Month: April 2022

Finding expired domains that have quality backlinks

Leave a Comment / SEO / By / April 26, 2022

Picking a domain is one of the most important things to do when you begin a blog. It is difficult to find the right domain, and many people regret making that wrong choice later.

This post will show you how I picked expired domains to host my blogs.

To get started on building a website, there are three options.

1. Create a new domain for your blog. This is what most people do. This is how you start from scratch.

2. Purchase an existing domain. This is another option — it can be profitable, especially if it has a website attached, but it could also be very costly.

3. Register an old/deleted domain This is the one I use and it has worked well for me. It is inexpensive and gives you an SEO advantage. Once your domain is a few months old, Google will pick up the backlinks from the previous owner, giving you a head start and better rankings.

What is an expired domain name?

If the domain owner fails to pay for the domain registration, the domain becomes expired. The domain host makes it inactive, making such domains dropped or deleted. Website owners are usually notified that their domain names will soon expire. The domain owner can renew the domain during a redemption grace period. The domain name is then available for stakes in auctions that sell domains. The domain name is deleted if there is no interest.

Use SEO SpyGlass for domain selection

In January 2021, I had the idea of starting a blog on sales funnels. Although the search term is popular with over 8,000 searches per month, anyone who wants to sell products must have a sales funnel.

I visited ExpiredDomains.net. This website is free to use and does not charge anything. It earns when users register domains through affiliate links. Entering the keyword “funnel” I set the filter to “Deleted Domains” and then sorted the results using “DP”, which stands for domain pop. This is the number domains linking to the domain. You can also sort the results using “BL”, which represents the number of Majestic backlinks.

Although these numbers are often incorrect, they can be a good starting point.

This is how you get a screen.

Tip: You can adjust the Column Manager settings in order to add or delete the metrics that you are interested. You can hover your mouse over stats to see tooltips. These will provide explanations and links to the major marketplaces that sell domain name. It is possible to find the domain age and status, as well as whether a domain is currently available for a particular domain name extension.

These are the key metrics that you should use to verify the domain.

LE: Domain name length in characters

BL: The number of backlinks.

Domain pop.

ABY: The date that domain was first mentioned in Archives.org.

CF/TF – Majestic metrics Citation Flow, and Trust flow (similar to Domain Authority or Page Authority both from Moz).

Notification

SEOs typically search for domains that have been expired and have a lot of referring sites. However, just because a domain is old doesn’t mean that it will rank highly on Google right away, Be aware of spammy backlinks. Also, make sure that the domain isn’t being used to create a PBN. In this instance, be on the lookout for 301 links giving link juice to another website. To see what content has been published on the domain, check the web archive. To monetize prospects, check if the domain hasn’t been blocked from Google Adsense. Your new website may not rank on the domain if it has been subject to penalties in the past.

These best practices are important when choosing a domain name to host your website.

  1. It’s easy to type.
  2. Make sure to keep the domain name brief.
  3. Avoid numbers and hyphens
  4. Choose memorable names that are associated with your brand.
  5. It is important to choose the correct domain name extension, especially if you are targeting a specific region.

The keyword will determine the availability of an expired domain. You will find expired domains that have great backlinks on Google for certain keywords, but not domains that have spam links. It doesn’t matter what, you will almost certainly find a domain with a great name and strong backlinks.

You can now take the domain and use SEO SpyGlass to verify it.

The message will say that SEO SpyGlass can’t find this web page. This is because the domain you are referring to has expired. A site search on Google would return zero results. To continue, click on “Yes”.

This is what I found when I first did the research:

FunnelXpert.com – Brandable domain, 304 backlinks to 74 referring sites. This seems like a great choice.

Next, I did some manual work to check the web archive using the Wayback Machine. The website search history dates back to 2012 and looked like this: An internet marketing company in Australia and India.

The domain was $8.99, and I built a nice blog from it. For it, I wrote detailed posts like this one about how to build an online course from your WordPress blog.

This is what I have gotten out of it so far, and it was totally worth the investment.

Recently, I launched an online course about it.

Another example is to pick an expired domain

Let’s take a look at another example in real-time. “Paleo diet” is the keyword.

The first domain I chose was “PaleoDiet411.com”. It has 150 backlinks from 26 domains.

Next, I check the domain using SEO SpyGlass. The Linking Domains tab is next:

It looks good, and even has a.edu backlink.

Spam would indicate links to domains in Chinese or Arabic.

