Keyword research is an approach to uncovering and inspecting search terms that people enter into search engines to get information about specific search terms. This data is repeatedly used for search engine optimization (SEO) or marketing.

Keywords are considered to be the foundation of SEO. It is very important to master the art of keyword research. Here, the cost of making a mistake is very high.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

If you publish an article on a subject matter that no one is looking for, that very article won’t receive any traffic from the search engines.

Keyword research enables you to discover the keywords that are best to target and provide perception into the queries that your audience is searching on Google. It helps you make sure there is a search demand for what you write about. If your page ranks up well in Google for its targeted keyword, you’ll consistently get all the targeted audiences.

Furthermore, keyword Research is very important as it can disclose vital information to grow your online business. Keyword research enables you to find the terms/topics people are actively searching for.

Types of Keywords

In general, there are two types of keywords, i.e. Shorttail and Longtail. You need to choose the keywords accordingly suitable balance of usage.

If you wish to promote targeted pages, like a blog post about baking a cake, you might consider using a long tail keyword. i.e. for a very specific blog post, you might consider using the Long tail keyword.

Similarly, if you wish to bring more traffic to your pages, you should give the Shorttail keyword a try.

How to find keyword ideas?

Keyword research is a critical aspect of SEO and content marketing. It involves identifying the words and phrases people use to search for information, products, or services related to your business. Here are some steps to do proper keyword research:

Brainstorm Seed Keywords

Brainstorming seed keywords is the first step in keyword research. You can start by thinking about the products, services, or information you offer and the problems you solve for your audience. Consider the main topics or themes that your website or content covers. Think about what your audience might be searching for and the language they use. Use general keywords and phrases that describe your niche, industry, or business.

For instance, if you run a gardening blog, some seed keywords might be “garden design,” “planting tips,” “vegetable gardening,” or “landscaping ideas.” Write down as many seed keywords as you can think of, and then use keyword research tools to expand your list.

Use keyword research tools

Keyword research tools can help you discover new keyword ideas, as well as provide data on search volume, competition, and other metrics. There are many keyword research tools present, including Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz. These tools enable you to enter a seed keyword and get a list of related keywords along with data on search volume, competition, and even suggested bid prices for advertising. You can use these tools to find long-tail keywords that are specific to your niche and have lower competition, which helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Moreover,  these tools can help you analyze the competition for each keyword you’re targeting, so you can identify high-authority websites ranking for those keywords and adjust your strategy accordingly. Overall, keyword research tools are an essential part of the keyword research process, providing valuable insights that can inform your content strategy and drive traffic to your website.

Analyze search intent

Analyzing search intent is a crucial part of keyword research. It’s important to understand why people are searching for a particular keyword and what they hope to find. Search intent can be classified into four categories: informational, navigational, transactional, and commercial investigation.

It’s essential to understand the intent behind the keywords you’re targeting. Are people looking for information, products, or services? Knowing this will help you create content that meets their needs and interests.

Assess competition

Assessing competition is a crucial aspect of keyword research, as it helps you understand the level of difficulty in ranking for a particular keyword. To assess competition, you should first look at the websites that are currently ranking for your target keyword.

One way to do this is to perform a search for your target keyword and analyze the top 10 results. Look at the domain authority of each website, the quality of their content, and the number and quality of backlinks they have. You can use tools such as Ahrefs or Moz to get more in-depth data on a website’s backlinks and authority.

If the websites ranking for your target keyword have high domain authority and a large number of quality backlinks, it may be difficult to rank for that keyword. However, if the top-ranking websites have lower domain authority and fewer backlinks, there may be an opportunity to rank for that keyword with good-quality content and strategic SEO tactics.

Another way to assess competition is to look at the search volume and cost-per-click (CPC) for your target keyword. High search volume and high CPC may indicate that the keyword is highly competitive, whereas low search volume and low CPC may indicate that the keyword is less competitive

Analyze the competition for each keyword you’re targeting. Are there high-authority websites ranking for those keywords? If so, it might be challenging to rank them. Look for keywords with lower competition, but still with decent search volume.

