24 Best WordPress Themes for Recipe Blogs

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for your recipe blog?

A food recipe blog should display tempting photos with complete recipes. It also needs to look attractive. Traditional WordPress blog themes may not make your recipes stand out.

In this article, we will share some of the best WordPress themes for recipe blogs that you can use right away.

Making a Recipe Blog With WordPress

WordPress is the best website builder on the market. It is perfect for sharing recipes and creating engaging, food-related websites.

There are two different types of WordPress. These are WordPress.com, which is a hosted platform, and WordPress.org, also known as self-hosted WordPress.

For more details, check out our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

For your food recipe blog, we recommend self-hosted WordPress.org. It gives you full access to all of WordPress’s powerful features.

You will need a WordPress hosting account and a domain name to create your recipe website.

We recommend using Bluehost for your hosting and domain name. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended hosting provider.

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After buying hosting, you can go ahead and install WordPress. Next, just follow our step-by-step guide on how to start a food blog.

Now, let’s take a look at our handpicked list of the best WordPress themes for recipe blogs.

1. Astra

Astra is a great theme for building a recipe, food, or restaurant blog. It comes with dozens of templates you can use, including the food and drinks blog template.

You can easily add your images, use any Google fonts, and pick from unlimited colors in the live theme customizer. There are lots of other customization options too.

The Astra theme is suitable for absolute beginners, but it also offers lots of power and flexibility. Astra has built-in speed and performance optimization.

You can easily add extra elements to your site, such as a contact form. You could even sell or give away a downloadable cookbook using Astra’s Easy Digital Downloads addon.

2. SeedProd

SeedProd is the best WordPress website and theme builder. It lets you make your recipe blog from scratch with a custom header, including a navigation menu, background image, call-to-action button, and more.

It has a drag-and-drop builder to make a recipe blog theme. The theme builder is easy-to-use for beginners and has simple options like color schemes, font selection, backgrounds, and layouts.

SeedProd also provides ready-made and fully-functional theme templates for different types of WordPress blogs, websites, and online stores. You can import a template and replace the content and images to launch your food recipe blog.

3. Thrive Themes

Thrive Themes is a popular WordPress theme-builder with a powerful toolset. It has built-in templates you can import and customize to launch your food recipe blog in just a few minutes.

In the Thrive Suite, you get an A/B testing plugin to help you find which landing page gives you more traffic. Thrive Themes is super flexible and easy to integrate with your favorite marketing tools.

When it comes to design and layout, Thrive Themes has smart color schemes, global website settings, and more. It supports block patterns that you can use to create fully custom landing pages without writing code.

4. Divi

Divi is one of the best WordPress multipurpose themes on the market. It comes with hundreds of built-in layouts for different business niches, including food and recipe templates.

With the Divi theme, you also get a powerful page builder for easy customization. It has point-and-click tools, elements, and modules that let you start blogging without editing any code.

Divi comes with hundreds of layout packs, making it easy to create a WordPress website quickly. Even better, Divi uses responsive design to make your website mobile-friendly.

5. Ultra

Ultra is a popular WordPress theme built to create any type of website or blog. It is fully compatible with the WordPress block editor.

It comes with a few starter sites for food, chef, recipe, and cafe sites. These let you get your site up and running quickly. They include the site’s settings, content, navigation menu, widgets, and so on.

Ultra includes Themify Builder, which makes it easier for you to set up a blog and add your recipes. Ultra also offers multiple addons to add more features to your website.

6. Hestia Pro

Hestia Pro is a one-page WordPress multipurpose theme well-suited for any type of professional blog or website. It supports video content to add your recipe videos easily.

It has homepage sections for the chef or owner of the blog to create an ‘About Me’ or a portfolio section. The theme also works great with your favorite page builders like Beaver Builder for customization.

6. Foodie Pro

Foodie Pro is a great theme from StudioPress. It is a well-crafted WordPress theme for recipe blogs, food websites, and health and nutrition businesses. It features a fully widgetized modern layout and lets you drag and drop items to set up your website.

