25 Best One Page WordPress Themes (2020)

Are you looking for the best one page WordPress themes for your website?

WordPress one page themes are perfect if you want to set up a minimal and modern business website. There are many professional one page themes available to choose from. This can make it hard to pick the right one for your site, especially if you’re new to WordPress.

In this article, we will share some of the best one page WordPress themes that you can use on your website.

Building a One Page Website with WordPress

A self-hosted WordPress.org site is the perfect platform to build your one page website.

Note: WordPress.org is different from WordPress.com. See our guide on the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

To start your WordPress website, the first thing you will need is a WordPress hosting account. Your web host stores your site on their servers, which are connected to the internet 24/7. All websites need web hosting.

You will also need a domain name. This is your website’s address on the internet (for example, wpbeginner.com or google.com).

If you are just getting started, then we recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest WordPress hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress hosting partner.

For WPBeginner users, they also offer a free domain name, free SSL certificate, and a 65% discount on web hosting. All you need to do to get the discount is to go through our link to Bluehost.

After purchasing web hosting, your next step is to install and set up WordPress. Follow our guide on how to make a small business website for step by step instructions.

Now you are ready to install a WordPress theme on your site. Don’t worry if you’ve never done that before. We have a full tutorial on how to install a WordPress theme.

Let’s take a look at our experts’ pick of the best one page WordPress themes that you can use.

1. Astra

Astra is a popular WordPress multipurpose theme for any kind of website. It comes with dozens of starter sites, including one page and multi-page templates.

The theme is lightweight, fast, and reliable. It integrates with third-party WordPress plugins to add more features and functionalities to your site.

2. Hestia Pro

Hestia Pro is a modern WordPress one page theme. It includes an easy setup with the help of a companion plugin which adds testimonials, services, and homepage sections to your website.

It is ready to be used with popular free page builder plugins and the WordPress live customizer. The theme supports WooCommerce out of the box.

3. Divi

Divi is a fantastic WordPress theme and powerful page builder. It comes with dozens of layout packs and a 1-click demo content importer to get started quickly.

It includes many one page website templates for different business niches. The theme also offers 40+ elements, 1200+ pre-made designs, and an easy-to-use customization panel to set up your site.

4. Ultra

Ultra is a powerful and flexible WordPress theme. It comes with several homepage layouts that can be used to easily build a one page WordPress website quickly.

The theme is suitable for all kind of business websites. It comes with ready to use templates for different industries like restaurant, agencies, spa and salons, lawyers, and even eCommerce stores.

5. OceanWP

OceanWP is a free WordPress multipurpose theme. It has a fast page load time and built-in SEO optimization to rank your website in the search engines.

The theme features include free and premium website demos, 1-click demo content importer, and powerful extensions. You can also find multiple one page templates for your website, blog, or eCommerce store.

6. Parallax Pro

Parallax Pro is a one page WordPress theme built on top of StudioPress’ Genesis framework. As the name suggests, it comes with beautiful parallax scrolling effects featuring a large fullscreen header image at the top.

It has a widgetized homepage layout allowing you to simply drag and drop content blocks to set up your homepage. It can also be used as a multi-page theme and comes with beautiful typography, full WooCommerce support, and custom widgets.

StudioPress is now part of WP Engine, the most popular managed WordPress hosting company. You can get this theme and all 35+ other StudioPress themes when you sign up for WP Engine hosting to build your website.

Bonus: WPBeginner users also get an additional 20% OFF. Get started with WP Engine today!

7. OneEngine

OneEngine is a one page business WordPress theme. It lets you add clients, portfolio, team, services, and an About section on the homepage.

It has animated graphs, a pricing table, and a blog section. The theme is easy to set up and customize without editing any code.

8. Mustache

Mustache is a one page WordPress theme for designers, artists, photographers, etc. It is ideally built for single page websites but flexible enough for multi-page sites as well.

It features a uniquely modern design with custom logo support, easy setup, built-in Google Maps, and contact form integration.

