Wordpress is a massively popular blogging platform, that has been adopted by millions of blogs worldwide. One of the major reasons that bloggers choose Wordpress these days is due to its ‘out-of-the-box’ SEO readiness. Simply install the blog, install a theme (all in just a few clicks) and away you go, rankings will surely follow. This is true to an extent but there is also some shortfalls:
- Lack of meta-data editing functionality.
- Duplicate content created by archives, tag pages and categories.
- Lack of Social Media integration.
However there is a very easy way to ‘fix’ most issues with Wordpress, due to the huge army of Plug-In developers that give up there time and experience to create work-around and improvements for little or no monetary gain. I am going to run through what I believe are 3 must have plug-ins for SEO.
All In One SEO Pack
This is a first install for me on any blog that I integrate. Quite simply if you are only going to install one plug-in then this is it! The all in one SEO plug-in handles issues from being able to change default title tags for posts and pages, to noindex and nofollowing tag and category pages, this really does what the name says. Everything for SEO is in here.
Twitter Tools
Twitter is the new social network of choice, and due to its widespread adoption you need to be on here and syndicating your blog posts to it. Twitter tools does everything for you. From shortening URL’s and adding hashtags this plug-in will automatically submit all of your blog post to Twitter, and can even post a Twitter Updates post on your site on a Daily, Weekly or Monthly basis.
SEO Smart Links
SEO Smart Links will crawl all of your posts and automatically add ‘in content’ links to related posts/pages. Internal linking has massive benefit for your SEO Results, so this plug-in makes the whole process more painless. You can even specify links with anchor text in it’s settings that when found will link to a location of your own choosing.
When these 3 plug-ins are installed you are well on your way to SEO success, but remember the golden rule that content is king, and links are the queen. Whatever plug-ins you install will have no impact unless you add quality content and gain relevant links.
Related posts:
- SEO Must-have: How to Connect your WordPress Blog to Twitter
- SEO principles for WordPress Blogs
- All a Twitter About Your Website
- WordPress Snippets on the Homepage
- WordPress and IIS, does it work?
Tags: 3 Plug-ins That Every Blog Needs for SEO, SEO Plugins, Wordpress Plugins, Wordpress SEO
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Thanks for this! I wasn’t aware of the SEO Smart links, but I’ll be installing that this afternoon. I loved this line:
“Whatever plug-ins you install will have no impact unless you add Quality Content and gain relevant links.”
Give quality content, GET quality rankings.
Thanks for pointing out SEO Smart Links.
Question: I’m new and using the Thesis theme. My understanding is that with all the built in features of Thesis that you don’t need the All In One SEO pack. What is your take on this?
PS- it would be great if you could add subscribe to comments to your list and your site.
Thanks for the post and for sharing the very useful information here, great post related to wordpress blog plugins.
I have no knowledge of Thesis theme sorry, but I assume if that is what they have said in their description then that will be the case.
PS:- There are two ways to subscribe to the responses 1) at the end of the post there is a ‘follow responses to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed and 2) in the address bar of your browser there should be an RSS icon, click that and it should give you 4 options, 2 of which are to subscribe to comment via RSS.
If you require any further information please do not hesitate to post a reply.
It is nice post. I found a chance to learn something new. Thanks.