How To Use SEOPress - Easy SEOPress Training
Table of Contents
Download a copy of the SEOPress Plugin
You have the option of manually downloading the free version of the SEOPress plugin directly from their website and then using your favourite FTP program you can manually upload the SEOPress folder into your Plugins folder on your web hosting server.
Alternatively, you can download the SEOPress plugin directly from the WordPress repository by logging into your WordPress dashboard and then clicking on “Plugins” > “Add New Plugin” and then search for “SEOPress” in the search plugins bar to download and activate the plugin on your website.
SEOPress Tutorial - SEOPress Setup & Configuration (Part 1)
What You Will Learn:
Installation: Step-by-step process to install SEOPress on your WordPress site.
Configuration: How to configure basic to advanced settings for optimal site performance.
Features: Detailed overview of SEOPress features including sitemaps, meta tags, and social media optimisation.
SEOPress Tutorial - SEOPress Settings (Part 2)
What You Will Learn:
Target Keywords: Step-by-step process to set your target keyword usingSEOPress on your WordPress site for each of your pages and posts.
Meta Title and Descriptions: How to create a meta tile and description that helps your pages and posts rank on Google.
Should Be Improved: Detailed overview on how to get an orange or green circle marker in SEOPress and what all of the SEO indicators mean in a simple overview which covers how to fix these errors to get a green indicator for better SEO results.
SEOPress Training For SEO Beginners
SEOPress is a SEO tool for your WordPress website. It will help you improve your ranking and traffic on your website.
This guide will help you navigate your way through getting a green indicator on your page or posts.
SEO Goal
The goal is to get a yellow or green circle which is a “Good” score in Google’s eyes.
| SEO Indicator | Outcome |
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
Yellow or Green Circle = Good |
It can be sometimes impossible to get a good green score on all pages or post. Having a yellow circle is still a good score for
your website to be indexed by Google.
SEO Panel
When clicking on “Edit” on a page or a post, you’ll have access to the SEO settings for your page or post. For this training example, we will be using a post. (The settings are the same for both pages and posts)
Step 1 – Keyword: We suggest working out your Target Keyword first. This is the keyword that you would like your page or post to rank for. If you scroll down to the Content Analysis section, under Overview you will find the “Target Keywords” field.
We suggest to just add 1 keyword that you’re targeting to rank for. Don’t worry. Search engines such as Google will find other keywords on your page without you needing to add them to this section. When you get better at ranking for keywords you may want to track other keywords on your page but for now – one keyword is what you need for a page or post.
Step 2 – SEO Settings: Add your SEO Settings to your page. Scroll to the SEO section and start adding in details that will appear on search engines such as Google.
This will appear in a mobile preview that will show you the output of what it would look like on a search engine results page.
Titles Settings Tab
This needs to be 568px or a maximum of 60 letters long (including spaces). This is the total amount of space that the search engines allow for a title. So, it needs to be small, straight to your point and include your target keyword from step 1.
For the title you can use the “+ Post Title”, “+ Site Title”, and “+ Separator” to create the post title.
For Example:
Which creates this output:
Post Title = The name of the post or page.
Site Title = The name on the website that is stored under “Settings” > “General” – Site Title Field.
Separator = The character used to separate the post tile and site title words.
Please Note: Depending on the size of your post title and the site title, it may take your title over the allowed title size. If this is the case, we would suggest manually creating a smaller title. If the title is too long. On search engines such as Google, your title will only show the characters it allows and then shortens the tile by adding …
Meta Description
The meta description is a small recap of the page or post that will encourage people that are using search engines like Google to click on your link. One of the best formulas is to add a short description and a call to action (read more, learn more etc.) for the best results. In some cases, there may not be enough room to add a call to action so make sure you add content that is compelling enough for visitors to want to click on your website.
The “+ Post Excerpt” uses the post excerpt if you have created one in your post excerpt box. Most people create their own custom meta description as you have the flexibility to create a unique description to fit the maximum recommended limit for a description.
