11-Point WordPress SEO Audit Checklist to Boost Your Rankings

Do you want to perform an SEO audit of your WordPress website so you can improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic?

Search engine optimization can be tricky if you don’t know what’s working and what’s not. By performing an SEO audit, you can analyze your site, find opportunities for improvement, and resolve critical issues.

In this article, we’ll go through a WordPress SEO audit checklist to boost your rankings.

What Is an SEO Audit?

Optimizing your WordPress website for search engines is important for attracting more visitors and growing your audience. However, many business owners don’t know if their SEO strategy is working or not.

This is where SEO audit comes in handy. It is a process of finding out if your website is properly optimized to rank better in search results.

By conducting SEO audits, you can also uncover critical issues on your WordPress website that might be stopping you from ranking higher in search engine results.

Then, based on the results from the audit, you can make adjustments to your WordPress SEO strategy, resolve any issues, and optimize your site.

How to Perform an SEO Audit in WordPress

There are many SEO tools in the market that can help you audit your WordPress website. However, not all of them will let you conduct an audit inside WordPress, so you don’t have to leave your site.

To perform an SEO audit of your WordPress website, we recommend using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) WordPress plugin.

It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress and helps you optimize your site for search engines without any technical knowledge.

The plugin offers an SEO Analysis Tool that allows you to perform a complete website SEO audit in your WordPress dashboard. It monitors your site and highlights critical issues, and then offers actionable insights to help you boost your organic traffic and keyword rankings.

You can get the SEO Analysis Tool in the AIOSEO free version. There is also a premium version of AIOSEO that offers advanced features like a redirection manager, schema markup, local SEO, powerful sitemap tools, and more.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. For more details, you can follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is active, you can head over to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress dashboard.

Then under the SEO Audit Checklist tab, you’ll see an overall site score and a complete SEO checklist. A score of 70 or above is good, and it means that your site is well optimized for search engines.

AIOSEO will check your website on different parameters. It will then highlight critical issues on your site that could hurt your SEO and provide suggestions for improving your rankings.

AIOSEO is a great tool to use to continuously monitor your site, so you’re aware of any big SEO issues that could hurt your rankings and traffic.

Besides that, it’s smart to do your own SEO audit once or twice a year to make sure everything on your site is working as expected.

The SEO audit checklist below can also help you troubleshoot any sudden drops in traffic, so you can fix the issue and recover your rankings.

That being said, let’s look at the SEO audit checklist for your WordPress blog.

1. Make Sure Your Website is Visible to Search Engines

When conducting a WordPress SEO audit, first you’ll want o make sure that your website is visible to search engines like Google and Bing.

WordPress has a built-in option to prevent search engines from crawling your website. If you’ve enabled that option, then Google or any other search engine will not list your site in the search results.

To view the setting, you can head over to Settings » Reading from your WordPress dashboard. After that, ensure that the ‘Search Engine Visibility option is not checked.

If it is enabled, then simply uncheck the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

You can check and see if your site is indexed in Google by searching site:example.com in Google. Just replace “example.com” with your own domain.

If you just launched your site or recently changed the setting above, then it may take a few days to get indexed. You can also see our guide on how to get new content indexed faster.

2. Ensure That Your Site is Using HTTPS

The next SEO audit checklist item is to find out if your website has an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between your user’s browser and your website server.

Google and other search engines will give priority to secure website that use HTTPS over those that are still using HTTP.

You can check if your site is secure by looking for a padlock sign in your browser’s search bar.

If you don’t have an SSL certificate, then see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site and how to move your site from HTTP to HTTPS.

3. Check If All Versions of Your URL Lead to the Same Site

Now, you should check that the www and non-www versions or HTTP and HTTPS versions of your URL are redirected to the same website.

For example, if someone enters https://www.example.com, https://example.com, http://www.example.com, or http://example.com in their browser, then they should see the same website.

You can check your primary WordPress URL by going to Settings » General and then look at the address in the ‘WordPress Address (URL)’ and ‘Site Address (URL)’ fields.

If different versions of your site’s URLs don’t redirect to the same location, then Google will consider the two URLs as separate websites.

As a result, it won’t know which URL to prioritize while indexing and could lead to duplicate content issues.

If you’re using AIOSEO, then it will automatically set the proper canonical URL in your site header, which will let Google know of your preference and prevent any issues.

4. Improve Indexing with an XML Sitemap

The next thing to check is whether there’s an XML sitemap and if it’s submitted to search engines.

