Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results. This page is designed to help creators evaluate if they’re producing such content.
Self-assess your content
Evaluating your own content against these questions can help you gauge if the content you’re making is helpful and reliable. Beyond asking yourself these questions, consider having others you trust but who are unaffiliated with your site provide an honest assessment.
Also consider an audit of the drops you may have experienced. What pages were most impacted and for what types of searches? Look closely at these to understand how they’re assessed against some of the questions outlined here.
Content and quality questions
Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources, and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?
Does the main heading or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?
Does the main heading or page title avoid exaggerating or being shocking in nature?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book?
Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
Does the content have any spelling or stylistic issues?
Is the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Expertise questions
Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s About page?
If someone researched the site producing the content, would they come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic?
Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?
Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors?
Provide a great page experience
Google’s core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you’re providing an overall great page experience across many aspects. For more advice, see our page, Understanding page experience in Google Search results.
Focus on people-first content
People-first content means content that’s created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings. How can you evaluate if you’re creating people-first content? Answering yes to the questions below means you’re probably on the right track with a people-first approach:
Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
Avoid creating search engine-first content
We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search, rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings. Answering yes to some or all of the questions below is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you’re creating content:
Is the content primarily made to attract visits from search engines?
Are you producing lots of content on many different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t.)
Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?
Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?
Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?
Are you adding a lot of new content or removing a lot of older content primarily because you believe it will help your search rankings overall by somehow making your site seem “fresh?” (No, it won’t)
What about SEO? Isn’t that search engine-first?
There are some things you could do that are specifically meant to help search engines better discover and understand your content. Collectively, this is called “search engine optimization” or SEO, for short. Google’s own SEO guide covers best practices to consider. SEO can be a helpful activity when it is applied to people-first content, rather than search engine-first content.
Get to know E-E-A-T and the quality rater guidelines
Google’s automated systems are designed to use many different factors to rank great content. After identifying relevant content, our systems aim to prioritize those that seem most helpful. To do this, they identify a mix of factors that can help determine which content demonstrates aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or what we call E-E-A-T.
Of these aspects, trust is most important. The others contribute to trust, but content doesn’t necessarily have to demonstrate all of them. For example, some content might be helpful based on the experience it demonstrates, while other content might be helpful because of the expertise it shares.
While E-E-A-T itself isn’t a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good E-E-A-T is useful. For example, our systems give even more weight to content that aligns with strong E-E-A-T for topics that could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society. We call these “Your Money or Your Life” topics, or YMYL for short.
Search quality raters are people who give us insights on if our algorithms seem to be providing good results, a way to help confirm our changes are working well. In particular, raters are trained to understand if content has strong E-E-A-T. The criteria they use to do this is outlined in our search quality rater guidelines.
Search raters have no control over how pages rank. Rater data is not used directly in our ranking algorithms. Rather, we use them as a restaurant might get feedback cards from diners. The feedback helps us know if our systems seem to be working.
Reading the guidelines may help you self-assess how your content is doing from an E-E-A-T perspective, improvements to consider, and help align it conceptually with the different signals that our automated systems use to rank content.
Ask “Who, How, and Why” about your content
Consider evaluating your content in terms of “Who, How, and Why” as a way to stay on course with what our systems seek to reward.
Who (created the content)
Something that helps people intuitively understand the E-E-A-T of content is when it’s clear who created it. That’s the “Who” to consider. When creating content, here are some who-related questions to ask yourself:
Is it self-evident to your visitors who authored your content?
Do pages carry a byline, where one might be expected?
Do bylines lead to further information about the author or authors involved, giving background about them and the areas they write about?
If you’re clearly indicating who created the content, you’re likely aligned with the concepts of E-E-A-T and on a path to success. We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information, such as bylines to content where readers might expect it.
How (the content was created)
It’s helpful to readers to know how a piece of content was produced: this is the “How” to consider including in your content.
For example, with product reviews, it can build trust with readers when they understand the number of products that were tested, what the test results were, and how the tests were conducted, all accompanied by evidence of the work involved, such as photographs. It’s advice we share more about in our Write high quality product reviews help page.
Many types of content may have a “How” component to them. That can include automated, AI-generated, and AI-assisted content. Sharing details about the processes involved can help readers and visitors better understand any unique and useful role automation may have served.
If automation is used to substantially generate content, here are some questions to ask yourself:
Is the use of automation, including AI-generation, self-evident to visitors through disclosures or in other ways?
Are you providing background about how automation or AI-generation was used to create content?
Are you explaining why automation or AI was seen as useful to produce content?
Overall, AI or automation disclosures are useful for content where someone might think “How was this created?” Consider adding these when it would be reasonably expected. For more, see our blog post and FAQ: How Google Search views AI-generated content.
Why (was the content created)
“Why” is perhaps the most important question to answer about your content. Why is it being created in the first place?
The “why” should be that you’re creating content primarily to help people, content that is useful to visitors if they come to your site directly. If you’re doing this, you’re aligning with E-E-A-T generally and what our core ranking systems seek to reward.
If the “why” is that you’re primarily making content to attract search engine visits, that’s not aligned with what our systems seek to reward. If you use automation, including AI-generation, to produce content for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings, that’s a violation of our spam policies.
To keep up with the digital world, Mastercard is removing their name from the logo as part of a “reinvention” of the brand.
As a company following the digital updates so well that they even adapt the biometric fingerprint verification, Mastercard evolves their logo once again.
If you are an entrepreneur, it’s a fact that you are constantly on the quest to find new ways to grow your business and make connections that will contribute to the growth of your small business.
Networking is one of the oldest tricks in the book – but if done right, it can take you a long way on your journey to establishing successful business relationships.
Marketing is probably one of the most important key factors in growing your business. The modern era offers many avenues to explore when it comes to gaining and retaining clients, all whilst promoting your business and service offering. Social media platforms offer the opportunity to advertise and reach cold audiences, printed collateral allows your target market to get hands-on with your brand, and referrals mean prospective clients hear about you from those they trust.
An eCommerce store needs a formidable online presence—of which a good website and quality products are just the beginning. The real challenge lies in letting probable customers know that your brand exists amidst the digital racket. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing come in.
When a client asks, “Why aren’t we gaining more followers?” or “How do our social channels increase our revenue?” it’s a signal to revisit your social media goals.
Goals are no longer vanity targets like hitting 10,000 followers. They’ve become the foundation for meaningful results and client satisfaction. Whether it’s growing brand awareness, increasing website traffic, or boosting conversions, clear, actionable goals make it easier to prove the value of your agency’s work.
To design efficient and memorable logos in 2025, you need a blend of creativity and strategic thinking. As the trends and technologies in graphic design continue to evolve, understanding them is essential to staying ahead of the curve and delivering modern solutions created customary or by logo makers.
Women’s accessories sold by Shein, Temu and AliExpress contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in South Korea found. 144 products from the retailer were tested, and multiple products from all companies failed to meet legal standards. Seoul officials have asked for the products to be removed from sale.
We want to remind you of the importance of staying vigilant and avoid falling victim to phishing scams.
Phishing scams typically trick you into clicking on a link or attachment that either infects your machine with malware or directs you to a fraudulent page designed to steal your confidential account information.
by Mariska Wiese-Schalekamp – Website Developer at Glixie Media t/u House of Pixels (Pty) Ltd
Log into your WordPress Dashboard.
Go to Posts.
Select Add New.
Use the screen provided to create your post as desired.
Click Publish when you are done creating your post. The post will display on the blogging page of your website.
Add content
You’ve arrived on the blank canvas where you’ll add your masterpiece (AKA your content). But before starting this process, we have a few pointers. First, be sure to save your work frequently or write it in a separate Google or Word document and copy it over to the content management systems (CMS). This is a wise idea because,
while WordPress does save your progress automatically, it might not pick up on changes made if you lose your internet connection. Not to mention, drafting your content in a separate document is good idea so you don’t get overwhelmed by simultaneously formatting, editing, and writing.
Click the “Save draft” button in the upper right-hand corner to save.
Now, it’s time to add your content. To do so, copy-paste your original text directly into WordPress.
