Skyrocket Organic Traffic with These WordPress SEO Plugins

 

As an online business owner, you need to take steps to ensure that your website is as professional and as effective as possible. If you want your website to rank higher in search engines, then you need to make sure that it has all the right SEO plugins installed. You can use a WordPress SEO plugin to help you optimize your site for search engines and increase traffic.

But with a huge variety of plugins on the market makes it hard to know which one to pick. Finding the best one for your site can be a tedious process as well. In this article, I will simplify that for you by discussing the key points about SEO Plugins.

What are SEO Plugins?

SEO WordPress plugin is a SEO tool that you install on WordPress websites for search engine optimization on websites. It is used to increase the visibility of a website in search engines by making sure the content is edited and formatted correctly for SEO needs. These plugins help to update and edit the page content. They also provide other features related to the internet site. Additionally, they help in the development of an effective online marketing strategy. It helps you do things such as making your page elements search engine friendly, enabling social sharing, and analytics to view data related to site traffic. It helps you refine your pages and blogs for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

These plugins are different from your typical SEO tools like Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush SEO writing assistant which are cloud-based. They do not perform tasks like keyword research or backlink lookup. These plugins are installed directly on your WordPress site although, they have increasingly added cloud-based features to increase their offerings, such as AI writing and rank tracking.

Why Do You Need to Use SEO Plugins in Your Website?

SEO WordPress plugins can be used to improve the performance of a website and to increase its visibility in search engines. Search engine optimization is a major factor that determines how well your site will rank on search engines. When using SEO plugins, it is possible to get better rankings in search engines and increase traffic to your site.

Search engines like Google and Bing are able to index web pages with the help of plugins. These tools make it easier for websites to be found online through search engines. Most websites use a WordPress SEO plugin because they offer various benefits that come with them. Some of its benefits include the following:

Rank Higher in SERPs

Everyone wants to have a better ranking on search engine results pages. And one of the ways to get there is by taking advantage of SEO Plugins. This ensures that it is visible to the clients who are searching for information on a particular keyword or topic. It helps you in making your page’s keyword optimized for search engines by eliminating any duplicate keywords. It redirects your users to higher pages when they are searching with sophisticated SEO algorithms. Plus, it introduces new words and phrases that most people will be using in their searches or even creating certain best practices regarding metadata content creation.

Optimize Metadata

Metadata is the section that contains details about your website’s content, structure, and marketing strategies. Search engines look for this information to help them out in ranking websites. SEO plugins are the best ones when it comes to adding metadata because they automatically create related text based on what you type in search engines. It helps you ensure that vital information is available so search engines like Google can index your website better.

In addition, SEO Plugins help you determine your OpenGraph tags. OpenGraph tags are essential for generating a link preview while sharing links on Facebook, messaging apps, and other social media platforms. A clear link preview helps you to get more clicks on these links, thus sending you more traffic.

Identify Your On-Page SEO Errors

On-Page SEO errors can negatively affect your ranking. Having numerous errors or missing elements would slow down search engines to index your website. With proper use of SEO plugins, you can quickly identify on-page errors that are not taking your website to the next level. This will help increase search engine traffic and expand your domain’s reach by getting more customer visits through organic search result pages. On-page SEO is like the baggage of a mountain climber. The less baggage a mountain climber carries, the faster the mountain climber can climb. Having clean on-page SEO helps Google to better understand your website content so that it can deliver your results much higher in the SERPs.

Moreover, by getting rid of those issues, your site can perform well so you can reduce your bounce rates. It becomes much easier for your visitors to stay on your website for a longer period of time which results in better conversions and ultimately higher revenues.

Who Should Use SEO Plugins?

SEO plugins should be used by anyone who wishes to market their website publicly on search engines. Unless your website is meant to be private, then you should definitely make use of some of these SEO tools.

How Do SEO Plugins Work?

SEO plugins work by optimizing your website for search engines to crawl or understand your website better. It does this by generating XML sitemaps allowing you to set SEO meta tags and OpenGraph tags, deindex pages, optimize on-page content, set schema markup, and other elements on your website.

XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps are “directories” that all search engines use to map the contents of your website. When you set up an XML Sitemap on WordPress, Googlebot can better crawl your site as they can better find pages of your website as well as its hierarchy within the website. Search engines love custom XML Sitemaps because they allow them to keep track of additions made to the sites. XML sitemaps generated by SEO plugins are dynamic and automatically generated, hence whenever search engines crawl your XML sitemap, they would know that there is new content added.

SEO Meta Tags

This feature of a WordPress SEO plugin makes sure all the meta tags, such as Title and Description in HTML pages are properly coded so that they can be extracted from search engine spiders. Meta tags are used to describe your web page content on the search engine result pages to give the user a preview of what your web page is about. When you use an SEO plugin, as soon as there’s an update on your pages, this information is also reflected by Google when your page is re-crawled.

OpenGraph Meta Tags

OpenGraph tags allow social websites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter to peek into both the title of your page as well as the description and offer a glimpse of the web page with an image. Once again, when there is a change in title or description elements within pages generated by an SEO plugin, these are also updated for all search engines crawlers at every time.

De-Index Pages

When working with an SEO plugin for WordPress, you can activate the option to not show these pages in the search engine results. De-indexing pages are important as Google penalizes thin and duplicate content pages. It also reduces the frequency in which the Googlebot would return for a re-crawl of your website. For example, an eCommerce store would have cart and checkout pages that do not contain much information. However, these pages have minimal content and do not add value to users searching on Google. Another reason would be your category pages showing similar or exact content which can confuse the Googlebot as to which page it should index on the search results. By hiding these pages from Google, it helps you to show the right results to users as well as allows Google to crawl your website at a higher frequency.

Optimizing On-Page Content for SEO

Taking into account that not all pages can be de-indexed, it is essential to take the time and ensure you include the right on-page content. By including quality text within your page, feed Google what you want people to find out after clicking on a keyword such as information about products for an eCommerce website. This will help Google understand which page is relevant to search queries which are also important for Googlebot to optimize the ranking of search engine results.

In addition, keyword density also helps Google understand the content better and show it higher up in the search results. Making sure within WordPress that every page has an internal linking factor references or anchor text helps increase local rankings as well as Google search results due to the relevance of content within each result. This has been proven in many case studies which have seen websites showing an improvement experiencing a boost in traffic or sales, this is down to how relevant your site is sounding when searched on.

Schema Markup for Different Types of Content Pages

Depending on your type of content, using schema markup such as microdata is recommended with the concept allowing Google to retrieve additional information about specific types of pages. By implementing schema markup into each page allows you to add ratings of the article, of your products as well as the number of reviews of your products, price, and stock availability. All this information will also be reflected in the Google search results.

My Recommended WordPress SEO Plugins

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms around. It has a great community that is growing fast thanks to its many plugins. These are basically different extensions that add new features to your blog. Depending on what you’re looking for, there are dozens of SEO tools that can help you build a more engaging blog with better SEO. Note that these plugins are not your All-in-One SEO tool for keyword research.

Squirrly SEO

Squirrly SEO is a WordPress SEO plugin that encompasses many aspects of optimizing your site’s visibility including the use of keywords and keyword research. Moreover, it also provides you with detailed analysis so you can get to know why certain sites are getting more traffic than yours. Another powerful feature that this WordPress plugin for SEO Squirrly offers is its built-in virtual assistant that helps you in your writing process so you can have a better understanding of how SEO works. Through this, you can optimize your content with a few clicks. Once it is ready for publishing, it will give you a signal to notify you. You can then set your own meta description as well. Video SEO is also included in Squirrly.

Other key features include direct integrations with Google Search Console and Google Analytics to make it easier to index your website. The plugin also features an automatic 301 redirection whenever a page slug is changed to prevent broken links. You can set local business schema and include all your social media links.

Currently, Squirrly SEO offers three paid plans: PRO Plan, Business Plan, and Agency Plan.  But they also have a free plan in case you are not yet ready to purchase.