9. Parallax

Parallax is a beautiful single page WordPress theme with parallax backgrounds, portfolio, and team post types.

It has animated progress bars, list and grid layouts, and infinite scroll. The Parallax theme also adds image filters like sepia, grayscale, and blur, which you can apply to your images without using Photoshop.

10. Fagri

Fagri is a free one page WordPress multipurpose theme for small businesses and online agencies. It has a minimalist design and a custom background.

The theme lets you embed videos and other visual content from third-party services like YouTube, Soundcloud, etc. It also supports WooCommerce to create an online store.

11. Moesia Pro

Moesia Pro is a beautifully crafted one page WordPress theme for business websites. It comes with a drag and drop page builder with different content blocks, and you can add and arrange the blocks to build your homepage easily.

It also has an image slider, page templates, Google Fonts, and all the features you would expect from a premium theme.

12. Business One Page

Business One Page is a free WordPress one page theme for corporate and enterprise businesses. The theme has a beautiful layout with a light background that makes your content pop out.

Other notable features include 3 custom widgets, CTAs, homepage sections, and social media icons. The theme is easy to set up using the WordPress customizer with a live preview.

13. Daylight

Daylight is an excellent WordPress one page theme that can be easily used to create multi-page websites as well. It comes with powerful features that let you set up your homepage with a drag and drop builder.

It has parallax scrolling, hero images, sliders, and a built-in portfolio type. It also offers 2 homepage layouts and 10 custom page templates.

14. Orfeo

Orfeo is a full-width WordPress one page theme with a responsive layout that looks great on any screen size or device.

It has a theme options panel to add a custom logo, header background image, CTAs, and a navigation menu. The theme supports RTL (right-to-left) languages and lets you create a multilingual site easily.

15. OnePage

OnePage is a single page WordPress theme for business websites. It has a Twitter feed, clients section, animated counter, pricing table, and more.

The theme is optimized for speed and performance, which means your website loads quickly.

16. Corporate Plus

Corporate Plus is a free one page WordPress theme for business websites. It can be also be used as a multi-page theme with a separate blog section.

It has powerful features like a slider, an about section, services, parallax background support, a blog section, and a contact page. It is fully widgetized, which makes it quite easy to set up.

17. Montblanc

Montblanc is a beautiful one page WordPress theme that can be easily used on multi-page sites as well. It features a large fullscreen slider on the homepage with a transparent navigation menu and logo at the top.

It has 5 homepage layouts, 4 creative header styles, multiple portfolio layouts, and more. It also comes with a drag and drop page builder to design custom landing pages.

18. Neve

Neve is a classic one page WordPress theme for small businesses and startups. It comes with multiple built-in starter sites that you can import in 1-click to launch your website.

It integrates with popular drag and drop page builders to let you build custom page layouts. The theme has additional WordPress customizer settings for header, social icons, breadcrumbs, and styling options.

19. Potenza

Potenza is another great choice for a single page WordPress theme. It comes with an easy to set up, fully widgetized homepage.

It offers lots of color choices, custom backgrounds, parallax scroll, and beautiful animations. Potenza has custom homepage widgets to add sections, including services, clients, pricing tables, and projects.

20. Sydney Pro

Sydney Pro is a premium one page WordPress theme for freelancers and small businesses. It has a beautiful layout with a fullscreen custom background slider.

It also supports a video header to engage your users right away. Sydney Pro lets you add a contact form in the footer to connect with your website visitors.

21. Enterprise

Enterprise is a professional WordPress business theme. It is designed to be suitable for both single and multi-page WordPress websites.

It comes with built-in sections to add portfolio and services. It also includes a pricing table, custom widgets, and multiple layouts.

22. Zakra

Zakra is a free WordPress theme that lets you easily create a one page site. It’s build with a lightweight framework that should keep your site as speedy as possible.

