All backlinks are not good for your website SEO. In pursuit of ranking don’t follow the shortcut to rank your site, rather understand the types of backlinks to use on your website.
Backlinks are one of the most essential parts of any SEO plan. Establishing backlinks with authority sites can surely put your site on good terms with the search engines. The more quality backlinks you have, the more the search engine will acknowledge your site as an important site for that particular topic.
Backlinks are considered a crucial authority and ranking factor for top search engines such as Google, Bing, Yandex, etc.
However, not all types of backlinks can yield the same type of result. If you want to get the best outcome from your hard work, you should understand the good backlinks techniques and the bad backlinks techniques.
This article will cover 14 major backlink techniques and not all of them are healthy ways to rank your site. Read on to know the good and the bad types of backlinks in detail.
What is Backlink and Why Does It Matter?
In the world of the internet, a link is used to describe the way to connect to a particular webpage. In general, when a website links to another website, it is called backlinks. Usually, a website to link back to another website to prove the source of information or give it some credibility.
So when a website links back to another, search engines consider the latter website as an authority site. So the more website links to a particular website, the more powerful it gets.
This makes backlink a necessary part of SEO. Many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists consider backlinking as the most important ranking factor for search engines. This is why it’s important to know the difference between types of backlinks and only use the good ones!
14 Types of Backlinks Explained
There are many types of backlinks that SEO specialists use, all of which are broken down version of “14 Types of Backlinks”, that we will talk about today. So without further ado, let’s get to it!
The Best Types of Backlinks To Boosts Your SEO
1. Editorial backlinks
Editorial backlinks are one of the finest types of backlinks for your site. These backlinks are placed when you are well-known as the source of information or statistics and a website is trying to make their article look credible.
When you can create top-notch content that makes you an established authority site in your arena, getting editorial backlinks is actually very easy. In order to become an authority site and a thought leader, you need to create well-researched and high-quality content continuously.
2. Guest Blogging Backlinks
Guest blogging is not as popular as it was in the 2010s, but it is certainly one of the easiest ways to get backlinks from a top site. In order to get these types of backlinks, you have to write high-quality content for a top site for free and they’ll offer you to include a backlink to your site. This type of backlinks allows you to get backlinks on your desired keyword.
3. Business Profile Backlinks
When you have a well-established organization, you will try to branch out. The same goes for websites, only here you try to branch out by creating profiles on different authoritative directories, social media, review websites. Doing these things not only makes you look like an established website to search engine but also get you more than one backlinks each
4. Webinar Backlinks
Webinars are also a kind of editorial backlinks, but for videos. Making quality and informational webinars and letting others embed that on their site will give you the chance to get not only more views but also genuine backlinks.
The important thing to remember here is to provide such kinds of information that not only prove to be useful but also sharable.
5. Free Tool Backlinks
As we already said, in order to get organic backlinks, you need to create useful content. But what if you go one step ahead and create free tools for your respective industry to use? Won’t that help you get more backlink? The answer is, yes, It will. And we call these types of backlinks, “The Free Tool Backlinks”.
More Backlinks That Helps SEO
6. Acknowledgment Backlinks
Acknowledgement backlinks are special type backlinks that are generated because of donation or relationship. There are three major ways to get an acknowledgement backlink that, and we’ve mentioned those below to give you a clear understanding of what acknowledgement backlink actually is. Ways to get acknowledgement backlinks are –
Donating for a cause.
Speaking to an event.
Sponsoring an event.
Usually, these types of backlinks don’t come with any keywords or content but a plain mention on the host website.
7. Guest Post Bio Backlinks
Some websites have a regulation of not accepting backlinks inside a content when you do a guest post. However, most of them usually allow having a link inside the author’s bio. Though these types of backlinks will not be as impactful as a guest blogging backlink, it will still have a somewhat positive impact.
8. Badge Backlinks
Badge backlinks are a way to empower both the site that is giving out the links and the site that is being linked to. Creating a listing blog that includes the top 10 or top 20 websites is a great way to get backlinks. You can also give out awards to sites and offer them a badge.
Later, the site that is being motioned or received the badge will link back to your website. This way you can get some invaluable backlinks without much work. But keep in mind that in order to get people to recognize your award or listing, you have to be a somewhat known or established site in your arena.
9. Newsworthy Press Release Backlinks
The press release is an important way to let people know about you while also get backlinks. This two-way promotion makes it one of the best marketing tactics. So whenever you have something worth sharing with a broader audience, a press release always a good option.
10. Comment Backlinks
Comment backlink is another old technique to get backlinks. This way of getting backlinks is, however, often misused by spammers. Whenever you comment on a website or a blog post, you are generally permitted to add a link to your website. If the search engines suspect that you are posting spammy links, you can even get penalized for this type of backlink.
However, proper use of comment backlinks is still a great way to generate backlinks.
Backlinks That You Need to Avoid
11. Paid Links
Backlinks are an integral part of SEO strategy. This influences many people to even adopt blackhat types of backlinks like buying backlinks from other websites or publishers. But keep in mind that, Google or any other search engine can most of the time asses if your link is relevant or not. If a search engine determines that one of your backlinks is a commercially formed link, it will negatively impact the ranking of your website.
12. Non-Newsworthy Press Release
We have talked about press releases being a great way to get backlinks while also giving your website exposure. However, we also suggested using press releases as a way to share something big happening to your organization. If you publish a press release just for getting another backlink, it will be considered as a bad practice for SEO and can also result in a drop in SERP ranking.
13. Directory Links
Once a popular way of gaining backlink is now not that useful anymore. With thousands of directories growing up over the years, stick with only the most trusted and authoritative directory site if you want to get something good out of it.
14. Low Quality Forum Backlink
If you don’t want to get lesser-known directory backlinks, then you should also avoid trying to get backlinks from low-quality forums as well. Joining a lot of forums and post irrelevant backlinks is not a great way of getting backlinks anymore. In fact, this is one of the worst types of backlinks you can get for your website.
