SEO Checklist items for WordPress blogs

Last Updated on February 21, 2021 by scottkandh

As I learn more and more about SEO, I’m updating this post to put what’s been learned in order to help you achieve higher SEO bullets. To keep it simple, instead of adding updated changes to the bottom of this post under the heading: Updated Changes (where most of them are now).

I’m going to put the updates right up front here for you, and make it easier so that you don’t have to go hunting and pecking for new information.

Speaking of easy, if you like this post, please subscribe to my blog. As your gift for subscribing you’ll be provided with this post in an e-Book format. It’s a handy reference, and easier for you to use to boost your SEO.

Yoast SEO has put out yet another update, there up to version 15.1.2. One of the coolest things about this update is that now the folks at Yoast have combined their knowledge with SEMRush technology. So that when you’re trying to rack your brains for what’s a good keyword, you can click on a button (only available in the premium version) that will look up the keyword suggestions.

At the time I wrote this I wasn’t using another useful Yoast SEO feature called internal linking suggestions. Yoast will examine the contents of your post and suggest posts/pages for you to optimize your site structure.

If you already haven’t started putting any cornerstone contents on your blog now would be the time. Cornerstone contents are the pivotal posts on your blog to drive people to popular blogs and bring all of the other posts together. To learn more about Cornerstone Content visit the Yoast website.

When I first started learning about SEO you might want to read the blog post called Reflections on week’s progress 7/21 – 7/26/20. That’s about the time that I discovered Search Engine Optimization was very important to understand as soon as possible to get a good handle on it, and I highly recommend you start to apply it early in your blogging endeavors. You don’t have to master it, but it’s going to be very helpful in the long run.

A related blog article to this one is Boost SEO for Pinterest.

When you’re done with this blog post, I encourage you to visit Blogging Basic Series, (pictured above) where I’ve placed my blogs together so they’re easier to see in one collective place.

NOTE: There’s a waitlist for The SEO Hive’s upcoming SEO course! Want to be first to know when it’s up for grabs? Pop yourself to the link below and Kate will let you know as soon it’s available – https://webhivedigital.com/the-seo-hive-waitlist/

2nd Update: This new update at the bottom of the post is called:
Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights Headline Analyzer. I can tell you now that this is a must-have utility for bloggers.

1st Update: Consequently, as I learn more and more about SEO, I’m updating this post to put what’s been learned in order to help you achieve higher SEO bullets. To keep it simple, I’ve added the updated changes at the bottom of this post under the heading: Updated Changes.

Note: This post is doing extremely good, so I’m not changing the headline of this post for the mere purpose that it could get more clicks. More importantly, I wanted to bring to your attention that with the program above and Yoast SEO you should be able to tremendously boost your Search Engine Optimization.

This blog is a a revamp of a blog earlier wrote (the 2nd image below) regarding the pursuit of developing a search engine optimization (SEO) checklist for WordPress blogs.  In the first blog: “Preventing SEO Trial and Error methods with Yoast” I researched and explored several different websites and “attempted” to pull it all together in a reader’s digest condensed format. 

However, it wasn’t neatly organized and missed a few key things in the checklist that were mentioned.  Hence, it was not very user friendly for referring to for improving your search engine optimization. Hopefully, you’ll like this new format a lot better after I made a hunt to ensure everything was in the checklist and you shouldn’t have to toggle back and forth between different pages to find out how to do this or that.

For example, one common thing commonly referred to for optimizing search engine optimization (SEO) is using active voice and the right percentage (greater than 33%) of transitions. These two tables have been inserted into this revamped blog. If you had to print out anything at all on this blog, at a minimum it would be these two tables until your comfortable without referring to them.

Why should you Optimize your individual posts & pages?

When writing or editing your post, there are a number of elements you need to pay special attention to in order to make it search engine optimization friendly.

