Search Engine OptimizationWordpress

SEO Plugins For WordPress: Top 15 Plugins To Achieve Higher Ranking

SEO Plugins For WordPress – For websites, search engines are like life-giving oxygen as survival resources such as organic-traffic, leads, and customers come from there.

WordPress is indeed SEO friendly. But having a properly optimized WordPress theme backed by a top WordPress SEO plugin goes a long way in reaping more benefits.

But choosing from a sea of SEO Plugins For WordPress will be the challenge, Here, we are seeking to guide you in that task with some important plugin names and their benefits.

WordPress plugins make a WordPress site into an SEO powerhouse. But do not be mistaken that plugins bring higher search engine rankings although they add to SEO success.

SEO Plugins For WordPress come in free as well as premium versions.

7 Best SEO Plugins For WordPress To Achieve Higher Ranking

1. “Yoast” SEO Plugins For WordPress

Yoast’s 5 million plus downloads suggest its high popularity. It is number One, SEO Plugins For WordPress that every WordPress user would want to install. The important deliverables of Yoast SEO Plugins For WordPress are the following.

  • Meta value to the homepage
  • Meta value to posts such as meta title and meta description.
  • Social media optimization in terms of image, title, and description
  • Option to create a sitemap file
  • Editing of robots.txt
  • Google search console integration
  • Control on indexing of blog
  • Focus keyword and On-page SEO

Overall, the plugin guides in developing better content and optimization of the site with features. Some of its attractions include

  • Page analysis tool.
  • Technical WordPress SEO
  • XML Sitemaps functionality

Yoast SEO can scan any page for images and ensure there is an alt tag that matches the primary keyword. Also, the content is checked for length and confirms meta description is relevant.

If a line in text misses green check mark the issue can be resolved by going back to meta description for a tweak or two.

Overall, WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin is simple yet comprehensive.

2. “All in One SEO Pack” SEO Plugins For WordPress

All in One SEO Pack is a popular alternative to Yoast SEO. The self-explanatory name says all. Since the release in 2007, this WordPress plugin has been helping webmasters for facing SEO challenges.

The biggest benefit is that it does not require any hard experience. Reading directions and adding data in the fields will work.

  • Automatic optimization of titles for all search engines
  • Automatic generation of META tags
  • Avoiding duplicate content
  • Ability to override any setting constraint

3. “Google XML Sitemaps” SEO Plugins For WordPress

This is good for faster indexation of site’s content. Search engines have a way of finding content without being guided but sitting back is not the way to go.

Google XML Sitemaps plugin maps out automatically the path and search engines are made faster in indexing a blog.

When sitemap is set up, settings turn comfortable. The plugin will update sitemap every time a new piece of content is published.

4. “Broken Link Checker” SEO Plugins For WordPress

As more content gets added managing blog turns hard. That is where the Broken Link Checker plugin helps. It checks content for broken links and missing images. The plugin maintains a watchful eye on the website and updates the webmaster on broken links.

The Broken Link Checker plugin is simple to use and powerful too. With stats of more than 400,000 active installs and a high rating, it is worth checking out.

5. “Google Analytics by MonsterInsights” SEO Plugins For WordPress

Those habituated to Google Analytics in tracking website visitors, top keywords and other data, here is Google Analytics by MonsterInsights plugin for a good experience.

The record of 11 million download volume is amazing. The primary benefit of Google Analytics by MonsterInsights is the ability to review Analytics data from WordPress dashboard.

6. “Schema Pro WordPress plugin” SEO Plugins For WordPress

By adding Schema plugin search engines understand more about the content and On-page SEO turns better.

This rich snippet plugin for WordPress will also boost visibility in the search engine.

7. “SEO Image Optimizer” SEO Plugins For WordPress

When images are optimized they drive significant traffic from image search engines. An example is ShoutMeLoud that gets almost 1 percent of traffic from image search engines.

This plugin adds ALT attributes to images to take care of the image name and indicate the theme of the content. For instance, an article on Tesla Model 3 car content must have the image of the name Tesla logo or Model 3 sedan.

8. “Image Compression plugin” SEO Plugins For WordPress

Images are an integral part of the WordPress site. An average, two to three images in every blog post can expand the page size by 400KB+. This is crucial on a 3G or 4G connection to offer a fast page.