WordPress uses a block editor, which works exactly as you’d imagine — by creating blocks for each section of content you add. For example, paragraphs will be separated into blocks, as will images and headings.
Uploading Images
Once you’ve written your first piece, you’ll need to add images to your WordPress blog post. Adding images can make your content more digestible and visually engaging. To begin uploading a picture, press “enter” on your keyboard to create a new block. Then, click the “+” button in the top left corner to view the different blocks. Select the “Image” block.
Now, upload your image. You can either upload one from your computer, select one from the WordPress media library, or insert an image with a URL from a site like Flickr. Dont forget to add alt text to your image for accessibility and search engine optimization.
Once you’ve completed this step, your image should be visible in the block. You can repeat this process as necessary — if your article is long, we suggest adding a few images to break up the text and make it more readable.
Pro Tip: People recall 65% of the information they see presented visually — so don’t forget to use infographics on your blog!
Adding Links
Adding internal and external links is an essential way to boost your blog post quality.
The anchor text is also crucial for SEO as it indicates to site crawlers what the page you’re linking to is about. It’s easy to add hyperlinks to your content in WordPress. You can do so in two ways. The first way is to select the text you want to hyperlink. Then, find the floating menu box and select the link icon highlighted in blue below.
Add a URL in the box that appears.
Click “Enter” to insert the URL. And ta-da, you’ve done it!
The more straightforward way to add hyperlinks is by using a keyboard shortcut. Start by selecting the text you want to hyperlink.
Then, press Control+K (PC) to bring up the box and add your URL on your keyboard.
Pro Tip: Its up to you to decide whether youd like your links to open in a new tab. Generally speaking, if a link is external, or youd like the visitor to stay on the page theyre currently on, turn on the option to open in a new tab.
Format the post
Spoiler alert: It’s just as important that your content is organized as it is well-written. Without formatting in place, your audience is more likely to get overwhelmed by massive blocks of text and leave the page quickly (therefore impacting your bounce rate). Here’s how to format your post.
Pro Tip: Readers don’t want to spend time figuring out how to navigate your post, so make it easy for them with clear formatting. We’ll dive into how you can do so now.
Headings
To organize a blog post, use headings. Headings tell the reader (and the search engines) what is essential on the page using a hierarchy. It’s a win-win: Your readers know what to expect, and your site is more findable for search engines. Plus, it allows your readers to better pace their reading experience. And that’s not to mention how it makes your blog post look better aesthetically speaking.
Here’s how it works: An H1 is the title of a page and lives at the top of the hierarchy and the top of the page. A blog post only has one H1. If you add more, you risk confusing Google — and your reader. In other words, don’t do it.
H2s are subheadings. You might have one, two, or more of these in your post. H2s are next in line in the hierarchy of a blog post. They always go below an H1, and if you’re trying to rank for a keyword on Google, it’s a good idea to try to include it in at least a few H2s — without keyword stuffing, of course. H3s follow a similar order — they always go below H2s. Think of an H3 as a subcategory. All subsequent headings follow the same pattern.
Let’s walk through an example. Say you’re writing a blog post about the best dog breeds for families. Your H1 could be: “The 10 Best Dog Breeds for Families.” Your H2s could be: “Why choose a family-friendly dog breed?” and “What are the best dog breeds for families?” Under the second H2, you could elaborate on breeds that are recommended. To do this, add H3s such as “Golden Retriever,” “Labrador Retriever,” “Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.” And under each H3 you may add an H4s such as “Why Choose This Breed” where you can provide additional information.
This results in a more digestible experience for readers and search engines.
To change a heading in a WordPress blog post, find the menu box and select the paragraph button highlighted in blue.
Select “Heading.” Depending on the CSS settings your site has set up, you’ll see your text change in size and even color. To edit the type of heading, click the “H2” button in the menu box and select the appropriate heading.
Pro Tip: Use headings strategically; they should reveal to your readers what to expect in the following copy.
Images
Images also help readers navigate your blog post, so remember to format them properly. Formatting images in WordPress is easy. Here’s how.
Select your image and find the floating menu box. Next, select the format button — the one with three horizontal lines. Next, choose the alignment you’d like for your image. Here, let’s stick with a center alignment for the photos in our blog post.
Pro Tip: Stay consistent with your alignment so readers don’t get confused when reading your blog posts. If you use center alignment for one photo, commit to it throughout the post so readers know what to expect.
Preview the post.
Youve added content, images, links, and formatting for an optimal user experience. Now, it’s time to preview your post before it goes live. You’re almost there. See? Learning how to create a blog on WordPress isn’t as difficult as it may seem! First, select the “Preview” button in the top right corner. Then choose whether you want to preview a desktop, tablet, or mobile version of the post. We chose “Desktop” here. Finally, select the “Preview in a new tab” option.
Take a look at your post for any errors. If you see any, simply return to the editor tab and adjust as necessary.
Once everything looks good, congratulations! You are ready to publish your first WordPress blog post. Now its time to preview your post before it goes live.
Pro Tip: Don’t skip the preview step! It can be tempting to rush through to get your post to go live, but resist the urge. Previewing allows you to check for any issues with the content, formatting, or user experience.
Publish the Post
To publish the post, select “Publish” in the top right corner. You’ll see a few different options for publishing, but if you want this post to be available to anyone on the internet, select “Public.”
Add Tags & Categories
Finally, you’ll have the opportunity to add tags to your post. These help readers navigate your posts by similar topics. This is optional, so you can leave them blank if you don’t yet have a process to organize tags.
Your blog post is now live on the web!
Pro Tip: As your blog grows and you publish more articles, you’ll find it’s increasingly important you add tags so visitors can easily peruse your content. It will also be helpful for you as you navigate through your content and add related links. And once you figure out how you’d like to organize tags, don’t forget to go back and add them to older content.
This decision tree describes how to use the alt attribute of the element in various situations. For some types of images, there are alternative approaches, such as using CSS background images for decorative images or web fonts instead of images of text.
During your research into website design and development, you might have come across two terms used to describe types of websites: “static” and “dynamic.”
If you’re building your own website, opting for a static or a dynamic website is one of the first major decisions you’ll need to make, since it will determine how your web pages are stored and delivered to visitors in their browsers.
When you use WordPress to write content and publish them online, you usually heard the term WordPress permalinks. This term is critical to learn from the SEO point of view for every user. This is commonly known as a link that helps you to reach a specific section of the content.
In this post, we try to bring you Complete comprehensive content about WordPress Permalinks. What are they? How do they Work? How should you implement them? And any more. But before getting into deep, let us know What WordPress Permalinks actually are?
How to Create a Website – An Easy, Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners. Starting your very 1st website or helping someone? websitesetup.org has some great walkthroughs for domain, hosting & CMS!
How to Start an Online Store – Guide for Creating an Online eCommerce Site. In 2022, starting an online store is easier than ever.
A few decades ago, creating a website wasn’t an easy task, especially for someone who wasn’t tech-savvy and didn’t know how to code. Nowadays, however, anyone with a computer and internet connection can launch an eCommerce business within a matter of minutes, all thanks to modern tools and website builders.
You’ve thought about it every year. You’ve gone over countless online business ideas in your head and imagined what your life would be like if you could quit your job and generate money on the internet.
You could travel the world with ease, create a comfortable lifestyle for yourself and your family, and achieve financial freedom. You could finally escape the constraints of the 9-5 lifestyle and own your time completely.
But then, what happens? Usually, you spend some time considering the ideas but ultimately resort back to your comfort zone.
Cryptocurrency, or “crypto” hit the headlines in 2009, when Bitcoin launched, but its origins can be traced back to the 1980s, when it was called cyber currency. An American cryptographer called David Chaum invented digital cash, which relied on cryptography to secure and verify transactions, but the requisite protocols and software that would facilitate a true digital currency did not begin to be developed until the 1990s. So what is cryptocurrency?
What is the legal framework in South Africa for cryptocurrency?
Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Monero…what do they all have in common? They are all cryptocurrencies. You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin. Many people think Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are the same thing, but in fact Bitcoin is just one type of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a digital payment system that works outside of the banking system. It’s a peer-to-peer payment system that allows anyone anywhere to send and receive payments. Cryptocurrency payments are digital entries on an online database. Cryptocurrency is stored in a digital wallet and when you make a cryptocurrency payment, the transaction is recorded in a public ledger. Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 by an anonymous developer and it has since become the most well-known cryptocurrency in the world. It has inspired the development of other cryptocurrencies, such as the ones named above.
An easy Step by Step Guide how to add a Blog Post to your blog page on your website. It’s really easy once you’ve done it a couple of times. A skill worth acquiring for the success of your business online. Share your knowledge, learn how to blog here & read about much more.
Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results. This page is designed to help creators evaluate if they’re producing such content.
In 2022, starting an online store is easier than ever.
A few decades ago, creating a website wasn’t an easy task, especially for someone who wasn’t tech-savvy and didn’t know how to code. Nowadays, however, anyone with a computer and internet connection can launch an eCommerce business within a matter of minutes, all thanks to modern tools and website builders.
However, you have to decide on a couple of things before setting up your webshop; matters like what you’re going to sell, how to handle shipping and payments, and most importantly what marketing strategies to use.
Follow our step-by-step online store building guide and you learn how to start an eCommerce website quickly from scratch.Table of Contents
The first step that’s an absolute must-do is to pick your niche. As it’s often defined, a niche is a specific piece of a broader market.
Sorry if this sounds a bit too dictionary-like. Let’s break it down into simpler terms. Basically, when picking your niche, you have to decide:
What do you want to sell?
Who are you going to sell it to?
Why would they buy it?
These three questions may seem fairly obvious, but they’re actually far from.
Defining your ideal customer base and figuring out why they would buy from you will make your job much easier later on. The main mistake that people make is going too broadly in the hope that the bigger the potential market is, the more likely they are to get good sales. This is not correct.
If your target customer base is simply “people who breathe” then you’re going to have a hard time positioning your product in the market, promoting it, and explaining what’s so valuable about it.
Overall, focusing on one niche is better than going all over.
It’s best to start in an area that you already have a personal interest in, expert knowledge about, or passion for. It’s really hard to operate in a field that you know nothing about.
So, begin with your interests, navigate from there. Define who your ideal customer is, and what makes them want to buy the products that you want to offer.
A good starting point is to look at what your competition in the niche is doing. See how they position their products, who their customers are. Learn from that and build upon other people’s experiences.
2. Choose Between Dropshipping and Selling Your Own Products
Let’s start from the beginning by explaining two popular eCommerce scenarios:
Scenario no.1 is the traditional way of running an online store. In this model:
(1) you get products from the supplier or create them yourself → (2) you offer those products to customers via your website → (3) the customer buys the product → (4) you send the product to them
Here’s the dropshipping model:
(1) you start by listing the products on your website → (2) the customer buys the product → (3) the supplier sends the product directly to the customer
The main benefit of the dropshipping model is that you don’t have to hold any inventory yourself. This means that there’s no cost involved in making the products or storing them. In fact, everything you sell is pure profit since you only have to pay the supplier after you receive an order from your customer.
In the traditional model, you have to shell out money upfront to either obtain products from the supplier or get them created. You must do that before you can ever start selling them.
On the other hand, dropshipping won’t be for you if the products you want to sell are of your own production or need to be customized/personalized before they can be sold.
Overall, if you can, opt for dropshipping – and especially if it’s your first attempt to start an online store. Dropshipping is a great way to test the waters and validate that the products you want to sell are indeed something that customers will want to buy. Then, later on, you can expand and start offering your own products as well.
3. Choose the Exact Products to Sell
One of the great things about dropshipping is that there’s an abundance of different products to choose from in nearly every niche.
This is excellent news for businesses that are just getting started and don’t want to invest in their own product development. The overall steps are:
Research your niche. Examine what sort of products your competitors are selling, and what their best-selling products are.
Go to content sites on the web to find what type of challenges, products, or things in general your target audience reads about.
Go to niche-related forums and see what your customers talk about.
Search on Google with keywords most relevant to your niche.
Go to Amazon and do similar research. See what products sell well.
With all this research, you can now go to some popular markets and start looking for specific products you can sell.
The biggest market of this kind is AliExpress. It’s a regular eCommerce marketplace by most standards, but it also allows you to establish relationships with merchants and offer their products as a dropshipper. Go there and look for products that are in tune with the research you’ve done, and also seem like something interesting-enough for your customer base to enjoy.
We recommend getting started with between 10-50 products. This will give you more than enough stuff to make your store complete and also not overwhelm you with what’s going on as you work with the store on a daily basis.
When you’re putting together a list of products, keep the following things in mind:
Make sure that the product is available for shipping in locations where your target audience is. Also, the lower the shipping costs, the better.
Check the shipping times and make sure they don’t exceed what you would consider acceptable (we leave deciding what’s acceptable and what isn’t to your judgment).
If possible, avoid brand name products (you don’t want to depend on being able to sell Adidas sneakers, for instance).
It’s a common practice for dropshipping stores to set their margins at around the 50% mark. Meaning, when looking for products to sell, focus on the ones that are half the price compared to what you want to sell them for.
As we mentioned earlier, having a list of 10-50 products is suitable for a start. We’ll use that list later on when importing the products to your actual online store.
4. Come Up With a Business Name and Register a Domain Name
Choosing a domain name for your store is undoubtedly the most fun part of the whole endeavor. People love to name things. Especially businesses.
However. The name you end up with can have a lot of significance for your future success and ability to market the business effectively. Here are the things to keep in mind when brainstorming a business name:
Pick a Name That’s Easy to Pronounce
Imagine yourself talking to someone over the phone and needing to mention the name of your store. Do you have to spell it out for the other person to understand?
If you do, the name is too complex. Go for something simple and easy to pronounce on the first go.
Pick a Name That’s Easy to Memorize
This relates to the previous point, somewhat. Apart from being easy to pronounce, your name also needs to be easy to memorize.
You can achieve this in a couple of ways. Going with a completely made-up word as your name is one solution (think “Google”). Alternatively, you can put together two words that do have real meanings but create something original when put next to each other (think “Face-book”).
Pick a Name That’s Brandable
Your name should be original enough so that people won’t mistake it for any other similar business.
For example, if you want to name your pizzeria “Pizza Den” but there’s another business in town called “Pizza Pan” then it’s not a good name.
Pick a Name That’s Short(ish)
Not longer than a combination of 2-3 words. Any longer and it’s going to be harder to remember and less brandable.
Don’t Use Any Special Characters Or Numbers
Also forget about dots, underscores, dashes, etc.
Pick a Name That is Available as a .com Domain
The .com is the most popular and most important domain name extension of the bunch. If you’re brainstorming a name, don’t go for something that doesn’t have a .com domain available.
Best Domain Name Generators – Still stuck with choosing a domain name? Check out this article of the best 15 domain name generators that can help you out.
Finally, it’s time to build an actual online store.
Here’s the best part: you can do it all on your own, there’s no professional help needed, and you don’t have to sacrifice the quality of the final outcome. Your online store is going to be just as functional and just as good-looking as if it was built by a pro.
To make that happen, we’re recommending using WooCommerce.
Note: Before you can start building your online store with WooCommerce, you first need to create a website. For this check out our step-by-step tutorial on how to build a website with WordPress.
The last piece of the puzzle when attempting to start an online store is accepting payments from customers.
By default, WooCommerce allows you to accept payments via PayPal. You don’t need to do much in order to enable this payment system either. You likely already took care of it during the initial WooCommerce setup.
That said, you can choose a different payment system, or even use a couple of alternative systems at the same time. One of the reasons for this might be that some of your customers will prefer specific payment methods over others. So the more of them you have integrated into your store, the more sales you’ll get.
Two of the most popular additional payment methods for WooCommerce are Stripe and Square. These are particularly good choices if you want to accept credit cards (which you surely do).
Both Stripe and Square are free to get started with. However, like with every payment method, there are additional fees imposed on every transaction made (it’s the same with PayPal), so just be aware of that.
