Are you looking for the easiest way to fix the ‘this site can’t be reached’ error in WordPress?
You can get this error on any website, including third-party sites and your own WordPress blog. If this error shows up on your own site, then it’s a big problem as it can stop you from accessing the admin area.
In this article, we will show you how to easily fix the ‘this site can’t be reached’ error.
What Is the ‘This Site Can’t Be Reached’ Error in WordPress?
There are lots of common WordPress errors, but ‘this site can’t be reached’ is especially frustrating because the message is vague, and it doesn’t tell you what to do next.
In the worst-case scenario, this error can stop you from visiting your own website. That will make it difficult to test your WordPress site, add new content, install security updates, and make other important changes.
Usually, the error means that something is stopping the browser from accessing the destination website. This could be anything from an internet outage, to a misconfigured network, or even an issue with your DNS settings.
In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at why you may be seeing this error, including exploring the different error codes. When you encounter a problem, you’ll typically want to solve that problem as quickly as possible.
If you’re unsure what’s causing the issue, then we recommend starting with step one since it’s the easiest. However, if you prefer to jump straight to a particular step, then you can use the quick links below.
When troubleshooting an error, it’s smart to try the simplest fix first. To start, check that you’re currently connected to the internet.
If there is no obvious problem with the connection, then the next step is restarting your internet connection. Similar to switching your computer off and on, resetting your entire connection can fix all kinds of small problems and get you back on track.
We recommend disconnecting your router from its power supply and then waiting at least 1 minute before reconnecting it. You can then try visiting the website again to see whether this has removed the error message.
To solve this problem, most modern web browsers store files, data, and other content from the websites you visit. The browser can then simply load this cached content from the local computer, rather than re-downloading it from a remote server.
This helps websites to load faster, but it can sometimes cause problems. For example, cached content can become outdated or get corrupted over time.
Thankfully, it’s easy to clear the browser cache. If you’re using Google Chrome, then simply click on the three-dotted icon in the upper-right corner.
Then, select ‘More Tools,’ followed by ‘Clear Browsing Data….’
In the popup that appears, check the box next to ‘Cached images and files.’
Google Chrome will clear the entire cache by default. Another option is to open the ‘Time Range’ dropdown and tell Chrome to only clear content that was cached during a particular time period.
Once you’ve done that, you can check or uncheck any of the other options. For example, the ‘Browsing History’ checkbox is selected by default, but you can uncheck this box if you want to keep your browsing history.
When you’re ready, click on ‘Clear data.’
Google Chrome will now empty the browser cache. Once it’s finished, try revisiting the website to check whether you’re still getting the ‘this site can’t be reached’ error.
Antivirus and firewall plugins can keep you safe, but they can also block websites that are perfectly trustworthy.
This might be a problem with how your security plugins and software are configured. For example, your settings may be too strict.
Other times, the website may be set up in a way that triggers your security software even if that website doesn’t pose a real threat.
For instance, if you’re still building your WordPress website, then you might not have an SSL certificate yet. Many firewalls will stop you from visiting a site that doesn’t have a valid certificate, so this may trigger the error.
To test whether a firewall or antivirus program is blocking the connection, simply disable that software. Then, visit the website that was showing the ‘this site can’t be reached’ error.
If the site loads without a problem, then you’ll know that the antivirus program or firewall was to blame.
If this is the case, then we don’t recommend disabling it completely.
Instead, it’s smart to check the software’s settings to see whether you can whitelist a particular website. In this way, you can access the site while still protecting yourself against hackers, viruses, and other digital threats.
If you’re not sure where to find these settings, then try checking the software’s official documentation, forums, or social media pages for more information. Depending on your software license, you may also be able to contact customer support or the developer for help.
For more tips on protecting yourself against hackers without triggering the ‘this site can’t be reached’ error, please see our ultimate WordPress security guide.
4. Reset Your Virtual Private Network
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) can protect your privacy, keep your information secure, and allow you to visit sites that are blocked or censored in your location.
However, if you’re using a VPN then your connection may drop, or the VPN may not recognize the IP address that you’re using. Some VPNs will reconnect automatically if they encounter a problem, but you may have to reconnect manually.
If you get the ‘site can’t be reached’ error when using a VPN, then we recommend checking your provider’s website or documentation for instructions on how to reset your VPN.
5. Disable Your Proxy Server
A proxy server sits between you and the websites you’re trying to visit. Many people use these ‘middle-man’ servers as an extra layer of security, or to cache data.
If your proxy server can’t connect to a website, then you’ll see the ‘site can’t be reached’ error. You may also get this error if you can’t connect to the proxy server in the first place.
In this case, the easiest fix is to simply disable the proxy server. If you’re on a Mac, then go ahead and click the ‘Apple’ icon in the toolbar.
Then, select ‘System Preferences…’
In the popup that appears, click on ‘Network.’
In the left-hand menu, select the network where you want to disable the proxy settings.
Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Advanced…’ button.
In the popup, simply select the ‘Proxies’ tab.
You can now uncheck all of the protocols listed under ‘Select a protocol to configure.’
Finally, click on the ‘OK’ button to save your changes. You can now try visiting the website to see whether you can access it without any problems.
6. Flush Your DNS cache
Similar to the browser cache, your computer stores the IP addresses of all the websites you visit. This means the browser doesn’t have to look up the same IP address multiple times.
This helps websites to load faster, but the cached DNS information can get outdated. This may trigger a ‘site can’t be reached’ error, particularly if the site has moved to a new domain name or you’ve moved WordPress to a new host.
By flushing your DNS cache, you’ll get the very latest information about a website, including its new domain name or address.
To help you out, we’ve created a complete guide on how to clear your DNS cache for Mac, Windows, and Google Chrome.
7. Change Your DNS Server
DNS is like the internet’s phone book. Instead of listing people’s names and phone numbers, the DNS lists domain names and their corresponding IP addresses.
Your internet service provider assigns you a DNS server automatically. However, sometimes this server may be unavailable, or it might have the wrong information.
If your browser doesn’t have a site’s correct address, then you’ll get a ‘this site can’t be reached’ error.
You can solve this problem by switching to a different public DNS server, such as Google Public DNS. You can use any public server you want, but just be aware that the DNS provider will be able to see all the websites you visit.
With that being said, it’s smart to research your DNS provider carefully.
Once you’ve found a DNS server that you want to use, it’s time to switch to that server. On Mac, this means selecting the ‘Apple’ icon in the toolbar and then clicking on the ‘System preferences…’ option.
In the popup that appears, select ‘Network’ and then click on the ‘Advanced…’ button.
Once you’ve done that, open the ‘DNS’ tab.
In the bottom-left corner, click on the ‘+’ button.
This adds a new DNS server with the address 0.0.0.0.
You can now go ahead and type in the numbers for the public server that you want to use.
After that, simply click on the ‘OK’ button to save your changes.
This takes you back to the previous popup.
To start using your new DNS server, click on the ‘Apply’ button.
Finally, you’re ready to visit the website to see whether this has removed the error message.
8. Reset the TCP/IP Settings
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is a set of protocols that control how data is sent and received over the internet.
If there’s a problem with how your internet connection is configured, then renewing your TCP and IP protocol will return the connection to its default settings, which may solve the problem.