Most of my websites are using this WordPress SEO plugin now, with the rest still on Rank Math, but I’m in the process of moving them all over the Squirrly SEO now. In my opinion, Squirrly SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin.

Rank Math

Rank Math is a SEO WordPress plugin is on top of my list because it has features that make it easier and effective for you to optimize your WordPress website. It is widely regarded as the best SEO plugin because of the wide range of features. You can optimize your content by providing your keyword/s and metadata such as the title, description, and permalink. Rank Math SEO has a built-in advanced SEO Analytics Module that assists you in tracking keyword rankings and search engine errors. Its Google Analytics and Google Search Console Integration allows you to see all your website metrics. So far, it has the most advanced Schema generator that makes your content stand out and improves your CTR. Rank Math also automatically redirects any changes in page slugs to prevent broken links as well as your social media links for local business.

Rank Math offers a free plan. But if you want to avail of their paid plan, they are currently offering these plans: Pro ($59), Business ($199), and Agency ($499).

SEO Press

SEO Press is a WordPress SEO plugin that integrates with your website to provide real-time SEO information including keywords, ranking, and mentions. The platform can run within WordPress or Multisite. It provides an easy way to integrate social signals like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn into your SEO toolset because it integrates with nearly all of them! Plus, it has a “Content Analyzer” tool that helps you analyze your content for SEO optimization. Some of its features include Sitemaps, Google Analytics, Image SEO, Local SEO, Redirections, Breadcrumbs, and more which are great for WordPress SEO. Their redirection feature is automatic to prevent broken links.

You can access all of its basic tools for free. But if you need some upgrade, you can avail of their Pro plan.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is not a stranger to users into WordPress SEO as it has been one of the top most installed WordPress plugin in the world. Yoast SEO plugin is a WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for better rankings. Yoast plugin takes into account many aspects of your site, including things like meta descriptions, titles, and images. The Yoast SEO WordPress plugin checks for duplicate content, keyword density, and so much more. All of this is done automatically in Yoast SEO to ensure your site runs as efficiently and safely as possible. Moreover, Yoast SEO plugin has a lot of features that help you manage your site. It has a “Sitemap” feature that generates an XML sitemap for your website. You can also use the “Crawl and Analyze” tool in Yoast SEO plugin to crawl and analyze your site including all of your pages, posts, and categories.

Yoast SEO offers a free plugin so you can give it a shot. But if you want access to all its goodies, Yoast SEO Premium that currently costs 89 EUR. Yoast SEO Premium gives you early access to all new features and tools. Yoast SEO Premium also gives you access to the redirect manager, an important feature that all WordPress websites should have.

Other SEO Plugins

WordPress is a competitive platform for software creators and there are also a lot of other alternatives for WordPress SEO plugins such as WP META SEO, Schema Pro, Slim SEO, Premium SEO Pack, Link Whisper and SEO Ultimate. However, I do not have to much experience with them and would recommend you stick to Squirrly SEO instead. Many people may be attracted to Premium SEO Pack, as it is the only few plugins with lifetime updates. However, I would recommend using something else than Premium SEO Pack which is being sold on CodeCanyon, a marketplace that does not have the best reputation for properly updated plugins.

Final Thought

WordPress is a great platform that has a lot of the core elements that you need for developing your website or blog to be successful. But getting your website to show up at the top of search engines can be quite challenging. And SEO is like a game. There are winners and losers where Google currently rules all. Just using keywords correctly is not enough to rank your WordPress website higher in SERPs. Instead, you should be utilizing every trick in the book to make sure that your pages get crawled quickly and sorted high in search engines. A good SEO strategy will ensure that you rank highly by being willing to work a little harder. That strategy should include installing SEO tool to your website.

SEO plugins alleviate many SEO hardships. By using it, you can easily focus on the content of your site without worries. And nowadays, there are numerous software companies that offer SEO plugins. It is important to select the best plugins for your WordPress website because they will play an essential role in determining your online success.