Getting a new payment method installed in your eCommerce store is simple. Those payment systems are all delivered as WordPress plugins, so you can install them the same way you installed WooCommerce.
After that, each payment system comes with its own setup procedure. Most of the time, though, all you have to do is sign up for an account and verify your details.
7. Start Marketing Your Online Store
There are many different things you can do to get the word out about your store, but we’re going to focus on just four here – the four that are the most likely to work in 2022 and going forward.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a relatively new way to promote your store. Most of it is done on Instagram.
The way it works is this:
Find people popular in your niche or recognizable for whatever reason.
Reach out to them and ask what their rates are for promoting products like yours. Also, pay attention to the size of their following and ask about the number of engagements they get under similar posts.
Agree on a run of two or three promotional posts, and send them your products.
Paid Ads
Paid ads basically don’t ever fail. If there’s a market for something, and you target that market with ads, you will get some sales.
The most popular platform for advertising your products is Google AdWords. Getting started with them is relatively easy, and Google has its own guides to take you through the initial steps.
Social Media Marketing
While Instagram certainly is the most on-trend social media network of today, this doesn’t mean that it’s the only place where you should promote your store.
Online store ASOS on Instagram
In fact, you should be present in all the places where your customers are likely to hang out. This, in the modern-day, means most of the popular social media networks. Or, at the very minimum, the top ones like Facebook, Twitter, and optionally Pinterest (if your customers use it).
Your approach to all these networks will be similar, but the goals and the way you construct your messages will be different.
The first thing you should do is research what your competition is doing and how they go about promoting their stores. Take note of their strategies and tactics, and see what you can adapt to your situation. Chiefly, pay attention to:
the type of messages they post
the posting frequency
how often they promote their products directly
what’s their general voice and how their messages make you feel
Next, set your own goals as to what you want to achieve through social media.
Most commonly, those goals should be building brand awareness among customers, and only occasionally promoting your products, and trying to generate direct sales. If you push your stuff too much, you’ll alienate people quickly.
The next step is setting a publication calendar in place and preparing some social media posts in advance. You can then publish those posts with the help of tools like Buffer.
Content Marketing and SEO
Nowadays, content marketing and SEO are the most effective methods to promote any website (including eCommerce stores).
The idea behind content marketing is simple: you give people insights on topics related to your business and thus generate interest in what you have to offer.
For example, if your store sells winter socks, then you can offer people advice on things like how to pick ski socks. You can deliver that advice in the form of a simple blog post. As people read your content, they also get introduced to your store and the socks that you have in your catalog.
The same principle can be adapted to any market or niche. Find out what people want to know and then create content that delivers that info to them.
When doing so, optimize your content so that it’s more discoverable via Google. It’s reported that Google is responsible for 94% of total organic traffic on the web.
In order to build a website, you first got to decide what platform you’re going to build your website with.
What do I mean by “platform”?
Well, back in 2005 when I got started with web development, most sites were created using HTML (code), CSS, and PHP. Each of these took a lot of time to learn and were difficult to master.
That’s why most people still think setting up a website from scratch is difficult or requires a lot of coding and design skills – but that’s no longer true.
In 2022, content management systems (CMS) like WordPress have made creating a website accessible to everyone.
To put it simply, a CMS (or website building platform) is a user-friendly platform for building websites and managing your own online content, instead of creating a website from scratch using HTML, PHP, and other coding languages.
Popular Site Building Platforms in 2022
To better understand which are the most popular content management systems, I dug up some recent statistics from W3 Techs and BuiltWith.
Just take a look at this graph below:
Data credit: BuiltWith
As you can see, nearly half of the websites on the Internet are running on the WordPress website platform.
But what makes them a better option than others?
Why use WordPress and not website builders?
1. It’s FREE (no recurring subscriptions, open-source)
Unlike website builders or web design software, WordPress doesn’t cost a dime to download, install or use. It’s built by web developers and there’s a large developer community who have designed beautiful free themes and templates, making it easy to get going fast.
2. It’s highly customizable and user-friendly
If you know how to use Google Docs, you already know how to add your own content. WordPress can be easily expanded with free add-ons to handle just about any site you can imagine – from small business websites to e-commerce sites. With WordPress “plugins” you’ll be able to add contact forms, subscription forms, image galleries, stores, and so on for your website. And it’s all pretty simple.
3. Your site will be ‘responsive’. Meaning it’ll work on smartphones & tablets, too
The website you build will instantly be responsive, looking great on every mobile device, smartphone, and tablet. No need to hire a web developer for that.
4. Help available from the community
With so many people using the platform (webmasters, small-business owners, bloggers), it’s easy to find fast help when you need it. You can get help from here for free or you can hire thousands of WordPress developers from here.
In fact, I built WebsiteSetup.org using WordPress, too. Below are samples of my homepage and ‘blog’ page:
WebsiteSetup Homepage
WebsiteSetup Blog Page
Are there any good alternatives for WordPress?
There are some.
But, I would still use WordPress.
Wix is an easy-to-use website builder with a simple drag and drop interface, but it has a higher cost, is not suitable for larger sites and it’s impossible to migrate your website out if the need should arise.
Squarespace is a very aesthetically beautiful website builder which makes creating beautiful websites easy, but it comes at a higher monthly cost and doesn’t have a function to migrate your website out.
Drupal is a powerful platform that is popular with experienced coders and web developers, but it has a high learning curve that makes it not the best option for beginners.
Joomla is almost like WordPress and is a good tool for website building, but it does require at least some basic understanding of how to write code to make things work the way that you want.
If for some reason you don’t want to build your site with WordPress, check out my Drupal, Joomla, HTML5 and website builder guides as well.
WHAT NEXT?
At this point, you don’t need go looking for WordPress. Right now, you don’t need to to install it nor download it.
To make sure your website is set up the right way, it’s important to complete the following steps below:
In Step 2, I’ll walk you through the process of choosing a domain name and finding a space to host your site.
In Step 3, I’ll show you how to install and customize your WordPress website. Don’t worry – I’ll walk you through the process, with lots of images as a reference.
Step #2: Find a Domain Name and Host
Full Disclosure: This guide is reader-supported. If you click on our links, we may earn a commission. Thanks for supporting us.
In order to get a new website online, there are two things that you’re going to need:
A domain name (a web address like yoursitename.com)
Website Hosting (a service that connects your site to the internet)
The WordPress platform itself is free, but hosting and domain name are not. However, the combined cost is still less than a coffee, with around $3 – $5 a month.
In order to look professional, you need to have your own domain name, instead of having a free domain that belongs to someone else (for example, yourbusiness.my-free-website.com.)
And, having a quality hosting service will also help you make sure that your website won’t go down and that it loads quickly (very important for everyone who visits your pages.)
Where do I get a domain name and hosting?
I’ve mostly used www.Bluehost.com as a web hosting and domain registrar for myself and for my web development projects.
Their website hosting costs less than a movie ticket ($2.75/mo) and they throw in a FREE domain name (a nice perk to have).
Of course, you can try other web hosting providers and even try to host your site by yourself, but it’s a very complicated process and often wouldn’t be capable of serving your website visitors. So save yourself some money and get a proper web host.
With your own domain name, you are also able to get a professional email account(s) like, yourname@YourWebsite.com – this is much more professional than a regular Yahoo or Gmail address, especially if you need multiple email accounts.
Already have a domain name and hosting? Go ahead and skip to step 3, where I’ll explain how you can set up your website.
If you’re setting up a business website, your domain name should match your company name. For example: YourCompanyName.com
If you’re planning on making a personal website for yourself then YourName.com can be a great option.
For this site (WebsiteSetup), I chose WebsiteSetup.org
Domain names usually end with .com, .org or .net, but in recent times, a large number of domain extensions (the last part of the web address, like .com or .org) have come out, ranging from .blog to .party.
My best advice? Avoid the unusual extensions and go with .com, .net or .org unless they precisely describe your website – and even then, it is usually better to go with a more common extension.
Any additional tips for choosing my domain name?
There are a few things that can help you choose your domain name:
#1 Is it brandable? For example, if you make a site about poetry then best-poetry-website.net is not a good choice: poetryacademy.com or poetryfall.com is much better.