Now, I’m going to the Linked pages tab.

It’s clear that links point to multiple pages. This is a good thing. If I wanted to use this domain, I would have to re-create the pages on the new blog. This way, the link juice is not lost.

Domains that contain off-topic pages such as iPhone or other brand stuff will be disqualified.

Archive.org is another thing you should check:

Verify that the domain is not being redirected or used for spamming.

It is also a good idea to check the InLink Rank of any potential domain (SEO PowerSuite’s alternative to Google’s PageRank).

Here are some more tips to help you buy an expired domain.

If you are looking to purchase an auction website, you can also follow this procedure. It is likely that you will be disappointed by the purchase of such a domain. Although it has many backlinks, most of them come from spam websites using Chinese anchor text.

Avoid expired domains with hundreds or more links pointing to the homepage only. These domains will be penalized unless your plan is to build massive links to individual pages.

We’ll send you one SEO guide per week if you want to learn more about SEO.

This method has also been used to find domains that have expired in foreign languages. It is also very useful for creating backlinks. Two Hungarian domains were found. The first would translate into seduction.net and the second to giftisland.com.

These domains in foreign languages require fewer backlinks to rank highly. You can even get away without link directory links. They will still rank well and receive traffic. This is due to the lower competition in foreign languages.

Great backlinks can be forged from domains that have expired

SEO SpyGlass has a second useful use that is very similar to the broken linking method.

  1. You can enter a domain that has expired in your niche, or one that is still being offered.
  2. Take a look at the backlinks that point to this domain.
  3. Analyze backlinks to see if you can “steal “…”.
  4. You can contact the domain owner that links to the expired domain. Tell them that they are linking to an expired site and ask them to instead link to your resource.

Jason Acidre has shared a free template for outreach that you can modify to help with your link building.

Subject: We found a broken link at [Site Name]

Hey, [First Name],

This link to [Site Name] with 404 page doesn’t work anymore

[insert URL for broken link]

This was found through the useful links section of [topic] on their resource page:

[insert URL to their resources page]

I also thought this content from [Your Site] would perfectly fit your resource list [another comment on why your content should be on their list]. This should be useful to your visitors:

[insert URL for your page]

If you need any assistance, let me know.

While you will have to go through some junk to find valuable backlinks, this is a proven method to start link building.

Have you ever bought domains that are no longer in use?

This is how you can find expired domains, and which ones to use for your next SEO project. These recommendations should help you in your search for backlinks.

Do you remember buying expired domains in order to take advantage of their high traffic or backlinks? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

How to Write a SEO-Friendly Article on a Blog

Leave a Comment / Content Marketing / By / April 25, 2022

Organic search traffic is the most powerful growth driver for blogs. SEO can provide recurring traffic without incurring any direct costs.

How can you ensure that your articles are SEO-friendly. These are 8 easy steps to increase your chances of being ranked high in the SERPs.

I have mentioned some software tools that can be used to help here and offered free alternatives when possible.

Let’s begin!

Eight steps to creating an SEO-friendly Article

These are our 8 steps. Continue scrolling to see the details.

  1. Keyword research can help you identify your target keywords
  2. Use a content optimization tool to plan and write
  3. For a high organic CTR, write a compelling title
  4. Find out how to win this featured snippet
  5. Optimize your internal linking
  6. Editor for readability, correctness and conciseness
  7. Optimize your images
  8. Keep your content updated as often as possible

1. Keyword research can help you identify your target keywords

Keyword research is a must if you want to increase organic search traffic. To optimize for Google searches, you need to find out what people are looking for.

These are the three main things you need to pay attention to in this step.

Volume

This is the average monthly search volume for a keyword. This will allow you to determine your potential for ranking #1. Is it worth it?

Are you seeing a trend that is increasing or decreasing in popularity? Is the trend seasonal? Here’s an example:

Difficulty

What is the difficulty of ranking for this keyword? It may not be possible to rank for highly-competitive keywords if you are on a site that is newer and has few backlinks.

You might instead try to find simpler alternatives. Take the above example and instead of ranking for “pumpkin recipes”, we might rank for something niche like “pumpkin protein balls”.

It still receives 1,800 searches per month, and there is a growing trend. However, we are much more likely to rank on the first page.

Learn more: How to use keyword difficulty technology

Relevance

If a keyword is not relevant to your business, it’s pointless trying to rank for it. It’s not enough to rank for keywords that are high volume and low difficulty. You must be able sell your product or services to these readers. This content is supposed to have a return on investment.

