Benjamin Denis

SEOPRESS STARTER GUIDE Get started with SEOPress within 15 minutes

Foreword

About this guide This ebook contains information regarding the

installation, configuration and utilisation of this plugin as

well as answers to common problems. We invite you to

carefully read this document. If you need further

information you can contact us from your user account

on seopress.org.

Prerequisites Min WordPress 4.4+

PHP 5.4

Recommended WordPress 5.0

PHP 7.2

Step 1

Installation • SEOPress free release: Installation

• SEOPress Pro: Installation

• SEOPress Pro: Activate your license

SEOPress free release: Installation Login to your WordPress website, and go to Plugins, Add new, search

SEOPress.

In the search results, look to SEOPress, and click Install now.

Wait a few seconds, Activate and that’s it!

SEOPress Free is required to use SEOPress PRO.

SEOPress Pro: Installation Once your purchase of SEOPress PRO has been completed, log in to

your customer area (https://www.seopress.org/account/).

In your Dashboard, click Download SEOPress PRO to get the ZIP file.

Then, go to your WordPress admin, Plugins, Add new and upload

the ZIP file of our plugin.

Click Activate.

Step 1

Installation • SEOPress free release: Installation

• SEOPress Pro: Installation

• SEOPress Pro: Activate your license

SEOPress Pro: Activate your license To receive updates of SEOPress PRO, you have to activate your

license.

In your customer account, on the Dashboard page, copy your

license key.

Then go to your WordPress admin, SEO, License page.

Paste your license key and click Save Changes.

Finally, click the Activate License button.

If everything is done correctly, you will see the word « Active ».

Step 2

The SEOPress Dashboard • Enable / disable features

• The Notifications Center

Enable / disable features In SEO, Dashboard, you can see the features list available.

By default, SEOPress activates and automatically configures certain

features and options to save you time. Let's make sure that the

choices we have made for you best fit your website.

To Enable / disable a feature, click the green checkbox.

Google Analytics enabled

Google Analytics disabled

Step 2

The SEOPress Dashboard • Enable / disable features

• The Notifications Center

The Notifications Center The Dashboard displays a list of notifications.

Read them carefully!

They will give you advices, actions to perform concerning your

installation, warnings and configuration aids.

Most notifications, once processed (for example by modifying an

option in WordPress) will disappear. However, some are impossible to

automatically check, you will have to delete them manually via the

trash icon if you want to see them disappear (this is the case for the

advice on creating a Google My Business page).

To reset the notifications, go to SEO, Tools, and click the Reset

Notices button.

Step 3

Titles & metas • Define the content to index

• Set global titles and meta descriptions

Define the content to index In SEO, Titles & Metas, you can define globally which post types to

index (post, page, product…), which archives, taxonomies etc.

Step 3

Titles & metas • Define the content to index

• Set global titles and meta descriptions

Browse through each of the tabs, and check if any content needs to

be indexed or not. Check the noindex and / or nofollow boxes

according to your needs.

By default, your different contents are NOT blocked at indexing (ie:

index, follow).

Do not forget to save and clear your cache if you have one.

Note that it can takes some times for search engines to update

their index (hours, days or weeks). Be patient!

Set global titles and meta descriptions If you do not set custom title and/or custom meta description when

you edit a post, page or post type, the global setting will be used.

You can change the construction of these here. You can use a lot of

different dynamic variables:

%%sitetitle%% -> Site Title

%%tagline%% -> Tagline

%%post_title%% -> Post Title (post, page, custom post type)

%%post_excerpt%% -> Post excerpt

%%post_date%% -> Post date

%%post_author%% -> Post author

%%post_category%% -> Post category

%%post_tag%% -> Post tag

%%_category_title%% -> Category title

%%_category_description%% -> Category description

%%tag_title%% -> Tag title

%%tag_description%% -> Tag description

%%term_title%% -> Term title

%%term_description%% -> Term description

%%search_keywords%% -> Search keywords

%%current_pagination%% -> Current number page

%%cpt_plural%% -> Plural Post Type Archive name

%%archive_title%% -> Archive title

%%archive_date%% -> Archive date (month, year or month

+ year)