Foodie Pro includes a theme options panel, live customizer support, custom headers, multiple page layouts, and more. It is highly optimized for speed and performance.

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.

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7. Restaurant

Restaurant is an excellent WordPress theme built specifically for cafes, restaurants, and food recipe blogs. It comes with several tools to add a food menu, categories, chef details, and more.

It has a grid layout on the homepage to showcase your recipes with images. You can also create multiple landing pages for user testimonials, single recipes, and contact information.

8. Kale

Kale is a free minimalist-style WordPress theme. It features a clean and simple traditional blog layout with all the basic features.

You can easily create great-looking recipe pages using the built-in, full-width templates for both posts and pages.

Kale comes with a special front page that showcases featured posts. It also has the option to show a banner or a posts slider in the header and includes full eCommerce and RTL language support.

9. Cookely

Cookely is a WordPress recipe theme made specifically for food and cooking blogs. This beautiful theme comes with a recipe card and a built-in recipe index that you can display and sort by category.

The homepage has different sections with a featured content area at the top. It is available in 4 color schemes, and you can also choose your colors easily.

10. Elara Pro

Elara is an elegantly-designed WordPress food and recipe blog theme. It features a clean and modern design that makes your content and images more engaging.

It comes with a recipe builder, plus a recipe template, recipe index, and filtering features. Elara also has built-in support to display ads and promote your content.

11. Florentine

Florentine is an elegant WordPress theme designed specifically for recipe blogs. It includes a dedicated recipe section that lets you add properly formatted recipes to your website. Your users will also be able to switch to distraction-free cooking mode instantly.

It has built-in social sharing, different styles, and layout choices. The theme options are easy to manage using the WordPress customizer with live preview.

12. Pulppy

Pulppy is one of the best food blog themes. It comes with a unique design that uses fun color schemes and a modern layout for presentation.

It includes drag-and-drop elements to set up your homepage. Inside, you will find sections to add portfolio items, featured products, sliders, and a call-to-action button. You can also use it to add an online store to your blog.

13. Neve

Neve is a stylish WordPress all-purpose theme built to create any type of website. It ships with multiple food and recipe blog templates that you can use on the site. It is easy to replace the content with your own images and text.

It is flexible and easy to set up with elegant layout designs that attract more users to your blog. The theme has full WooCommerce integration to sell your recipes online.

14. OceanWP

OceanWP is a modern WordPress multipurpose theme. It comes with a 1-click demo content importer and a few paid and free templates for recipe blogs.

When it comes to features, the theme has a fast page load time, multilingual support, and eCommerce compatibility. It also provides useful addons to extend the functionality of your site.

15. Osteria

Osteria is an outstanding WordPress recipe theme built specifically for food bloggers, cafe owners, and restaurants. The top feature of the theme is its 3D scrolling effect, which makes it unique and grabs users’ attention.

It gives you a custom editor to add your food recipes, favorite food menus, and food descriptions. The theme also offers a style manager to customize colors, fonts, and backgrounds. You can also set up a food-ordering system for your users to place online orders for your delicious recipes. 

16. Foodica

Foodica is a beautiful, magazine-style WordPress theme for food lovers. It features a modern design and comes in 6 color schemes to choose from.

It includes shortcodes to add recipe ingredients to your blog posts. It also has dedicated sections to display ad zones and banners to make money online.

17. Foodie

Foodie is a WordPress theme built for chefs, food bloggers, and recipe bloggers. It includes a recipe post section to add ingredients, instructions, and videos.

Foodie uses a traditional blog layout with support for a custom background and a custom logo. You can use the WordPress live customizer to make changes to how your site looks.

18. Food Recipes

Food Recipes is a free WordPress theme suitable for chefs, restaurants, and food businesses, as well as for recipe blogging. Its content area is responsive, so it is divided into a 2-column grid on the desktop screen and a single-column layout on small screens.

