Some days ago I was asked about my absolute favorite WordPress SEO plugins. At first I had to think about it for a while, because I wasn’t sure how to define what’s a “SEO plugin” and what isn’t. But now I’m sure.
The following is my personal top 7 of WordPress SEO plugins that I also use here on code-bude.net and/or en.code-bude.net. It should be noted that all the plugins I use are available to download for free.
All in One SEO Pack
14 million bloggers can’t all be wrong – that’s how often this plugin is downloaded. It’s All in One SEO pack, and the name speaks for itself. The plugin can perform a whole multitude of optimisations on your site. I personally use it only to automatically generate meta tags. [Plugin page]
BWP Google XML Sitemaps
With BWP Google XML Sitemaps setting up XML sitemaps for Google indexing is a piece of cake. I find it very appealing that this plugin doesn’t only generate a huge sitemap.xml file, but also a sitemapindex.xml that links to other site map files. The plugin can be configured to have separate site maps for tags, categories, pages, articles etc. The number of links per site map is also configurable. If there’s a lot of links for the site map, it gets split and linked to in sitemapindex.xml. Don’t forget to submit sitemapindex.xml to Google Webmaster Tools under Optimisation -> Sitemaps! [Plugin page]
Do Follow
DoFollow or no DoFollow? That is the question – one could say it’s almost a question of faith. The DoFollow plugin changes the automatically generated NoFollow links in your blog to DoFollow ones. A bit of info: links tagged with NoFollow won’t be followed by search engines. What do I have against it? Nothing! In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with having a search engine see the content that I linked – it might even push it up in rank thanks to my backlink. On the other hand, it doesn’t really do me any good. Still, the more people use it, the more chances there are to have backlinks to your own blog. Besides, DoFollow doesn’t do any harm. Keeping that in mind be sure to check it out. [Plugin page]
Lazy Load
The Lazy Load plugin isn’t a SEO plugin in the classic sense. I’m still putting it on this list, and here’s why. The plugin dynamically (using Javascript) loads all the graphics on a certain area of the page when a user scrolls to it. Graphics that lie outside of the visible area on the page are unloaded until the user scrolls to them. This speeds up page loading – how much depends on the amount and size of the graphics – and page loading times are certainly an important factor when it comes to search engine ranking. [Plugin page]
Mobile Smart
The Mobile Smart plugin brings mobile optimisation to your site. If you have a responsive theme installed on your website – one that dynamically changes size and layout according to the screen size of the device – then this plugin is unnecessary. Still, on code-bude.net, for example, I use a non-responsive theme, and so I need a solution for mobile devices. That solution is Mobile Smart. The plugin needs you to select a second theme that will be loaded instead of the default one when a user visits the site on a mobile device. [Plugin page]
TagKeywordFinder
TagKeywordFinder is a plugin I’ve developed myself that helps tag articles and pages. Normally WordPress only suggests tags that have already been used in your blog. This is where TagKeywordFinder comes in. When you begin typing something into the tag field, my plugin runs that text through Google’s Suggest function – the same one used for Google’s own search field. That way, when you start typing in a tag, you automatically get suggestions for more tags based on most popular Google searches. If you don’t know about it, I strongly recommend having a look at this gem! [Plugin page]
wpSuggest
This plugin offers similar functionality to my TagKeywordFinder – in fact, it was what inspired me to write my plugin. wpSuggest also uses the Google Suggest function, but unlike my plugin, it uses it for the title of an article or a page. [Plugin page]
And now the big question – what plugins do you use? Maybe you haven’t given any thought to the topic, or maybe you use the services of a SEO expert for professional search engine optimisation? As always, I’m happy to receive your comments!
