The Significance of SEO in the Online Growth of Your Business

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essential for the online growth of any business, as it can help improve the visibility and accessibility of a company's website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

When a user searches for a specific term related to your business, your website's ranking in the SERPs can have a significant impact on whether or not they visit your site. The higher your website ranks, the more likely users are to click on your website and visit it. This can result in increased traffic, leads, and sales.

SEO also helps to establish your business as an authority in your industry by providing valuable and relevant content to users. By optimizing your website's content, keywords, and metadata, you can ensure that your website is visible to users searching for relevant information.

Moreover, SEO can also improve user experience by optimizing website design, page speed, and mobile-friendliness, making it easier for users to navigate and engage with your website.

Overall, SEO plays a crucial role in the online growth of any business, as it helps to drive organic traffic, establish brand credibility, and increase conversions. Therefore, businesses should invest in SEO to achieve long-term success in the competitive online marketplace.

How to Submit Your Website to Search Engines (Works in 2023)

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how to submit your website to search enginesIf you want your website to enjoy long-term success, you need to make sure it ranks well on search engines. Before you worry about ranking, though, you need to make sure search engines know your site exists in the first place. This guide on how to submit your website to search engines will show you what to do in order to achieve that result.

How do I use email to benefit SEO?

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Email marketing can indirectly benefit SEO in a few ways:

(1) Increased Website Traffic: Sending promotional emails with links to your website can drive traffic to your site, which can improve your search engine rankings over time.
(2) Social Shares: Encouraging your email subscribers to share your content on social media can increase your social media presence and improve your visibility in search engine results.
(3) Brand Awareness: Regularly sending emails to your subscribers can help build brand awareness and recognition, which can lead to increased searches for your brand on search engines.
(4) Quality Content: Email marketing is an excellent way to share high-quality content, such as blog posts or infographics, which can be shared on social media and linked to by other websites, improving your website's authority and relevance.
To maximize the SEO benefits of email marketing, consider the following tips:

(1) Optimize your email content for SEO by including relevant keywords in your subject lines, headlines, and body text.
(2) Use a clear and concise call-to-action (CTA) in your emails to encourage subscribers to visit your website and engage with your content.
(3) Segment your email list based on interests and behavior to provide targeted content and promotions to your subscribers.
(4) Monitor your email and website analytics to track the impact of your email campaigns on website traffic and engagement.
(5) Include social sharing buttons in your emails to encourage subscribers to share your content on social media.

Benefits of robots.txt in SEO

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The robots.txt file is a text file placed on a website to communicate with search engine robots (also known as "bots" or "crawlers"). It instructs the bots which pages or sections of the site should not be crawled or indexed. Some benefits of using robots.txt in SEO include:
Preventing unnecessary indexing: By specifying which pages should not be crawled, you can prevent search engines from indexing pages that have no SEO value or that you do not want to appear in search results.
Improving crawl efficiency: By limiting the number of pages the search engine bots crawl, you can improve the efficiency of the crawling process and reduce the load on your server.
Protecting sensitive information: By disallowing the crawling of sensitive pages, such as login pages or confidential information, you can prevent sensitive information from appearing in search results.
Note: It's important to remember that while the robots.txt file can prevent bots from crawling a page, it does not guarantee that the page will not appear in search results.

Image Alt Text vs Image Title in WordPress – What’s the Difference?

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A lot of content on the web includes images. However, not many website owners optimize their images for speed or better search rankings. Even though WordPress comes with the option to add alt text and an image title, often beginners do not understand the difference and how to use them. In this article, we will share the difference between image alt text vs image title in WordPress, so you can improve your image SEO.
Image Alt Text vs Image Title in WordPress - What's the Difference?
Here’s what we’ll cover in this tutorial:

What’s the Difference Between Alt Text and Image Title?

‘Alt text’ is short for ‘alternate text’ and is an attribute that is added to an HTML image tag. The text describes the image, so visitors who can’t see the image and search engine bots will understand what the image is about. If an image on your WordPress website can’t be found or displayed for some reason, then the alt text will be shown instead, as you can see in the following screenshot.
Alt text displayed next to a broken image icon
Alt text is different from the image’s title. The title will be displayed in a small popup box when you bring your mouse cursor over the image.
An image with the title text
Alt text and image titles are also used to improve the accessibility of your website for those with poor vision and who use screen reader devices to read your site’s content. When the screen reader comes to an image, it will read the alt text. Depending on the user’s settings, it may also read the title text. For both accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO), alt text is more important than title text. This is why we strongly recommend including alt text for all your images.