Food Recipes includes support for custom logo upload, a social media menu, a fullscreen background image, and more. It is easy to set up, too.

19. Pepper+

Pepper+ is an all-purpose WordPress theme with several turnkey designs, including one for a food/recipe website. It takes a modular approach and comes with different modules that you can drag and drop to create custom layouts.

It is ready for WooCommerce and supports WPML to create multilingual websites. It is easy for beginners to use because it has a 1-click content import and quick setup.

20. Gourmand

Gourmand is an elegantly-designed WordPress theme for food and recipe websites. It has a beautiful recipes section, which allows you to add recipes on the homepage.

It is compatible with popular drag and drop page builders like Visual Composer for easy customization. With built-in SEO optimization, your recipes should automatically rank well in Google and other search engines.

21. Food Blog

Food Blog is a powerful WordPress recipe and food blog theme that ships with a premium recipe plugin. It lets you add, manage, and share recipes on your website. You can also allow users to share their recipes on your blog.

It provides homepage sections to display food photos and recipes professionally. It ships with Beaver Builder to create custom page layouts using drag-and-drop tools.

22. Foody Pro

Foody Pro is a beautifully-designed WordPress theme for food blogging and recipe websites. This elegant theme features gorgeous typography and a clean, spacious layout.

On the homepage, it offers a featured content slider with call to action buttons. It is WooCommerce-ready, comes with an Instagram widget, and includes an automatically generated recipe index.

23. Igloo

Igloo is a flexible WordPress theme for a recipe blog, restaurant, or cafe. It comes with a beautiful modern design, elegant photo galleries, and built-in social media integration.

For restaurant websites, it has a menu management system and testimonial sections. It comes in multiple color schemes, and you can change colors for individual pages as well.

24. Rosa

Rosa is a beautiful WordPress food blog and recipe theme. It has eye-catching colors and a fullscreen background layout with mouth-watering photos to quickly catch the attention of your visitors.

The theme comes with built-in tools to add recipes with images, video recipes, and more. You can also create custom landing pages to showcase your featured food recipes.

We hope this article helped you find some of the best WordPress themes for recipe blogs. You may also want to check out our list of ways to make money online from your blog and a complete guide to set up online food ordering for restaurants in WordPress.

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 24 Best WordPress Themes for Recipe Blogs first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 14, 2023 at 03:58PM

How to Open External Links in a New Window or Tab with WordPress

Do you want to open external links from your blog posts in a new browser window or tab?

Opening external links in a new window allows your users to visit the link without leaving your website. This leads to higher user engagement because they spend more time on your site.

In this beginner’s guide, we will show how to easily open external links in a new window or tab on your WordPress site.

Why Open External Links in a New Window or Tab?

External links are links to websites that you don’t own or control. Normally, if you add a link to an external website, your visitors will simply leave your site by clicking on the link.

While some user experience experts say that you shouldn’t open external links in a new window or tab, we don’t agree.

You see, most users easily forget the last website they were visiting. If clicking a link takes them away from your WordPress website to a new site, then they may never return.

For a better user experience, we recommend opening external links in a new window (in older browsers) or a new tab (in modern browsers). This way, the original web page is not lost, and users can resume browsing your website by switching back.

Another benefit of opening external links in a new tab is increased page views and user engagement on your site. Users who spend more time on your site are more likely to sign up for your email newsletter, follow you on social media, leave a comment, and buy your products.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily open external links in a new window or tab in WordPress. We’ll cover different methods so that you can choose the one that best suits you.

1. Opening External Links in a New Tab Using the Block Editor
2. Opening External Links in a New Tab Using the Classic Editor
3. Opening External Links in a New Tab Using HTML Code
4. Opening Navigational Menu Links in a New Tab
5. Automatically Opening All External Links in New Tab Using a Plugin

Opening External Links in a New Tab Using the Block Editor

The WordPress block editor has a built-in feature that lets you open external links in a new tab. In recent versions of WordPress, this option is visible when adding a link.