An XML sitemap helps search engines to find and index your website pages easily. It also allows website owners to tell search engines about the most important pages on their website.

While having a sitemap won’t instantly boost your search engine rankings, it will help search engines crawl your website better.

For example, suppose you’re starting a new website. In that case, a sitemap will help Google or Bing to quickly discover new content on your website, as you won’t have many backlinks initially.

To create sitemaps, you can use the AIOSEO WordPress plugin. Simply head over to All in One SEO » Sitemaps from your WordPress dashboard and go to the ‘General Sitemap’ tab.

After that, make sure that the toggle for ‘Enable Sitemap’ is switched on.

You can also preview the sitemap and use different options provided by the WordPress plugin to edit the sitemap. Besides that, the plugin also allows you to create video, news, and RSS sitemaps for your WordPress site.

Once the sitemap is created, you can submit it to different search engines like Google and Bing. For more details, check out our guide on how to create a sitemap in WordPress.

5. Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website

A broken link or dead link occurs when a link goes to a page that no longer exists at that URL. In such cases, you’ll see a 404 not found error when you click on the broken link.

Some commons reason why you see a 404 error is because the WordPress site was moved to a new domain, the page was deleted, or it was moved to a new location.

Having a lot of broken links can be bad for your site’s SEO. They can have a negative impact on your keyword rankings and user experience, since search engines and website users won’t find the page they’re looking for.

That’s why when you’re conducting an SEO audit, it’s important to look for dead links and fix them.

To find broken links, we recommend using MonsterInsights. It’s the best Analytics solution for WordPress and it automatically tracks 404 errors on your site in Google Analytics.

MonsterInsights monitors broken links without slowing down your website like other broken link plugins do.

Once you’ve found broken links on your website, you can fix them by setting up 301 redirections.

The easiest way to redirect dead links is by using AIOSEO’s powerful redirection manager. It will also logs 404 errors on your website and allows you to set up redirects.

You can check out our complete guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress.

6. Check If You Are Missing Meta Tags

Meta tags are snippets of HTML code that help search engines like Google to understand what a page is about, so it can rank it for relevant searches.

There are different types of meta tags, but the two most important tags are the title tag and meta description. Search engines will use this information to understand the content of the page.

Usually the title tag and meta description are displayed in search results, though Google may sometimes change the text depending on various factors like what that user is searching for.

When performing an SEO audit, you should ensure that the meta tags aren’t missing from your blog posts or product pages.

That’s because your title is the first thing people will read in the search engine page results and decide whether they want to click on your link or not.

Similarly, meta descriptions are short text that appears under your post title and URL on search engine page results. They help in describing your article to search engines and users.

You can add meta tags to any blog post or landing page using AIOSEO. Simply scroll down to the ‘AIOSEO Settings’ meta box in your WordPress editor and add your title and description.

7. Ensure You’ve Got Internal and External Links

The next thing to check during an SEO audit is to make sure that the pages you’re trying to rank have internal and external links.

Internal links are links from other pages on the same website, while external links or outbound links are links to other website. They’re are crucial for your SEO success, yet many business owners overlook their importance.

Search engines follow different links to find and index new pages in the search results. Creating internal and external links allows search engine crawlers to discover new content on your website and boost rankings easily.

Not only that, but links also help your readers to navigate your website or find source for stats and other information.

You can use an SEO tool like Semrush to run a site audit, which will show you any pages that could use more internal links.

If you need help adding links to your site, then check out our guide on how to add a link in WordPress.

8. Measure Your Website Loading Speed

Google uses your website loading speed as a ranking factor. When you’re performing an SEO audit, it’s important to check for things that can slow down your website.

First, you’ll need to find out how fast your website loads for your users.

If you’re already using MonsterInsights, then you can check the Site Speed report inside your WordPress admin area.

Once you’ve connected Google Analytics to your WordPress website, simply head over to Insights » Reports from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Site Speed’ tab.

You can see a score for your site’s load time for desktop and mobile. Besides that, the report also shows different metrics that are important for measuring how fast your website is.

Next, if you scroll down, then you’ll notice that MonsterInsights offers recommendations and benchmark goals that you should aim for on your website.

Using the report, you can audit your site and find how to load your web pages faster. For example, you can use a caching plugin to improve the server response time or use a content delivery network (CDN) to boost website speed.

For more tips, you can check out our guide on how to run a site speed test, and then see our ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.

9. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Responsive

The next item to check in a WordPress SEO audit is whether your website is mobile responsive or not.

Google uses your site’s mobile version for indexing, instead of desktop. If you want to boost your rankings, then your website needs to be mobile-ready.

To find out how mobile-friendly your website is, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Simply enter your site’s URL and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

The tool will now analyze your website and show the test results whether your site is mobile-ready or not.

If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, then you can change your website theme and select a responsive WordPress theme. See our guide on how to properly change your WordPress theme so you don’t lose any data or traffic.

10. Scan for Malware and Unwanted Vulnerabilities

Another essential thing to check while conducting an SEO audit is to scan for security risks. If Google Safe Browsing flags your website for malware or unwanted software, then it will show a warning to your visitors.

This can hurt your SEO, as people will avoid visiting your site. Google will also lower your rankings since your site contains malware and harmful programs.

To remove malware and other suspicious files from your website, you’ll need a WordPress security scanner.

At WPBeginner, we use Sucuri as it’s the best WordPress firewall and security service. It checks your website for malicious code, malware, spam injection, and other vulnerabilities and helps clear your site.

Sucuri also monitors your site for potential threats 24/7 and blocks any suspicious activity, hacking attempts, DDoS attacks, and more. Not only that, but it also helps in protecting the server-side.

If Google Safe Browsing flags your site as unsafe, then check out our guide on how to fix ‘this site ahead contains harmful programs’ error in WordPress.

11. Track Your Keyword Rankings for Drop in Traffic

Finally, it’s important to keep track of your keyword rankings when conducting an SEO audit and check their positions in case there’s a drop in traffic.

Keeping an eye on your keyword rankings not only helps you see which search terms people use to find your website, but you can also find opportunities to get even more traffic.

To track your keyword rankings, you can use Google Search Console. First, you’ll need to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Once that’s done, you can log in to your Google Search Console account and head over to the ‘Performance’ report. Next, scroll down and see the search queries your site is ranking on.

Besides using Google Search Console, you can also use an SEO tool like Semrush to track keyword rankings.

Semrush is a popular keyword rank tracker tool that’s used by many professional marketers and SEO experts. All you have to do is enter your site’s URL in the ‘Organic Research’ option and click the ‘Search’ button.

From here you can view your top keywords, track their positions, and even monitor position changes.

If you’re seeing your rankings decline, you can use our guide on how to optimize your blog posts for SEO so you can recover your traffic and rankings.

We hope this article helped you learn how to perform a WordPress SEO audit using the checklist and boost your rankings. You may also want to check out our guide on the best email marketing services and our comparison of best keyword research tools.

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.

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October 11, 2021 at 03:30PM

How to Automatically Tweet When You Publish a New Post in WordPress

Do you want to tweet your newly published blog posts automatically?

Twitter is one of the best platforms to let your followers know whenever you publish a new post in WordPress. By tweeting new posts automatically, you can save time while growing your Twitter followers and website traffic.

In this article, we will show you how to automatically send a tweet when you publish a new post in WordPress.

Why Automatically Tweet New Blog Posts on Twitter?

Twitter is a great place to engage with your audience and build a following. However, it can be time-consuming to manually send out tweets whenever you publish a new post on your WordPress blog.

That’s where automatically sharing new blog posts on Twitter comes in handy. You can provide fresh content to your Twitter followers to keep them engaged.

That said, let’s look at how you can automatically Tweet whenever a new post is published on your WordPress website.

Automatically Share New WordPress Posts on Twitter Using Uncanny Automator

The easiest and most reliable way to tweet newly published content in WordPress is by using Uncanny Automator. It’s the best WordPress automation plugin that helps you create automated workflows without having to code.

For this tutorial, we’ll be using the free version of Uncanny Automator, since it includes a Twitter integration.

There’s also an Uncanny Automator Pro version that unlocks more integrations like Google Sheets, Twilio, Slack, and others. It also offers advanced features like delayed or scheduled actions, buttons that can trigger any automation, and much more.

You can see our guide on how to create automated workflows in WordPress for more examples to reduce admin tasks and save time.

To get started automatically tweeting new posts, you’ll first need to install and activate the Uncanny Automator plugin on your website. For more details, you can follow our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll need to navigate to Automator » Settings and then select the ‘Twitter’ tab. After that, go ahead and click the ‘Connect an Account’ button.

On the next screen, you’ll need to allow Uncanny Automator to access your Twitter account. To do that, simply click the ‘Authorize app’ button.

