WordPress SEO

by Yoast Guide

It is no secret that WordPress is the most used CMS today. Nor is it a secret that SEO is needed to make money with an Internet project. That is why I decided to launch this comprehensive guide to SEO for WordPress which I will show you how to configure your project well for you to accomplish put you in the top of the search engines.

WordPress SEO guide

I show you here is not your typical guide on how to install two plugins and generate good content, but will show internal configuration optimization and to improve your search engine positioning and certain WordPress plugins that will facilitate the task. This optimization is to use both my microniches or affiliation projects and other projects of customers who use WordPress and it's what works for me.

Before starting with this guide I want to make a recommendation. Do not practice in your project everything you read, and in this blog or any of the Red My advice is to read, experiment in Blogs tests and then pull your own conclusions the which you can apply to your project. On topics such as WordPress SEO nobody knows everything and maybe what my work me to another does not, and what can I apply for certain professional other projects not apply in a different way and be equally valid.

Remember that:
"To be a good SEO not only to read but also experience"

Always before starting to optimize a web project should be aware of recent changes in the Google algorithm.
Guide to WordPress SEO you need.

SEO for WordPress

In this guide you will find some recommendations and tips that will make better the SEO of your online project.
There are many factors that influence SEO when a website is in a high position in the search engine Google. This guide is the place that I have worked for me and that I think are most important to your site minimally prepared to compete for the top positions in the search engine giant.
Getting your Site.

Preparing your Site in WordPress

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This guide assumes that you already have done your Keyword Research and have clearly defined your Web architecture, so I shall not detail these issues.

Before starting with the preparation of the Site I recommend having your website hosted with a hosting provider. As of WordPress will this guide, I recommend the popular Webempresa pack where it will be very easy to install and configure your Web and besides everything is ready for WordPress.

Once you have your Web listing recommend you give your website high on Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Thanks to these 2 free services that Google offers you will be able to have total control over everything that happens around your website.

Now that you have everything ready, you must edit the Robots.txt file. This file allows you to block indexing those sections you want to keep private. A recommended for this configuration would be:

User Agent: *
Disallow: / wp-admin /
Disallow: / wp-includes /
Disallow: / * trackback
Disallow: / wp-login /
Disallow: / * feed
Sitemap: http://tusitioweb.com/sitemap.xml

This would be an example of a standard file, you can customize it more, blocking both indexing folders, files and any folder or file containing specific word that interests you.

As you can see in the previous step I have marked in bold line the Sitemap, which now have to talk. A sitemap is simply a list of links pointing to your site URLs that are accessible to users and robots. In this case the Sitemap.xml talk, which is a file that contains all the pages that are part of your Web site. This file serves spiders of search engines for a more effective tracking of your website.

To install WordPress Sitemap.xml, to me personally, the plugin that I like most is Google XML Sitemaps, a very complete plugin that lets you install and configure your sitemap simple and effective way.

The next step would be to go to the .htaccess file to define your canonical domain and not have duplication because from the beginning, but as this SEO guide is based on WordPress, you do not get to edit this file, as the CMS itself allows us to do easy and simple way:

Enter the backoffice WordPress, select Settings >> General. Here are two options that should appear with the same URL (with or without www). Here I leave an example of how would this in my Blog:

Choose preferred domain in WordPress

Now you have chosen the preferred domain for your blog. I'll leave all the information on how to use canonical URLs.
Another important option, although by default comes, make sure you correctly unchecked is "Deters search engines index this site", this option should always be unchecked, you can be found at Settings >> Reading.

Finally, and to end this section, it always pays to check that everything you did was successful. For this you can use these tools:

Web-Sniffer or SEO consultants: Allows you to check the server headers. Very useful to quickly see if you have any errors in your headlines.
Robots.txt Analyzer: Analyzes the content of your Robot.txt file and displays the results.
Google Webmaster Tools: Set your preferred domain and checks that does not leave any mistakes in your GWMT panel. If you do not know how to do this do not worry (I did not know the first time xD), here I leave a complete guide.

Google Webmaster Tools: Submit your Sitemap. This is easy, just have to go Tracking >> Sitemaps and click where "Submit Sitemap" he says.

WordPress SEO configuration.

WordPress for SEO settings

First things first!

I'll help you set up WordPress optimal and correct way to position yourself in Settings and this follow these steps:

1. GENERAL: This section does not have to worry about filling options "Site Title" and "Short Description" since then I recommend using an SEO plugin that will make these two options remain disabled. Everything else you can set as you like (remember the URL options you set before).

2. WRITING: This section is the highlight of "Update Services". This service is used to notify different update services a new article you published on your website. These reports are very useful because you avisarás different services that there are changes on your site, and will be easier for your content indexed faster. To fill in here I have brought you the best services update, which are what I myself also use:
Update consulting services I recommend

1. To access update services that I recommend, use any of the following social buttons: Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus.
2. tweet
3. like
4. +1 Us

3. READING: This section highlights all as I mentioned above, remember, you must have unchecked the option "Deters search engines to index this site."