Simply edit the blog post or page where you want to add an external link. Next, select the text you want to link and then click on the ‘Link’ button. You can also press the shortcut key CTRL+K on Windows or Command+K on Mac.

This will bring up the insert link popup. Simply enter the link and press Enter. After that, you need to toggle the ‘Open in new tab’ option to the On position.

The link will now open in a new tab.

Tip: You can also add title and nofollow attributes to the insert link popup by installing the All in One SEO plugin.

Opening External Links in a New Tab Using the Classic Editor

If you are still using the

classic editor, then we recommend you start using the new editor. It’s modern, faster, and includes many new features that you are missing out on.

However, if you still want to use the classic editor, then this is how you add a link that opens in a new tab.

First, you need to edit the post or page where you want to add the link. Next, select the text that you want to link (also known as the anchor text) and then click the ‘Insert/edit link’ button.

A popup will appear where you can add your external link.

After that, click on the gear icon next to it. This will bring up the advanced insert link popup.

From here, you need to check the ‘Open link in a new tab’ option. After that, you should click the ‘Update’ button at the bottom to add your link.

Opening External Links in a New Tab Using HTML Code

Sometimes you may need to write HTML to add a link in WordPress. For example, you will need to do this when using the HTML mode in the new block editor or adding a link in a WordPress theme template file.

You can add the link using HTML code like this:

 <a href="http://example.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Link Text</a>

The target="_blank" parameter in this code tells browsers to open the link in a new window or tab. Simply replace ‘example.com’ with the external link URL and ‘Link Text’ with the anchor text you wish to use.

Opening Navigational Menu Links in a New Tab

On your WordPress website, you can add external links in your site’s navigational menu. How you do this depends on whether you are using a traditional theme or a block theme.

Opening Nav Menu Links in a New Tab for Traditional Themes

To open your outbound menu links in a new tab, head over to Appearance » Menu from your WordPress admin area.

Next, click the ‘Screen Options’ button at the top right corner of your screen.

When you click the button, you’ll now see more options.

Go ahead and check the option for ‘Link Target’ under ‘Show advanced menu properties.’

After that, you can add a Custom Link to your navigational menu by entering the URL, Link Text, and clicking the ‘Add to Menu’ button.

Your Custom Link will now appear in the Menu Structure column. You can now select the option for ‘Open link in a new tab’ to open your external link in a different tab.

Once you’re done, click the ‘Save Menu’ button at the bottom.

Opening Nav Menu Links in a New Tab for Block Themes

If you are using a new block theme, then you will need to navigate to Appearance » Themes and use the Full Site Editor to

open your outbound menu links in a new tab.

You need to click on the header area at the top of the page, and the header will be selected. Next, click on the navigation area just to the left of the menu. The menu will be selected, and you should see a ‘+’ sign at the end of the menu where you can add a new link.

Tip:

Selecting blocks in the Full Screen Editor can be tricky, so many users find it easier to use List View. Simply click the icon at the top of the screen, then find and select the Navigation block. It may be nested inside other blocks, such as Header and Group.

Now you need to click the ‘+’ icon to open a popup where you can add a link. Type the URL in the field at the top, and make sure you toggle ‘Open in new tab’ to the On position. Next, click the ‘Submit’ icon next to the URL to store your settings.

Once you’ve done that, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen.

Automatically Opening All External Links in New Tab Using a Plugin

It may sound like extra work to manually check the option for every external link that you add. However, over time you will get used to it.

If you run a multi-author blog or often forget to make external links open in a new tab, then you can use a plugin for that.

First, you need to install and activate the Open External Links in a New Window plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

The plugin works out of the box, and it will automatically open external links in a new window.

It does not actually change the external links in your blog posts. Instead, it uses JavaScript to open external links in a new window.