How to Add Alt Text to an Image in WordPress

WordPress allows you to easily add alt text to your images. You can do this from the block editor, the classic editor, or the WordPress Media Library. Adding Alt Text in the Block Editor Simply create a new post or page or edit an existing one, and add an Image block.
Add an Image Block
If you’re not sure how to add a block or you need some extra help with the block editor, then just check out our tutorial on how to use the WordPress block editor. Now you need to upload your image or drag and drop it into the Image block. You can then set the alt text on the right-hand side of the page.
Adding alt text to an image in the WordPress block editor
Adding Alt Text in the Classic Editor If you’re still using the classic WordPress editor, then you can add image alt text when adding the image. First, click on ‘Add Media’ above the posting box.
Click 'Add Media' in the classic editor to add an image to your post
After that, you should either upload the image from your computer or click the ‘Media Library’ tab to view images you’ve already uploaded. Next, click on the image you want in order to select it, and then type the alt text you want into the ‘Attachment Details’ of your image.
Adding alt text to an image in the classic editor
Adding Alt Text in the Media Library You can also add alt text to an image by going to Media » Library and clicking on the image to edit it.
Viewing or editing the alt text for your image in the WordPress media library
Remember, this won’t change the alt text for any instances of that image that you’ve already inserted into posts or pages. However, if you add the image to a post or page after adding alt text here, then the alt text will be included with it.

How to Add Image Titles in WordPress

It’s important to understand that there are two types of titles that you can add to your images. First, there is the default image title WordPress uses internally to identify media files in the Media Library and attachments pages. Second, there is the HTML image title attribute added to images in your posts and pages. Let’s take a look at how to add both types of titles. Adding the WordPress Image Title in the Media Library You can add WordPress media titles to your images using theMedia Library. When you edit an image in the Media Library, you will see a ‘Title’ field.
Adding an Image Title in the WordPress Media Library
This title is used by WordPress to identify the image. When you click the ‘View attachment page’ link at the bottom of the screen, you’ll see the title is used as the title on that page.
Viewing the image's attachment page, with the image title shown
The WordPress media title isn’t necessary for image SEO or for users with screen readers. While it may be helpful in some cases, it’s not as useful as the image’s HTML title attribute. So how do you create that?
Pro Tip: Would you like to automatically use the WordPress media title as the image’s title attribute in your posts and pages? Take a look at the section below where we show you how to do this using All in One SEO Pro.
Adding an HTML Image Title Attribute in the Block Editor It’s easy to add a title attribute in the block editor. Simply click the image and then click the down arrow next to ‘Advanced’ to show the advanced image options.
Adding the Title Attribute in the Block Editor
Now you can simply type the title in the ‘Title Attribute’ field. Adding an HTML Image Title Attribute in the Classic Editor Adding a title attribute using the old classic editor is similar. You can add the title attribute by clicking on an image and then clicking the pencil icon.
Editing an image in the WordPress classic editor
You’ll then see the ‘Image Details’ screen. To set the image title attribute, you need to click the little down arrow next to ‘Advanced Options’ at the bottom.
Click the downward arrow to view the Advanced details for your image
You can then set the image’s title attribute. Make sure you click the ‘Update’ button at the bottom of the screen when you’re done.

How to Automatically Set Alt Text and Image Titles Using AIOSEO

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It will add a proper image sitemap and other SEO features to improve your SEO ranking. It also lets you automatically set your alt text and image titles, and more. The first thing you need to do is install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin. To use the Image SEO feature, you will need the Plus plan or above. Upon activation, the plugin will launch the setup wizard automatically. You can learn how to configure the plugin in our guide on how to set up All in One SEO correctly. Now you need to navigate to All in One SEO » Search Appearance and then click on the ‘Image SEO’ tab. After that, you’ll have to click the ‘Activate Image SEO’ button to enable the premium image SEO features.
Activating the Image SEO Module in AIOSEO
Setting Image Titles Using All in One SEO Make sure that you are looking at the ‘Title’ tab of the Image SEO page. Here you can choose tags that will set the format used to automatically generate title attributes for your images. For example, if you include the ‘+ Image Title’ tag, then each image in your posts and pages will automatically use the WordPress media title in the HTML title attribute.
Customizing the Image Title in AIOSEO
You can also add other tags, such as your website title, to your image title attribute. All in One SEO can even strip punctuation from the title and change its capitalization. Setting Alt Text Using All in One SEO Next, you need to click the ‘Alt Tag’ tab on the AIOSEO’s Image SEO page. Here you can automatically format the alt text of your images. By default, AIOSEO will simply use the image’s alt text. If you like, you can also add your website’s title and other information to the alt text of each image on your website.
Customizing the Alt Tag in AIOSEO

Why Use Alt Text and Image Titles in WordPress?

