Wednesday, February 12, 2020

9 Best Free Logo Makers to Help You Look Like a Pro (2020)

Are you looking for the best free logo maker to create a new logo for your business?

Whether you’re running a small business website or a starting a blog, you want to look like a pro. This means having a great logo that fits your brand, but it can be a challenge if you are not a graphic designer.

In this article, we’ll show you the best free logo makers that you can use to create a professional logo without any design skills.

Best logo makers to help you look like a pro

Why You Need a Great Logo?

You need a great logo to create and establish a brand identity for your business, blog, or personal brand.

Think of a logo as the profile picture for your business. You’ll be using it on your website, social media accounts, email newsletter, and business cards.

It helps your customers identify and associate your business with a visual identity.

In an ideal world, you’d pay a professional designer to create a logo for you. But when you’re facing the other costs of building a website, you might need a cheaper or even free logo option.

Using a logo maker is a great alternative to hiring a design company to produce a custom logo for your website.

Each of the logo makers below are free to use. Note that with some you’ll need to pay to download and keep the logo you come up with.

1. Tailor Brands’ Logo Maker

Tailor Brands' logo maker

Tailor Brands offers a free logo maker that’s incredibly easy to use. You simply type in your brand name and (optionally) your tagline, click to select a few options, then it generates a logo for you in seconds.

Here’s a logo we created for an imaginary company, Monster Movies. The logo maker generated this for us, after we picked the options we wanted.

Example logo for Monster Movies created by Tailor Brands logo maker

You’ll need to sign up to view your logo. As well as your main logo, you’ll be shown alternative logos to choose from. If you don’t like any of them, then you can click to keep creating more.

You can customize your logo, change the style, fonts, text spacing, color, and more. Once you’re done, you can download the logo with a single payment.

Yes, you might see a monthly pricing, but you don’t need the subscription unless you’re using Tailor Brands other services like their social media management tools, website builder, and more. The best value way to get all the features is to pay $12.99/month upfront for a year.

Best for: Total beginners, particularly those who want to use Tailor Brands’ other tools too.

2. Looka’s Logo Maker

Looka's logo maker

Looka’s logo creation process is fairly similar to Tailor Brands’ process. To create your logo, you type in your company name, select what type of company it is, and then tell Looka what styles you like.

With Looka, you also get to pick up to three colors and symbols that you think would suit your brand. If you’re stuck though, you can just skip this step.

Like with Tailor Brands’ logo creator, you will need to login or create an account to view your logos. You can scroll through lots of options and pick the one that you’d like to customize.

Here are some of the options it generated for us:

Several logo options created by Looka's logo maker for Monster Movies

When customizing a logo, it’s easy to preview different fonts, colors, and style combinations. You can then pick the option you want and make changes to your design.

You’ll need to buy your finished logo to be able to use it. The cheapest option here is $20. You can also pay up to $80 if you want additional files such as resized versions of your logo for social media profiles. These are one-off costs, not recurring payments.

Best for: Anyone needing a logo in high resolution, perhaps for use in print.

3. Constant Contact’s Logo Maker

Constant Contact's logo maker

The Constant Contact logo maker is super quick to get started with. Just type in the name of your brand, and it’ll present you with six options. If you don’t like any of these, then click ‘More’ to see a larger range.

Logos created by Constant Contact's logo maker, for Monster Movies

Once you’ve picked an option, you need to create a free account. After that, you’ll be able to edit your logo by changing the style, font size, colors, and more.

You can preview how your logo would look on a website, on social networks, and even on a t-shirt. It’s completely free to download it and use it. You won’t have to pay anything.

You can use your logo-building account to access Constant Contact’s other services, too. For instance, you could start a website or blog using Constant Contact website builder, or you can use their marketing platform to create an email newsletter.

Best for: Good quality logos that you can download completely free of charge.

4. Hatchful: Shopify’s Logo Maker

Hatchful's logo maker

Hatchful, from Shopify, is another easy and fun logo creator. With just a few clicks, you can create a range of potential logos.

You can keep generating more options until you get something that you like. Here’s what we got for Monster Movies:

Logos for Monster Movies created by Hatchful

You can click on your chosen logo to edit the font, colors, icon (if your logo has one), and more.