While it’s fine to search for informational queries with low intent, you should have a strategy to convert those visitors. They might be the right target market but are not looking to purchase. You could attempt to convert them by offering a micro-conversion, such as an email signup.

Keyword research tools

KWFinder is a great tool for anyone with a limited budget. This is the tool that I used to display the above search trends examples. This tool is part of the Mangools toolset, which includes a rank tracker and reporting tool as well as a backlink monitor. It is a more affordable alternative to Ahrefs, with monthly fees starting at $30.

Here are some tools that you can use to get started even if you don’t have the budget.

  • AnswerThePublic
  • Google autocomplete
  • Google Search Console (if your traffic is already established)
  • Google Trends

These free tools won’t give you accurate keyword volumes, trends or difficulty, but they’re a lot better than nothing if your content budget is tight.

Find out more about the best ways to search keywords for SEO.

2. Use a content optimization tool to plan and write

Let’s start with a definition.

An SEO tool that analyzes pages at the top of the search engine results page and provides data about what’s working in the SERP is called a content optimization tool.

It’s not necessary to use these tools to rank. However, it can help speed up the process and make it a lot simpler. Even if you are not an SEO expert. If you’re having a hard time coming up with blog topics, I suggest you check out Article Market – buy pre-written articles on any keyword or topic.

Here are some steps I will demonstrate using Frase. You can also see other similar tools here.

Frase will first ask you to create a new file and to enter your target keyword.

Determine the best length/word count

Different searches will require different levels and types of content detail. Some, such as “How old is the Queen?” require more detail. Some, like “How old is the Queen?” can be answered with a short paragraph. Some questions, such as “How to cook pumpkin”, will require a longer post with detailed instructions.

You can see the current ranking of your content to determine how long it should be. While you can manually check, content optimization tools (including Frase), will do it automatically.

You can remove outliers from your analysis if you think there are too many posts (e.g., a very long or short post).

Plan your structure & outline

We will once again start with the top-ranking results to outline our content structure.

The SERP Explorer allows you to see which subheadings and headings your competitors use in their content. You can either look here for inspiration or click on any one of the headings to save it as an outline.

This stage is where I would be asking questions such as:

  • What number of pumpkin recipes should I include in my recipe? 5? 10? 25?
  • What level of detail is needed for each recipe?
  • Do I need to categorize recipes? E.g. healthy pumpkin recipes, quick pumpkin recipes etc.
  • Do you need any additional information before or after the list? (Example: H2 for “ingredients required for pumpkin recipes”

You should be able combine your expertise in the topic and current SERPs to create a solid plan for your next blog post.

What keywords should you include?

These recommendations will be generated by all content optimization tools based on current SERP. These tools will show you the keywords you should include and give you a frequency recommendation. You can then tick them off as needed. It looks like this in Frase, with the keywords on the right sidebar.

You can, and should, override their recommendations by using common sense when necessary.

Don’t compromise quality and readability if the tool tells you to add something that doesn’t make sense. Although this software category is extremely useful, there are sometimes exceptions.

What questions are you going to answer?

Consider whether there are any questions that you don’t know the answer to. These could be included as subheadings or added to your article with an FAQ section.

Frase has a tab called “Questions” in the right-vertical navigation. You can also check the People Also Ask section of a Google search or look through Quora & Reddit threads to find common questions.

3. Find out how to win this featured snippet

Before hitting ‘publish,’ it is worth checking the SERP features. Particularly, the featured snippets. What is the best way to win a featured snippet?

A featured snippet is a way to jumpfrog from any position on the first page to #1.

These are the most common featured snippet formats that you will find:

  • Paragraphs
  • Tables
  • Listes
  • Videos

My experience is that lists and paragraphs are the most popular.

It’s best to try to reverse engineer the way things are currently working. Look at the current snippet and figure out what it is.

Here’s a quick example. Here’s a quick example: I have the snippet of ‘best keyword complexity software’.

You’d notice that the page has a simple numbered listing underneath a keyword-rich H2. To steal this snippet, someone should also structure their content in the same way.

4. For a high organic CTR, write a compelling title

For many reasons, organic clickthrough-rates are an important metric. You will get more traffic if you have more people clicking on your result.

Moreover, more people clicking on your search result sends positive signals back to Google. Google discovers that people are searching for your resource. This can result in higher rankings.