We strongly recommend using alt text for all images. Here on WPBeginner, we also add a title to all images. However, this is less important than the alt text. Alt text is important because Google focuses on it as a ranking factor for images. It is also used by screen readers to help visitors with impaired vision to fully engage with your content. You should never just stuff keywords into alt and title tags. It’s important that you make them descriptive and helpful so that they’re useful for visitors who need them. You can use your keywords where relevant, but don’t overdo it. For example, if you’re writing an article about the best WordPress hosting, then your target keyword could be “best WordPress hosting”. You might also have a screenshot in your article showing users how to set up an account with a popular web host like Bluehost. Let’s take a look at some good and bad examples of alt text for that image:
  • “Account setup” is not very descriptive and also doesn’t include anything related to your keyword.
  • “Best WordPress hosting, WordPress hosting, best web hosting for WordPress” doesn’t describe the image and is stuffed with keywords.
  • “Setting up a WordPress hosting account” is much better as it’s descriptive and uses part of the keyword in a natural and appropriate way.
We hope this article helped you understand the difference between image alt text and image title in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to optimize images for the web, and check out our list of the best WordPress SEO plugins and 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. The post Image Alt Text vs Image Title in WordPress – What’s the Difference? first appeared on WPBeginner.

What is rel=”noopener” in WordPress? (Explained)

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Have you been wondering what rel="noopener" means in WordPress?

When you add a link that opens in a new tab, WordPress will automatically add the rel="noopener" attribute to the link.

In this article, we will explain what rel="noopener" means in WordPress and how it affects your website.

What Is rel="noopener" in WordPress? (Explained)

What Is rel=”noopener” in WordPress?

When you add links to your WordPress website, you can use HTML attributes to control what happens when you click the link.

For example, when you create a link, there is a toggle switch that allows you to open it in a new tab.

Opening a Link in a New Tab

The HTML code generated by WordPress for this link looks like this:

<a href="http://example.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">external link</a>

Notice that some HTML attributes have been added to the link, rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer". These attributes are added to address a security vulnerability.

The problem is that JavaScript code can be used to allow a new tab to get control of its referring window. If you link to an external website affected by the malicious code, then that website can use the window.opener property in JavaScript to change the original page (your website) to steal information and spread malicious code.

WordPress adds rel="noopener" to prevent the new tab from taking advantage of this JavaScript feature. Similarly, the rel="noreferrer" attribute prevents passing the referrer information onto the new tab.

How Does rel=”noopener” Affect Your WordPress SEO?

It doesn’t.

Even though the rel="noopener" attribute improves WordPress security, some users avoid using it because they think it will impact their WordPress SEO.

But that’s just a myth.

It has no impact on your site’s SEO rankings or your overall WordPress performance.

What’s the Difference Between “noopener” and “nofollow”?

It’s easy to confuse rel="noopener" with rel="nofollow". However, they are completely separate attributes.

The noopener attribute prevents your website from cross-site hacking and improves WordPress security.

On the other hand, the nofollow attribute prevents your website from passing on SEO link-juice to the linked website.

Search engines look for and consider the nofollow attribute when following a link on your website. However, they do not give any consideration to the noopener tag.

By default, WordPress does not allow you to add nofollow to your external links. If you want to add nofollow in WordPress, then you will need to use a plugin.

To learn more, see our article on how to add title and nofollow to links in WordPress.

Does rel=”noreferrer” Affect Affiliate Links in WordPress?

The rel="noreferrer" does not affect affiliate links in WordPress. Some users believe that it does because rel="noreferrer" prevents the referrer information passing to the new tab.

However, most affiliate programs provide you with a unique URL that has your affiliate ID. This means your affiliate ID is passed along as a URL parameter for the other website to track.

Secondly, most affiliate marketers use a link cloaking plugin for their affiliate links.

