How to add a Table of Contents in WordPress Posts Automatically.

If you’re a blogger and want to enhance your blog or website’s user experience and also on-Page SEO, you must add the table of contents to your website. For a WordPress website, you can create a table of contents with the help of a plugin. This article will discuss how you can create a table of content in every WordPress blog post automatically.

What is a Table of Content?

The Table of Content(TOC) provides an overview of the content to the blog readers. So that readers can directly jump on the required section. The Table of Content offers easy access to the user, makes the website interface user-friendly (UI), and also enhances the User Experience(UX).

Create a Table of Contents in WordPress Posts and Pages.

You can add the content table in every WordPress blog post by installing and activating the Easy Table of Contents plugin into your WordPress website. Learn here how to install a plugin on a WordPress website.

This plugin can automatically add up a contents table on every WordPress post, or you can choose which article should have this contents table. Please note that this plugin only highlights heading tags that are in WordPress blog posts.

Set up Table of content for WordPress Blog Posts

After creating the table of content, you need to set up a table of content for every post properly. This plugin provides you the option to change global settings for the table.

General TOC settings

These Settings enable you to allow or disallow the plugin to automatically add a table of content in every post or not.

1. Enable plugin to support Post or Pages choose as per your need.
2. What should be the position of the table of contents in your WordPress post
3. Choose the condition on how many heading tags TOC should add in the post.
4. Show header label above the TOC.
5. Header Label name
6. Allow users to hide or show the TOC. In our case, it is disabled.
7. When a user visits your page, should it be visible or not? In our case, it is visible.
8. Show the heading order.
9. Counter type
10. Nature of scrolling when clicking on any content in the table of content.

Appearance Settings

This setting will define how it should look or appear for your WordPress page.

1. What should the width of the table
2. Ignore this if you choose the first option
3. Should it float with page scroll?
4. Title font size.
5. Weight or boldness of the font.
6. Choose the Font Size.
7. Choose the theme.

Advanced Settings for TOC.

These settings are essential from a Search Engine Optimization Point of View. You can follow the same as selected in our case or as per your need.

1. Anchors should be lowercase from an SEO point of view.
2. It would be best if you ticked this to use “-” instead of “_” in the anchor(SEO).
3. Would you like to add a table of contents on the homepage?
4. CSS should load or not? If it(table of contents) causes render-blocking, you can select this option. If you choose this option, then no style will be displayed with your content table.
5. Headings that to include in the table of content? Learn how you can use heading tags by keeping SEO in mind.

Scrolling in Mobile and Desktop

If you’re using a fixed menu on the header of pages, you can provide a value according to the size of your header menu. For example, suppose if your header menu of 100px, then provide 100px in the offset value.

1. Smooth Scroll Offet for Desktop View
2. Smooth Scroll Offer for Mobile View

You can try the same values as provided here. These works with most WordPress themes.

Pros of Adding Table of Contents

• It gives a professional look to the website,
• Provides a map to the content,
• Enhance User Experience by taking your user to what they need,
• Easy to understand the content,
• More SEO-friendly content.

Cons of Table of Content

• May reduce in earning of the single post due to skip in ads
• Total reading time will decrease of the content.

Conclusion

It would be best if you create a table of content for the WordPress blog posts. TOC will enhance the user experience and SEO score of your website. In this article, we discussed how to add a table of content to the WordPress website.

I hope you like this article on How you can add and properly make settings for the Table of Content.