It works with Elementor and other page builders, so it’s easy to create any layout you want for your site. It even comes with 10+ free starter sites that you can use. Also, it’s responsive and will look great on all devices.

23. Shapely

Shapely is a free WordPress one page theme with a nice set of features. It comes with custom widgets to add your portfolio, testimonials, and other homepage sections quickly.

It is easy to customize and set up with the help of a live theme customizer. It also supports WooCommerce and can also be used on multi-page websites.

24. Zelle

Zelle is an elegant WordPress one page theme that comes with interactive homepage elements and parallax scrolling. It has a fully custom header to display your logo, navigation menu, fullscreen background image, CTAs, and more.

The theme offers multiple sections to showcase your services, testimonials, clients, etc. When it comes to styling, Zelle has unlimited color choices, colorful buttons, and crisp typography.

25. Zero

Zero is a stylish one page WordPress theme for digital agencies, startups, and app developers. It comes with a layered homepage layout with beautiful on-scroll animations.

It has built-in homepage sections to add portfolio, clients, and services. Other notable features include Google Web Fonts, a sticky navigation menu, and video background.

We hope this article helped you find the best one page WordPress theme for your website. You may also want to see our list of essential WordPress plugins for business websites.

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 25 Best One Page WordPress Themes (2020) appeared first on WPBeginner.

June 12, 2020 at 05:30PM

How to Send Email in WordPress using the Gmail SMTP Server

Are you having trouble sending emails from your WordPress site?

One easy way to solve this is by sending WordPress emails using the Gmail SMTP server.

In this article, we will show you how to send emails from your WordPress site using the Gmail SMTP server.

Why and When You Need Gmail SMTP Server for WordPress Emails

Your WordPress site sends emails to notify you of new user registration, lost password reset, automatic updates, and even notifications from your contact forms.

By default, WordPress uses the PHP mail function to send out email notifications. However, this function doesn’t work as expected due to a number of reasons.

Most WordPress hosting companies restrict usage of this function to prevent abuse and spam.

Spam filters on popular email service providers check incoming emails to monitor if they are sent from authentic mail servers. Default WordPress emails fail this check and sometimes may not even make it to the spam folder.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the industry standard for sending emails. Unlike the PHP mail function, SMTP uses proper authentication, which increases email deliverability.

Gmail provides SMTP service that you can use to send out emails from your WordPress site. If you just want to send WordPress notification emails to yourself and few users on your site, then Gmail SMTP servers are the best option.

However, if you are planning on sending newsletter emails using WordPress, then you should use a mass emailing service provider, like Sendinblue or Mailgun.

Free vs Paid Gmail SMTP Service for WordPress

You can use your free Gmail account to send out WordPress emails. However, for better deliverability, we recommend using paid G Suite.

With G Suite, you get your own professional branded email address such as (name@yoursite.com).

G Suite requires you to add MX records to your domain name which means that your emails will appear to be coming from your own domain name boosting authenticity and ensuring better deliverability.

We use G Suite for WPBeginner and can honestly say it’s the best.

How to Send Email using Google SMTP Video Tutorial

If you prefer written instructions, then please continue reading.

How to Send WordPress Emails Using Gmail SMTP Server

If you decided to use G Suite, then you first need to set up your domain to work with Google Apps. We have a step by step tutorial on how to set up a professional email address with G Suite.

The rest of the instructions are the same whether you are using a paid or free Gmail account.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin on the market. It allows you to easily use any SMTP server to send WordPress emails with higher deliverability.

We recommend buying the paid version called WP Mail SMTP Pro which gives you access to premium support, more mailers, and white-glove set up by one of their experts.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » WP Mail SMTP page to configure the plugin settings.

First, you need to make sure that you use your Gmail email address in the ‘From Email’ field. Next, you need to provide the sender’s name.

WP Mail SMTP plugin offers two ways to connect your WordPress site to the Gmail servers.

The first method uses OAuth Authentication. This is a more secure method to send emails using Gmail servers.