#2 Is it memorable? Short, punchy and clear domain names are much easier to remember. If your domain name is too fuzzy, too long or spelled in a strange way, visitors may forget it.
#3 Is it catchy? You want a domain name that rolls off the tongue, describes what you (or your business) does and sticks in the head. Coming up with a cool name can be a bit tough since there are more than 200 million active domain names in the world right now – but don’t give up.
There’s one rule that always applies to domain names: If you like it, go for it.
WHAT NEXT?
Do some brainstorming to come up with a unique domain name that reflects your future website, business or blog.
Secure your web hosting and domain name. For this, I recommend using Bluehost.com, but you can pick any web host that’s reliable and trustworthy.
If you have any questions/suggestions for this guide don’t hesitate to contact me. Remember: I’m here to help!
1. Install WordPress Site
There are two possible ways to install WordPress, one MUCH easier than the other.
1. TO CREATE A WEBSITE WITH WORDPRESS, USE ONE-CLICK-INSTALLATION:
Almost all well-established and reliable web hosting companies have integrated one-click installation for WordPress these days.
If you chose to sign up with Bluehost or any other similar hosting company, you should find your “one-click installation” either in the account creation process or in your account control panel.
For example, these are the steps you need to follow to install WordPress on Bluehost (the process is very similar or even the same on all the most popular web hosting companies):
2. MANUAL INSTALL (if your web hosting provider doesn’t have an easy way to do it)
If for some odd reason (some hosting companies don’t provide one-click-install for WordPress) you don’t have the option to install WordPress automatically, look at this manual guide below:Installing WordPress Manually (Click to expand)
2. Choose a Theme for Your Site (Free or Premium)
For the next step, we’ll be diving into WordPress themes and how to use and customize them.
WordPress themes are design templates that make changing your site’s looks a lot quicker and easier.
Luckily, WordPress has loads of themes to choose from. The official WordPress theme directory alone contains more than 8,000, which are completely free to use.
You can access themes directly from within WordPress without having to navigate to an external site.
For that, simply go to Appearance > Themes, and click the large + sign that says Add New Theme.
Then use the search bar to find a theme that suits your site.
You can click on any theme in the listing to view a demo of it and read more about its features on its Details & Preview screen.
Once you find a theme you like, install it by clicking the Install button in the Details & Preview screen.
Once the install process is complete, click the Activate button that appears where the Install button used to be.
If what’s available in the official theme directory doesn’t suit your needs, check out premium theme markets such as:
Before getting to site customization, you need to have some content on your site.
After all, it’s hard to customize your site when there’s nothing on it to show the changes. What you need in terms of content will vary depending on the subject matter of your site and your goals.
However, there are a few key pages that nearly every site has:
Homepage
About page
Contact page
In deciding which pages to add, consider what information would be most helpful to your visitors. You’ll also need to think about visual content, such as photos.
To make things easier, some WordPress themes come with page templates for specific page types. Others also come with more than one layout option for each page.
To take advantage of these, go to Appearance > Customize.
In this example, we’re using the latest WordPress default theme, Twenty Twenty-One to create a site. By default, it uses a static page as the homepage that you can configure under Homepage Settings. Use the dropdown menu to select which page you want to serve as your website’s homepage.
Alternatively, if you want your homepage to feature your latest blog posts, check choose the option Your latest posts.
Confirm your choices by clicking Publish in the upper left corner.
After that, you can move on to creating new pages for your site. For that, in the main dashboard, go to Pages > Add New.
The Twenty Twenty-One theme relies on the Gutenberg editor, so here I can add page titles and content.
Within this page, you can add features like images and formatting.
Repeat this process to add additional pages to your site.
4. Make Sure Your Website is Well-Organized
Think of your website as a library.
Your website structure will become increasingly important the more content you add to your website.
When learning how to create a website, you need to get expert at organizing your site in a way that makes sense to your visitors and easy for them to get around it.
A crucial part here is the navigation menu. Once you’ve created some pages, it’s time to make them available to your visitors on the site. You can do that under Appearance > Menus.
The first step here, is to give your new menu a name, then click Create Menu.
After that, you can choose which content to add to it on the left. For example, tick the boxes next to pages you want to appear in the menu, then click Add to Menu.
You can drag and drop menu items to your desired order and even turn them into sub-items by moving them underneath others like below. Once you are satisfied, choose the menu position where you’d like for this menu to appear (in this case Primary menu).
Click Save Menu again and go to your site’s front end to see the new menu in action.
Ultimately, you want to reflect a structure that makes sense for your site and helps visitors get to where they need to go.
5. Additional Customization Options
For additional customization options, go back to Appearance > Customize. When you look around, you will see that it offers a lot more options to make changes to your site. You are able to modify other parts of your site like:
Title and tagline
Colors
Typography
Background image
Menus
Widgets
You can also make adjustments to your homepage, blog page, and add custom code. The options that appear will vary depending on which theme you’ve installed.
Beyond theme customization, there are many plugins available for WordPress, both free and premium. In the official WordPress plugin directory alone, you can find close to 60,000 plugins that can add all kinds of new features and functionality to your site. Plus, there are many more available from third-party marketplaces.
To install new plugins, navigate to Plugins > Add New.
You’ll be presented with a list of some of the most popular plugins currently available. Use the search field to find anything else you are looking for.
To get plugins onto your site, hit the Install Now button. Wait until it has been downloaded and then click Activate. You can find all plugins on your site plus the possibility to activate, deactivate, and delete them under Plugins in the WordPress main menu.
As to what plugins you should install, some choices worth considering include:
Yoast SEO – A top search engine optimization plugin that adds on-page optimization prompts to every page and post plus the option to customize Open Graph social media tags.
Jetpack – Includes a wide range of features to improve website speed, optimization, social media integration, digital marketing, contact forms, and site search.
Smush – This plugin compresses images that are uploaded to WordPress, which saves storage space, and speeds up page load times.
WooCommerce – This is the most popular e-commerce store plugin for WordPress and makes it easy to set up an online store. More on it further below.
MonsterInsights – This plugin adds Google Analytics to your WordPress dashboard.
If you want even more control over how your website looks, you can install a page builder plugin. These plugins add drag-and-drop functionality to your site, which means you can visually build entire web designs — not just individual pages and posts. A few popular choices include:
Elementor – This all-in-one website builder offers visual website editing, fast load times, and a vast selection of templates to choose from.
Divi – Developed by Elegant Themes, Divi provides another straightforward way to customize websites.
Beaver Builder – An easy-to-use page builder plugin that speeds up website design considerably.
6. Add a Blog (Optional)
Not every website needs a blog. However, creating one can be a good idea to regularly publish fresh content, display your expertise, and provide additional value for your visitors.
To add a blog in WordPress, you first have to select a blog page. Above, I have already covered that you can configure your homepage to automatically display your latest posts. However, if you want a dedicated blog page instead and keep your homepage static, you first need to create it.
This is as simple as setting up an empty page (Pages > Add New), naming it Blog (or whatever you want but Blog makes sense because it will automatically create the address yoursite.com/blog for your blog page), and publishing it. Then, pick it as your Posts Page either under Appearance > Customize > Homepage Settings or under Settings > Reading.
When saved, all blog posts will automatically appear on your chosen page. Don’t forget to add it to your navigation menu!
To add blog posts to your website go to Posts > Add New.
This will get you to the same content editor that you used earlier for your pages. Add a title and content to your blog post. Include images and formatting, headers, lists, and anything else it needs. In the sidebar on the right you also find options to apply categories and tags, define an excerpt, and set up a featured image.
Once you’re done making changes, click Publish. Your first post is completed, well done!
7. Adding an Online Store (Optional)
Not every website needs an ecommerce store. But if you want to know how to make a website and include an online store, keeping reading.
The most popular plugin for this purpose is WooCommerce.
You can set it up quickly, it offers many payment options, and a wide range of optimized themes to create an online shop. Plus, it has a variety of extensions available for purchase to customize your e-commerce site and adapt it to many purposes.
To learn how to add an online store to your website, follow this guide.