The maximum recommended limit is 940 pixels (160 letters including spaces) anything beyond will add “…” to the end of the text in the search engine results page and the visitors can cause the visitor to not be able to read the remaining text. For the best results, keep the meta description text small and below the 160 characters.
Social Tab
By default, if you share a link to your website, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter will just grab a random image and text from your page/post. To control this, you can make suggestions for Facebook and Twitter on what they should use instead.
Add a Facebook Title, Facebook Description and Facebook Thumbnail (Image).
A preview of how the link will appear in a Facebook post will appear on the right-hand side of the screen.
For your Facebook Title and Description, you will be limited to how much space you have in these fields. Using the preview section, you can see how much space you have in these fields before the text gets cut off.
You can add your own custom Facebook Thumbnail image which needs to be 1.92 ratio. The closer to 1.91 the better.
(800px x 418px gives 1.91:1 ratio or suggested 1640x856px)
Please Note: This is controlled by Facebook, so you can only add this as your suggestion for them. You must configure SEOPress to your Facebook Developer panel for this section to work. Facebook only caches these links for some time, and they tend to stop working. If this happens or if your link isn’t working correctly, you can ask Facebook to rescrape your page for the correct information.
To do this click on the “Ask Facebook to update its cache” button in this section or go this this page:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Add the page URL link and then click on the blue “Debug” button.
Twitter (x.com)
This section is the same as the Facebook section. You will need to add a Twitter Title and Description. You will be limited to how much space you have in these fields. Using the preview section, you can see how much space you have in these fields before the text gets cut off.
You can add your own custom Twitter Thumbnail image which needs to be 1.92 ratio. The closer to 2 the better.
(800px x 418px gives 1.91:1 ratio or the suggested 300x157px)
Please Note: This is controlled by Twitter(X), so you can only add this as your suggestion for them. Twitter(X) only caches these links for some time, and they tend to stop working. If this happens or if your link isn’t working correctly, you can ask x.com to re-scrape your page for the correct information.
To do this click on the “Preview your Twitter card using the official validator” button in this section or go this this page:
Advanced Tab
This section you can skip and leave as default unless you have a need to change these settings. Altering these settings can stop and prevent the page/post from working or displaying on search engines.
Meta Robot Settings
As the name suggests, this section you can prevent the search engines from indexing (displaying this page or features on their search engine)
Do not display this page in search engine results / XML – HTML sitemaps (noindex)
“noindex” robots meta tag
By checking this option, you will add a meta robots tag with the value “noindex“. Search engines will not index this URL in the search results.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
Do not follow links for this page (nofollow)
“nofollow” robots meta tag
By checking this option, you will add a meta robots tag with the value “nofollow“. Search engines will not follow links from this URL.
<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />
Do not index images for this page (noimageindex)
“noimageindex” robots meta tag
By checking this option, you will add a meta robots tag with the value “noimageindex“. Note that your images can always be indexed if they are linked from other pages.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noimageindex” />
Do not display a “Cached” link in the Google search results (noarchive)
“noarchive” robots meta tag
By checking this option, you will add a meta robots tag with the value “noarchive” so Google won’t keep a copy of the page/post in their search results.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noarchive” />
Do not display a description in search results for this page
(nosnippet)
“nosnippet” robots meta tag
By checking this option, you will stop search engines from adding the meta description and image in their search results.
<meta name=”robots” content=”nosnippet” />
Canonical URL
A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google thinks is most representative from a set of duplicate pages on your site. For example, if you have URLs for the same page (for example: example.com?dress=1234 and example.com/dresses/1234), Google chooses one as canonical. Note that the pages do not need to be absolutely identical; minor changes in sorting or filtering of list pages do not make the page unique (for example, sorting by price or filtering by item colour). The canonical can be in a different
domain than a duplicate.
Select A Primary Category
This section is only used for breadcrumbs to add your page/post into a breadcrumbs category.
