Wordpress SEO 2019 - Wordpress SEO For Beginner - Yoast Plugin Full Tutorial

[Music] welcome to Planet WPS complete guide to WordPress SEO video training series my name is Mark and I'll be your guide as we dive into the exciting realm of search engine optimization or SEO and the lessons that follow we will introduce you to the foundational elements of WordPress SEO and provides you with specific instructions on how to optimize your WordPress site SEO can be quite complex and is often viewed as an overwhelming task even for experienced content marketers and web developers but don't worry it's actually much easier than you think especially since you're running the WordPress platform actually out-of-the-box WordPress is relatively SEO friendly meaning it comes ready to embrace search engines it also comes with several built-in SEO tools which we'll cover later in this series additionally WordPress allows you the ability to expand and extend its core features through third-party plugins so we'll show you which SEO plugins work best and how to use them most importantly we'll teach you the important pressure points of WordPress SEO so you can spend your valuable time on the parts of your website that matter most at this point you may be asking how does SEO work or why should I care about SEO well simply put if you own a website search results matter the better your SEO the higher your website will rank in search results let's face it almost everyone relies on search engines to find the relevant content they are looking for despite what some may say search engines are the biggest source of traffic for most web sites as a result SEO is the most effective way to get your WordPress site recognized and increase the amount of visitors to your site plus these aren't just any visitors passing by these are people that found your website based on a highly intelligent algorithm that determined your site has what they're looking for understanding search engines is an important part of SEO so we start off this series by explaining how search engines operate in the next video so that's it CEO is important because search results matter he also experienced other benefits by following our SEO best practices as many of your efforts will carry over into other aspects of your website such as improve performance and increase security of your WordPress site two factors that are taken into account with site rankings good SEO takes time so the sooner you get started the sooner you'll move up the search results ladder [Music] ever wonder how major search engines such as Google Yahoo and Bing rank your website within their search results if so you've come to the right place in this video tutorial we're going to explain how search engines work more specifically we'll discuss the primary functions of search engines such as how they scan and index information on the web and provide search patrons with the most relevant listings based on their request understanding these components is a critical part of SEO and can help us as we begin our endeavors of optimizing our site for search engines imagine for a moment that you're a librarian when people come into your library it's your job to help them find the book they're looking for now imagine that your library is a giant one that consists over one hundred and thirty million books with no formal organized filing system well how do you do it first you need a system and a great one for that matter your system needs to know what's on over a hundred trillion pages additionally it needs to answer up to 40,000 customer enquiries per second and spit out the most relevant answers to each question search engines like Google Yahoo and Bing are the librarians and the giant library is the internet and yes search engines like Google have a system to collect information about every page on the Internet to provide their customers with the most relevant search results so there it is the system search engines deploy consists of three primary functions crawling indexing and ranking first to locate relevant content on over a hundred trillion web pages a surgeon deploys a spider also referred to as a bot or crawler which is a program that finds relevant information and builds a list of words found on each site a process known as web crawling crawling is where it all begins and for that matter it never ends spiders quickly and frequently scan sites and compile a list of everything presented on the site including content page titles headers keywords images link pages and much much more the second function of search engines is indexing in this step the bot processes all of the information it gathers and compile a massive index of the words and the respective location the last function is providing users with a list of relevant results based on their search when a user enters a query the search engine scans the index to locate the most relevant sites it then returns the results it believes are most relevant to the user we refer to this as a ranking ranking is determined by many factors for example google uses over 200 ranking factors to identify the relevancy of their search listings these ranking factors are part of a complex algorithm and Google does not openly disclose what these ranking factors are however very combination of research testing and most importantly experience the important factors of good SEO are known in addition Google is constantly adjusting and updating its search result terms so a website that is ranked at the top of your results page today may have a different position next month throughout this video training series will cover the most important ranking factors to optimize your WordPress site for higher rankings on search engines well that about wraps it up for this video on how search engines work it's important to note that in order for your website to rank well it's important that you make sure the search engine can crawl and index your website correctly which we'll cover in a subsequent video too [Music] in this tutorial we are going to adjust the permalink structure in WordPress to make our URLs more SEO friendly before making any changes let's quickly define permalinks permalinks are permanent URLs to individual posts or pages or categories and tags on our WordPress site by default WordPress assigns a permalink using the query string format that includes a question mark the letter P followed by an equal sign and a unique ID number that is assigned to our page or post these are commonly referred to as ugly permalinks well because they're just ugly not only are ugly permalinks unrecognizable to our viewers there are also useless - search engine spiders as you may have guessed the term pretty permalink is used to describe a URL that is constructed in a way that makes sense to those who view them both humans and robots rather than having incomprehensible parameters for our permalinks question mark equals P number number number we can easily create well-structured readable user friendly and most importantly SEO friendly euros simply by changing the default permalink structure from within the permalinks settings screen to begin navigate to settings permalinks from the left side navigation menu the first option here is the plain query string format plain for plain ugly so we definitely don't want that we can choose a different more desirable default permalink structure from the predefined options such as day and name month a name numeric post name or we can create our own custom structure using a structure tag or combination of structure tags you may notice that when I click the radio button for each option the custom structure will update to reflect my selection however if we select custom structure we can create our own by entering the structure tag or combination of struck your tags there are a total of 10 structure tags to choose from including the Year month day hour minute and second post ID post name category and author here's a protip regardless of your structure tag selection or combination thereof always make sure that the custom structure ends with the post ID or post name structure tag this ensures that our permalink points to an individual page or post for simplicity and SEO purposes we recommend that you select the post name option in this tutorial we're going to set a preferred domain in the WordPress general settings screen in the last video we verified that our site is visible to search engines through these settings reading subpanel menu the next important housekeeping item for SEO is to set a preferred domain in the general sub panel menu we can enter how we want the URL of our site to appear to the public and to search engines by modifying the WordPress address URL and the site address URL fields essentially the options we have are to include or exclude the www now search engines don't have a preference whether our preferred domain is set to wwr site comm or just our site comm however it is important that we decide on a preferred domain and stick to it subsequently we'll need to set it up