4. PERMANENT LINKS: I omitted paragraphs of comments and media, as they have no secret and must configure to your liking. Now let's set the permalinks section, one of the most important.

SEO for WordPress configuration

As you see in the picture there are different ways to configure your URLs, in my opinion your URLs settings depend on the type of blog you have, the refresh rate, etc.

1. Default option: do not recommend you use it in no time.
2. Day and Name: One of my favorites, this type of URL structure is very good when it comes to blogs where several articles are published daily.
3. Month Name: Another good option when, for example, on your blog upgrade only 1 or 2 times per week.
4. Numeric: This option is somewhat delicate, I do not recommend its use unless it is for something very special.
5. Name of Entry: If you have a personal blog where you you will publish tips, tricks and guides your refresh rate will be several monthly articles, this structure is the most appropriate.
6. Custom structure: You can customize the URL structure to your liking and according to your needs, but you need to use the right "labels" to set this up. Here I leave the "tags" that use:

• % Year%: Tag used to indicate the year.
• % Monthnum%: Indicates the number of the month (2 digits).
• % Day%: Indicates the day of the month (2 digits).
• % Hour%: Indicates the time of day (with 2 digits).
• % Post_id%: Used to place a unique identifier to post.
• % Postname%: Used to place a logical URL as a Title of the post.
• % Category%: Used to place a logical URL as the title of the category.
• % Author%: Allows you to display a logical URL as the title of author.

Finally, and as you can see in the picture above, you can also change the name of the base class and the base label that suits you.
Advanced Optimization WordPress.

WordPress SEO Optimization for Advanced

We entered the most advanced section of this manual, where you will learn to optimize your WordPress using a few plugins and configuring them correctly. The plugins you will use are:

WordPress SEO by Yoast
Will not go crazy with the plugins, with these 3 plugins will be enough for advanced configuration of WordPress
1. Configuring WordPress SEO by Yoast

To me it's the plugin I like, and despite what others say, it seems to me a fairly comprehensive Plugin, provided you know that is a Plugin and not a "robotic SEO Consultant".

Not to repeat guidance on how to properly configure this plugin, I'll leave you with a complete setup guide, Alejandro Caballero, who is the best I've read lately the net about this.

To contribute my bit to the configuration of this plugin, I will give you some interesting tips you should consider:

☛ Pages files, categories, pages and Tags:

Unless you have a very extensive Blog where you are going to publish dozens of articles a day, I do not recommend using pages all these sections, I only use such categories, and labels pages, but the pages of files do not use. Files for pages and files by date Author I have the attributes "noindex, follow" marked.

As I mentioned in previous lines, unless you have a blog with dozens of new content daily, using all those pages to sort the information I see unnecessary, as this would serve a very extensive page to improve usability.

Really these pages GoogleBot sees as linked pages, but are not necessary for the robot of Google find your content properly. You choose what's best for you!
These options listed in the plugin configuration in section titles and meta tags >> taxonomies and Other.

☛ "nofollow" attribute:

The option of applying the nofollow links to some sections of your page to those that really do not want to distribute to "Link Juice" attribute is something that has been talked about time and everyone has their opinion. My opinion is that if each of your pages have a link to the section "About Me" means that these distributing "Link Juice" to a page really do not want to give so much importance for the search engines, so the best option is to apply the nofollow attribute and stop transmitting the force to pages that really unimportant in the face of search engines, but if that interest to users. Privacy policy pages, contact, Equipment, etc, are best suited to implement this. In part ... Is this why the nofollow were created not?

☛ "nofollow" on links "Read More" to your Blog:

This "TIP" is very useful when you have a blog, since your blog page, categories, etc., will always be fragments of your recent items displayed per page.

If you look closely, you'll see that each of these fragments have 2 links (minimum) targeting the specific article, the link in the title and text or button read more.

Now consider, if you already have a link with the "anchor text" optimized (thanks to the title) to the article, why would you want another link with the anchor text Read more, pointing to the same place, and transmitting "Link Juice"?

Would not it be more effective to put the "nofollow" attribute to each of the "Read More" and let the Link Juice entire page of your blog is distributed by the links with anchor text optimized?
2. Setting up TinyMCE

TinyMCE is a simple and free plugin that lets you include content without programming in the categories of your blog, so avoid having the typical category page with a list of items.

With this Plugin you can include category information, photos, videos and everything you need to have a category page able to woo the user and dazzle Google.

Now that you can include your content in categories and have applied the trick "nofollow to Read More" and you can try to link categories from internal and external content 😉.
3. Knowing the advantages of WordPress Related Posts

Surely WordPress Related Posts, is one of the most used Plugins today to show the articles in each of your items. Using a plugin of this kind has two advantages:

Hold your readers: With this plugin, every one of the users who read one of your articles and finish reading, see related articles and many of them will click on any of them.
Internal links on each article: Another advantage is that we will have at the end of each article several links pointing to other sites on our Blog, you can do while not link, that link will come in handy to that page.