Choose long-tail keywords

Choosing long-tail keywords is an important part of keyword research, as they are often less competitive and more specific to your niche or industry. Long-tail keywords are longer phrases that contain more words and are usually more specific than shorter, more general keywords. For example, “best running shoes for women with flat feet” is a long-tail keyword, while “running shoes” is a more general keyword.

When choosing long-tail keywords, consider the search volume and competition for each keyword, as well as the intent behind the search. Long-tail keywords often have lower search volume than shorter keywords, but they are also more specific and targeted, which can result in higher conversion rates. Additionally, long-tail keywords can help you rank for multiple related keywords, which can increase your visibility and traffic.

To find long-tail keywords, use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz. These tools can help you identify relevant long-tail keywords that are specific to your niche or industry. Additionally, you can use Google autocomplete to generate ideas for long-tail keywords based on related search queries.

Long-tail keywords are more specific and have lower competition than generic keywords. They also tend to have higher conversion rates as they target more specific search intent.

Analyze and refine

Analyzing and refining your keyword strategy is an ongoing process that requires ongoing research, analysis, and optimization. After selecting a list of keywords, it’s important to analyze their performance and refine your strategy based on the results.

One way to analyze your keyword strategy is to track your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). Use tools such as Google Search Console or Ahrefs to monitor your keyword rankings and identify areas where you can improve. If you’re not ranking as high as you’d like, consider optimizing your content for the target keyword or building more quality backlinks to your website.

Another way to refine your keyword strategy is to analyze your competitors’ strategies. Look at the keywords they are targeting, the quality of their content, and the number and quality of their backlinks. Use this information to identify areas where you can improve and optimize your own strategy.

Keyword research is an ongoing process. Monitor your rankings and traffic and refine your strategy based on the data.

Therefore, proper keyword research involves brainstorming seed keywords, using keyword research tools, analyzing search intent, assessing competition, choosing long-tail keywords, organizing your keywords, and analyzing and refining your strategy continually.

Hope you enjoyed reading this article.

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Here are the Best Free WordPress SEO Plugins. Please check it out:

All in One SEO

All in one SEO is the initial WordPress SEO plugin that started in 2007. It is one of the most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin and marketing tools which enables you to improve your

website’s rankings and uncover new SEO-grown opportunities in a very short time.  The plugin enables you to set up website SEO for ongoing SEO optimization. It is very easy to use and is beginner-friendly. This WordPress SEO plugin features are highly optimized for major search engines including Google.

Major Features:

• Comes with unlimited keywords
• Helps with On-page SEO optimization
• Includes Smart Meta Title and Description
• Comes with SEO Knowledge Graph Support
• Consists of SEO Audit Checklist

More about All in One SEO

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins that has enabled millions of websites in the world to rank higher in Search engines.  It is the most used WordPress SEO plugin and is packed full of features, designed to help visitors and search engines to get the best of your website.  Yoast SEO comes with automated technical SEO improvements like meta tags, canonical URLs. The plugin enables you to give full control over site breadcrumbs.  This WordPress SEO plugin comes with an in-depth Schema.org integration that helps users to increase the chances of getting the best/high result.

Major Features:

• SEO and Readability Analysis
• Comes with Innovative Schema blocks
• Gives you cornerstone content and an internal linking feature
• Includes automated technical SEO improvements

More about Yoast SEO

Breadcrumb NavXT

Breadcrumb NavXt is the successor of the popular WordPress plugin Breadcrumb Navigation XT and is the best WordPress SEO plugin. This plugin was written from the ground up to be better than its ancestor. This WordPress SEO plugin generated locational breadcrumb trials for WordPress-powered websites or blogs. The plugin comes with breadcrumbs trials that are highly customizable. It consists of an administrative interface that makes setting options easy.  The WordPress SEO plugin comes with extensive breadcrumbs customization via a setting page with appropriate default values for most use cases.

Major Features:

• Highly WPML, Polylang Compatible
• Compatible with BuddyPress
• Comes with extensive breadcrumb customization control via a setting page.
• Includes Network admin settings page for managing bread crumb settings for all subsites.

More about Breadcrumb NavXT

Rank Math SEO

Rank Math was to enable all the website owners to get access to the tools needed to improve SEO and attract huge traffic to their websites. This WordPress SEO plugin comes with intelligent features bringing top SEO capabilities. It comes with many features. The smart automation features lend you the power of an entire SEO crew in just a matter of a few clicks. Rank Math is a well-thought-out design and comes with powerful features., and is a game-changing SEO plugin that will level the SEO playing field in your favor to gain huge traffic.