Search engine optimization friendly doesn’t just mean that it’s easy for a search engine to grasp the topic of a page. More importantly, in a single glance a visitor gets a glimpse of your page before even going there in the first place. 

Once they’ve visited your site, the things that determine if they are going to remain on your site are readability.   Factors like headings, subheadings, images, etc..

Before proceeding, please take a moment to take the quiz below to test your SEO knowledge, especially useful for bloggers within their first 30 days or so.

Personal challenge of using Yoast SEO Plug-in

My challenge to you is to take this challenge of utilizing my checklist and run down the laundry list of items exclusively without the aid of Yoast plug-in. Upon the process of writing this blog I’m doing the same before I prompt Yoast SEO to help me with the rest that might bring the SEO to a higher level. This will familiarize you how to change your bullets from grey to orange, and in most instances orange to green.

NOTE: At the time this was written, the Headline Analyzer wasn’t available, be sure to look at the bottom of this page to see how your headlines score.

For clarification, I’ve ran down my checklist of items and I thought for sure that my bullets were going to be green since I methodically ran down the list to ensure I touched on every subject. But both of my bullets were orange. So I’m now turning my attention over to the Yoast Plug-in to see what it recommends (and then decide if there are a few things I can change, which are usually my use of transitions and active voice). Here’s goes nothing, pressing the button (to improve your post with Yoast SEO). Note: You might have to switch over from Block to Document in case it’s not visible.

As I suspected, my use of transition words measured up to 23.7 so I have a little ways to go. If there’s a lot of content within the blog, it can be achieved. For shorter blogs, leave it alone.

SEO Analysis Results

Yoast Plug-in has a very nice feature that has an eye displayed to the right of some of your results. If you click on the eye, it’ll highlight those areas that are referenced by the Yoast Plug-in.

One problem that comes up on a frequent basis is the subheading distribution where text in some sections is longer than 300 words. The suggestion in those instances is to separate those long sections with the use of subheadings. Unfortunately, Yoast doesn’t provide you with the an eye on those areas that require your attention so you have to do a little hunt and peck to break up items if it’s applicable.

Right now, I thought I was shy of getting a green bullet for Readability analysis because there’s two orange bullets in improvements (under Analysis results).

1) More than 300 words
2) Use of transition words only went up to 24.2%.

Remember; however, it’s not always necessary to have a green bullet beside every Yoast suggestion. Not every bullet has to be green in order to rank. 
Use these two pieces of advice from Yoast: 

1.  Pursue the green bullet wisely; use the SEO analysis tool correctly!

2.  Getting green bullets should never be more important than your keyword strategy, content, and site structure.

Moving on to SEO Analysis Results

My bullet for SEO analysis is Orange. One common thing that I miss inputting into SEO analysis is Keyphrase synonyms. It’s been added to the checklist items but it’s not readily apparent right now where that field is located. It’d be helpful to know so I’ll make myself a mental note for the next blog to see where it’s located. The simplest way to find synonyms is to type the word(s) in Microsoft Word, highlight the word, right click your mouse and select Synonyms.

This blog is one of those instances that concentrates on the content and I’m not tempted to change any of the five problems identified to get a green bullet. However, there’s one suggestion that merits a little more work on my part by incorporating some of the keyphrase synonyms identified in some of the higher level subheadings. FYI, my keyphrase synonyms for this blog are: hint, pursuit, quest, explore, and SEO checklist. The synonyms were added and it didn’t make a difference so this blog is going to press without the green bullet.

Oops, was getting ready to push that publish button, however, by making a few changes here and there my passive voice changed to 10.1 and lost the green bullet. So it’ll require just a little more effort on my part to get rid of that extra “0.1% for a green bullet. Back to the drawing board. At least one of my bullets is going to be green. (Note: as mentioned, it’s a little trial and error). By typing this last part of the sentence without changing anything else resulted in a green bullet, go figure?! Ready for press.

