SEO is vital if you want to have a successful blog. WordPress SEO plugins are great tools for that. Even if you don’t know anything about SEO, these plugins will do the job.
There are a couple of SEO rules you should follow and SEO plugins will tell you everything you have done right or wrong. So, it is a must-have plugin for every blog.
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How WordPress SEO Plugins Work
An SEO plugin is a tool that helps you to make WordPress websites optimized for Google. It has many features and fully optimizes your website. This makes WordPress one of the best website-building tools.
First, the SEO plugin creates a sitemap for your website. Google needs a sitemap to crawl and understand your website’s structure. You can choose what to include in your sitemap.
Next, you can create default meta tags for titles and descriptions with a plugin. It allows you to customize how your pages look on SERP. You can also set open graphs which means how your shared post will look on social media.
Also Read: Top 7 SEO Tools
With these plugins, you can also customize links behavior. You can set external links to nofollow or dofollow, open them in a new tab, and more. And some plugins allow you Google Analytics and Search Console implementation.
And finally, it helps you to optimize pages and posts for SEO. It shows what you need to do for SEO optimizations – add keywords, alt texts, how many words are in the post, how your titles are optimized, and much more.
So, SEO plugins are fully featured tools for technical and on-page SEO. They are highly recommended for every website.
Top SEO Plugins
There are several good SEO plugins that can do the job. But some of them stand out for their features. Most of these plugins are free to use and offer more advanced features in premium versions.
Let’s dive in and find out the best plugins that can help you to optimize websites for SEO.
1. RankMath
RankMath is the best and my favorite SEO plugin. It is so powerful that its free version is like a pro version. It offers so many options and features that it’s hard to count. I highly recommend it to everyone.
It has all the features for title and meta, sitemaps, open graphs, and more. You can insert Google Analytics and Search Console in it. Other amazing features include support for AMP, ACF, link counter, image SEO, WooCommerce SEO, redirections, and more.
And the post SEO editing is so easy. It shows keyword density, images alt texts, how many words the post has, how your title and meta tags are optimized, and much more. RankMath has almost unlimited capabilities.
2. SmartCrawl
Another great plugin for SEO is SmartCrawl. Although it is a powerful plugin, it is not as popular as others. It has some unique features others don’t have. I used it before switched to RankMath.
SmartCrawl checks your website and gives it an SEO score. Tells you what pages or posts have to be improved. Allows you to configure title and meta for search engines and also you can tweak open graphs. You can fully customize your posts for search engines and social media.
You can configure your websites’ schema markup and create and add a sitemap of your website to Google. Also, it has a redirection feature and you don’t have to install a separate plugin for that.
And another great thing about this plugin is that not only it shows what has to be improved in your post, but also analyzes the post and gives you a readability score. Really cool plugin with awesome features.
3. Yoast
Yoast doesn’t need an introduction. Actually, there is no best SEO plugins list without it. It is the most popular one. And powerful too. Has great features and is very easy to use.
Its features include SEO & readability analysis, link count, sitemaps, SEMrush integration, etc. Allows you to configure title, meta, archives. You can add your social accounts to it.
For posts, it has standard suggestions like if you lack internal or external links, keyword usage, word count, image alt attributes, etc. Also, has a readability checker which is a great bonus.
4. All In One SEO
All In One SEO is another great plugin. Also a well-known plugin with good features. Perhaps not as popular as Yoast but many websites use it.
It offers standard options like global settings, content types, social, sitemaps, etc. Also, you can analyze your and competitor websites for SEO. Has tools for robots.txt, .htaccess, database, etc.
Post editing is a standard process. You can modify the title, meta, add keywords. But this plugin doesn’t have many features that other SEO plugins have. It is limited in my opinion.
Also, many features are in the pro version where other plugins offer it for free. They should improve and make some features free. A free version of RankMath is like a pro version when you compare them side by side.
Conclusion
So, SEO plugins are must-have tools. With them, your job as an SEO specialist will become easier. Install one of these plugins and use all the good features of it. But remember, the most important is the content. Plugins won’t help if you have bad content.
Try to write original and good content. With the help of these plugins, make sure your posts meet the basic SEO requirements and you will be fine. Do not try to trick Google.
