Optimizing your WordPress site for search engines is something not to be taken lightly. Fortunately, one of the great things about WordPress is the sheer number of plugins available, whether they are free or paid. However, faced with this abundance of solutions, which plugins should be preferred for your site?
Will SEO plugins do all the work?
Unfortunately, the answer is no! The goal here is only to help you choose the best SEO plugins for WordPress. While it can improve various aspects of SEO, the optimization process is more complicated than installing a few extensions.
Beforehand, it is, therefore, necessary to know the basics of SEO by familiarizing yourself with the many criteria. However, the advantage with WordPress is that it is very “blog” oriented, and as we (almost) all know, the content is ROI if it is qualitative and targets the right keywords join SEO services in Lahore today for better services
1. Yoast SEO
With over 5 million downloads and thousands of positive reviews, Yoast SEO is, without doubt, one of the best WordPress SEO plugins available today. This extension allows you to perform many technical on-site optimizations to improve the SEO of your website. It has a wide variety of features that make it an all-in-one plugin. Note that there is a premium version, even if the free version is more than enough.
2. All in One SEO Pack
Competitor of Yoast SEO, it is, however, a little less complete than this one if you want to fine-tune your site. However, it will be suitable for beginners or those who do not want to take the lead too. This is because the advantage is that it works automatically, and you won’t need to touch the settings too much for it to work correctly.
Main features:
- Automatic management of Title and Meta description tags
- Generating the sitemap.xml file
- Google AMP support
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Content optimization for SEO
- Notifies search engines when changes are made
- API available for developers
- Helps avoid duplicate content
- Link to the All in One SEO Pack plugin
3. WP Backlinks
This is a plugin developed by Kevin Richard, an SEO consultant who also created the excellent SEObserver tool. WP Backlinks is a freemium plugin that allows you to analyze new backlinks directly from your WordPress dashboard. For this, the device uses the resources of Majestic, while the data is usually very limited without a subscription. A premium version at only $ 20 / month allows you to monitor new backlinks from 3 of your competitors.
Main features:
- Track new backlinks directly from the WordPress dashboard
- Monitor new backlinks from your competitors (paid)
- Link to the WP Backlinks plugin
4. WP Rocket
Even if the speed of a site is not a direct factor for your SEO, it helps to avoid having an alarming bounce rate on your site. Who wants to stay on a site that is too slow?
WP Rocket is, therefore, a cache optimization plugin that can boost the performance of your site with your server. Available only in premium, it does much better than its other free competitors and is well worth the investment if your site is your livelihood.
Main features:
- Caching pages
- Cache preload
- Compress static files
- Gradual loading of images
- Browser cache
- Database optimization
- Link to the WP Rocket plugin
5. Google XML Sitemaps
As the name suggests, Google XML Sitemaps can generate a sitemap for your site and allow search engine robots to crawl your site better. This allows your website to index faster by sending a push to search engines. If you install this plugin, be careful, however, to deactivate the Yoast SEO plugin (less optimized for my taste), which can be duplicated.
Main features:
- Allows you to generate a complete sitemap of your site
- Notifies search engines
- Possibility to configure the types of pages you want to integrate or not
- Link to the Google XML Sitemaps plugin
6. All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets
Rich snippets improve the way your post appears in search results by providing more information about the content. These are interactive elements that can display images, stars for reviews, prices, etc. These are, therefore, handy features to highlight your pages on Google results.
Main features:
- Allows you to generate rich snippets such as reviews, authors, events, products, recipes, applications or videos
- Link to the All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin
7. Redirection
Well, on this one, they did not sprain too much for the name. Redirection is an extension which nevertheless does its job very well by allowing you to manage your various 301 redirects. It avoids having 404 errors, which are penalizing but also redirecting to new pages. Indispensable to properly redistribute the “juice” of your site and have total control of your internal network.
Main features:
- 404 error monitoring
- Custom transient redirects
- Automatic addition of 301 redirects when the URL of an article is changed
- History of redirects
- Link to the Redirection plugin
8. Broken Link Checker
The leading utility of the Broken Link Checker is to inform you by email notification or via your dashboard as soon as this plugin finds a broken link. Once the broken link is detected, you will be able to repair the link directly through the interface.
Main features:
- Detects broken links, missing images, and redirects
- Notifications on the Dashboard or by email
- Links can be edited directly from the interface
- Link to the Broken Link Checker plugin
9. AMP for WP
Today, more than 50% of searches are done on mobile. It is, therefore, necessary to take these uses into account and adapt your website accordingly. For this, the AMP format launched by Google makes it possible to display a web page much faster on mobile. This plugin thus adds its new features to your site so that it is compatible.
Main features:
- AMP format automatically added to your site without adjustment
- Supports major media
- Link to the AMP for WP plugin
10. Simple SSL
Another format that will become a standard as long as you monetize your website. Indeed, Google strongly encourages us to switch our sites to HTTPS (secure connection) so as not to be penalized in the future. To switch to HTTPS, I advise you to follow this excellent article from WP Marmite. Note, for example, that it is necessary to obtain an SSL certificate, which is generally offered free of charge from hosting providers. Then Really Simple SSL will do all the rest of the work for you by automatically detecting your server and setting your website to HTTPS.
Main features:
- The plugin handles most of the problems that WordPress can encounter with SSL
- All requests are redirected to HTTPS via internal redirect or .htaccess
- HTTP replaces site URL and Home URL
- Your site appears as “Secure” on different browsers
- Link to the Simple SSL plugin
Here are most of the plugins that I use and recommend to optimize SEO on WordPress. Note, however, that this list is not exhaustive and that everyone can have their preferences. Be careful, however, not to have too many plugins installed that could duplicate so as not to harm the performance of your site.
Digital Endeavour 