The second method is by entering Gmail SMTP settings manually. This method is not recommended because it is less secure.

That being said, let’s set up WordPress to use Gmail SMTP for sending emails.

Method 1: Setting up Gmail to Send WordPress Emails using OAuth Protocol

This method is recommended for all users. It is more secure and once you set it up, you’ll never have to do that again.

You need to start by selecting Gmail as your mailer and set the return path to be the same as sender.

Next, you will see the option to enter your Client ID, Client Secret, and a URL in ‘Authorized redirect URI’ field.

Let’s set up these fields.

Creating an App and Generate API Keys for Gmail

Visit the Google Developers Console website and create a new project.

If you don’t see the blue button to create a project, then you can also click on select a project drop-down and create a new project.

You’ll be asked to provide a name for your project. Give it a memorable name, so that you can easily recognize it in the future.

After that, click on the create button to continue.

Developer console will now create your project and take you to its dashboard. Google offer developers access to many of their APIs and services. You need to enable the APIs that you will be needing for this project.

Click on Enable APIs and services button to continue.

This will bring you to the APIs library page. Next, you need to type Gmail in the search box to quickly find the Gmail API and click to select it.

You will now see an overview of the API and what it can do. Simply click on the ‘Enable’ button to continue.

Now that your API is enabled, the next step is to create credentials that you can use in your WP Mail SMTP plugin settings.

Click on the create credentials button to continue.

On the next screen, you will need to select ‘Web browser JavaScript’ in ‘Where you’ll be calling the API from’ field. After that click on the ‘User Data’ option.

To continue, click on the ‘What credentials do I need?’ button.

You will now be asked to provide a name for your OAuth client name. You can enter ‘WP Mail SMTP’ here.

Under JavaScript origins field, you need to add your website’s domain name. Next, you need to copy and paste the authorized redirect URL from WP Mail SMTP plugin settings.

After that, click on the ‘Create client ID’ button to continue.

Next, you need to enter a name for OAuth consent screen. You can put the plugin’s name here.

After entering the details, click on the continue button and the developer console will show your client ID. You can copy and paste this in the WP Mail SMTP plugin’s settings page. However, you will still need to add your client secret key.

Go ahead and click on the Done button to move on.

You will now be taken to your project’s credentials page. On this page, you can see your recently created credentials listed here. You need to click on the edit icon next to your credentials to continue.

This will bring you to the edit credentials page where you will be able to see your client secret key. You need to copy and paste the key in your plugin’s settings page.

Return back to plugin’s settings page in your WordPress admin area. Now that you have both client ID and client secret keys, you need to click on the save settings button to continue.

The plugin will now store your settings and reload the page. After that, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the settings page and click on the ‘Allow plugin to send emails using your Google account’ button.

This will take you to your account on Google, and you will be asked to give the website permission to send emails on your behalf.

Click on the Allow button to give permissions.

After that, you will be redirected back to your website where you will see a success message.

Method 2: Setting up Gmail SMTP as SMTP Sender

This method allows you to manually connect to Gmail’s SMTP servers to send your WordPress emails.

First, you need to visit Settings » WP Mail SMTP page to configure the plugin settings.

You need to start by providing the Gmail address you want to use in the ‘From Email’ field, and your name in the From ‘Name’ field.

Next, you need to select ‘Other SMTP’ as your mailer and check the box next to return path.

After that, scroll down to the Other SMTP section to configure more settings.

Here is the exact configuration you need to add in the plugin settings:

• SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com
• SMTP Port: 465
• Encryption: Use SSL encryption
• Authentication: Turn on authentication
• Username: Your complete Gmail address, e.g. john.smith@yourdomain.com or john.smith@gmail.com
• Password: Password of your Gmail account

Once you are done, click on the save changes button to store your settings.

That’s all, you have successfully set up WP Mail SMTP to use Gmail SMTP servers.

Note: If you use method two, please know that it’s less secure because your password is stored in text. You can enhance this by using the constants tip, but we strongly recommend using Method 1.

