Now that you’re all set up with Search Console and Analytics, let’s look at a couple of easy ways to improve your SEO and traffic using the information these tools provide.
We’re going to be working with the information in the Acquisition > Search Console tabs. On each page you’ll see these table headings (there are others, but these are the important ones for this guide):
Google Search Console, formerly known as Webmaster Tools, is a must-have for your WordPress site. It is a free account which will give you a lot of useful information about the search health of your site. Additionally you’ll get valuable SEO data about keywords, click through rates etc, which you could not otherwise get in Google Analytics alone. There are other uses and features of Search Console, but in this and the next post, I’ll be focusing on the marketing uses of Search Console.
This guide is current as of March 2017.
While some general aspects of SEO will be touched on in this guide in the course of explaining the plugin, beginners may find that they need a more fundamental understanding of how SEO works in general, in order to get the best use out of this plugin. I have written an ebook that addresses that need:
The Beginners’ Guide to SEO for Business
Yoast SEO is on most lists of ‘must-have’ WordPress plugins. But the extensive set of options it provides can seem intimidating, especially to newer users.
Yoast has a fair amount of commentary and explanatory text throughout the plugin screens so I won’t duplicate anything he’s saying there, but I’ll try and clarify the less obvious parts.
If you’ve used an older version of Yoast on a site, there are several menu tabs you’re used to seeing, that are hidden by default on first activation of more recent versions.
To access all of the settings referred to in this guide, you will need to activate the Advanced settings.
The Google Keyword tool which is an essential tool for researching keywords - finding search volume and related phrases etc is shutting down and is going to be replaced with their new tool called Keyword Planner. It will still be…
Most people have heard they need a sitemap so Google will like their site but what are they and how do you go about creating one?
Sitemaps are recommended for search engine optimization to help Google (and other search engines) discover all of the content on your site. Search engines typically discover the content on your site by following all the links that exist to your site, and within your site (your navigation etc). When you have a large site or one that has a complex structure which might make it harder for Google to find all the pages on your site, a sitemap is especially helpful because it simply lists all of the available content.
Sitemaps come in two flavours: XML and HTML
XML sitemaps are designed for search engine bots, not humans.
HTML sitemaps are more geared toward humans, but search engine bots can crawl them too.
The easiest way to create an XML sitemap is by using an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or All-in-One SEO. Both have the capability to create an XML sitemap.
Have you noticed how some Google listings show a wee photo of the author along with a link to their Google Plus profile? This nifty feature is part of Google Authorship which is a way of associating your name and…