in the Google search console formerly Webmaster Tools to match how it is listed here we'll cover that among other important features in the search console later in this series it's important to note that either domain namely with or without the www will still take the visitor to the same location however Google recognizes these domains as two completely different sites for example our planet WP we chose to do away with the www and settled up accordingly in the search console by default even if you were to type in our address with the www that is www planet WP com you will still be taken to our website feel free to test it out if you don't believe us again we'll provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to set everything up in the Google search console later in this series [Music] now that we've a general understanding of how search engines work we must ensure that the visibility settings are set up correctly on a wordpress site we begin by logging into the admin area of WordPress and navigating to settings from the left side navigation menu and then reading scroll down to the last option entitled search engine visibility and ensure that the box next to discourage search engines from indexing this site is not I repeat not checked if unchecked our site will be visible to search engines which is definitely what we want but wait why would we ever want our site not to be visible to search engines great question WordPress comes with this option to hide our website from search engine spiders and their ability to index our website in the case that we want to make changes to our site before releasing it to the public while unlikely there is a chance that this setting is enabled which would be a big hindrance on our ability to optimize our site now just because our site is visible doesn't mean it will rank high in search engines for example Google uses complex algorithms with many factors when scanning indexing and evaluating relevant content on websites to identify their ranking this is where SEO comes into play that is taking control of what is visible to search engine spiders by making strategic changes to your website's code and format which we'll cover throughout this [Music] linkjuice is a colloquial term used to describe the amount of positive ranking factor that a link passes to a site via links from internal and external sources to elaborate every website has its own ranking which is governed by the combined PageRank or ranking capacity of all the individual pages on the website PageRank is an algorithm used by Google that evaluates at the quality and quantity of links to a webpage based on a score of zero to ten to determine that pages importance and authority when another website includes a link to our site the search engine recognizes this as a vote by the other website that our site includes a valuable content worth promoting web pages with a higher PageRank are more valuable and therefore contain more of the link juice we are seeking so the quality and quantity of links pointing to our page are important factors in deciding how a search engine should rank our page in search results [Music] first it's important to note that link juice flows in both directions so let's begin by discussing how we receive link juice from external sites let's suppose there are two web sites site a and site B with site a having two external sites linking to it and site B having only one assuming that all of the external sites have the same Authority site a will rank higher in search results due to the higher volume of link juice it receives this is a fairly simple concept so let's say it is a consideration some additional factors for example what if the websites linking to site a also link to multiple other web sites whereas the website linking to site B is exclusive if that's the case site B will actually receive more link juice than site a and therefore have a higher ranking here are some key takeaways and SEO best practices with regard to link juice first and foremost quality over quantity links from pages with a high PageRank are worth far more than those from low authority pages next the recipient of link juice will receive more when there are less links on the page that it is flowing from for example a link from a page that has three links is far more valuable than a link from a page that has ten links also pages with relevant content and links that use keyword optimized anchor text pass along more link juice and link juice is more valuable when passed between two pages that have relevant content and or similar use of keywords in addition links from unpaid sources are far more valuable than paid sources and finally use both direct and indirect link building techniques to get more link juice direct link building strategies include guest posts sponsored posts email outreach social media sharing etc the indirect techniques are those that naturally generate more links such as writing quality content the type of rich content that our visitors want to share and other websites may want to reference another technique is to build relationships with relevant industry partners as this might earn us more links in the future in addition to link juice flowing inward and outward between our site and external sites it also flows internally throughout our site's pages in the subsequent video tutorial we'll discuss the importance of evenly distributing link juice within our site by way of internal links every high ranking website has a lot of link juice evenly spread throughout their site with a good number of links from credible external sites pointing its way with regard to SEO often times many make the mistake of not evenly distributing link juice internally within their own site by only concentrating link juice on certain parts of their site for example just on the home page with little to no link juice dripping into those deeply nested pages by effectively interlinking our pages and posts we can obtain deeper links which is what Google wants to see actually with the Google Panda update web sites with a high concentration of Link's pointing only to their home page are actively penalized so obtaining deeper links is an absolute must [Music] here are some SEO best practice tips with regards to internal distribution of link juice first construct the table to calculate the number of internal links you have on each page in doing so we can understand the distribution of internal links and whether or not we need to focus on distributing link juice more evenly throughout our site it's no surprise that through balance link juice distribution each page will likely rank higher in search results secondly identify the high value and low value pages as well as their performance to elaborate if we have a high valued page that isn't performing well we can simply link it to another page that is performing particularly well for example one with high traffic or quality inbound links in addition identifying low value pages can help us focus on the pages that matter most pages such as that contact us about or meet the team page offer no real benefit to us with regard to search results consider these low valued pages as the only exception to the evenly distributing link juice rule next build an SEO friendly site architecture through effective use of internal links as a rule of thumb no single page should be more than three clicks away from the home page search engine spiders need to be able to easily browse the pathways of a website in order to list pages in the search engines keyword based index having a crawlable link structure makes our content more visible allowing spiders the ability to find all the pages on our site creating a minimum amount of links between any given page and the home page allows link used to flow evenly throughout our site thus increasing the page rank for each page one common method of accomplishing this is through the use of category and subcategory systems and lastly utilize the SEO tools that you have available to your advantage the Google search console has a report that shows which pages have the most internal links pointing to them once logged into the search console we can this report by going to search traffic and selecting internal links as such we can identify which pages can pass the most authority to others and where that linkjuice needs to go with the WordPress platform we have complete control over our site so creating and managing internal links is easy [Music] incorporating imagery into our WordPress page and post content is a critical part of creating an engaging experience for our website visitors images enhance our websites appearance and set the tone and brand for our entire site if for some reason one of the most common overlooked part of WordPress SEO is image optimization if we're not cautious improper use of images can bog down our site the large file size is associated with improper use of images can result in increased page load times and account for over half of our sites total size with that said let's