Testing Your WP Mail SMTP Settings

WP Mail SMTP plugin allows you to test your email settings, so you can make sure that everything is working properly.

You need to visit Settings » WP Mail SMTP page and click on the ‘Email Test’ tab. Simply provide an email address that you can access in the send to field and click on the send email button.

You will see a success message. You can now check your inbox to see a message with the subject line ‘WP Mail SMTP: Test Email to…’.

That’s all, you have successfully setup your WordPress site to send emails using Gmail SMTP servers.

Get More With WP Mail SMTP Pro

If you want even more functionality, you should try WP Mail SMTP Pro.

With the Pro version of the plugin, you can connect with:

• G Suite/Gmail
• Amazon SES
• Mailgun
• Office 365 / Outlook.com
• SendGrid
• And more

You also get additional features like email logs, ability to fine-tune / control which notification your WordPress site sends, and more.

Troubleshooting Gmail SMTP Not Working Issues

We have seen users encounter few issues when using Gmail SMTP with certain shared hosting configurations.

Take the following steps to fix the Gmail SMTP issue:

1. Log in to your cPanel account and create an email account that matches your Google apps email address. This might seem strange because you’re not using your server for emails. This step basically tricks your server into believing that you’re sending the email through the server.
2. In your cPanel account, go to the MX Records and change the MX routing from automatic to remote. It might be a little tricky to find since each host now has a custom cPanel interface. You need to look for a small link next to MX that says Email Routing: Remote Mail Exchanger.
3. After that log back into your WordPress site and send a test email.

We hope this article helped you learn how to send email in WordPress using the Gmail SMTP server. You may also want to see our list of the best contact form plugins for WordPress, and our comparison of the best email marketing services for small business.

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 Send Email in WordPress using the Gmail SMTP Server appeared first on WPBeginner.

June 11, 2020 at 05:00PM

How to Create a Loyalty Program in WooCommerce

Recently, one of our readers asked us if it’s possible to give customers loyalty points in WooCommerce.

This might be something you’ve wondered about too, especially if you’re looking to increase sales on your online store.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to create a loyalty program in WooCommerce (without writing any code).

Why Create a Loyalty Program in WooCommerce?

Creating a loyalty program can be a great way to increase sales on your online store.

A loyalty program encourages customers to keep coming back to your store, and it can even help boost average spend per customer.

You can use loyalty points to rewards customers for things like registering an account, placing their first order, and even get extra points for spending over a certain amount.

With that said, let’s take a look at how to add a loyalty program in WooCommerce.

Setting Up Your WooCommerce Loyalty Program

For this tutorial, we’ll be using Advanced Coupons to add a loyalty program to your WooCommerce store.

It is the best WordPress coupons plugin on the market and helps you increase sales and grow your business.

First, you’ll need to create an Advanced Coupons account, then download, install, and activate the plugin. If you’re not sure how to do that, just check out our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you’ve activated Advanced Coupons, you’ll need to enable the loyalty program module.

To do this, go to WooCommerce » Settings in your dashboard, then click on the Advanced Coupons tab.

Once you’re on that tab, you’ll need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and check the Loyalty Program box. After that click the ‘Save changes’ button.

You can now start customizing your loyalty program.

First, click on the Loyalty Program link below the Advanced Coupons tab:

Here, you can change how your loyalty scheme works.

The ‘Price to points earned ratio’ defaults to 1. That means the customer earns 1 point per $1 spent. You could change this, so that they earn 2 points or 10 points per $1 spent if you want it to look more impressive.

The ‘Points to price redeemed ratio’ defaults to 10. That means the customer needs to spend 10 points to get a $1 discount. You’ll likely want to change this if you’re changing how many points they earn per $1 spent.

For our loyalty scheme, we’re giving customers 10 points per $1 spent, but they’ll need to save 100 points to get $1 off.