Major Features:

• Integrated with Google Schema Markup
• Uses AI to help users write content
• Comes with Optimized unlimited keywords
• Highly integrated with Google Search Console
• Includes Optimal Settings Pre-selected

More about Rank Math SEO

Flexy Breadcrumbs

Flexy Breadcrumb is a simple WordPress SEO plugin that comes with a robust breadcrumb menu system that is available for the WordPress site. This WordPress SEO plugin enables you to display breadcrumb navigation anywhere in a website via shortcodes. The plugin enables you to style, and format the text, links, and separators of breadcrumbs on your own. It comes with major features and is very SEO-friendly. This plugin enables users to change the breadcrumb separator.

Major Features:

• Enables to display of breadcrumb navigation
• Enables to set the font size of breadcrumb trial
• Comes with font Awesome icon picker for homes
• Includes color options of separator, text, links

More about Flexy Breadcrumb

Catch Breadcrumb

Catch Breadcrumb is a simple, feature-rich WordPress SEO plugin that adds seamless breadcrumbs navigation to your website. This plugin is very lightweight and comes with many features such as shortcode options, and separator that provides a responsive design, and more. It enables you to display the breadcrumb trail where ever you want to. This feature-rich plugin enables you to make your website elegant looking and user-friendly.

Major Features:

• Enables to make your website elegant looking
• Extremely User-friendly
• Comes with a responsive design

More about Catch Breadcrumb

Simple: Press

Simple: Press is an amazing WordPress SEO plugin that brings enterprise-class forum capabilities to your WordPress site. This WordPress plugin makes it easier to get your forum started with major powerful features. It is built for performance with custom tables, is tightly integrated into WordPress’s user and security model, and can scale up to thousands of users. This WordPress SEO plugin is fully integrated with WordPress registrations and logins and supports standard and multi-site versions of WordPress.

Major Features:

• Comes with a Powerful user group and permission system
• Includes unlimited topics in a forum
• Consists of Unlimited posts on any topics
• Comes with format posts with basic HTML
• Includes comprehensive administration options and settings

More about Simple:Press

WooCommerce Breadcrumbs

WooCommerce Breadcrumbs is a simple WordPress SEO Plugin that allows you to restyle WordPress breadcrumbs. This WordPress plugin enables you the ability to disable them completely so that they no longer display. It gives you the tools to change the HTML and wrap it around your breadcrumbs.

More about WooCommerce Breadcrumbs

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• Best Free WordPress themes for Filmmakers

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On the user’s end, it’s a simple process. Type something into Google, Yahoo, or Bing and, voila, a neatly prioritized list of results.
Behind the scenes, however, there’s tons of work happening to arrange those results. Search engines need help to seek out appropriate content.

That help comes from sitemaps.

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a map of your website that indexes relevant pages, so search engines can read them.

For example, at some moment when you Google “what is visual voicemail?” Google knows what pages to rank based on sitemaps, and perceived values of those URLs, so as to answer that question.
It might prioritize informative URLs like blog posts.
Alternatively, if you were to Google just “best business phone app”, Google would prioritize reviews and products.
You want people to seek out your site. But, you furthermore may want people to remain there and find it useful. the best way to ensure both is to optimize your sitemap.

Use WordPress Plugins to create Sitemaps Automatically

There are tons of great WordPress sites with plugins that can design and create webpages and automatically generate a sitemap for you.
WordPress plugins are apps that allow you to add new features and functionality to your website.
WordPress companies will have a strong understanding of SEO, so it’ll remove tons of the trial and error involved in producing your own sitemaps.

Consider Dynamic Sitemaps

Whenever your website changes, your sitemap will have to be updated to reflect those changes, ensuring bots are being directed to the latest content your website has to offer.
Doing this manually can be time-consuming, especially for larger sites.
Instead, you’ll create a dynamic sitemap.
A dynamic sitemap will automatically update your sitemap each time changes are made to indexed pages. It’s faster and uses fewer resources.
It’s an excellent option for large sites with numerous engagements.
Something like a CCaaS provider, for example, provides cloud-based communication software to third parties, via their own software.
Naturally, they will have frequent traffic from different businesses. they could use a dynamic sitemap to reflect the constant changes in user engagement, making them preferable in program rankings.