8. Configure SSL
A secure sockets layer (SSL) on your website means data sent to your website’s visitors is kept secure. SSL is an important search ranking factor, and it’s essential to ensure a positive user experience by prioritizing user privacy and security.
To check that SSL is active on your new website with Bluehost, do the following:
Log into Bluehost.
Go to My Sites.
Click Manage Site.
Find the Security tab on the next screen.
Under the section that says Security Certificate, verify your Free SSL Certificate or SSL Certificate: Let’s Encrypt status. The toggle should be switched to On.
Verify SSL is set up by visiting your site again. A lock icon should appear next to the domain name in your web browser’s address bar.
9. Launch Your WordPress Website
Once your site is ready, it’s time to officially launch it. Make sure to double-check your settings and proofread your posts and pages one more time. If everything looks good, click the link at the top of the dashboard that says Coming Soon Active.
After that, scroll down and hit the button that says Launch your site.
Now you can check your live website.
Click through each page to make sure all links work, your text looks good, and your images are formatted properly (you can use this checklist for reference).
Congratulations! You’re now the proud owner of a new website.
Learning how to make a website is no small feat, even with a detailed guide to help you along the way.
At the same time, it can be very satisfying when you acquire a new skill and start seeing your hard work pay off.
But don’t stop here. Use your new knowledge to learn more and implement more complex functionalities and features. This way, you won’t just learn how to make a website but exactly the site you want.
An Easy, Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners
Starting your very 1st website or helping someone? websitesetup.org has some great walkthroughs for domain, hosting & CMS!
When you use WordPress to write content and publish them online, you usually heard the term WordPress permalinks. This term is critical to learn from the SEO point of view for every user. This is commonly known as a link that helps you to reach a specific section of the content.
In this post, we try to bring you Complete comprehensive content about WordPress Permalinks. What are they? How do they Work? How should you implement them? And any more. But before getting into deep, let us know What WordPress Permalinks actually are?
What are WordPress Permalinks?
As per the official definition provided by WordPress,” Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings.” Whether your website has archive pages, posts, or even 404 error pages, all of them have their own WordPress permalinks.
Suppose your domain/homepage is www. example.com, then the archive pages or your blog pages would be www.example.com/blog to understand this term better.
Or if your website has other pages such as contact us, home, or about us page, then the WordPress permalinks of these pages would be as follows:
Contact us – www.example.com/contactus
Home – www.example.com/home
About us – www.example.com/about-us
Or Www.example.com/?p=123
These both URLs are the types of WordPress permalinks you have which we will discuss later. In addition, whenever you post content on your blog, each post has its own permalink. It becomes accessible due to your theme template files, which have a template tag that fetches the Post URL and converts them into clickable links.
And Here the WordPress comes into play, and it uses these clickable links to use in your blog listing by showing them within an <a> element.
Some other terms related to WordPress Permalinks
To continue this post, we would like to let you know about the meaning of some more terms related to WordPress permalinks, and it will be easy for you to understand the difference between them. As we have already mentioned above, WordPress permalinks are the complete links to the post or any page of a website.
And the slugs are like the final, ready to use and unique part of WordPress permalinks. For example, the permalink of the About us page is www. example.com/about-us, then the slug would be about-us. These are generated by WordPress automatically based on the various parameters that you have in your permalink settings.
And if you are not happy about your default WordPress permalinks, you have the option to customize it as per your choice, which we will see in the later section of this post.
Types of WordPress Permalinks
There are generally three different types of permalinks are available.
Plain or Ugly WordPress Permalinks
Pretty WordPressPermalinks
Plain or Ugly WordPress permalinks: Plain or ugly permalinks are the links WordPress assigns by default without any customization or alterations. It usually looks like the example given below:
1
<strong>http://example.com/?p=N</strong>
Each element in the permalink given above have its own meaning, such as N denotes the Post ID number. To your surprise, these links work fine on all servers, but the only downside of plain permalinks is that it doesn’t look nice like other options available.
Pretty WordPress Permalinks: A well-structured, easy to read, understand, and SEO-friendly URL termed Pretty WordPress permalinks. You can easily enable them in your WordPress settings. Let us take some examples to understand better how they are different from Ugly permalinks.
From the above-mentioned examples, you can easily see the main difference between them. In the ugly permalink, it shows you the P variable with the post id number. Whereas in the pretty WordPress permalink, you can see an easy-to-understand and read post slug.
WordPress has provided you with four formats that you can pick from permalink settings to make it more informative and structured. Just look out the image below and see all the options.
WordPress permalinks: Pretty permalinks
But another thing you must keep in mind is that you are not limited to use only the above pretty WordPress permalinks settings. WordPress provides you customization options by using structure tags.
Why you need to use Pretty WordPress permalinks?
Pretty WordPress Permalinks not just look good and easy to remember, but they have two more benefits: it is SEO friendly, and another enhances UX. You might have curious to know how Pretty URLs helps in SEO benefits? Well, search engines use your URL to determine what your page or content page is all about. And if they found your permalink related to the content or page, the search engines find it genuine and legitimate to give them priority in their search engine rankings.
In terms of UX(User Experience), Pretty WordPress permalinks not just help search engines understand the post or content it links, but a user can also easily read and understand the post it links to. For example: If you about us have URL like example.com/?p=245, it is tough to determine and remember such URLs rather than example.com/about-us.
How to implement better Permalinks, Slugs, and SEO?
As we have already mentioned in the above sections about the Slugs, these are the last part of your page or post URL. slot automaty online And if you have already gone through the WordPress permalink settings page, the title of the page or content is used in Url. For example, if your content is about “How to monetize your blog?”, it will be automatically generated as an example.com/how-to-monetize-your-blog/.
From the above example, you can see that anyone can easily tell what the content will be all about by looking at the URL. In addition, search engines can easily determine these URLs as pretty WordPress permalinks that have focus keywords.
But it is not enough; you can even improve the slugs for better results by following some tips such as your slug should be not soo lengthy, and it should be long enough to include your focus keyword and be easy to remember.
For example, if a post/page has a Pretty link as ” How to monetize your blog,” it might be better if you use slug as Monetize-blog. And if your website has multiple posts on the same focus keyword and you want to differentiate each one with a different slug. For example, if you have another content on the same focus keyword, ” monetize your blog,” with a different topic such as What are the benefits of monetizing your blog?
In this case, you could use “monetize-your-blog–benefits,” and the pretty permalink would be example.com/monetize-your-blog.
Slugs and User Experience
After knowing the SEO benefits of WordPress, pretty permalinks, now we shall talk about its User Experience benefits (UX).
As per Jacob Nielsen, the following points have been mentioned about what a website must have.
Easy to learn and type URLs
Easy to remember and spell Domain names
Permalink should not change
Short and clean URLs
Urls should not get hacked or provide security from all the malware or hackers attacks.
In addition to the above worth points, A permalink should never be either removed or altered in any case; it has been shared and used in multiple ways on the internet that provided you credibility. Another point to remember is that an URL must be clean and easy to understand so that even a non-expert user can easily understand and remember it.
No doubt, it is not impossible to edit or alter your permalink completely of a post that you have already published. But it is not a good practice and can potentially harm your website DA and even search engine rankings. This is because the original permalink may have been shared on the internet.
Still, if you need to make some edits to change your old permalink with a new one completely, make sure you practice the WordPress directing methods.
How to setup Permalink in your WordPress Website?
WordPress has provided you with multiple options to change the WordPress permalinks and choose whatever you want your permalink should look like.
You can change WordPress permalinks as
As soon as you setup your website, you can change your permalink settings to pretty permalinks.
You have the option to edit or alter slugs for each posts, when you are writing a post and editing them.
You can use WordPress best redirecting practices to point your old/outdated permalink to the new one.
You can even compose or create your own plugin to change the way permalink are designed.
You have the option to change the permalink structure for tages and categories.
WordPress Permalink Settings Page
After you set up your website, the first thing you need to do is to configure your WordPress permalinks settings page. Go to your WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks.
