Do you want to add a multilingual search in WordPress?
If you have a multilingual WordPress site, then adding a multilingual search feature can help users find information more quickly by searching in their own language.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add multilingual search in WordPress and delight your users with a better user experience.
Why Should You Add Multilingual Search in WordPress?
Often users have trouble finding information on multilingual websites because either there is no search feature that they can use, or the search feature shows them content in the wrong language.
Adding a multilingual search feature helps users easily find the content they are looking for. This improves user experience which means users will stay longer on your website.
Research shows that engaged users are more likely to convert, subscribe, or make a buying decision.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add a multilingual search in WordPress without breaking your website or writing any code.
Note: Keep in mind that the free version of TranslatePress only allows you to translate your website into one other language. So if you want to add multilingual search in WordPress for more than two languages, then you’d need to buy the TranslatePress Premium version.
Once you have translated some content on your WordPress website. It is time to add the search form.
Add a Search Block to your WordPress Site
WordPress comes with a built-in search block that you can add anywhere on your website.
If you’re using a block-based theme like Ultra, then you’ll be using the full site editor to add the search block.
Simply visit the Appearance » Editor page from the WordPress dashboard.
This will launch the full site editor which looks a lot like the block editor you use for writing posts and pages.
Now, click on the add block button (+) to add the Search block.
You can move the search block up and down to display it anywhere on the page.
Search block also comes with a few style options that you can choose from the block toolbar or settings.
Once you are finished, don’t forget to click on the Save button to save your changes.
You can now visit your website to see the search form in action.
On the other hand, if you’re using a theme that does not support the full-site editor, then you can add a search form as a widget.
Simply go to the Appearance » Widgets page from the WordPress admin dashboard.
Here, click the Add widget block button (+) and add the Search block to your widget area.
Once the ‘Widget Block Menu’ opens up, locate the ‘Search’ block and add it to your WordPress sidebar.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Update’ button at the top to save your changes.
Once you’ve saved the changes, visit your site and see the search box in action.
Method 2: Adding Multilingual Search Using SearchWP (Recommended)
The default WordPress search feature used by TranslatePress is not very good. It is quite basic and only looks for search terms in certain places.
It is the best WordPress search plugin on the market and allows you to easily replace the default WordPress search with a more powerful search feature.
SearchWP automatically builds a search index and matches search keywords in content, title, categories, tags, shortcodes, documents, products, and more.
Plus, it automatically replaces the default search form upon activation so you don’t need to replace it if you were already using it on your site.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add a better multilingual search to your WordPress site.
After that, go to the SearchWP » Settings page and then click on the ‘License’ menu option to enter your license key.
You can get the license key from your ‘SearchWP Accounts’ page. Simply copy the license key from there.
After that, paste it into the ‘License Key’ field and then click on the Activate button.
Now, you are ready to create your first custom search engine.
Simply go to the SearchWP » Settings page from the dashboard.
From here, you will see SearchWP’s first default search engine for you. It is pre-configured to work for most websites including multilingual websites.
You’ll see all your post types with different attributes. Next to each attribute there will be a slide that you can move to assign weight for that attribute.
You can also click on the Add/Remove Attributes button to include more areas in the search.
For instance, you can add custom fields and taxonomies to the attributes as well.
If you are unsure about a setting, you can leave it as it is. The default options would work for more use cases.
Finally, click on the Save Engines button to store your settings.
SearchWP will now start building your search index in the background.
Now, all you need to do is add the search form to your site.
Add a Search Block to your WordPress Site
SearchWP replaces the built-in search feature, which means you can use the default WordPress search form and it would still use SearchWP to show the results.
If you haven’t already added a search form to your website, then here is how you would add it.
If you’re using a block-based theme, then you’ll be adding a search block using a full-site editor.
Simply go to the Appearance » Editor page from the admin dashboard.
On the edit screen, click on the add block button (+) at the top and add the search block.
You can move the search block to the area where you want to display the search form by moving it up or down.
Finally, don’t forget to click on the Save button to save your changes.
If you’re using a theme that doesn’t support the full-site editor, then you’ll need to add a search widget to your website’s sidebar or widget-ready area.
For that, head over to the Appearance » Widgets page from the dashboard.
Now click on the add block button (+) at the top to open up the ‘Widget Block Menu’.
From here, locate and add the Search widget to your preferred widget area.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Update’ button at the top to save your changes.
