When I first started as a freelance content writer, there were still people who wanted certain keyword densities and other outdated ideas. Other people were still trying to force keywords into articles just to gain links.
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All of that is firmly behind us but the world of SEO still remains confusing. So if you are baffled by search engine optimisation, then the answer is to get a good SEO plugin to help out. Here are a look at a few of the ones I have encountered and the one I use myself.
What is an SEO plugin?
A WordPress SEO plugin is a type of plugin designed to help with SEO on your blog posts. It is a tool that looks at your content and offers suggestions based on SEO best practices, but it doesn’t guarantee you are going to get your content to rank or fix the problems for you – you still need to do the work manually.
A good SEO plugin is an excellent guide, but you don’t have to follow every suggestion to the letter. Take Yoast SEO, one of the biggest names in the field. They have a green light system and while it is nice to see all green lights, you don’t need to feel like you can’t publish your post until you get the green light. It is a guide only.
They can also help with some of the more advanced features. These include things like product schema or how-to schema – these schema markup features help Google better understand what content is for what purpose. They can also prompt you to complete image SEO with keywords in the ALT text along with a description of the image.
What an SEO plugin doesn’t do
It is also important to understand what an SEO plugin doesn’t do. For example, it can’t guarantee you will appear in search engine rankings at a particular spot. It can’t know you will get on the first page of search rankings if it gives you a positive reaction to your post.
Also, these plugins don’t replace the need for keyword research and a tool like Keysearch. They can help to optimise your content around the keyword you have chosen but they don’t have information about keyword rankings and the content in top places for those target keywords.
Their SEO features are very much about helping you to remember the most important areas of on-page SEO.
Yoast SEO
What does Yoast SEO plugin do?
Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that you add to your site that is aimed at guiding you to solid on-page SEO and improving the chances of your ranking in search results. It also helps you focus on a particular keyword phrase and monitors elements such as readability. There are a number of checks that it performs for every page including:
- Is there a focus keyphrase?
- Does the post have outbound and internal links?
- Does the key phrase appear in specific places like the introduction?
- Is there a meta description with the key phrase in it?
- Is the key phrase in the SEO title and headings?
It also monitors things like keyword density. This is helpful to avoid over-optimising your content and keyword stuffing your post. It also gives you a quick view of things like the length of the text and if you have ALT attributes for your images.
Other Yoast features
Yoast SEO also does a number of site-wide jobs that ensure your content is ready to appear in search results. This includes things like creating XML sitemaps, and the robots.txt file that bots use to check your site and avoid duplicate content across the site.
There are also features to help avoid broken links by redirecting content if you remove a post. The premium plugin allows you to redirect posts while the free version alerts you to do this and you can do it manually with a redirection plugin.
It can also help with some codes for social networks to connect with your site – Pinterest is one example of this.
Is Yoast SEO plugin free?
The features mentioned above are included in the free version of the plugin. There is also a paid version if you want to add extra features which include things like getting suggestions for internal links and a redirection plugin will manage. Personally, I don’t have the upgrade as these things are easy to manage manually but that’s a personal choice.
Prices for the upgrade start from £79 + VAT (UK) for a single site and there are discounts of 5% and upwards if you are buying more than one license.
Best Free SEO Plugins
While Yoast is probably the biggest name in SEO Plugins, it isn’t the only one available and this means there are other options to consider. Here are some of the best paid and free SEO plugins for WordPress to consider.
Squirrly SEO
I’ve heard a few bloggers recommend Squirrly lately although I haven’t tried it myself yet. It is an SEO plugin for non-SEO experts that offers tips and information as you write to improve your SEO. For example, you add a keyword you want to rank for and as you write, popups and green lights appear to keep you on track – almost like having a live SEO consultant with you.
There are also content reports to see how content could be optimised and a tool to help analyse competitors’ pages. The plugin is free to use and there is an upgrade option for extra features that starts from $29.99 a month for up to 7 sites.
The SEO Framework
The SEO Framework is an ideal plugin to get an overview of the whole of your site from an SEO perspective. It is designed to follow Google’s Webmaster guidelines with a colour-coded overview page that lets you quickly see where optimisation is needed. This means you can spend time fixing problems as it gives suggestions and tips as to what is needed.
The plugin is free to use and can migrate SEO data from other similar plugins.
Rank Math
Rank Math is a plugin that connects with Google Search Console to allow you to see a range of data on your website that is accurate for your own search results. It helps you see what keywords you are ranking for, what impressions you get for searches, and any errors on the site. It also handles things like redirects and sitemaps.
Rank Math is free to use.
All In One SEO Pack
All In One SEO Pack is perhaps the biggest contender to Yoast’s crown as a top SEO plugin and has a clean and easy-to-use system. Like Yoast, it covers a range of key SEO support features such as sitemaps and redirection of pages. It also integrates with e-commerce sites including WooCommerce.
The basic version is free, or you can upgrade for $ 57 a year. You can also get a business license for up to 10 sites for $97 a year.
Get the best help with SEO
We all need the best possible help with SEO and that starts on the WordPress dashboard. These plugins are like having an SEO assistant with you to prompt you to remember key things or to ensure you don’t do them incorrectly. They also handle more complex back-end things like sitemaps so Google can see its way around your site.
While you don’t have to have one of these plugins installed, they definitely have strong benefits to merit adding them to your website. Pair them with things like Google Analytics and you can get a good picture of what’s happening on your site.
These are just a few of the SEO plugins that have positive reviews but if you know another one then please get in touch and I can add it!