WordPress Permalink Settings page
Common Settings are defined as:
Plain: This option only uses post ID in the URL. However, it can be easily read by browsers but it won’t work for humans like us and the search engines. e.g- yoursite.com/?p=123.
Day and Name: This option uses the date of posts that publised on and the name or title of the post. In the above picture it is showing as: yourwebsite.com/2022/08/30/sample-post/.
Month and Name: Similar too Day and Name, this option uses the Month and Name of the post that you publish. e.g- yourwebsite.com/2022/08/sample-post/.
Numeric: Just like the Plain option, it also uses the post ID. It can alsoo be easily readable by the browsers but won’t work for humans like us. e.g- yourwebsite.com/archives/123.
Post name: Unlike other options that has post ID,month or date, this option uses your the name of the post in the slug. e.g- yourwebsite.com/sample-post/
Custom structure: With this option, you can create your custom structure. You can use certain tags that help you to grab the information from your that will doesn’t change in near future.
Optional Settings
Apart from the above permalink settings that you find, there is an optional settings field also provided that lets you set a custom structure for your category and tag archives.
If you like, you may enter custom structures for your category and tag URLs here. For example, using topics as your category base would make your category links like http://example.com/topics/uncategorized/. If you leave these blank, the defaults will be used.
How can you edit or Change Permalinks and Slugs for each pages and post?
After successfully setting up pretty permalinks on your website, the next thing you need to do is to edit your Pretty permalinks to get better results and optimize as per the search engine and users’ standards.
To optimize WordPress permalinks and slugs of each page and post of your website. It is highly recommended that you must practice this while editing or writing your content. If you have a directly edited slug of any content or page, you have unintentionally also changed its URL. And if the old link was shared anywhere on the internet by your users will be no longer exist and return a 404 error page.
Hence, to carefully carry out the same process, you need to go to your WordPress dashboard > posts > select the post you want to edit.
After that, on the right-hand side of the post creating a screen, you will find the permalink option under the post tab as shown in the picture below:
from the above image, you can see in the post-editing screen on the right-hand side a permalink option is provided under the post section. When you click on it, you fill an automatically generated slug displayed in the URL slug.
Now you can edit this section to make your permalink short, clear, and SEO-friendly that focuses on your target keyword. But before editing it, make sure you have copied the old slug in your notepad or somewhere else so that when you set up redirecting (In case you are editing the old content), the old link cab used.
After editing, now click on the update button to save the changes and hit on Publish button to make it live. But one thing must keep in mind is that you must not forget that if you have to make changes in the slug of an existing post, it could result in a 404 Error for the users who shared the original link. Hence after completion of editing, do not forget to set up redirection.
Changing WordPress Permalinks settings for Archive pages
If you are looking for WordPress permalinks settings, especially for individual archive pages, you need to change the “category” or “tag” in the permalink settings page. However, you also have an option to change the slug of each tag or category.
How to change slugs for Tags and Categories?
To change the slugs for tags and categories, you need to go to your WordPress dashboard > Posts > categories or Posts> Tags. Look out for the tags or category that you want to alter or chance and click on it. Now type in a slug if you want to, or else, the WordPress will automatically generate and assign one, per the tag or category.
However, it is not necessary to have this, it only makes sense when you have categories or tags, and if you choose it for later, you are required to complete the whole redirection.
WordPress permalink settings in Ecoomerce
If you are looking to change WordPress permalinks settings for an eCommerce website, if you are using the woo-commerce plugin, then it creates custom post types and all the taxonomies by itself, and all these permalinks are generated by default.
However, you can still make changes to the permalink and slugs for every custom post and taxonomy.
Changing Product Category, Tag, and Attribute Permalinks
To change product category, tag, and attribute permalinks, you can go either by using slug or the structure. However, both these works are almost similar for regular tags and categories.
Editing Product category Slug
For editing the product category slug, you need to go to your Products > Attributes. Still, before editing your attribute, you must keep in mind that it is a whole different process, and you have to also deal with attribute terms too.
Editing Permalink structure
For editing the Permalink structure, you need to go to your Dashboard Settings > Permalinks and scroll down for the Optional field, where you will find more Woocommerce permalink options. And you can edit the permalink settings for woo-commerce custom taxonomies.
Product cateogory base: By default it is set as product-category but it can be changed as per the terminologies you use in your online store. But one thing you must ensure that whatever you make amendments in your settings, it should not clash with your settings that you have set up for regular categories.
Product tag base: By default it is set as product-tag, but it can also be changed as per your choice. And ensure that it should not also clash with your settings that you have set up for regular post tags.
Product attribute base: Apart from the above two taxonomies, it works differently by having a different structure. The product you add it will by default asigned a slug for each and every attribute name with attributes itself.
Suppose you wish to make some changes in the slug for every tag or category. It would help if you went to your Product section followed by categories or Tags and make changes the way you do with categories and tags.
If you want to edit the slug for an individual category or tag, go to Products > Categories (or Products > Tags) and edit these in the same way you would post tags and categories.
While editing or creating a new attribute, all the procedures will be the same, just as you would for editing categories and tags. i.e., you use the slug option to set up the slug. Or, in another way, if you’re looking to edit the slug for an existing attribute, you need to click on the Edit link just below the attribute you would like to edit.
After completing editing attributes, the find thing you need to do is to click on the Update button to save your changes.
If you are looking to edit or make some changes in the Attribute term slugs, go to attribute > and click on configure terms link just beneath the attribute. You will find a complete list of the terms for that particular attribute.
Now, you have the option to edit the slug for each term that is being listed, just like you edit for tags and categories.
How to change WordPress permalinks of products?
If you want to edit permalinks of products, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks and Lookout for Product Permalinks filed.
When you look at the product permalinks section, you will find the following fields to choose from:
Default: These slug will be show if you have already activated pretty permalinks, and it will use slug of each product by default.
Shop base: You will be using shop instead of product in the slug.
Shop base with category: In addition to shop you will be also using category nam e of the product into the URL.
Custom base: This section let you customize your own permalink structure, anyhow. And another important thing you must note that, you simply cannot left or remove the base completely.
When you are done with opting for the suitable option as per your requirement, the next thing you need to do is to click on the save changes button to save your changes.
Changing WordPress Permalinks Using WordPress plugins
If you found all these permalink settings quite tedious, WordPress has always provided you with alternative solutions in terms of WordPress plugins. Using a third-party WordPress plugin will help you out to make changes or editing your permalinks over what WordPress has provided you with default permalink settings options.
Permalink Manager Plugin is considered one of the most advanced and highly rated WordPress permalinks editor plugins that let you customize and control the structures of URLs for all the pages, custom posts, and posts. And when a new custom permalink is active, the errors such as 404 and copy content errors will be avoided by automatically redirecting them to the new custom permalink you have defined.
The Custom WordPress Permalinks plugins are best suitable for customizing your URLs of any post, page, category, or tag the way want to. And you do not need to worry about 404 errors; all the old WordPress permalinks will be redirected to the new address without any issue.
Changing WordPress permainks in phpMyAdmin
If you have basic knowledge of WordPress files and using phpMyAdmin, then you can do almost anything through it, including editing permalinks. This comes to the handy and best alternative solution when there is something issue with your WordPress dashboard, and you are unable to access it through your WordPress permalinks Settings page.
But before that, you must make a complete backup of all the files and databases to avoid any mishap during permalink editing.
The First step is to access your phpMyadmin by logging in to your Cpanel by typing your database username and password. At the top of the page, you can see the Databases option. Click on it to open and select the database you want to work with.
Select the wp_options as shown in the picture above and look out for the permalink_structure.
Select the wp_options table and find the permalink_structure entry in the option_name column. You might need to navigate beyond the first page of entries.
As shown in the above picture, you can see on the left side of permalink_structre; an Edit link has been provided. Click on it to add the permalink structure that you wish to use.
Click the Edit link on the left for that entry, then under the option_value field, add the permalink structure you want to use. Use the tags that we identified earlier for use in the Permalinks settings screen.
Once done with editing, You can click on the Go button to save your WordPress permalinks.
How to change WordPress Permalinks in Images?