To reset the TCP/IP settings on Mac, select the ‘Apple’ icon in the toolbar and then click on ‘System Preferences…’
In the popup that appears, select ‘Network’ and then click on the ‘Advanced…’ button. Once you’ve done that, open the ‘TCP/IP’ tab.
On this screen, go ahead and click on the ‘Renew DHCP Lease’ button.
That’s it. You can now try visiting the website or blog, to check whether you still get the same ‘site can’t be reached’ error.
What Causes ‘This Site Can’t Be Reached’ Error in WordPress?
There are a few different reasons why you may get this error message, but the code that appears next to the message can help you pinpoint the cause.
Let’s take a closer look at these codes and what they mean for your WordPress blog.
ERR_CONNECTION_RESET
Sometimes, you’ll see an ERR_CONNECTION_RESET code next to the ‘site can’t be reached’ error. Most of the time, this means there’s a problem with your internet connection.
The most obvious problem is an internet outage, but there’s also software and settings that can interfere with the connection and trigger an ERR_CONNECTION_RESET. For example, VPNs and proxy servers can sometimes cause this error code.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
Domain Name System (DNS) lets you connect to websites by matching a user-friendly domain name such as www.wpbeginner.com, with the ID of the server where this website is stored.
You’ll get this error code if Google Chrome can’t resolve the domain name or address for the website that you’re trying to access.
Since it can’t connect, the browser assumes that the domain name doesn’t exist. It then shows a DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN error code, where the NXDOMAIN part of the error stands for ‘non-existent domain. ‘
If you see this error code next to the ‘site can’t be reached’ message, then it usually means there’s a problem with how your DNS settings are configured.
Do you want to add wholesale pricing in WooCommerce for bulk purchases and wholesale buyers?
Wholesale pricing can make your online store more attractive to retailers that need to place large orders which can greatly increase the average order value. By default, WooCommerce only allows you to set normal pricing for a product.
In this article, we will show you how to easily set up WooCommerce wholesale pricing for customers who want to place bulk orders.
Why Setup WooCommerce Wholesale Pricing in WordPress?
If you have enough resources and staff to manage really large orders, then you may want to set up wholesale pricing for your online store.
By offering a discount on bulk orders, you can make your store much more attractive to companies or organizations who need to buy in bulk.
Customers who place large orders can have a big impact on your profits and help you grow a successful WooCommerce store, so it makes sense to offer wholesale pricing.
You can also use wholesale pricing to offer discounts to dropshipping businesses. By partnering with a successful dropshipping business, you can set up another source of revenue without having to deal with consumers directly. This means more sales without much extra effort.
By default, WooCommerce doesn’t allow you to offer different pricing based on quantity or the customer’s user role.
This means your wholesale customers will need to manually negotiate prices and discounts to place their orders. This takes a lot of time and effort, and will often cause delays which can affect the customer experience.
If you don’t offer automated discounts for wholesale customers, then those customers will eventually look elsewhere.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add wholesale pricing in WooCommerce so customers can place big orders, fast.
How to Setup the WooCommerce Wholesale Suite Plugin
For this guide, we’ll be using the WooCommerce Wholesale Suite. It is a suite of three plugins that allow you to sell wholesale products on your WooCommerce store and manage your wholesale customers.
You can now enter your email address and license key.
You’ll find the license key by logging into your Wholesale Suite account. This information is also included in your purchase confirmation email.
After adding this information, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.
By default, Wholesale Suite creates a new role called ‘Wholesale Customer’ when activated. This role allows you to offer a discount to all your wholesale clients at once, without impacting other customers.
By default, anyone who has a ‘Wholesale Customer’ role will see the discounted pricing when they log into their account.
To create a ‘Wholesale Customer’ account, go to Users » Add New.
Here, enter all the information you want to use such as the username and email address. Be sure to enter your customer’s business email address so that they will get a notification their account has been created for them.
Then, just open the ‘Role’ dropdown and choose ‘Wholesale Customer.’
After that, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the ‘Add New User’ button.
You can now create more wholesale customer accounts simply by repeating the process described above.
How to Add Wholesale Pricing in WooCommerce
Once you’ve created some wholesale accounts, the next step is offering them an exclusive discount.
One option is to set up wholesale pricing for one or more WooCommerce products. Simply create a new product or open an existing product for editing.
Then, scroll to the ‘Product Data’ section. If you haven’t already, then you can set the ‘Regular Price’ which will be offered to everyone who visits your WordPress website. You can also set a sale price.
After that, scroll to the ‘Wholesale Prices’ section and open the ‘Discount Type’ dropdown. You can now choose to offer wholesale customers a fixed discount or a percentage discount.
If you select ‘Percentage,’ then you can type an amount into the ‘Discount (%)’ field. Wholesale Suite will then work out the price and show the value in US dollars.
If you choose ‘Fixed’ from the dropdown menu instead, then you can simply type the amount into the ‘Wholesale Price’ field.
After that, scroll to the ‘Wholesale Minimum Order Quantity’ section. Here, type in the minimum number of items a customer must purchase to unlock the wholesale pricing discount.
This is all you need to add wholesale pricing, so you may want to go ahead and update or publish the product.
Now, any wholesaler who is logged into their account will see the discounted price next to the product’s regular price.
However, there are some extra things you can tweak for a product’s wholesale pricing.
Setting up Quantity Based Wholesale Pricing
You can encourage wholesale customers to buy more units by offering tiered discounts. For example, you might offer a 25% discount if the customer buys at least 50 units and a 50% discount if they buy more than 100 units.
To create tiered discounts, check the following box: ‘Enable further wholesale pricing discounts based on quantity purchased?’
This adds some new settings where you set the starting and ending quantity, plus the discount you want to offer.
After entering this information, click on ‘Add Quantity Discount Rule.’
You can add more tiers to your pricing simply by following the process described above.
Enforce a Minimum Order for Wholesale Customers
By default, customers with the wholesale role can buy less than the minimum number of products. If they do, they won’t qualify for the wholesale discount.
You may want to limit wholesale customers from buying less than the minimum, just like other users. This can improve the customer experience by making sure wholesalers always get their special wholesale discount.
It can also be useful if you’ve made exceptions for a customer because they buy in bulk. For example, you may not offer free shipping because of high postage costs. However, you might be willing to pay the extra fees if they buy in bulk.
In this case, you’ll want to stop the customer from placing smaller orders and taking advantage of the shipping exception.
To strictly enforce the minimum order quantity for this particular product, scroll to the ‘Wholesale Order Quantity Step’ section and then type a ‘1’ into the field.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to save your changes to the product.
After that, go to Wholesale »Roles in the WordPress dashboard. You can now hover over the ‘Wholesale Customer’ role and click on the ‘Edit’ link when it appears.
On this screen, check the following box: ‘Prevent purchase if wholesale condition is not met.’
Once you’ve done that, just click on the ‘Edit Wholesale Role’ button to save your changes.
Now, anyone with the ‘Wholesale Customer’ role won’t be able to checkout unless they meet the minimum quantity.
Creating New Wholesale Customer Roles
By default, Wholesale Suite creates a new rolled called ‘Wholesale Customer.’ If you want to offer the same discount to all your wholesale clients, then you can simply use this default role.
However, to improve the customer experience, you may want to create different wholesale roles with different discounts, or even entirely different perks.
