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If WordPress is one of the most used CMS in the world, it has many advantages for website owners. It is particularly effective in terms of natural referencing, main thanks to SEO plugins that should be installed. These extensions are fundamental because they can earn valuable spots in Google's search results. What are the best SEO plugins for WordPress?
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is arguably the most well-known and all-around plugin on the market to market through content and SEO, which has over 260 million downloads and 25,000 five-star ratings and is available for free; Yoast SEO also has a premium version with several advanced features.
In its free version, Yoast SEO will allow you to optimize the natural referencing of your website effectively. Through a pleasant and well-thought-out interface directly integrated into your WordPress back-office, Yoast plays the role of a real SEO assistant. For example, it will allow you to configure your tags, optimize your content—titles and keywords in particular, avoid duplicate content or even add rich snippets.
Yoast SEO also includes many resources to learn more about SEO, whether you are a beginner or an expert in natural referencing. Considering the countless possibilities the extension offers, it is also nice to count on a huge community of users of the solution in case of questions or problems. The plugin is finally regularly updated by the developers, which allows it to be always in tune with the latest news from Google.
The SEO Framework
Yet accessible for free, The SEO Framework differs from Yoast SEO by greater ease of use and price. This is explained in particular by the desire of the developers not to keep only the essential functionalities in terms of natural referencing. The result is a clean interface that is accessible to everyone. For example, a playful-coloured scale tells you if your content is optimized enough to be properly valued in search engine results.
To complement its native features, The SEO Framework offers many complementary add-ons, most of them free, that will allow you to target specific needs. From the "Local" extension to ensure perfect search engine rank, to "Focus", a great help for the collection of optimized content, to "HoneyPot", a spam blocker in the comments, there are to all tastes. Fast and light, this complete plugin is a real alternative to Yoast.
SEO-Press
Launched in October 2018, SEOPress is a 100% French SEO plugin for WordPress. It is also positioned as a likely alternative to the giant Yoast. This extension works according to a freemium model, with a free version which offers practical basic functionalities, and a premium version, accessible for $39 per year, which allows you to go even further in your natural referencing.
This powerful plugin has the advantage of being constantly evolving. Its creator is ambitious to make it accessible to as many people as possible, both beginners and SEO experts. As for the features of the free version, you can manage your titles and other meta-descriptions, create XML and HTML sitemaps, optimize your tags to share your articles on social networks or even take advantage of analysis to ensure the quality of your content in terms of SEO.
The premium version has more advanced features, including an SEO-optimized breadcrumb, WooCommerce and Easy Digital Download optimisations, a local SEO solution, automatic 404 error redirection, and Google Structured Data Types or the import and export of the most efficient.
Ranking math
Any WordPress SEO plugin should aim to improve the positioning of a website's pages in the SERPs. That's what Rank Math, another strong competitor of Yoast, does. Easy to install and configure, this extension has a simple and clear interface and offers an excellent user experience to manage your on-page SEO fully.
It offers many free features such as an SEO audit, the possibility of connecting the Google Search Console, the monitoring of 404 errors, the improvement of local SEO, generating rich snippets or a tool for counting backlinks. In other words, you will find all the services you may not need to optimize the natural referencing of your pages.
The creators of this powerful WordPress plugin have also added the ability to import data from Yoast into the tool.
SEO Squirly
SEO Squirrly is a rather free WordPress extension intended for those who do not master all the workings of natural referencing. It will allow you to optimize your rank across the WWW and generate qualified traffic on your website. This plugin, thus, has effective functionalities that can be used without any special skills in digital marketing.
The main advantage of this powerful tool lies in its ability to provide real-time indications when you write your content. Your goal will be to achieve a 100% SEO optimization rate. SEO Squirrly also includes a valuable tool that will analyze the performance of your competitors to help you get better results.
Broken link checker
In addition to the quality of your content, the reliability of your links is also an essential criterion that Google considers when positioning your website in the SERPs. Indeed, the American search engine believes broken links that redirect your visitor to a 404 page negatively impact the user experience. But how do you locate and fix every broken link?
This is where the WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin comes into play. Unlike previous SEO extensions, which are intended to be rather complete toolkits, Broken Link Checker's only vocation is to spot broken links. This plugin saves you hours of work trying to identify each broken link on your website to correct it.
Broken Link Checker allows you to edit each broken link directly from its main page. It is, therefore, a great way to gain valuable places in Google's search results.
Rel NoFollow
To measure the popularity of your website and thus ensure that it is relevant to promote it to its users, Google constantly analyzes your incoming and outgoing links. To meet this criterion, digital marketing experts implement net linking strategies. But more than the number, it is the quality of these links that will be of interest in the first place to the search engine.
It is, therefore, in your best interest to prioritise yourselves with sites enjoying a good reputation. However, in their quest for privileges, some webmasters may be inclined to spam certain sites, forums and blogs by posting comments in the unique but to obtain an incoming privilege. To counter this, adding the Rel NoFollow attribute to your blog comments will help avoid getting too many spammy comments.
- The WordPress Rel NoFollow extension will also allow you to add the “no follow” attribute to your external links. To do this, you must tick a box when creating your link in the WordPress back office without going through the HTML code.
All in One Schema Rich Snippets
Rich snippets are very valuable elements in SEO. This data, which can be consulted directly from Google's search results—photo and rating of a recipe, number of opinions on a product, detail of an event, etc.—provides excellent flux for websites performing at development.
The All in One Schema Rich Snippets extension will succeed in this process. It is essential because WordPress does not natively integrate functionalities dedicated to managing these rich extracts. The strength of this plugin lies in its ability to support many types of content. It will therefore allow you to attract new users and generate more traffic on your pages.
Thanks to its many SEO plugins, WordPress is an excellent CMS to improve your rank in search engines. From all-in-one tools to specialized solutions on a single aspect of natural referencing, there is no doubt that you will find the extension that will effectively meet your needs.
Final Tip
The best SEO advice is to create quality content and use relevant keywords. Content should be informative, well-structured and easy to read for users. It is also important to optimize title tags, meta descriptions and URLs for each page of your website. Also, it is essential to work on the user experience by decreasing the loading speed of your website and making it easy to navigate. Improve user experience: Your website should be easy to navigate and use.
So, make sure your website loads fast and is mobile-friendly. Finally, building quality links to your website from other relevant websites is important to improve your search engine rankings. At AzarOnline, we would love to provide services and advice in the field of SEO. Contact us.
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I'm fascinated by the IT world and how the 1's and 0's work. While I venture into the world of Technology, I try to share what I know in the simplest way with you. Not a fan of coffee, a travel addict, and a self-accredited 'master chef'.