%%archive_date_day%% -> Day Archive date

%%archive_date_month%% -> Month Archive title

%%archive_date_year%% -> Year Archive title

%%_cf_your_custom_field_name%% -> Custom fields

from post, page or post type

%%_ct_your_custom_taxonomy_slug%% -> Custom term

taxonomy from post, page or post type

%%wc_single_cat%% -> Single product category

%%wc_single_tag%% -> Single product tag

%%wc_single_short_desc%% -> Single product short

description

%%currentday%% -> Current day

%%currentmonth%% -> Current month

%%currentyear%% -> Current year

%%currentdate%% -> Current date

%%currenttime%% -> Current time

%%author_bio%% -> Author biography

More dynamic variables are added regularly. You can find

them using the Help tab button in the top right corner of

your WordPress admin, or by reading this guide: https://

www.seopress.org/support/guides/manage-titles-meta-

descriptions/

Step 4

XML Sitemaps • Enable XML Sitemaps

• Configure your XML Sitemap

• Enable Image Sitemaps

• Submit your XML Sitemaps to Google

Enable XML Sitemaps Even if an XML sitemap is not absolutely necessary for your site to be

indexed by Google, it makes the work of the bot much easier, and it

ensures that all the indexable pages of your site are. You can then

control all of this from the Google Search Console.

Google says: « Using a sitemap doesn't guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed, as Google processes rely on complex algorithms to schedule crawling. However, in most cases, your site will benefit from having a sitemap, and you'll never be penalized for having one. »

To build your XML Sitemaps, go to SEO, XML Sitemap, check Enable

XML Sitemap and Save changes.

You have to flush permalinks in order to work properly.

To do that, go to Settings, Permalinks or just click the Flush

Permalinks button in General tab of XML Sitemap page.

You can view your xml sitemaps by clicking on the button View your

sitemap.

Or, by typing, https://example.com/sitemaps.xml/ in your browser.

Step 4

XML Sitemaps • Enable XML Sitemaps

• Configure your XML Sitemap

• Enable Image Sitemaps

• Submit your XML Sitemaps to Google

Configure your XML Sitemap By default, your XML Sitemap contains your posts, pages, post

categories and post tags (if available).

In Post Types and Taxonomies tabs, check what you want

to include in your sitemap.

Never include the post type Media (attachments) unless you

know what you are doing.

Post, page, single post type set to noindex will not be included in

the sitemap.

Click save and browse your sitemap to see the changes.

It may be necessary to flush your permalinks each time you make

changes to the configuration of your sitemap.

Step 4

XML Sitemaps • Enable XML Sitemaps

• Configure your XML Sitemap

• Enable Image Sitemaps

• Submit your XML Sitemaps to Google

Enable Image Sitemaps In SEO, XML / HTML Sitemap, check Enable XML Image

Sitemap and Save changes.

Images included in XML Sitemap are:

✓standard images,

✓ image galleries,

✓ featured image,

✓WooCommerce product images.

Notice that, XML Image Sitemaps is only visible from the XML

Sitemap source code.

Step 4

XML Sitemaps • Enable XML Sitemaps

• Configure your XML Sitemap

• Enable Image Sitemaps

• Submit your XML Sitemaps to Google

Submit your XML Sitemaps to Google Search engines will not find your XML Sitemaps unless you give them

your URL.

To do this, you can add the URL of your sitemap to your robots.txt file.

SEOPress allows you to do it from SEO, PRO, robots.txt with one

simple click.

For Google (this is also the case with Bing), it is strongly

recommended to add it to Search Console. This will allow you to

obtain valuable information from Google: ratio of number of pages

submitted on number of pages indexed, errors in the construction of

the sitemap, date of last exploration by the bot…

Check out our video guide on our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kIqfPfm4Ok

Step 5

Social Networks • Setup Open Graph and Twitter

Cards globally

• Enable Google Knowledge Graph

• Link your social networks with Google

Setup Open Graph and Twitter Cards globally Open Graph and Twitters cards are metas working like meta title and

meta description. They give control of the look of a share publication

on Facebook and Twitter (and any other social networks that support

Open Graph). Working these metas, including the sharing image, will

increase the click rate and therefore the conversion.

