How can you optimize your WordPress site for Google? Which SEO plugin is best for WordPress?
When you have an online presence, optimizing for the search engines becomes one of the most important parts of your digital marketing strategy. SEO helps you by beating your competitor and putting you at the top of the organic search results. There are more than two hundred ranking factors, so worry not, help is around the corner.
Millions of users on a regular basis are searching for information, services, and products. When they don't know about a particular website in mind, they turn to Bing, Yahoo, and Google etc.
Before we can talk about which WordPress SEO plugins are the best, we need to know what Search Engine Optimization is and how we can choose the right WordPress SEO plugin.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
In SEO a certain set of factors are needed to optimize for website rankings. The main aim of SEO is to raise your blog or site to the top of the organic search engine results.
'Organic results' means those websites that are being listed below the paid advertisement results. Search engines are being used by thousands of people on a regular basis. You need to make sure that your website is found in the top search results, specifically the top five pages because most people don't look past the top five pages.
Why?
Trust - users trust websites that are shown in the top results of search engines. Social media sharing - people who visit your site and like it often share it on their Facebook page and other social media platforms.
How To Select A Good WordPress SEO Plugin
A quality WordPress SEO plugin will have the following attributes:
Clean And Capable Code: A decent WordPress SEO plugin will have a clean code that won't have unwanted JavaScript or CSS in it, ensuring that the plugin is efficient and fast and won't slowdown your website.
Multiple SEO Elements: The most efficient SEO plugins for SEO are those that come with multiple features. Why would you opt for a SEO plugin that just offers one feature, forcing you to use multiple SEO plugins. So opt for a WordPress SEO plugin that offers multiple features and does not increase the load time of your website.
Detailed Documentation: Plugin documentation is essential since it assists the users in understanding how each plugin works. The documentation can be in the form of articles or video guides with visually appealing images about how to configure, install and update the plugin. Most SEO plugins come with an admin dashboard, where the configuration is done. A good plugin will have precise and clear instructions with a tooltip guide on how the plugin works.
Excellent Customer Support: The best SEO plugin will always have good customer support. The free WordPress SEO plugins come with free support in the form of a plugin support forum. Always check out the support offered by the plugin author on the support forum before making the decision to use that SEO plugin. Positive Review Ratings. All good SEO plugins for WordPress receive ratings and feedback from the users, and this should be a key factor for you when choosing an SEO plugin for your website.
Regular Updates: SEO WordPress plugins need to be regularly updated to make sure they are compatible with the latest WordPress version. A plugin which is not updated can get your website hacked or create an incompatibility with other WordPress plugins or WordPress core files. Never compromise on the plugins update when selecting the best SEO WordPress plugin for your website.
Here is a list of top ten best WordPress SEO plugins:
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Who hasn't heard about Yoast SEO? Even beginners in the blogging field know about it. It's been the leading SEO plugin for quite some time, with more than 5 million installs and a 4.8-star rating out of 5 from their current 15,000+ reviewers.
Yoast not only improves your websites online presence in every way, it also goes the extra mile to take care of the technical optimization. It comes with a wide range of features and defines the phrase 'all-inclusive SEO plugin'.
Key Features:
Breadcrumbs: Lets you develop simple navigation for spiders and users. It's awesome for internal linking.
Meta Tag and Title Tag: Lets you control which pages you want to be shown in the search results.
Multi-Site Compatibility: XML sitemaps functions in all the setups. It has the option to copy settings from post to post.
Site SEO Analysis: This is a great tool, allowing you to check content length, keyword focus usage, and Meta description content. A simple green light and red light can show you where you rank.
Snippet Review: Lets you observe how the page will look in the search results.
Social Addition: This includes a SEO friendly Facebook open graph to connect social media and SEO together.
2. XML Sitemaps
A sitemap is a method to tell Google about the pages that are available on your website, that may not be discovered otherwise. This plugin will instantly generate an XML sitemap for your website and will notify all the search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Google etc when they’re updated. This is a highly recommended plugin for all WordPress users to create hassle-free sitemaps.
3. Rankie
Rankie is not an ordinary SEO plugin. It is one of the most important tools for boosting and monitoring your SEO ranking. It gives you precise and essential stats and feedback regarding your site's overall performance and the exposure your website is getting on a monthly or weekly basis. The data is quite useful and allows you to develop better SEO content.
4. Broken Link Checker
Have you ever thought how badly a broken link can affect your site? I'm pretty sure you must have thought about it. Even though it doesn't seem to be that important, it can have a great impact on your website.
Checking each link on your website on a daily basis is not a good way to utilize your time. That is why we have added this plugin to our list. The Broken Link Checker is a great plugin to regularly monitor your website for any broken links, informing you when it has detected one. The plugin has so far received more than 500,000 active installations and has been rewarded with a 4/5 star rating from its 300 reviewers.
5. SEO Optimized Images
Images are the most important part of a blog, and optimizing an image is equally crucial.
Do you want your images to be optimized including alt and title tags? This plugin is a treat. It will automatically add SEO friendly alt attributes and title tags to your images so you can attract more audience from Google image search for different keywords for which you want to rank.
6. Simple URL's
Managing links is a time-consuming task. Simple URL's plugin makes things easy for you. With this plugin you can manage, create and track outbound links from your website by making use of custom post types and 301 redirects. This plugin also collects the click counts in a custom field form on the custom post type, so this really is a handy tool when it comes to analyzing and tracking affiliate click-through rates.
7. WP Meta SEO
WP Meta SEO plugin comes with multiple handy functionalities and features, including a tool that helps in fixing your content for better SEO performance in less time and in a simpler manner. The WP Meta SEO dashboard offers an elaborated overview of how optimize your website for SEO along with the areas that require improvement.
8. Internal Links Generator
Internal linking has an essential role in improving search rankings. Many bloggers, however, ignore this because it's a time-consuming task to find relevant links while creating content. The Internal Links Generator solves the issue by displaying relevant links to interlink within your content.
This plugin also keeps a track of how many times keywords from your list are found in your blog's content. You can also set the limit for the keyword usage in your internal links.
9. WooCommerce : All in One SEO Pack
Designed specifically for e-commerce websites, this plugin is an add-on to All in One SEO Pack. When you add products under WooCommerce. they will have keyword-rich titles and descriptions just like an article or blog post.
10. W3 Total Cache (Free/Paid) : Speed Optimization
Website speed is a thing that marketers and Google both take very seriously. W3 Total Cache plugin assists a website to gauge and handle a significant amount of traffic without crashing. This plugin improves both the user experience and SEO of your website by decreasing the download time as well as improving the website performance through CDN integration.
Conclusion
Understanding and implementing SEO can be overpowering to the average WordPress user. The above-mentioned plugins are a great way to add value to your website and allow any website owner or blogger to practice SEO with greater assurance.
About The Author:
Andrew Scott is a skilled digital marketing expert at Intelicle A Web Design Development and online marketing agency based in Nottingham UK. Besides evaluating client technical requirements, Andrew also writes about conversion rate optimization and other strategies for success.
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