Wrapping Up
No one can ignore the importance of backlinks for an effective SEO strategy. However, it’s important to ensure you are getting more quality than quantity. Getting a single backlink from a top-tier, high authority site can have a more impact on ranking than many backlinks from weak websites.
However, Different types of backlinks techniques result in different levels of ranking boost, while some can even make your site get penalized for wrongdoing!
Search Engine Optimization(SEO) plays a major role in content writing. It increases search and visibility, exposure of your brand through organic search results. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. And it is certainly impossible without any SEO tools.
But Why You Need a SEO Plugin
Every website needs an SEO plugin. No matter how important social networks can be for a site, SEO is often the most important factor for a site’s growth. Not following SEO best practices, or not doing SEO at all, can be quite detrimental to your site’s performance.
Fortunately, there are quite a few efficient SEO plugins available in WordPress that will help your cause and we are going to list the 5 best free WordPress SEO plugins and compare them with WP Hive so that you can choose the best one.
Why WP Hive?
Well, you may have heard the news about the new upgraded version of the WordPress repository WP Hive. It is a platform where you have the opportunity to not only download a plugin but also
Get an in-depth review of the plugin
See the test results based on different performance metrics
So, you have probably have guessed that we are going to use the Compare option of that platform to find out the best free WordPress SEO plugins out of the 5.
But first, let us list the best 5 shall we?
Quick Navigation
5 Best Free WordPress SEO Plugins
SEO plugins are the extension modules for content management system. It has features that impact website analysis, online marketing, and of course search engine optimization. However, you only need to use one SEO tool as they all have quite similar features with exceptions. So, we are going to list the best SEO tools for you also give you an insight to their features.
Yoast SEO
All In One SEO
Rank Math
SEOPress
Google Keyword Planner
Yoast SEO Plugin
The first on the list of best free WordPress SEO plugins is Yoast SEO. It one of the most popular SEO plugin with over 5M active installations and 4.7 ratings from 15000+ reviews.
It offers a detailed analysis of your content based on the keyword you have chosen. You can easily get a detailed insight to your writing to make sure it’s SEO optimized. Also, it lets you add Open Graph Metadata and social media images to your content.
It has a smooth import system, so you can easily transfer your previous SEO data from the old plugin. Yoast SEO automatically creates an XML sitemap for all your content. Therefore it is easy for search engines to crawl your website.
It has a premium version for $89 that has,
Internal linking suggestions
Content insights
Redirect manager
1 year free access to 24/7 support
However, the free version has enough essential features to help you if you are on a budget.
Next on our list of best SEO tools is All In One SEO Pack. With over 2M active installations it is easily among the best free WordPress SEO plugins.
It lets you add SEO title and meta tags, open graph meta tags, XML sitemaps, image sitemaps, and more. The setup process is easy as it has a feature manager that lets you control different settings. All In One SEO pack support SEO on custom post types. Also, if you make any changes to your site it will automatically notify search engines like Google, Bing.
It has 3 kinds of paid version Individual, Business, Agency with different prices. Those paid versions offer,
Image SEO Module (Business Plan and above)
Advanced Support for WooCommerce
SEO for Categories, Tags and Custom Taxonomies
Social Meta for for Categories, Tags and Custom Taxonomies
Support for Google Tag Manager
Advanced Google Analytics tracking
It is a more affordable than Yoast SEO, so you can easily go for it.
It allows you to optimize your website search engines and social media. It has an efficient setup wizard that helps you not only to install the plugin easily but also help you import data from previous SEO plugin. You can add meta title, description, and Open Graph metadata to your blog posts.
The plugin allows you to generate XML sitemap, connect to Google Search Console.
Rank Math is currently free! But they plan on releasing a pro version soon. But the free version has enough features like,
With over 100k active installations, next on our list of best free WordPress SEO plugins is SEOPress. It has got a perfect 5-star rating from its user.
It includes all the features you would expect from a SEO plugin like meta title, description, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps, redirects, and more.It is comparable to any other top SEO plugins in the market. Beginners can find an easy settings while for the experts, there are some complicated settings.
All the effort we are putting into Search Engine Optimization so that, Google recognizes us. SO, a tool from them will obviously make our list. That is why we will be including Google Keyword Planner.
No one on the planet has more data on what people are searching for than Google. This tool offers it’s own keyword ideas from Google itself. It’s free! It is mainly to show their advertisers the keywords they can bid for their campaigns. It gives them an estimate of search volume, number of results, and difficulty level.
More importantly, it helps the bloggers to find keywords that will help them outrank all other sites.
Now, we have listed the 5 best free WordPress SEO plugins for you. But, which one you are going to choose?
Comparing Best Free WordPress SEO Plugins Using WP Hive To Find The Best One
Yes, the concept is exactly how the title shows. One of the main functionalities of WP Hive is that you can compare a plugin with a similar plugin, and based on different metrics it will declare a winner. So, we are going to use that feature and show the best SEO plugin among the four as Google Keyword Planner is an online tool.
This will not only help you choose the best one but also save your valuable time. As you don’t have to go and give a trial one by one.
We are going to start with the process of finding the best SEO tool.
First, go to wphive.com. There on top the menu, you will find an option called Compare.
Second, you need put the names of the plugins you want to compare.
Yoast SEO vs All In One SEO Pack
We are going to start with Yoast SEO comparing with All In One SEO pack. Type their name on both text boxes.
After you hit the Compare button, you will see the comparison based on memory usage, page speed, and other criteria. You can see the metrics.
All In One SEO Pack vs Rank Math
Onto to comparing All In One SEO and Rank Math to find out which one is the best free WordPress SEO plugins among the two.
Write their name in the compare box and hit the Compare button.
On to the next page to see the winner.
Rank Math vs SEOPress
Last but not the least, we are going to compare Rank Math and SEOPress.