You can also choose what to call your points. We’ve gone with ‘Reward Points’ for ours. You might want to use something more branded, like Starbucks does with their ‘Stars’.

Tip: If you change the name of your points here, you may also want to change it in the cart/checkout messages further down.

Next, you’ll need to decide how your points are calculated. For instance, if your customer has a discount code, you’ll probably want to only give them points for what they actually spend.

By default, the discount and tax are taken into account before points are rewarded. You can also choose to award points when the customer pays for shipping and/or fees.

There are lots of other settings on this page that you can tweak if you want to. These include things like the minimum spend to earn points, the minimum spend to redeem points, and when does the points expire.

A key setting you’ll want to look at is how customers can earn points. You can give them points for more things than just buying your products. For example, you may want to reward them with some points for registering as a customer and for completing their first order.

You can even set up a bonus reward during a certain period of time, or if your customer spends over a specific amount.

Once you’re happy with how you’ve set things up, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the ‘Save changes’ button.

Automatically Creating Accounts for Your Customers

Your customers will need to register for an account in order to collect loyalty points. If they check out as a guest, then their points will not be saved.

However, you can setup WooCommerce so that customer accounts are automatically created for them when they complete the purchase.

First, go to WooCommerce » Settings page and click the ‘Accounts and Privacy’ tab.

We suggest you uncheck ‘Allow customers to place orders without an account’, so that customers can’t checkout as guests.

You will probably want to allow customers to:

• Log in to an existing account during checkout
• Create an account during checkout

Here are our settings:

Now, customers will receive an email after the checkout to let them know how to access their account.

The WooCommerce Loyalty Program in Action

Your loyalty program is up and running! When a customer adds a product to their cart, they’ll see how many points they’ll receive for the order.

Once a customer has earned loyalty points, they can turn them into coupons in order to redeem them. This is done under My Account » My Reward Points.

To redeem points, the customer can type in the number of points they want to redeem. They’ll see how much the coupon will be worth. They can then click ‘Redeem’ to create the coupon.

Here, the customer has created a $5 off coupon using 500 of their points. They still have 550 points left to redeem.

They can then redeem this coupon on future order as long as it meets any minimum threshold you’ve set for redeeming coupons.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to create a loyalty program in WooCommerce.

Now that you have Advanced Coupons for WooCommerce, you might also want to check out our guides on creating BOGO (buy one get one) coupons and scheduling coupons in advance.

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 Create a Loyalty Program in WooCommerce appeared first on WPBeginner.

June 10, 2020 at 05:00PM

Categories vs Tags – SEO Best Practices for Sorting your Content

Readers often ask us, what’s better for SEO: categories vs tags?

You might not be sure what WordPress categories and tags actually are, and how they’re different. Knowing this can help you use them correctly.

In this article, we’ll explain the differences between categories vs tags for organizing your content, and how they can impact SEO rankings.

What’s the Difference Between Categories and Tags?

Categories are meant for broad grouping of your posts. Think of these as general topics or the table of contents for your WordPress site. Categories are hierarchical which means you can create sub-categories.

Tags are meant to describe specific details of your posts. Think of these as your site’s index words. They let you micro-categorize your content. Tags are not hierarchical.

For example, this blog post on WPBeginner is in our category “Beginners Guide”. You can see all the posts in this category by going to Blog » Beginners Guide in our navigation menu.

This post has the tags: categories, categories vs tags, custom taxonomy, seo, seo best practices, sorting your content, and tags.

You won’t see these tags displaying anywhere on our article. However, they do help users find this article in relevant searches on our blog.

One of the biggest differences between tags and categories is that all WordPress posts must be filed under a category, but they don’t have to have tags.

If you don’t give your post a category, WordPress will automatically assign it to the default category. This is called “Uncategorized”, but it’s often helpful to rename the “uncategorized” category to something like “Other” or “Miscellaneous”.

Note: By default, only blog posts have categories and tags in WordPress. However, you can add categories and tags to your WordPress pages using a plugin.