It’s free to download your chosen logo, though you will need to sign up and create an account. In your download, you’ll get all sorts of useful variations of your logo. These don’t just include social media sized logos, but also a Favicon for your website.

Best for: Quickly creating multiple different versions of your logo, for free.

5. Canva Pro’s Logo Maker

Canva Pro logo maker

Canva Pro works a bit differently from the logo makers above. It’s not a logo creating tool but a whole graphic design tool that you can use to create pretty much anything.

While Canva has a free plan, Canva Pro gives you access to lots of extra elements, plus the ability to upload your own fonts and create a brand kit. It costs from $12.95/month, though you can try it out for free for 30 days.

With Canva Pro, you can choose from a bunch of searchable logo templates that you can then modify as much as you want. Here’s one we created for Monster Movies:

You’ll need to sign up for a free account to download your logo, and you’ll need a Pro account if you want access to the full range of Canva’s tools.

Best for: Website owners who want to create other graphics beyond just logos.

6. Ucraft’s Logo Maker

Ucraft logo maker

Like Hatchful, Ucraft is a completely free logo creator. You don’t need to pay anything to download your logo.

It takes a different approach from most of the logo makers we’ve looked at so far, though. Ucraft doesn’t generate a logo for you or offer templates. Instead, it gives you a blank canvas to design your unique logo.

There are a huge number of icons to choose from. We found dozens of monster related ones. These icons come from The Noun Project, and they’re the same as the ones used by Squarespace’s logo creator.

There’s a very limited selection of fonts unless you upload additional ones, however.

The creation process is easy and intuitive, with a drag and drop interface where you can add icons, text, and very basic shapes.

Monster Movies logo created with Ucraft logo maker

You won’t have the fine-tuned controls that some other logo makers provide, like the option to adjust the letter spacing. However, you don’t need to pay anything to download your logo.

Best for: Quick icon-based logos, particularly if you want a slightly cartoonish style.

7. Designhill’s Logo Maker

The Designhill logo maker

The Designhill logo maker works in a very similar way to Looka’s. You choose some brands you like, then you pick three colors.

You’ll then be shown the image search, so you can find and choose potential symbols for your logo. As with Ucraft’s icons, these are supplied by The Noun Project.

The logo generator will then come up with a set of different designs. You’ll need to enter your name and email address to see them.

Logos created with Designhill for Monster Movies

If you don’t like any of the logos that have been created for you, you can generate more. Once you’ve chosen an image you like, you can click on it and edit it. The editor gives you fine-tuned control over the font size and spacing, offers you a wide range of different fonts to choose from, and more.

Best for: Generating lots of logo options that use symbols you’ve picked.

8. GraphicSprings’ Logo Maker

GraphicSprings logo maker

GraphicSprings offers an easy drag and drop logo creator, where you can select from a huge range of images. There’s a reasonable selection of fonts, plus the option to add letter spacing and text effects.

Many of the images available are a lot more colorful and detailed than the icons that some other logo generators provide. There are also some good options for simpler graphics if that suits your brand better.

A logo created using the GraphicSprings logo maker

One downside is that there’s no easy way to search the images. You have to scroll through them to find one that you like.

Once you’ve designed a logo you’re happy with, there’s a one-off fee of $19.99 to download your logo files.

Best for: Creating a detailed, potentially colorful logo.

9. Logogenie’s Logo Maker

The Logogenie logo maker

Like other logo generators, Logogenie asks for a bit of information from you then creates a range of logos that you can pick from. Here’s what they came up with for us:

Logos created in Logogenie for Monster Movies

Once you’ve chosen a logo, you can modify it by changing the colors, the fonts, and more. There’s a reasonable range of fonts to choose from and a good number of icons.

This logo creator is a little more advanced than some other options. You can tweak the letter spacing of your fonts and you can move elements in front of or behind others.

Logogenie isn’t the cheapest logo generator, however. Your logo will cost from $24.90. You’ll need to pay more if you want extra options, like social network formats.

Best for: Detailed logo editing, particularly of the text on your logo.

Which is the Best Logo Maker? Our Expert Pick:

After going through our list of logo makers, you might be wondering which is the best logo creator for you?

That entirely depends on how experienced you are, and what you want to achieve.

