Blogging with WordPress | WordPress 101

Welcome back to WordPress 101 series. In this series, we’re learning the basics of WordPress. WordPress is used to create all types of websites such as eCommerce, Forums, Social networking sites, etc.

But majorly, WordPress is known for blogging. It hosts the majority of blogs on the Internet.

Blogging with WordPress

In this article, we are going to briefly discuss blogging with WordPress. The CMS is SEO-friendly, so when you push content on the Internet, WordPress automatically takes care of content submission to search engines like Google.

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WordPress Sitemap

A sitemap is a file that contains all the URLs to be submitted to search engines. WordPress generates a sitemap that all search engines regularly scan to find new content. Since WordPress 5.5, there is no need to install a third-party plugin to create a sitemap. The default sitemap is available at /wp-sitemap.xml. All the blogger has to do is submit this sitemap to search engines and let search engines handle the rest.

In case /wp-sitemap.xml returns a 404 error, make sure the server has SimpleXML PHP extension installed. Without this extension, the feature will not work.

SEO-friendly

Most of the premium and free WordPress themes are well-written and SEO-friendly. If you get an error in the Google search console, there is a huge community to help you fix the issues.

Each page contains proper meta tags for search engines and social networking sites that help these giant content aggregators fetch and show your blog posts on their platforms.

SEO plugins

Besides having several built-in SEO features for blogs, WordPress third-party plugins provide additional features that simplify day-to-day SEO practices.

One of the most popular SEO plugins is Yoast SEO. It helps follow important SEO practices while writing new articles or updating the old ones. The article’s author can set a focus keyword, and the plugin will reveal the important tips to rank for that keyword in search engines.

The free version of Yoast allows one keyword targeting, whereas the premium version allows multiple keyword targetting.

Yoast SEO plugin also analyses the article and shows the readability status. The readability analysis shows how easy-to-read the article is, how many words, headings, and sub-headings there should be in the article, etc.

Similar to Yoast, Rank Math is another SEO plugin for WordPress sites. It is new but gaining popularity really fast. Rank Math has many features, and the best of all, it’s free (so far, it’s free).

WordPress Blog Page

In the previous article, we learned to create new blog posts and pages. It was effortless. By default, each WordPress site shows the latest posts on the homepage. You can also change the homepage as described in the last article. In that case, your blog page is moved to /blog URL.

If you visit /blog, you’ll see all the published blog posts/articles.

Content Monetization

Content monetization is a part of blogging. Content publishers across the platforms earn by showing ads on their websites. These days showing ads is not as simple as it once was. Page load time and ad spots are the keys to making more money.

WordPress themes provide easy ways to show ads at important places. If your theme does not support enough ads spots, use the ads manager plugins available in the WP plugins repository.

Conclusion

WordPress is the best platform for blogging. The features mentioned in this article are easily accessible and customizable in WordPress. I have used several blogging platforms, and none of them were as useful for blogging as WordPress.

So if you are thinking of starting your blogging career, it is best to start with WordPress.