Free Yoast SEO Checklist

Readability

Keywords and Keyphrases

☐  Find relevant Keywords – free keyword tools (in no particular order)

LSI Graph   both limited to 3 queries per day & KWFinder by Mangools Ubersuggest/NeilPatel          Thesaurus – to find related and similar words.  Keyword Tool.io                   Google Trends

         Select the keyword(s) with the highest volume relevant to your page/post

☐  Focus on using your keyphrase used in your introduction.

• Use the Keyword(s) in Title, Description, and the introductory 1^st paragraph.   For best SEO results write the exact match of your keyphrase in the SEO title, and put the keyphrase at the beginning of the title.

                                  Grammar

☐  Avoid using passive voice – use Active voice.  See examples below:

Yoast:  You’ll get a green bullet if less than 10% of your sentences have passive voice. It’ll turn red if you go over 15%.   Passive voice makes your writing more distant, and your message less clear.  Writing in the active voice makes your writing stronger!

Transitions

☐  Transitions and to how to use them.   

Transitions are words containing and, but, so, because, etc.  They display to the reader how the previous sentences or phrases are connected to one another and bring flow to your work making it easier to read.

Yoast:  The transition words check in Yoast SEO assesses whether or not you use enough transition words. If at least 30% of the sentences in your text contain a transition word, the bullet will be green. You’ll get an orange bullet if you use them in more then 20%, or in less than 30% of your sentences. The bullet will turn red if less than 20% of the sentences of your text contain a transition word. That’s less than 1 in 5 sentences.

                                    Links

☐  Structure your post with Headlines and Links:  1 external, one internal

     Shorten any lengthy paragraphs.  People don’t like long pieces of text.                     
             (break up lengthy paragraphs with Headings and transitions). 

☐  Use of no-follow links – they shouldn’t be used (that’s why the no-follow links has a strike-thru)!  Note:  To identify if there are any no-follow links on your website   go to:  https://varvy.com/tools/linkcount/ 

☐  At least one External Link to A High Authority Source – link is away from your website. 

☐  At least one Internal Link to another page on Your Website – link stays within your website.  Check out LinkWhisper.com for the free plug-in that will help to automate making internal links on your website.   

                        Images and Misc. 

☐  Aim to include at least 2 images on every page of your website.  Use proper file name etiquette for images.  Rename the image before it’s uploaded (i.e.  Pinterest Artwork.jpg instead of IMG052.jpg. 

☐  Alt – Text: Click on your image and then type in a description of your image.

☐  Word Count – Pages / posts not less than 500 words.    If your copy and pasting from Word. The number of words in Microsoft Word gets displayed in the bottom left hand corner next to page x of y.   

Goal to shoot for is between 1,000 and 1,200 words.  It’s okay to go over, Google appreciates detailed articles.   Focus on providing quality content not quantity. 

Search Engine Optimization
(SEO) Analysis

☐   Keyphrase in slug: For the best definition of a slug, check out the video: What is a slug? Use lowercase letters only in your slug. Your keyphrase should be in the slug.

☐  Metadescription:  Click on Edit Sniplet (located on the left side) to edit the metadescription (this requires installing the Yoast SEO plug-in).  Add link. 

If it’s not visible, click the down arrow on “Google preview”.  The length of the metadescription has up to 156 characters available, use the space and shoot for more than 120 characters. 

☐  The keyphrase synonyms (words that have the same meaning) do not need to be separated by commas (just use spaces in between).

To summarize, look at feedback provided (within Yoast) to see what can be improved for Yoast SEO readability and SEO analysis.   Furthermore, look at the next section for one-time changes that can be done for improvement. 

☐  Keyphrase density: The focus keyphrase that used for your blog should be recommended a minimum of x amount of times based on the length of your text. To the best of my knowledge there’s no way to plan for this ahead of time, except for to check in the analysis results for suggestions.

One-time changes

☐  Optimize images – Optimize on-page imagery optimization with Optimole plug-in.  It runs seamlessly in the background. 