For example, you might give a larger discount to the wholesaler who places the biggest order. In this way, you can keep your valuable customers coming back to your online store.
To create more roles, go to the Wholesale » Roles page.
You can now give the role a name, a key, and type in an optional description.
When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on ‘Add New Wholesale Role.’
You can now assign this role to any customer by opening that person’s user profile in the WordPress dashboard.
Here, simply open the ‘Role’ dropdown and select the wholesale role you just created.
You can also create different wholesale prices for the different user roles.
Simply open any product and scroll to the ‘Wholesale Prices’ section. You’ll now see different settings for each of the user roles.
Setting up Global Discounts for Wholesale Customers
A lot of the time, you will want to add a different wholesale price to each product. However, the Wholesale Prices WooCommerce plugin also allows you to set a global percentage discount for all products.
Wholesale Suite will apply the global discount to all products that don’t have a specific wholesale price set up. This allows you to offer store-wide benefits to wholesalers.
However, just be aware that there’s no minimum order value. This is a great way to encourage wholesalers to try new products by placing small orders, but you should also think about the impact this will have on your profits.
To create a global discount for wholesale customers, go to WooCommerce » Settings. Then, click on the ‘Wholesale Prices’ tab.
As the WordPress block editor adds more site editing features, we have been asked if it is meant to be a replacement for drag and drop WordPress page builder plugins?
The WordPress block editor is quite intuitive and can be used to create beautiful content layouts. However, it is still no match for the powerful page builder plugins.
In this article, we’ll compare WordPress block editor vs page builder plugins to help you understand the difference.
WordPress Block Editor vs Page Builders (Explained)
The block editor is the default editor in WordPress. It uses blocks for common website elements (hence the name, Block Editor).
When creating posts and pages on your WordPress site, you can use the block editor to add and edit your content. The block editor is also used for all your widget areas. And now, some themes called ‘block themes’ even support using the block editor for every area on your website.
Since the block editor allows you to use blocks for creating content layouts, it is easy to confuse it with a drag-and-drop page builder.
However, it is still nowhere close to being called a page builder.
WordPress page builder plugins are drag-and-drop design tools allowing you to create custom WordPress website designs without writing any code.
They come with ready-made templates that you can use and offer much more design flexibility than WordPress block editor.
To understand better, let’s take a deeper look at the differences between WordPress block editor and Page Builders.
Key Differences Between Gutenberg and Page Builder Plugins
The biggest difference is that the block editor comes built-in with WordPress core software as the default editor.
On the other hand, page builder plugins are created and supported by third-party developers.
WordPress.org team does not call the default editor a page builder. Instead, they call it the block editor, and it’s presented as a modern way to edit your website in WordPress.
There’s a big reason for that, and it’ll become very clear as you read the differences between the two.
1. Theme Compatibility & Support
The WordPress block editor relies heavily on your theme styles. It does add some of its own CSS and even allows you to add custom CSS for blocks, but it doesn’t override your theme styles and settings.
While page builder plugins can work with your theme styles, they also give you the option to completely take over a page and override your theme’s styles.
Some WordPress page builders like SeedProd are completely theme agnostic. This means that pages created with SeedProd would look the same even if you change your WordPress theme.
This is extremely helpful if you want to create custom layouts for all website pages.
2. Blocks and Widgets
WordPress block editor comes with a decent set of default blocks covering all the commonly used content elements. You can also save and reuse blocks in other posts and even on other WordPress websites.
It has a powerful API allowing plugin developers to create their own blocks. All top WordPress plugins also have their own WordPress blocks that you can use.
On the other hand, WordPress page builders come with even more blocks.
They offer advanced content elements, including carousels, sliders, call-to-action buttons, contact forms, countdown timers, and more.
You can also save individual blocks, rows, or entire templates to reuse later.
3. Formatting & Styling Options
The blocks in the WordPress block editor come with their own styling and formatting options. However, these options are limited.
For more styling and formatting, you’ll have to add your own custom CSS for a block.
Page Builders, on the other hand, offer more styling options by default.
You can change the background colors of blocks, use gradients, use font-icons, select fonts, line height, adjust the width of elements, use styles on images, and more.
4. Templates, Patterns, and Sections
The block editor comes with patterns, which are sets of blocks to quickly insert commonly used areas on a WordPress blog.
For instance, you can use block patterns for headers, call-to-action buttons, columns, and more.
Your WordPress theme may come with its own patterns. You can also find and install patterns from WordPress.org’s patterns library.
If you are using a block theme (themes that support full site editing), then you can also edit theme templates. Your WordPress theme may come with templates you can edit using the block editor.
However, these templates are generic and provide functionality to display common pages of a typical WordPress website.
WordPress page builder plugins come with more pre-made templates and sections or patterns.
Unlike block editor, these sections and templates don’t rely on your WordPress theme for styling.
Most WordPress page builder plugins come with dozens of ready to use templates that are highly optimized for conversions.
Plus, you also get templates for specific business types and websites which makes it much faster to customize them for your own needs.
5. Drag and Drop Features
The WordPress block editor is not a drag and drop design tool (at least, not in its current form).
You can add blocks and move them up and down, but you cannot adjust their width/height using your mouse, move blocks next to each other, or create complex layouts.
The block editor comes with group and column blocks that can be used to create beautiful page layouts.
On the other hand, page builders allow you to drag and drop blocks/widgets, adjust their height and width, create columns and add blocks inside other blocks.
These drag and drop allow you to design your pages and complete websites easily.
6. Full Site Editor vs WordPress Page Builders
You can also use the block editor to edit your WordPress theme. However, you’ll need a WordPress theme that supports the full site editor to try this out.
The WordPress full site editor comes with sitewide blocks like query block, site logo, navigation menus, and more.
You can edit your theme templates like header, footer, homepage, and more.
However, the full site editing feature requires using a supported theme. Your changes will disappear if you change your WordPress theme.
On the other hand, WordPress page builder plugins allow you to create individual pages to create your website. They can work with any WordPress theme, and you can change your WordPress theme.
You can easily edit any section or page of your theme with the drag and drop builder. It even lets you select conditions for displaying each template. For example, you could display different sidebars for different sections of your site.
7. Development Goals
The default WordPress block editor is developed to make it easier for users to create content and edit their websites. It is intended to be used by everyone including bloggers, writers, photographers, and businesses.
The page builder plugins offer ability to create conversion and sales oriented pages without much effort. They are intended to be used by small businesses, aspiring designers, WordPress agencies, eCommerce stores, and more.
While the block editor helps you create better content, page builder plugins help you create better landing pages that help you increase sales, boost subscribers, and grow your business.
Can or Will the Block Editor Replace WordPress Page Builders?
In its current form, the block editor is a good content editor and an easy way to edit and customize your WordPress theme.
However, it is currently not a replacement for powerful drag and drop page builder plugins.
With that said, it is in the WordPress roadmap to expand block editor functionality and promote full site editing features.
We will have to wait and see the improvements to determine if block editor will ever come close to the powerful WordPress page builder plugins.
Which Page Builder Plugin to Use with the Block Editor?
All top WordPress page builder plugins work well with the WordPress block editor. You can take a look at our pick of the best WordPress page builder plugins, and how they stack up against each other.
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use and powerful WordPress page builder, then we recommend SeedProd. It offers a drag and drop builder and over 200+ built-in themes to create any type of landing page without coding.
