The Best WordPress Plugins for Search Engine Optimization for Your Website. You want to get your website found by potential customers, clients or patients. Or maybe you are an agency looking for the best intel on the newest options for improving your clients’ SEO. Our comprehensive, unsurpassed-in-detail plugin reviews and comparisons will ensure you make the right choice when selecting a WP SEO Plugin for your website.

Without a single doubt, WordPress SEO by Yoast is one of the best optimization plugins that have ever been produced. To rank highly in the search engines, an internet marketer using WordPress will need to configure it correctly and then find the most useful plugins that will aid him in that task. Although there are varieties to choose from, the WordPress SEO by Yoast is among the best that you will ever come across.

One of its benefits is on the Meta description and post titles. Whenever you write a post or page, you will be provided with a box to fill in the title, description and the keywords that you are targeting. To cap it all, you get to see a preview of how that text will appear to a searcher on the results pages. Another great feature that comes with this tool is the meta robots settings. This will especially come in handy when you want to leave out some of your posts and pages from being indexed by the search engines. To set it up, just go to the 'advanced' tab in the meta box where you will be provided with a list of options to adjust for each post that you publish.

In WordPress SEO, breadcrumbs come with a totally different meaning. They make it easier for visitors to navigate your blog and may also give you additional SEO benefits like providing more keywords to the search engines to rank you for. By changing the settings on your breadcrumbs title, you get the option of changing the default breadcrumb title which is always assigned to the post title.

For those who are worried about posting duplicate content on the internet, the canonical URLs feature on the WordPress SEO by Yoast will come in very handy. In this section, you specify whether a particular URL will be left blank or if it will point to a specific page. To leave it blank means that the default permalinks settings will be applied.

Whenever you are looking to change the URL of a specific page as displayed in the search engine, you should use a 301 redirect. In this plugin, this job has been simplified for you; all you do is to simply insert the right URL in the 301 redirect in the meta box.

For those not so familiar with permalinks, these are permanent URLs of the pages and posts in your site. The default permalinks setting in WordPress is not friendly and should be optimized when you are in the process of setting up your site. The WordPress SEO tool takes this a notch higher by allowing you to further optimize the permalinks. Many a time, sites that link to you do not apply clean links structures. By doing some minor edits in this plugin, you can ensure that the links to your site pages use the exact structure that you want.

As you can see, the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin is one handy tool when it comes to optimizing your site for maximum results.

Like the name suggests, this plugin is used when you are redirecting existing pages to another website. You can find this very useful if you decide to migrate from an old website or when you get a new directory for your WordPress installation. The plugin allows users to redirect to random pages or based on referrers, among other things.

WordPress is probably the most popular blogging platform used by a lot of website owners. It boasts of useful features that makes maintaining websites easy and enjoyable. Another great thing about WordPress is that it has lots of plugins that you can use for search engine optimization. Plugins are heaven-sent for non-techies who are not into hardcore programming and website development. There are lots of plugins available so it's best to choose the ones that can be beneficial for your website.

Headspace 2

This plugin is used for creating meta titles and descriptions, analytics, and customizing archives, to name a few. It is a great tool for optimizing specific pages of your website. It can be tricky to use at first but it's easy once you get used to it.

WP SEO By Yoast

This plugin is loaded with features that will surely delight any website owner. Its functions include snippets, page analysis, breadcrumbs, social integration, RSS optimization, webmaster tools verification, and xml site mapping. You will find its snippet preview function very useful because it allows you to have an idea of how your page or post will appear in search results. The plugin also has allows page analysis in which you can check the length of your posts, if your descriptions are complete, and many more. And the best thing about it? It's free. Some website owners do not find it necessary to install other plugins if they already have WP SEO By Yoast.

All-In-One SEO Pack

Also known as AIO, this plugin is one of the most popular due to its simplicity and functionality. This is a great tool for beginners who know little about tweaking websites. If you are an advanced user, you can customize using this plugin.

Of course, there's always the standard plugins that will work wonders for your website. These include:

Google XML Sitemap

This is the type of plugin that you just install one time and let it do its work on its own. It is designed to make and submit sitemaps, which allows the search engines to efficiently get more information from your website. You can use this for all types of pages generated by WordPress.

Google Site Verification

If you need to verify your website on the webmaster tools used by Google, this is the plugin for you. If you use this, you don't have to think about other means of verification. All you need to do is install and access it through your Google account.

Redirection

Like the name suggests, this plugin is used when you are redirecting existing pages to another website. You can find this very useful if you decide to migrate from an old website or when you get a new directory for your WordPress installation. The plugin allows users to redirect to random pages or based on referrers, among other things.