Very Important Note: Do not install Optimole plug-in if you’re already running Jetpack by WordPress Plug-in (it’ll cause a conflict that some of your pictures won’t be visible).

☐  Use of Categories:  Minimum of 5 to 10 well-structured categories.  Categories provide clarification of your site’s structure. 

☐  Does your page have no images?  To give your page a boost, add an image, preferably 2 images.   

☐  Have at least one Social Image within Your SEO Plugin (i.e.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).  Add the social link via the plug-in SEO name. 

☐   Install the plug-in Google Analytics for WordPress by Monster Insights to see how visitors are directed to your website and to keep ‘em coming back. 

☐  Pinterest users only – Sign up for the 5-day Pinterest Challenge to boost your Pinterest traffic and Pinterest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and simultaneously your blog.  Pinterest has their own algorithms for SEO. 

Updated Changes

SEO title width check in Yoast SEO

Luckily the snippet preview can help you out! The green line underneath the SEO title turns red when your title is too long, or too short. So keep an eye on that, and use the feedback to create great titles!

One common occurrence is notification the title width check in Yoast is too long.  The Site title was conjoined with the page/post title.  Solution:  Go to Customize > Site Identity and shorten the length of your title (i.e. Pinterest Artwork – A Blog for Pinterest users – shortened to Pinterest Artwork. 

#1 – Look at title and shorten the title
#2 – Then look at the title in the snippet and keep an eye on the line to turn green. 

Keyphrase in slug: (Part of) your keyphrase does not appear in the slug. Change that!

Your keyphrase should be in the slug. It has to make clear what your page is about immediately.

“There is one thing to keep in mind here. You can use a slug only once, so you should use it for the right page. For example: the URL for this article is https://yoast.com/slug/, which is very specific. Now, we’re not going to write another article with the same topic. This informative article is the central point for information about slugs on our website. But if this were just an additional post, and we were planning to write a main article about this topic later, we’d have a problem. You’ll understand why: because the slug would already be taken. So, do consider the page’s level or position on your website.”

The use of tags and the difference between tags and categories:

Tags and categories help us structure our content. You can often find these in the visual metadata at for instance blog posts, or in a list of clickable links in the sidebar of a website. Tags are sometimes represented as a tag cloud, although most websites refrain from using that element these days. There is a clear difference between tags and categories, but a lot of users mix them up. Now in most cases, that won’t matter for the end user. But for instance, in WordPress, there are some benefits to using categories for certain segmentations and tags for others.

According to the WordPress definition, categories allow you to broadly group post topics, while you can use tags to describe your post in more detail.

In an ideal world, we would use categories to group the content on your website into — say — eight to ten global segments. On our blog, these segments are for instance Analytics, Content SEO, eCommerce and Technical SEO. By maintaining a limited set of categories, you can keep your website, and your content focused. Now, of course, you can dissect the content even further, going to more particular groupings. For that, you should use tags.

Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights Headline Analyzer

This post has been updated to reflect changes with a new program that just became available on August 7th, 2020.

There’s a new version to bring your SEO to the next level that helps to increase your web traffic called Headline Analyzer (from Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights).

The staff at MonsterInsights were using this program and loved it so much that now they’ve made it available for the rest of us to use. 

Judge for yourself, I honestly believe that the added content to this post is going to be unbelievably valuable to significantly boost your SEO for Blogging. 

By combining the power of Yoast and Google analytics MonsterInsights Plugin Header Analyzer you can get those green bullets on your SEO Analysis as well as readability with the information outlined above and increase the likelihood of getting your headlines clicked.

With this aid of this new program, you can try entering different headlines for your post title to see how it compares and beefs up your potential to get clicked. 

Note of caution:  Don’t change the title (and your URL) if you’re already had already had it published and it’s getting a lot of shares (that can be visible with the aid of the Social Warfare plug-in).

