The question of many marketers who use WordPress for blogs or online stores is: How to apply SEO for WordPress? How to get more traffic from the organic search?
Well, WordPress is one of the biggest content management platforms in the world and it has no shortage of features.
You don’t need a lot of knowledge to apply SEO in WordPress, and I believe that after reading this article, you will get a few more positions in search engines.
Optimizing for search engines is an almost endless process, you will always have improvements and new goals with each passing day.
That’s because when you get the desired position in search engines, there are people who are working to get them too.
The solution to this is simple: keep your site up to date, both content and SEO techniques. One of the solutions is to use the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress.
Check out some Best SEO Plugins for WordPress that will help you to be well-positioned in search engines!
Table of Contents
Rank Math
Starting with a free WordPress SEO plugin, Rank Math is considered the Swiss Army Knife of WordPress Website SEO Solutions.
With a wide range of features, you can take full control of your on-page SEO. It combines features of different plugins, and is lightweight and easy to manage.
It is an intuitive plugin that allows custom settings, control of pages to be indexed, and how the site should appear in searches, based on structured data.
Some features:
- has a configuration wizard;
- traces Google errors (404 error) to inform its origin;
- provides tooltips, warnings, guides, and other information;
- apply image SEO;
- performs the XML mapping of the site;
- supports advanced search;
- adds improved metadata to posts;
- optimizes product descriptions;
- monitors the ping of search engines;
- has clean code;
- performs SEO analysis based on 40 factors;
- assists in ranking local search results;
- performs error checking;
- redirects the user to main posts or pages;
- allows full control of the page’s meta description and title;
- has compatibility with WooCommerce;
- works on Facebook and other social networks.
Yoast SEO
This I think is one of the most used plugins for SEO in WordPress. It has over 5 million installs, and over 25,000+ reviews and is already compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
The Yoast SEO plugin makes you improve all aspects of SEO necessary for you to gain better positions in search engines.
For example, you choose a keyword for the article, and the plugin makes a checklist for you to work on SEO.
Some features:
- Page analysis;
- XML sitemap;
- Technical optimization.
All in One SEO Pack
This plugin is perfect for optimizing your WordPress SEO. It’s easy to install and use, and one of the differentiators is the API for developers.
As the name suggests, there is a lot of functionality packed into this plugin. Check out some:
- XML sitemap;
- Google AMP support;
- Google Analytics Support;
- Embedded API;
- Automatic generation of META tags;
- Translated into 57 languages.
The features are diverse, so at first use, it may seem complicated, but as you gain experience with the plugin, you can use the advanced features easily.
The PRO version of All in One SEO Pack has new features and benefits such as:
- Advanced support for WooCommerce;
- SEO for Categories and Tags;
- Access to the Premium support package;
- Access to the knowledge center.
Google XML Sitemaps
No use and no plugin to improve SEO if your Sitemap is not created and optimized.
With the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, the sitemap is generated automatically, facilitating the indexing of your site in search engines, both Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.
After creating the Sitemap, and having already known a little about the plugin, you will only have the basic settings to change.
After an article is published or any changes are made to your site, the Sitemap is automatically updated and published.
This plugin does what it promises, and in an efficient and easy-to-understand way.
W3 Total Cache
You may already know that your website speed has a big influence on SEO.
Many people ignore the user experience, but fast and agile access has benefits for both the user and the website owner.
Google has made it clear that performance is a factor in having better search engine positions, so it’s important to use resources to optimize your site.
The W3 Total Cache plugin improves the speed of your website using several features, such as a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and compression of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files.
Some features:
- Caching;
- It promises a 10x increase in overall website performance;
- Bandwidth saving with file compression;
- Optimization of JavaScript and CSS codes;
- Various security features.
WP Rocket
Another WordPress SEO plugin on our list is WP Rocket. It is a caching plugin that optimizes the performance of your page by improving load time.
Some features:
- caches page content and retrieves it on the next access;
- stores the website’s static files in the browser so that they do not reload with each new access;
- compresses CSS, HTML and JavaScript files;
- introduce lazyload; a feature that loads page images as visitors scroll down the site, rather than loading them all at once;
- decreases database volume with frequent cleanups;
- offers compatibility with other e-commerce plugins ;
- enables GZIP compression;
- preloads the Sitemap;
- performs Google Fonts optimization;
- load JavaScript;
- performs a DNS prefetch;
- detects mobile devices, making the page more responsive;
- offers compatibility with Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, and other tools.
Smush
Another SEO WordPress plugin that can help a lot in optimizing your page is Smush Image Compression and Optimization.
This tool is a great solution to compress website images and reduce the space occupied by them. That way, your page will load faster and search engines will find it easier.
Some features:
- image compression without loss of quality;
- lazyload feature;
- compresses up to 50 images at once;
- resizing images;
- optimizes images even if they are not in the media library.
AMP
Launched in order to facilitate support on WordPress sites for AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), this plugin is open source, and aims to optimize the content on mobile devices.
By activating this plugin, all your articles are generated with AMP-compatible versions.
If you are a developer and want to contribute to the development of this plugin click here.
Redirection
This plugin is perfect if you have targeting errors on your pages like 301 or 404. It is very useful if you have just migrated your site or just want to change the directory.
Some features:
- 404 error monitoring;
- Personalized targeting;
- Add automatic redirection;
- Redirect stats.
MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is another SEO WordPress plugin you can’t miss. Many consider it one of the best tools to track website performance in detail.
Most analytics require a learning curve to deliver consistent results. After all, only images and figures are not enough for this.
With MonsterInsights, you can speed up this process by allowing Google Analytics to access your WordPress dashboard, saving you time.
In this dashboard, the Google tool identifies where your visitors access your page from, which devices they use, gender, age, and other information. All of this helps you make better decisions for your website.
Some features:
- quick and easy setup with just a few clicks;
- real-time statistics;
- universal tracking;
- e-commerce tracking;
- tracking affiliate links;
- tracking of popular posts;
- performance tracking.
SEO Framework
Among the SEO plugins for WordPress, the SEO Framework is another one that follows the performance recommendations required by search engines.
One of its best features is the automatic completion of Meta Tags, in any language. In addition, its guidelines are color-coded, allowing the user to customize Open Graph and other protocols.
This tool is also integrable with other plugins installed on the CMS. It’s fast, responsive, and prevents critical errors on the page.
Some features:
- stops paging processes and prevents the appearance of Error 404;
- notifies search engines of updates made to the page;
- directs search engines to the comments on the page;
- has high compatibility with PHP;
- identifies and renders Unicode characters;
- offers accessibility for the visually impaired.
Squirrly SEO
This WordPress SEO plugin is intuitive, easy to use, and user-friendly for those who don’t have much experience with SEO. It acts as an independent or complementary tool to the website, depending on what is already installed on the page.
Squirrly helps you gain insights before you’re done writing. It is compatible with other tools and does not override any SEO settings.
One feature worth noting is the keyword research function. With it, you can optimize your content even before publishing it.
Check out other features:
- keeps the settings of the old plugins, in case you want to replace them with Squirrly;
- offers analysis and competition tool;
- presents content reports so you understand what needs to be maintained or improved;
- offers weekly monitoring of page performance, along with top trending internet trends, so you get more content inspiration.
Conclusion
There are several factors that influence the choice of the best WordPress SEO plugin.
After all, there are many options that will certainly help you resolve duplicate content, sitemap, article date, number of links to the page, etc.
As you can see, they all have several features that facilitate better positioning.