There are other plugins available for WordPress, some made for advanced users who want to do complex customizations on their websites. Always go with the free stuff, but don't hesitate to invest on paid plugins if you find features that will make your website more optimized.

One of its benefits is on the Meta description and post titles. Whenever you write a post or page, you will be provided with a box to fill in the title, description and the keywords that you are targeting. To cap it all, you get to see a preview of how that text will appear to a searcher on the results pages. Another great feature that comes with this tool is the meta robots settings. This will especially come in handy when you want to leave out some of your posts and pages from being indexed by the search engines. To set it up, just go to the 'advanced' tab in the meta box where you will be provided with a list of options to adjust for each post that you publish.

WordPress SEO is basically straightforward if you follow some simple rules:

1. Domain Name and Hosting

Register a domain name including your primary keyword. Alternatively you can purchase an existing domain name. There are WordPress SEO advantages to this so if you can find a suitable name at a good price it is a worthwhile step.

Get a hosting plan where there is an uptime guarantee and pages load fast. If your site gets busy use a plugin to cache the pages/posts. Slow loading will be penalized.

2. Use a theme designed for WordPress SEO

Many themes are designed with appearance in mind rather than SEO. Make sure you use a SEO friendly theme.

3. Configure WordPress for SEO purposes

Firstly set the Permalinks to postname so that the title appears in the URL. Then install one of the many WordPress SEO plugins (All In One SEO Pack is the most popular). Configure this to noindex duplicate content, set the titles to what is best for you and enter meta data (the description being the most important).

Use a plugin to generate a sitemap for the search engines.

4. Good Content

Adding good unique content on a regular basis is a key part of WordPress SEO. Search engines like to see active sites so new content as well as some editing of old content is good.

In general big sites are better than small sites for WordPress SEO purposes so plan to keep adding content on an ongoing basis.

It is best if the topic of the site is focused as the pages will help each other get ranked.

5. On Page Optimization

For each page/post the keyword should be in the URL, title, headings and at a reasonable density through the text. In particular it should be used in the first sentence.

There should always be an image and the keyword should be in the ALT field.

You should have internal links with keyword anchor text such that all your pages/posts are linked together. Outbound links are good for WordPress SEO when they are to relevant sites but don't have too many and never link to any site which engages in questionable SEO practices - it will reflect on your site.

Make sure that you do not have any broken links.

6. Off Page Optimization

This is the biggest task which will be on-going.

Your aim is to get as many backlinks as possible. However all backlinks are not equal, the best being from high authority sites using your keyword as anchor text. Links from sites on a similar topic are good as are links from.gov and.edu sites.

One way to minimize the work involved in WordPress SEO is to get on page SEO right (i.e. it is clear to the search engines what your page is about) because a link to a well optimized page is worth more than a link to a poorly optimized page.

CMS or Content Management System is an application software for creating and managing web content especially if you have a large collection of web material and images. WordPress is a Content Management System application software which can create contents, edit and control these contents and other web maintenance functions.

The features of WordPress guide the search engines through the posts, content pages and categories so that its spiders can crawl your site and have the information needed for the search engine's database. It is a Content Management System application software with several built in search engine optimization tools for optimization purposes.

After you use WordPress application themes however, you may have some tendencies to break some search engine friendly features of your contents. To maintain your site's optimal friendliness towards the search engines you have to do some SEO activities, for effective crawling by the search engines spiders.

Since the spiders can only read your contents and with no capabilities to read images, you have to optimize your contents well. Be sure you have the quality words and the proper inclusion of keywords in your contents, with not errors as much as possible and without keyword stuffing.

When you are writing your content, have your readers or customers in mind, think about the words and phrases that they will have more possibilities of searching for in the internet. If your contents are those quality ones, they will have more chances of getting categorized by the search engines and this is already good SEO for your contents.

After you have done WordPress application on your contents and the search engines enter your site, it will only read whatever is in your contents and ignore the styles and in ages contained therein. It will just gather information in your contents such that optimization should focused on whatever is contained in terms of texts and keywords.

Have your WordPress themes created in such a way that the contents are placed near the top of the page and have the other things or images near the bottom. The spiders can effectively crawl your contents through this way and give better SEO to your WordPress contents.

Since the search engines do not evaluate your site based on its appearance but more on the words contained therein, having done the SEO efforts on your contents you have already attained your goal of doing SEO. Having the WordPress application, you have created an attractive and pretty website while being with optimized contents.

Thus, you have attained your goal of having a well optimized website to give you better rankings. And with the WordPress application you have made your website really attractive.

For those who are worried about posting duplicate content on the internet, the canonical URLs feature on the WordPress SEO by Yoast will come in very handy. In this section, you specify whether a particular URL will be left blank or if it will point to a specific page. To leave it blank means that the default permalinks settings will be applied.

