In the latest post, we talked about how to write your first blog post in WordPress. So, you know exactly the basics to create good content without problems. Today, I’ll show you the best WordPress plugins for SEO, this will optimize your posts and images for search engines and visitors.
Before everything, please note that SEO plugins are can’t guarantee better results without content. You need to create helpful posts first, then, optimize them with some tips, and never kill yourself with plugins and settings. Even, without an SEO plugin, you can still get a good ranking, but, the plugin will really help you more.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
I’ve tested and used many plugins, but this one is the only SEO plugin that you should install. It suggests some good tips and settings get indexed fast with a better search engine ranking. WordPress SEO by Yoast is a professional plugin without so-called “secrets”. It includes all the SEO functions that any blogger needs.
The best thing about this tool is that you don’t need any additional XML plugin, it generates the best XML sitemap for your blog in the Google norms. It works automatically when you publish a new post.
You can also add your Facebook and Twitter profiles to automatically display a description for your blog and make your Facebook shares friendly.
One of the biggest problems with new blogs is to verify a blog with Google authorship. All you have to do is adding your Google page URL to the plugin social area.
To verify your blog with Google webmaster tools, you just need to add your meta tag in the appropriate box, Bing and Alexa verification are also available. Insert and save your codes for automatic and fast verification.
You can find lots of commercial SEO plugins, but they never add a real value like the WordPress SEO.
Another good thing, you can customize your home page title and description, index, or not index pages, and more advanced options.
When installing this plugin for the first time, you will notice its importance and great features compared to others. It gives you important tips to optimize your posts, but, please never focus on Keyword density and other settings. They’re just suggestions, and believe it or not, even with the lowest keyword density, you can rank better than your competitors.
The keyword density is no longer a thing that Google uses, it becomes used by spammers and that’s why you need to forget it completely.
You get suggestions and not orders, you don’t need to have all green signals to publish your blog post, just focus on internal linking. Link to relevant posts to add value and link to external posts also to give your readers even more information as possible. Of course, you need to link to trusted sources.
The installation takes a few seconds, just add “WordPress SEO by Yoast to your plugin search box, or directly download it from the WordPress plugin directory. Then activate it and edit your titles, Meta, and other settings, including, adding your social network profiles.
As you can see, this is the best WordPress plugin for SEO. It optimizes your blog posts with useful recommendations and tips, generates an automatic XML sitemap to tell search engines about every update on your blog and posts.
Please note, there are other commercial plugins that you can purchase for dollars. I can add their links and make commissions with them, but, I never recommend their plugins, they turned SEO into spamming and encourage bloggers to make big mistakes sometimes. So I never want to tell you about something you don’t need.
So, install this free and professional plugin and start optimizing your blog posts for Google, and get indexed and ranked. If you need to know who is using this plugin among popular websites and blogs, then, Mashable is one of those.
I’ve found a good article by the plugin creator itself, Joost de Valk explained and added great tips on how to configure the WordPress SEO plugin and make it search engine friendly.