How do you create a memorable title? While there are many tips for writing titles, this is the one I use when it comes to meta titles for SEO.

The model provides examples and categories of titles that can be modified to make them more appealing.

Let’s think of some examples. Let’s say our original title was “Our Favorite Pumpkin Recipes of All Time”. Let’s see how each modifier could be applied to test a new title.

Modifier Neue Title Speed Pumpkin Recipes You Can Prep In Under 10 Minutes Volume 50+ Recipes for Every Taste Price 10 Pumpkin Recipes You Can Make For Less Than $10 Freshness Our Favorite Pumpkin Recipes for Fall 2022

Consider whether any of these suggestions are relevant to your content and then try to increase your organic CTR.

5. Add internal links

For a great user experience, internal links are essential. They show search engines which pages have the most importance and are related.

Consider which internal links will you add to your new blog post and which posts might link to it.

This Google search operator is my preferred method for finding opportunities to link internally.

site:marketingarsenal.io “keyword”

You could search for “site:mywebsite.com Pumpkin” to find relevant posts that could link to your article on new pumpkin recipes.

I aim to add at least 2 or 3 internal links per post. However, don’t force them to do so. Only if your content is relevant. This will make your post more searchable and rank higher.

These are 3 tips to add internal links.

  • Be descriptive. The user and the search engine should know where they lead to. Avoid using generic words like “here” or “read more”.
  • Internal linking could be used to help the user move down the funnel. Is there a logical next article that someone might be interested in?
  • It could have an impact on how important the internal link is. To highlight the importance of certain pages, you might choose to place them in your footer and nav.

6. Correctness, readability, conciseness and clarity should be checked

Good writing is essential for SEO-friendly blog posts. Search engines are responsible for delivering content that is:

  • Answers the query of the searcher
  • Provides a great user experience

Search engines will continue to rank your page if you provide a great user experience. It takes many things to create a great user experience. Great writing is one of them. This means that your writing should be:

  • It is easy to understand and read (even for non-native speakers).
  • Correct spelling, punctuation and grammar
  • Concise, but thorough & practical

Grammarly is an excellent tool for correctness. Hemingway is a great tool for SEO content writing. It makes sure that your writing is clear and easy to understand. It is free to use, and you don’t even need to log in.

7. Optimize your images

It is unlikely that a great SEO-friendly article will be a huge wall of text. You will likely include visuals in your content.

You can make those images SEO-friendly by doing some things.

These are two quick image optimization tips that can be used in blog posts.

Image compression file sizes

You need to find the right balance between quality & performance. You will notice a significant improvement in your page load speed and page performance if you use a lot of high-quality images.

Smush and other compression plugins can be helpful if you are using WordPress as your CMS. You could also use Compress JPEG, a free tool.

Consider using next-gen image formats

New image formats have been developed in recent years that compress images faster and preserve better quality with smaller file sizes. WebP is the most popular. ShortPixel, an image optimization plugin for WordPress, can help you do this. You can also use the convertor tools by simply typing ‘jpegtowebp’ or whatever format you are converting to.

Note In 2022 there may be some Safari users, and perhaps others, who still use browsers that don’t support WebP. This is something you should consider when selecting the ideal file format.

It doesn’t matter what you do, it will help to be aware of the importance of avoiding large image files and being mindful of this.

8. Keep your content updated as often as possible

Content doesn’t always stay relevant, no matter how annoying it may be. Things change, facts are inaccurate or out of date, search intent and trends change, and content is posted by competitors.

It’s possible that you could reap the benefits of updating outdated content every now and again.

There are many factors that can affect the frequency of content updates. Content in YMYL niches such as financial advice or medical advice will need to be updated frequently. The same applies to news and trends such as coronavirus news.

It is common to have enough time once every six to twelve months. Maybe less. SEO is always about “it depends”.

There are a few ways you can monitor your old content:

  • Check Google Analytics & Search Console data
  • To see if your rankings are falling, use a SERP tracker
  • ClickFlow is a paid content decay tool that could be worth your while if you require additional ClickFlow features.

SEO for Bloggers (9 Tricks To Get Your Blog Posts To Rank)

Leave a Comment / SEO / By / April 25, 2022

It is crucial to get search engines, particularly Google, to find your blog. You’re missing out a large audience if you don’t.

SEO (search engine optimization) can be difficult to understand at first. It’s actually not that difficult. The most important thing in SEO is to use common sense and apply a strict process to your content.