The winner is,
End Result
So, we can say the best free WordPress SEO plugin after comparing using WP Hive among the 4 is ,
Rank Math SEO plugin.
You can try with any other SEO plugins than the listed ones and you may get different results.
We used to ask Google, expert opinions , ask questions on forums to determine the best plugin. We are not saying it is a bad practice. However, you would get different opinions every time.
That is why we have come up with WP Hive. The answer to all your questions. You can get all the performance metrics and decide for yourself which plugin to choose.
We hope you found our solution to your liking. Do share your opinion.
Facing difficulties to understand all the SEO Jargons? This guide will get you used to all the common SEO terminologies with definitions.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most crucial aspects of marketing in the current era of digitalization. It is the practice of making a website valuable to search engines, thus attracting large quantities of quality organic visitors.
Right now, there are more than 1.75 billion websites online
internetlivestats
And there’s a good chance that your website will never attract visitors unless you apply proper SEO techniques.
However, SEO is a complex set of work and its terminologies are even more complex. If you are a new online marketer, learning the SEO terms should be your first priority before you jump right in to do SEO.
This SEO Glossary is a compiled list of the terms that you’ll come across while doing SEO. We hope it will help make you ready for the real battle, to rank your website on top of the search engines.
Essential SEO Terms You Need To Know
Before we immerse you with the huge list, first let’s check out some of the most used terminologies that you will see all the time while doing SEO.
Algorithm
Algorithms are the computer programs behind the search engines to determine which websites to display for a user query. Algorithms take several factors into account and retrieve data and websites that are relevant to the search query.
Alt-Text
Alt Text is a word or phrase that we can set to display in case an image or graphic is not visible to a user. It carries a great deal of importance as it is also used by the search engines to understand the contents of an image.
Also, in case of any missing image, users can easily understand what the image was all about by reading the alt-text.
Backlink
Backlinks are the links to your website from an external website. Having a good number of backlinks from quality sites with relevant anchor-text is one of the best ways to rank higher in search engines.
You can achieve backlinks by guest posting on high ranked websites.
Conversion
Conversion is being able to encourage visitors to do a specific action when they visit your website. This includes signing up, downloading a file, or buying a product, etc. It increases user experience and users don’t feel confused.
It is a good practice to use CTA buttons to enable these actions.
Crawling
Crawling is a process done by search engines using bots to crawl or move through a website. It not only analyzes a website but also follows every external or internal link to and from the website. Search Engines do crawling to index pages from a particular website.
Domain
A domain is a unique address of a website. Such as, you can reach our website by typing www.wphive.com. It’s a good thing to register a domain name for your website for a longer period, as search engines see that a sign of stability.
Google
You already know this. Though there are a couple more search engines like Bing and Yahoo, yet all our SEO efforts are mainly for this specific website.
Google is the single biggest search engine in the world
Netmarketshare
Homepage
The homepage is the main or root page of a website. When a visitor type in a website URL, this is the first page they will be welcomed with. It is also the most visited page of a website.
So, you your homepage needs to be attractive while guiding the user to the point he/she wants to go.
Index
The index contains all the webpages that a search engine decides to store through the crawling process. If your website or a specific page of your website is not on s search engines index, it will not be displayed on search results.
Keyword
Keywords are the words or phrases that users type into a search engine to find a relevant webpage. One of the core work of SEO marketers is to find keywords that people are searching for and match them with relevant content on their website.
Meta tags contain meta keywords and meta description. They are written on the head section of the HTML structure of a webpage. It tells the search engine what that webpage is all about.
Also, users can easily get an idea about your content by reading all the meta tags.
Organic Search
An organic search is done when a user searches for a term on a search engine and visits an unpaid result.
Page Rank
PageRank or PR is a value assigned by google algorithm to measure the importance of a page. The higher the value, the higher the website will rank on google search.
Traffic
Traffic is the number of visitors coming to a website within a specific period. Traffic can be of various types,
Organic traffic
Paid traffic
Referral traffic
Social media traffic
XML Sitemap
XML Sitemap is a virtual map containing the links of all the pages of a website. It helps search engines crawl through your website and index all the pages.
SEO Glossary of Terms: A Guide for Beginners
Finally, the main attraction of your article today. Here’s the complete glossary of terms. For your convenience, we have organized the terms in such a way so that if you are searching for a specific term, just click on the first letter from the table of content below to find it quick and easy!
301 redirect is a systematic way to automatically redirect users from one page to another page with a different URL. This is usually done if another page with updated content on the same topic exists on the same website.
This also ensures that people who have linked to or bookmarked the old address will automatically get to the new one, and search engines can update their index.
302 Redirection
302 redirection is the same as 301 Redirection, apart from the fact that the redirection is temporary. It is used when an original page is being updated and will be back after the update is done
A
Adwords
Google Adwords is the “Pay Per Click” program by Google to attract visitors to a website. It is an advertising system in which advertisers bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google’s search results.
That’s how Google makes money from search.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is a text that works as a link when the actual link is hidden inside it. This is usually the blue text we come across on most websites. Inbound links with relevant anchor text are good for a website’s SEO.
AuthoritySite
Authority Sites are websites that people trust. When a site has inbound links from many high ranked websites, it is considered as an authority site to search engines.
B
B2B & B2C
B2C and B2B are two forms of commercial transactions. B2C stands for business-to-consumer, which is a process for selling products directly to consumers. B2B stands for business-to-business, which is a process for selling products or services to other businesses.
Baidu
Baidu is the most popular and regularly visited search engine in China. 90% of online search queries done in China are done through Baidu.
Bing
Bing is the second most visited search engine worldwide. It is owned and operated by Microsoft.
Black Hat
Unethical or manipulative way to rank higher on search engines. These ways are against search engine guidelines and websites can get banned for these types of malpractice.
Blog
A blog is a regular publication of new content on different topics. Each publication is posted on a new page. Writing blogs on a regular basis can be a good SEO practice for your website.
Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate is the percentage of users that visit your website and leave without any other interaction or entering any more pages. The lower the bounce rate, the better is for you. Because that means people are interested in your content.
Breadcrumb
A navigational element that helps users find out where they are on a website and how to get back to the root. Breadcrumbs are typically placed in the horizontal form under the masthead or navigation of a website.
Example of Breadcrumb URL
C
Cache
The technology of temporarily storing web content to load it faster. It is a widely used method for storing information so that it can be later accessed much more quickly.
Canonical URL
The canonical URL defines the best address to find information about a specific topic on a website. It is used in case there is more than one address where the same content can be found.
CMS
CMS or Content Management System is a kind of web-platform that lets a user create a website without any coding skills. WordPress is one of the best examples of CMS.
Competition
Competition is a metric for a keyword that several webpages are trying to rank for. The higher the number, the higher the competition.
CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. This is a language that defines how the HTML of a website should look.
D
Dead-End Page
A webpage that has no further links to any other page, so the visitor or search engine bot has no other place to move forward.
Directory
A directory is a categorized list of websites. Unlike search engines, the list of websites in a directory is manually curated and categorized.
Do-Follow
Do-follow is HTML links that don’t have a “no-follow” attribute. Search Engine bots can easily move around with do-follow links, which gives them an SEO value.
E
E-Commerce
Sale of products through online stores. E-Commerce is growing very fast. It’s the best and easiest way to sell a product nowadays. You can create an E-Commerce website easily using WordPress.
F
Fold (The Fold)
Fold refers to a point in a webpage where it is cut off by the bottom of a monitor or browser window. It is the only visible part of a webpage unless the user wants to scroll down.
The Fold
G
Gateway Page
A gateway page is a page that is crafted to attract visitors from a search engine, and then encourage them with CTAs.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free program from Google that gives detailed data on the traffic of a website. This data includes geographic location, device, time spent, bounce rate, etc.
Googlebot
Googlebot is the crawler program used by Google to find webpages to index. It collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google Search engine.
H
Heading
Headings are the title of different sections of a website. Headings are created using h1-h6 tags. They are significantly bolder than the regular page of a website.
HTML
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It creates the backbone of a website. HTML is also the code that search engines crawler analyze to get an idea of your website.
HTTP/HTTPS
HTTP or The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the way data transfers between the website and the visitor. HTTPS is the secured version of HTTP, which uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to ensure data security.
I
Impression
An impression is the number of times a webpage has been viewed over a certain period.When your ad loads and displays in front of a user, that is one impression.
Inbound Link
An inbound link is a link to your website from another site. When someone else uses your website link on their website, it usually enhances your site authority.
Inbound Link
It is better to have a good number of inbound links to your website from other valued websites, as search engines then think of your site as a resourceful one.
Internal Link
A link from a page, to another page of the same website. An internal link can be used to guide the user through your website and help them with more relevant content.
J
JavaScript
JavaScript is a scripting language that is used to create special dynamic features for a website.
K
Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization happens when two or more pages from the same website focus on the same keyword. This results in low PageRank for both the page, as search engines fail to understand which page is more relevant for that keyword.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the number of times a keyword is used on a single webpage. The ideal percentage to use a keyword on a webpage for better SEO is not yet known.
2% keyword density is a good practice
L
Landing Page
Landing pages are the pages that a user will land once they click on the link. These pages are often created to generate leads.
Link Building
Link building is the process of getting inbound links from well-ranked, authority sites. More links from trusted sites are a huge boost for websites SEO.
Long-Tail Keywords
Long-Tail keywords are phrases that contain three or more words. Long-tail keywords usually target specific customers and their search terms. The conversion rate of long-tail keywords is usually higher than in regular keywords.
Long Tail Keywords have low search traffic, but better conversion rate
M
Metric
Metric is the measurement of the performance of a website. This include website traffic, traffic source, bounce rate, top pages, conversion rate, customer’s lifetime value, etc.
Monetize
Monetizing is a method of earning money from a website by placing an ad. Basically you will driving your traffic to another website through a link beneath the add in exchange of money.
N
Negative SEO
Negative SEO is malpractice to deliberately harm the ranking of a website. This kind of attack can take a number of different forms: Hacking your website. Building hundreds or thousands of spammy links to your website.
No-Follow
No-Follow is an HTML attribute that tells a search engine to not follow a specific outbound link.
O
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to SEO activity that helps rank a website higher but is not done on the website itself.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the opposite of off-page SEO. Key examples of on-page SEO are the usage of keywords, structuring HTML to help a search engine understand what your website is about, etc.
Outbound Link
Outbound link refers to a website placing a link to another website. Also called external links, it direct visitors from pages on your website to other sites on the Internet. Unlike inbound links, which send visitors to other pages on your website
P
Page Speed
Page Speed is the amount of time needed to load a webpage. Page speed affects a website’s rank on search engines. Here’s how you can improve your page speed.
Page Title
A page title is the name of a webpage. Page titles are the titles search engines use to display a website on search pages.
Paid Search Result
Paid search results are the opposite of the organic search Result. Paid search results are displayed above the organic search results on search engine
Paid Search Result
Panda
Panda is a series of updates released by Google to prevent bad practice to rank a website higher.
R
Rank
Rank is the position of a website in an organic search. Google measures various factors for a website and then decides in which place to rank the website. If it’s good enough, you can get a place in the first page.
Ranking Factors
Ranking factors are the factors that a search engine takes into account to rank a website in a search result.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file that is used to tell a search engine which part of the website should be ignored. It is important to have Robots.txt file on your website so that search engines can index only the pages that you want.
S
Search Volume
Search volume is the number of times a keyword is searched during a specific period.
SEM
SEM stands for search engine marketing. It describes the process of increasing website traffic with both organic and paid efforts.
SEO
SEO or, search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a website for search engines, thus getting organic visitors. This is a combined effort that is done by choosing relevant keywords, link building, ensuring better user experience, and offer quality content.