Note: Deactivating the plugin will stop external links from opening in a new window.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily open external links in a new window in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a free business address, or check out our expert picks of the most useful WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks that you can use on your website.

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

The post How to Open External Links in a New Window or Tab with WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 14, 2023

13-Point WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners

Do you want to make sure that your WordPress site is properly optimized for search engines?

Going through a search engine optimization (SEO) checklist can help you follow best practices and ensure you don’t miss out on small details. This way, you can rank higher on Google and grow website traffic.

In this article, we will share a WordPress SEO checklist for beginners.

Why Follow a WordPress SEO Checklist?

Search engines are often the largest source of traffic for many websites. However, the idea of optimizing your site for WordPress SEO can be intimidating, especially for beginners.

There are many technical terms, SEO tactics, and new trends that can put off new website owners from optimizing their sites and ranking higher in search engines.

This is where a WordPress SEO checklist can help you out. It covers all the basics and makes sure you follow SEO best practices. Plus, there are many tools and plugins that can optimize your site and take care of technical SEO for you.

You can use the checklist by going through each point step by step. After that, make changes to ensure search engines can easily crawl and index your content.

That said, let’s look at the WordPress SEO checklist for beginners. Here are all the things we’ll cover, so you can simply click the links below to jump ahead to your preferred section:

• Install a WordPress SEO Plugin
• Set Up Search Engine Webmaster Tools
• Add Google Analytics to WordPress
• Do Keyword Research for Your WordPress Site
• Use LSI Keywords and Check for Keyword Stuffing
• Optimize Your SEO Title and Meta Description
• Use Short and SEO-Friendly URLs
• Make Sure to Add Alt-Text to Your Images
• Add Internal Links to Your Content
• Improve the Readability of Your Content
• Ensure that Search Engines Can Easily Find Your Website
• Check Your WordPress Website Speed
• Your WordPress Site Should Be Mobile Ready

1. Install a WordPress SEO Plugin

An SEO plugin can help configure your WordPress site for search engines. It ensures that you follow the best practices and handles all the technical SEO optimizations.

You can use All in One SEO (AIOSEO) for your website. It is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and helps you optimize your site for search engines without technical knowledge or hiring a developer.

It is also the SEO plugin we also use on WPBeginner.

AIOSEO offers lots of powerful features. For instance, you can use it to create an XML sitemap, add schema markup, integrate social media, breadcrumb navigation, TruSEO On-Page analysis score, robots.txt editor, local SEO, WooCommerce SEO, link assistant, track broken links, and much more.

You can also use AIOSEO to conduct an SEO audit. The plugin will monitor and highlight crucial issues. Plus, you’ll get actionable insights for resolving these issues and boosting organic traffic on your site.

To learn more, you can follow our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

2. Set Up Search Engine Webmaster Tools

Next, you’ll need to set up different search engines’ webmaster tools, like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yandex Webmaster Tools.

These free tools help you track your site’s organic search performance. You can use them to see which keywords people are using to find your website, check rankings, submit sitemaps, uncover errors that might be preventing your site from ranking in search engines, and more.

For example, Google Search Console shows which pages are indexed in the search results. You can then find out why Google doesn’t index other pages, fix any issues, and submit pages for indexing.

You can follow these guides to add your WordPress site to each webmaster tool:

• How to Add Your WordPress Site to Google Search Console
• How to Add Your Website to Bing Webmaster Tools
• How to Add Your WordPress Site in Yandex Webmaster Tools

3. Add Google Analytics to WordPress

Another vital tool to set up on your WordPress website is Google Analytics. It is a free tool that shows how people behave on your site, where they’re coming from, which pages they view, and a lot more.

Google Analytics can help you track your WordPress SEO efforts and see the number of visitors that come from organic searches. It is an excellent tool for tracking website traffic and keeping an eye on all the traffic spikes and dips.

Besides that, you can use it to find high-converting pages and improve their SEO, look for opportunities to boost organic traffic, track 404 errors, and more.