Go to SEO, Social Networks, and click Enable this feature (if it’s not

the case).

In Facebook (Open Graph) tab, check Enable OG data.

You can also set a default image (in case of one of your post, page,

post type, doesn’t have one).

Do the same for Twitter and don’t forget to click Save changes and

clear your cache if you have one.

Check out our video on our YouTube channel to learn more about

managing Open Graph and Twitter cards metas:

https://youtu.be/XkxJH9Le1u8

Step 5

Social Networks • Setup Open Graph and Twitter

Cards globally

• Enable Google Knowledge Graph

• Link your social networks with Google

Enable Google Knowledge Graph To enable Google

Knowledge Graph,

go to SEO, Social.

In Knowledge

Graph tab,

select Person or

Organization, type

your name or

organization

name, and select

a photo.

Save changes.

It can take weeks

or months to see

your Knowledge

Graph in SERPs.

Step 5

Social Networks • Setup Open Graph and Twitter

Cards globally

• Enable Google Knowledge Graph

• Link your social networks with Google

Link your social networks with Google In Your social accounts tab, enter the URLs of your accounts to

make the link between your site, Google Knowledge Graph and your

online presence on social networks.

Note that for Twitter, just type your username (eg:

@wp_seopress).

Save changes and clear your cache if you have one.

Step 6

Robots.txt • Enable your robots.txt

• Edit your robots.txt file

Enable your robots.txt The robots.txt file is a simple text file that provides indexing guidelines

to be respected by search engine robots. It is up to the engines to

apply or not these guidelines. This file can be physical or virtual (case

of WordPress by default but also with SEOPress).

To enable this file, go to SEO, PRO, robots.txt tab.

Check the green checkbox associated with Robots.

Then, check Enable robots.txt virtual file.

Edit your robots.txt file In Virtual Robots.txt file textarea, create your robots.txt and

click Save changes.

Note the small buttons under the textarea field. In few clicks, you can

add indexing guidelines to bots. Don’t forget to save and clear your

cache.

Step 6

Robots.txt • Enable your robots.txt

• Edit your robots.txt file

To view your robots.txt file, click the button View your robots.txt, or

go to https://yoursite.com/robots.txt

If you see a 404 error, flush your permalinks.

Notice that, if you have a physical robots.txt file, this virtual

robots.txt file will not bypassed it.

Some servers automatically add a physical robots.txt file that

can only be surpassed by creating your own physical robots.txt

file.

In this case, the virtual robots.txt of WP or SEOPress can not be

used (case with some web hosts like Infomaniak).

Step 7

Import data from other SEO plugins • Import posts and terms metadata

Import posts and terms metadata With SEOPress, you can import metas from other plugins in one click.

We currently support 3 plugins: Yoast SEO, All In One SEO and The SEO

Framework.

We only import posts and terms metas, NOT global settings.

In your WordPress admin, go to SEO, Tools.

Find the section matching the correct plugin, eg, Yoast, and click

Migrate now.

Wait a few seconds (depending on the number of posts you have) to

see Migration completed.

Step 8

Going further • This is just the beginning!

• Ressources

This is just the beginning! Thank you for reading this guide to the end! You are now ready to

start with SEOPress. Note that we only tackle the essentials for a start

on clean and solid bases. Feel free to review each feature one by one

from our extension, read our guides, watch our videos. New resources

are added regularly. And if you have questions, ask them on the

w.org forum, or by mail from your client area for PRO users. We’re here

to help!

Resources Our support center Guides, FAQ, Changelog, Hooks and more:

https://www.seopress.org/support/

SEOPress YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/seopress/

SEOPRESS www.seopress.org