SERP
SERP stands for the search engine result page. This is the page a search engine displays after a user types in a query. This page contains all the webpage that matches the users’ search term.
Spider
Spiders are the same as crawlers. They are used to crawl websites and determine whether the page should be indexed.
U
UGC
UGC stands for user-generated content, the content that is posted by a user or customer of the website. This includes a photo, video, blog, or even a comment from a user.
URL
URL or uniform resource locator is the address of a webpage. Every page of a website has a different URL. An URL usually consists of a domain name and a custom page name. Here’s an example to help you understand.
URL
W
White Hat SEO
SEO practices that maintain all the guidelines by search engines are called by white hat SEO.
WordPress
WordPress is the leading Content Management System in the world. According to the stats from WhoIsHostingThis, Over 35% of all the websites in the world are powered by WordPress.
WordPress
Y
Yahoo
Yahoo is the third most popular search engine in the world, accumulating almost 2% of the global search engine market share.
Yandex
Yandex holds 5th position worldwide on the market share of search engines. It is the 4th most popular website in Russia.
A lot of people face difficulties during their earliest days of being a Marketer on digital platforms. If you are using a WordPress site, this is the best SEO guide for WordPress to get you started for your next step.
In this glossary, we wanted to cover all the common SEO terms. However, if you are facing difficulties with a term that we did not cover here, do comment below and we will definitely help you out.
You have written a blog post, it’s really well and informative. You believe it will add value to your readers. So, should you publish the post right away?… No! There are many things you need to check before hitting on the publish button.
Over 2 million blogposts got published everyday just on WordPress. So, you have to consider how to stand out.
Writing is obviously the main part of blogging but that’s not all. Before making it public you need to check some certain things to ensure the quality and better user experience.
Here we described a 37-point blog writing checklist to make sure your efforts are not ruined. This checklist will cover from the start of your writing to publishing it.
37 Point Blog Writing Checklist for Beginners
The points got divided into three parts to make them easily understandable.
Primary Considerations and Content Outlining
Points related to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Useful tips to boost your content further
Now, let’s start with the part.
Primary Considerations and Content Outlining
1. Consider Target Audience before Planning
Considering the target audience group before preparing the content outline is a must. Every blog topic is meant for some specific people. If you write a blog post and think everyone is going to come and read then you are mistaken.
When you pick a topic up you need to identify your audience first. That will help you have a clear goal in mind and you will write keeping those specific readers in focus. Your information will be precise and you will find the right tone for your blog as well.
2. Define Your Top Goal
You should write a blog post keeping a marketing plan in mind. So, you need to realize the purpose of your topic. Like, generating traffic, SEO boosting, creating brand awareness, lead generation, etc.
We are going to start by giving you some pointers on how your structure of the content will look like.
3. Create An Outline For The Post
The next point on our blog writing checklist is, you need to create an outline for your blog post. Assuming you have already locked in on the topic. Now, an outline will contain the whole idea of your blog. The problems you are going address and how you are going to solve them, all this will be in the content outline.
When you will write a blog with a huge word count, the outline will help you keep track. Otherwise, it will be easy to get confused in the middle of writing.
4. Choose A Catchy Headline
After the outline, you need to choose your initial headline. Pick a headline that is true to your blog topic and also creates urgency among the audiences. Locking in on the starter headline will help you get a more clear idea of the topic and you will easily know what to write.
For example, if you want to write about the bad effects of smoking you can choose your headline to be “How Smoking Reduces Your Life Span By 10 Minutes Every Time“. This title will help the readers immediately realize that you are going to talk about the bad effects of smoking.
5. Provide Self-explaining Subheads
If you are writing a post that has more than 500 words, then you should use subheadings to split up the content. It is boring if you just write paragraph after paragraph without giving an insight.
That way the readers will get lost and will get bored quickly. So, to create engagement and give your readers the chance to understand your content more easily use subheadings throughout your post to break up sections of text.
6. Content Should be above 300 Words (1500+ is Best)
Don’t hold back while writing. Write as many words as you can. But make sure your whole topic is covered. Use facts, statistics, quotes, ideas, solutions. Writers often makes the mistake of thinking that audience like short contents because they don’t like to read long contents.
That is not true. When you find content that answers all your questions regarding the topic will you feel bored? Not at all. Rather you will appreciate the blog post and the writer. The same goes for Google and other search engines as well.
However, don’t fill your content with unnecessary information just to make it longer. The audience will get irritated.
7. Break Up Content Into Paragraphs
If this article was being written without any break you would have gotten bored reading the first 200 words. That is why it important to break up your content into paragraphs and white space.
Because digital contents should be skimmiable.
8. Stats & Facts Adds Value To The Post
Stats, facts, takeaways, news helps prove your point. That means if you are trying to show something or make your audience believe something uses facts or stats. Then you will come out as more believable to your audience and it will definitely add value to your post.
9. Add Use Cases, more and more Examples
Show, don’t tell.
It is one of the main factors of the blog writing checklist. When you use more use cases or examples than the audience will easily understand your point and will absorb the facts quite easily. Also, they grasp the message you are trying to share and convey to them.
Like, when you write about the bad affect of smoking you should examples like,
Every 15 cigarettes you smoke will cause a mutation in your body, mutations are how cancers start.
10. Use Active Voice
One of the first things you will learn as a blog writer is to use active voice while writing. Because active voice,
Uses fewer words, so that makes the writing more concise and efficient
Has a faster-moving narrative, which makes for easier writing and more engaging reading
Cleans up the sentence and
Helps prevent grammatical mistakes.
Also, active voice makes the sentences sounds more interesting and exciting rather than passive voice.
11. Write So That Even An Eight Standard Could Understand
We have included this point to the blog writing checklist so that you understand the importance of keeping the content simple. When you are writing a topic make sure it not only understandable by you but also by everyone.