The easiest way of setting up Google Analytics in WordPress is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Analytics solution for WordPress, and you don’t have to edit any code or hire a developer to configure Google Analytics.

The best part, you can get started with the MonsterInsights Lite version for free to add analytics to your site. The plugin also offers a premium version and helps set up advanced tracking features like eCommerce tracking, form conversions, and more.

To learn more, you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

4. Do Keyword Research for Your WordPress Site

Keyword research is a technique that content creators and SEO experts use to discover topics your audience is interested in using search engine data.

Many beginners will use their best guesses to come up with topics that they think people might like. Instead, you should do proper keyword research and find search terms for each page on your website.

It is important that you define a primary target keyword for your blog post or landing page. Having too many different search terms can make it harder for search engines to understand the content.

You can use many keyword research tools to find a primary search term. We recommend Semrush because it offers in-depth keyword data, keyword position tracking, competitor analysis, related keywords, questions, and more.

For more details, please see our guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress blog.

5. Use LSI Keywords and Check for Keyword Stuffing

Now that you’ve found a focus keyphrase for your content, the next thing to do is find Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords. These are related search queries to your primary keyword.

The easiest way of finding LSI keywords is through Google Search. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the search results and see the ‘Related searches’ section.

You can then use these terms throughout your content and cover the overall topic in depth. This also helps search engines better understand your content.

That said, it is vital that you don’t stuff the keywords. Using the exact search term repeatedly doesn’t provide a great reading experience for users, and search engines are pretty clever at detecting keyword stuffing.

6. Optimize Your SEO Title and Meta Description

The next WordPress SEO checklist item is whether your SEO titles and meta descriptions are optimized.

The title of your WordPress blog post or product page plays an essential role in search rankings. A compelling title will encourage the user to click on the link.

The meta description also provides more information to users about the page and helps improve the organic click-through rate (CTR). As more people click on your site’s link, it will send a positive signal to Google and help you achieve higher rankings.

It is an SEO best practice to include the primary keyword in your SEO title, meta description, and URLs. Plus, you should ensure that your titles are not more than 55 characters and meta descriptions are not more than 155 characters. Otherwise, Google will truncate your headline and description.

If you’re using AIOSEO, then you can use the headline analyzer to create engaging title tags. It shows a score for your headline and offers tips for improving your SEO title.

You can check out our guide on how to use a headline analyzer in WordPress to improve SEO titles.

7. Use SEO-Friendly URLs

You should also optimize the URLs of your blog posts and landing pages for SEO.

Creating short and descriptive permalinks helps searchers to understand what’s the page about in the search results. Besides that, it is also a good practice to include the primary keyword in your URL.

For example, here is what an SEO-friendly URL should look like:

https://www.wpbeginner.com/start-a-wordpress-blog/

On the other hand, here’s what a URL that’s not optimized for SEO would look like:

https://www.wpbeginner.com/articles/651472

You can change these in your WordPress permalink settings.

8. Make Sure to Add Alt-Text to Your Images

Optimizing your images for search engines is also important in WordPress SEO. One way of doing that is by ensuring that your photos have descriptive alternative or alt text.

Alt text helps Google and other search engines understand the image’s subject matter. This way, your pictures can appear in Google Images and help you get more organic traffic.

In WordPress, you can easily add alt text to your images. When you upload a picture in the WordPress content editor using the Image block, you’ll see the Alt Text option in the settings panel on the right.

You can also go to Media » Library from the admin panel.

After that, simply select any image and enter the ‘Alt Text’ in the right side panel.

Aside from that, you can also use an image compression tool to reduce the size of your pictures. This will help your site to load faster and provide a great user experience.

Note: Using the block editor to add alt text will only add it to that specific use of the image. If you want to add the same alt text to the image no matter where on your site it’s used, use the media library.

For more details, you can read our beginner’s guide to image SEO.

9. Add Internal Links to Your Content

When going through the WordPress SEO checklist, another important thing to check is the internal links in your content. Internal links are pages you link from your own website.

