Essential SEO Plugins for WordPress
WordPress is one of the most frequently used content management systems worldwide. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the free application to individual configuration options and intuitive user guidance. A further strength, resulting from the individual design via plugins and themes, can be seen in search engine optimization. With the right plugins you can optimize your WordPress, no matter if it is a compact site or your own blog, so lastingly that hopefully soon improvements in the positioning on Google and Co can be noticed. A selection of the most important SEO plugins for WordPress can be found below.
Yoast - the all-rounder for effective WordPress SEO
Under the name "Yoast" you will find a compilation of different modules and plugins, which all have the same goal: to optimize a page/blog for search engines. In order to achieve this, the modules and plugins take over some automation processes, but also give the operator of the site important advice on what to look out for, where improvements are necessary and how they should look in case of doubt. The "Yoast" compilation is available either as a free version or as a premium version directly from the company of the same name. The latter is primarily aimed at experts who want to go one step further and also need direct support. But newcomers to the Pro version also get an incentive: comprehensive tutorial videos for every single plugin of Yoast. For most users, however, the free version, which uses the identical modules and plugins, will be absolutely sufficient.
The "Post titles and meta descriptions" module supports you in selecting titles and setting suitable meta descriptions. Even while you are defining them, the plugin highlights weaknesses, marks them and also provides a real-time preview of how the description will look later in the Google SERPs. The module monitors the use of keywords in the appropriate places and the length of both meta descriptions. This way you can prevent your Title or Description from appearing shortened in the search results. This not only looks "neater", but also has a positive effect on the rating of the website off. The module for titles and descriptions is now available in many common languages, including German.
With the "Robots meta configuration" you can configure the robots.txt of your site in a compact format and in a clearly arranged form. The robots.txt determines which of your subpages may be crawled, excludes some specific pages and is also used to exclude certain crawlers from the website. The robots.txt is therefore elementary if you prefer not to see some of your pages in the Google index - this may be due to duplicate content or old information that should therefore no longer be indexed. With the plugin, you don't have to work in the .txt file itself and know the necessary commands, but can easily set everything via check marks and selection options. The settings can be adjusted individually for each page. Also Breadcrumbs Titles and Canonical Tags (for original pages that used unique content for the first time) can be adjusted.
Also worth mentioning in the Yoast compilation are the module for the clean-up of permalinks and the "RSS enhancements" plugin. The latter allows the placement of a footer at RSS feeds, which allows a small preview within the RSS feed. These teasers are supposed to improve the opening rate and can of course also be used to place certain keywords already visible in the preview. With the help of the plugin, links, for example back to the WordPress blog, can also be placed in the footers. With the "Permalink clean up" plugin you get a fully automated support that helps to clean up permalinks. It brings them into the desired structure and removes excess URL components.
As an all-round SEO tool, Yoast is therefore highly recommended for WordPress users. The diverse composition covers at least the SEO foundation of your own WordPress page completely and can be used easily and intuitively, also thanks to many automations.
SEO-oriented image optimization in WordPress
pictures and graphics are an important part of every website and blog. Two plugins support the webmaster in optimizing the images, on the one hand in the background and on the other hand actively on the basis of the file itself. With the plugin WP Smush.it you can efficiently and automatically reduce the size of images. This reduces loading times and improves user experience, especially on mobile devices. The downsizing is done automatically right after the upload, if desired. The plugin also shows how much the selected file has been reduced in size. The plugin "SEO Friendly Images" can be used to optimize the embedded images. This module automatically adds predefined title and alt tags to embedded images. This is especially helpful when different authors maintain the WordPress CMS and some of them are not extensively trained in SEO. Instead of doing without the tags completely, the plugin simply integrates them automatically.
Include link monitoring and related posts
Especially with blogs based on WordPress, related posts are a well-known and frequently used instrument to achieve an intensively interwoven internal linking and at the same time guide the reader step by step through the site and related content. With the YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) plugin, articles related to the individual articles are automatically searched for, for example by tags and the content of the article. These can then be summarized and linked under the article, for example in a bar of 4 posts. This creates an internal link, in which the "linkjuice" is guided through the page in its entirety. Alternatives to YARPP exist as well, but this plugin is probably the most used of its kind.
To make sure that all links work properly, it is worth using the "Broken Link Checker" plugin, which checks all contents of a WordPress page for dead links (404s). As soon as the plugin finds a dead link that no longer exists, it informs the operator, who can then check it manually and delete the link if necessary. From an SEO point of view, this process is particularly important, because links that result in a 404 error often lead to a lower rating of the page - because the page is then perceived as "unmaintained" and "faulty". Regularly checking all content and links for 404 errors is therefore advisable and can prevent penalties.