Use simple words, don’t over complicate things, keep the structure simple. The quality of the writing should be high but simple.
12. Strictly Avoid Duplicacy
Always create original content. It is natural to look at other contents during researching. But, you should pick up ideas and what is lacking on that blog not sentences. So, rewrite the sentences in your own way and add more information if you can.
Not only audiences but Google doesn’t like plagiarism as well. You could be penalized as well.
13. Add Relevant Images, Infographics
Blog is not only about writing, it’s also about how present the information to the reader. One thing we have said repeatedly throughout the this blog writing checklist guide, never let your readers get bored.
So, if you fill-up the blog with words then no matter how interesting the topic is, it will not hold the excitement of the readers. So, you should include relevant images, infographics in order to spice up the visualization of your blog.
14. Link to Relevant-Valuable Sources
We told you to provide facts, stats, quotes to add more value to your content. But remember to give credit and provide links from where you picked up the information.You need to provide proper citations.
15. Important Information Should be Marked
When you will provide a lot of information, you want some information to catch the eye of your reader. Because you have worked hard to find that information. That is why that information should be highlighted.
But don’t go highlighting every single information.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices
You need to make sure your audience finds it and Google along with other search engines acknowledges it. That is why you need to perform SEO. So, what should you do?
16. Analyse Keywords before Writing
Next on our content writing checklist is selecting your primary keyword. It is important why? Well how else audience is going to find your blog. That is why you need to find a keyword that represents your topic and also help you rank higher in SERPs.
It is a very important practice for the content writers out there. The target keyword should appear in the headline of your blog topic. So, after choosing the primary keyword, go back to your title and try to include the keyword in it.
The benefit of it is Search Engines like Google, Bing, etc will know exactly what your content is all about.
18. Include LSI (Secondary) Keywords
Latent Semantic Index(LSI) or secondary keywords is an important part of the blog writing checklist. When you lock in your primary keywords, you should find some other keywords that surround your topic. These keywords can be long-tail keywords as well.
That way when people search using those secondary keywords, your blog post will still appear in the search results. Also, search engines use them to deeply understand your content.
So, it is better to select a few secondary keywords for your blog topic.
19. Make Sure Your Target Keyword Appears Within The First 100 Words Of Your Content
It is a very important practice for the content writers out there. The target keyword should appear in the first 100-150 words of the content. However, it shouldn’t look like you are forcing the idea. It should come naturally.
The benefit of it is Search Engines like Google, Bing, etc will know exactly what your content is all about and bring it higher in the search results and it sends signals to search crawlers.
20. Use Your Primary Keyword In Subheads Naturally
A part of your blog writing checklist should include adding your target keyword in subheadings. Because subheadings play a key role in optimizing the content in the best possible manner. That way subheadings will be used efficiently to enhance the quality of the content so that the content performance can be better.
21. Use The LSI keywords At Least Once
Point number 7 of the blog writing checklist, we told you to choose some secondary keywords relevant to your blog posts. Well, that was not for the show only. You need to use those keywords at least once your blog post for SEO optimization.
22. Avoid Keyword Stuffing or Black Hat SEO
It is a common idea among many writers that if you fill your blog post with your target keyword then your blog will get a higher ranking. That is absolute nonsense. The goal is to avoid using the target keyword more frequently rather than use it more naturally.
The keyword should be used naturally so that it doesn’t break the flow of the blog and readers don’t find it unnatural.
2% density is enough for a blog post.
23. Add Target Keyword At The End Of Your Blog
It is a good practice to use the primary keyword toward the end of the post to bookend the copy with references to the target phrase.
Also, it will help with the SEO and help you rank higher.
24. Add Target Keyword In The Meta Description
A meta description is used as a summary for your blog. Readers will get an initial idea about your blog by reading the meta description. So it is a good idea to use your target keyword in the meta description.
Remember your meta description should not exceed 150 words.
25. Internal Linking
It is one of the crucial point in the content writing checklist. Internal linking means when you link to other published posts on your site through relevant keyword on your blog post.
It helps in three things, boost your SEO, generates more traffic, acts as a resource guide to the readers.
26. External Linking
After internal linking comes external linking. When you write a blog you use terms that is unfamiliar and readers want to know about it more. So, it is a good practice to add outbound links to the best possible explanation for that term on the web.
The links can be to a Wikipedia page or to any relevant blog post.
27. Try To Keep The Head Keyword In The Page Title
One of the best practices in blog writing is to put the target keyword in the page title. It is a great way to boost your SEO. Also, that title needs to be unique to avoid any duplicate title tag issues that might hurt your site’s SEO.
You can make the page title the same as your headline, no problem. If you make it different make sure it stays true to your topic.
28. Add Your Target Keyword To Image ALT Tag
When you add images or any other graphics, remember to add the primary keyword to the alt tag in a natural way. It will boost SEO and also save you from copyrights.
29. Add The Keyword To Image File Name & Title
When adding images, also use the primary keyword in the original file name and the title in the CMS. This will also boost SEO.
30. On-Page SEO
Make sure to run a full on-page SEO after the blog is published. Make sure you don’t miss any SEO optimization steps. On-page SEO includes optimizing title tags, images, meta descriptions.
Useful Tips To Boost Your Content Further
31. Optimize Your Images
We all want to include high-quality images in our blog posts. But, there is a downfall to that. Sometimes it may take some time to load the whole image that can create irritation for the readers.
So, it is a good practice to resize the images for giving your readers a better experience.
32. Be Careful About The Image Copyright Issues
While writing a blog, we need to use images to convey our message. Sometimes we use images from Google. When we do that, we need to be very careful to avoid image copyright infringement. It is a very serious issue and you need to double check before publishing these kind of images.
33. Links Should Open In A New Tab
All the links, internal or external should open in a new tab. Otherwise, if the links open in the same tab, then it will drive attention away from your blog post. Which will increase the bounce rate and have a negative impact on your blog post?