Custom Breadcrumbs
If breadcrumbs are enabled for a breadcrumbs enabled WordPress theme, you have the option of changing the breadcrumb name if it is too long.
Redirection Tab
This section you can skip and leave as default unless you have a need to change these settings. You will only need to use redirection if you have changed pages and need to redirect this page/post to that new page.
If this is the case, tick on the enabled redirect button.
Select a login status should be set to “All” unless you have a membership section where logged in members have access to this page/post.
The select a redirect type should be set to “301 Moved Permanently” as the default. (Moving temporary can affect search engine results as they can remove the link and the forwarding won’t be there for this link)
The URL redirection is the new full URL link to the new page.
Google News Tab
If you are a news publisher, you can tell Google News about your news articles and additional information about them.
This needs to be setup in the SEOPress sitemaps section as a separate news sitemap needs to be created and submitted to
the Google Search Console.
By default, you can leave this section as is. Most websites won’t have this setup as they are a business website and not a news publisher. The “Exclude this post from Google News Sitemap?” is unticked by default but if you have Google News enabled on your site, you have the option to enable or exclude pages/post being indexed by the Google News Sitemap.
Content Analysis
Step 3 – SEO Results: SEO for your page/post.
SEO Content Analysis Overview
This section we’re going to work towards getting a Yellow or Green “Good” circle result. All post should be easy to get a green circle whereas pages you should be able to get green or yellow circles for your pages. Getting a yellow or green circle
will help you rank for keywords in the search engine results pages.
Target Keywords
We suggest working out your Target Keyword for this page/post (Step 1).
We suggest to just add 1 keyword that you’re targeting to rank for. Don’t worry. Search engines such as Google will find other keywords on your page without you needing to add them to this section. When you get better at ranking for keywords you may want to track other sub keywords on your page but for now – one keyword is what you need for a page or post.
If you are not sure what keywords to use, you can get suggestions from Google. Type in what your page/post is about and then click on the “Get suggestions!” button.
This will then provide you with some suggested results that you could use as a keyword. Once again, please choose one keyword to work with. This will be the main keyword that you want this page/post to rank for.
These suggestions don’t give how popular these terms are to rank for or the difficulty levels to be able to rank for that keyword. Using a paid program such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or SE Ranking will give a more in-depth statistics and information that you can use to help rank your page/post for this keyword.
Keyword Research is another SEO topic that is a full course. We would suggest watching YouTube videos on how to do effective Keyword Research using paid programs for effective SEO research.
Content Analysis Circle Colour
In this section we will be working towards getting a green or yellow circle for a “Good” ranking.
Words Counter
Words counter is not a direct ranking factor. But, your content must be as qualitative as possible, with relevant and unique information. To fulfill these conditions, your article requires a minimum of paragraphs, so words.
We suggest that you have a minimum of 500 words per page/post with a goal of 1000+ words. This will give you a green dot.
Please note: Popular pages such as portfolio, quote and contact us normally don’t have a high word count. This section may be red, orange, or yellow for you. We have seen search engines such as Google still index these pages and add them to their search engine results.
Having an all green result is no guarantee that your page/post will be indexed but it give a great benchmark to get top results and to potentially be indexed by the search engines.
Keywords Density
The keywords density is the number of times that your keyword has been used through the content on your page/post. This will calculate the number of words that you have on your page as well as how often your keyword has been used. The content on the page/post needs to be relevant to your keyword and include your keyword throughout.
If you don’t have a green dot, start adding your keyword into your paragraphs and make sure that it makes sense.
Headings
Your page/post require your keyword to be in a <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags. You should only have one h1 tag and multiple h2, h3, h4 tags on your page/post.
Social media tags require you to complete the social media section on page 6 in this guide.
Meta Description
This is the meta description from page 5 from this guide where you can add a description that will be shown on search engines.