Search engines use these links to find and index content on your website. It also helps pass authority from one page to another.

Additionally, it assists your visitors in navigating your website, reading related posts, finding sources for statistics, and discovering old articles and pages.

If you’re using AIOSEO, then you can use its Link Assistant feature to uncover internal linking opportunities. It will show orphaned pages with no internal links, provide suggestions and anchor text, and allow you to insert links in a single click.

If you’re not sure how to insert internal links, then please see how to add links in WordPress.

10. Improve the Readability of Your Content

When checking for on-page SEO, it is essential that your content is easy to read. It plays a massive role in getting higher rankings because blogs that are easier to read often rank higher than those that are hard to read.

Studies show that people spend less than a second deciding whether to exit or stay on the page. This means they scan through your content, and you have a very short time to convince them to stay on your website.

By improving the readability of your content, you can help users quickly scan your articles. A simple way of doing that is by grouping sections of your content under headings (H2, H3, H4, and so on).

Besides that, you can write short sentences, use bulleted lists, break long chunks of paragraphs into smaller paragraphs, and add a table of contents. Adding images, videos, and other multimedia can also enhance readability and make your content more engaging.

With AIOSEO, you can analyze readability issues inside the content editor and get suggestions on improving your content.

You can also use grammar checker tools like Grammarly to make sure your content is free from spelling mistakes, missing punctuation, and grammatical errors.

11. Ensure that Search Engines Can Easily Find Your Website

Now that your content and on-page SEO is optimized, there are a few technical elements you should also check as part of the WordPress SEO checklist.

First, you should make it easier for search engines to find your website and index your site. WordPress has a built-in option that stops search engines from crawling your site. If it is enabled, Google and other search engines will not list your site in the search results.

You can check this by heading to Settings » Reading from your WordPress dashboard, and scrolling down to the ‘Search engine visibility’ section. Just make sure that the ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ option is not checked.

Another way you can help search engines find content on your site for crawling and indexing is by creating a sitemap.

An XML sitemap tells search engines about the most important pages on your site, so they can quickly discover new content and index them in the search results.

With AIOSEO, it is very easy to create a sitemap. The plugin lets you set up sitemaps for videos, news, RSS feeds, and HTML.

Once the sitemap is ready, you can submit it to search engines using different webmaster tools.

12. Check Your WordPress Website Speed

Next, your WordPress website speed is critical in ranking higher in Google. That’s because page load time is now a ranking factor, and Google will rank faster-loading sites higher compared to slow-loading sites.

A simple way of checking load time is by using MonsterInsights. It lets you run a website speed test and shows a Site Speed report inside your WordPress dashboard.

You can see an overall score for mobile and desktop, along with other important metrics for measuring how fast your site loads.

The plugin also shows suggestions and benchmark goals for improving each metric. For example, you can use a content delivery network (CDN) to improve site speed,

You can find more tips by going through our ultimate guide to boosting WordPress speed and performance.

13. Your WordPress Site Should Be Mobile Ready

The last WordPress SEO checklist item you need to check is whether your site is mobile responsive.

Google has now gone mobile-first. What that means is that it will use your site’s mobile version for indexing instead of the desktop version. You will lose out on higher rankings if your site is not mobile-ready.

Using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool is an easy way of checking mobile responsiveness.

The free tool will analyze your site and tell you whether the website is mobile-responsive or not.

You can simply enter your site’s URL in the tool and click the ‘Test URL’ button.

If your site isn’t mobile-ready, then you can start by changing the theme. There are many responsive WordPress themes designed for mobile. You can follow our guide on how to change a WordPress theme without losing data or traffic.

We hope this article helped you learn about the WordPress SEO checklist for beginners. You may also want to see our guide on how to get free SSL certification for WordPress sites and the ultimate guide to WordPress security.

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The post 13-Point WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 13, 2023 at 02:15PM