Next, simply visit your website and use your improved search box.
Have you ever wanted to white label the WordPress admin dashboard for your clients or users?
WordPress comes with a nice user interface, but sometimes you may need to customize it for your own needs or simplify it for clients.
In this article, we will show you how to white label your WordPress admin dashboard.
What is White Labeled WordPress and When Do You Need it?
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world as it powers more than 43% of the website on the internet. However, many people still don’t know about it.
When working on a client project, it is possible that they may not be familiar with WordPress. Clients are interested in an easy way to update their website. They don’t want to struggle with themes, plugins, updates, security, and learning how to use WordPress.
White labeling a WordPress admin dashboard allows you to customize the WordPress admin area. You can replace the default WordPress branding with your own and hide unnecessary items to create a more streamlined interface for your clients or users.
Having said that, let’s take a look at how you can white label the WordPress admin dashboard without much effort.
White Labeling WordPress Admin Dashboard
The best way to white label your site’s admin area is by using the White Label CMS plugin. It’s a free WordPress plugin that lets you customize the login page, add your branding, edit the dashboard, control which menus your clients can see, and more.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the White Label CMS plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » White Label CMS from your WordPress dashboard to configure the plugin settings.
The plugin offers a simple setup wizard that you can use to get started. In the wizard, you can add a developer name that will appear in the footer and alt text.
Other than that, there are options for adding a developer URL, footer text, and RSS feed. After adding these details, you can click the ‘Next’ button.
The White Label CMS setup wizard also lets you add your client’s business name and upload a login logo for customization.
There’s also an option to enable a Retina login logo and upload your image.
Once you’re done, simply click the ‘Save’ button to exit the setup wizard.
Besides that, the settings page for the plugin allows you to control and customize every aspect of WordPress administration screens.
It is divided into these 5 sections:
Branding
Login
Dashboard
Menus
Settings
Let’s dive deeper into the different options available under each section and how to properly configure them.
Replace WordPress Branding With Your Own Brand
This is where you will replace the default WordPress site’s branding with your own custom branding.
The first option under the branding is to show or hide the WordPress logo and links in the admin bar. You can also hide the WordPress version from the footer.
Next, you can scroll down and upload your own custom logo to replace the WordPress logo that will appear in the admin bar.
The plugin also lets you replace the Howdy text from the admin bar and the WordPress.org URL with your own custom link.
After that, you can scroll down and change the side menu branding in your WordPress admin panel.
The plugin offers options to add a side menu image, an image that appears when the menu is collapsed, side menu link URLs, and alt text.
Lastly, you can also change the Gutenberg exit button and replace it with an exit icon, admin bar logo, and use a custom logo.
Besides that, there are options to brand the footer of your WordPress admin panel. The plugin lets you add a footer image, text, URL, and your own HTML code.
When you’re done, simply save your changes.
Here’s a preview of what these changes would look like in the WordPress dashboard.
White Label the WordPress Login Page
Next, you can go to the ‘Login’ tab in White Label CMS and change what the login screen will look like.
To start, you can upload a login logo and a retina login logo. There are also options to define the logo’s width, height, bottom margins, and add background color.
If you scroll down, there are more settings to change the background image and its position.
You can also enable the option to make the background image appear as a full screen on the login page for your WordPress website.
After making these changes, you can click the ‘Live Preview’ button at the bottom.
This will show you what your changes will look like in real-time. Once you’re satisfied with the edits, simply save your changes.
The White Label CMS plugin gives you some simple options to customize the login page. However, if you’d like more control over its design, then we recommend using a drag and drop page builder like SeedProd.
The main WordPress admin screen is called the dashboard. This is what users usually see when they login to WordPress.
It contains default panels showing different information about the website.
There is usually quite a lot of information, and many users don’t know what they are supposed to do with it.
White Label CMS allows you to customize this section and make it look cleaner. To start, simply click on the ‘Dashboard’ tab, and you will see options to show and hide each panel.
You can add dashboard icons, change the heading for the dashboard, and select WordPress user roles that can view the dashboard panel.
If you scroll down, there are more options.
For instance, you can enable the ‘Add Your Own Welcome Panel’ option.
When you’re done, don’t forget to save your changes.
Hide Specific Menu Items in the WordPress Admin
Next, you can head over to the ‘Menus’ tab in White Label CMS.
