Before getting to a checklist for using WordPress SEO Plugins it is important to point out that WordPress SEO Plugins will only help to get high rankings if you have got the basics of SEO right.
- Keyword selection must be good. In practice there is no point in trying to rank for highly competitive terms.
- The Domain Name should include a keyword.
- Don't get involved in any "Black Hat" SEO practices and make sure that you don't link to any site that does.
Assuming that the above is OK you should install the following WordPress SEO Plugins:
One of the general (multifunction) WordPress SEO plugins. I usually suggest "All In One SEO Pack" but there are others with greater functionality which may be appropriate if you intend to get into the detail of SEO.
You can expect this to prevent indexing of the duplicate content which WordPress generates, give you control of how the titles appear on the search engines and give you control of the meta data. You should use this to manually write the description for each page as this is the text that appears on the search engine results and needs to attract visitors to click.
A sitemap plugin. This will generate a sitemap aimed at the search engines which will enable them to find and index your content quickly.
Other WordPress SEO Plugins that may be appropriate. There are many to choose from and most will become more useful as the site grows. The following are examples:
- Shortening URLs - Remove common words from URLs to make them more search engine friendly.
- Automatic Linking - Automatically generate both internal and external links - good for SEO.
- Checking for Broken Links - Run regular checks and report any broken links which are bad for SEO.
- No Follow external links - Selectively make external links no follow to avoid leaking authority.
- Make images SEO friendly - Make sure that the title and description of images include a keyword.
- Manage Redirections - Minimise the impact of moving content on your site.
- Manage 404 errors - Log and manage 404 errors which are bad for SEO.
- Easy social bookmarking - Make it easy for visitors to bookmark your site.
- Caching - Maintain a static copy of pages and posts to speed up page loading for visitors.
SEOPressor Plugin. It is vital that the search engines understand the keywords to which your content is relevant. If they believe that your content is highly relevant to a particular keyword then it will rank well with the lowest possible number of backlinks. On the other hand if the search engines are not sure whether your page is relevant it will take many times more backlinks to get the same ranking.
SEOPressor checks the SEO of a page or post when it is saved and reports the result with comments. You can them make changes to maximise the score. This makes it one of the most useful WordPress SEO plugins because correctly optimised content is the key to successful on page SEO.
