What is a plugin? How does it help you do SEO? And which one to choose for your WordPress site?
WordPress is among the most successful platforms for building sites.
It’s easy to use and has many themes and loads of quality plugins.
Today, we want to focus on the possibilities that WordPress offers you through its plugins, mainly to make SEO on your site easier and faster.
Table of Contents
What Is A Plugin?
A plugin is a tool that allows you to add valuable features to your site without directly intervening in the code.
Simple, isn’t it? Yet the benefits are truly remarkable.
In addition to saving time and reducing development costs, a plugin allows you to apply changes to the site while preserving the entirety of the theme and the site in general, even after the various updates, in a completely autonomous way.
While, if you intervene in the code, you should create a copy of the site, not modify the original files.
Not to mention the need to have good technical skills or a professional available.
Each website allows you to use many types of plugins based on the option you want to add.
Always try to evaluate the plugins that are useful to you and avoid installing more than necessary because:
- They can burden the site and slow it down,
- Risks that interfere with each other, creating bugs, an error in operation, and various problems.
How To Choose An SEO Plugin For WordPress?
There are four main factors to consider when choosing SEO plugins for WordPress:
- Compatibility with the platform ;
- Compatibility with the latest updates, both of the theme and WordPress;
- Possibility of updating the plugin itself, so you have to make sure it is a topical plugin;
- Consider the reviews. See which are the most voted plugins; the experience of other users will be helpful for you to understand how good that plugin is and if it can also be for you.
What Are The Best SEO Plugins For WordPress?
As you know by now, SEO is an obligatory step in the configuration, the content structure, and the site itself.
Being able to manage SEO in its entirety determines the success of your project on the web.
SEO is fundamental and does not only include the aspect of writing articles but concerns the site as a whole.
When we talk about SEO plugins for WordPress, we refer to a whole series of tools that act in a general way on the site, favoring optimization and positioning on the SERP.
We have selected the best SEO plugins for WordPress for you.
Yoast SEO
Without a doubt, this is one of the main plugins to download on your WordPress site.
It suggests and fixes every aspect of SEO optimization.
From repetitions of the keyword to titles to the presence of links to image optimization to readability, analyze every aspect of your articles.
It helps you enter the title, and the meta description warns you about the length of the sentences, the length of the paragraphs, etc.
In other words, it takes care of everything you need to write an article from an SEO perspective.
There are two versions of the plugin:
- Free: It already allows you a lot of options and aids.
- Premium: You can optimize multiple phrases and keywords; it is a support in the complete indexing of the site. It notifies you about updates to your pages and suggests internal links.
The Seo Framework
- This plugin also works for writing articles.
- It is less well-known than Yoast Seo, but it works just as well.
- Also, there is a free and a paid version in this case.
W3TotalCache
This plugin does not act directly on SEO but serves to speed up the site.
A site’s speed is one of the main elements for the user’s user experience and a good position on Google.
Therefore, from this point of view, it is a plugin that falls within the context of SEO optimization.
W3TotalCache works by eliminating caches, loading a lighter version of the site without making direct reference to the server’s contents.
EWWW Image Optimization
As the name implies, EWWW Image Optimization helps you optimize your images.
However, always try to upload light and good-quality images.
But if you ever have trouble doing that, this plugin will fix the problem for you.
Google XML Sitemaps
With XML, you can create a sitemap of the site to be linked to Google Search Console.
The sitemap is the main element of site optimization, through which you can communicate to Google the structure of your pages, your menu, and your internal and external links.
Akismet
Akismet blocks all comments revealed as spam.
It is a tool to avoid spam on the site and, therefore, Google penalties.
Look at your web project as a whole. Ask yourself what you want or need to do.
Looking at everything helps you evaluate which tools are right for you, even when it comes to plugins.
Finally, remember to combine the SEO plugins for WordPress with general SEO techniques.
Their combination will bring you more than remarkable results.