Every blogger wants to gain higher rankings and visibility on search engines. One cannot ignore how vital SEO lid when it comes to improving your site’s visibility. If you are a WordPress blogger, then you are in luck because WordPress has a number of plugins that will help your ranking.
When you look at various blogs whether its fashion related or the CityPlace condo blog, there is always something that sets them apart. The good news is that the WordPress plugin developers created some essential SEO plugins to help you make your site rank high in the search engines.
If you have a new website or have has a site for a while but never installed any SEO plugins for WordPress here are the top 10 SEO plugins you should consider:
- Yoast SEO
Yoast has more than 4.5 million downloads, thousands of reviews, and an average of 4.7 staring rating. It has gained its reputation as the best WordPress SEO plugin. This plugin not only improves your site’s SEO but also takes care of your technical optimization. It has a number of features that make it stand out.
Yoast allows you to create better content by allowing you to check how your post or page will look like when in the search results. It also has a page analysis feature that checks small things like how long the post is and how the meta description looks like and if it has the focused keywords.
This plugin gives you the power to choose the pages that will show up in Google search results and those that will not. Yoast SEO makes the meta and link elements available everywhere. It also has an advanced XML sitemaps feature that allows you to automatically create XML sitemaps and inform the search results of its existence.
This plugin comes with Facebook OpenGraph integration that allows you to link to social media and SEO. Yoast is also multi-site compatible which is a big bonus. It also has a Breadcrumbs feature that gives you easy navigation for both your users and search engines. It has free and payable options.
Pros
- Has a number of key features
- Easy and fast to work with
Cons
- Reduces the site’s speed when all the features are activated at once
- SEO Ultimate
If you are looking for data flexibility and versatility at the same time, then SEO Ultimate may be the best plugin for you. This plug can import and export data from other sources including the third-party SEO plugins.
It has a Deeplink Juggernaut feature that allows you to automatically set up keywords and then the plugin will generate internal links on the site automatically. It also has a Code Inserter that lets you add codes before the content, after the content, in the header and footer.
There is a file editor feature that modifies the robots.txt in your WordPress dashboard directly. Using this plugin, you can monitor 404 errors on your site using the 404 Monitor feature. It also has rich snippets that will allow people to visit and find your blog easily.
The plugin generates an open graph for your pages, posts, etc. using the social media optimizing features. You can also edit the title tags of your post, pages, and categories using the title tag rewriter. SEO Ultimate has an Author Highlighter feature allows showing the author of the content on Google or Bing. You can use either the free or paid option.
Pros
- Gives you easy access to things you need
- Has custom permalinks for custom taxonomies
Cons
- Is a little complicated for beginners
- Updates features late
- SEOPressor
This plugin is developed with the latest Google algorithm trends. It has a keyword SEO score that allows you to monitor the SEO score of your keywords. With this SEO you can avoid being penalized by Google because it has an Over optimization check that helps you monitor how you’re using the SEO tips.
With the LSI keywords feature in the plugin, you will be able to calculate the semantic quality of the site using its proprietary formula. This makes SEOPressor capable of suggesting ways you can strengthen the contextual signal for the interpretation by search engines.
You will also be able to add keywords and links automatically using the automatic smart linking features which will lower your bounce rate an increase average time on site. You will also be able to get authority over how search engines crawlers will navigate your site using the dynamic crawler control. There is no free option.
Pros
- Lets you focus on the sites SEO and gain results
- Has a 60-day money back guarantee
Cons
- No free option
- Their customer support is poor
- Premium SEO Pack
This SEO plugin is popularly known for coming with a complete set of SEO features like image optimization, social sharing, and SERP tracking. It gives you everything you need to optimize your website.
You can add your website to different site directories using the backlink builder feature. It also has a W3C validator that allows you to check the markup of your pages, posts and custom taxonomies. You can monitor the speed of your pages or posts using the page speed insights
Using the monitor 404, you will monitor the URLs that seem to refer your visitors to 404 pages. With the SEO friendly images feature you will be able to update all your images automatically using appropriate title attributes and ALT. You can also post your content on Facebook using the Facebook planner feature.
Pros
- Has a video sitemap
- Has a search engine reporter
- Has a bulk editor
Cons
- Absence of RSS settings
- Squirrly SEO
When it comes to optimizing your site’s SEO, squirrly removes the majority of the hazards and optimizes your content by encompassing specific keywords. It does this by check whether you have effectively used the keyword in the content, title, and URL.
When you do something right, it has a light that turns green. This plugin’s SEO is always intact and tracts all aspects of the content marketing strategy you are using. It also monitors your progress weekly. It suggests headlines for you in accordance with the SEO keyword. It has a social intelligence feature that helps you create better content.