SEO was a term that meant we were writing for search engines rather than humans a few years back. SEO strategies such as repeatedly repeating the same keyword several times was a surefire way to rank high in Google. However, this is no longer true.

SEO best practices today are directly related to how people consume your content. High-ranking content should be well-written and SEO-friendly in most cases.

How do you do that?

SEO is complex. I will only cover the basics. Remember that SEO won’t make your blog a success overnight. SEO is not a quick way to get paid traffic. You need to take the time to plan your SEO strategy and build a good reputation with Google.

SEO is a process that takes six to twelve months to see results. You should set realistic expectations when you first start SEO. SEO can be a great investment if it is done correctly.

SEO is Important

GrowthBadger reports that organic search accounts for 60% of all traffic. This percentage could be higher in some niches.

Traffic is essential. Traffic is the key to a blog. Search is a large source of traffic so you should focus on optimizing your website for search engines. You shouldn’t rely on search traffic alone.

Search traffic can also be used to make decisions. Searchers are looking for a solution to a problem.

Facebook is different. You’re not looking for something, but you want to connect with your family and friends. Social media has a lower reach and more difficult to convert, so conversion rates are often much lower.

Organic search by niche Source: GrowthBadger

Google: How does it work?

Google may be the largest database. Google uses “spiders”, or “bots”, to access all content on your website. It has scanned millions (or even billions) of webpages to index them.

Google uses over 200 metrics to score your content and compare it with other blogs once it has captured the content.

SEO is not a way to compete against Google but with other bloggers.

There are only two things that you can improve on.

  1. Content on-page
  2. Backlinks

These two categories encompass everything related to SEO.

On-Page Content

Google evaluates your content and compares it to other content, as I have already mentioned.

But it wasn’t always like this. Google began its search engine years ago by determining how important an article was based on the number and quality of the links it provided to other webpages. The web was created by linking content to another content. The more interlinks there are, the more important an article must be.

This was a difficult game to play. To get content to rank, there were many bad SEO strategies. Webmasters might buy backlinks from blogs.

Google made the decision to improve user experience in 2008 (content, navigation, and other links). Google would count towards a website’s ranking in a Google Search. Google also receives feedback from site visitors to determine the content’s quality. Google views your content the same way a person would.

When creating content, two factors are more important than ever:

  • Intent – What visitors expect to see on your website should be in line with their expectations.
  • User Experience — How does your site compare to other sites? Is your site difficult to navigate for the average user? Are popups interrupting the user’s reading?

The user experience can refer to many things, including the theme you choose, the navigation menu and the links within your content.

You should first focus on page content if you are just starting out. This is because you have complete control.

SEO: Why is intent important?

SEO writing is very different from writing for other media. Google understands that readers are looking for solutions to their problems.

These are the two most important questions to ask when writing a blog post:

  • How informative is your content?
  • It is transactional!

These should be your first concern when it comes to the purpose of your blog.

It’s the paradox of SEO. The SEO content you create is at odds with the information–> transactional content.

The organic search funnel is similar to paid traffic. If a visitor searches Google and arrives at your site, it means they are somewhere in the purchasing process. The intent of your blog should correspond to this point.

This means that your content must match the intent of keywords entered into Google.

My favorite example is “What is a Mortgage” and “What’s the Best Mortgage Rate.” They both search for mortgages but their intent is very different.

A search for “what is the best mortgage rate” might lead someone to a different point in the sales funnel than someone looking for “what is the best mortgage rate”.

Are you unsure of how transactional or informational your content should be? Google gives clues.

Always check the search results for keywords you are trying to rank for. This doesn’t mean you have to duplicate the content. You should still get a sense of what your readers want to see on your site. Follow up with similar information.

Walt Disney stated about his cartoons that you should “pluss” your content, which means constantly improving it to make it better.

This does not mean that you should make your content more long than other articles. You should instead add content or information that creates value for the reader’s place in the sales funnel process.

In order to answer readers’ questions, it is a good idea to answer them all in your article or link directly to other articles on the website.

You Want to Learn More About SEO?

My guide to SEO Writing is available.

Why are backlinks important?

Backlinks, or links to your site, are another aspect of SEO. These links are more important than the content of your blog.

You want links that are “followed”, rather than “nofollow”. You should still take every link. Even if Google doesn’t count it, a link is still a link.

Link velocity refers to the speed at which a blog post’s number of links grows. Google considers blog posts more important if they grow faster. Google interprets a high link velocity as more people liking your article and finding it worthy of sharing.

