WordPress is a great platform and takes care of about 80% of the mechanics of SEO according to Matt Cutts (Google Spam Chief). While this is true, it does not mean that you can’t improve it further and this is where the SEO plugins come into play.
WordPress is now one of the best blogging platforms, and the new adopters continue to jump onboard daily. There is no other blogging application that has found so many businesses willing to advocate it, and recommend it. The reason is quite simple! It’s that easy to use, has a great interface, works very well for SEO and is very easy to customize. Besides that, there are now hundreds of plugins that can be used with WordPress. SEO is a never-ending battle for your WordPress site, so you’ll want to make sure you have the right weapons on your side here are my favorites:
WP SEO By Yoast: Has so many options that it will blow your mind away. As an all-in-one plugin, its features include an XML sitemap, Webmaster Tools verification, RSS optimization, social integration, breadcrumbs, page analysis, rich snippets, the whole shebang.
My favorite features are the snippet preview, where you can see a rendering of what your post or page will look like in the search results and, the page analysis feature, which checks, if you have images in your post with an alt tag, whether your posts are long enough, if you’ve written a meta description, subheadings within your post, and more (SEO assistant).
CBnet Ping Optimizer: Deals with the frequency of pings that are sent for your new blog posts. Did you know your WordPress blog pings unnecessarily every time you edit a post? Think how many times you click on “Save and Continue Editing” or “Save” button. Your blog will ping unnecessarily every time you click on those buttons. With CBnet Ping Optimizer you can save your blog from getting tagged as a ping spammer.
WP Super Cache: Caches your generated pages in order to speed up your website. Drastically reduces load time; given Google’s increased and ongoing emphasis on speed this is really good for SEO. This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more resource expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
Scribe SEO
I do not blog without optimizing my posts for SEO, which I do using this plugin. This is a plugin that helps your content rank higher in search engine results by analyzing your posts and making suggestions about how you can improve your post from an SEO perspective. With a click of a button, your content is evaluated and given a score based on its structure and keyword density – and you can rest assured that Google will see the same targeted keywords that you intended for every blog post and page of your website.
SEO Rank Reporter
This plugin gives you the ability to keep track of the keywords you want to rank on or are already ranking with inside the comfort of your WP dashboard. It can even issue you a report every three days by notifying you via email whenever certain keywords experience major changes in search engine ranking. SEO Rank Reporter is a smart tool to help you monitor where your website stands in the search engine wars.
Quick Take Away Point:
WordPress plugins are great and makes our websites work a lot easier, especially for the non tech-savvy. However, there is a downside to overusing plugins. Always check your WordPress performance once in a while to avoid causing you some problems big problems in the future.
How about you? Which plugins do you use to optimize your WordPress site for SEO? Any ones that don’t appear on this list or new ones that you recommend to be included here? Your feedback is appreciated and welcomed.