quickly discuss the impact images have on SEO first off Google understands that images add quality to our content and therefore reward us with a better ranking however site speed is also a ranking factor and nobody likes a website that takes ages to load therefore slow loading page times that will negatively impact our SEO score it sounds a bit counterintuitive but this is where the importance of image optimization comes into play it's critically important that we optimize our images prior to uploading them to our website in order to this there are three important things that we must take into consideration image file type image dimensions and file size and image file name in addition adding the right types of markers to our images such as writing good alt tags title tags and captions alongside proper placement and positioning of our images can earn us even more SEO brownie points we've saved this for the subsequent video tutorial entitled image attributes since it's a well known best practice for SEO let's begin by discussing image file types nearly all images on the Internet are either in the ping JPEG or gif file format while all of these image file types are acceptable and compatible with WordPress there are certain cases where we may want to save the file in one format over the other unfortunately people often choose the wrong file type when saving their images prior to uploading them which can result in an unnecessarily large file size or poor quality image if we choose the right file type we can keep our images crisp without slowing down our site for example a ping file preserves the original images quality which is great for logos and graphics however if we're working with high quality photos saving it as a ping or result in a large file size therefore to reduce the file size of high quality photos while still keeping them crisped we should save them as a JPEG to simplify proper selection of image file types stick to the following rules use JPEGs for photographs of people places or things as well as designs with a lot of color avoid using on screenshots and text or graphics use pings with images that include text and graphics such as logos screenshots or on images with a transparent background this will keep the graphics looking clean but be cautious with regard to file size use gifts for short animated images or flat images without gradients next let's discuss image dimensions and file size a common issue that most WordPress users make is that they do not format the size of their images properly prior to uploading them in most cases when you upload an image with dimensions that are especially large WordPress will automatically format the image to align it with the dimensions of your site however it does not compress the file size of the image images that have a large file size drag down our sites load time which negatively affects our rankings on search engines the solution reduce the image file size by adjusting the image dimensions to the exact width of our content area on our site for example at Planet WP we format our pictures to the size of the posts width which is roughly 750 pixels wide prior to uploading them into WordPress the obvious best method to sizing our images accordingly is to specify the dimensions upon exporting the image through an image editing software for example when using Photoshop or illustrator we can easily customize the image to match the exact dimensions of our website if you want more editing options and don't have access to an image editing software application you can always edit your images online for free through Pixlr or download a free image editor such as another option is to use a native application on your computer such as preview on mac or paint on a Windows PC to resize an existing image for example in preview I simply navigate to tools and then select adjust size this is a very simple way of aligning the picture dimensions to match the dimensions of my site thereby reducing the file size lastly for SEO purposes it's important that we always name our image file appropriately for example if we're uploading a picture of the planet Venus the image name should not be pwp to 0 1 7 jpg but rather planet - Venus jpg or something along those lines here's a pro tip always shoot for the main keyword in the article as the first word of the image filename bear in mind that search engine spiders not only call our website's content but also recognize keywords within the filenames of our images as such creating descriptive keyword rich filenames for images can help improve her chance [Music] when it comes to discussing SEO successfactors a common phrase you'll hear over and over again is content is king this dates back to 1996 when Microsoft founder Bill Gates famously made this statement bill wasn't wrong as content is an integral part of search engine optimization but so is context which is why I prefer the phrase content is king but context is God let's further to find these factors for additional clarity content is the valuable information directed towards your audience it should have substance and depth context is the circumstances and facts that surround a situation statement or idea otherwise put context is the terms of which content can be fully understood and assessed when it comes to content it's important that you focus on quality relevance and freshness but what's even more important is that your valuable content is delivered the right way so that in addition to understanding it the reader can also relate to it this is what keeps them coming back for more let's take a closer look at the elements of good content writing [Music] the quality of your content is of critical importance again by quality we are referring to the perceived value of your content as it relates to the reader quality content is evergreen it will stands the test of time and has a lasting impression on your site visitors and search engines from an SEO perspective relevant content is the cornerstone upon which all ranking factors rely on search engines send bots to scan your website which includes your site's code and its written copy if you're able to convince search engines that your written copy matches the search query the higher your page and its content will rank on the search engines results page so what does quality content consist of well quality is subjective so it's imperative that you understand your audience and create content that appeals to them quality content is relatable so the original poignant and use a writing style that appeals to the intended receiver speak in an active voice and always ensure that your content is easy to read there are a number of different tactics you can employ to draw attention to your blog promote greater readership and keep your audience engaged some examples include first content should be written with the objective of appealing to the targeted prospect or site visitor yes we want to appeal the search engines as well but that should be an afterthought keep sentences and paragraphs short and precise you want all types of visitors to be able to understand your content use a font and size for example 16 that is easy to read on all devices break up content with formatting options such as headers sub headers bullet points and lists bolding etc include visual aids such as images infographics and videos always ensure that you include a satisfactory amount of content on your pages in posts the ideal length for an article should be 1500 to 2500 words this as reader-friendly and will help boost your SEO ranking remember the best content is rendered useless if no one reads it so keep your users engaged from start to finish an important part of writing excellent content for SEO depends on the use of relevant keywords strategically incorporating certain keywords namely those words people are using in their search query into your content can draw organic traffic to your site we have a separate video designated to strategically using keywords for search engine optimization since with the recent Google Panda update overuse or misuse of keywords can actually result in an over optimisation penalty or recognized as keyword spamming by Google as such avoid stuffing your article with keywords in an effort to increase keyword density search engine spiders feed on fresh content simply put if you frequently update your website with fresh high quality content you will be rewarded with an SEO boost by frequently updating your website with new articles pages and posts images downloadable resources etc the more frequently a search engine will stop by to visit your site resulting in greater opportunity to obtain a higher ranking based on your site's newly released content understanding what is perceived as great content and context is just the beginning actually implementing these best practices that is only having excellent content that adheres to these suggestions site-wide can be viewed as an overwhelming task after all not all of us are experienced journalists or copy editors by trade