If you’re a total beginner, then you’ll probably want a logo maker that generates lots of options for you to choose from. The Tailor Brands and Looka logo creators are good options here.

If you’re looking for a completely free logo maker option, then Constant Contact logo maker is the best.

If you’ve got more experience and are looking for an easy design tool, then Canva Pro offers a lot of flexibility and control.

We hope this article helped you learn about the best logo makers that help you look like a pro. You may also want to look at our guide on the best website builders or best blogging platforms to start your next website.

Once you’ve got a website, check out our list of best email marketing services, so you can increase your website traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 9 Best Free Logo Makers to Help You Look Like a Pro (2020) appeared first on WPBeginner.


February 12, 2020 at 07:00PM

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners (Step by Step)

Improving your WordPress SEO is crucial for getting more traffic to your website. Sadly most WordPress SEO guides are too technical for new users to get started.

If you are serious about increasing your website traffic, then you need to pay attention to the WordPress SEO best practices.

In this guide, we will share the top WordPress SEO tips to help you improve your WordPress SEO and get more organic traffic.

WordPress SEO for beginners

You might have heard experts saying that WordPress is SEO friendly. This is actually why a lot of people choose WordPress to start a blog or a website.

While WordPress makes sure that the code it generates follows the SEO best practices, there is a lot more you need to do if you want to maximize your SEO efforts.

We have a number of actionable steps that you need to take to properly optimize your WordPress SEO.

To make it easy, we have created a table of contents to help you easily navigate through our ultimate WordPress SEO guide.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Basics of WordPress SEO

The Best WordPress SEO Plugin

WordPress SEO Best Practices

Speed and Security for WordPress SEO

Finally, see more SEO tools and resources to take your WordPress SEO even farther.

Introduction

We know the idea of optimizing for WordPress SEO can be intimidating for beginners, especially if you’re not a tech geek.

But don’t worry — it doesn’t have to be complicated. Start here to learn the basics, and then you can start applying them to your own website.

What is SEO?

What is SEO

SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a strategy used by website owners to get more traffic by ranking higher in search engines.

Search engine optimization isn’t about tricking Google or gaming the system. It’s simply about creating a website that has optimized code and formatting which makes it easy for search engines to find your website.

When people search the web for the topics you write about, your search-engine-optimized content will appear higher in the search results, and you’ll get more people clicking through to your website.

[Back to top ↑]

Why SEO is important

Search engines are often the biggest source of traffic for most websites.

Google and other search engines use advanced algorithms to understand and rank pages appropriately in search results. However, those algorithms aren’t perfect — they still need your help to understand what your content is about.

If your content isn’t optimized, then search engines won’t know how to rank it. When people search for the topics you write about, your website won’t appear in the search results, and you’ll miss out on all that traffic.

It is really important for all business owners to make their website search engine friendly, so that they can maximize their search traffic.

[Back to top ↑]

Basics of WordPress SEO

SEO can get technical, but it doesn’t have to be. Just learning a few basic SEO tips to optimize your site can give you a noticeable boost in your website traffic.

You don’t have to be a tech genius to use the techniques below. If you’re already using WordPress, then you’ve got what it takes!

Let’s get started optimizing your website.

Check Your Site’s Visibility Settings

WordPress comes with a built-in option to hide your website from search engines. The purpose of this option is to give you time to work on your website before it’s ready to go public.

However, sometimes this option can get checked accidentally and it makes your website unavailable to search engines.

If your website is not appearing in search results, then the first thing you need to do is to make sure that this option is unchecked.

Simply log in to the admin area of your WordPress site and visit Settings » Reading page.

Search engine visibility settings in WordPress

You need to scroll down to the ‘Search Engine Visibility’ section and make sure that the box next to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is unchecked.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.

[Back to top ↑]

SEO friendly URLs contain words that clearly explain the content of the page, and they’re easy to read by both humans and search engines.

Some examples of SEO friendly URLs are:

https://www.wpbeginner.com/how-to-install-wordpress/
https://www.wpbeginner.com/common-wordpress-errors-and-how-to-fix-them/

Notice that these URLs are readable and a user can guess what they will see on the page just by looking at the URL text.