Test Your Sitemap

Before submitting your sitemap to search engines, run tests to ensure every index is accounted for. After testing, fix the issues.
This can be tricky. Search engines can only tell you that indexes aren’t being read. They can’t point to which of them aren’t being read, or why.

Try rearranging sitemaps based on specific criteria and submitting individually.
For example, resubmit your sitemap indexing pages with images, or video feeds. If those specific URLs have problems, you’ll deduce that the problem is with images or videos.

Quality Over Quantity

Search engines value high-quality pages.
High-quality pages have relevant, original content. Ideally, they will have images, videos, and high engagement (comments or reviews from users).
Low-quality pages are those that, while important, aren’t what users are searching for.
For example, let’s say your site provides cheap web hosting.
Your sitemap could index home pages, product pages, or blog posts – high-quality pages that people are useful to users.
You shouldn’t index an URL for checkout, or customer complaint page. Though they are related, they are not what users are searching for. If people are directed to those pages, they will presumably leave, increasing churn.
Including them in your sitemap will make search engines think the whole site is lower quality, rank it lower on search engine results.

Don’t Make Your Sitemap too large

There’s a limit to what search engines can handle.
The limit is high; 50,000 URLs per sitemap for Bing and Google, and most sites won’t reach it.
Even if you don’t, you ought to avoid extraneous URLs so there’s plenty of room for your sitemap to grow.
If you do reach that limit, split one large website into smaller sitemaps and submit them separately.

Don’t Trick the search engine

Sitemaps use timestamps to notice the last time a URL has changed. It’s a useful feature because it means any content updates will be registered by search engines and marked as up-to-date content.
Some people use this feature to trick search engines, changing the date so that it’s considered recent content and prioritized in search engine results.
This doesn’t work. Search engines have caught onto this and can check for any actual changes to URL content when its date has changed. If nothing important has changed, it can be flagged, and have its timestamp removed altogether.

So, any time you make modifications, only change the date if they’re substantial changes that add value.
For example, if you sell business communication tools, they’re likely to change as technology progresses. So, you’ll probably be adding new content to old URLs to keep up with the times. These are relevant changes and should be reflected within the modification date stamp.
If you’re going back to old URLs to make fairly trivial changes, like design and formatting, don’t change the date stamp. If you do, search engines will assume you’re trying to cheat, and consider them as lower quality.

Don’t Waste Crawl Budget

We mentioned before that there’s a limit to the number of URLs an inquiry engine can read per sitemap.
This is referred to as a crawl budget.
As it’s limited, be selective about which URLs you would like to be recognized.
You can use a “no index” tag to prevent certain URLs from being read. You’d use this for utility pages that you simply don’t want showing up in search results, like payment portals.

You’re telling search engines to ignore certain URLs, but it still counts toward your overall crawl budget, so consider removing them altogether.
Keeping them in with a no-index tag will preserve link equity. You’re telling the system it’s a crucial part of your website, with links to other parts of your site, but won’t be useful in search results.

Points to Ponder

SEO practices are ongoing. You’re trying to get noticed in an ever-shifting mass of online content. As such, your content, and sitemaps are going to change as you continue to optimize.
So, don’t expect to get perfect results overnight. respond to research and feedback and stay consistent with your good SEO practices.
Do this, and you’re giving your website the best possible chance because it steps into the wider world.

The post 7 Best SEO Practices for Sitemap Optimization appeared first on Acme Themes Blog.

PageSpeed Insights speed report:

GTMetrix.com speed report:

For any website, these two metrics indicate how fast is a particular website’s contents are opening on the screen. You might be wondering what those metrics exactly are. In this article, we are going to cover the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and First Meaningful Paint (MFP) in detail. Also, we discuss 4 methods to reduce Paint Times for your WordPress site in order to improve your PageSpeed Insights score.

What is First Contentful Paint (FCP)?

First contentful paint (FCP) is the first content that is rendered on the screen when users browse the website. It measures the time from navigation to the time when the browser renders the first piece of content defined in the Document Object Model (DOM). This can be text, an image or canvas render.