If you are using a bunch of plugins on the site, then those plugins will probably add their own menus as well. This could make your admin menu quite long. Many of your clients or users will probably not need these menus.
Using the plugin, you can hide these menus by enabling the ‘Want to hide menus for your clients’ option.
After that, you can scroll down and see different menus to hide.
For each menu, there are sub-menu items that you can see by clicking the blue downwards arrow icon.
To hide a menu, simply click the toggle, and it will be hidden for different user roles in WordPress.
There are also admin bar menus that you can hide using the plugin.
When you’re done, go ahead and save your changes.
Customize WordPress Admin Settings
Lastly, you can go to the ‘Settings’ tab in the White Label CSS plugin.
In this section, you’ll get options to hide the front-end admin bar, help box, and other screen options.
You can also turn off nag messages that appear at the top of the page in your WordPress dashboard. These are messages like rating the plugin or upgrading to a pro plan.
By removing them, you can keep your admin panel clean and clutter-free for your clients.
Other than that, the plugin lets you add custom CSS for admin and custom editor stylesheet.
Once you’ve made the changes, simply click the ‘Save’ button.
Note: If you’re doing work-for-hire and will not be managing your client’s sites on a regular basis, then we DO NOT recommend hiding admin menus or disabling the admin nags.
Only do that if you’re going to be regularly updating and managing the website.
Do you need a technical search engine optimization (SEO) checklist?
Optimizing your site for search engines can be a challenge if you’re not sure what to look for. Many website owners will ensure basic SEO practices but overlook technical elements.
In this article, we will show a WordPress technical SEO framework and share a checklist you can use for your business.
Why Do You Need a WordPress Technical SEO Framework?
Technical SEO is a key component of your WordPress SEO strategy. You could be creating the world’s best content, but if search engines can’t find and understand your content, then all your efforts are wasted.
That’s why it is important to have a WordPress technical SEO framework.
Our WordPress SEO framework checklist will ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index your content. Plus, you can also evaluate other technical aspects of your WordPress website that might be preventing you from achieving higher rankings.
For example, your website might be taking a long time to load. This would result in poor rankings since the page load time is a ranking factor.
There are many SEO tools that let you conduct SEO audits and find out if your site is technically optimized. However, not all tools will show details inside your WordPress dashboard.
The easiest way to evaluate technical SEO for your WordPress site is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It is the best WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines.
It offers a free SEO Analysis tool that you can use to conduct a technical SEO audit. The tool is available in the AIOSEO Lite version, which you can use for free. There are also premium AIOSEO plans that offer more features like schema markups, sitemaps, redirection manager, and more.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you can go to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress admin panel. Under the ‘SEO Audit Checklist’, you’ll see an overall score for your website.
Next, you can scroll down to the Advanced SEO and Performance sections.
Here, the plugin will evaluate the technical SEO aspects of your website based on different parameters and ranking signals. It will then highlight missing elements and critical issues that could stop your site from ranking higher.
You can use AIOSEO to continuously monitor your site’s technical SEO and fix issues. Similarly, you can also perform a competitor analysis and see what they’re doing differently for their technical SEO optimization.
That said, let’s look at our WordPress SEO framework checklist that you can use to ensure higher rankings and organic traffic. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section:
1. Ensure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines
The first thing you need to check is whether search engines are able to find your WordPress site.
You can simply enter site:example.com in the search engine and see if your website appears in the search results. Just replace ‘example.com’ with your own domain.
If your site isn’t showing up, then you can check the visibility settings in WordPress.
Go ahead and visit the Settings » Reading page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, scroll down to the Search engine visibility setting and be sure the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is unchecked.
This option is usually enabled if your website is under construction or is put in maintenance mode.
2. Uncover Crawling and Indexing Issues
If your website is visible to search engines, then it is important to check that your content is crawled and indexed.
Crawling is the process where Google, Bing, and other search engines discover and understand your website. Indexing is the process where search engines collect and store information about your website.
A simple way of checking crawling and indexing issues is using webmaster tools. For example, Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that shows your site’s performance on search results, helps uncover bugs, and allows you to submit your site to Google.
In Google Search Console, you can head to the ‘Pages’ report. Here, you’ll see pages that are indexed and not indexed.
Next, you can scroll down to the ‘Why pages aren’t indexed’ report.