So what does a non-SEO friendly URL look like?

https://www.wpbeginner.com/?p=10467
http://example.com/archives/123

Notice that these URLs use numbers unrelated to the content, and a user cannot guess what they will find on the page by looking at the URL.

Using SEO friendly permalink structure improves your chances of getting better positions in search results.

Here is how you can check and update your WordPress site’s permalink structure.

You need to visit the Settings » Permalinks page. Select the post name option and then click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

SEO friendly URL structure in WordPress

For more detailed instructions take a look at our guide on what is a SEO friendly URL structure in WordPress.

Note: If your website has been running for more than 6 months, then please don’t change your permalink structure unless you’re using the numbers option. If you’re using Day and Name or Month and Name, continue using that.

By changing your permalink structure on an established site, you will lose all of your social media share count and run the risk of losing your existing SEO ranking.

If you must change your permalink structure, then hire a professional, so they can setup proper redirects. You’ll still lose your social share counts on the pages.

[Back to top ↑]

WWW vs non-WWW

If you are just starting out with your website, then you need to choose whether you want to use www (http://www.example.com) or non-www (http://example.com) in your site’s URL.

Search engines consider these to be two different websites, so this means you need to choose one and stick to it.

You can set your preference by visiting the Settings » General page. Add your preferred URL in both the ‘WordPress Address’ and ‘Site Address’ fields.

Non-www or www in WordPress URLs

Despite what someone else might say, from a SEO standpoint there’s no advantage to using one or another.

For more detailed information on this topic, take a look at our guide on www vs non-www – which is better for WordPress SEO.

[Back to top ↑]

The Best WordPress SEO plugin

One of the best parts about WordPress is that there’s a plugin for everything, and SEO is no exception. There are thousands of WordPress SEO plugins which makes it harder for beginners to choose the best WordPress SEO plugin.

Instead of installing separate plugins for individual SEO tasks, we will help you choose the best WordPress SEO plugin that does it all, and it’s 100% free.

Choosing the Best WordPress SEO Plugin

Choosing the best WordPress SEO plugin

When it comes to choosing the best WordPress SEO plugin, you will most likely narrow your choices down to the two most popular solutions: Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack.

They are both effective solutions, and we’ve done a pros and cons comparison of Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Pack.

At WPBeginner, we use Yoast SEO, so in this tutorial we’ll be using Yoast SEO for screenshots and examples.

Regardless, we have a step by step guide on properly setting up each of these plugins:

[Back to top ↑]

Add XML Sitemaps in WordPress

Add XML sitemap in WordPress

An XML Sitemap is a specially formatted file that lists every single page on your website. This makes it easy for search engines to find all of your content.

While adding an XML sitemap does not boost your site’s search rankings, it does help search engines find the pages quickly and start ranking them.

If you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin, then it will automatically create an XML sitemap for you. To find your sitemap, just go to this URL (don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name):

http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

We will show you how to submit your XML sitemap to Google in the next step.

[Back to top ↑]

Add Your Site to Google Search Console

Google Search Console

Google Search Console, also known as Webmaster Tools, is a set of tools offered by Google to give website owners a look at how their content is seen by the search engine.

It provides reports and data to help you understand how your pages appear in search results. You also get to see the actual search terms people are using to find your website, how each page appears in the search results, and how often your pages are clicked.

All this information helps you understand what’s working on your site and what’s not. You can then plan your content strategy accordingly.

Google Search Console also alerts you when there is something wrong with your website, like when search crawlers are unable to access it, find duplicate content, or restricted resources.

We have a step by step guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

If you’re using Yoast SEO, then follow step 6 in our Yoast SEO setup guide.

If you’re not using Yoast SEO, then you can watch our video that shows an alternative way:

Once you have added your website to Google Search Console, click on the Sitemap from the left menu and then paste the last part of the sitemap URL.

Adding sitemap in Google Search Console

Click on the submit button to save your changes.

Google Search Console will now check your sitemap and use it to improve your website’s crawling.

Once you have successfully added your sitemap, it will appear as pending. It does take Google some time to crawl your website. After a few hours, you would be able to see some stats about your sitemap. It will show you the number of links it found in your sitemap, how many of them got indexed, a ratio of images and web pages, etc.

We recommend that you check your Search Console at least on a monthly basis for gathering insights and see your website’s SEO progress.