Pros
- Easy for beginners
- Has slideshow tutorial that guides you through the plugin’s features, how to use and leverage them.
Cons
- You have to upgrade to the Pro version to access some of the features unavailable on the free version
- W3 Total Cache
Google and marketers take website speed seriously and so should you. This plugin helps you to scale and sustain traffic to your site without crashing. W3 Total Cache plugin helps enhance both the user experience and SEO of your website by increasing site performance through content delivery network (CDN) integration and reducing download times.
This plugin is compatible with dedicates clusters/servers, dedicates services/virtual private and shared hosting. It also supports accelerated mobile pages support and Secure Socket Layer support. You can cache your feed in the memory on disk or CDN. You can also cache fragments in memory or on in disk.
Pros
- Explains all the features in detail
- It is caching plugin that is powered by WordPress
Cons
- The free version has limited support
- It is not so easy to use
- AMP for WP
One of the requirements now that there are so many mobile searchers is to make your site mobile responsive. AMP for WP adds accelerated mobile pages functionality to your site and makes it faster for your mobile users.
This plugin allows you to make your website accessible on the mobile with just a few clicks. You can also add different types of content using the Custom AMP editor feature, particularly for AMP. It also has the mobile redirection feature that let as you provide the fast user experience. Faster user engagements mean lower bounce rate and more engagement.
It also has a custom AMP frontpage and an unlimited color scheme feature. It has a Google analytics supports, and it also supports posts and pages.
Pros
- You don’t require any coding knowledge
- Has a woocommerce integration
- Has good distribution
Cons
- Not easy to implement
- Has limited functionality compared to other plugins
- Redirection
If you want a plugin that will allow you to tighten up the loose ends, track 404 errors, and handle 301 redirections of your site, this might be your option. This plugin is especially useful when you are migrating pages from a former site or changing the directory of the WordPress installation.
You can pass through a URL to another page, site, or file using the custom ‘pass-through’ redirection. You will also be able to capture the 404 error lops using the 404 error monitoring feature. Using the same feature you will also map the 301 redirects.
This plugin allows you to redirect all your URLs. It is wholly localized and has complete regular expression support. It has a redirection statistic that tells you about the number of time a redirection has happened and when it occurred.
Pros
- Free
- Allows you to manage redirection from the WordPress dashboard
Cons
- Lacks developer support
- Reduces the speed of your site by continually scanning your site for 404 errors
- SEO Friendly Images
This plugin updates all your images with appropriate Title and ALT attributes for SEO purpose. If your site lacks the Title and ALT attributes already set, the plugin adds them according to your options. Optimizing your images allows you to bring an incredible amount of traffic to your site from the image search engines.
SEO friendly images plugin has category placeholders that let you add the category name, parent name, and store. You can also ass the product name, vendor, category, or price using the product placeholders feature. Using the blog placeholders feature you can add the store and post name. You can also add the brand name and store using the brand placeholders feature.
Pros
- Easy setup
- Free
- The lazy load feature makes your website faster by 50-70%
Cons
- SEO friendly images isn’t supported on the free version
- Broken Link Checker
Broken links create bad user experience and also affects your SEO which is why you need to check your site for broken links from time to time and fix them. This plugin allows you to find the broken links on your site.
The plugin allows you to fix the broken links without having to edit your posts. The plugin is free which makes it convenient.
Pros
- Free
- Finds and fixes broken links
Cons
- May slow down your server
Bonus SEO Tips For Your WordPress Site
- While you are spending most of your time trying to improve your content strategy, you need to make sure that you improve your site’s speed as well to make sure that you outrank slower sites.
- Use Pingdom and Google Page Speed tools to check your website’s speed and make the site load fast.
- Install and Setup W3 Total Cache to give your website speed and more boost. It will improve the page load time.
- Images can significantly affect your website’s speed, therefore, make sure that the photos you upload are optimized, this will also improve the performance of your site.
Conclusion
There are many more WordPress SEO plugins on the web. However, we have looked into the ten plugins that are mostly used and are also capable of resolving most issues webmasters experience. If you use a number of plugins simultaneously, you will most likely slow down the speed of your website.
If you have a plugin you don’t use it frequently, you should deactivate the plugins, and you can always reactivate them when you need them. If you have used either of the above plugins and they don’t seem to improve your SERPS ranking, then you might want to consider finding a better WordPress hosting providers like WPEngine or Pagely.
These plugins will help you optimize your website and help you confidently practice SEO and make your site rank higher on the search engines which is the idea behind the plugins in the first place.