Wordpress SEO
What you'll learn
- Set up a Wordpress website for maximum search engine exposure.
- Avoid duplicate content on the site using a variety of techniques.
- Rank web pages higher in the search engines.
- Add a self-updating XML sitemap to their website and submit it to Google.
- Test the web host for uptime and reliability.
- Test the website for page load speeds, and identify image files that may be loading too slowly.
- Appreciate the speed gains obtained by using a Content Delivery Network (free with the recommended web host).
- Install and configure the W3 Total Cache plugin for even faster page load times.
- Understand the importance of site navigation, and know the various types that can help the visitor.
- Understand the importance of dynamic sidebars, and implement them using free Wordpress plugins.
- Correctly set the Permalinks for better URL structure and then edit the filename manually where necessary.
- Why stop words should be avoided in areas of the web page that have high SEO significance.
- Understand the importance of enabling comments, and the need to moderate them all.
- Keep their website, theme and plugins updated, and know the reasons why this is so important.
- Why linking out to authority sites is a good idea, and how to do it properly.
- Understand what a bad neighbourhood is, and how to use the nofollow tag when you want to link to one.
- Avoid dangerous sitewide linking.
- Use category and tag pages correctly, and even optimize them to rank highly in the search engines.
- Use Wordpress Pages and Posts efficiently and to their strengths.
- Correctly optimize the on-page factors like titles, headings, images, etc.
- Effectively use the nofollow on pages with little search engine significance.
- Install and setup a Wordpress SEO plugin that gives fine control over the on-site SEO.
- Understand how the Google Search Console can keep you informed of any problems or issues with your site.
- Use the Google Search Console to identify pages on the site that are not performing well, and how to tweak them for better click through rates from the search engines.
Requirements
- Students should have a basic understanding of how to use Wordpress to build a website.
Description
Wordpress SEO is a course that will teach you how to optimize your Wordpress website for Google and other search engines. Wordpress is a fantastic platform for building websites, but can produce a lot of SEO challenges out of the box. Most notable is the duplicate content issues that can get your site penalized by the search engines.
Wordpress SEO will teach you how to set up your Wordpress website in an efficient and search engine friendly manner, to minimize duplicate content and to maximize your exposure in the search engines.
You will learn:
- How to make use of the Google Search Console to keep you informed of problems, and how to use it to identify poorly performing pages and fix them.
- How to set up an self-updating sitemap and submit it to Google so they will always know when you add new content, or edit existing content.
- How to identify a good web host, then test it for a while to make sure it is reliable and your pages load quickly.
- How to use a free tool to monitor the load times of your web pages, and how a cache and Content Delivery Network (free with some hosts) can boost load times to keep your visitors happy.
- How to effectively use internal site linking to keep your visitors on your site, and enable them to find anything they are looking for quickly.
- How to create dynamic sidebars on your site, so that you don't use the same sidebar on all pages of your site. These valuable marketing areas on your web page should be highly relevant to the article the visitor is reading, which means using a different sidebar in different areas of your site.
- How to set up permalinks for better structured web page URLs, and how to manually edit the filenames that Wordpress assign, for better SEO.
- The importance of stop words, and how avoiding them in certain areas of your web page can improve relevancy and rankings.
- How Wordpress comments should be set up, to keep your visitors happy and prevent hackers from using them against you.
- Why it is important to keep your site up to date, and how to do this in only a few minutes every month.
- How to use categories and tags effectively, to reduce duplication, and to help these power pages rank higher in Google.
- About page archives set up by Wordpress, and which ones you should be setting to noindex.
- About nofollow, noindex and noarchive, and how and when to use them.
- How to optimize every element on the web page, from title to author bio and everything in between.
- How to avoid thinking about SEO in terms of keywords, and start thinking in terms of themes.
- How to set up a powerful (and free) SEO plugin for fine control over your on-site SEO.
- How to override default SEO settings on a page-by-page, post-by-post, category-by-category and tag-by-tag basis.
By the end of this course, you will be confident and proficient at on-site SEO of a Wordpress website. You will understand the main problems caused by Wordpress out-of-the-box, and how to avoid them.
Unlike a lot of SEO courses, you won't be no-indexing category and tag pages. You'll be setting them up as powerful pages that can rank really well in Google.
You'll also understand the importance of certain areas of your web page in terms of SEO power, and how to maximize those areas for better search relevance and rankings.
Most importantly, by the end of this course, you will know the benefits of using the Google Search Console. You'll have your website integrated into the search console so that Google will notify you of any problems with your site (like indexing, downtime or malware). You'll also be comfortable using the tools included in the Search Console to help you better optimize your page listings in Google. You'll be able to identify keywords that your site is rankings for, the average positions of those pages in Google, and what percentage of people click on your listing. Armed with that information, you can set about testing and tracking to see if you can increase click through rates, which translates to increased website traffic.
As with all of my courses, I am only a message away. Any problems or questions will be quickly answered in the course discussion area.
Who this course is for:
- This course is for anyone with a Wordpress website that wants to rank better in Google.
- This course is important for anyone needing to learn how to reduce the duplicate content that a Wordpress site can produce.
- This course is not for you if you simply want to learn how to build spammy links to your site.
Instructor
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 39,262 Reviews
- 175,643 Students
- 31 Courses
I have written and published a number of books that are available on Amazon, including books on WordPress ("WordPress for Beginners 2023"), Self-Publishing ("Self-Publishing on Amazon 2022"), and search engine optimization ("SEO 2021"). I also run a website called ezSEONews, where I provide tutorials on a number of skills required for running a successful website.
As an ex-schoolteacher, I hope I can make complicated topics simple to understand. I certainly enjoy trying!