[Back to top ↑]

Optimizing Your Blog Posts for SEO

Often beginners make the mistake of thinking that installing and activating a WordPress SEO plugin is all that’s needed. SEO is an ongoing process that you must keep up with if you want to see maximum results.

All top SEO plugins allow you to add a title, description, and focus keyword to every blog post and page. It also shows you a preview of what users will see when they Google your website.

We recommend that you optimize your title and description to get maximum clicks.

When writing your blog post, simply scroll down to the SEO section and take full advantage of it.

Yoast SEO blog post settings

If you’re wondering how to choose a focus keyword or focus keyphrase, what is a good title, or what is a good meta description, then we have covered it in details in our beginners guide to optimize your blog posts for SEO.

We highly recommend that you read it because on-page SEO is crucial for your success.

Doing Keyword Research for Your Website

Many beginners use their best guesses to figure out what topics people are looking for and what they should add to their blogs and website.

It is like shooting an arrow in the dark. You don’t need to do that when you can use real data to find out what people are looking for.

Keyword research is a research technique used by content creators and SEO experts. It helps you discover words users enter into search engines to find content, products, and services in your industry.

You can then use those words and phrases into your website to get more search traffic.

There are a ton of keyword research tools (both free and paid) that you can use. We recommend using SEMRush, it helps you discover keywords and even find out the keywords where your competitors are ranking.

For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress website.

[Back to top ↑]

WordPress SEO Best Practices

If you follow the basics of WordPress SEO and use the best WordPress SEO plugin, you will already be ahead of most websites.

However if you want even better results, then you need to follow the WordPress SEO best practices below.

These aren’t too technical and most won’t even require you to touch any code. But they will make a big difference if you follow them.

Properly Using Categories and Tags in WordPress

Category vs Tag

WordPress allows you to sort your blog posts into categories and tags. This makes it easy for you to manage your content by topics, and for your users to find the content they’re looking for.

Categories and tags also help search engines understand your website structure and content.

Often beginners get confused on how to best use categories and tags. After explaining this to thousands of readers, here’s how we approach categories and tags.

Categories are meant for broad grouping of your posts. If your blog was a book, then categories will be the table of content.

For example, on a personal blog, you can have categories like music, food, travel, etc. Categories are hierarchical, so you can add child categories to them.

On the other hand, tags are more specific keywords that describe the contents of an individual post. For example, a blog post filed under the food category can have tags like salad, breakfast, pancakes, etc. Think of these as indexes section in a textbook.

For more on this topic, see our guide on categories vs tags and SEO best practices for sorting your content.

By using categories and tags properly, you make it easy for your users to browse your website. Since it’s easy for users, it also makes it easier for search engines to browse your website.

[Back to top ↑]

Make Internal Linking a Habit

Adding internal links in WordPress

Search engines assign each page on your website a score (page authority). The recipe of this score is kept secret so that people cannot game the results. However, the most common signals of authority are links.

This is why it’s important that you link to your own content from your other blog posts and pages.

You should make it a habit to interlink your own posts whenever possible. If you have multiple authors, then create a pre-publish blog post checklist that requires them to interlink at least 3 other blog posts.

This will help you boost your pageviews, increases the time users spend on your site, and ultimately will improve the SEO score of your individual blog posts and pages.

[Back to top ↑]

Optimize WordPress Comments

Optimize WordPress comments

Comments can be a strong indication of user engagement on your website. Engaged users mean more links back to your site, more traffic, and improved SEO.

However, you need to make sure that your comments are real and not spam. Spammers submit comments with bad links which could affect and even ruin your search rankings.

This is why we recommend everyone to start using Akismet. It is one of the two plugins that come pre-installed with every WordPress site, and it helps you combat comment spam.

If Akismet alone is unable to handle comment spam, then see these tips and tools to combat comment spam in WordPress.

If your blog posts attract a lot of genuine, spam-free comments, then you should pat yourself on the shoulder for building such an engaging website!

However, too many comments on a post can make it load slower which also affects your search engine rankings. (Keep reading below to find out more about how speed affects SEO.)

To prepare your website so that it can handle the burden comments put on your server and speed, you can split comments into multiple pages. See our tutorial on how to paginate comments in WordPress.

