
feature that checks all files to see if they’ve been
altered.
315
Sucuri will alert you every time someone logs into your site,
helping publishers to identify if a hacker is logging in. Sucuri
can also alert a publisher if a file was changed, something
that hackers do.
These are the features of the free version of

Sucuri:
Security Activity Auditing.

File Integrity Monitoring.
Remote Malware Scanning.
Blacklist Monitoring.
Effective Security Hardening.
Post-Hack Security Actions.
Security Notifications.
The paid version of Sucuri includes a website firewall.
316
Limit Logins to Your Site

WordFence is able to block bots that are repeatedly
filling in user names and passwords on the WordPress
login page.
But if you want to focus on limiting those logins, there

is a plugin called, Limit Login Attempts Reloaded that
allows publishers to automatically block all hackers
who enter a set number of failed name and password
combinations.
317
For example, you can set it to block hackers after three

attempts to guess the password.
These are the features of the login blocker:
Limit the number of retry attempts when

logging in (per each IP). This is fully
customizable.
Informs the user about the remaining retries
or lockout time on the login page.
Optional logging and optional email
notification.
It is possible to whitelist/blacklist IPs and
Usernames.
Sucuri Website Firewall compatibility.
XMLRPC gateway protection.
Woocommerce login page protection.
Multi-site compatibility with extra MU
settings.
GDPR compliant. With this feature turned
on, all logged IPs get obfuscated (md5-
hashed).
Custom IP origins support (Cloudflare, Sucuri,
etc.)
The Limit Login Reloaded plugin provides a fast way to shut

down hack bots that are trying to guess a password.
318
Backup Your WordPress Site

It is important to automatically create a daily backup
of your website. Any catastrophic event that takes the
site down can be recovered from with a backup.
There are many backup solutions but the one

that I have found to be immensely useful is called
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin. UpdraftPlus is
trusted by over two million users, it’s a well-regarded
choice.
319
It can be configured to email the backups every day

or send them to a cloud storage location like Dropbox.
I once accidentally removed all the theme layout files

from a site, completely removed the look of the site.
But I was able to restore the site to exactly how it was
before by using an UpdraftPlus backup. It was easy to
do and I was so thankful.
320
Update All Themes

and Plugins
It’s important to always update all themes and
plugins. WordPress provides a way to update all
plugins automatically, which is convenient for
publishers or businesses who don’t log in and do
updates often.
321
By enabling the auto-update feature a publisher can

be assured of having the most up-to-date software.
Having an out-of-date plugin is one of the leading
causes of being hacked.
There are reasons not to enable the auto-update

feature, but the negatives tend to happen rarely. For
example, an updated plugin might be incompatible
with other plugins.
But for sites that don’t change frequently, the auto-

update feature is probably a good thing to enable.
322
Beware of Abandoned
Plugins
A final warning about abandoned plugins. Some
plugins can continue to work years after they’ve
been abandoned by their developer. What can
happen is that these old plugins may contain a
vulnerability. But because they are abandoned, it
will never get fixed.
323
Another issue is that hackers sometimes buy the old

plugins and update them with malware and viruses.
Check all your WordPress plugins to make sure that they

have not been abandoned and appear to be updated
on a fairly frequent basis.
324
Protect Your WordPress

Site from Hackers
For many sites, simply taking these small steps to
secure a website is enough to keep the sites from
getting hacked. The free versions of these plugins
provide an extraordinary amount of protection
and the premium versions give even more
protection.
325
There are many security-type plugins and some

of those have actually contained vulnerabilities
themselves. Wordfence and Sucuri are in my
opinion top choices for WordPress security.
Citations
WordFence Security
Sucuri Security
Limit Login Attempts Reloaded
UpdraftPlus
326
Chapter 11
WordPress Mistakes
to Avoid
Jeremy Knauff
CEO, Spartan Media
WordPress is an amazingly powerful and flexible tool,

but like any tool, its wide array of options means it’s
easy to make mistakes using it.
While all of these mistakes will adversely affect your

website, some can be absolutely devastating. That’s
why it’s so important to know what they are so you
can avoid them.
So in this article, I’m going to outline ten common