thankfully with WordPress we don't have to be so as long as we have the tools that can analyze our content and provide us with valuable insight on how to improve our content for SEO the Yoast SEO plug-in does just that through the content and SEO analysis tool which analyzes the content in our pages and posts in real time and identifies areas for improvement thereby providing us with feedback on how to make our written copy more readable and of course more SEO friendly we cover the content and SEO analysis tool in great detail in the Yoast SEO mini-series section later in this course [Music] in this video we're going to introduce you to Google Trends a powerful and versatile tool for SEO good SEO starts with identifying our audience and their interests by exploring trends if we understand how our target audience searches for specific topics we can tailor our content accordingly and strategically use keywords to increase our website's visibility in search results Google Trends is a valuable tool that can help us with this process not only can we explore trends of specific terms and view their interest over time we can also see where the searches are coming from at the top of the page Google Trends provides us with a chart that reflects the interest of the search term over time on a relative scale from 0 to 100 a value of 100 is the highest point on the chart and represents the peak popularity for the term this data is normalized therefore if the value is 50 at any given point in time this means that the term was half as popular as when it was at its peak we can filter our results using 4 parameters by region which is currently set to worldwide timeframe specific category or the type of web search such as an image search news search Google Shopping or YouTube search Google Trends also breaks down the search term by region so we can see where the greatest level of interest is coming from the values are also relative and calculated on a scale from 0 to 100 where 100 is the location with the most popularity we can drill down further to view especially strong markets by clicking on a specific location for example if I click on the United States I can view the results by state then by metro then city and so on this tool is invaluable for search optimization and geo-targeted campaigns best of all Google provides us with related topics which is a list of terms that users also searched for in addition to our search term we can filter related topics by top which list them in order of popularity that is those that scored high on the relative scale or by rising which are those related topics that recently experienced the biggest increase in search frequency the results marked as breakout recently had a significant increase which may also be a new search term with little if any at all prior search history Google Trends also allows us to compare up to five search terms side by side each search term is color-coded so we can easily compare the results of each term with regard to their level of interest overtime and popularity by region if we scroll down we can see the individual results for each of the search terms such as the interest by region and related search queries we can even search for or compare groupings of keywords at one time with up to 25 terms in each grouping this is done by using the plus sign between search terms for example if we search for Batman plus Superman we're telling Google that we want to view the combined trends on searches for either Batman or Superman well we hope you found this tutorial helpful and put the Google Trends tool to good use [Music] in this video we're going to introduce you to CD ends more specifically what a CDN is and how using one can improve our website's performance resulting in an overall positive impact on SEO it's important to reiterate that site speed is a ranking factor and if our page load time is too slow it can hinder our website's ability to be found on Google's search engine results page let's begin by defining a CDN and explaining how it works CDN stands for content delivery network and as indicated by its name delivers content through a network of geographically dispersed servers to elaborate a CDN utilizes a large network of servers strategically deployed in multiple data centers to cache store and distribute our website's content primarily static files such as images videos style sheets JavaScript CSS files etc based on the proximity of the site visitor so why should we use a CDN well there are many studies that suggest that page load speed directly impacts many factors such as bounce rates and conversion rates to put things in perspective roughly 57 percent of website visitors abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load and for every extra second it takes for the page to load conversion rates fall by roughly 12% with that said site speed is critically important as reduced page load times will retain site visitors increased traffic and conversions and since page load speed is a known ranking factor in search engine rankings reducing page load times will likely increase our chance of SEO success so how does a CDN work well by storing content closer to the user accessing our site content can be delivered more efficiently thereby reducing server response time and improving page load speed otherwise put a CDN puts our website's content in many places at once rather than only delivering content from our web hosting server thereby providing superior coverage to our users regardless of their geographic location the key benefits of using a CDN are as follows improves page load speeds handles high volumes of traffic shortens response times reduces bandwidth consumption and provides a superior experience to our site visitors the rubber ball actually goes much deeper when we evaluate the inner workings of a CDN and its advantages but for simplicity we'll leave it at that [Music] thankfully since we're running the WordPress platform we have many options when it comes to implementing a CDN feel free to explore all CDN solutions that are available but our professional recommendation is CloudFlare which is arguably the best well-known CDN solution for WordPress and it's 100% free regardless of bandwidth so we don't have to worry about being charged extra if we hit certain limits according to CloudFlare the average site using their CDN loads twice as fast which is enlarged due to their network of 28 data centers spread across the globe best of all installing cloud fare for WordPress is very easy and takes about five minutes the majority of the configuration process is done in the cloud player interface but we also need access to our hosting domain registrar account to change our DNS details to cloud flares name servers the entire process is fairly straightforward and CloudFlare walks us through each process step by step we can even install the CloudFlare wordpress plugin which is allows us the ability to manage our cloud fair account from within WordPress rather than navigating into the cloud fair comm - boy [Music] website security is often an overlooked part of SEO as many website owners don't recognize the correlation between security protocols and the rankings on search engines the fact of the matter is if our website is compromised it can quickly decimate our website's reputation and our SEO efforts reason being Google is committed to providing its users with a safe online experience to do this they invest heavily in identifying websites with malicious software or malware and flag them accordingly if Google determines that our website has malware they'll blacklisted a process that involves removing our site from their index and displaying a warning to our site visitors it's estimated that Google blacklist approximately 30,000 websites for containing malware and another 50,000 for detecting phishing per day and to put things in perspective those sites that have been blacklisted lose nearly 95% of their organic search traffic ouch so where do we begin for starters there are many WordPress resources and best practices that we can implement to increase the security of our site and protect it against hacks we won't go into every detail in this video since WordPress security is multifaceted and contains a lot of moving parts however we will address some important key items that directly impact SEO as expected proactively addressing website security is optimum but it's equally important to have a reactive backup and restoration strategy in place well circle back to the ladder shortly for now let's discuss some of the techniques and best practices that harden our website further ensuring that it is safe and free of vulnerabilities the first item on the list is updates it's creepy important that we update our WordPress plugins and themes regularly exploitation attempts against vulnerable software specifically outdated plugins and themes is the number one reason why WordPress websites get hacked according to a report by WP white security 51% of attacks are made through an outdated