WordPress Intermediate: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Name: WordPress Intermediate: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Author: Chrissy Rey

Optimize your WordPress website for search engines

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 5 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Chrissy Ray, and in these lessons, I will show you how to implement search engine optimization features in WordPress. We're going to start off by adding some tools that you can use to measure your progress. Specifically, I'm going to show you Google Analytics and Google Search Console. To add both of these Google Analytics and Search Console, you can add a plugin to WordPress called SiteKit. So you're going to go to the Plugins menu and choose Add New. And this does require a Google account, so make sure you've got a Google account if you don't. And then you can search for SiteKit. So we're going to enter SiteKit. And it's going to come up first right there. So I'll click on Install Now. And once it's installed, I do need to activate it to get it to work. So let's wait for it to install. And then we're going to activate it. All right, so once it's installed and activated, you can then start your setup. And again, this does require a Google account. It doesn't matter if you've used Google Analytics before or not, this will require a Google account. So we're going to start setup. And we're going to connect my Google account to SiteKit. So I'm going to sign in with Google. I do need to enter my email address and password. So after you enter your username and password, it's going to ask you for access to your Google account. So you can click on Continue and give it that permission. It's going to add Analytics and Google Search Console. You might need to go through and answer more questions and give it more permission. I had previously set this up for this website. So I didn't have to go through as many steps, but you might have to go through and create a property for the site in order to get this to work. So it may be a little bit more than what you see in the video. Don't worry if you see that. Once you get it set up, you can then look at the statistics in the dashboard of your website. It's only going to be visible to people that have access to that particular Analytics property and that particular Search Console property. Now, if you look at the Analytics, you can see that there's links to the Analytics. So if you click on that, that will take you to analytics.google.com. And that's a way that you can look a little bit more closely at the stats. Now, this is a development website. So there's not really a whole lot going on. You can see that I can see where my audience is coming from. I don't have an audience for this particular website, because again, it's a development site. But you can really go in and take a look at where your users are coming from, what country, what browser they're using, what operating system that they're using, what language they're using. You can also look at your behavior, what the users are doing when they're on your website. And this does require them to accept cookies. So if you have a cookie management tool on your website and somebody declines the cookies, then depending on which tool you're using, you might not be able to track the statistics for that particular user. So just something to be aware of. So again, Analytics is really good for checking the statistics of a website and see what kind of traffic you're getting, what your users look like, what they're doing on your website, where they're coming from. You can see under Acquisition. We can see where a traffic is coming from. We can see if they're coming from ads, if they're coming from specific campaigns, if they're coming from the Search Console or Search Engine result page. Now, if I go back to the website and I click on the link for Search Console, that's gonna show me my Search Console. And again, it's gonna give me statistics about what kind of queries people are using to find my content, how many impressions I'm getting, how many clicks I'm getting for that. Again, this doesn't show any statistics because this is a development site, but when you do this for your website, you should see some statistics. Just be aware that it doesn't show them automatically. It doesn't show them by default. So it actually is only going to show content in the Analytics dashboard and the Search Console dashboard after you've set it up. So if there was usage of the website before that, it doesn't retroactively show that usage. It doesn't show the queries from before this would set up. It does actually need to be set up in order to start tracking that information. So make sure that you do this as soon as you launch the site and make it live if you're gonna use Google Analytics and Search Console. It does require the site to be live. It does require it to not be password protected in order to use it. One other thing I wanna point out for the Search Console is that you are going to need to submit the site map for the website. You can see I've already submitted that. I did sitemap.xml and I will show you you don't have site maps automatically. You do need to install a search engine optimization plugin to get a site map for your WordPress website. The site map is going to have a list of all of the pages and all of the content within your website that you can then submit to the Google Search Console so it can index all of that information. So I know this was a lot, but make sure you take the time to set up some kind of analytics tool and some kind of Search Console tool so you can track your search engine optimization because you can optimize your website as much as you want, but unless you're actually getting people to use those queries and getting users, then that SEO is not successful. So you do wanna be able to track what kind of return you're getting on all of your optimization. So thanks for watching and stay tuned for the next video where I'm going to show you how to use a specific SEO tool called Yoast SEO.

Intermediate Provider : Chrissy Rey 5 Lessons · 36m in English

Course Description

After you’ve built a great website, the next step is showing it off. The best way to increase traffic to your site is to make it appear in search engine results. When a user searches for information on a site like Google, you can ensure that your content shows up in the search results with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Effectively implementing SEO involves researching and selecting the right keywords or keyphrases to use as a guide to optimize each post and page within your website, and WordPress offers tools to help.

In this module, you will discover how to maximize your WordPress website’s potential by enabling SEO functionality. First, you’ll learn how to connect your website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console so you can track your SEO progress. We will also go over how to install and implement three SEO plugins: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and All-in-One SEO.

What You'll Learn

Connect your WordPress website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track SEO progress
Optimize your website's posts and pages for search engines
Install and implement the Yoast SEO plugin
Set up and use the Rank Math SEO plugin
Configure and use the All-in-One SEO plugin
Research and select keywords or keyphrases to guide optimization

Key Takeaways

Making your site appear in search engine results is the most effective way to increase traffic.
Effective SEO involves researching and selecting the right keywords or keyphrases to optimize each post and page.
WordPress offers tools to help implement SEO functionality.
Connecting to Google Analytics and Google Search Console lets you track your SEO progress.
This module covers three SEO plugins: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and All-in-One SEO.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this WordPress SEO module?

You'll learn to connect your website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console, optimize your website for search engines, and use the Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and All-in-One SEO plugins.

Which SEO plugins does this course cover?

The course covers three SEO plugins: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and All-in-One SEO.

How does this course help increase traffic to my website?

It shows how to use Search Engine Optimization so your content appears in search engine results, which is the best way to increase traffic to your site.

What lessons are included in this module?

Lessons include Setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console, Using Yoast SEO, Using Rank Math SEO (Parts 1 and 2), and Using All-in-One SEO.

Is this course suitable for someone who has already built a website?

Yes. The course is framed as the next step after you've built a website, focusing on showing it off by making it appear in search engine results.