The plugin is lightweight and ensures that your pages load quickly, helping your rank higher in SEO. It also integrates with popular email marketing services such as Constant Contact, Drip, ConvertKit, and more.
Do you want to use Google Search Console to grow your website traffic?
Google Search Console is a powerful free tool created by Google to help website owners understand how Google sees their website. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t know how to effectively use the full power of Google Search Console to increase their website traffic.
In this article, we will show you how to properly use Google Search Console to improve your website SEO and get more visitors.
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.
It provides essential marketing data that you need to start tracking from day one. It also alerts you about errors, security issues, and indexing problems that may affect your website’s search rankings.
You can use all this information in your WordPress SEO strategy to increase your website traffic.
The sad part is that most businesses don’t utilize the full power of Google Search Console because most of them think that just adding their website to Google Search Console is enough.
There’s so much more that you can do with the tool.
If you’re not leveraging all of the powerful features that Google Search Console offers, then you’re missing out.
Luckily, we’re here to help. We have created this ultimate Google Search Console guide to help you grow your website like a Pro.
Note: Since this is a comprehensive guide, we have added a table of contents for easier navigation.
If you haven’t already done so, then you need to go ahead and add your website to Google Search Console. It is really simple and will only take a few minutes.
You’ll be asked to sign in using a Google / Gmail account. Once logged in, you will need to enter your website URL.
Google Search Console offers 2 methods for site verification, including domain name or URL prefix. We recommend using the URL Prefix method as it provides more flexibility.
Do remember that Google considers HTTP and HTTPS as two different protocols. It also considers https://www.example.com and https://example.com as two different websites.
You’ll need to make sure that you enter the correct URL of your website.
If you are unsure, then simply login to your WordPress admin area and go to Settings » General page. There you will see your website’s URL in the site address field.
After entering your website address, click on the ‘Continue’ button.
Next, you will be asked to verify ownership of your website. There are several ways to do that, but we will show the HTML tag method because it is the easiest one.
Click on the HTML tag to expand it and then copy the code inside it.
Next, you’ll need to add the code to your WordPress website so that Google can verify the ownership. However, this requires coding, which can be tricky for beginners.
Upon activation, you can go to AIOSEO » General Settings page and then click the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab. Next, select the ‘Google Search Console’ option under Webmaster Tools Verification.
After that, go ahead and enter the code you copied earlier from Google Search Console into the ‘Google Verification Code’ box.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.
You can now go back to Google Search Console settings and click on the ‘Verify’ button.
Google Search Console will now look for the HTML tag in your website code and show you a success message.
That’s all. You have successfully added your site to Google Search Console. You can now click on the ‘Go to Property’ link to visit your Google Search Console dashboard.
Note: if Google Search Console cannot verify your website after you have added the code in Insert Headers and Footer plugin, then you need to make sure to clear your WordPress cache and try again.
2. Adding an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a way for website owners to tell search engines about all the pages that exist on their website. It also tells search engines which links on your website are more important than others.
Adding an XML sitemap to your website helps search engines better crawl your website. While it doesn’t give you a boost in search rankings, it can definitely help search engines index your content more efficiently.
The best part is that if you installed All in One SEO (AIOSEO) in the first step, then the plugin automatically adds an XML sitemap to your site.
To see the sitemap, you can head over to All in One SEO » Sitemaps and make sure that the toggle for ‘Enable Sitemap’ is switched on.
The plugin will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your website, and you can find it at the URL that looks like this:
http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml
Don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name. You can now submit this URL in Google Search Console.
Next, head over to the Google Search Console dashboard and then click on the ‘Sitemaps’ option from the left column. After that, you can paste the URL and click the ‘Submit’ button.
Google Search Console will now check your sitemap and use it to improve your website’s crawling. You can go through our guide on how to add a sitemap page in WordPress for more details.
3. Connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics
Connecting Google Search Console to your Google Analytics account helps you analyze search console data in Google Analytics. This provides you with a new perspective on your top-performing content and keywords.
If you haven’t already done so, then you will need to install Google Analytics on your WordPress website.
We recommend using MonsterInsights for that. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, and it will automatically show your top keywords from Google Search Console in your WordPress admin area.
To connect Google Search Console to your Analytics account, you need to head over to Google Analytics dashboard for your website. From the bottom left corner of the screen, click on the ‘Admin’ button.
Google Analytics will now switch to the admin view. From here, you need to click on the ‘Property Settings’ section and then click on the ‘Adjust Search Console’ button.
On the next screen, you need to click on the Add button to select your website.
Analytics will now take you to the Google Search Console website showing you the list of all websites you have added to the search console. Select the property you want to link to Google Analytics from the dropdown menu.
After that, you’ll need to select the Google Analytics property you’d like to connect with Search Console and click the ‘Continue’ button.
You’ll now see a popup window showing that you’ve successfully connected Google Analytics and Search Console.
That’s all. You have successfully connected your Google Search Console data to your Analytics account. You can go back to the Google Analytics Search Console settings page to see the connected Search Console and click the ‘Save’ button.
You can now view the newly unclocked Search Console reports in your Google Analytics account under Acquisition reports. It also helps unlock keywords not provided in Google Analytics.
The first report you will find there is the ‘landing pages’ report.
For each landing page, you’ll see the impressions (number of times a page appeared in search results), clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and average position in the search results. Combined with that page’s analytics parameters like bounce rate, sessions, and pages per session.
Clicking a landing page will show you the actual keywords that brought users to this landing page.
Next, you can Switch to the ‘Countries’ report, and you will see countries listed in the same order. This helps in creating content and geolocation marketing campaigns for people from different regions.
The devices report will show you how your site performed in desktop, mobile, and tablet search results.
Next, Queries are the most important of all reports among this data. It shows you the keyword data missing from your Google Analytics reports. You can see which search terms are driving traffic to your site.
4. Finding and Fixing Search Indexing Issues
The most helpful feature of Google Search Console is that you can troubleshoot indexing errors.
These errors can affect your search rankings by stopping the search engine from crawling and indexing the pages on your website.
You can easily locate these errors under the Coverage report.
It shows you which pages from your website are indexed by Google and which pages resulted in an error or a warning.
Next, scroll down, and you will see the detailed list of all the errors. Clicking on a link will open the detailed view, where you will also find the link to learn more about the error and how to fix it.
Following are a few common indexing errors you may see:
404 error – This error means that the crawler followed a URL and saw a 404 error.
Soft 404 error – This error occurs when the crawler sees a 404 error page, but the page’s status code is sending a 200 (success) message to the browser.
Server error – This means that your website server timed out or didn’t respond. This could happen if your website were under heavy traffic, was under maintenance, or unavailable for any other reason.
Not followed – This error occurs when Google is not able to follow a content type. This could be a flash, javascript, iframe, or other resources that the crawler cannot fetch.
Now let’s take a look at how to fix some of these crawl errors.
5. Fixing 404 Errors in Google Search Console
First, you need to keep in mind that not all 404 errors are equal. You can safely ignore some of them and only fix those that are actually an error.
For example, if you deleted a blog post and don’t want to redirect users to a newer post, then it is ok to let Google see a 404 error page. Google will eventually deindex that page if it keeps seeing the 404 error.