Google Search Console will show you crawling and indexing errors on your website and which pages are affected by them. You can then resolve these issues, so your web pages can appear in Google search results.
Besides that, you can also check indexing and crawling issues for individual URLs.
Simply enter the page link in the URL inspection tool at the top. Google Search Console will then show you a report on whether the URL is indexed and on Google.
If it is not, then you’ll see a ‘URL is not on Google’ message. To fix this, you can click the ‘Request Indexing’ button so Google can crawl and index your page.
3. Make Sure Your Website is Secure with HTTPS
Another important thing to check from a technical SEO framework standpoint is whether your website is secure or not.
Google and other search engines will give preference to sites that use HTTPS over those that use HTTP. To secure your site, you will need an SSL certificate to encrypt the connection between your website server and the user’s browser.
You can check this by looking for the padlock sign in your browser’s search bar at the top.
Most WordPress hosting companies now offer free SSL with all their plans. You can ask your host to see if they offer that.
Broken links are bad for your website’s SEO framework, and it negatively impacts your user experience. These are links that no longer exist and will return a 404 error.
Since search engine crawlers find different pages on your website by following internal links. A broken link can stop them from discovering new content. As a result, your page might not get indexed in the search results.
Similarly, if a visitor clicks on a link and is unable to find a page they’re looking for, then they might exit your website.
With All in One SEO (AIOSEO), you can easily find and fix broken links on your WordPress website.
It offers a powerful redirection manager that helps track 404 errors on your website and lets you set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links.
It is important that Google and other search engines only index one version of your website.
Your website can have different versions, but they should all point to one version. For example, you can have a site that has www and non-www version or HTTP and HTTPS version:
Whether you choose a www or non-www version, all the URLs should redirect to the primary WordPress URL. Otherwise, Google will consider each version as a different website.
This can negatively impact your overall SEO rankings. Search engines won’t know which version to index, and it could cause duplicate content issues.
You can check the primary URL for your site by going to Settings » General from the WordPress dashboard. Next, look at the web address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.
With AIOSEO, you can automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, so search engines will know your preference.
6. Use SEO-Friendly URL Structures
After setting a primary URL for search engines to index, you can now check the URL structure of your website.
URL structure plays an important role in your SEO. Having an SEO-friendly URL structure will help Google, Bing, and other search engines easily crawl your pages and understand your content.
Here’s an example of a bad URL structure:
https://www.example.com/category.php?id=42012
Instead, you should be using URLs that describe the content, like:
You can create SEO-friendly URLs by making sure that they are short and descriptive. Besides that, don’t forget to include a keyword in the permalinks, use hyphens to separate words, keep all the words in lowercase, and don’t use stop words.
Pro Tip: Don’t include numbers in your URL slugs, either. That way, you can update your content in the future
7. Ensure Your Site is Mobile Friendly
The next item in the technical SEO framework checklist is to ensure your WordPress site is mobile responsive.
With Google now going mobile-first, it will now index your site’s mobile version instead of the desktop version.
8. Check Your Website Speed and Improve Performance
Your website speed is also a critical part of your WordPress technical SEO framework. Google uses page load speed as a ranking factor and will rank fast-loading sites higher compared to slow-performing websites.
You can check website load time by running a site speed test. For instance, you can use MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin that shows a site speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.
After that, you can head to the Insights » Reports page from your WordPress admin panel. Next, you can go to the ‘Site Speed’ tab. Here, you’ll see an overall score for your website speed for desktop and mobile.
The report will also show other metrics that are important for measuring your website speed.
If you scroll down, then MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals for each metric you should target.
A quick tip that you can use to improve your website speed is minifying your CSS and JavaScript files.
The term minified means reducing the size of website files by removing white spaces, lines, and unnecessary characters. When a user visits your website, different files are sent to the user’s browser, which includes CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.
By reducing the file size, you can significantly improve website speed and performance. There are many WordPress plugins and hosting services that allow you to minify CSS and JavaScript files, like WP Rocket and SiteGround.
9. Improve Your Internal Linking Structure and Remove Orphaned Pages
Internal links play an important role in your website’s technical SEO framework. Search engines reward websites that have a proper internal linking structure without too many orphaned pages.
AIOSEO has a powerful SEO Link Assistant feature that makes it easy for you to discover link opportunities and even automate the process for you.