WordPress is probably the most popular blogging platform used by a lot of website owners. It boasts of useful features that makes maintaining websites easy and enjoyable. Another great thing about WordPress is that it has lots of plugins that you can use for search engine optimization. Plugins are heaven-sent for non-techies who are not into hardcore programming and website development. There are lots of plugins available so it's best to choose the ones that can be beneficial for your website.

Headspace 2

This plugin is used for creating meta titles and descriptions, analytics, and customizing archives, to name a few. It is a great tool for optimizing specific pages of your website. It can be tricky to use at first but it's easy once you get used to it.

WP SEO By Yoast

This plugin is loaded with features that will surely delight any website owner. Its functions include snippets, page analysis, breadcrumbs, social integration, RSS optimization, webmaster tools verification, and xml site mapping. You will find its snippet preview function very useful because it allows you to have an idea of how your page or post will appear in search results. The plugin also has allows page analysis in which you can check the length of your posts, if your descriptions are complete, and many more. And the best thing about it? It's free. Some website owners do not find it necessary to install other plugins if they already have WP SEO By Yoast.

All-In-One SEO Pack

Also known as AIO, this plugin is one of the most popular due to its simplicity and functionality. This is a great tool for beginners who know little about tweaking websites. If you are an advanced user, you can customize using this plugin.

Of course, there's always the standard plugins that will work wonders for your website. These include:

Google XML Sitemap

This is the type of plugin that you just install one time and let it do its work on its own. It is designed to make and submit sitemaps, which allows the search engines to efficiently get more information from your website. You can use this for all types of pages generated by WordPress.

Google Site Verification

If you need to verify your website on the webmaster tools used by Google, this is the plugin for you. If you use this, you don't have to think about other means of verification. All you need to do is install and access it through your Google account.

Redirection

Like the name suggests, this plugin is used when you are redirecting existing pages to another website. You can find this very useful if you decide to migrate from an old website or when you get a new directory for your WordPress installation. The plugin allows users to redirect to random pages or based on referrers, among other things.

There are other plugins available for WordPress, some made for advanced users who want to do complex customizations on their websites. Always go with the free stuff, but don't hesitate to invest on paid plugins if you find features that will make your website more optimized.

In WordPress SEO, breadcrumbs come with a totally different meaning. They make it easier for visitors to navigate your blog and may also give you additional SEO benefits like providing more keywords to the search engines to rank you for. By changing the settings on your breadcrumbs title, you get the option of changing the default breadcrumb title which is always assigned to the post title.

Without a single doubt, WordPress SEO by Yoast is one of the best optimization plugins that have ever been produced. To rank highly in the search engines, an internet marketer using WordPress will need to configure it correctly and then find the most useful plugins that will aid him in that task. Although there are varieties to choose from, the WordPress SEO by Yoast is among the best that you will ever come across.

One of its benefits is on the Meta description and post titles. Whenever you write a post or page, you will be provided with a box to fill in the title, description and the keywords that you are targeting. To cap it all, you get to see a preview of how that text will appear to a searcher on the results pages. Another great feature that comes with this tool is the meta robots settings. This will especially come in handy when you want to leave out some of your posts and pages from being indexed by the search engines. To set it up, just go to the 'advanced' tab in the meta box where you will be provided with a list of options to adjust for each post that you publish.

In WordPress SEO, breadcrumbs come with a totally different meaning. They make it easier for visitors to navigate your blog and may also give you additional SEO benefits like providing more keywords to the search engines to rank you for. By changing the settings on your breadcrumbs title, you get the option of changing the default breadcrumb title which is always assigned to the post title.

For those who are worried about posting duplicate content on the internet, the canonical URLs feature on the WordPress SEO by Yoast will come in very handy. In this section, you specify whether a particular URL will be left blank or if it will point to a specific page. To leave it blank means that the default permalinks settings will be applied.

Whenever you are looking to change the URL of a specific page as displayed in the search engine, you should use a 301 redirect. In this plugin, this job has been simplified for you; all you do is to simply insert the right URL in the 301 redirect in the meta box.

For those not so familiar with permalinks, these are permanent URLs of the pages and posts in your site. The default permalinks setting in WordPress is not friendly and should be optimized when you are in the process of setting up your site. The WordPress SEO tool takes this a notch higher by allowing you to further optimize the permalinks. Many a time, sites that link to you do not apply clean links structures. By doing some minor edits in this plugin, you can ensure that the links to your site pages use the exact structure that you want.

As you can see, the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin is one handy tool when it comes to optimizing your site for maximum results.