WordPress mistakes and how to avoid them.
328
Mistake #1: Using Poorly-Coded

Themes
This is the first and most important thing to look at because
it forms the foundation for your SEO efforts, and frankly,
most themes suck in this regard.
Whether your theme is custom-built, purchased from a

theme vendor, or downloaded for free from the WordPress
repository, there are a few critical details you need to
evaluate to ensure it will not put you at a disadvantage,
including:
329
HTML Validation
This is critical because invalid HTML can cause
rendering issues, which affect both users and search
engines. When this happens, you can lose visitors
because your website doesn’t display and/or work
properly for them, and you can rank poorly because
search engines can’t properly render your page and
understand the content on it.
There’s a simple and free tool for checking HTML

validation via W3C’s Markup Validation Service
but I want to include a caveat – while I think valid
HTML is important, I’m not an HTML validation purist.
What I mean by that is there are cases where some
errors may not be worth fixing from an ROI (Return on
Investment) perspective.
It’s also important to note that you may not be able

to fix some errors because they may be coming from
something you don’t have the ability to edit, such as
core functionality in some themes or plugins. In cases
like this, if you’re faced with severe errors that are
causing rendering issues, it may make more sense
starting over and rebuilding from the ground up.
330
HTTP Requests
Many themes load a ridiculous number of scripts,
images, fonts, and other types of files, which cause your
pages to load more slowly.
The worst part is that many themes load these files

unnecessarily. Rather than loading files only on pages
where they are used, many themes simply load them on
every page, which results in a significantly slower load
speed. Page speed is critical, both for users and for SEO.
There’s no particular number to aim for, but fewer

is always better from a performance standpoint –
especially if your website loads slowly.
331
Excessive DOM Size

This may sound incredibly technical, but it’s actually
pretty simple. It just means we need to ensure that the
HTML for our WordPress site is as efficient as possible.
While that may seem trivial, efficient HTML code can

play a huge role in how well a site performs because
each element has an impact on memory usage, style
calculations, and layout reflows.
Many themes use excessive HTML elements, often

nested several levels deep, and this quickly destroys
performance. We see this with page builders, but we
also see it at the theme-level because most developers
focus on the visual appearance with little regard to code
efficiency.
332
Mistake #2: Using

Page Builders
Some may disagree, but I believe using page
builders is a huge mistake.
I understand the arguments in favor of them – they

make it easier for people to add and edit designed
content. But the problem is that they also create a
lot of bloated code, add unnecessary HTTP calls, and
often, introduce HTML errors that you can’t fix.
333
I’ve never seen a single page builder that produces

clean, efficient code.
I published an extremely in-depth article about

website builders a while back, and many of the issues
that apply there apply equally to WordPress page
builders.
334
Mistake #3: Installing

Excessive Plugins
One of the things that makes WordPress so
powerful is the simplicity of adding functionality
by simply installing one or more plugins. Gone
are the days of having to hire a developer
and spend thousands, or tens of thousands of
dollars just to add a new feature.
335
But this can also create significant problems.
The first problem is that there’s a wide range of

development quality in these plugins. As with themes,
many plugins are poorly coded, which slows down
the load speed and introduces HTML errors into your
website. Often, these plugins also load a bunch of
scripts, CSS files, images, and fonts, which further
degrades speed and creates a poor user experience.
Another problem is that because it’s so easy, many

people make the mistake of adding too many plugins.
This causes your websites to load more slowly no
matter how well each one may be coded because
it still requires processing power to execute the
functionality they provide and to include any external
files they load.
336
Mistake #4: Not Optimizing

Media
We’re all carrying an incredibly powerful camera in
our pocket these days, which gives us the ability to
easily add new photos to our WordPress website, but
this also leads to a common and significant mistake.
When you take a picture with your iPhone or Android

device, the image will generally be significantly
larger than it needs to be for use on your website.
337
These large, high-resolution images are great for

printing, or even for cropping a smaller section to be
displayed at full size without losing image quality. But if
uploaded directly to your WordPress media library, they
will often be stored as full-sized, unoptimized images.
Some themes will automatically resize uploads based

on a set of dimension pairs to help eliminate this issue.
Many do not, however.
If your WordPress site is already up and running and