WordPress plug-in or theme the longer we go without performing updates the more vulnerable our site is to getting hacked as a rule of thumb we recommend logging in at least twice a week to check for updates with that said that leads us into our next best practice that is choose plug-ins and themes wisely be picky we know it's tempting there are so many shiny plugins available at the click of a mouse nevertheless given that plugins are the leading cause of vulnerabilities in WordPress it's important that we only install reputable plugins or themes that we are going to use before downloading one consider all available options read through the reviews and comments check to see when the plug-in or theme was last updated and view the plug-in or themes download count here's a pro tip if we are ever hesitant about a must-have plug-in or theme we can always check its history online to see if it has a track record of vulnerabilities by visiting the WP scan vulnerability database a website dedicated to cataloging WordPress plug-in and themes of vulnerabilities simply go to WP v UL n DB comm and search for the plug-in or theme by name with all this talk about plugins must be asking is there a wordpress security plug-in that improves the security of my site well that's a great question and there are multiple security plugins that feature a plethora of security functions for example our professional recommendation is the word fence security plug-in which is the most download security plugin for WordPress websites wordfence is completely free and features a web application firewall that adds a layer of security by identifying malicious traffic and blocking hackers before they gain access to our site the free version also includes a malware scanner which does exactly that and leads us into our next best practice that is proactively scanning our site by utilizing word fences scan function able to scan our website's core files themes and plugins for malware code injections and any back doors that would otherwise leave our site vulnerable the scanner also checks the integrity of installed plugins against the wordpress.org repository checks URLs against Google's Safe Browsing list and scans our site for DNS changes that might sound complex but wordfence is doing all the heavy lifting so using this plugin simplifies the process of proactively hardening our site another critically important part of website security lies within the retroactive security techniques we implement to protect our valuable content otherwise put the aforementioned best practices may harden our website and mitigate the risk of a security breach nevertheless it's equally important that we protect our website but have any solid backup and restore strategy in place in the case of an unfortunate security breach now there are many backup plug-in solutions for WordPress and when selecting one ensure that the solution offers to store the backed up files off site for example on Google Drive or a Dropbox account our professional recommendation is updraftplus which is the highest-ranking backup plugin for wordpress with over a million current active installs updraftplus is a free general-purpose backup and restore plugin and we can backup our website's files and database on site as well as off-site to a cloud service such as Google Drive Dropbox or Amazon s3 account among others storing our files off-site reduces the risk of contamination or backup loss should an attack on our site occur otherwise but we can have our website files stored safely in an off-site location thereby simplifying the restoration process in the case we need to start fresh with a new wordpress install it's important to note that all web sites on the internet are vulnerable to attacks and security threats and as a website owner it's our responsibility to have both proactive and reactive strategies in place to protect not just our web site and the valuable data we've created over the years but also our ranking and certainty [Music] back in 2014 Google announced their begin using HTTPS as a ranking signal when displaying search results meaning those sites that have an SSL encryption are rewarded with an SEO boost more recently Google has upped the ante on website security by announcing that effective January 2017 their Chrome internet browser will begin marking non secure pages that collect passwords and credit card information as not secured in the URL bar it's worth noting that WordPress websites have an administrative login page that requires a password therefore by default our WordPress site falls into this category the current warning is gray and not too terribly noticeable however Google recently confirmed that this warning will begin to appear on all websites served or HTTP and the warning will be in red this ugly red caution sign can easily be interpreted by site visitors that they are at risk when visiting our site this all sounds pretty serious and Google's initiatives put website security front and center but in the SEO realm a little effort can go a long way let's begin by breaking down what this all means by first explaining HTTP HTTPS and the difference between the two [Music] essentially there are two different types of protocols HTTP and HTTPS HTTP which stands for hypertext Transfer Protocol is the protocol over which all data is transferred between the clients web browser and the website they are connected to HTTP has been working great for ages plus it's fast and reliable on the other hand it's about secure as a diamond at a cat burglars convention data transmitted over HTTP connection is dangerous and vulnerable to being intercepted by third parties especially on public wireless networks or compromised routers the second protocol namely HTTPS is the secure counterpart to http it literally stands for HTTP secure HCBS uses an SSL or secure sockets layer which is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between the user accessing our site and our server this link ensures that all data passed between the web server and the browser remains private and secure [Music] if you currently ran the site on HTTP we strongly encourage that you make the switch to HTTPS and add a valid SSL certificate in addition to the SEO benefit you'll receive switching to HTTPS will protect sensitive information like passwords and credit card information from being stolen we also won't have to worry about scaring our visitors away through warning alerts in their web browser actually it's quite the opposite by having an HTTPS users will likely see a positive green notification in their web browser such as a green lock icon with the HTTPS portion highlighted in green there are a couple different types of SSL certificates so what is displayed in the URL bar ultimately depends on the type of certificate you acquire from a trusted third-party unfortunately we won't address the details of migrating our site from HTTP to HTTPS as we don't want to over complicate things for example it may be as simple as reaching out to our hosting provider as many hosting companies offer an upgraded package that includes an SSL certificate migration can be very straight forward but it's important that the SSL certificate is installed correctly and that 301 redirects are set up so that search engines are notified that our sites address has changed nevertheless the clear conclusion is that HTTPS isn't going away and by migrating your site to HTTPS you remain in Google's good graces [Music] the Yoast SEO plugin features a dashboard that informs us if it detected any serious SEO problems it also includes a notification center with specific details on those items that need attention and in most cases provides us with recommendations on how to resolve the issue there are two ways to access the dashboard we can go to SEO from the left side navigation menu and click dashboard or we can hover our mouse over at the Yoast icon displayed in the top toolbar and click on notifications as you can see the toolbar has a 1 next to it indicating that we have one notification in this example the plugin is notifying us that we have paging comments enabled in our discussion settings screen and they recommend that we disable it it even includes a link that will take us to our discussion settings screen so we could fix the issue the dashboard is just the first tab of seven that are listed in the general screen the tab entitled general includes a link to Yoast configuration wizard which if you haven't completed we suggest that you do so we can also view the contributing team behind Yoast or restore the default settings the features tab allows us to enable or disable Yoast features including the ability to enable or disable Advanced Settings the on page org integration that checks to ensure our site is indexable the admin bar menu which again is the notification icon in our toolbar and the meta box inside section we encourage that you leave all of these features enabled you can update your information using the company info tab which includes defining your