You’ll now be redirected back to the Uncanny Automator settings page. You can see that your Twitter account will be successfully connected.

Next, you’ll need to create a recipe to automatically send tweets when you publish a new blog post in WordPress.

To start, simply head over to Automator » Add New from your WordPress dashboard. Now, you’ll need to select a recipe type by choosing either logged-in users or everyone.

Logged-in recipes can be triggered by only users that are logged in to the website. However, if you want anyone to trigger the recipe, then you should select the ‘Everyone’ recipe type.

You can go ahead and select the ‘Logged-in users’ recipe type and then click the ‘Confirm’ button.

After that, you’ll need to add a title for your recipe and then select ‘WordPress’ as your Logged-in triggers integration.

Next, you will see a list of triggers to choose from. Go ahead and select ‘A user publishes a type of post with a taxonomy term in a taxonomy’.

Now you can choose which content you’d like to automatically share on Twitter by selecting a ‘Post type’ from the dropdown menu.

For instance, if you want to share all blog posts, then simply choose the ‘Post’ option. You can also decide if you’re going to share posts from a particular category or tag by changing the Taxonomy options.

When you’re done, click the ‘Save’ button.

Next, you’ll need to add an action for your recipe. An action is something that you want to do when the recipe is triggered, like sharing your content on Twitter.

You can start by clicking the ‘Add an action’ button.

Now select ‘Twitter’ as your integration under the Actions section.

After that, you’ll need to choose the ‘Post a status to Twitter’ option for your action.

Next, go ahead and add a Status that your followers will see on Twitter when new content is published.

Uncanny Automator also offers different options to customize your Tweet. For example, you can click the (*) asterisk button to the right of the text field and select ‘Post title’ and ‘Post URL’ to automatically appear in your Tweets.

You can use the Image URL field below if you want the same image to appear with every blog post that’s tweeted out.

However, if you want your blog posts’ featured images to appear instead, then you’ll want to see our guide on how to add Twitter cards in WordPress.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button when you’re done.

Now you’re ready to publish your recipe. All you have to do is click the toggle under the ‘Recipe’ meta box and change the recipe status from Draft to ‘Live.’

That’s it! Uncanny Automator will automatically tweet when you publish a new blog post on your WordPress website.

You can now publish a new blog post and then visit your Twitter profile to see your tweet with the custom status.

We hope this article helped you send automatic tweets when you publish new posts in WordPress. You may also want to look at our tutorial on how to choose the best blogging platform and the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.

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 Automatically Tweet When You Publish a New Post in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 09, 2021 at 06:34AM

13 Free User Management Plugins for WordPress (2021)

Are you looking for the best user management plugins for WordPress?

User management plugins let you more easily register, edit, and manage users on your WordPress website.

In this article, we’ll share our favorite user management plugins that you can use on your WordPress site.

Why Do You Need a User Management Plugin in WordPress?

WordPress user management plugins make it easy to manage and register new users on your WordPress website.

There is built-in functionality to manage user registrations, but it’s quite limited and doesn’t give you much control over your users.

With a user registration plugin, you can easily manage your users in bulk, customize user roles, create custom login and registration forms, and more.

If you’re running a multisite network, online course, multi-author blog, or membership site, then this gives you more flexibility and control over your users.

That being said, let’s take a look at the best user management plugins for WordPress.

1. Members

Members is a free user management plugin used by over 200,000 sites that lets you easily create and manage user roles and permissions in WordPress.

You can easily set permissions and restrict content on your website without having to code or hire a developer.

The advanced role editor lets you create, delete, and customize roles and capabilities for any user through the easy to use interface. You can even assign multiple roles to different users.

It also integrates with other popular plugins, including MemberPress, to help you build a paid membership site.

For more details, see our beginner’s guide to WordPress user roles and permissions.

2. WPForms

WPForms is the best contact form plugin for WordPress used by over 4 million websites.

It’s very easy to use and lets you build contact forms and other forms with the drag and drop builder.

The free version of the plugin has simple contact form features like spam protection, basic form fields, email notifications, and simple user management.

If you want to create custom user registration forms, then you’ll need the pro version that comes with the User Registration Form addon.

You can use this addon to build custom user registration and login forms. This lets new users create an account on your WordPress website.

The registration forms are completely customizable. You can change form fields like the username, bio, assigned user roles, and much more.

For spam protection, you can manually approve new users or require them to confirm their profile by clicking a link in their email.