(If you’d like to get more comments on your site, check out these 11 ways to get more comments on your WordPress blog posts.)

[Back to top ↑]

NoFollow External Links in WordPress

As mentioned above, links help search engines decide which pages are important. When you link to a website, you are passing some of your site’s SEO score to that link. This SEO score is called “link juice.”

For good search rankings, you need to make sure that you are getting more link juice from other websites than you are giving away.

Adding the “nofollow” attribute to external links (links to websites that you don’t own) instructs search engines not to follow those links. This helps you save link juice.

A normal external link looks like this in HTML:

<a href="http://example.com">Example Website</a>

An external link with the nofollow attribute looks like this:

<a href="http://example.com" rel="nofollow">Example Website</a>

By default, WordPress does not come with an option to make links nofollow. However, you can still easily do that by manually modifying links.

Simply select the block containing your link and then click on the 3 vertical dots icon present at the top bar.

Edit as HTML

This will open a menu where you need to click on the ‘Edit as HTML’ option.

You will now see the HTML code of your link. Go ahead to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link element.

Manually adding nofollow attribute to a link

If you see the rel=”noopener noreferrer” attribute in the HTML code, then add a space after noreferrer and add nofollow after that.

For more details and alternate methods, see our guide on how to add nofollow links in WordPress.

[Back to top ↑]

Full Posts vs Summaries or Excerpts

Full posts vs summary or excerpts

WordPress displays and links to your posts from a number of pages like home page, category archive, tags archive, date archive, author pages, etc.

By default, it shows the full article content on all these pages. This affects your site’s SEO, as search engines may find it to be duplicate content. Full articles also make your archive pages load slower.

Showing full articles everywhere also affects your page views. For example, users who subscribe to your RSS feed will be able to read the full article in their feed reader without ever visiting your website.

The easiest way to solve this is by showing summaries or excerpts instead of full articles.

You can do this by going to Settings » Reading and select summary.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to customize WordPress excerpts without coding.

[Back to top ↑]

Speed and Security for WordPress SEO

Even if you follow all the WordPress SEO tips and best practices above, if your site is slow or gets taken down by a hacker, your search engine rankings will take a big hit.

Here’s how to prevent your site from losing search engine traffic due to slow performance or lax security.

Optimize Your Site’s Speed and Performance

Optimize your WordPress site's speed and performance

Research shows that in the internet age, the average human attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish.

Web usability experts believe that users decide whether they want to stay or leave within a few seconds of visiting a website.

That means that as a website owner, you only have a few seconds to present your content and engage users. You don’t want to waste this precious time making your visitor wait for your website to load. Search engines like Google now rank faster websites higher than slow loading websites.

If you need to improve your site’s speed, check out this expert advice on 18 useful tricks to speed up WordPress and boost performance.

[Back to top ↑]

Optimizing Images in WordPress for SEO

Images are more engaging than text but they also take more time to load. If you are not careful with image sizes and quality, then they can slow down your website.

You need to make sure that you use images that are optimized to load faster. See our guide on how to speed up WordPress by optimizing images for the web.

Another trick you can use to optimize your images for search engines is to use a descriptive title and alt tags. These tags help search engines understand what your image is about. They also help users with visual impairment as their screen readers can read the alt text to them.

WordPress allows you to easily add title and alt tags when you upload an image.

Adding alt text and title to images in WordPress

If you are a photographer or add a lot of images to your WordPress site, then you need to use a gallery plugin.

We recommend using the Envira Gallery. In our speed tests, we found it to be the fastest WordPress gallery plugin. It’s also fully responsive and SEO friendly out of the box.

For more tips, see our complete beginner’s guide to image SEO.

[Back to top ↑]

Security and Safety of Your WordPress Site

WordPress security

Each week, Google blacklists around 20,000 websites for malware and around 50,000 for phishing. When a site is blacklisted, it doesn’t show up in any search results at all.

This means that the security of your WordPress site is crucial for good rankings. You don’t want all your hard work on SEO to go to waste if your site is compromised by a hacker.

The good news is that it’s not that difficult to keep your WordPress site safe — see the step by step instructions in our ultimate WordPress security guide.

At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri to protect our website against attacks. To see why we recommend this service, check out our case study of how Sucuri helped us block 450,000 WordPress attacks in 3 months.