How can You Add Categories and Tags in WordPress?

You can add categories and tags in WordPress when creating or editing a post. You’ll find them on the right-hand side under the ‘Document’ settings.

You can also go to Posts » Categories and Posts » Tags to add new categories and tags.

For more about the process of adding categories and tags, check out our explanations of What is a category? and What is a tag? for help and guidance.

How Many WordPress Categories Should You Have?

There’s no specific number of categories that you should have. In most cases, you’ll want somewhere between 5 and 10 in order to properly categorize your posts and make your site easy to browse.

Categories are meant to encompass a large group of posts. You can use sub-categories and tags to split your posts into smaller groups.

If you’re just starting a blog, then don’t worry about trying to come up with a perfect list of categories. Just choose 3 – 5 broad categories and add more as time goes by.

Do I have to use sub-categories?

You don’t have to use sub-categories, and many large blogs (including WPBeginner) don’t. However, sub-categories are helpful if you have a large category with a lot of posts that could be grouped into smaller sections.

For example, you might have a “Recipes” category that contains a growing number of gluten-free recipes.

You can put these posts into their own sub-category, so it’s easy for readers to find them. You create a new child category for “Recipes” called “Gluten-Free” and move these posts into that category.

Using Categories in Your Posts’ URLs

Some sites use the Category name in permalinks (post URLs), which you can set up under Settings » Permalinks.

If that’s the case on your site, then your post will initially have a URL something like this:
…/recipes/gluten-free-pancakes/

After moving the post to a child category, it’ll have a new URL:
…/recipes/gluten-free/gluten-free-pancakes/

Normally, WordPress will try to redirect the old URL to the new one. It’s definitely worth checking that your links are still working. If necessary, you can create a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.

Another option is to keep the post in the parent category as well as assigning it to the child category, but this can have drawbacks.

Although, WPBeginner website has categories in the URL, we always recommend users to use shorter URL structure that only contains “Post name”.

This will give you maximum flexibility to reorganize content without worrying about setting up redirects.

All of our new websites use the modern Post name URL structure. WPBeginner is over 10 years old, so it has legacy URL structure and changing URL structure is not recommended for SEO which is why we have stuck with it.

Can I Assign One Post to Multiple Categories?

WordPress lets you put a post into multiple categories. This could be several parent categories, or a parent category plus a subcategory or subcategories.

Having multiple categories won’t benefit your SEO. You should only assign posts to multiple categories if it makes the most sense for your readers.

It’s possible that having your post in multiple categories could cause some SEO issues due to duplicate content.

If you do use multiple categories, then try to avoid putting one post into two or more main (parent) categories. Each post should fit within one main category.

Is There a Limit to How Many Tags a Post Can Have?

WordPress itself doesn’t have any limit on the number of tags you can have on each post. You could potentially assign 1,000 or more tags to a post!

However, we definitely don’t recommend that.

The purpose of tags is to help link related posts together. Think of them as an index section in a book. Each tag is like a keyword in the index.

Tags are helpful for users searching your site. Some plugins that display related posts use tags to help them figure out which posts’ topics are related.

We suggest that you normally stick to 10 tags maximum per post.

Categories vs Tags: What’s Better for SEO?

Are there any WordPress SEO advantages of using categories over tags or vice versa?

The short answer is No.

Categories and tags both have different purposes. You have to use categories, but you don’t have to use tags if you don’t want to. However, we recommend using both, appropriately, to help readers navigate your site.

Ultimately, you should design your site with users in mind. All search engines want to show users the content that’ll be the most useful to them.

This means that by organizing your content for best usability will also help you get better SEO rankings.

We hope that this article helped you understand categories vs tags and the SEO best practices for sorting your content. You may also like our article on how to track WordPress category and tag analytics, and our comparison of the best keyword research tools for SEO.

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The post Categories vs Tags – SEO Best Practices for Sorting your Content appeared first on WPBeginner.

June 09, 2020 at 05:00PM