Wordpress is one of the most popular open source platforms people are developing on. It’s great for blogs and regular websites, making it an amazingly flexible platform. It’s easy, intuitive and it has a ton of free plugins that will allow you to address specific SEO goals. Below, I’ll mention some of the most common issues people encounter with their website or Blog SEO and provide you with my recommended list of Top 5 Wordpress plugins that will enable you to address these issues which cause a site to be poorly indexed.
Here are some common issues:
- Duplicate content
- Lack of/improper Meta tags (Title, Description, Keywords, Robots, NoYDIR, etc.)
- Lack of keyword focus in page header (H1) tag and Content
- Lack of/improper use of the Rel=”Canonical Tag”
- 301/302 Redirects
- 404 Errors
- XML Sitemaps/ Robots.txt
People often overlook how easy some of these SEO factors are to control on a WordPress-powered site. A blog has tremendous power for managing your brand and image, but a blog that isn’t very well known or at least, well optimized, has little chance of being found and read, and ultimately, shared with the masses.
Below is a list of the top 5 WordPress SEO plugins and their features. These plugins listed below are packs, and include many features that normally take multiple plugins to accomplish the level of customizability built into one of these packs. Before settling on any one of these packs, I would recommend checking to make sure the following packs are compatible with your current version of WordPress, especially if you are trying to replace an existing SEO plugin you may already have installed.
- Custom Home Description
- Custom Home Keywords
- Title Rewriter
- Categories for Meta keywords
- Noindex Manager
- Auto-generate descriptions
- Canonicalizer
- Fine tune Page Navigational Links
- Built-in API for accessibility and extendibility
- Nonce Security
- Automatically optimizes your titles
- Generates meta tags automatically
- Avoids duplicate content
- Title Rewriter
- Simplified version of All in One SEO Pack
- Title Rewriter
- Noindex Manager
- Meta Editor
- Canonicalizer
- 404 Monitor
- Linkbox Inserter
- File Editor
- Slug Optimizer
- Competition Researcher
- Link Customizer
- Internal Relevance Researcher
- Deeplink Juggernaut
- Settings Manager
- Title Rewriter
- Auto-generate meta-data
- Avoid duplicate content
- Meta Editor
- Auto 301 Redirect
- Add meta description and meta keywords tags to Categories and Tagpages
- Noindex, Nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir meta tags Manager
- Nofollow external links on front page
*(Possible compatibility issues with All in One SEO pack)
- Automatic Conflict Checker
- Title Rewriter
- Seconday Descriptions
- Paged Comments
- Avoid duplicate content
- Meta Editor
- Legacy SEO Plugin support
If you are running a WordPress blog or site and don’t currently have any SEO plug-ins, pick one and get started optimizing your WordPress site. You’ll see all of your content start to get the traction it deserves!