With link cloaking, the affiliate link that your users click on is actually your website’s own URL, which then redirects users to the destination URL.

How Do You Disable rel=”noopener” in WordPress?

There is no need to remove rel="noopener" from links on your website. It is good for your website’s security and has no performance or SEO impact on your website.

However, if you must remove it, then you will have to disable the Gutenberg block editor in WordPress and use the old classic editor.

That’s because if you remove rel="noopener" from the link manually, the block editor will automatically add it back in to keep your website safe.

Once the block editor is disabled, you will need to add a code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file or to the WPCode plugin (recommended). You can learn how to use the WPCode Free Plugin in our guide on how to easily add custom code in WordPress.

Simply copy the following code into a new PHP snippet:

add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init','wpb_disable_noopener');
function wpb_disable_noopener( $mceInit ) {
    $mceInit['allow_unsafe_link_target']=true;
    return $mceInit;
}
Adding a Code Snippet Using WPCode

Make sure you change the ‘Active’ toggle on and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

This will stop WordPress from adding rel="noopener" to new links. You will also need to manually edit any old links to remove the attribute.

Want even more control over which rel attributes get added to your links in WordPress? We recommend using the AIOSEO plugin because it lets you add title, nofollow, and other link attributes right inside the WordPress editor.

AIOSEO Adds NoFollow and Title Attributes to the Insert Link Popup

We hope this article helped you learn about rel="noopener" in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to get a free email domain, or see our list of tips to speed up WordPress performance.

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 What is rel=”noopener” in WordPress? (Explained) first appeared on WPBeginner.

SmartCrawl’s Newest Release Adds A Handful of New Features, Plus Greater Flexibility in Options

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SmartCrawl version 3.4 adds multiple keyword analysis, additional SEO recommendations, the ability to disable SEO & Readability Analysis in the post list, and more. For free.

SmartCrawl has been SEO optimized from the start, but each new version further improves site performance while boosting your PageRank on Google.

With automated SEO scanning, automatic XML sitemaps, real-time keyword and content analysis, and detailed audits/reports – not to mention one-click recommendations – SmartCrawl lets you create targeted content that ranks at the top of your favorite search engine.

In this post, we’re going to take a closer look at the latest features added to version 3.4, and why they make SmartCrawl even better.

Continue reading, or jump ahead with these links:

Let’s get cracking.

Multiple Keywords Analysis

SmartCrawl has had keyword analysis for a while now. It also previously allowed multiple key phrases to be added, but analysis was only done on the first one.

Now, you can analyze your post content for up to three different focus keywords (or phrases). The first keyword entered will be considered primary, while the second and third keywords will be analyzed as secondary.

Doing this is easy. First of all, let’s make sure analysis is turned on. Navigate to SmartCrawl > Settings > General Settings > In-Post Analysis > Visibility, and make sure Page Analysis is toggled on (it will turn blue), then click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

keyword analysis in settings
Simple, flexible settings to start your SEO analysis journey in SmartCrawl.

Now, open any Page or Post, and scroll to the SmartCrawl section at the bottom. In the Add Keywords field, enter up to three keywords or phrases, separating each by a comma, then click on the Add Keyword button. (You can enter them individually or all at once.)

analyze multiple keywords
Multiple keyword (or phrase) analysis has come to SmartCrawl!

SmartCrawl will instantly analyze all of your keywords, showing results directly below them.

keyword analysis results
SmartCrawl provides a wealth of detail on a multitude of SEO checks.

Clicking on any of the keywords will put you on its own tab, with details listed beneath.

For each focus keyword, SmartCrawl will give you a list of recommendations to improve the SEO of your post. Suggestions will be made in yellow and gray, while passed audits will be green.

Click on the dropdown arrow to the right of any recommendation to see details specific to it.

If for any reason you decide a certain recommendation isn’t needed, simply click the Ignore button beneath it, and it will stop appearing every time you run the analysis.

recommendation drop down
Don’t want to see a certain recommendation post analysis? Just click Ignore.

As you go through making content adjustments based on SmartCrawl’s recommendations, follow them up with a click of the Refresh button (at the top of SEO section), so you can reanalyze and see what improvements your changes made.

Taxonomy List Status Column

You’ll also find a handy SEO Status column on Category & Taxonomy pages, providing the SEO status for all of your taxonomies.