Online Method of Headline Analyzer

Below is a screenshot from the Online Method.  Simply type in your headline.  Then it will tell you how your Headline can be improved and make it more compelling to attract more clicks through a combination of words categorized as emotion, uncommon, and power words (these types of words are listed further below). 

Headline Analyzer thru plug-in method

For the Headliner Analyzer, there are two tabs at the top of your WordPress page/post.  I used this blog title for the screenshot below. With the aid of this new program I’m able to significantly increase the likelihood of getting my blogs clicked.  For example, one of the last blogs posted, Blogging Basic Series – You need to know useful checklist and Best Blogs) reflected a 93 out of 100. 

1.  Current Score
2.  Try New Headline

Current Score

Enter a different headline than your post title to see how it compares.

Score “SEO Checklist Items For WordPress Blogs” – 37

A good score is between 40 and 60. For best results, strive for 70 and above.

Word Balance

Can Be Improved

Compare the percentages of your results to the goal for each category and adjust as necessary.  Words described below can be located at: https://www.monsterinsights.com/headline-analyzer/ .  To create an irresistible headline, try to include at least one word from each bank: 

1. Uncommon words
2. Emotional words
3. Power words 

Uncommon Words – Goal:  10 – 20%

NOTE: I’ve provided a table of each of the banks and I placed a pin for each of the banks. That way you’ll be able to utilize the method (a pin or a list) that works best for you to improve the SEO on your Blog and save it as a ready reference.

Emotional Words – Goal:  10 – 15%

Emotional power words – Trust

Absolutely
Admiration, to admire
Authoritative, authority
Facts, factual
Faith, faithful
Fool-proof, sure-fire
Guaranteed
Proven
Reliable, reliability
Research-backed
Saint
Scientific, science
Trustworthy

Emotional power words – Fear

Abuse, abusive
Anxiety, anxious
Banned
Burning out
Despair
Failure, to fail
Freaking out
Horror
Miserable
Pussyfoot
Sabotage
Steal, stolen, plunder
Threat

Emotional power words – Surprise

Awe
Jaw-dropping
Mind-blowing
Mesmerizing
Spectacular
Remarkable
Enchantment, enchanting, to enchant
Astonishing
Terrific
Breath-taking
Spellbinding
To beguile
To bewitch

Emotional power words – Sadness

Austerity
Envy, envious
Grief-stricken
Heartbroken
Hostile
Lovesick
Resentful
Shame
Sobbing, to sob
Tearful
Teary-eyed
Troubled, trouble
Weepy

Emotional power words – Disgust

Crap, crappy
Icky
Junk
Lousy
Nasty
Obscene
Outrageous
Repellent, to repel, repulsive
Ridiculous
Scuzzy
Shit, shitty
Trash, trashy
Vulgar

Emotional power words – Anger

Annoying
Bitter
Flare up
Frenzy, frantic
Fury, furious
Grumpy
Hatred, to hate
Hysterics
Irritating
Panic
Rage, raging
Tantrum
To sulk

Emotional power words – Anticipation

Charming, to charm
Craving, crave
Discovery, to discover
Enthusiasm, to enthuse
Forgotten
Inspiration, to inspire
Little-known
Longing, to long for
Lust
Mystery, Mysterious
Passion, passionate
To woo
Yearning, to yearn

Power Words – Goal:  At least one power word

Sentiment

Neutral

Your headline has a neutral sentiment. Headlines that are strongly positive or negative tend to get more engagement then neutral ones.

General

Headlines that are lists and how-to get more engagement on average than other types of headlines.   Read about Why these 21 headlines went viral. 

Here were the scores for this blog title. As previously mentioned, I wouldn’t suggest changing the URL title after the post has already been published.

Character Count – 34 – Too Short.     You have space to add more keywords and power words to boost your rankings and click-through rate.

Word Count – 6 – Good.  Your headline has the right amount of words. Headlines are more likely to be clicked on in search results if they have about 6 words.

