by Homerun Nievera, Negosentro.com |
What makes WordPress such a good choice for a CMS is that it enables you to have complete control over the content you create, without concerning yourself with too many technicalities. You don’t need to be skilled coder in order to use it, but still, WordPress alone can’t do everything. This is where you need to turn to the great variety of optimization plugins, which are easy to use and will help you improve your SEO efforts. If you are having trouble choosing which plugins to use, this article will help you. Here are 5 most user friendly WP plugins for SEO.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the highest-rated SEO plugins out there, and certainly not without a reason. Being an extensive toolkit which contains many features that make SEO easy for people with different levels of technical skills, it also guides you through the technical side of the process step by step. Thanks to its great user interface design, its extensive list of features is easy to navigate and apply as well. Among its great features are:
- A page analysis tool
- XML Sitemaps functionality
- Technical WordPress SEO
With its page analysis tool, you can always know exactly what you are doing. You can use it to scan pages for images, in order to make sure that every one of them has an alt tag that matches the main keyword for the corresponding post. You can also check the length of your content and see if your meta descriptions are in order. It makes it very easy for you to see what you’ve done properly and where you have made a mistake.
Broken link checker
Broken link checker is a great plugin that detects broken links and missing images, and gives you a variety of options to take care of them. The more content that you create, the harder it becomes for you to track every single mistake that you have made. This is where Broken link checker jumps in. Since it’s highly improbable that you are so lucky never to be alerted about problems on your website, this plugin will keep a watchful eye for you. This way you can focus on content creation, and let the plugin take care of loose ends. This plugin enables you to:
- Prevent search engines from following broken links
- Monitor links in posts, pages and comments
- Detect links that no longer work
- Give a different appearance to broken links
The first feature is the most important for your SEO efforts, as broken links are bound to have a negative effect on your search ranking as well as UX. Therefore, a powerful as well as easy to use app such as Broken link checker is a must.
Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps is an app that helps you ensure that your website’s content is indexed. What it does is that it automatically generates your sitemap. This makes it much easier for search engines to index your page or blog. What makes it so useful is that, once you have created a sitemap and properly set everything up, you don’t have to do much else. Every time you publish new content, Google XML Sitemaps will update your sitemap for you.
There are many basic options that you should take care of, but if you are unsure of what you are doing, you can stick with the plugin’s default settings. It’s an easily understandable and efficient plugin that is an essential tool for sitemap creation.
All in One SEO pack
All in One SEO pack is an alternative to Yoast SEO. The name is pretty self-explanatory – it’s an extensive plugin that includes most of the necessary features for you to optimize your website for search engines. While it doesn’t offer as many features as Yoast SEO, it contains some unique ones such as its performance optimizer and advanced sitemap options.
The same as with Yoast SEO, you don’t need to be experienced with coding in order to use it. All you need to do is type in the proper data in the given fields, and you will get your results easily. Some of the things it can do are:
- Automatically generate meta tags
- Automatically optimize titles for search engines
- Enable you to avoid duplicate content
- Enable you to override any setting
While it is simpler than Yoast SEO, its simplicity is exactly what gives it a special appeal to those who are looking for a plugin like this.
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is the perfect plugin for dealing with speed issues of your website, as well as for improving the overall UX. According to SEO Adelaide experts, website speed is a very important factor for search ranking, so it is vital that you don’t overlook it. The way this plugins improves speed is by storing data in your website visitors’ browsers, and therefore reduces the loading time for the next visit.
While it is still necessary for you to optimize your website for visitors who are there for the first time as well as those who clear their cache, this plugin is a great start for optimizing your pages’ speed. Next to caching your pages, W3 Total Cache minimizes the effects of 3rd party CSS and JavaScript, and is quite easy to use, so it is a plugin that is worth your time.
Final words
Choosing the plugins from this list will make sure that you handle your WordPress website’s search engine optimization both with quality and ease. While it may be true that it’s good for business to learn more about every possible option out there, you don’t want to crowd your website with too many plugins. In order for you to make sure this doesn’t happen, start by using some of the plugins in this article.