[Back to top ↑]

Start Using SSL/HTTPS

A site secured by SSL and HTTPS

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a technology that encrypts the connection between a user’s browser and the server they are connecting to. This adds an additional security layer to your WordPress site.

Websites secured with SSL are indicated by a padlock sign in the browser’s address bar. This makes your website more trustworthy, and it is required if you are running an online store with WordPress and processing sensitive payment information.

All top WordPress hosting companies offer free SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt. See our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your website for more details.

If you want a premium wildcard SSL certificate or just a regular certificate with security warranty, then we recommend using Domain.com.

Their SSL certificates come with a minimum of $10,000 security warranty and up to $1.75 million security warranty. You also get a TrustLogo site seal to display on your site for added credibility.

[Back to top ↑]

More SEO Tools and Resources

Once you get the hang of WordPress SEO best practices, you’ll want to take your skills even further to get ahead of your competition.

We have compiled a list of best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use to boost your SEO. If you’re ready to try some more advanced techniques, you can also check out our archive of WordPress SEO articles.

[Back to top ↑]

We hope this article helped you learn how to properly optimize your WordPress site for SEO. Go ahead and implement a few of these WordPress SEO tips, and you should see an increase in your traffic within a few months as the search engines process your changes.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide for Beginners (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.


February 11, 2020 at 05:00PM

Monday, February 10, 2020

How to Add Google Optimize in WordPress (2 Easy Methods)

Are you looking to add Google Optimize on your WordPress site?

Google Optimize is a free tool by Google that helps website owners optimize their sites by running A/B split tests. This allows you to compare two versions of a page and see which one converts better (i.e is more successful).

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add Google Optimize in WordPress, so you can start running split tests.

How to add Google Optimize in WordPress

What is Google Optimize?

Google Optimize is a free tool that lets you split test your pages and personalize them for your customers. You can link it to both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.

Using Google Optimize, you can set up experiments to see if making changes to a page increases your conversion rate.

For instance, you might run an A/B split test where you have two versions of a sales page to see which one performs better.

You might have a different headline on each page or a different product image on your online store. By split testing, you can gradually optimize your page to get the highest conversion rate.

Google Optimize lets you create these split-tests with a drag & drop editor. After that it shows each variation to your visitors at random, so you can gather data about what works best.

What Will You Need to Use Google Optimize?

You need a Google Analytics account in order to use Google Optimize on your WordPress site. You’ll also need to have placed the Google Analytics tracking code on your site.

If you don’t already have an account, or if you haven’t put the tracking code on your site, then see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress for step by step instructions.

You’ll also need MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

It comes with a Google Optimize addon which makes it super easy to run Google Optimize tests on your website.

MonsterInsights is a paid plugin, and you’ll need their Pro plan to access the Google Optimize addon. If you don’t want to purchase MonsterInsights, then we also have a method on how to setup Google Optimize manually using a free plugin as well.

That being said, let’s see how to add Google Optimize in WordPress like a pro.

Setting Up Your Google Optimize Account

First, you need to go to the Google Optimize website and click on the Get Started button.

The Welcome page for Google Optimize, with Get Started button

You’ll be prompted to decide whether or not you want to receive Google’s emails. After that, you need to click the options you want, and then click the Next button at the bottom of this screen.

Choose which emails you want to receive from Google

You can now choose specific settings for your account. We suggest simply using the Recommended settings.

Make sure you select your country from the dropdown menu, so you can see the correct terms of service agreement. When you click on these to read them, they’ll open in a new tab, so you won’t lose your place during setup.

The checkboxes may also change depending on what country you select.

Choose your Google Optimize account settings

Next, you need to check the boxes once you’re ready, and then the Finished button will turn blue. Click on it, then Google will set up your Google Optimize account.

As part of this, Google has created your first container. This will contain your experiments (tests and personalizations), and it needs to be connected to your website.

Your Google Optimize account, with step by step instructions on the right

Although you’re prompted here to create your first experiment, we suggest instead that you link Google Analytics to Google Optimize at this point.

Linking Google Optimize and Google Analytics

On the right-hand side of your screen, you’ll see the Link to Google Analytics step. Click the downwards arrow here and then click Link property.