If you have an email list, then you can integrate WPForms with the most popular email marketing services to automatically add users to your email list.

3. MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin in the market.

It’s very easy to use and can help you quickly build a membership site or online course in WordPress.

After you activate and set up the plugin, you can turn on user registration in a couple of clicks. To embed new user registration forms into your website, you can use the custom shortcodes.

Beyond new user registration, you can easily view and manage your existing users and even edit their profiles.

Plus, it supports all kinds of integrations with the most popular WordPress plugins. For example, the WooCommerce integration to help you create a members-only online store, add WooCommerce registration forms, send new user emails, and more.

4. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is one of the most advanced WordPress form builders in the market, used by more than 300,000 businesses.

You can use the drag and drop builder to easily create advanced forms like quizzes, payment forms, job board listings, surveys, online calculators, and much more.

Both the Business and Elite plans allow you to add advanced user registration forms to your WordPress site. Your users can register and edit their profiles all from the front end of your website.

There are all kinds of advanced options like user nickname fields, custom password reset pages, field auto population with user data, and more.

You’ll also find advanced integrations to register WooCommerce users or automatically add users to your email newsletter, CRM, and more.

5. WP User Manager

WP User Manager is a free user registration and profile builder plugin. It has features like custom user registration and customizable user profiles, login form, password recovery, and more.

Plus, you can create custom front end login forms, let users create custom avatars, display users in a directory, and much more.

If you’re building a community based website, then this plugin can help you easily manage all of your members.

6. LoginWP

LoginWP (formerly Peter’s Login Redirect) is a free plugin that lets you automatically redirect users after they log in to your website. You can redirect users based on their username, user role, capabilities, and more.

This plugin makes it easy to redirect users to a custom welcome or thank you page after they successfully register on your website.

It’s very easy to use and only takes a couple of clicks to set up the redirects. For step-by-step instructions, see our guide on how to redirect users after a successful login.

7. User Switching

User Switching is a great free plugin that lets you quickly switch to different user accounts.

Instead of having to log out and log in to different user profiles, you can do it in one click from your WordPress dashboard.

This can be useful for testing WordPress sites, where you regularly need to log out and switch between different accounts.

8. Comment Moderation Role

Comment Moderation Role is a simple and free plugin that lets you easily create a comment moderation user role in WordPress.

This lets you keep you WordPress website secure while creating a role that only allows for comment moderation. Every other part of the WordPress dashboard will be hidden.

For more details, see our guide on how to allow blog users to moderate comments in WordPress.

9. Simple History

Simple History is a free WordPress plugin that lets you monitor the activity of your WordPress users. It shows you actions your users have taken on your WordPress site, which helps you spot any errors or security issues faster.

You can choose whether you want your user activity log to display, and you can show the user history for the last 30 or 60 days.

For more details, see our guide on how to monitor user activity in WordPress with security audit logs.

Alternative: WP Activity Log provides detailed user tracking and real-time reports.

10. SeedProd

SeedProd is the best drag and drop page builder for WordPress used by over 1 million websites. It lets you create completely custom pages in WordPress without writing a line of code.

The plugin has a beginner-friendly drag and drop builder, a page template collection, and pre-design sections to make the page building process quick and easy.

Plus, it has a WPForms integration, so you can build a registration form with WPForms and customize it with SeedProd.

The free version of SeedProd can be used to customize your user registration page.

However, the premium version of the plugin comes with over 100 professionally designed templates, additional content blocks, integrations, subscriber management features, and more.

11. Bulk Delete

Bulk Delete is a useful free plugin that lets you bulk delete users on your site that have a specific role or other criteria. For example, you can delete users that haven’t logged in for a specific amount of time.

Instead of selecting users manually, this plugin lets you bulk delete users in a couple of clicks.

You have complete control over the filters you want to use to delete users, like the number of posts, last login date, user role, and more.

12. Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles

Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles is a simple plugin that does exactly what the name suggests and lets you hide your WordPress admin bar for specific user roles.

Hiding the admin bar can help to improve the user experience for some users. For example, you might want to hide the admin bar on the front-end of your website for subscribers, or for users who aren’t able to edit posts or pages.

For more details, see our guide on how to disable WordPress admin bar for all users except administrators.

13. Import and Export Users and Customers

Import and Export Users and Customers is a free plugin that helps you easily export and import WordPress users. This can be very useful if you’re merging multiple sites and want to add all your users to the new site automatically.

