SEO (or search engine optimisation) helps your website communicate clearly with search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. While modern search engines can “read” your website more easily than in the past, using additional tools to clearly define what your website content is about will help you climb up the rankings. This involves a number of factors including (but not limited to) keywords, links in your website, links to your website, media content and the often forgotten sitemap.
Below is a list of the best WordPress plugins on the market to cover all your on-site SEO needs. With all of these WordPress plugins available absolutely free, you can start to dramatically improve how your website content is indexed by the search engines.
All in One SEO Pack
This is one of the most popular SEO plugins for wordpress because it does what the name suggests. If you want to add a solid base for your SEO then the All in One plugin lets you add keywords, description and other metadata on each post and page. This is a hassle free set-up, as a new dialogue box is simply added underneath your existing or new post where you can add your relevant SEO information.
This is a really easy plugin to install and configure because it also allows you to optimise your home page with its own description, title and keywords. Remember, this plugin isn’t automated when it comes to your existing posts so you will have to take some time to go back and fill in title, description and keyword boxes. You will also have to get into the habit of adding this information for any new posts or pages you create.
WordPress SEO by YOAST
While this plugin is quite similar to All in One SEO, it does differ a little in terms of functionality. The best feature is the guidance that the plugin gives you in terms of your selected keyword. All of your posts will be given a colour coded ranking in relation to how effective it thinks your keyword placement is within your title, content, as well as subheadings. Not only will it help you to improve your SEO but it will also help teach a novice the basics of SEO by providing you with more information.
SEO Friendly Images
Images are often forgotten when it comes to optimising website pages for search engines. This plugin will help you automatically add ALT (description) and TITLE tags to your images which help search engines index your content in the same way it does for your pages. If you have not added a description for your images the plugin can also help you do that. This is an essential tool that will add that little bit of extra search engine relevance to your content as long as you are using appropriate images that relate back to the focus of your content.
Google Sitemap
A sitemap is essential if you want to submit your website to Google and other search engines correctly. Basically, this plugin creates a “map” of all of your content which is then provided to the automated bots that search engines send to your site. This means your website will be indexed faster and also gives you the option to leave certain pages out of your sitemap so they are not indexed.
Wrap Up
Your SEO shouldn’t be an afterthought for your website and adding these plugins to your site will help you focus on attaining better traffic from the search engines. While they may take a little more work on an existing site, they will certainly make a difference as to how search engines view your website.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Our Favourite SEO WordPress Plugins
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