Linking Google Optimize to your website (click Link property)

On the next screen, select the website you want to link with. If you can’t see your website here, then that could be because you’ve not finished setting it up in Google Analytics.

Select your website from the dropdown menu

Once you’ve clicked Link, you’ll see this pop up:

The Google Optimize snippet popup

If you’re going to use MonsterInsights to add Google Optimize to your site, which is what we recommend, you can simply click Skip for now. Otherwise, you may want to view and copy the code now as you’ll need to use a line of it later on.

Add Google Optimize to Your WordPress Site (Easy Way)

The easiest way to add Google Optimize to WordPress is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin on the market. Note: you’ll need to have a Pro subscription to the plugin in order to use the Google Optimize addon.

Installing MonsterInsights

First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Insights » Settings page and enter your license key here. You can find this information under your account on the MonsterInsights website.

Enter your MonsterInsights license key on the Settings page

Next, you need to visit the Insights » Addons page and find the Google Optimize addon. Simply click the Install button next to Google Optimize addon, and it should automatically activate.

Installing the MonsterInsights Google Optimize addon

Once that addon is active, you can go to Insights » Settings » Conversions page to configure the settings.

You’ll need to enter your Google Optimize Container ID here. You can find this listed against your container under the My Account section of your Google Optimize dashboard. You can also easily find it in the Container setup panel when you’re in the process of setting up your container.

Finding your Google Optimize container ID

Simply enter this in MonsterInsights, and your site will be connected to Google Optimize.

You can also enable “Google Optimize’s Async Page Hide” here. This may improve users’ experience on your website, especially if they’re on a slow connection.

It hides the page for a small amount of time, so the variation you’ve created during your experiment can load. Otherwise, your regular content could load before it’s actually modified which will make the page “flicker” from your users’ perspective.

Now that you’ve connected Google Optimize to your website, you’ll want to start running some A/B tests.

Manually Add Google Optimize to Your WordPress Site

You can also add Google Optimize to your WordPress site manually. This method is not recommended for beginners as you’ll have to manually modify your Google Analytics code.

There are different ways to do this depending on how exactly you’ve added your Google Analytics code to your website.

In a moment, we are going to cover the process for adding Google Optimize to an analytics.js tag, as this is what many people will have used to set up Google Analytics.

If you set up Analytics quite recently, you might instead be using Global Site Tag (gtag.js) to deploy Google Analytics. In this case, you can find instructions for this within Google Optimize itself. Just click the blue ‘Install Optimize’ link to get the instructions and code.

If you’re using Google Tag Manager (GTM), see Google’s instructions on installing Optimize with Google Tag Manager.

Assuming that you’re using the analytics.js tag, let’s cover the installation process.

First, you need to find your Google Analytics code in your WordPress dashboard.

Note that this code must be in the header part of your pages in order for the Optimize code to work. If you’re using a plugin or theme that places Google Analytics in the footer, then you’ll need to move your code to be in the header instead.

Next, add the line ga(‘require’, ‘GTM-XXXXXXX’); to your Google Analytics code as follows, replacing GTM-XXXXXXX with your Optimize Container ID.


<!-- Google Analytics -->

<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXXXXXX-1', 'auto');
ga('require', 'GTM-XXXXXXX');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>

<!-- End Google Analytics -->

Note that UA-XXXXXXXXX-1, in your code, will show your Google Analytics property ID.

Once you are done, please make sure to save your changes.

Tip: If you’re not sure where to find and edit your Google Analytics code, then you may want to see whether you have a plugin like Insert Headers and Footers installed.

If you’re using a premium WordPress theme, then there may be a place within it where you’ve put your Google Analytics code. You can check the theme’s documentation or contact their support team for help.

If you’re using this method, then you’ll need to also manually add the anti-flicker snippet code to your site if you want to use it. You can’t just click a button to do this, like you can when using MonsterInsights.

Once you have setup Google Optimize, you’re ready to setup split tests. You can follow our guide on how to do A/B split testing in WordPress using Google Optimize.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add Google Optimize in WordPress. You may also to see our proven tips on how to increase your blog traffic, and how to create an email newsletter for your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Google Optimize in WordPress (2 Easy Methods) appeared first on WPBeginner.


February 10, 2020 at 05:00PM