Although I am not an SEO expert, I have been actively playing around with different SEO plugins for WordPress over the past years so that I can improve Socialable’s SEO by myself. Search engine optimization is definitely not an easy job, but there are lots of tools and plugins that can help even the most inexperienced website owners and bloggers. Some of them will automatically do your job for you, while others are more advanced and require some settings, but also provide the necessary information that you need in order to understand what you should be doing. And fortunately, there are many free options that you can choose from while experimenting with SEO plugins for WordPress. Here are some of the best SEO tools and plugins available:
SEO Plugins for WordPress
The All in One SEO plugin for WordPress is the perfect tool for SEO beginners. The plugin automatically optimizes your blog for search engines, so if you are a beginner you won’t even need to play with the settings to get it working – all you need to do is install and activate it! However, if you are more of an advanced user, than you can make any settings you want to the plugin.
WordPress SEO by Yoast is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. It’s a bit more complex that the All in One SEO Pack, but it is still quite easy to use, even for a beginner. It will help you write better, more optimized content for your website, by forcing you to choose a focus keyword for each of your articles. What makes this the best WordPress SEO plugin is that it provides lots of explanations throughout each step, so it’s very easy to learn.
3. SEO Ultimate
SEO Ultimate is another all-in-one SEO plugin for WordPress. It literally has hundreds of features and gives you control over all your SEO needs. The features include: title tag rewriter, Open Graph integrator, author highlighter, 404 monitor, and many others. And the best part, the plugin is completely free!
Images are able to keep visitors for longer on websites, but why not also use them to also get more traffic? This useful plugin automatically adds alt and title attributes to each one of your images, thus helping improve your search engine traffic making it one of the more useful WordPress plugins SEO.
XML Sitemaps help search engines to index your blog better. Google XML Sitemaps is probably the best SEO WordPress plugin for the job – it will generate a sitemap that will help Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Ask.com better index your blog. As a plus, Google XML Sitemaps will also notify search engines whenever you create a post about the new content.
W3 Total Cache is one of the best SEO plugin WordPress; it will improve your server performance, reduce download times on your website and provide transparent content delivery integration. When it comes to SEO, your website’s speed is one of the factors taken into consideration, so all the more reason to make sure your website is as fast as it can be.
Category SEO Meta Tags was specifically designed to work with the All in One SEO plugin that I mentioned earlier. This plugin will allow you to add meta tags for categories, tag pages and custom taxonomies.
8. Google XML Sitemap for Images
Google XML Sitemap for Images is another plugin to help you get more traffic from your website’s images. The plugin will generate an XML Sitemap with all the image URLs that are attached to your WordPress website.
9. Google XML Sitemap for Videos
The Google XML Sitemap for Videos plugin works exactly like the plugin for Images, just for YouTube videos. Useful especially if you have lots of videos on your WordPress website.
10. Google XML Sitemap for Mobile
This plugin will generate an XML Mobile Sitemap for your blog – however, if you are already using a responsive web design for your website, then you will not need this plugin.
With SEO Data Transporter you will be able to transfer all your inputs SEO data between two different themes or plugins. It’s very quick and easy to use, and definitely makes the job much easier.
Obsessed by your Google rankings? Then this plugin might be just what you need – you can use it to track your Google ranking every three days and then report the data in a graph. You will also be able to see how the traffic flow changes in response to your Google ranking changes and every time there is a major rank change, you will be immediately notified by email.
13. SEO Smart LInks
SEO Smart Links has lots of automatic SEO benefits, such as keyword lists and nofollow. It can also automatically link keywords and phrases for your blog posts and comments to the corresponding posts, categories and tags from your blog. It’s a great tool that will help you get your blog posts interlinked.
SEO Tools
14. Scribe
Scribe is the perfect companion to any content marketing strategy. First of all, it will show you how your audience ‘talks’ on social networks and it will give you the best topics keyword phrases for you to use. Once you’ve written your content, Scribe will show you exactly how it should be tweaked to improve your search engine ranking and will also help you crosslink your content. Another very useful feature is that it will help you identify websites where you can guest blog, strategic alliances, link building opportunities as well as social media users that will want to share your content with their friends and followers.
15. Moz
16. Woorank
This very useful tool will show you exactly what you’re doing wrong and right on your website. What I like about it the most is that it’s very easy to use and understand even if you’re not an expert. Woorank also gives you recommendations on what your top priorities for your website should be. The great think about Woorank is that it shows you exactly what’s good and exactly what isn’t – and attempts to help you solve those problems.
17. BuzzStream for Link Building
BuzzStream for Link Building will help your link building by taking most out of the work out of it. It’s a very useful tool, as the more links you have the better your search engine rankings will be.
18. Google Adwords Keyword Tool
The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is an incredibly useful tool that is free to use for all Google account holders. I recommend using it before writing any new content for your website. You can easily do keyword research by searching for keywords and seeing what language your audience uses to search. The best part is that you will get lots of ideas for new keywords that you might not have thought about and you will know exactly what keywords and keyword phrases you should use to improve your writing and optimize it better for search engines. You can also see what the competition is for each keyword and keyword phrases.
19. PageRank Status
PageRank Status is a SEO extension for the Google Chrome browser. It will show you your Google PageRank as well as AlexRank, Compete Rank and Quantcast Rank of the current web page. You will also get information on backlinks, indexed and cached pages, Geo IP location and much more.
20. Raven Tools
The Raven Tools SEO software provides you with all the necessary SEO tools: keyword research, link building tools and Google integrations with Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adwords. You can start trying it out with their free 30-day trial option.
Advanced Web Ranking is one of the top SEO software out there. You can use it for rank tracking (as well as competitor monitoring) and for detailed and branded SEO reports. You can also monitor an unlimited number of keywords and analyze your competition thoroughly.
22. Analytics SEO
Analytics SEO is a very powerful SEO tool for professional SEOs and web marketers. It’s especially useful for those who have multiple websites and SEO projects and it will provide you with insightful SEO reports, daily auditing, keyword research, keyword ranking data and automated link prospects.
23. WebCeo
WebCeo offer an array of useful SEO tools for both individuals and for teamwork. You will get powerful SEO reports and you can use it for keyword research and for competitor analysis, as well as for tracking your performance across global and local search engines. As I mentioned earlier, WebCeo can also be used for collaborations within a SEO team and you can also email SEO reports to your customers that you can customize with your logo and footer.
24. TrafficTravis
TrafficTravis is a free SEO tool that is very easy to use even for beginners. You can use it to perform a full SEO check on any website you want and see exactly where you’re standing in terms of ranking, but also what mistakes you are making that might be affecting your rankings. You will also be able to see what your competitors are doing in terms of SEO and why they are outranking you, so you can ultimately outrank them. You can also use TrafficTravis to monitor your keyword rankings and find link partners so that you can build more quality backlinks.
25. HubSpot Keyword Grader SEO Tool
You can use the HubSpot Keyword Grader Tool to see and track the keywords you rank for, find out what the best keywords are for your website, as well as track and monitor your competitions’ keywords. Their software can also be used to attribute visits and leads to a specific keywords and therefore be able to track the ROI.
What SEO tools and plugins are you using for your search engine optimization efforts? Which ones do you think are the best and most useful?
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