you’re just starting to address this issue, the good news
is that you don’t need to re-upload everything in your
media library because there are a variety of plugins
available to automatically resize them.
I want to point out that it’s absolutely critical to back

up your website before running tools like this because
if they delete or overwrite something you didn’t intend
them to, you’ll need a way to undo that.
I covered optimization of media extensively in my

article How to Improve Page Speed for More Traffic &
Conversions.
338
Mistake #5: Omitting

an XML Sitemap
While everyone can benefit from having an XML
sitemap, this is especially important on larger
websites because it helps search engines to find
and crawl all of your pages. Particularly the ones
that may be buried deep with few links pointing to
them.
339
Surprisingly, this critical feature is not yet native

to WordPress, so you will have to rely on a plugin.
I generally rely on Yoast for this because it also
incorporates several other features that we need, but
there are a number of plugins that can dynamically
create your XML sitemap each time you add, modify, or
delete pages, posts, and media.
340
Mistake #6: Skipping

Updates
Given what I do for a living, I get to see the backend
of a tremendous number of websites, and I am
always surprised at how out of date some people
are willing to let their plugins and themes and even
WordPress core get. After decades of consistently
seeing this, I really shouldn’t be surprised though.
341
This common mistake can have devastating

consequences because these updates patch not only
performance, design, and usability issues, but also
security holes that may give hackers the ability to get
into your website.
Once they get in, they can do all kinds of malicious

things, ranging from the obvious – like deleting or
defacing a website, to the subtle – like intercepting
credit card info or adding outbound links.
If you know you’re the kind of person who won’t make

time to regularly update WordPress core, I recommend
that you turn on automatic updates.
342
Mistake #7: Overlooking

Security
We’ve already talked about the security
implications of not keeping your plugins,
themes, and WordPress core up to date, but
keeping your website secure goes far beyond
that.
343
It’s important to point out that there is no way to

make your website completely secure. But by taking
steps to harden your security, you’ll deter most
hackers, with the rare exception of those who are
specifically targeting you.
This is because hacking is largely a numbers game

where hackers crawl thousands or even millions of
websites looking for easily exploited vulnerabilities.
Don’t Use a Default Username

By default, the first username in a WordPress install
will generally be “admin” which should be changed
because it’s the username hackers will try first.
If you’re setting up a brand new website, this is simple

– just change it during the installation process.
If you have an existing website, there is no way to

change usernames within the admin area, however,
you can log into your hosting account’s phpMyAdmin
and modify the WordPress database directly.
You should also change the display name in your

user profile so that you aren’t broadcasting your
username to the world with each post.
344
Lockdown your admin area

There are multiple ways to limit access to your admin
area to a particular IP, which will prevent most hacking
attempts.
Linux Server (Most Web Servers)
This is a simple process of creating a .htaccess file with

the right content and uploading it to your wp-admin
folder.
Simply fire up a text editor, create a new file and paste

the code below. Be sure to replace xx.xx.xx.xx with your
IP, which you can find by entering “what’s my ip” into a
Google search.
# ALLOW USER BY IP
<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
# Replace with your IP address
allow from xx.xx.xx.xx
</Limit>
345
Windows Server
I’ve never hosted anything on a Windows server,

and the process here is a bit foreign to me, so if
you’re on a Windows server, I’ll just encourage you
to search Microsoft’s support documents to find the
appropriate process for your version of Windows.
Plugins
I look at this as a last resort because it is the least

efficient method to limit access to a particular IP.
It also poses another problem in that when your IP
changes, you’ll be unable to update the plug-in to
your new IP.
The only way to access your admin area at that point

will be to login via FTP and delete the plugin. If you’re
going to go through all of that, you’re better off just
using .htaccess in the first place.
346
Enable TFA
(Two Factor Authentication)
Two-factor authentication is a powerful tool to protect
your website because it sends a code to your mobile
device that you must enter before logging in. This means
that without physical access to your device, someone
else won’t be able to access your admin area.
This requires a plugin, and there are a number of free

and paid plugins available to create this functionality.
Limit login attempts

This is one more simple way to harden your WordPress
website’s security by blocking login attempts from a
particular IP after a certain number of failed attempts.
This also requires a plugin, and there are a number of free

and paid plugins available to create this functionality as
well.
347
Mistake #8: Not Implementing

