With the thousands of WordPress plugins available it is tough to know which are the best ones for SEO. There are the obvious SEO plugins you should already be using, such as Yoast or the All in One SEO Pack, then there are the not-so-obvious plugins that can help boost your site’s SEO even more. Below are 5 WordPress plugins you should download right now. Good News: they are all free.
Broken Link Checker
Broken links on your website have a negative effect on SEO. Search engines rank websites by crawling links and when there are multiple dead links within your site it can result in spiders no longer crawling the site. Not Found (404 errors) also cause poor user experience, which can hurt your site’s rankings. Broken Link Checker is a great tool that monitors your entire website searching for broken links. It can alert you via email or on the WordPress dashboard whenever a broken link is found.
Redirection
Speaking of broken links, you’ll need a plugin that can help redirect your 404 errors to the new appropriate pages. The Redirection plugin easily allows you to monitor all your 404 errors and 301 redirects. Whether you are migrating from an old website or just need to redirect one page, the Redirection plugin is the one plugin you’ll be sure to need.
Internal Link Building
Internal linking is extremely beneficial for your website’s SEO, however there are certain rules to follow if you want to get results. Creating internal links within your site helps tell Google which other pages on your website are important. It also helps provide site users with further reading options and information. Internal linking can also help improve rankings for certain keywords if used correctly. The Internal Link Building plugin easily allows you to link to blog posts and pages on your site by letting you assign keywords given to specific destination URLs.
Google XML Sitemap
Creating a sitemap for your website is another important tool for SEO because it outlines the structure of your website for search engines. A sitemap lists all the pages within your site that you want search engines to crawl and index. Therefore, whenever content is changed or updates are made to the site, a sitemap alerts Google and other search engines more quickly to be indexed faster. The Yoast SEO plugin and All in One SEO Pack already have a built-in sitemap feature, but if you aren’t using either of these, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin is another great option. All you have to do is activate the plugin and then register your sitemap with Google Webmaster Tools. Once you have successfully submitted your sitemap, crawlers can easily see the complete structure of your site.
All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets
Rich snippets are becoming more popular in search results every day. If you aren’t familiar with what a rich snippet is, it is a search result that displays a short summary of the most important and precise information a user is looking for. They typically attract more users’ attention because they are displayed as a larger result and provide information right away. Recipes, products, restaurants, events, businesses, and more can all be shown as a rich snippet and contain interactive elements such as ratings, price, photos, and more. The All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin can help your website rank higher as a rich snippet.
All of the above plugins are a great way to help improve your site’s SEO. However, there are many more plugins and tools available that you can use to reach your goals. Learn about other free SEO tools to increase traffic to your WordPress site, or if you have a favorite WordPress plugin let us know in the comments.
Source: Netvantage Marketing