In the case of the WordPress website, the header elements are the first content the begin render. Visitor see the site logo and the navigation menu.

There are two phases in the First Contentful Paint. First Paint, and Contentful Paint.

First Paint – First Paint is triggered when a render is detected in the browser. This could be something as subtle and uninformative as a change in the background color. The issue with this timing is that first paints can be triggered relatively early on in the page load, while not necessarily delivering any content or information to the user for consumption.

Components of websites can load in a staggered fashion and while a background color may be painted fast, actual content/interactivity may take a longer time to load.

Contentful Paint – First Contentful Paint is triggered when the first bit of content from the Document Object Model (DOM) is painted. This can be text, an image or canvas render defined in the DOM.

Because the focus is on content, the idea is that this metric gives you an idea of when your user receives consumable information such as text, visuals, etc.

The different phases of First Paint and Contentful Paint is shown in the image below:

What is First Meaningful Paint (FMP)?

When a website’s contents are fully loaded that users are looking for, that is called First Meaningful Paint.  This is the time at which the user feels that the primary content of the page is visible. As the name suggests after the first meaningful paint render, it giver meaningful information to the users.

The meaningful information differs from site to site but the general practice currently is to designate the rendering of valuable content known as hero elements. Hero elements include marquees, images, and headings that are likely to be more meaningful to a user when they visit the site, making them good flags for the FMP timing.

For a blog website, hero elements could be blog posts with featured images, and for social sites, hero elements could be timelines, users profile.

The following image shows a fully loaded website of acme themes.

How to Speed First Contentful Paint (FCP) and First Meaningful Paint (FMP)

To improve First Contentful Paint, speed up the download time of resources or do less work that blocks the browser from rendering DOM content. The following are ways to improve the website’s speed.

1. Reduce the number of render-blocking external CSS and scripts upon which the page depends.

This is the first way you can reduce the paint time of your website by eliminating the render-blocking resources. Render block is anything that is getting in the ways of rendering the Document Object Model (DOM). A CSS file is treated as a render-blocking resource meaning the browser won’t render any processed content until the CSSOM is constructed. Make sure to keep your CSS lean, deliver it as quickly as possible, and use media types and queries to unblock rendering.

2. Use HTTP Caching

HTTP caching is another way os reducing the paint time of any websites. When someone visits a website, everything the site needs to display and operate has to come from somewhere. All the text, images, CSS styles, scripts, media files, and so on must be retrieved by the browser for display or execution.

You can give the browser choices about where it can retrieve a resource from, and that can make a big difference in your page’s load speed.

3. Minify and Compress text-based assets

Your webpages consist of text-based HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. If you can’t eliminate a file because it is essential, then you need to reduce the file size as much as possible. There are ways you can reduce the file size, wither minify or compress.

• Minification: Minification refers to the process of removing unnecessary or redundant data without affecting how the resource is processed by the browser – e.g. code comments and formatting, removing unused code, using shorter variable and function names, and so on.
• Compression: Compression if the process of detecting patterns and duplication in the text file and encodes them much more efficiently.

Both of these techniques significantly reduce the paint time.

4. Optimize JavaScript

The JavaScript file is the heaviest file compared to other files for a website. Images, for instance, must be decoded, but JavaScript must be parsed, compiled, and then finally executed, taking up lots of valuable time. You can use different methods such as Tree Shaking and Code Splitting to optimize your JavaScript file.

• Tree Shaking: Tree shaking is a term commonly used within a JavaScript context to describe the removal of dead code.
• Code Splitting: It is the process of splitting up the code into bite-sized chunks and moving the chunks that aren’t critical out of the head of your site, reducing the first paint time.

Summary

Talking about reducing the page load time, this is just one perspective (technical solution) that speed testing tools consider. There are various other factors that affect website loading speed.

Both First Contentful Paint and First Meaningful Paint should be less than a second for the best user experience. Because these metrics are user-centered metrics that can tell you a lot about how long your visitors are waiting for content. So, you can follow the above-listed methods to reduce FCP and FMP. Check out your site’s page speed at Google’s PageSpeed Insights and find out the status of your website.