It’s just a quick way to indicate whether an SEO description has been set, and remind users to craft good SEO descriptions so they do well in search results.

taxonomy seo status column
An SEO Status column has been added to category & taxonomy pages.

Green check marks mean the SEO description is set and contains the recommended 120-160 characters. Red means a description is missing. Yellow means the description provided is too long/short in length.

You can also hover over any icon in the SEO Status column for a popup with more detailed information.

A Quad of Additional SEO Recommendations

SmartCrawl suggests In-Post SEO Recommendations for every focus keyword that your post content has been analyzed for.

Each of these will click to expand, providing additional information about how to better improve your post SEO.

The list of important recommendations in SmartCrawl was already significant, but we added four more in this version release.

1. Check if the URL contains underscores

Google recommends the use of hyphens over underscores in URLs, stating that hyphens make crawling and interpreting URLs easier for search engines.

2. Check for recommending a hand-crafted meta description

Using best practices for meta descriptions increases the likelihood of your content ranking higher in SERPS. That includes handcrafting your meta description using relevant information about the page content, instead of using the auto-generated one.

3. Primary focus keyword is already used on another post/page

Optimizing more than one post for the same focus keyword confuses search engines and can affect your SEO ranking. SmartCrawl will check to see if your Primary Focus Keyword is used in other Posts/Pages, and then list the 10 most recent ones.

primary focus keyword other post-page
SmartCrawl checks for repeated primary keywords on more than one post/page.

4. Check if all external links are nofollow links

Relevant outbound site links help search engines determine the relevance and quality of your content, improving credibility, authority, and value to users. While having some nofollow links is okay, best practice is to have at least one external dofollow link in your site, so SmartCrawl will check for this.

Disable SEO & Readability Analysis Status

Posts and Pages in SmartCrawl are analyzed one at a time by default, in order to prevent excessive loads on the server.

In the newest version, you now have the ability to completely disable these checks if you prefer. To do so, navigate to SmartCrawl > Settings > General Settings > In-Post Analysis, and toggle the Disable Page Analysis Check on Pages/Posts Screen on (it will turn blue).

If you change this setting, be sure to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

disable page analysis check in settings
SmartCrawl has one-click disabling for page/post analysis.

The SEO Do-all, Be-all, End-all, SmartCrawl

SmartCrawl is built with ease-of-use in mind. Set up is a cinch, with one-click recommendations that improve your PageRank in minutes, each full of details so you can better understand and improve on them.

Now with the newest features, like analyzing multiple keywords at once, even more recommendations that benefit your post SEO, and improved readability analysis, using SmartCrawl on your WordPress site is a win-win-win.

Sign up for a WPMU DEV free membership to take a test run with us. In addition to SmartCrawl, you’ll get Smush and Hummingbird – our two most highly rated (and awarded) plugins for image and performance optimizations – as well as the rest of our popular free plugins.

If you want to up the ante even more, we recommend going with one of our Premium Memberships, which include SmartCrawl Pro (plus the rest of our Pro plugins), along with our exclusive, feature-packed Hub client portal, blazing-fast CDN, and our 24/7/365 five-star support. SmartCrawl Pro adds features like scanning, reports, automatic linking for specific keywords, 404s and multiple redirects.

You can also Host with us, and join the tens of thousands of satisfied WordPressers who see the difference our fully dedicated, fully optimized, and lightning-fast resources make.

However you go, SmartCrawl your way to the top of the search game.

Is this good practice for SEO?

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Just came to my mind this and i like to ask others about it. So i have website that have auto generated content on the pages.
The text it self is all the same but only some variables changing like (names, tags, pictures). So i was wondering is it good practice for SEO purposes, to make the text content change for some KEY keywords.
For example.
DaniWeb was founded in 2002 by Dani, who, at that time, was pursuing a computer science degree on Long Island, New York, and began gaining widespread attention throughout the search engine optimization industry in 2005.

On the second refresh to be something like this.
DaniWeb is founded in 2002 by Dani, which was pursuing a computer science degree on Long Island, New York and started to gain widespread attention throughout the SEO industry in 2005.

The above is just an example to get my point.

But i have on my website key keywords that users will search on google.
I plan to do this in the title & text also. But as i said only for some KEY keywords
Keyword: [UPDATED] -> [NEW], [LATEST], [RECENTLY]
Keyword: [LEAKED] -> [LEAKS], [HACKED], [HACK]
and so on...