It is the best internal linking plugin for WordPress that crawls the links on your WordPress website and provides a detailed report. You can see the number of internal links, outbound links, and affiliate links for each post and page.
You can see all the link suggestions in one place, and it can even automatically go back and add internal links in your older posts with a single click.
10. Generate XML Sitemaps and Submit Them to Search Engines
Another important part of technical SEO framework is making it easier for search engines to find your content. One of the ways you can do that is by creating an XML sitemap.
It tells search engines about the important pages on your website. This way, search engine bots can crawl your site faster and index your content. While a sitemap won’t boost your rankings, it will improve the overall crawling and indexing process.
You can create and customize the sitemap using AIOSEO. The plugin will automatically generate a sitemap upon activation. Besides, it also lets you create a video sitemap, a news sitemap, an HTML sitemap, and an RSS sitemap.
Once you’ve created a sitemap, you can then submit it to different search engines using their webmaster tools.
For instance, Google Search Console gives the option to enter the sitemap URL and submit it to the search engine. To learn more, you can see our guide on how to submit your site to search engines.
Similarly, you can also add your site to Bing Webmaster Tool and then submit an XML sitemap to improve crawling and indexing.
11. Use Schema Markup for Rich Snippets
The next technical SEO framework item you should check is schema markup. It helps search engines understand your content better and how it will appear on the search results.
Search engines can use this information and display rich results. It also helps capture Google featured snippets, which can increase organic clicks and traffic.
For example, here’s how Google shows recipes, ingredients, ratings, cooking time, and other information for blog posts that use a recipe schema markup.
The plugin lets you choose the schema type depending on your content, and it takes care of the rest.
With AIOSEO, you can also add completely custom schema markups based on your needs using the WordPress custom schema generator feature. This can help you get star ratings, and other rich snippets in Google.
12. Optimize Your Robots.txt File for SEO
Robots.txt is a text file that specifies instructions for search engine bots on how to crawl your website. You can tell which pages to crawl and which pages to skip while crawling.
Here’s what a robots.txt file would look like for a WordPress site:
Adding a robots.txt file helps save the crawl quota. A search engine crawler will crawl a certain number of pages during a session. If they don’t finish crawling all the pages on your site, they will resume crawling in the next session.
This can slow down the indexing of your content, and it will appear in search results after some delay. That’s why optimizing the robots.txt file is an important component of the technical SEO framework.
You can disallow pages unnecessary pages like the WordPress admin area, theme folder, plugin files, and more. This way, you get to save the crawl quota and allow search engine bots to crawl even more pages.
On the other hand, you can add sitemaps and other important pages to robots.txt. This way, search engines will crawl and index them as quickly as possible.
A simple way of optimizing the robots.txt file is by using AIOSEO. You can enable custom robots.txt using the plugin and add rules to allow or disallow search engines to crawl.
13. Make Sure Google Doesn’t Flag Your Site for Malware
Another important technical SEO checklist item is to ensure your site isn’t flagged by Google for malware or unwanted software.
If your website is a security risk for users, then Google will show the following warning message:
This can be really bad for your WordPress SEO. It will keep people away from visiting your website, and impact your rankings, and overall website traffic.
To scan for malicious files on your website, you can use a WordPress security scanner. At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. It checks for vulnerabilities like malware, spam injection, malicious code, and helps clean up the website.
14. Use Server Side Rendering vs Client Side Rendering
Another technical SEO best practice is ensuring that your site’s JavaScript renders on the server side and not on the client side.
Server-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render on the website server. While client-side rendering is when the JavaScript files render in the user’s browser.
Client-side rendering is bad for your site’s user experience and SEO. All the burden of loading your site quickly falls on the visitor. Plus, search engine bots use JavaScript resources for crawling and indexing your content. This could result in JavaScript content being missed by crawlers and not included in the search engine index.
With server-side rendering, your website server ensures everything loads quickly. This way, you get a better user experience, faster page load speed, and reduce any risk of content being missed from indexing.
One way of ensuring that JavaScript is rendering on your site’s server is by running a site speed test. If your website speed is low, then it could be because of this issue. You can also look at crawled pages in Google Search Console and see if Google missed any content while crawling. If it did, then it could be because of JaveScript-related SEO issues.
That’s it. You’ve made it to the end of the list. You don’t need to go through each and every point in the technical SEO framework at once. Simply go one step at a time and work your way through the list.