However, the reason Google wants you to look at those 404 errors is that you may not be aware of them. For example, you accidentally deleted something or forgot to redirect users to the new updated version.
Simply click on the error in the Index Coverage report, and it will show you all the pages displaying that error. Carefully review the pages and if you see a page that shouldn’t be there, then copy its URL and open it in a new browser window.
If you see a 404 error page in your browser, then this means that you need to fix this page.
Now, if it is a page that no longer exists but you have a newer or similar version of it, then you would want to redirect users to that page. See our guide on how to set up redirects in WordPress.
However, sometimes 404 errors may occur due to a misconfiguration in WordPress permalink structure. To fix this, simply visit Settings » Permalinks and then click on the ‘Save Changes’ button without changing anything.
6. Fixing Soft 404 Errors in Google Search Console
Soft 404 errors are a bit tricky to troubleshoot.
Basically, these errors occur when the Google bot sees what looks like a 404 error document instead of content. However, your server is sending a 200 (success) code. Normally, your server sends a 200 success code when a page is displayed without an error or redirect.
To resolve soft 404 errors, go ahead and click on the errors in the Coverage report to view the list of affected pages.
Now, you need to open the page in a new browser tab to see what’s happening. If the page displays correctly, then you can safely ignore the error.
On the other hand, if the page is showing a 404 error document, then you may want to investigate further.
Start by clicking the ‘Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404’ link from the Coverage report. Next, you can open the link in a new tab to check if it’s not a false alarm.
If the page is valid and you want it to appear in the search results, then simply click the ‘VALIDATE FIX’ button. Google will then recrawl the page and change the status error.
If the WordPress search function causes the soft 404 errors you are seeing, then the easiest solution is to stop the Google bot from crawling search URLs.
To do that you need to add the following lines to your robots.txt file.
User-agent: * Disallow: /?s= Disallow: /search/
Usually, Google Bot doesn’t crawl search URLs. However, some spammers might try to spam Google search console reports by linking to search URLs with random strings. This way, they hope you will see their link in your Search Console report and click on it.
If the affected URLs are not searched queries, then you may want to redirect them to a proper page on your site.
7. Fixing Server Error in Google Search Console
Server Errors in Google Search Console are caused by a number of reasons. The most common of them is when your server times out during a crawl, throws an unexpected error or does not appear to be online.
Use the ‘URL inspection’ tool to make sure that the affected URL is working.
If it is working, then you can ignore the error. If you are on a reliable WordPress hosting provider, then most server errors would disappear automatically.
However, if you can confirm the error by visiting the URL, then there are several things you can do to fix it. See our list of most common WordPress errors guide to find a fix for the specific error message you are seeing.
8. Finding and Fixing Security Issues
Security issues not only stop Google from crawling your website, but they could also cause a sudden drop in search traffic. Google may temporarily remove affected pages, show a warning to users, and drop a page’s ranking.
Security issues will be highlighted on the overview screen as you login to your Google Search Console account. The most common security issue is websites affected by malware and trojans.
While security issues are automatically triggered, manual actions are the penalties that are imposed by human staff from the Google Search team after a careful review. If a manual action is taken against your website, then this is pretty significant and can immediately take away all your search traffic.
These manual actions usually occur when a website is involved in illegal activities, spamming, and other fraudulent or fishy activities.
Clicking on the Manual Actions link will show you the actions in your search console report. You will also find detailed information about the issue that triggered it and how to clean it up.
Once you have removed the objectionable content, you can click on the request review button. Your website will now be reviewed and reconsidered by the Google Search team, and they can decide on removing the penalty.
10. Using Google Search Console To Grow Traffic
Now that we have covered the technical bits, let’s get to the fun part of growing your website traffic by utilizing the data available in Search Console.
Google Search Console helps you uncover keyword data, find out your top-performing keywords, and discover hundreds of potential keywords where you can easily rank and get more traffic.
We will also look at links and how to use them to improve search rankings.
Ready? Let’s get started.
11. Mining Keyword Data in Google Search Console
Keywords are the search terms users type in search engines to find information.
Marketers and website owners can optimize their content to target desired keywords and improve their chances of appearing on top in search results.
Previously, keyword data was available in website stats and analytics reports in Google Analytics. However, Google encrypted that information in 2013 when they switched to HTTPS.
As a result, if you try to view search queries in Google Analytics, you’ll most likely see ‘not provided’ keywords. A simple solution to this issue is connecting Google Analytics with Search Console.
You can also view the keyword data in your Google Search Console reports.
It gives you a full view of the keywords your website is ranking for, average position, clicks, and impressions (number of times your site appears for that keyword).
You can see this information in your Google Search Console reports under the ‘Performance’ tab.
On the top, you will see a graph of your website’s performance in search results. Below that, you will see the keywords data, which you can filter by position, impression, and click-through rate.
You can sort this data by clicking on any column or using the filter option to narrow down the results.
You can also switch to the Pages tab to see the performance of your pages in search results.
Clicking on any page in the list will filter the results for that page. You can then switch to the ‘Queries’ tab to see the keywords that bring the traffic to that particular page.
Now that we have covered how to browse and view this data, let’s see how actually to use this in your SEO and content planning.
12. Finding Low-hanging Keywords That You Can Easily Rank
A lot of your pages may be ranking on page 2 or 3 of Google search results for different keywords. These are the keywords that you can quickly work on to rank higher and get more traffic.
Let’s find out those keywords.
In your Performance report, click on the filter icon and then select the ‘Position’ option. Next, you’ll be looking for keywords where the average position is higher than 7.
Search Console will now only show the keywords where your site appears on an average position of 7 or higher. Now, click twice on the position column to sort the list in ascending order.
As you scroll down, you will find tons of keywords that rank between 7 and 30. All these keywords are low-hanging fruits where you can easily rank higher.
To view more results, scroll to the bottom and select a higher number for ‘Rows per page.’
When choosing the keywords to work on, you would want to choose keywords based on their number of impressions. Higher impressions mean more search traffic for those keywords.
To do that, you can export the data in CSV format and then open it in spreadsheet software.
Now that you have mined the low-hanging keywords with higher impressions, the question is how do you improve your rankings for those keywords?
Here are some tips to help you improve your rankings for those keywords.
1. Improve the content by adding more useful information
The #1 reason your page isn’t ranking for a keyword is that Google finds other content more valuable. To counter that, you need to review your article or blog post and add helpful content.
Look at the articles ranking on top five positions for that keyword and cover all the information that your article is missing in more detail.
We are not saying that you should just add more text to it. You need to make it more useful, informative, and comprehensive.
2. Evaluate On-page SEO
Use All in One SEO (AIOSEO) to improve the on-page SEO score for that article. It gives practical tips on improving a page by analyzing the content, keyword density, title, readability, links, and more.
You can also check out our guide on the SEO audit checklist to boost your rankings.
3. Increase time users spend on that page
Google considers it a success when users click on a search result and spend time viewing it. This means your content needs to be highly engaging and instantly provide users with the information they were looking for.
Here are some crazy simple things you can do to increase user engagement.
Use images – users find images much easier to look at than text. Adding more images makes it easier for users to scan the information and keeps them engaged.
Use videos – Videos are the most engaging form of content available. Adding video to a page significantly increases the time users spend viewing that page.
Make text more readable – Use smaller paragraphs, lots of white space, simpler sentences, and keep your style casual and conversational. All these things make reading easier for users.