Internal Links
Your page/post require a page or post from your website to link to it. This is important for SEO as when the search engine bots spider your website, they jump from page to page to index your website. Each page needs to link to one another with a hyperlink. A hyperlink is the highlighted text that links to another page and usually has a underline under it to indicate that it’s a link to another page.
Go to another page or post and make a hyperlink from your text that is related to your page/post to get a green dot for this section.
Canonical URL
The canonical URL should automatically set itself as soon as you create your page/post. This will use the URL for the page/post and you can update the URL up the top right of the page to shorten this and include your keyword to get a green dot.
Structured Data Types
Structured data types tell Google what sort of page/post you have and Google may use this information to show it in a unique way in the Google Search Results page. For example, the JB Hifi website will show computers with images if you do a Google search for “Computers” as part of their results:
This result is not guaranteed but if you provide the information that Google requires, it increases the chances for Google to take this information and use it on their search engine above your competition.
You will need to add the schema to your page or post. We will show you how to do this later in this guide under step 4.
The different schema types are:
Article (Webpage) – This is a blog post article.
Local Business – This is business information for a business directory website.
FAQ – This is a question and answer for a frequently asked question page.
How-To – This is a detailed how to page or post on a topic.
Course – This is information or landing page for a course.
Recipe – This is a page or post on a cooking recipe.
Job – This is a page or post on a job advertisement.
Video – This is a page or post that only has a video.
Event – This is a page or post promoting an event.
Product – This is a page or post that has product information.
Software Application – This is a landing page promoting a software program.
Service – This is a page or landing page that is promoting your service.
Review – This is a review page on a product or service.
Custom – This is for advanced users for any experimental or new structured data types for search engines.
Last Modified Date
WordPress will automatically update your last modified date on your page/post. For SEO purposes, search engines will look at how often you update your pages and posts. It is suggested that you should look at updating your pages/posts often as it’s Google’s way of knowing that you are still active and in business. By updating your content regularly, the Google bot will return back to your website to index your new content.
Keywords In Permalink
The permalink if your URL in the top right corner of the page.
This is the unique link that people need to go click on to get to your page or post. Make sure to update this URL to include your keyword to get a green dot for this section.
Meta Title
The meta title needs to be 568px or a maximum of 60 letters long (including spaces).
This is the total amount of space that the search engines allow for a title. So, it needs to be small, straight to your point and include your target keyword from step 1. (See page 3 for more information)
Meta Robots
This will be set by default by WordPress for you to get a green dot. For more information on meta robots, please see page 9
of this guide to learn more about these settings.
Alternative Text Of Images
All images that you have on your website need to have ALT text which is short for Alternative Text.
This is what the browser uses when your image can’t be showing or is missing on your website.
It is also used for accessibility on your website as those with disability can use software to explain what is in the image.
For search engines such as Google, their search bots have no idea what your image are about as they are unable to tell.
This is where you need to provide them with relevant information to help them.
To do this, you will need to return back to your dashboard and then click on “Media” > “Library”. Each one of your images will need to have alt text added.
The Alternative Text should include a detailed description of what is in the image. This will be used for accessibility programs like text-to-speech to explain the image.
The title should include a keyword. SEO TIP: At least one image on your page/post should have your keyword as the file name of the image as well as the title.
The caption is small text that explains the image and the description provides further information about the image.
Above is an example of how you should setup each image within your media library. Please take note of the File name used as the keyword and how it is also used in the title.
NoFollow Links
No follow links are a tag on your hyperlinks to instruct search engines such as Google not to crawl this link. This doesn’t pass on ranking power to another site. In simple words, the nofollow tag will prevent the credit from being passed to other websites linked to your website. By default, you page/post will create links that dofollow as that is the set hyperlink. For more information, please read this post:
Outbound Links
To make your website more authoritative you need to link your content to valuable content on another website. We suggest linking out to at least 2-4 websites per page.
These are other people’s websites. It is recommended to link to high valuable websites. (We suggest looking at the first page of a Google search or linking to the wiki of a word) as these are pages with top domain ranking (DR) and URL ranking (UL).
