Thursday, October 10th, 2013
One of the greatest benefits of the WordPress platform is the ability to include SEO functions through plugins and simple tricks.
In this article we’ll take a look at some of the best plugins that you can use on your Website.
You want to gain more visitors, don’t you?
You want more revenue and sales?
If you fail to take advantage of all the additional features available to you through WordPress, then you are going to be strangling your website.
Not sold yet?
Having a website that can’t be found is like printing off brochures and leaving them in the top drawer of your desk; absolutely useless. You need t stack the deck in your favour by using the tools that make seo easier.
Let’s take a look at some plugins that you can use to maximize your WordPress website potential.
WordPress – Source
You don’t need to use every plugin here. You should select the ones that you like the best. Some of them do similar things, others are very different in the way they help.
The Smart Links plugin provides you with the capacity to link up different keywords to specific pages within your website. This provides linkages with good anchor links to the pages in your site that you most want to target. In addition, Smart Links can automatically provide links to exact match pages by matching keywords to slugs. In this way you can interlink your site, making it better for web users and better for SEO too.
It’s really important to be able to add a customized 404 page. When visitors hit a page that has been removed it can be a pretty bad experience. By adding links to pages that are similar to the page that has disappeared, you’ll lose fewer visitors. Keeping visitors in your site is almost as important as getting them in in the first place.
Google loves to have a site map in Webmaster Tools. It helps them to know what is going on in your Website. With simple plugins in WordPress you can generate a file that is up in your Web site and can be submitted to Webmaster Tools. It can also of course be submitted to Bing webmaster tools and anywhere else you need to submit it.
The default options in WordPress provide you with good opportunities to get a lot of your SEO right. However, with Headspace 2 you are able to provide much more relevant titles, descriptions, tags… so that SEO is more effective. Moe effective SEO means more visitors; more visitors means more sales.
This plugin is a generalist, and a comprehensive SEO tool. It can do redirects, generate meta-tags, monitor for content that is duplicated both in your site and around the Web, and even automatically make your posts and titles better optimized.
This plugin allows you to add no-follow options to your anchor text, and to replace certain words in your website with others. It’s a great SEO tool, providing you with tools to customize the SEO features of your site.
This Sitemap tool allows you to customize the sitemap very significantly. You can use multi-level categories; you can order items to your preferences; you can link to blog links, too. The control panel is easy to use, and therefore you can get your sitemap up and looking great in very little time.
This system is designed for the content management system model rather than just for blogs. You can stipulate certain titles, descriptions, and keywords to be used through the CMS.
The slugs, or file name, of a WordPress site often get too long to manage easily. With SEO slugs you can automatically shorten these slugs in order to get better SEO results. Redundant words can be removed so that you have a much better slug featured in search engine results, and more effective slugs for SEO.
WP Backlinks
This tool automates the process of exchanging links with other Web sites. You are able to have a form in your sidebar from which webmasters of other sites can connect with you to trade. The plugin also has a Spider to monitor the reciprocal links so you can make sure they stay up.
Anti-Social
This tool engages with your readers in order to help them to submit your posts into sites such as Reddit and Digg. It really does encourage them to spread the word about your business or Website.
SEO Post Links
This is similar again to SEO slugs, in that it shortens the slugs, removing redundant words and ensuring that the page names are appropriate for search engine visitors and for SEO.
This plugin enables your visitors to share your post through their social presence. There are over 100 social bookmarking sites that are included in the tool. The plugin enables your motivated visitors to share content by email as well.
You can make your Web site images far more search engine friendly by incorporating titles and tags, etc. This is not just great for SEO, but also for users that have their images turned off, or who are blind and require that images are explained to them by their screen readers.
This tool is able to generate tags, optimize titles, identify and alert you about duplicate content, and much much more. It provides you with superb control over your Word Press SEO.
As well as all these plugins you should consider optimizing the size of your website pages. Google has said very clearly that they will give preference to websites that are fast loading over those that are not. Make the images as small as possible while maintaining the quality you need. Use GZip to crunch up the JavaScript and CSS.
Make the pages as light as possible and you will get a bump in the search engines.
Write For People
In this day and age the website that you develop needs to be shared in order to be successful. This can be in the form of links on other websites, or this can be in the form of Social media shares.
The way to get your content shared is to become an authority in your field, and you can only do this by producing top quality content that really speaks to visitors, and encourages them to share it. Doing 3-500 word bog standard posts isn’t really enough any more. Nowadays you should be looking at 1,500 plus word posts if you really do want to become an authority, and provide truly relevant, interesting and useful content that “works”.
Building an Audience
Content Marketing – Source
When you write quality content you need to get it in front of people. It is the size and quality of your audience that will dictate whether your content propels your business forward or not. Your audience comprises your Facebook and Twitter followers, your website visitors and any new visitors that you gain through the search engines on the posts.
To increase your social media following contact authorities in your industry. Ask them for interviews and comments for your website. They will probably end up following and re-tweeting you if they are on your site. Produce industry snapshots, summaries and commentaries. These will be well linked on other websites and well distributed through the various social media channels.
A Word of Advice – Write Quality Content
Content – Source
It is more vital than ever that you produce high quality content. Generic one screen-page blog posts will rarely make a stir. Make posts comprehensive and worthy of attention. Many bloggers will spend a whole day on their featured posts to ensure that they meet up to the required standards.
Content is King is how the adage goes. In my opinion it is far more important than that. If you can have a steady stream of top quality information going on to your site you will differentiate your business from your competitors and make an impact in the search engines and through social media. Your ripples will spread far and wide.
Any bare bones WordPress site has many SEO flaws. It is a great program, but you really do need plugins, especially if you are using free themes. Some of the top-drawer paid themes do include many of these features and this is partly what you pay for with themes like Thesis.
Adding plugins does slow down your site and it is always a trade-off between improving the visitor experience and slowing down your site server because of too many installed plugins. Make sure that your plugins are not duplicating each other and try to minimize the number that you install.
You will be amazed at how much difference you will see when you have the right plugins, and the right philosophy for your content. Take the time and effort to do things right; it is the only way you will gain the online exposure that you crave for your business.
Hey, am Uttoran Sen - the CEO and Founder of the Guest Crew Influencer Marketing Community and a full time Blogger. Follow me on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.
Account
Cool stuff mate!
Using Yoast SEO and been rather ‘happy’ with it. Do you suggest any other SEO plugin that could possibly overtake Yoast SEO?
Reginald
Hey Reginald,
thanks for your comment,
when it comes to plugins, most people have their own favorites… just use what works for you!
regards,
Uttoran Sen,
Thanks for sharing! You’ve given some really comprehensive advice that I am looking forward to using.