website's name for Google's site name markup and selecting whether you are a company or a person for Google's knowledge graph if you haven't verified your site with the Google search console formerly Webmaster Tools you can do so in the webmaster tools tab we have a separate video tutorial on creating a Google search consult account since verifying your site with Google is a critical part of SEO the Yoast SEO tool includes this feature to simplify the process since most beginners aren't comfortable modifying their PHP files otherwise put you can input the meta tag that Google provides you with to verify your site in the respective field here the security tab features only one option to enable or disable at the advanced part of the WordPress SEO meta box we recommend that you disable this option this will prevent authors from making changes such as redirects and no index which could impact your SEO score as the admin you'll still have control over these items the last and final tab is the site wide analysis this provides us with a snapshot of how we are using prominent words or keywords throughout our site in this example we have three posts and all of them contain prominent words [Music] the u.s. SEO plugin has a content and SEO analysis feature that is baked in to the WordPress editor this provides us with a detailed list of the important content related and SEO related factors that impact both the readability of our content and its ranking in search engines this tool can be accessed from within any page or post we'll start by going to post all posts from the left-side navigation menu and open an existing post scroll down to view the Yoast content analysis tool this tool analyzes our content in real time and provides us with a list of recommended best practices to ensure that our content is easy to read content readability is an important factor of SEO and greatly improves the user experience the analysis tool features suggestions that are listed in order of importance with items that need the most attention listed at the top they are also color-coded items that need immediate attention have a red bullet point next to them as expected an orange bullet point indicates other items of significance whereas the yellow bullet point indicates a minor issue those items that meet Yoast SEO friendly criteria are rewarded with a green bullet point the content and SEO analysis tool has two tabs namely the readability tab and the SEO analysis tab each tab has a color indicator that represents all the factors as a whole the readability tab analyzes factors with regard to the readability of our text including the sentence and paragraph length presence and distribution of subheadings use of a passive voice as compared to an active voice the use of transition words and our flesh reading East score which measures how difficult our text is to read in this example the plug-in alert says that we have exceeded the total recommended amount of 300 words following a sub header suggesting that we insert another sub header it also states that nearly one-third of our sentences exceed the recommended maximum of 20 words and according to the flesh reading ease test we can improve our article by using shorter sentences making the content easier to read the second tab is the SEO analysis tab if you haven't selected a focus keyword yet this tab will weed enter your focus keyword this phrase will be replaced by the focus keyword once it is entered into the focus keyword field within this tab is the snippet preview which is a simulation of what our post will look like on a search engines results page by clicking the Edit snippet button we can create a meta description which would be a short sentence that describes our contents topic the Meta Description is the text that is displayed by Google below our URL on the search results page as such it's a very important aspect of SEO the analysis tab also includes the field where we enter our focus keyword after entering our focus keyword the plug-in will analyze our content based on the keywords presence in the title heading URL or permalink content the meta description and the alt tag of our images the plugin will also check for the presence of images and links in our article the number of words in our article and the title length keyword density and whether or not we have used this keyword before after making the suggested changes we are rewarded with the green bullet points indicating that we have followed the suggested best practices to improve the readability of our content and how well our page or post ranks and search engines [Music] in this tutorial we're going to discuss the google search console as well as register our site by verifying ownership the Google search console formerly Google Webmaster Tools is a completely free and indispensable useful tool and can help kick-start the SEO process the search console provides us with the ability to view incredibly detailed information about our site as well as insight about its performance first we need to add and verify our site in the search console to prove to Google that we are the site owner webmaster or authorized user the process of adding our site is fairly straightforward and while there are a couple different methods of verifying ownership we can easily connect our site to the search console using the Yoast SEO plug-in we begin by logging in to our search console account if you don't have an account you can quickly create one once we are logged in we can add our site by clicking the red add property button and then typing in our web sites URL it's important that the URL we enter here matches the preferred domain we previously specified in the WordPress settings screen after we've confirmed that the URL matches our preferred domain proceed by clicking the Add button next we are asked to verify our site there are a couple of different ways we can go about this the recommended method is to download and upload the HTML verification file that's way too complicated especially considering the Yoast SEO plugin allows us to easily connect our website to the Google search console from within the admin area of WordPress this is really simple all we need to do is click on the alternate method tab select HTML tag and copy the code that is in parentheses after content leave this page open since we are going to return to it shortly in a separate tab login to your WordPress account go to SEO from the left-side navigation menu and click dashboard click on the webmaster tools tab and paste the code under Google search console don't forget to click the Save Changes button we're nearly done switch back over to the Google search console and click the verify button and that's it we've successfully added and verified our site with the Google search console [Music] in this tutorial we'll cover the Yoast SEO s titles and metas panel which allows us to configure the title and meta description settings for our WordPress site after clicking on titles and metas from the left side navigation menu we are taken to the screen that first displays the general tab here we can select which separator symbol we want to use in our page and post titles when appearing in search results we can also enable or disable the readability analysis tab or the keyword analysis feature from the Yoast SEO tool that is built in to the WordPress page or post editor we encourage that these are set to enabled so we can view suggestions regarding content readability the appropriate use of keywords customize options in the snippet preview field and much more simply from within the editor now moving on to the home page tab the options on this page will vary depending on how we have configured our front page display settings to elaborate under the WordPress reading Settings panel which can be accessed by going to settings and then clicking on reading we can choose between having our front page set to display our latest posts or a static page by which we select the pages we want for our front page and which page our posts to appear on from the drop-down menus if the front page display setting is set to a static page we don't have many options under the Yoast SEO home page tab this is because we have assigned pages for each so we can customize the title and meta description by editing it from within the Yoast tool that is built in to the WordPress page editor on each of the respective pages however if the front page is set to display latest pose the u.s. SEO plug-in will provide us with the option to customize the title template and Meta Description here since we don't have a page or post editor for the home page let's quickly discuss the title template structure it's important that we are familiar with this structure before proceeding to the other tabs the formulas here consists of variables that act as placeholders for the actual content for example the placeholder site name surrounded by two percentage symbols is the variable for the name of our site so will be replaced with the actual site name when rendered