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When it comes to driving traffic to the website, there are two options, organic traffic and paid traffic. Organic traffic comes from proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid traffic comes from Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign. To simply understand, organic traffic is FREE and paid traffic, of course, costs you.

People often get confused about which method to use for traffic. But it is important that before making a decision, you must know what are the differences, pros, and cons of implementing SEO and PPC. In this article, I am going to cover in-depth information about SEO and PPC. 

First off, let’s look at the image that shows Google’s organic and paid results. The paid result generally shows on the top depending upon the Ad Rank – a combination of your bid, auction-time ad quality (including expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience), the Ad Rank thresholds, the context of the person’s search (location, device, time of search, search terms, the other ads and search results on the page, and other user signals and attributes), and the expected impact of extensions and other ad formatting. 

When people search on Google, text ads can appear above or below the search results. Only up to four ads are eligible to show above the search results.  

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the website’s visibility in order to drive organic traffic from search engines. SEO involves lots of different tasks from the technical improvement of the website to content creation. Search Engine Optimization is a slow and step by step process that you have to do continuous work to get a result. It may take months to start getting traffic depending upon the keyword difficulty. 

• Keyword Difficulty – In SEO terms, Keyword Difficulty is a metric that tells how hard is a particular keyword to rank on the search engines. The higher the value, the harder it is to compete with others using that keyword. So, one needs to focus on low competition keywords in order to win the game. 
• Search Volume – Search Volume is the amount of query and search of a particular key-phrase made in the search engine in a certain period of time.  As an SEO person, unless you are working for your own keywords, you need to focus on those keywords which have higher search volume. 

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized. On-page SEO is something that you do within the website like a technical improvement, content creation, content format, etc.

15 On-Page SEO Techniques:

1. 1. Proper Keyword Research
   2. Optimize Page Titles
   3. SEO Friendly URL Structure
   4. Optimize Meta Description
   5. Optimizing Media Files
   6. Proper Content Formatting
   7. Take Care of Website Speed
   8. Mobile-First Design (Responsive)
   9. Content SEO
   10. Maintain Keyword Density
   11. Work in LSI Keyword
   12. Maintaining Headline Hierarchy
   13. Proper Internal Linking
   14. Use Outbound Link
   15. Developing High-Quality Content

Read About Full Guide To On-Page SEO

 Off-Page SEO 

Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is also an important tactic to bring traffic, build the trust and relevancy of the website. Off-page SEO is performed outside the website. 

Off-Page SEO technique sometimes called off-site SEO techniques – is a technique of improving the ranking of the website in the Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs). Basically, it is a type of promoting a website across all the internet channels. 

10 Off-Page SEO Techniques:

• Social Media Promotion
• Email Marketing
• Question and Answer Submission
• Influencer Marketing
• Link Building and Link Exchange
• Image, Video, Document Submission
•  Social Bookmarking
• Blog Commenting
• Local Business Listing

Read About Full Guide To Off-Page SEO

There is another term in SEO called Technical SEO. Technical SEO refers to the optimization techniques related to the technical part of the website like the structure of the website, technology used to build the website and so on.

Technical SEO doesn’t have any standard definition, but there are some SEO experts who think technical SEO is something that provides a beneficial platform for making your content rank and brings in success. It ensures that your website is complying with all the guidelines set by the search engines.  Technical SEO falls under the domain of the On-Page SEO services framework, but it has been majorly complicated by implying that it belongs to some other domain.

SEO Pros

• SEO traffic is FREE
• SEO traffic is considered to be more stable
• SEO leads to better user experience
• SEO is a primary source of leads
• SEO brings higher close rates
• SEO promotes better cost management
• SEO builds a better brand credibility
• SEO takes you ahead of the competition in the long term

SEO Cons

• SEO takes a long time
• SEO results in low conversion compared to PPC
• SEO has no guarantee for #1-page results
• You can not have full control over users
• You may get a slap from the Algorithms

What is Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click is the paid marketing model where advertisers pay certain money on the basis of ads click. PPC is the process of buying visitors through different platforms. One of the best examples of PPC is search engine advertising using Google AdWords. As the name suggests, advertisers have to pay according to the click they get.