Image compression reduces the overall size of the image without compromising the quality. ShortPixel is one plugin good for this. It automatically compresses the new images and also gives the option to compress old once.

9. “Cache Plugin” SEO Plugins For WordPress

Caching helps a WordPress site load faster and reduces the load on your server and ticks up the performance of the WordPress site.

Shared hostings like SiteGround and Bluehost do offer inbuilt caching, and adding extra plugin is not required. So is the case with a majority of managed WordPress hosting companies such as Kinsta and WPEngine having inbuilt cache and CDN.

If other hostings have to be used that are without inbuilt cache facility, the following two cache plugins can be fine.

  • WP Rocket
  • WP super cache

10. “Plugin for WordPress Speed” SEO Plugins For WordPress

The speed of a WordPress website is a significant variable in attracting traffic and search engine rankings. Google treats site speed as an important ranking factor in ranking.

That is where the W3 Total Cache plugin becomes important.

This improves site speed and overall user experience. Among the key benefits is 10 times improvement in overall site performance after it is fully configured.

From caching of pages and posts to ‘minimizing 3rd party JavaScript and CSS, it is worth your time.

11. “All In One WP Security & Firewall” SEO Plugins For WordPress

A security breach is bad for any website despite WordPress being secure. To protect a website, using All In One WP Security & Firewall plugin can render extra security that goes beyond what WordPress provides as the site runs efficiently.

The security features include

  • Password strength tool
  • Detect duplicate accounts
  • Detects identical display name accounts

These can turn off hackers and show how secure is a website in terms of “security points” based on the existing setup.

12. “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)” SEO Plugins For WordPress

Low bounce rate is always positive for SEO towards other goals. Keeping people long on a site is important. In SEO, lowering bounce rate and escalating time users are spending on a site is important. For this, there is no better plugin than this.

Using YAARP will show to search engines that your website offers a lot and a strong user experience too.

It will improve visitor retention. Once installed, the plugin displays posts and pages and content related in addition to the current content.

It gives readers relevant content to make them stick around longer. Some of the good things the plugin is doing will  include

  • Option for thumbnail and list view
  • Ensures best posts are displayed
  • Templating features control result display

13. “SEO Optimized Images” SEO Plugins For WordPress

While optimizing content importance of images is often overlooked. It is useless to merely insert images into the content without optimizing to improve rankings and to drive traffic through Google Images search.

With the guidance of the SEO Optimized Images plugin, it is easy to dynamically insert SEO Friendly alt and title attributes into an image.

To avoid image-related SEO mistakes using this the plugin can help your SEO and it will save your time.

14. “SEO by SQUIRRLY” SEO Plugins For WordPress

SEO by Squirrly eliminates many hazards in the path of the optimization process. It is extremely easy to use for newbies.

The SEO plugin SEO by Squirrly is great in optimizing content for certain keywords, title, content, and URL.

  • SEO settings are kept intact
  • All aspects of content marketing strategy are looked at
  • Updates progress on a weekly basis
  • Offers headlines suggestions based on SEO keyword

Redirection: This WordPress plugin helps in handling 404 errors, speeding 301 redirections and manages loose ends of a website.

15. “Remove Query Strings from Static Resources” SEO Plugins For WordPress

This SEO plugin is a must for Speed Optimization and is free.

There are speed insights tools such as GTmetrix, Google speed insights look at the possible reason for slowing down a website. Mostly query strings are responsible for slowing. Though a different type of solutions is provided by experts to resolve this issue, Remove Query Strings from Static Resources is the easiest as it removes query strings from static CSS and JavaScript files from the header. Some top features are the following.

  • Good for Linux servers
  • Minimum PHP version required: 5.5
  • good to use as a mu-plugin
  • Improves speed scores in services Pingdom, PageSpeed, YSlow

admin

Udit Khanna is a Digital Marketing Course professional at Expert Training Institute, an expert in Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, Social Media, etc. who helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Previously, Udit worked as a marketing professional for various startups and tech companies. He graduated with B.Sc from IGNOU with a dual degree in Business Administration (Marketing & Finance).