The placement of backlinks is another factor that is often overlooked. It is crucial to ensure that your backlinks are relevant. It is not always possible to get links from every source. A link within a blog post can be more valuable than one in a forum discussion.

Backlinks should be obtained from respected sites in your niche. This is crucial. This is crucial.

Here is a quick overview of how to get backlinks.

  • Guest posting on other blogs
  • Guest host on podcasts
  • Contact broken links blogs to see if they can be replaced
  • Write an article about your niche by conducting a thorough survey.
  • Make an infographic that can be shared
  • Use HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
  • For other businesses, write testimonials
  • Create authoritative long-form content

It is important to ensure that the URL can be easily shared, not just for social media but also for backlinks. It is more difficult to share URLs that are too long.

Side note: You may believe that you cannot rank for keywords if you don’t have backlinks. This is not always true. In several cases, I have been able rank for keywords of low- or moderate difficulty with no backlinks.

Backlinks are not easy to obtain, as you can see. These links can be difficult to obtain, especially for those just starting out.

My opinion is that you must first create a strong foundation for your blog before you can get backlinks. For the remainder of this article, I will be focusing on on-page SEO techniques.

Google ranks a website using more than 200 metrics. Let me touch on the technical SEO aspects of your WordPress website.

Let’s talk about the ones that give you the most bang for your buck.

Check out my article on SEO writing for tips and tricks to improve your writing.

1. Choose from a variety of WordPress hosting options

Larry’s Take

WP Engine is the web hosting company I turn to when creating a WordPress blog. WP Engine is a WordPress hosting company, unlike many other providers. If you need a host to host your email, you will have to search elsewhere. WP Engine offers many WordPress-specific features, including caching. A content delivery network (CDN), is also included automatically. WP Engine is the right choice if you are looking for reliable, fast and reliable hosting for your WordPress blog.

WP Engine Review

Your choice of web hosting provider is the most important. Slow web-hosting providers can have a ripple effect on all other aspects of your website. WP Engine is my choice for speed, and it’s a very affordable option. (If you are interested, I also discuss other options that might be more suitable for you in my article “Best WordPress Hosting for Bloggers”.

2. Increase the speed of your WordPress website

Larry’s Take

Page load speed is critical for SEO and users. This plugin will speed up your website’s loading time by compressing your files and using a CDN. WP Rocket is my favorite WordPress plugin to speed up your blog.

Slower websites will rank lower. Google says that one second can reduce conversion rates by 70%. So make sure you make it count!

GTmetrix allows you to test your blog. GTmetrix offers a free tool to show you how long it takes for your WordPress site to load.

How fast should your website load? The ideal speed is between five and three seconds. You should be concerned if your blog takes more than seven seconds for loading.

WordPress can be a resource hog. WordPress is slowest if you have too many plugins. Plugins are the best way to increase WordPress’ functionality. You must find a balance.

You should be aware that not all plugins will work equally. Some plugins are more well-developed than others.

WP Rocket is a great tool to speed up WordPress.

WP Rocket is a plugin that compresses, combines and caches your content. This reduces the time it takes for your blog to load.

Improved load times is a whole article in itself. I’ll be discussing it more in detail at some point.

3. Choose from a variety of WordPress themes

Larry’s Take

All of my blogs use this recommended WordPress theme. Although it’s not the fastest WordPress theme, it is SEO-friendly and comes with many child themes that you can use with your blog. The Genesis Pro version comes with WP Engine. However, it also includes a version that supports Gutenberg blocks.

Pre-Made Templates 41 WooCommerce Support Yes Version Free Yes Price Free – $360/year

Find out More

Too many bloggers have used free or cheap WordPress themes out of fear of losing their budget. Avoid making the same mistake.

The choice of WordPress theme will have a major impact on the design and functionality of your website. It can also make or break your blog.

Your branding will suffer and your Google ranking will be affected if your blog looks too generic. You also need a site that is easy to navigate and easy to rank and index your content by Google.

Based on my experience, StudioPress Genesis is the best theme for SEO.

Genesis is SEO-friendly and uses schema markup to help Google find your webpage content. This WordPress theme is highly recommended and I use it on my blog as well as every other WordPress blog that I have created.

4. The Content Above the Fold

Google scans your content like a reader. Google renders web pages exactly as they appear in a browser. It’s important to consider things such as the layout, navigation, and location of buttons.

