8 Best WordPress SEO Plugins
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| Wordpress Seo Image Credit : WPBeginner |
Optimizing your web presence is no longer just a “nice to have” option. It’s a necessity.
With millions of active users interacting across the Internet at the same time, getting lost in all the noise is inevitable unless you take steps to stay relevant.
And that’s where search engine pptimization (SEO) comes into play.
SEO refers to the steps you take to ensure that your site or page are the first things to show up when a user enters a certain keyword.
The benefits of this are tremendous. You’ll see a significant boost in engagement, generate more leads, make more sales, and improve your bottom line.
However, competition for the top spots in organic search results is fierce. Because of the low barrier to entry, anyone can create a site and optimize it to rank better on Google or Bing.
What separates the best from everyone else is the smart implementation of certain strategies, as well as using tools to help make optimization much more efficient.
In this article, you’ll learn the best ways to optimize your WordPress site for SEO, including the tools that will make that journey substantially easier.
Pre-Requisites for WordPress SEOBefore diving into the wild and wonderful world of WordPress SEO tools, it’s important to get the basics right first.
SEO plugins are features you add to an already well-thought-out and presented package. These plugins aren’t magic, and they certainly won’t create sensational results if the base they have to stand on isn’t strong.
WordPress is widely regarded as a great site for SEO optimization as it has Content Management Systems (CMS) that make the entire process super easy and intuitive.
Take advantage of this user-friendliness and ensure that the content you post on your site is high quality and value-added.
Just keep in mind that no plug-in can help you if your page doesn’t offer great information. Even if you get people to your site, they probably won’t stay there for very long.
It’s also important for you to use themes/templates that have clean code as that helps with SEO.
Another important thing to mention is that you absolutely don’t need every single plugin from this list. These are just to give you an idea of the different options and what they have to offer.
Choosing just one from each of the categories is more than good enough, especially if you’re new to optimization.
Don’t get caught up in all the technology, since you could potentially reach the point of overwhelm, and experience analysis paralysis (a.k.a., you become so caught up with things that you never make any headway on what you’re trying to achieve).
At the end of the day, always keep the basics in mind, regardless of whatever stage you’re at right now.
WordPress General SEO PluginsThese tools are designed to help you turn your simple WordPress into an SEO machine. They will help you optimize your site, give you suggestions, and perform keyword searches.
1. Yoast SEOYoast SEO is an industry favorite with thousands of glowing reviews. It’s a premium plugin that offers an incredible number of powerful features while still being easy to use and understand.
Some of these features include:
The page analysis tool that Yoast offers is very useful as it provides an all-inclusive snapshot of how your page is doing.
The readability, the length of the content, alt attributes, keyword density, title tags, and meta description among others, are all analyzed to ensure you’re on the right track.
2. All in One SEO Pack
As of the time of this writing, All in One SEO Pack has been downloaded more than 74 million times and has cemented itself as a super feature-rich WordPress plugin that’s perfect for beginners and experts alike.
The plugin offers:
More seasoned users can also create custom headlines, tags, meta descriptions, and keywords depending on their needs.
3. Premium SEO Pack
Premium SEO Pack offers several super useful modules for you to take advantage of in both the free and paid versions. For the regular license, a fairly reasonable $44 / RS 3265 gets you:
The price tag might be higher than other services on this list, but the features and customizability Premium SEO Pack offers more than justify it.
It’s a great choice for seasoned SEO professionals looking to take their WordPress site to the next level.
4. SEOPressor Connect
This plugin takes your most essential SEO data and lays it out in one intuitive dashboard. The dashboard gives you a glance at insights into your site’s search engine visibility amongst other things.
The main selling point of SEOPressor however is their emphasis on contextual content instead of keywords.
A $9/Rs 667 monthly subscription gets you:
The learning curve is steep, but this professional tool is a mainstay in advanced SEO processes.
5. Semrush
Semrush is an incredibly popular WordPress plugin that is adored by SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, and businesses of every size.
You can use Semrush to find organic keywords and terms to rank for and the plugin’s competitive research functionality lets you compare your competitor’s rankings and find new terms to gain a leg up on them.
Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant tool also improves your overall website content by helping you write more search-friendly content. It does this through tight integration with WordPress.
6. Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO has over 3 million installs and consistently good reviews. It’s not hard to see why. The WordPress plugin has over 200 features to help you optimize your content with updates keeping things fresh constantly.
Instead of listing down all the things the program offers, here’s an incredibly detailed video that runs through everything from the developers themselves:
The app has subscription tiers starting from $20 for your first month and it goes up from there depending on your use case and requirements.
WordPress Site Speed Plugins
You’ve painstakingly optimized your site for keywords and search trends and now you have a steady stream of visitors flocking to your WordPress site. But your work is far from over. Nothing will put off new readers more than slow load times and unoptimized content.
Research shows that 53% of mobile users leave if the website takes more than 3 seconds to load while 87% of online shopping carts are abandoned if the load time exceeds 2 seconds.
This data proves that the speed of your site is an incredibly important part of the efficiency puzzle and not paying attention to it could leave a bad taste in your customer’s mouths.
Thankfully though, the following WordPress plugins will help you keep your site snappy and well optimized for years to come.
1. W3 Super Cache
W3 Super Cache is a fantastic tool to help speed up your WordPress site. It’s made by the company responsible for WordPress itself, so you know the quality is going to be exceptional.
The plugin manages your site’s cache files to ensure that performance isn’t affected. This improves site speed and allows the end-user to have a better experience.
Google also uses site speed and cache metrics in its ranking algorithm so this could be the difference between you ranking higher or lower.
Oh right, and this plugin is completely free to use.
2. Media File Renamer
While this plugin might not help your site’s speed, it certainly helps reduce the time it takes to optimize your images and files. Going back through large sites and sifting through file names and attributes is a huge hassle.
Media File Renamer solves this issue by renaming media files based on their image titles. When an image file is updated, the entire site is updated to include these references.
The free version of the plugin is an auto renamer so if you want manual control of your naming then you’ll have to get the pro version which starts at $24 for an annual subscription.
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