Links play an important role in WordPress SEO. Search engines use them as a metric to determine how important a page is and where it should rank in search results.
The Links report in Google Search helps you see your website’s performance in terms of links.
It shows you external links, internal links, top linking sites, and top linking text. More importantly, it shows top linking sites, how often they link to your site, and how many pages they link to.
Let’s see how you can use these reports to get more backlinks, improve internal links, and boost your rankings.
14. Getting More Backlinks from Third-Party Websites
Search console shows third-party websites that have linked to your site in the ‘Top linking sites’ report. You can expand the report by clicking on the ‘More’ link at the bottom.
If you click on a domain name to expand the report, you will see all the pages they have linked to. Next, click on each page to get the exact URL linked to that particular page.
You can now use this data to get more backlinks for your site. Simply visit the website and see how they have linked to you. After that, see what other content they have where your site can be linked from.
Next, simply reach out to the website via email or contact form on their website.
First, thank them for linking to your article and then politely mention that they may want to include a link to an article of yours.
Now, this direct approach may not always work. In that case, you need to be creative. You can offer them to write a guest post for their blog, leave comments on their articles, follow them on social media, or retweet their articles.
Repeat the process for all important external links on your website. With consistent effort, you can get proper backlinks without spending any money.
15. Improving Internal Links to Boost Rankings
It is harder to get third-party websites to link to your content. However, it is way easier to link to your own content from your own site. This practice is called internal linking.
Internal linking helps search engines understand the context and relationships among different pages on your website. It also helps them understand which pages are important based on how often you have linked to them.
This is why you should make internal linking a habit when writing new content on your website or blog.
Now let’s see how to use the links reports in Search Console to help you build internal links.
In Google Search Console, click on the Links report and then click on the ‘More’ link under the ‘Internal Links’ column. The report shows how often you have linked to other pages on your site.
Go ahead and click the filter icon and then select the ‘Target page’ option.
Search Console will now show you how many pages are linking to this page. You can now compare it with other pages and see whether pages with more internal links are ranking higher than posts with many internal links.
If that’s the case, then go ahead and start adding internal links to pages that you want to rank higher. Make sure you are only linking to the article when it makes sense. Adding links where they don’t make sense would create a bad user experience.
16. Using Core Web Vitals in Search Console
Did you know that Google now considers your website loading speed as a ranking factor?
In 2020, Google introduced Core Web Vitals that measures how fast your website is and help the search engine measure your site’s user experience.
In Google Search Console, you can view the ‘Core Web Vitals’ report under the Experience menu on your left. It provides a complete report about your site’s speed score for mobile and desktop.
The best part is that you also get recommendations on how to improve your Core Web Vitals score and improve your site’s load time.
For more information, please refer to our guide on how to boost WordPress speed and performance.
17. Create Rich Snippets for Your WordPress Pages
Rich snippets or schema markup allows Google to display additional information in its search results. These include star ratings, prices, reviews, and more.
Rich snippets make your page more noticeable in the search results. As a result, you get more clicks and website traffic.
Many WordPress themes automatically include some basic structured data. If you publish recipes, run a reviews site, or an online store, then rich snippets can give your site an SEO boost.
Google Search Console makes it very easy to find pages that are displaying rich snippets. It also shows the type of rich snippets for your website.
You can view them by going to ‘Overview’ and then scrolling down to the ‘Enhancements’ section.
The real useful part is that the report allows you to quickly look at pages that have errors while displaying rich snippets so that you can fix them.
18. Using Search Console to Improve Mobile Usability
Nearly 63% of all Google searches in the United States come from mobile devices. That’s why Google gives an SEO bump to mobile-friendly websites in the search results.
Google has a Mobile-Friendly test tool that allows you to quickly examine a page. The Mobile Usability report in Search Console tells you how Google sees your entire website in mobile performance.
If you see errors on this page, then this means that these issues may affect your site’s rankings.
To see the affected pages, you can scroll down to the ‘Details’ section and click on the error.
Poorly coded WordPress themes or plugins cause most mobile usability issues. The easiest way to fix those issues is by using a better responsive WordPress theme.
19. Use URL Inspection Tool in Search Console
The URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console provides information about a page if it’s on Google search results or not.
You can check the status of a page and also request Google to recrawl a page. To start, simply enter a URL in the top search bar.
Google Search Console will then show you the status of the page is indexed by Google. If it’s not indexed, then you’ll see a message saying ‘URL is not on Google.’
You can click the ‘Requesting Indexing’ button and request Google to manually fetch the page from your website.
Besides that, you can scroll down and see more details in the ‘Coverage’ report. It will show information about sitemaps, crawl history, and indexing.
You can also live test a URL and see if there is an indexable version available. If there is, then simply click the ‘Request Indexing’ option.
20. Removing URLs from Google Search
So far, we have focused on using Search Console to get your content indexed and improve rankings in Google Search. However, sometimes you may want to remove content from Google Search as well.
One way to do this is to add a noindex meta tag to the page you want to remove from search results. However, depending on how often Google crawls your website, this could take some time before your page actually disappears from search results.
Search Console’s Remove URL tool allows you to request a URL to be removed from the search results. Simply click on ‘Removals’ under Index in the menu on your left.
Now click on the ‘New Request’ button, and a popup window will appear. Go ahead and enter the URL you want to remove, select whether you want to remove this URL only or with this prefix, and click the ‘Next’ button.
Google will now block the URL from its search results for about six months. You can add as many URLs as you want and see them in the Removals section in the Search Console.
21. Adding Users to Access Google Search Console
If you have a marketing team or you have hired someone to help you with SEO, then those users may need access to Google search console data.
Search Console allows you to easily add users and give them access to view all reports without sharing your Google account credentials with them.
To add a new user, simply click on the Settings » Users and permissions option under Property settings and then click on ‘Add User’ button.
Next, you need to provide the user’s valid Google account email address and select permission to grant them.
There are two types of permission levels. The full permission level will give them access to everything, including the ability to add new users. Restricted permissions will allow them to view the data but not add new users.
After choosing a permission level, click on the ‘Add’ button to save your changes.
The user you added will now receive an email notification, so they can login and view Google Search Console data for your website.
Helpful Resources
Following helpful resources on WPBeginner will help you further improve your website’s performance in search engines.
Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide – Our complete step by step WordPress SEO guide will walk you through complete WordPress SEO setup like a pro.
WordPress Performance Guide – Step by step guide to improve your WordPress speed and performance for higher search rankings and better user experience.
WordPress Security Guide – Keep your WordPress site secure with this complete WordPress security guide for beginners.
Tracking User Engagement – This guide helps you learn how to track user activity on your website and use it to plan your growth strategy.
Convert visitors into Customers – If you run an online store, then this guide will show you how to convert search traffic into paying customers.
Starting a blog for the first time can be a nerve-wracking experience. There’s a lot of excitement, but at the same time, there’s a fear of the unknown. You want to do everything the RIGHT way and avoid all major pitfalls, so your blog can be successful. In our 12+ years of blogging, we have made countless mistakes and learned from them. Over the last decade, our blogs have received well over a billion pageviews. In today’s article, we will share the “expert tips” that we wish we knew before starting our first blog.