Your content “above” the fold is one of the most important aspects. This refers to what you see when you first view a webpage. Visitors are less likely to see content further down on a webpage, so it is not surprising.

You must be your best self on a first date. You should make sure that the content is above the fold and encourage the reader to continue reading. This is known as “open looping.”

These are some examples of an open loop:

  • To indicate that there is more content below, use a visual cue like an arrow.
  • Use a table with contents
  • Ask the reader a question which is answered below the fold
  • Uploading an image that is only partially visible above the fold

Remember that what is above the fold on a desktop device may be different than what is above the fold on your mobile device.

5. More informational than transactional

Organic search can be viewed as renting search results.

Google is not your company, and Google has the right to change its algorithm at any moment. Would you expect organic traffic to be just as important as paid traffic if you were in Google’s shoes? It is not.

It is in the best interests of both the shareholders and the company to make money.

Paid traffic is more transactional than organic. Google only wants paid traffic that converts, while Google values the value of the content to the reader more than organic traffic. Transactions are secondary.

This allows you to get more traffic from paid search than organic. Organic search requires that you engage your reader with your content, and make it educational.

You can make any outcome you wish from the visitor with a transaction.

  • Sign up to receive an email newsletter
  • Place an order
  • Clicking on an affiliate hyperlink

You can create an article that is too transactional, but Google will not rank it. You must make content to please Google.

6. Images from the Compress Blog

Larry’s Take

ShortPixel can preserve similar quality images to your photos, but only take up a fraction the disk space. This not only speeds up the loading of your pages, but also helps with SEO. ShortPixel is my favorite image optimization tool. They provide both lossy compression and lossless compression options.

While blog images can look great on a blog, they can also slow down page loading times. My experience shows that images can consume 70% of your download time.

You need to optimize images, just like WP Rocket, which optimizes HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

ShortPixel is the WordPress plugin that I recommend. It is easy to use and can compress images up to 90% in certain cases. Image optimization with ShortPixel supports both lossy and lossless compression options. They are compatible with all the most popular image formats, including JPG, PNG and GIF as well as the latest WebP.

7. SEOPress WordPress Plugin

Larry’s Take

SEOPress, a competing WordPress plugin to Yoast SEO is lighter and offers more functionality. SEOPress Pro is the best version. It includes structured data types, breadcrumbs and Google Page Speed. You can also rewrite URLs.

Platform WordPress Price FREE – $118 Per Year

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I used the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, but it has become too complicated. Yoast has lost its identity and values as a company. Recently, I switched to SEOPress. I find it lighter. It is my opinion, the best SEO plugin.

SEOPress is not only a tool for creating content that is correct, but also a tool to share your content on social media.

It has all the functionality of Yoast SEO, but it also allows you to create a predefined schema or add your own customer schema for any blog posts.

8. Linking to Content on Your Site

Larry’s Take

LinkWhisper, a WordPress plugin that helps with SEO, can be used to help you make sure your internal links are effective. It automatically suggests links to add, and it finds older posts that require more linking. Although I like the idea of the tool, the execution is a little lacking, especially in terms of ease of use. LinkWhisper was sometimes difficult to use.

Platform WordPress Price $77 – $167 Per Year

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You have full control of your blog so you can link to other articles on your site. Consider the content you create as a blueprint of the web, with pages interlinked between each other.

You might consider writing a lot of articles on core topics. Google places your blog in specific niches so you need to expand your articles and cover them in detail.

LinkWhisper can be used to automate this process as well as add internal backlinking. It is something I do manually.

9. Make short WordPress Slugs

Avoid using long WordPress URL slugs. My experience has shown that the WordPress URL slug should be focused on the main topic of the blog post. I also recommend that you remove any stop words. Google with BERT today understands complete sentences. However, removing stop words in URLs makes them look cleaner.

Shared via social media, not only in SERP.

It is easier to read and makes it more concise when you look at the URL. Because it is often used in search results, I chose to leave the “for” stop word for this particular post.

This tip also applies to URLs that do not include the category name or dates. Although it is possible to use categories in large sites, this can be a good idea in larger sites.

Although it is recommended for most blogs, I prefer the post name URL structure. This is the best SEO-friendly URL for WordPress.

Summary

This article focuses on optimizing your blog for search engine optimization.

Check out my SEO course for writers if you are interested in learning more. Instead of getting too technical about SEO and building backlinks, my course targets writers.