Pay-per-Click marketing is seen by many as one of the best ways of promoting a business online. It is considered as the 1st logical step to be taken by marketers and business owners in testing keywords profitability and ROI before they tried their hands-on Search Engine Optimization or SEO. But just like SEO, PPC has its share of advantages and disadvantages. Before you take the plunge into PPC, it is a good idea to know its pros and cons first so you can make the most of it.

PPC Pros

• PPC gives you instant result
• PPC results in a high conversion rate
• PPC does not involve technical tasks related to website
• You can control over your ads
• You can target specific (Geographical, Demographical) audience
• Free from search engine algorithms updates
• PPC Gives You Measurable Results

PPC Cons

• It is NOT FREE
• PPC Costs high – more you pay more you get the results
• You get traffic as long as your campaign runs
• PPC can be quite complicated

SEO vs PPC Comparison

My Suggestion!

Well, we have come to the conclusion now. We know how PPC and SEO work in the business. But when it comes to picking up the option, both are great options. Just you need to do is figuring out what are your objectives. For long term business, it is quite a good option to invest in SEO, but for instant sales and time-specific business, you better go for PPC option. What did you think about this article? Comment down below and follows our other WordPress, SEO, Traffic, Tips and Tricks articles visit out Acme Themes Blog. Other Posts:

• 15+ On-Page SEO Techniques You Must Implement to Rank Higher
• 13 Essential SEO Tips For WordPress Website
• 10 Reasons Why You Should Build Your Site in WordPress

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The post SEO vs PPC – Search Engine Optimization & Pay Per Click Comparison appeared first on Acme Themes Blog.

Search Engine Optimization task is easier for WordPress websites. Because the dedicated WordPress plugin makes it easier for SEO guide. In our previous article, we have listed 10+ Essential WordPress Plugins for a brand new website. Which you must have to install at any cost.

In this post, we are going to discuss WordPress SEO Tips for a Beginner. Because these are fundamental task we should do prior to performing advanced Search Engine Optimization.

Read- 15+ Actionable On-Page SEO Techniques for WordPress Website

13 WordPress SEO Tips for a Beginner

1) Setup Proper Permalink Structure

When it comes to SEO, permalink plays a great role in ranking. Permalink is the website permanent URL seen in the search bar of any browser. For the WordPress website, you have different choices of how your permalink will look like. But, among them recommended setting for best SEO practice is setting www.yourdomain.com/%postname%/ as shown in the fig. below.

One good reason for setting permalink as “postname” is easy to guess what is post is all about and the keyword can also be seen in URL.

Tips

• Try to keep the URL as short as possible
• Try to include the main keyword in the URL

2) Optimize Images Before Upload

Media like images and videos are important parts of any website. Maintaining proper media setting and size is very important for any website. Media along with text adds extra value to your content. But if you do not maintain media properly, it ruins your website.

From the SEO perspective, optimizing images is one of the best practices. Because of large-sized image slows down the website and ultimately degrades the website performance. One important fact to understand is a high-quality image is not necessarily be of large size. We can maintain high resolution with the optimum size as well. So, optimize images before uploading them to the website.

Tips

• Try to keep the image size below 200 KB
• Do not forget to rename each and every image with proper keyword
• Also, add title, description and also caption while uploading
• You can use image compression websites like tinypng.com

3) Manage Plugins

As well know, WordPress is a plugin rich platform. There are thousands of plugin developers who developed various plugins for different purposes.  But installing random and unnecessary plugins adds extra burden to the website. Broken and unauthorized plugins degrade the speed of the website and ultimately it creates a negative impact on ranking. So, use only needed and trusted plugin on your WordPress website.

Tips

• Carefully look rating and last update date of the plugin
• Do not forget to check the compatibility
• Install only essential plugins and delete rest of the plugins

4) Install Cache Plugin

Installing a cache plugin is another important SEO setting for the WordPress website. A cache plugin generates static HTML pages of your website and saves it on your server. Each time a user tries to access your website, your caching plugin serves up the lighter HTML page instead of processing the heavy WordPress PHP scripts. This allows the caching plugin to tremendously improve your page loading time.

Tips

• Top 3 cache plugins are WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache
• Follow full documentation of the cache setup

5) Choose Proper Theme

While choosing a WordPress theme, you should take care of two things, speed and responsiveness. There are thousands of WordPress themes available but the one with high speed, well-coded responsive theme is what we need to install. Fast loading and responsive theme are best for both search engines and users.