Pro Tip: We have a step-by-step guide on how to start a blog (the RIGHT WAY) from setting it up, to optimizing it, securing it, and then making money from it. This guide has been used by hundreds of thousands of visitors, and it’s 100% free.
Having that said, here are the lessons that WPBeginner founder, Syed Balkhi, has over the last 12+ years of blogging.
1. Choose The Right Platform
A lot of folks start with popular free blogging platforms like Blogger, Medium, or WordPress.com, but these blogging platforms are limited. You don’t want to waste your time there if you’re serious about blogging.
First, you’ll have to follow the terms and conditions of these platforms, and they have the right to shut down your blog without any notice. Also, there’s no guarantee that you will be able to export your content should they shut off your blog.
You can only use the features available on their platform which are limited. Most free platforms also restrict you from making money blogging.
WordPress.org, on the other hand, gives you complete freedom and control of your blog.
You can add features, make money, or do whatever you like. All of our blogs now use WordPress including WPBeginner. WordPress powers over 31% of all websites on the internet.
If you are thinking about how WordPress.org compares to other free blogging platforms, then we have done the research for you:
Choosing the right domain name is very important. I had a wildly successful blog called List25.com which had over 2.3 million YouTube subscribers and over 500 million video views. But in hindsight, I wish I didn’t add a number in the domain because it restricted us to only 25 items in a list.
Here are some quick tips on choosing the best domain name for your website.
Choose a domain name that is easy to pronounce, spell, and as short as possible.
Use your keywords and brand name in the domain name. For example, stargardeninghouston.com is more search engine friendly, than stargardeningcompany.com
Choosing the right web hosting is by far one of the most important decisions when starting a blog because this is where your website files are stored.
Many beginners like the idea of getting free hosting, but choosing a free website hosting is always a bad idea, and it will end up costing you more money and time in the end.
In the early days, one of my first websites was hosted on a free host which was going fine until one day they shut down without notice. My entire website was gone with no way to restore it. I lost months of hard work.
This is why it’s important to choose a reputable hosting company. Here are a few things you need to consider:
There are different types of hosting plans like shared hosting, managed hosting, VPS, and more. You need to pick a plan that suits your needs and budget.
Compare reviews of different hosting companies.
Support is important for beginners, and you want make sure that there are plenty of options to get help when you need it.
For those who’re just getting started, we recommend using Bluehost because they’re an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. They’re also offering our readers a free domain name + a 65% discount on hosting.
Our second choice for hosting is SiteGround. They’re also officially recommended by WordPress, and they’re known for great support.
Often users don’t think about backups until it’s too late. In the early days, I chose a cheap web hosting provider that wasn’t very well-known, and they had a hardware failure. I lost my entire website because I didn’t have a backup.
Many hosting companies offer limited backups. However, these backups are not guaranteed, and a hardware failure can cause you to lose data as well as the backup.
Backups are your first line of defense against brute force attacks, hacking, and data theft. They are the first step to improving your WordPress security and keeping your website safe.
There are plenty of reliable WordPress backup plugins that allow you to schedule automatic backups and store them in remote locations like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more.
You can’t grow your site if you don’t know how people find and use your website. Like many beginners, I too relied on “guesswork” and “winging it” to get the job done until I learned the importance of website analytics.
Google Analytics is the best analytics software in the world used by millions of websites. It allows you to see your most popular content, where your visitors are coming from, and more.
It also helps you track user engagement across your website, which helps you improve your business using real numbers instead of guesswork. If you are running an online store, then you can use it to track customers and boost your conversions.
For quick setup, follow our step-by-step guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.
6. Setup a Professional Branded Email Address
If you’re serious about your blog, then it’s important to have a professional branded email address. This goes a long way in negotiating deals with an advertiser because they think you’re a legit operation.
Plus it also helps with email deliverability when sending email newsletters. Which brings me to tip #7.
7. Start Building an Email List Right Away
Over 70% of people abandoning your website never return. You need a way to keep in touch with them. This is why you need to start building an email list.
Now you may think, why not just build a following on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more?
While you should absolutely work on building a following on social media, you do not own these platforms. They can limit your reach to your own followers and can even block your account at any time.
On the other hand, email is still the most effective online marketing tool. You own your email list, and you can reach your audience without any limitations.
Not building an email list from day 1 is still my #1 regret, and this is a common regret shared by many blogging experts.
8. Setup Unique Contact Forms for Each Use Case
In the beginning, I had my email address publicly displayed on the blog. This led to tons of spam coming my way. Contact forms are very important and that’s why you will find a contact page on almost every website you visit.
It’s also important to have different forms for each use case, so you can easily filter the emails and be more efficient.
There are plenty of WordPress contact form plugins in the market. However, most WordPress contact form plugins are designed for developers. This is why I launched WPForms, with the goal of making it the most beginner-friendly contact form plugin for WordPress.
It has more than 5 million active installs with 10,000+ five-star reviews. There is also a free version called WPForms lite that you can try.
Often beginners just copy and paste images from the internet. This adds liability as your site grows. Don’t just use images from Google because you might have to pay thousands later in image copyright infringement fees. The copyright owner can also report the page displaying their work and ask Google to remove it from search results.
Considering these costs, it’s worth paying for a Shutterstock license to get high-quality vector images to use on your website.
However, if you are just starting out and don’t want to pay for licenses, then you can find several websites offering cc0 images. These images are royalty-free, and you can use them on your website.
Another way to add images to your website is by creating your own. However, most beginners are not graphic designers. Luckily, there are online tools like Canva which enable you to create professional images to use on your blog.
10. Onsite SEO Optimization is Important for Growth
If you’re serious about growing your blog and making it successful, then you need to pay attention to on-page SEO from the beginning.
SEO short for search engine optimization helps you get more visitors to your website from search engines. SEO strategies are divided into two categories, off-site and on-site SEO.
Onsite SEO helps you optimize your blog by making small adjustments in various areas. Now, this may sound a bit technical, and it is, but there are plenty of tools that can help you with this.
First, I would recommend you install AIOSEO on your website. It is the complete WordPress SEO plugin suite, and it will help you with the onsite optimization of your blog.
It also allows you to easily create and submit sitemaps to search engines. This enables your website to get listed in Google and start appearing in search results.
Next, you need to make internal linking a habit. Internal links are the links you create inside your content to your own blog posts, pages, and different areas of your website. Internal links help you increase your pageviews as well as guide search engines to understand the context and relationship between your content.
You can use an internal linking plugin like AIOSEO to automatically find internal linking opportunities and add them to your content easily.
For more SEO tips, see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners with step by step WordPress SEO setup.
11. Keyword Research is VERY Important
Often people write great posts, but they aren’t discoverable because they didn’t think about using the right keywords. Most beginners follow their best guesses to come up with ideas for blog posts. You don’t need to do that when there are tools that can help you find out what your users are looking for. You can use these keywords for your blog posts and increase your traffic.
You can use a free tool like AnswerThePublic to find the questions your users are searching for. You can then answer those questions in your blog posts to get more search traffic.
Want to know which keywords are bringing traffic to your competitors? Use SEMRush to steal your competitors’ keywords. It also shows you paid keywords where your competitors are running paid advertising campaigns.
12. Catchy Headlines are important for Social and SEO
People judge the book by its cover and blog posts by its headline. If you want to get a lot of shares, then you need to write catchy headlines.
