When optimized correctly, WordPress performs really well when it comes to SEO and search engine results page (SERP) rankings. Out of the box, however, WordPress has a ton of duplicate content problems. For instance, if you’re not using excerpts on the home, tags, categories pages and you are displaying the entire post, that post is being shown not only on the homepage but also on the category, tags, and archives pages too. Google and other major search engines don’t think too highly of that and your search rankings will therefore suffer. Not to worry there are plenty of WP SEO plugins available to help you optimize your WP blog. Below are all the plugins, that I am aware of, that are aimed at improving WordPress SEO. Commercial versions of some of these and other plugins can be found in our list of premium WordPress plugins.
SEO Slugs – This takes out commonly used filler words in post’s slug such as: and, of, the, with, in, etc. to improve search engine optimization (SEO)
All in One SEO Pack – Most popular and most widely used SEO plugin for WordPress that lets you create titles and meta keywords and descriptions for each post/page
Platinum SEO Pack – Does almost everything All in One SEO Pack does and then some. It provides automatic 301 redirects for any permalink changes and permits you to assign index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir meta tags to any post/page as well.
- Allows you to apply nofollow to any links
- Apply Noindex to any posts/pages
- Automatically build a footer page menu
- Create custom page title
- Add meta keywords and meta description to posts/pages
- Ability to easily add Google Analytics and verify site with Google
- Permits assignment of custom CSS file towards a single page/post for individualized styling of single post/page
- Ability to perform a 301 redirection on the page to reassign PageRank
- Use of the 301 redirect feature to cloak affiliate links.
WordPress Tweaks – Provides several SEO tweaks as well as other WordPress customization to the admin, comments, pings, posts, nofollow assignments, and security settings.
Robots Meta – Ability to noindex feeds and prevent indexing of specific posts, pages, and archives. Easy assignment of noindexing a wide range of content
WP SEO Master – Includes meta module for creating titles, keywords, and descriptions for posts/pages. Noindex and nofollow modules allow you to assign these attributes to specific locations in your blog
HeadSpace2 – Provides lots of flexibility for the arrangement of site elements, lets you assign tags, create descriptions, page titles, blog name and blog description, ability to change theme on each page, ability to load a plugin for a specific page only, assignment of noindex and nofollow attributes, easily integrate your favorite traffic stats tracking service (i.e. Google Analytics, StatCounter, etc.).
SEO Title Tag – Permits custom creation of title tags, mass editing of title tags and slugs across your entire blog, and the ability to define title tags for 404 error pages
Google XML Sitemaps – Generates a Google friendly XML sitemap for your blog that is automatically updated when you edit or create a post and all the major search engines are notified of the changes
Homepage Excerpts – Automatically lists posts as excerpts instead of full posts to reduce content duplication and improve SEO
SEO Friendly Images – Automatically adds proper alt and title attributes to all your blog’s images
Simple Tags – Lets you assign tags to pages, autocompletion of tags as you enter them, supports click tags, embedded tags, related tags, suggested tags from Yahoo!, Tag The Net, and Local Tags
Yoast Breadcrumbs – Quickly and easily add breadcrumbs to your theme to improve navigation for your readers and easier crawling by search engines
There you have it. With the help of these plugins, you should be able to improve your SERP rankings without too much difficulty. Let me know if I’ve left any important ones out.
Please Tweet, Bookmark, or Share This Free Content Using These Services:
Add New Comment
Subscribe to comments
Email
Reader
Listen or subscribe via podcast
Another I would suggest for the list is Greg’s High Performance SEO, which configures over 100 separate SEO characteristics while loading only about 600 lines of code per page view and avoiding the use of crude output buffer hacks. By contrast, the ‘leading’ SEO plugin (I won’t name names!) configures around 20 parameters and loads something like 2000 lines of code. It also uses output buffer hacks which stomp on other plugins’ modifications to the
headsection of the page.It’s not for everybody — several people have reported that they don’t want to have to deal with the full SEO picture and would rather just the some basics. But I think it’s worth checking out.
All the best,
Greg (yep, that one)
Reply
Twitter/Share/Bookmark