To your surprise, images that you use in your post or content have their own permalinks. And when you upload any media file, such as images or videos, to your website, it will generate multiple links for each media file.
The first one is the link to the original image, and another is the links created when you set media sie settings.
How it created Link to the origal image or the image you upload?
As we have already mentioned that whenever you upload an image or any media, WordPress will create a unique link to the file it is saved on your server. You must have noticed a path named wp-content/uploads while configuring server files.
The image files or the pathname consists mainly of the date on which the image was uploaded. It helps to avoid conflict between the images. If you have uploaded an image of the same file name but on a different date, it won’t create any big issue.
For example, if you have uploaded an image with the name Image001.jpg on a month, say June 2021, the WordPress link will generate as example.com/wp-content/uploads/06/Image002.jpg where the number 06 in the link indicates the month of file upload.
It also works the same way with other media files or documents. For example, example.com/wp-content/uploads/06/emploees.doc. And you might have thought, what if you upload a file with the same name in the same month. Well, WordPress resolve this situation by adding up a number to the end of the file name.
So whenever you upload another file, either image001.jpg or emploees.doc, again in the same month, the file will be saved with the name image001-1.jpg and employees-1.doc.
If you wish to check out the working condition of the original file that you have uploaded or want to link to the original file, check out the procedure how you can find the link.
To find the link to the file, you need to go to your WordPress Dashboard > Media > Library and click on the file that you want to know its link to. A pop-up editing image window will open and showing the File URL and other file details on the right side.
WordPress Permalinks for different sized images or any media files
We have already mentioned in the previous section of this post that WordPress also creates permalinks for the images based on their file size. Whenever you set a file size for any image, a permalink will be created automatically. To do this, you need to go to your WordPress dashboard> Settings > Media.
So whenever you upload an image with a large file size exceeding the large value settings, WordPress will automatically create copies with three different file sizes per the media settings, i.e., Large, Medium, and thumbnail.
However, WordPress won’t name these files as per their different sizes; a user may change its name as per their requirement shortly. Hence, alternatively, WordPress uses the dimension as in the file name and store them at the same place where the original image is being located. i.e in the wp-content/uploads.
To find the URL of all the images of different sizes, the easiest method will be by accessing the WordPress files via the FTP client and find out all the images you have uploaded in a particular month.
For example, let us suppose I have uploaded an image with the file name Image001.jpg. The WordPress will create a copy of the same file with different file sizes using the media settings as follows:-150×150.jpg
Image001-150×150.jpg
Image001-300×300.jpg
Image001-1024×1024.jpg
Redirecting WordPress Permalinks
In the previous sections, we have discussed how you can edit your slug or change your WordPress permalinks. And we have also mentioned the consequences that you may face during editing WordPress permalinks. i.e., your users might face a 404 error page, or it can also affect your SEO.
However, to avoid this or to fix this problem, the best thing you can do is to redirect your old permalink or URLs to the new ones that you have edited or created.
How to Redirect each and every Pages or Posts that you have created?
Redirecting every page or post from the old permalink to the new one that you have edited or created, the first and the most important step you need to do is to set up a redirecting rule.
If you’re with WPOven, You can do redirecting by following these simple steps.
Redirects are server-side rules to handle incoming requests and redirect them for your visitors. The WPOven redirect tool redirects any incoming request for a Domain that is not added to your WPOven dashboard and redirects it to the destination set by you.
Step 1 : Access the Redirect section.
The redirect section can be accessed from your WPOven dashboard, from the ‘Server‘ section. You need to select the server to which you want the request to redirect. Now in this section, you will notice the ‘Redirects’ tab. Click on the ‘Redirects‘ tab to set up the redirect rule.
Step 2 :Create a Redirect.
Once you open the ‘Redirects‘ section, you will see the Redirect Manager. Here you will be able to see all the redirect rules that you have set up for this server.
Click on the ‘New Redirect‘ button to add a new redirection rule. Here you will see a form that looks like the form shown below.
The 2 fields for the form :
Source : This field will take the regular expression for the URL you wish to redirect from. Also note that the domain for this URL should not already be added to your WPOven dashboard, otherwise the redirection will not work. The path entered should be a PCRE/PHP regular expression (you can learn about Regular expressions here) and it should not include any starting or ending delimiters.For Example, if you wish to redirect themes.wpoven.com to blog.wpoven.com, you would enter the source field as : ^(.*?)themes.wpoven.com/$
The ‘^’ indicates the starting of the regular expression and ‘$’ the end.
‘(.*?)’ Symbol catches the protocol of the request, i.e http:// or https://
Destination : Here we will enter the destination path where the visitor will be redirect to,If you wish to add the matched variables from the regular expression from the source field, you can enter them as $1, $2, $3 …..For example, continuing with the previous example, the destination URL for the Redirect to blog.wpoven.com, would be : $1blog.wpoven.com
Where $1 is the matched expression from the symbol ‘(.*?)’
Once you have entered both fields, press the ‘Add Redirect’ button to save the redirect. You should now be able to see your redirect on the Redirect Manager page for the server. To edit an already existing Redirect, you can click on the ‘Manage’ button from the Redirect manager page.
In case you are not able to set up the redirect or require any assistance with it, please feel free to contact our support team. They will be happy to help you.
How to redirect Archive pages?
If you like to explore more easy and simple alternatives for WordPress permalinks redirection, you can go for the WordPress redirection plugin. This is an ultimate redirection tool that helps you out to redirect URLs easily.
But before using that, you need first to enable the Regex function. To enable it, Go to your WordPress dashboard > Tools > Redirection > Add new redirection.
Now on the right side, you have URL options to choose from. polskie gry kasyno And Select URL Options/Regex from the Dropdown list.
In the Source URL field, You can enter ^(.*?)themes.wpoven.com/$. The entry for Target URL needs to take the source $1blog.wpoven.com. This will exactly be the way we have done through WPOven Dashboard.
What if WordPress Permalinks are not Working as planned?
Sometimes, even after taking all the necessary steps, you might still found some issues with WordPress Permalinks, and it will not work as planned. To troubleshoot such problems, you can follow our recommended solution:
At times, When you register a new post type or taxonomy, and it doesn’t work as expected. You do not need to worry about it. You can resolve this issue by Got to your WordPress dashboard > Settings > permalinks and refresh settings. And even you do not need to make certain changes to it or click on the save changes button. It can work even you open the Permalink Settings page once.
This happens because WordPress cannot determine whether a custom post type or taxonomy means there is a change in permalink settings.
And even the issue persists, you can also check out these alternate solutions.
Check your Permalink settings, that you have done it correctly or not. Ensure that you have not missed anything or typed the wrong data.
Check out whether you have typed the correct URL in the browser or not.
Check is there any issue with your redirection plugin if you are using a redirection plugin. fortuna zakłady online opinie And cross verify all its settings too.
Examine that you have made any changes to the slug of any post you have created and edit if required.
Try clearing your website cache and check if the issues persists.
verify via phpmyadmin and edit WordPress permalinks if requried.
Summary
WordPress permalinks can do wonders for your WordPress website if you know how to configure and properly implement them. Not just can it enhance user experience, it has the potential to boost your search engine rankings too.
Hence, you add quality information and help you to boost up your website performance. We tried to bring you detailed and comprehensive material on WordPress Permalinks. We have tried to cover all the aspects of WordPress permalinks that you can use in your Website. Whether it is for e-commerce websites, optimizing images, posts, or pages.
If you have anything worth mentioning about more WordPress permalinks, please share your valuable ideas in the comment section below. We love to hear from you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are permalinks in WordPress?
Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings.” Whether your website has archive pages, posts, or even 404 error pages, all they live their own WordPress permalinks.
Where do I find permalinks in WordPress?
You can find the WordPress permalink in the editor section of pages or posts. Usually located on the right-hand side of the editor where a default permalink can be easily shown.
Can I change permalinks in WordPress?
In short, Yes, you can change permalinks in WordPress after or before published the post or page. However, it is not recommended to edit or change the WordPress permalinks after publishing your content or making your page live. It can lead to a 404 error, and if the post has been shared multiple times, there are chances that your backlinks will be lost.
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