Speed ​​is a must for Googlebot and for users.

Speed ​​of Web load in WordPress

The fewer seconds later your website to load much better!

I recommend that before installing any plugin or make any changes, analyze the state of your project with this tool, with which perfectly know the current status of your Web, what mistakes have and how you can solve them.

Once solutions presented problems you Page Speed ​​Tools, I recommend the following plugins:

WP Super Cache
Kraken.io

1. Setting WP Super Cache

Before going to set this great Plugin used to implement the cache on your pages and make this work much faster.

Caching of pages it does is save your pages as static, this means that when a user arrives at your page will display the previously cached version, so your WordPress work much faster and pages take much less to load .

When a correct advanced configuration of this plugin, I suggest this fantastic manual Manuel Vicedo my friend, who tells you step by step configuration of this great Plugin.

2. Implementing Kraken.io

This tool is the best I've had lately and am very happy with the performance that is giving me. It is a tool that optimizes each of the images that you upload to your WordPress automatically, you reduce the weight of each image up to 80% without losing the quality of it. Weight reductions range from 10% to even 80%, depending on the image.

When you are using WordPress, you just have to install the plugin and automatically every image you upload will be automatically optimized. In fact if you go into Media >> Media Library, you will see a new column called "Kraked Size" where you will see reductions of each of your photographs appears.
As you see, they have simply been required 2 simple plugins in this section and have spoiled the loading speed of our website.
Amazing WordPress SEO tools.

SEO Tools for WordPress

Now that you have your heart ready to fight in the first pages of Google operations, will recommend a series of tools that you use in your everyday life that will help you improve and further optimize your SEO strategy and will give clues what your competition is doing.

I'll leave my TOP 5 SEO tools I use in my daily life:

Screaming Frog: An indispensable tool that will help you perform a scan of your website and find all kinds of error codes, meta tags, duplicate content, broken links, etc. Will serve to keep about your website.
SEMrush: One of my favorite tools and thanks to this tool you can test yourself against your competition and, most interestingly, you can see what your competition is doing well to do your (plus also has many other advanced features). Here I leave an interesting article related to the contents of competition.
Ahrefs: My favorite for monitoring the profile links of any web tool. A tool that you have to keep track of your links, anchor text, dofollow% - nofollow, etc.
Google tools: ready Here the familiar, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Google Trends and planner of Google Adwords keywords.
Excel: I could not finish this section without one of my favorite tools, simple yes, but effective.

Linkbuilding, reviews and other techniques that you must perform.

Reviews and Link Building for WordPress

In this section I'll list, which to me are the 3 best techniques to Link Building more powerful than you realize when you cast your blog or website on WordPress.
1. Start with exchanges.

When you're starting your blog, one of the best strategies you can do is find your own niche professionals and make 2 or 3 exchange links with them. This will help give a boost output to your blog and do not hurt at all. I am outspoken proponent of exchanges of links when you are starting out, provided there is no abuse of this technique. As always ... everything in excess is bad.

Alternatively, you may also create you a blog a part of yours where you are getting information about your same subject and providing it with authority, when you already have some content and a minimum of authority, can start making crusaders exchanges ie where your you want to place a link puts you and your will place the link to that blog from your blog that you have created support.

2. Make Networking and Play with your Content.

As always, when you create a blog, and you want to start them rank in search engines, you have to make yourself known, and the best way is to create content to meet the needs of users who are looking for that information related to your topic.  This way you earn links based on merit and you no longer need to pay for monthly link building services.

You can also use social media to spread your content and make yourself known to more people and create synergies with other professionals that will serve to increase your social impact and reach more people.

"The goal is that your content reaches the maximum of possible users INTERESTED IN YOUR THEME"

3. Use a strategy of Guest Blogging Effectively.

The Guest Blogging, a strategy that has to talk for a long time and has generated much controversy. Here I'll tell you as I do and what are the advantages of this strategy in one way or another.

Normally when you are about to make a guest article, there are many Webmasters that do not allow you to include links in the content and just let you put links in your article author box. For input and I recommend you do not waste time writing articles for blogs that do not allow you to embed links in the content, in the author box is not as effective as in a related content, therefore, that option will not it .

You must choose Blogs and Websites that allow you to embed at least one link in the content, these sites are the ones that interest you.

My recommendation has two important aspects:

Link to related content: I recommend embed 1 or 2 links related to the text you are writing and that text / content is useful for users who are going to read. One goal is that when you are reading them no other recourse left to click on the embedded link you to more information about that text. This will give a plus to your link! .. And you will get many clicks that link and that power.
Links in the box Author (NOFOLLOW): You've embedded the content or links that interest in the content of the article. Use your author box to embed links and to NOFOLLOW Branding, as this author box is repeated on many occasions that use the Guest Blogging.

So much for the guidance we have developed based on my experience of SEO for WordPress.

What other settings, use your techniques and strategies to improve WordPress SEO in your projects?