WordPress is a very popular platform for blogs, static sites, video and audio podcasts, online shops and a lot of other applications. It is free and has an amazing number of developers, plugins and themes. It can be made to work for anything a webmaster may need, all one has to do is change the code, which is quite easy for even a beginner programmer.
Millions of people are using WordPress for their blogs and never think that they could have the same features and freedom with any other software. Whether you’re a whitehat or blackhat marketer, WP is the best option for anyone.
But as with many other platforms, WordPress is not fully optimized for SEO from the box. It is definitely better than other solutions (like Joomla, phpbb, Drupal, etc.), but you have to customize it further if you want to get the highest Search Engine rankings for your blog. Fortunately, that is very easy to do. It is a matter of installing a few plugins and configuring them. No messing around with the code and templates or breaking something!
Here are the best (and probably the only) SEO plugins you’ll ever need for WordPress:
1. All in One SEO Pack
This is the single most important SEO plugin for WordPress. It’ll account for more than 70% of the Search Engine Optimization your site will ever need. The plugin is pretty much a must for any blog, and it is one of the most popular WordPress plugins in any category. You can optimize individual pages and posts titles, excerpts, descriptions, keywords, meta tags and everything else. The automatic settings are more than enough, but you can manually override them if you need to. Overall, it’s an amazing must-have plugin for SEO. Check it out, you won’t be disappointed!
2. SEO Friendly Images.
This plugin will automate a task that you need to do for better rankings (and better Image Search Optimization), but takes a lot of time to do manually. I’m talking about setting custom alternative titles for any images in a post. This is a very effective method to get your images ranked in Image Search, and therefore, drive more traffic to your site. For example, an image named “Nissan_GTR.jpg” in an article about the Nissan GTR car will rank higher in Image Search than an image named “img1.jpg”. The reason is obvious: a more detailed description gives the Search Engines a better idea about what the image contains, and they consider it more relevant to a user’s search. With this plugin, you won’t need to manually change an image’s name or alternative text (which is the same in Search Engine’s eyes). It will do everything automatically.
3. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator.
This plugin will generate a full sitemap (a collection of links to all the posts and pages on your site), making it easier for search engines to find and index every single page your site has. What’s unique about it is that it isn’t simply an XML sitemap generator only for search engines – it also allows people to search and find any and all of your posts and pages. This is especially useful when you’ve got a lot of them – people rarely go deeper than 5 pages when searching for older posts. But with this plugin, they can have a list of all your posts on one page (I would suggest listing the old articles first, as the newer ones can be found on the homepage and in the sidebar).
4. Google XML Sitemaps.
This plugin is an alternative to the above one, with the only exception that it can’t generate a sitemap for users to see. On the plus side, it is great for all search engines (despite the name) and has a feature that automatically pings the top 3 search engines when your site has a new post.
That’s it, with the above 4 plugins, you’ll cover 90% of all SEO work you can do for your WordPress site. Just remember to keep them updated and enabled!
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m new with blogging and using this plugin as well. Hope it will work
Yes Adi, these Plugins are best for your wordpress blog and it help to get better results in Search Engines.
No doubt All in SEO Plugin and Google XML Sitemap are essentials of a WP Blog.
I was searching for Blogs about The Best SEO Plugins For Wordpress and found this site. I am interested in your content and I appreciate sites like this.
does anybody know the exact time SEO Netlinks is coming out? i heard it’s an amazing way to build tons of traffic
I couldnt agree more with All-In-One SEO being the best free SEO plugin overall for Wordpress. As the grandaddy of all SEO plugins it set the standard for all other SEO plugins.
It’s nice that you actually gave us the details on the plugin features while most bloggers just give it a quick mention and move on. That’s definitely the mark of a blogger who knows his plugins.
I’ll be referencing this post on my main blog.
Kevin,
http://bestseopluginforwordpress.com
Hello Kevin,
Well All In One SEO is best free SEO plugin and I’m sure 90% blog owners using it since it’s easy and most effective plugin for us.
Great post. No doubt all in SEO pack, Google XML Sitemaps are important. But you should have elaborated plug in list so that along with the description. Otherwise your post is excellent as you have mentioned major Plugins .
AdamWarne