WordPress is one of the leading content management systems in the market and it is used by millions of web developers to create websites and blogs. Developing a website is easy, but optimizing it for the search engines is a different matter altogether. It is not possible for every businessman to hire an SEO company for optimizing his website. The good news is WordPress offers plenty of SEO plug-ins that can be used for making your website search engine friendly. Let’s take a look at the top 5 SEO plug-ins for WordPress.
Yoast SEO: It is the most downloaded SEO plug-in in the WordPress plug-in library. The best thing about Yoast SEO is you don’t need to be an expert coder to manipulate its features. It basically walks you through various crucial SEO elements such as keyword usage, Meta descriptions, and titles. It features sitemaps, Open Graph Metadata, and even the XML sitemap functionality.
LinkPatrol: Link building is essential for website optimization, but the quality of the links matters more than quantity. You have to make sure that every link has a purpose and comes from or points to an authoritative source. Link spamming is a menace of the SEO world and it must be nipped in the bud. This paid plug-in allows you to monitor all the outgoing links on your website. It marks the poor quality links and gives you the flexibility to remove spammy links.
WPtouch Mobile Plug-in: Millions of people surf websites from smartphones and tablets these days. Your website must be mobile friendly because Google prefers such websites. If you can’t afford a web developer to build a responsive website, then this is the best plug-in for you. It gives you plenty of tools to customize the appearance of your website on handheld devices without affecting the core coding structure. Also, it does not alter the UI of the desktop version.
Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in: The longer people stay on your website, the better it is for your business. This particular plug-in is very useful for displaying posts and pages related to the current content people are watching on your website. You can choose how the related content will be displayed and how many articles will be displayed. As people move from one page to another to check the related content and get engaged, the bounce rate decreases significantly.
Google XML Sitemaps: Google must be able to index your website properly to understand what the website is all about and decide its rank on the SERP. In order to help Google scan your website effortlessly, you must have a sitemap. This plug-in generates a sitemap automatically as soon as you publish a new content. Therefore, as you keep updating your web pages, the sitemap gets updated too.
Conclusion
While all these plug-ins are beneficial in terms of SEO, in the long run, you will need the help of an SEO company for complete on-page and off-page website optimization. Select an SEO firm based on their reputation in the market and let them do their magic!