Beginning and Ending Words

SEO Checklist Items
for WordPress Blogs

Most readers only look at the first and last 3 words
of a headline before deciding whether to click.

Snippet Preview

Search Preview – A snippet of what your headline will look like in Google Search results

SEO Checklist Items For
WordPress Blogs

Try New Headline

Enter a different headline than your post title to see how it compares.  (Enter a different headline for comparison).  For example, after inputting Search Engine Optimization Checklist Items for WordPress Blogs and pressing the Analyze button the score jumped to a 40.  Note of Caution:  If your page/post is already published and your getting shares don’t change the title for the mere purpose of getting a better score. 

After you do the analysis, you’ll see the new score and the previous score and the comparison to how much your current score has changed. 

Neutral

Your headline has a neutral sentiment.

Headlines that are strongly positive or negative tend to get more engagement then neutral ones.

This headline analyzer was part of MonsterInsights to help
increase my website traffic.

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Other SEO Tutorials for Bloggers – Beginning to Expert level

As I come across other SEO tutorials, I’m starting to develop a list of other SEO Tutorials for Bloggers that range from Beginner to Expert level.

Beginner’s SEO Tutorials

Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Beginner Blogging SEO

SEO Basics for Bloggers

Intermediate SEO Tips

Blogging for SEO: How to write posts that rank well

On Page SEO Techniques

Ultimate Bloggers Guide to SEO

The Ultimate SEO Guide for Bloggers – What is SEO?

Advanced SEO Tips

Blog SEO for the Modern Marketer

SEO checklist

SEO Consultants / Tips Not yet reviewed:

I love the series of Books for Dummies so this first link was pretty cool.

SEO for Idiots: The 10 Basics of Blogging Search Engine Optimization

SEO Brisbane by Joel House | Search Engine Optimization Services

Orlando Florida Search Engine Optimization

Top 16 Most Effective Search Engine Optimization Tips [Infographic]

Infographic: Goldilocks SEO, Getting Search Engine Optimization “Just Right”

Deep Learning And The Future Of Search Engine Optimization

A Novice’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization: The Upper Ranks

What is SEO? The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization | HigherVisibility

What Is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) And Why Is It Important

Read suggestion #4 regarding SEO (also provided below):

“Know SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to driving traffic to your blog via organic search. And there are many ways, besides using well-researched keywords in blog posts, to make your blog more attractive to search engines. You can learn how to get started with SEO in this guide.

Tania advises doing your SEO research before you start blogging so you don’t have to fix things later.”

Ashley Grant – Female bloggers share tips for blogging for a living

Recommended SEO Programs (other than Yoast SEO)

I was trying to compare two SEO programs SEMRush and Ahrefs. These two are a little more on the expensive side to use.

Ubersuggest really caught my eye when it comes down to the Site Audit that they’ll perform. The program recognized nearly 80 meta descriptions that hadn’t been updated. I was able to whittle the list down to less than 10 pages. I didn’t think that was much of a deal when I first started so I was leaving them blank. The report clearly told me what pages/posts needed to have meta descriptions.

Within 12 hours, this post, one of best-shared posts received nearly 50 shares. So there’s something to it. I can’t wait to see what kind of progress I have in a week after using Ubersuggest and their recommended 7-week action plan to improve “my” SEO.

Ubersuggest – has a 7 day trial period.

SemRush ( A little expensive though).

Ahrefs

The Importance of SEO

As your SEO articles climb higher and higher in search engine rankings, the exposure of each article increases, and more visitors will see your content. The more traffic you receive, the more money you make, whether you intend to earn it from ads, affiliate sales, a product you created, or your own services.

Many entrepreneurs, however, focus a little bit more on SEO, which can be a mistake if their readers are neglected. The purpose of this article is to teach you how to maximize your traffic from search engines, while also satisfying your readers and maintaining quality content.

Jacob M – Effective SEO copywriting hints to increase your traffic in 2020

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