in a web browser in our example our title template for our home page includes the site name followed by the separator symbol which is the symbol we just assigned in the general tab followed by the site description there are many variables that you can insert to create your own custom formula you can access a list of variables by clicking on the Help Center drop-down menu which includes a list of basic variables and advanced variables there's no magic formula for SEO however we suggest to always include the site name variable especially on the title templates for pages and posts which we'll get to next reason being in the absence of the site name variable Google will automatically include the name of our site so by including it here we have more control over how our title appears in search results in the post types tab we can customize our templates for the titles as well as our meta descriptions for our posts pages and media but wait why would we do that if there is the option to customize for each page and post from within the use tool built into the editor well that's a great question the templates that we create in this section enable the plug-in to automatically create titles and descriptions in the event that we leave the fields in the WordPress editor empty this ensures that Google receives some information rather than nothing at all on the post types tab we have some advanced options such as the ability to control whether or not meta robots should index the post type of course we want search engines to index our content so we'll leave this set to in we can also select whether to show or hide the date in the snippet preview it is probably best that this is hidden however some may choose to enable this if they have a blog with recent news or other time-sensitive content we can also show or hide the Yoast SEO meta box option from the editor we'll leave this set to show since it provides us with the most flexibility when customizing the meta description for individual pages and posts similar to the post types tab in the taxonomy x' tab we can customize the title template and meta description for our categories and tags as well as post format if applicable in the archives tab we can enable or disable author archives we should disable this if we are running a single author blog for context author archives allows site visitors to see all of the posts associated with a particular author if we have a single author blog there's no reason to have an author archive since all it's doing is creating an exact duplicate of our content now if we have multiple authors on our site we can enable author archives however it's very wise to select the no index option to prevent robots from indexing duplicate content don't stress too much about the complexities of duplicate content there are many myths regarding its impact on SEO however if you can avoid it by simply clicking a button we encourage that you do so the same options apply for the date archive settings or date-based archives for example some blogs have the option to filter posts by date for example by month or year by default WordPress enables date archives so if you like you can disable it here if enabled we suggest that the no index option is selected lastly the other tab includes the site wide meta settings for our site we have the option to index or no index these subpages of archives it is wise to leave this set to no index which again prevents search engines from indexing duplicate content next we have the option to enable or disable meta keyword tags it's funny that used States I don't know why you'd use meta keywords but if you do enable this he says this because Google no longer uses meta keyword tags and their algorithm for search rankings and other search engines such as Yahoo or Bing rarely use them and if they do they accredit very little weight to them as such it's safe to leave this option disabled finally we have the option to enable or disable the use of the No ODP command OTP stands for open directory project or dmoz directory if your website is listed in dmoz there's a chance that google may pull the listing information from dmoz to use in the google directory so by enabling the no ODP command site-wide we are telling Google not to pull the information but rather use the title and description we create giving us more control over what is displayed on the Google search results page the settings that we implement through the titles and metas section are very important as they allow us to create accurate relevant and most importantly effective titles and meta descriptions for a wordpress site [Music] in this tutorial we'll show you how to configure the social settings in the Yoast SEO plugin setting up our profiles will inform search engines which social media profiles are associated with our WordPress site we'll also introduce you to this social tab that is featured in the post editor which allows us to preview what our following will see when sharing our article on Facebook or Twitter from this tab we can customize our featured image title and description let's begin by navigating to the social settings menu by going to SEO from the left side navigation menu and clicking social we'll start with the accounts tab here we can enter in the information for each of our social media profile accounts now that our profile information is entered search engines will be informed that these social media profiles are associated with our website we can also customize our settings for Facebook Twitter Pinterest and Google+ let's start with the Facebook tab the first option is to enable or disable Open Graph metadata the Open Graph protocol enables our website to become a rich object in a social graph giving it the same functionality as any other objects on facebook and other platforms using the same protocol for this to happen basic metadata needs to be added to our page so as long as this option is enabled the Yoast plug-in will take care of this for us otherwise put it will add the required code Facebook needs to share the image title and description when sharing a page we'll post the only time you want this option disabled is if we are using another social media plug-in that outputs Open Graph metadata by default the Yoast plug-in will use the featured image on a page or post we can assign a default image that will be used if our page or post is missing a featured image lastly the Yoast SEO plugin includes a Facebook Insights feature that provides us with additional statistics about our website inside our Facebook account in order for this to work we need to add our admin account which can be done by clicking the at Facebook admin button while logged in to our Facebook account the Twitter tab features a similar metadata option so we want to keep this enabled we can also specify the default card to use by selecting from either the summary or a summary with a large image option Pinterest uses the same Open Graph metadata as Facebook we don't need to do anything here since it is already enabled on the Facebook tab if we haven't yet we can confirm our website with Pinterest this can easily be done in the account settings screen of our Pinterest account so we can skip this step in the Google+ tab we have the option to add our Google+ page for business URL the Yoast plugin includes an awesome social feature that is built-in to the page and post editor in the Yoast window pane beneath the WordPress visual editor click on the social icon below the traffic light which is the icon for the content and SEO optimization tool this section features two tabs one for Facebook and one for Twitter here we can preview what our page or post will look like when shared the default image is the featured image of our page or post but we can change it by clicking on the upload image button and choosing a picture from our media gallery or uploading one from our computer we can override the default title tags by entering our own custom title here and if we don't want to use the default meta description when sharing the post we can enter in a custom description the same three options are available for Twitter [Music] in this tutorial we'll discuss breadcrumbs and dive into the breadcrumb tab in the advanced sub panel menu of the Yoast SEO plugin to show you how we can enable breadcrumbs on our site breadcrumbs often referred to as a breadcrumb trail appear at the top of the page and act as a secondary navigation system that helps the site visitor easily understand the relation between their current location and how they got there first let's discuss the three different classifications of breadcrumbs location-based often referred to as hierarchy based breadcrumbs are most common and display the specific position of a page or current location within the site's hierarchical structure path breadcrumbs show the logical path that the user has taken to get to a particular page or post lastly key word or attribute breadcrumbs include a specific keyword or attribute that represents the content being displayed