WordPress is now one of the best blogging platforms, and the new adopters continue to jump onboard. There is no other blogging application that has found so many businesses willing to advocate it, and recommend it. The reason is quite simply that it is so easy to use, has a great interface, works very well for SEO and is very easy to customize. Besides this, there are now hundreds of plugins that can be used with wordpress. Here are 5 of the very best:
All In One SEO Pack
A very popular plugin, used by many Internet marketers. It's recommended for all new installations of WordPress.
It lets you customize your Meta HTML, even if you dont know anything about code. You'll be able to change your title, image tags description, keywords and Meta tags.
- Get it here
- Use it to the max: Getting the Most Out of All-in-One SEO Pack WordPress Plugin
Google XML Sitemaps
A great plugin in order to have your website indexed with Google and the other search engines.
It will help to speed up your chances of being indexed and will share the page rank amongst your pages.
- Get it here
CBnet Ping Optimizer
Deals with the frequency of pings that are sent for your new blog posts. From the site:
"Even the latest version of WordPress has this problem.
Do you know your WordPress blog pings unnecessarily every time you edit a post? Think how many times you click on "Save and Continue Editing" or "Save" button. Your blog will ping unnecessarily that many times you click on those buttons.
Save your blog from getting tagged as ping spammer by installing this plugin."
-- Ping Optimizer
- Get it here
SEO Smart Links
Great plugin to automatically create links on your website.
- Get it here
- Use it to the max: Automatic Interlinking with SEO Smart Links
WP Super Cache
Caches your generated pages in order to speed up your website. Drastically reduces load time; given Google's increased and ongoing emphasis on speed that's really good.
- Get it here
- Use it to the max: How to Install and Setup WP Super Cache for Beginners
Let be the first of doubtlessly many commenters to extol the virtues of the Yoast SEO Plugin:
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
Not only has it, for some time, supplanted All-In-One as the SEO plugin of choice for search marketers, but it obviates the need for the Google XML Sitemaps as sitemap functionality is built in (and produces better quality sitemaps because you’re not using two plugins – AIO and Sitemaps – that don’t talk to one another).
And to boot, Yoast has just added a Google News sitemap module for the SEO plugin.
Thanks for listing Ping Optimizer, though – I wasn’t aware of this interesting-looking plugin.
Aaron, I agree with you regarding Yoast’s plgin. It is great.
I used All In One SEO in the past buy it was too heavy and redundant. The one from Yoast is much better.
I’m still having problems with my SEO plugins. I use Yoast SEO’s plugin, and I used to use the All in One SEO Pack, but both are a little buggy on my site for the META tags. Also – Smart Links has a few problems, such as not showing up in the RSS feed. I used to use it, but it has had to many problems for me.
I will say I’ve never heard of the ping optimizer plugin above. I’m installing that asap, thanks for the tip.
Hey Jon,
if both plugins are buggy, chances are it’s your theme and not the plugins that are actually buggy…
I total agree Aaron,the Yoast plugin solves most seo issues in one plugin. The only thing I don’t like is that the updates have reset the category settings earlier for me. But its probably better now..
It wasn’t called a beta until 1.0 for no reason 😉
Pat, thanks for sharing the plugins! I’d have to agree with Aaron. I love the plugin by Yoast because it includes all key elements and is simple to use at the same time. After all, the plugin is written by a person ranking #1 for WordPress SEO.
It’s all about the Yoast WordPress plugin. I used All-in-one for many years and just moved away from it on the latest versions of Yoast WordPress. Yoast can handle the work of at least 6 top SEO plugins and can do everything from titles, indexing, breadcrumbs, sitemap generation, and other admin settings. You can forget about the first two if you use Yoast and I personally have it running on blogs that generate millions of pageviews. However, don’t try to use all-in-one and Yoast together, it will create some problems so use one or the other, but I recommend Yoast.
Hi Pat, Kevin Stacey here…
For optimization, free plugins like Platinum SEO, All in One SEO Pack, WordPress SEO by Yoast and even the premium seo plugins are all great,
but everyone is different and nothing works best for everyone.
I always suggest looking at a side-by-side comparison of the best seo plugins for WordPress in order to make an informed decision of what the best plugin is for that blogger and their website’s specific needs.
Here’s my most recent write-up on the subject:
SEO Pressor vs Easy WP SEO vs Scribe SEO
http://www.bestseopluginforwordpress.com/wordpress-seo/the-best-seo-plugin-for-wordpress/
You also don’t want to overload/bog down WordPress resources with too many bulky plugins as well.
Great article btw…I’ll be referencing this post on my main blog.
With the excellent features of All in one SEO pack and Yoast SEO Plugin am tempted to ask if they can be used together.Can they be used together? if used together what are the risks?
WordPress is one of the best CMS to build websites, and is practically optimized for search engines, and some plugin we can position ourselves very quickly in the first place. A very good plugin for SEO is All in One SEO Pack, this plugin for me is one of the most important gap is much more like the ones listed here but if we want to position quickly I think one of the best is All in One Seo Pack with SEOMetrico which is very good.
Well I bid you all are well
I personally prefer to use minimum number of plugins and use Thesis theme for most of my websites which gives me much finer control on each post and page level. In case I have to use a plugin i will go with Yoast SEO or All in One SEO