In Google’s eyes, you are providing information that will help the reader and they will reward your website with you providing quality content and useful links.
SEO Content Analysis Results
If you complete all these sections and get green dots, you will achieve a green “Good” circle result.
Please keep in mind that sometimes getting all green dots can be impossible. This is only an indicator and getting a yellow circle can also provide the results required for you to get indexed by search engines such as Google.
Refresh Analysis
When you do any changes click on the “Refresh analysis” button for SEOPress to go through your page/post to look at the new changes and to update your dots and overall circle colour.
SEOPress Pro - Structured Data Types
Step 4: Help Google Promote Your Content.
Towards the end of your page/post will be the Structured Data Types section. Structured data types are explained on page 21 of this guide but by completing these steps it increases the possibility of getting rich snippets to be shown in the Google Search Results.
Google have unique sections on their search results that show content in a different way that can capture visitors to click on a link to go to your website over your competition.
An example of a Google search for Cake Recipes shows articles such as these at the top of the results page:
The other results below show images which is more appealing than the standard Google results:
To add schema to your page/post, click on the “Add a schema” button in the Structured Data Types section.
Please select the correct schema for this page or post.
Important: It is suggested to only create one schema for each page or post that you create as they can conflict and cause errors with the search engines indexing your website. If you make a mistake, you can click the red “Delete schema” button and start again.
What schema to use?
Look at the schema section above in this guide for a break down on what each one of the schema’s are for the search engines to use.
Complete the fields for the schema with as much information that you can provide for the best results.
Once completed, you can click on the “Validate my schema” button if you would like Google to text your page and provide
test results. (The page must be published for Google to test)
Improve Your Headline For Posts
Step 5: Headline Analyzer
Another cool built-in feature for SEOPress users is the headline analyzer. Studies show that a compelling headline can increase clicks and traffic to your website. The more interesting the headline, the more likely someone is going to take action to want to look at your content.
This is where the Headline Analyzer can help you.
At the top right of the blog post, you’ll be given an indicator with a headline score.
When you click on the score, you will be given a break down of the results and how you can improve your score.
You can work on areas of improvement which include:
• Common words – Headlines with 20-30% common words are more likely to get clicks.
• Uncommon words – Headlines with uncommon words are more likely to get clicks.
• Emotional words – Emotionally triggered headlines are likely to drive more clicks.
• Power words – Headlines with Power Words are more likely to get clicks.
• Sentiment – Headlines that are strongly positive or negative tend to get more engagement then neutral ones.
• Headline type – Headlines that are lists and how-to get more engagement on average than other types of headlines.
• Character count – Headlines that are about 55 characters long will display fully in search results and tend to get more clicks.
• Word count – The amount of words used in your headline.
• Beginning & Ending Words – Most readers only look at the first and last 3 words of a headline before deciding whether to click.
• Preview – How your headline looks on a search engine results page.
Blog Post Layout
The anatomy of a great blog post layout
From our research this is the best layout for an article.
Top of the article
Headline: This includes the article headline in a <h1> tag.
(This is the only H1 tag used. Do not use another h1 tag on your page)
Article Information: Who has written the article, data published and the time published.
Article Main Featured Image: This is the image used to promote the blog article.
Table of Contents: This is the h2, h3, h4 tags used on the page that a visitor can click on the link to navigate to the section of the article that they are searching for.
Body of the article
The body should start of with a few paragraphs as an intro to your article. With the intro or the next section below you should include links to high authoritative websites that are relevant to the word. (Look at the first few pages on a Google search result or the wiki for the word.
There should be 2-4 external URL links that you should use in your post as well as internal links that navigate to other pages on your website such as your services page or other articles in your blog.)
The headlines should be h2 tags and relevant to article. These headlines should break up the text as well as adding an image to the top or bottom of each one of your headlines.
Where possible you can add pictures and links, advertising links with buttons & video to maintain your readers attention.
Most visitors skim through your content so it’s important to make keywords bold and add bullet and number lists where possible.