on a page this is very common on ecommerce sites as it allows the user the ability to filter their search queries thereby assisting them with finding the product or service they're looking for we'll show you an example in just a moment [Music] before proceeding let's quickly discuss why breadcrumbs are so important first location-based and/or hierarchy based breadcrumbs allow the users to easily see where along the site architecture they are and allow them to easily backtrack to higher-level pages for example on Best Buy's website we can easily navigate through the categories and subcategories of their products which can help us locate the specific product we're searching for in our best by example the site also has attribute based breadcrumbs so we can view the filters that we have applied in the process of narrowing down our search results with the option to remove them ultimately these types of breadcrumbs encourage browsing and improve the find ability of our site to direct benefits associated with breadcrumbs another very important aspect associated with breadcrumbs is yep you got it breadcrumbs provide a direct SEO benefit reason being they help search engine spiders discover related content on our site essentially breadcrumbs provides search engines with logical access to the inner and outer pages of our website and help them understand the overall structure of our site casting an overall positive impact on SEO [Music] we can use the Yoast SEO plugin to add this functionality to our site and begin displaying breadcrumbs before we show you how this is done it's important to note that breadcrumbs need to be implemented through our WordPress theme if we enable breadcrumbs through the Yoast SEO plug-in and don't see them on our pages or pose it's likely that our theme doesn't support breadcrumbs many popular themes already support Yoast SEO breadcrumbs but if they don't we can implement them by editing our theme which we'll get to shortly let's begin by navigating to SEO from the left side navigation menu and opening the advanced menu item by default breadcrumbs are disabled upon enabling them we are presented with a series of options for customizing how we would like them to appear on our site for example we can choose to have a different separator symbol between breadcrumb links change the anchor text for the home page and specify a prefix for the breadcrumb path archive search and 404 pages there is also an option to enable or disable breadcrumbs on the blog page currently this option isn't displayed due to the way our example site is set up that is we don't have any static homepage or a designated blog page for that matter but instead have the front page set to display our latest blog posts for example purposes we can choose to have a static homepage and list our blog articles under another page by going to settings reading and choosing a static page from the front page display options and then selecting the respective pages after making these changes we are then presented with the option to enable or disable breadcrumbs on the blog page we also have the option to make the last page in the breadcrumb trail appear in bold lastly we can choose which taxonomy we want to use for our posts for example if the category tag or custom post type and can have a prominent word displayed as the breadcrumb link for our pages for this example we are going to select category for our posts this way our site visitor can easily backtrack to our category archive page and view similar posts now circling back to themes and whether or not they support breadcrumbs if enabling this option doesn't work then breadcrumbs are not supported by our theme however we can still add breadcrumbs by copying the code snippet that Yoast provides us with in the link below and pasting it into our theme file where we want the breadcrumbs to appear if you're not comfortable editing code in your theme files we encourage that you don't attempt this there's nothing worse than a broken site that requires fixing from a professional however adding the code to a theme is a quick task so you can always hire a developer that can quickly add this functionality to your theme or alternatively contact your theme developer this isn't an odd request and most theme developers will likely assist you with implementing breadcrumbs it so happens that the theme we are using for example site does not support breadcrumbs therefore to implement breadcrumbs I simply followed use instructions and added the code snippet to our themes header template file this is as simple as going to appearance from the left side navigation menu opening the editor locating the theme header template or header.php and pasting the code snippet at the very end after saving my changes a couple of things happened first the breadcrumbs now appear on my site secondly an additional menu item has been added to my theme customizer so we can now make changes to this series of options that were previously listed in the breadcrumb tab and use advanced sub panel menu there are some missing items in the customizer such as the options to make the last word in bold and select the text on imme we would like to use for our pages and posts as expected we can still make those changes from within the yo sub panel menu just not here in the customizer again breadcrumbs have many benefits including increasing the usability of our site and with regard to SEO having breadcrumbs is a suggested best practice as it helps search engines and crawlers [Music] any advanced menu of the Yoast SEO plug-in there is the RSS feed tab and here we are provided with settings that allow us to control and protect the content that is distributed through our RSS feed for context an RSS feed which stands for rich site summary or Really Simple Syndication is a widely adopted technology that allows our site visitors to receive updates when new content is published this is all done through dedicated programs such as a feed reader or news aggregator or RSS feeds are great but unfortunately there is a downside people can easily copy our work by a way of content scrapers there by automatically reposting our articles from our feed on their own blog we refer to this as automatic syndication or automatic posting and it is quite common one way to fight against the RSS copy/paste bloggers and their content scraping shenanigans is to grab a backlink from our copied article this way by having the copied article link back to our site Google knows where the original source is actually coming from the u.s. SEO plugin allows us to do just that namely add links back to our site within the content before and after each post so if someone does scrape our content at least we'll receive credit as the original source let's talk for a moment about how this impacts SEO if content scraping occurs the scraper site is essentially pulling the content from our feed and republishing it and attempt to use our valuable content to rank higher in search engines thereby increasing their site traffic if the scraper site has more authority than our blog it will likely outrank us even though this is article therefore having the functionality to add links back to our site can help Google float our content to the top of search engines since they know that we are the originator which is definitely what we want by default the Yoast plugin will create a link back to the original post on our site and include a link to our site's blog which is referenced in the phrase this post appeared first on this will automatically be added to each post on our RSS feed we can get creative here and use HTML in these messages or choose from a list of variables shown below and choose as to whether we want the messages before or after each post in the feed or both there are a couple different variables that we can use and each option includes a description of what it displays listed to the right of each variable below for example the author link variable will display a link to the authors archived page and will include the author's name as the links anchor text a common best practice is to add a unique abnormal and possibly strange word here this way we can easily find the scrapers by googling our specific post titles for example Yoast adds what would he do to all the articles published on his feed by adding these custom messages with backlinks to our site and our feeds content we are protecting our work while at the same time telling search engines that we are the original source of the publisher on purpose you

Channel: HackzLaB

Views: 7,509

Keywords: 786SD, wordpress seo tutorial, best wordpress seo plugin, wordpress seo tips, what is yoast seo, yoast seo premium, how to install yoast seo plugin, best seo plugin for wordpress 2016, yoast seo review, is wordpress good for seo, how to enable seo on wordpress, how to setup yoast seo on wordpress, Wordpress SEO 2018, yoast seo tutorials 2018, seo 2018, seo

Id: ID2sZdmDhN0

Length: 82min 25sec (4945 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017