Old web pages were flat, with no user interaction. Nowadays there are many content managers who create dynamic web pages in a very short time. In this article I will talk about the WordPress content manager and how to improve SEO.
WORDPRESS
WordPress is a content manager very used for its convenience and ease of working on it. It uses php language and has an associated database. So is like a dragon with 2 heads, one related to the other. Therefore, a web page created in WordPress has basically two parts:
- The files part. A website is exactly like a folder on your computer. Inside that folder is an index.php file that is the one that loads first and gives the commands to show all the content, but there are also other folders as can be seen in the Fig. 1. WordPress works mostly with 3 folders: wp-admin (administration zone), wp-content (content zone) and wp-includes( plugin zone and diverse material). You can view those files from your browser through your hosting provider or using FTP programs.
- The database. There are different types of databases. Normally you don’t need to enter it, but there may be specific moments when it is necessary. Depending on your hosting provider you can see it one way or another but usually phpmyadmin is used as the editor of that database. What you’re going to see are tables in a database, and those tables store web page information such as comments, published articles, pages, terms, relationships, taxonomy, users, etc.
SEO
SEO, you’ve probably heard about that. It comes from SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, and that’s just, a way to make your website as friendly and optimized as possible for indexing robots to track and add to index.
One of the most used plugins to improve SEO on your WordPress website is YOAST SEO and let’s see how to work with it. First you have to install the YOAST SEO plugin. Once this is done and being active we can already work with it on our articles.
Readability analysis
The readability analysis will tell you how readable the text you’ve written is. Use an algorithm that determines how readable your text is. It is based on several sections and tells you for each article the problems that there may be (in red), results to improve (in orange) and good results (in green, what we are looking for). That is, use the colors of a traffic light to help you improve your WordPress SEO.
- Subheading distribution: when one section of your text is longer than 300 words and is not separated by any subheadings.
- Transition words: Is important that your text have transition words.
- Flesch Reading Ease: the plugin do a test, which is considered fairly difficult to read your article. Is important to make short sentences to improve readability.
- Passive voice: is important to add passive voice but not too much.
- Consecutive sentences: Your sentences have enough variety.
- Paragraph length: Your paragraphs must be not too long.
- Sentence length: is important to have short sentences.
In conclusion, all the sections are explained in a help that incorporates the plugin itself and in many cases you get an EYE that allows you to see in detail what is not right. After assessing all the parameters a face will tell you if you are doing well, moderately good or wrong.
SEO analysis
Three colors are used to guide you: green, you are doing well; orange, you need to improve; and red, there are problems. You can see these variables:
- Internal links: if not internal links appear in your page, make sure to add some.
- Keyphrase density: The focus keyphrase is recommended minimum of 5 times for a text.
- Meta description length: you have to specified a meta description for your article or page. Search engines will display copy from the page instead. Meta description is what google shows when you search for a word or words in the engine. It’s a summary of the article, and you can usually choose the first phase of it. Therefore, using Yoast SEO you’ll find it in the final part of the article while you’re editing it. It always suggests that you put a meta description and in SEO analysis is extremely important.
- Keyphrase in subheading: you must to use more keyphrases or synonyms in your higher-level subheadings.
- Outbound links: Links to external pages are recommended.
- Keyphrase in introduction: you have to put your keyphrase in introduction.
- Keyphrase length: is important to choose a short keyphrase.
- Previously used keyphrase: you must to not used your keyphrase before, your article must be original.
- Image alt attributes: remember to write alt attributes in your images.
- Text length: The text must be more than 300 words. But don’t make a book that demoralizes the person who wants to see an article online and doesn’t have enough time.
- Keyphrase in title: The exact match of the focus keyphrase appears at the beginning of the SEO title.
- SEO title width: The title must be adequately wide.
- Keyphrase in slug: This is the part that identifies an item in the navigation bar.
Summary
Therefore, it is extremely important you work the SEO of your articles in WordPress. That will make the google indexer or search engine positioned your page as high as possible in the results index, and that will help to increase your page’s visits without a doubt. The content is the most important thing but as the one who will index the page is a robot, make its work simple and help you.
In the end you should try to have all your items with a green light (Fig. 4).