Google even uses CTR (click-through rate) as a ranking factor, so you need to have catchy headlines to get more people to click on them.
How do you analyze your blog post headlines? Luckily there are several tools that will help you improve your headlines. Here is a list of tools that’ll help you create better headlines.
13. Repurposing Content is a Secret Weapon for Expert Bloggers
You don’t always have to come up with new blog post ideas. Expert bloggers repurpose their content into videos, images, collection articles, etc.
Following are some examples of articles we have compiled with repurposed content from our existing articles.
You can also repurpose articles as downloadable ebooks, audio files, or YouTube videos. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see how we reuse content from our articles to create highly engaging video tutorials. This brings me to my next tip #14.
14. Videos are a Great Way to Boost Engagement and Stand Out from the Crowd
Videos are the most engaging form of content on the internet. Users are actively looking for video content, which is why YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
Using videos on your blog allows you to keep users on your site and help them discover more content.
Over the years, I have learned that you should never upload videos to WordPress. Instead, I recommend using video hosting services like YouTube.
Your blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological order (newer posts appear first). This means your older posts are buried down and are not easily discoverable.
One way to fix this is by sharing your older articles on social media. Often beginners think that it’s not ok to recycle old content. It’s completely fine and expert bloggers do it all the time.
The easiest way for new blogs to start making money is by displaying ads using Google AdSense. While Google AdSense is great, you need to diversify your income stream. We have seen bloggers losing all their income when AdSense blocked their accounts for a policy violation.
Another way to boost your ad revenues is to monitor who’s advertising on your site. You can then go to them directly to eliminate the middle man.
17. Consistency is Key
You don’t have to post every day. But you have to be consistent in your schedule. At WPBeginner we post once a day, 5 days a week. Some popular blogs publish several new posts each day.
Choose how frequently you will publish and then stick to that frequency. If you are just starting out, then you can start with 3 posts per week and then gradually increase your pace.
If you’re not disciplined, then it’s easy to slip and this is how most blogs die. You need to keep yourself motivated and don’t get distracted from your goals.
18. Streamline a Flow for Storing Your Blog Post Ideas
There are plenty of online tools that you can use to store your blog ideas. As a professional blogger, you will often come up with blog post ideas during conversations and everyday chores. It is important to jot them down before you forget.
You can use tools like Asana, EditFlow, or Evernote to store new ideas, plan content strategy, and manage your editorial calendar.
This is extremely important because there will be days when you are out of ideas to write about. Having an idea bank will help you stay consistent with your publication schedule.
19. Setup a Place to Manage All Your Passwords
Passwords are the gatekeeper to your WordPress website as well as your online accounts. They are also the most common target of hacking attempts.
This is why it is recommended to use strong and unique passwords for all your accounts. I am often asked by beginners how to remember all those strong and unique passwords?
Well, you don’t need to. There are excellent password managers like LastPass and 1Password, which securely store all your passwords, auto-fill them for you, and can generate strong passwords to use.
Whatever you do, just make sure that you DO NOT use the same password everywhere!
20. Connect Multiple Emails with Your Gravatar
Gravatars are the profile images used by WordPress. It is super easy to start using Gravatar, but what most users don’t know is that you can connect multiple email addresses to your gravatar.
This allows you to use the same brand image for your comments while using different email addresses.
Leaving comments on other blogs is a great way to bring attention to your new blog and get more traffic.
21. Comment on Other Blogs and Networks to Grow Your Brand
Blogs are an inherently social platform, allowing people to comment and engage with content. To grow your brand, you need to utilize this feature by participating in other blogs in your niche.
When we first started, we commented on all relevant blogs. It’s important that you take part in relevant blogs and Facebook groups to grow your brand. This grass-roots effort is essential for your blog’s growth.
It helps you get the word out about your blog, get noticed by influencers in your niche, and make new connections on the way.
22. About Page and Start Here Pages Are Very Important
You need a place to share your story as well as give new users a place to start. This is why you need to add an about page to your blog. It allows your users to learn more about you, your story, and build a personal connection with your brand.
You should also add a Start Here page to walk your new users through your most important content. This walking tour helps you quickly get new subscribers for your blog and establish your brand as an authority.
23. Social Media is Important But Always Remember It’s Rented Land
Remember MySpace or Orkut? We have seen social networks come and go. While social networks can be a great source to drive traffic to your blog, you should always focus more on items that you control (i.e. your blog, newsletter, push notifications).
In 2011, I lost 40% of traffic when I redesigned WPBeginner simply because we switched color schemes which confused users. Consistency in your brand’s color scheme and website is crucial for building brand recognition.
There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes which makes it tempting for beginners to switch their website’s design and colors. You need to pick a design and stick with it so that your users can become familiar with your brand’s color and design,
You should use your brand’s colors and logo on your merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc. You should also stay consistent across your social media profiles.
25. Leverage Social Proof When You Can
Social Proof is a marketing tactic that eases a customer’s mind by showing them that other customers already trust the brand, product, or website they are viewing.
As humans, we prefer to learn from other people’s experiences and decisions. Marketers use this social phenomenon by adding social proof to their marketing campaigns and websites.
You need to use this to help establish trust and grow your blog / business. You can add social proof by sharing your total subscriber count, adding website logos where you are featured, displaying your growth indicators, number of downloads, and more.
26. Website Speed is Very Important
Nobody likes slow websites. Search engines like Google give an SEO advantage to faster websites. As a blogger, you need to optimize your website for speed and faster page loads.
The key to faster websites is choosing the right WordPress hosting. A bad host can slow down your website and no matter what you do on your end, you will never be able to improve performance.
Next, you need to start using a WordPress caching plugin. There are excellent free plugins like WP Super Cache which help you serve a cached version of your website with just a few clicks.
You can also combine that with DNS-based firewalls like Sucuri or Cloudflare. These firewalls block bad traffic which reduces your server load. They also serve static content through their CDN servers which gives you a significant speed boost.
For complete step-by-step instructions see our ultimate WordPress speed and performance guide for beginners.
27. Content Upgrades and Exit Popups are Magic
Content upgrades and exit popups work like magic. When you are first starting out, you might think that these things don’t work, but they do and that’s why you see them everywhere.
I used exit-intent popups on WPBeginner and increased our subscribers by 600%. Later, I ran a similar experiment with content upgrades on my personal website and got a 27% conversion rate on a single page.
As your blog starts growing, you will get a ton of positive feedback and encouragement from your users. However, you will also get some haters who will criticize you and try to bring you down.
You need to ignore these haters and not waste your energy or time on them. To make sure you are not distracted, turn on comment moderation and disable new comment notifications.
29. Don’t Obsess Over Perfection
When writing a blog, I recommend not obsessing over perfection. It’s completely ok to make mistakes as long as you fix them.
Some folks might get upset over grammar or spelling mistakes, but you can fix them and move on. Remember, it’s human to make mistakes.
You can use tools like Grammarly to help catch some errors.
My advice for new bloggers is to write and develop your own voice / style. Often blogs with more personalized writing do better than those that are written like research papers.
30. Always Use the Best Tools to Get Ahead
All experts have a toolkit that helps them stay ahead. These online tools are made specifically for bloggers and website owners. They will help you be more efficient, so you can make your blog successful.
Following are just some of the tools that I have found very helpful in my journey.