Tips

• Choose a theme that is not only appealing visually but also fast and responsive
• Keep checking Google Search Console if anything is wrong with the theme code and get the support from developers

6) Create a Sitemap.xml and Robots.txt

Sitemap.xml file makes it easy for Bing, Google, Yahoo, and other search engines to crawl your website. This is a file through which search engines find different pages and posts of your website. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. If you have installed SEO plugins like Yoast SEO then it automatically generated an XML file for your website. Otherwise, you have to install a Google XML sitemap plugin.

Likewise, robots.txt is also called the robots exclusion protocol, which is a standard used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots. It defines which areas of a website crawlers are allowed to search and also defines certain areas not to crawl.

These two files are very important files for any website. You can check these files of Acme Themes

• Sitemap.xml
• Robots.txt

7) Use Right SEO Plugin

We recommend using the right SEO plugin in WordPress SEO Tips for Beginner Tips.

The right SEO plugin makes easy for the WordPress website to maintain most of the SEO guidelines. Two of the most popular SEO plugins are Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack.

These plugins guides you to insert the proper amount of characters in title tag, body, and meta descriptions. Also, there are lots of essential settings required for Seach Engine Optimization.

8) Setup Google Analytics and Google Search Console

For a new website, setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console is the first step task. Google Analytics provides in-depth knowledge of visitors, source of traffic, the platform that visitors using, geography for visitors, session and other valuable insights that can help you to build the success strategy for your business.

On the other hand, Google Search Console (GSC) helps you to monitor, maintain and troubleshoot the website’s visibility in Google Search Result Pages. If you have a particular issue with a website then you can identify through Google Search Console.

So, you must set up Google Analytics for traffic analysis and Google Search Console for fixing the website issue.

Tips

• Setup both www and non-www version of the website in Google Analytics and Google Search Console
• Actively monitor and track the GA and GSC to keep your website healthy

9) Use CDN

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network and as the name suggests, it is the delivery of the content based on the geographical location. The core concept of CDN is serving content from the nearest possible physical location in order to increase the speed of the website.

The CDN server closest to a user is known as the “edge server”. When a user requests content from a website served through a CDN, they’re connected to the closest edge server, ensuring the best online experience possible.

Read – 10 Common Off-Page SEO Techniques

10) Maintain Proper Internal Link

In the list of WordPress SEO Tips for a Beginner, we have Internal Linking.

Internal linking is the process of linking one content to another according to the context in the same website. Internal linking is one of the important factors for SEO perspective as well as the user’s perspective. Internal linking helps in navigating the different contextual pages within the website.

Tips

• Link to only relevant pages

11) Keep Checking Broken Links

Having broken links on the website is a bad experience for users and so does for search engines. So, time and again you have to keep checking if there exist any broken or dead links on the website. A broken link can be fixed manually by analyzing the Broken Link Checker plugin or using the different broken link checker tools.

12) Make Your Content Shareable

Writing helpful and quality content is a key thing but also making it easily sharable is equally important. It is because once the audiences find it very helpful, they can share with their social media profiles and groups. So, is your content is easily sharable then that multiplies your visitors. More share means more reach, more reach ultimately improves in better ranking.

Tips

• Have the easy to share social media plugins

13) Write Quality and Detailed Content

Coming up in our last point of WordPress SEO tips for a beginner, we have quality content. You have to develop quality content Because content is king in SEO.

According to the study, thoroughly written content tends to rank higher in the search engines. So, you should write long and detailed content to improve ranking.

The character limit of the post or pages are as follows-

• For Title – Max 75 Character
• For Meta Description – Max 155 Character
• Body content should be 1000+ Words for better SEO perspective

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Final Words

Above mentioned SEO tips for WordPress websites are very basic but significant for maintaining proper SEO.  These are the tips and tricks to better rank in the search engines after setting up a brand new WordPress website. These are things to consider or improve before performing any SEO action.

Other Posts:

• Types of Website Traffic 
• 20+ Best Magazine WordPress Themes 
• Essential Basic Setup for Brand New WordPress Website

The post 13 Essential WordPress SEO Tips for a Beginner appeared first on Acme Themes Blog.