34. Use CTA Buttons
CTA (Call To Action) is a great way to lead your readers where you want them to. It is better to add a CTA button at the end of the blog post. That way after finishing the blog post it will the readers what to do next.
CTA is a great way to achieve the goal you had in mind before writing the blog post.
35. Alternative Headlines
Next on our blog writing checklist is to write some alternative headlines that is more powerful and engaging. From these powerful and engaging titles choose the best one. Make sure it includes the primary keyword. Your final headline should be not more than 60 characters in order to be fully displayed in search.
You can keep the initial one as well.
36. Don’t Forget Social Sharing
Encourage your readers to spread your post on different social media channels. Create shareable contents that includes ClickToTweet links, and social sharing icons.
Also, try to promote your content through your own social channels in a regular basis.That will help create awareness for your blog.
37. Last Minute Review
You need to have your own checklist to help you find any typo mistake or spelling mistakes. Also check for grammatical errors as well. Read the whole blog post once before publishing. Don’t hit the publish button unless you are done editing.
Follow the Checklist and Stand out from The Crowd in Blogging
We prepared this ultimate blog writing checklist to help beginners and our friends who are struggling to get the desired traffic. So, when you are writing a blog post make sure to give a check to all the points mentioned here.
And feel free to suggest more considerable points if you have any in your mind.
SEO friendly URLs is one of the most vital elements for on page SEO. In addition, it always creates a positive impact on your site search results and Google loves to see the SEO optimized URLs.
URLs refer to the web address of your page or a blog post. That’s why like your title, meta, heading, link, and content search engine also use your web URLs to know about your content.
It’s always important to create perfect URLs based on proper search engine optimization. But when you search on the web you find millions of blogs with millions of URLs. But most of these URLs are not focus on the SEO except few.
For that reason, they will fail to make their impact on the search engine and also fail to rank on the top.
So today we are going show you how to create SEO friendly URLs.
Today you’ll learn about making SEO optimized URLs and some key consideration while generating the friendly URLs.
Let’s have look that you’ll learn today through this ultimate SEO guide.
Some Key Considerations on SEO Friendly URLs
While creating the SEO compatible URLs you should remember some key considerations. If you do then your chances of error will reduce more.
Here the lists:
Focus on right permalink setting
Short and definite
Can easily readable and understandable
Should represent your content
If you’re new in the SEO then take look over this informative SEO checklist blog that will help you for better ranking.
How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs in WordPress
Now it’s time to cover how you can create your SEO friendly URLs that easily helps in your search engine optimization.
Let’s do it.
Use HTTPS Instead Of HTTP
Online security is a very important matter in these days. Most of the online users love to a secured website. In fact, search engines like Google also likes those sites that are very secured.
So when you run a site you have to make sure that your site is on the HTTPS. By using HTTPS, you tell your customers that you’re secured. Most importantly, it tells Google that your site is not harmful to the visitor.
In addition, it’ll also help to build SEO optimized URLs as well as create more opportunities for building trust with your customers.
Add Your Focus Keyword
Without a proper keyword, you cannot imagine a post. In fact, the keyword is the most powerful element that Google uses to crawl your site data. That’s why it’s a proven way to add your primary keyword in your URLs. Thus you’ll easily create your SEO optimized URLs.
Besides, you can easily find your desired keyword by using any of these keyword search tools.
Remove Special Characters & Numbers
Sometimes you’ll see people are using special characters and numbers (, 1, =) in their URLs. But it’s a very bad practice. Because it doesn’t help in the better search result but it creates a bad impact on it. Also, it doesn’t add any value to the blog post.
Focus on Length, Don’t Make It Long
Honestly, there is no proper length limit for your SEO URLs. However, it is better to keep it short. Because Google or other search engines like short URLs.
When you are using a long URL that means you add a lot of junk words in it. For creating friendly URLs, you need to remove extra words in your URLs and try to use a short and definite URL.
You can easily make your URLs short using only your primary keyword. According to Backlinko,” short URLs rank better than long URLs”.
Try Hyphens, Not Underscores
When you’re making SEO compatible URLs you have to use hyphens (-) instead of underscores ( _ ). As it was mentioned earlier to avoid special characters.
Here underscore is a special character that you should remove from your URLs.
Avoid Stopping Words
Do you know what are the stopping words? Here is a list for you.
a
an
or
but
and
So try to remember those words and always avoid them when you create your SEO URLs. In fact, these words don’t add any value to your URLs. Besides, the search engine crawler doesn’t like those stopping words in the URLs. So it is not good for your SEO optimization.
Use Lowercase Letters
Using lowercase letters is also an important fact for SEO friendly URLs. Because the search engine likes lowercase letters, not uppercase. So always use lowercase letters in your URLs.
Make It Readable
Readability makes sense in your URLs. Moreover, it creates a friendly environment between your site URLs and your visitors. Google also likes these URLs because it helps with the crawl ability issues.
If you’re using WordPress for your site then you’ll check out some of the SEO plugins that will help in your site SEO.
Awesome! We’ve successfully finished this informative article regarding the SEO friendly URLs. So we can hope you understand the real facts of SEO URLs. In addition, you’ll learn about how to make these types of URLs in your website post or pages.
Plus, if you carefully focus on these pieces of stuff it’ll help you to reduce SEO mistakes rapidly.
If you face any issue regarding this blog topic feel free to comment on us. And please share with us what you learned from this article. Most importantly, if you have any idea that adds some value in this article do let us know. We’ll definitely appreciate your opinion.
SEO optimization is more than just the word content. Using high-quality, relevant images will also increase its effectiveness. When you are especially running a WordPress blog, you know how important a blog image is.
It is often noticed that a WordPress website with great content also takes care of the images on site – like how to choose a color theme, font styles, and image formatting. Thus to do that, you must familiarize yourself with some of the best image editing and image creation tools for SEO.