It can also be helpful if you want to import your existing customer or user information to your CRM or email list. It’s very easy to use and can help you import or export user data in a couple of clicks.

For more details, see our guide on how to easily import and export your WordPress users.

We hope this article helped you find the best free user management plugins for your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting and our expert picks of the best business phone services for small businesses.

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 13 Free User Management Plugins for WordPress (2021) appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 08, 2021 at 06:00PM

How to Set a Minimum Word Count for WordPress Posts

Do you want to set a word count for your WordPress blog posts?

If you have multiple authors on your site, then setting up a minimum word count can help ensure that writers meet content standards and fully answer the reader’s questions.

In this article, we’ll show you how to set a minimum word count for your WordPress posts.

Why Set a Minimum Word Count for Your Blog Posts?

Whether you’re creating content yourself or run a multi-author website, you should set certain content standards to ensure top quality articles.

One of the standards you can introduce is a minimum word count for each WordPress blog post. With WordPress, you can restrict authors from publishing blog posts with thin content and ensure high content quality.

Why would you want to enforce longer posts?

Some research suggests that longer content tends to rank significantly better in search results than short content, which could help you get more traffic to your blog.

That being said, let’s look at how you can set a minimum word count in a WordPress blog.

Method 1: Set a Minimum Word Count Using a Plugin

A simple way to add a minimum word count to your WordPress website is by using a plugin like PublishPress Checklists.

PublishPress Checklists allow you to set tasks that authors must complete before publishing content. This includes adding a minimum and maximum word count on posts and pages.

For this tutorial, you can use the free version of PublishPress Checklists, since it has the features we need. There’s also a premium version available that offers more features like checklists for WooCommerce products.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the PublishPress Checklists plugin. You can follow our step-by-step tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin for more details.

Upon activation, you’ll need to go to Checklists from your WordPress admin panel. Next, you can set minimum and maximum words for the ‘Number of words in content’ option.

After that, you can choose whether you want to make the ‘Number of words in content’ option to be disabled, required, or recommended task from the dropdown menu.

If you select Recommended, then authors can publish articles even if they don’t meet the minimum word count. However, the Required option makes it mandatory to complete the word count task, so go ahead and select the Required option.

Besides that, PublishPress Checklists also lets you add user roles to exclude from meeting the word count requirement. Simply click on the box under the ‘Who can ignore the task’ column and select a user role.

When you’ve set the number of words writers should complete, simply scroll down and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Now you can go to Posts » Add New to create a new blog post and see the minimum word count requirement in action.

If the post doesn’t contain the minimum number of words, a warning icon will appear on the ‘Publish’ button in the WordPress editor. The plugin will also show that the word count task wasn’t met in the ‘Checklist’ settings box on your right.

Once your content meets the minimum word count, the checklist task will show a green checkmark, and authors can publish the blog post.

Method 2: Manually Set a Minimum Word Count Limit

Another way to add a minimum word count on your WordPress website is by adding a code snippet to the functions.php files in a WordPress theme.

However, we don’t recommend editing your site’s theme files. That’s because even a small mistake can break your website and even prevent you from accessing the WordPress dashboard.

An easier way to add code to your site is by using the Code Snippets plugin. It lets you add custom code without worrying about breaking your site. Plus, it makes it easier to keep track of any snippets you add to your site.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Code Snippets plugin. If you need help, then check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is active, simply head over to Snippets » Add New from your WordPress dashboard. You can start by adding a title for your custom code.

Now, you’ll need to copy the following code:

function minWord($content)
{
        global $post;
        $content = $post->post_content;
        if (str_word_count($content) < 100 ) //set this to the minimum number of words
        wp_die( __('Error: your post is below the minimum word count. It needs to be longer than 100 words.') );
}
add_action('publish_post', 'minWord');

Note: You may change the minimum number of words from 100 to whatever you like and also customize the error to make it helpful. Make sure to change the number in both places in the code snippets.

Next, simply paste the copied code in your new snippet under the ‘Code’ area and then click the ‘Save Changes’ and ‘Activate’ buttons.

Now, if you try to publish a blog post that’s below the word count limit (100 words in our example), then you’ll see a publishing error.

We hope this article helped you learn how to set a minimum word count for a WordPress blog. You may also want to look at how to create an email newsletter the right way, or see our expert pick of the best HR payroll software 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 Set a Minimum Word Count for WordPress Posts appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 07, 2021 at 06:17PM