Backups
Everyone needs automated backups – this is an
essential part of having a website.
Aside from enabling you to easily roll back changes, it

also may help you to quickly recover from a hack by
restoring an older version of your website.
348
Your backup schedule will depend to some degree on

how frequently you modify your website, but at the very
least, it should run weekly. I like to keep several months
worth of backups in case a hack occurs and goes
unnoticed for a while – this enables us to go back far
enough to find a clean backup to restore from.
While these backups can live on your webserver to

speed up the restore process, ideally, they should also
be backed up to the cloud so that you always have a
clean copy.
349
Mistake #9: Omitting

Schema
In the world of SEO, we need every advantage
we can find, and while schema may not directly
impact ranking, it can have a positive impact on
clickthrough-rates because of added visual cues.
350
This means that your website may earn clicks that

would have otherwise gone to other higher ranking
websites simply because your listing in the search
results drew more attention.
Schema is basically a way to communicate to

search engines what your content is about, and how
the entities within your content relate to each other.
You’ll want to implement your schema as JSON,

which is a type of JavaScript, rather than microdata,
which is HTML markup.
There are a number of plugins available, both free

and paid, to help with this, but I personally prefer
to write the JSON and insert it into the code myself
because this gives me greater control without
having to add yet another plugin. And sometimes,
we have to do this because plugins can’t handle
some of the more complex scenarios we run into.
For example, let’s say you’re working with a national

brand with multiple franchise locations. In this case,
some pages may need schema for the parent
company, while others need the schema for both
the parent company and the local franchise. That
requires a custom approach.
351
Mistake #10: Not Properly

Configuring Permalinks
The default permalinks that WordPress creates
are not ideal from a search perspective, so we’ll
want to change them.
This is a relatively easy fix, and it’s essential

because a proper URL structure helps search
engines to better understand the hierarchy of
your website.
352
You’ll want to change this setting from whatever it’s

currently at to the following:
353

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Content

Don’t Launch a WordPress

Raise your hand if you work on your WordPress

Keep it raised if you have an embarrassingly

Don’t worry; I’m guilty, too. Between my 9-to-5

But it doesn’t have to be.

Like doing taxes or crafting the perfect business plan,

You don’t need to stress, though – I have you

From choosing an SEO-friendly theme that’ll juice

Your current level of WordPress prowess doesn’t

And, in case you want to get a quick glimpse, here’s a

3 Steps Before You Launch

Now, I know it can’t be that difficult to do – the site

Despite the fact that so many people sing its praises,

Over the last year or so, I started optimizing my

That’s when I realized; WordPress is a

No other platform has all the same

You don’t have to code to get started.

But getting into the SEO groove and seeing ROI

Here’s what I learned (it’s a lot!), and consider this

I’m all about handling my virtual private server

So, when it comes to time, resources, anyone-can-

If I have a slow, unresponsive site, my bounce rate will

There’s a massive difference between a site that takes

Before you make the leap to a hosting

Do they have support for plugins?

What type of backup support do they

Is there a staging environment?

What is the volume of bandwidth?

Which operating system are they using?

What other sites are in your IP range?

For more information on choosing a web hosting

Web hosting provider SEO benefits:

A CDN changes the way your site handles static

Sound cool? It is. I love anything that makes it look

And after extensive road-testing, I’ve found that

CDN recommendations: SEO benefits:

Cloudflare. Increased website

3. SEO Friendly Theme

It would be good, but in reality, it’s more likely

To help you transition from gawking at

Clean and fast code: With a clean code

CSS and Javascript files: With Google, less

Simple layout: A simple design will make

Responsive: As we know Google gives an

Schema Markups: Schema Markups tell

SEO-friendly WordPress SEO benefits:

4 Steps When Getting Set-Up

Often you find old content to trash or plugins to

Below I’m talking about the steps you just can’t

Unlike most plugins, a caching plugin is rarely

Instead, this plugin takes page load time to the next

It may sound like a whole lot to embrace

Cache plugin SEO benefits:

Remember, once you activate the plugin, head over

If your pages are of no use to searchers (e.g.,

Within WordPress, your categories are broad topics

Think of categories as your table of contents. And,