Numbered lists help the reader keep up to where they are in your article as well as skim through your information in your article to find what they are looking for.
Keyword: The body need to include your keyword throughout and have your keyword in at least one h2 tag.
Text Content: You want to break up the text so it’s not a huge block of text as the reader won’t want to read it. Instead break up the paragraph so they are shorter and easier to read without feeling overwhelming for the reader.
Reading an article on the internet is different from reading an article in a magazine. Visitors to your site want the information easy bite size chunks of information.
Break your sections up into four to six paragraphs tops and then start a new section with a new image and headline. This way, your visitors are not going to be bored reading a novel of an article. If they wanted a novel, they would download a book.
Blog articles need to be structured to be easy for visitors to read. Having a big bulky chuck of text on a screen without any headlines and images is going to turn off your visitor’s attention and they will look to find the information from your competitor.
Footer of the article
The footer should include a h3 headline with your keyword and a summary of the article with a clear call-to-action. You can also include a button or hyperlink to where you would like to take your visitor.
A lot of people forget to add a call-to-action at the end of their articles as they don’t like to ask for the sale at the end.
You’ve earned it by providing this information so you should always ask in every article. Don’t assume that the visitor will go to your menu and then reach out to you as this usually doesn’t happen!
Call-To-Action: Make sure you add your call-to-action. Think of it the same way as going to a pharmacy and asking for a solution to your problem, the cashier tells you how to fix your issue but won’t sell you the drug to help with your issue.
This is the same as that scenario, your article helps explain their issue and your product/service is the solution!
Extra Footer Details
Comment Section: Your footer to your article can include a comment section. WordPress has it’s on comment system built in but it prone to comment SPAM where you will need to monitor or pay for programs to help protect the amount of SPAM that it collects.
An alternative if you’re using a page builder such as Elementor, WPBakery, Divi etc have drag and drop options to add a Facebook comments section to your articles. This requires your visitors to have a Facebook account and they are less likely to add nasty comments and the SPAM is controlled by Facebook.
Social Sharing Buttons: By having social sharing buttons on your article, you can ask the reader to share your article with people that they know. This can be a great way for others to find your content.
Authors Information:
Let your visitors know more about the person who has written the article. This way they get to know, like and trust this author and add them on their social media platforms.
Share more articles:
A great way of keeping visitors on your website is suggesting more reading material from you. If they have liked reading your content already, chances are they will like reading more of your content on your website.
SEOPress Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
You may only have the free version of SEOPress installed and you may want to purchase the SEOPress PRO version to get the extra features.
You will need to register for Google Search Console https://search.google.com/search-console/about
Where you can add your website sitemap and request for Google to index a page or new page that they may have missed. Your page/post may be indexed but it does not guarantee that you will get to the first page of Google.
You could be pages back on the keyword that you want to rank for. Using programs such as SEMrush or Ahrefs you can track your keywords to see where you rank on Google.
No, no-one can guarantee that your website will rank on Google. Using this program helps you with a small portion of their ever-changing algorithm to help you rank on Google. You will need to either invest money and time in learning all aspects of SEO or look at hiring an SEO Expert to help your website rank on the major search engines.
You can look at completing SEO courses or by reading information online to get a better understanding of ranking your website on Google. It’s an ever-changing industry and requires studying the field if you want to get the best results.
This is an area where business owners outsource this work and get an SEO agency to help with their website.
The short answer is yes, but your pages/post may not rank as good as they can be if you don’t install SEOPress on your website. SEOPress will help guide you to get better results for your page or posts on search engines.
SEOPress is a WordPress plugin and only works for WordPress websites.
The SEOPress Team have an amazing guide on their website:
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Peter Lowen
Senior Web Developer | CEO
Peter Lowen is the founder and CEO of Constructive Visual, a website design and hosting company. He has been creating websites since 2005 and writes content on business, marketing, web design, sales training, web hosting and WordPress related topics.
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