In this article, we are focusing on why your WordPress site needs unique images and some of the best tools to create those images.
The Need for Unique Images in WordPress or Any Other Website
Someone well said – “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
In the case of your WordPress blog or website, images are often used to tell the context. If you are using an image in your blog posts you are using them to explain your points. While in case of selling something you can show with an image that how your product or service is better than the others.
There was a time when website owners just used to pick the images from Google without looking at the copyright, but with the evolution in Google guidelines they are much aware now. They either use their own unique images or give an image credit.
Frankly, experienced website owners don’t use images with copyright and follow the Google’s given criteria. So for creating unique images, we are listing some of the tools that will help your designing process.
When it comes to free online Image creation tools, Canva is currently leading the charge. It has unique templates and various features. Also, if you opt to avail of its advanced features, it will only cost you a few dollars.
Some more advantages of Canva are their vast collection of free images, font styles and template sizes. Canva is an amazing tool that you can use for your WordPress blog to take benefit of their extensive features and functionality to create engaging visual content. From blog graphics to social media posts to YouTube thumbnails – you can design anything with Canva and give boost to your WordPress marketing strategy. The dimension for images is fixed in Canva, so it is easy and you don’t have to do it yourself.
BeFunky
With BeFunky tool, you can edit pictures into a picture you desire – no pricey software required to operate. BeFunky Photo Editor has amazing enhancement tools to give lighting effects, and to remove digital noise, fuzziness, and other common picture related problems. So, if you are looking for an image creation tool for SEO that has no fuss, BeFunky might be for you.
You are not required to create an account to edit or create images. Moreover, its advanced feature can be accessed at extremely affordable prices.
Pixlr
For all your pictures and graphic editing needs, Pixlr can also be a good option. If you are a pro in image designing, this tool is definitely for you. Although Pixlr is not exactly beginner-friendly, it is useful for deep image customization. It is a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop if you are looking for a less expensive option.
Web Learners who just started a WordPress Website or Blog can begin with using Pixlr as they won’t need to invest in expensive licensed software.
Stencil
Stencil is one of those image editor tools that offer a fermium business model. It is advantageous if you only edit fewer than ten images because you can use it for free. If you want to access its advanced features or edit more images, you need to create an account and subscribe to a membership. However, the membership subscription is fairly affordable.
When you create or edit images for your WordPress website, Stencil gives you option to choose from over 2,200,000 spectacular royalty-free photos (high resolution and perfect sizes).
Piktochart
For your WordPress blog you can use infographics to better represent content in form of steps and visuals. Piktochart is the perfect tool for creating infographics images. It makes infographics less time consuming and easier so that you would not need to spend money on hiring professionals. It has a free trial period that you can use to your advantage as well.
Easy steps to operate Piktochart involves – choosing an infographics template, selecting height & width, change color, objects or text as per the need, just copy and paste elements from one infographics to another and publish. So it is really quick.
Snappa
Snappa is similar to Piktochart and Canva. It offers a lot of features for photo editing. What sets Snappa against the other photo editing tools out there is that you can share your images directly from Snappa to other social media sites. This feature saves your download time and ensures the quality of your pictures.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is also another useful photo editing tool. The difference it has with other tools is that it has a collage maker feature, and it could also be used for graphic design. Aside from that, it is compatible with both mobile devices and desktops.
PicMonkey used to be entirely free, but they now make you pay for the images you save. However, it is still affordable compared to other tools.
Bottom Line
Images are essential in gaining rankings, shares, and traffic, which are fundamental goals of SEO for your WordPress website. However, not all photos can fit your content, and you sometimes have to make them yourself. So these tools will be fun to use when you need to design images.
Because, nothing beats having an original image for your WordPress blog or website.
This is why familiarizing you with the best image creating tools and image editing services is vital. Hopefully, the tools mentioned above will help you with this. Some of them are free, and they are mostly easy to use even for beginner image editors.
Everyone loves organized articles. WordPress categories & tags are the most useful way to organize your content on your WordPress website.
You might be asking yourself, “Why should I use WordPress tags?”. Well, tags are basically keywords. Keywords help to reorganize your website.
Why You Need To Use Tags
If you want high traffic on your website, you want your website to be perfectly organized. An organized website will have great color, theme, grid, layouts, and most importantly quality contents. You can see examples of well-structured, organized website exam on 21 Outstanding WordPress Built Websites.
What are WordPress Tags?
Just like categories help you to organize books on your shelf, tags can help you narrow it down even further.
A guide that explains the difference between WordPress posts vs. pages in WordPress. Know which one to choose and why.
Beginners often find it puzzling to distinguish between WordPress post and WordPress pages. We are covering basics of WordPress Posts vs. Pages and why you shoulld choose pages or posts.
About WordPress
WordPress is an open source content management system. Matt Mullenweg created WordPress in 2003. He did it for blogging purpose primarily. And the focus was to make it available to everyone. It’s easy posts and pages adding features are evidence of his intention.
Create Anchor Links in WordPress can be tough if you do not get the concept right. Follow our step by step tutorial to know how to create anchor links in WordPress.
We use anchor links too frequently on our WordPress websites but get confused when someone asks about that. Anchor links can be considered as shortcuts within site.
Table of contents gives your users a basic idea about what to expect from the content. We are going to have a detailed discussion on anchor links, table of content in WordPress and how you can create anchor links and table of content in WordPress
Connect with your readers more effectively and increase user engagement like a pro.
If people aren’t reading your website content – or they’re moving away from it quickly – it is because of this one thing: You’re not respecting your audience’s time. It is essential that you write engaging content. We are covering the best 5 audience engagement strategies in today’s article.
If you are not respecting your reader’s time, you are robbing their time, by publishing content that:
(a) Doesn’t speak to your target audience’s needs or concerns,
(b) Is confusing, and/or
(c) Is sloppily formatted
And all those, my friend, are exactly what your readers do not want.
Let’s look at five audience engagement strategies
