Contents
Improve your WordPress SEO in just a few steps
This article lists some of the best WordPress plugins you can use to quickly SEO your blog or website. I installed WordPress, all these plugins and wrote this article in just a few hours!
Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs
Search Engine Friendly URLs are designed to look nice for humans as well as perform well with search engines. Unlike the standard URLs generated by WordPress they include keywords, so search engines and users can tell what a page is about in a glance.
WordPress has some built in options to create Search Engine Friendly URLs. They are available form the Settings->Permalink menu option.
Pick the style that suits you. I would recommend the Month and name option.
The SEO Slugs Plugin can also be used to clean up the default keywords used in the URLs.
All In One SEO Pack
Plugin Source: All In One SEO Pack
This plugin adds a lot of features that enhance the ability to Search Engine Optimise WordPress. Make Sure you fill in the plugin settings for Home Title and Home Description.
The plugin also adds title and description fields to posts and pages. Again, try and always fill these in as they are used by search engines to promote your pages. If you don't fill them in then the plugin will auto create their content. This is OK but manually customised content is always the best.
Refer to my articles on Page Titles and Meta Description for details on why they are important and help in getting them right.
For WordPress pages you can also edit the Title Attribute and Menu Label. This refers to the text used in the Pages menu that is on every page and the tooltip associated with it. This can be handy if you want the pages heading to be different to the text used to refer to it.
Google Analytics
Plugin Source: Google Analytics for WordPress
Google Analytics is an excellent tool for tracking user activity on your website. I have written several articles just about it in my Google Analytics section.
This plugin makes it easy to add Google Analytics to your website. Create a Google Analytics Account then install this plugin and set it to use your new accounts ID.
Website Upgrade
Plugin Source: Redirection
If you are upgrading your website to WordPress or event altering your WordPress you need an upgrade strategy. Without one and you will most likely lose all the ranking you had with the search engines.
The basics of an upgrade strategy is to tell the search engines and referring websites that your pages have moved, and tell them where. The correct way to do this is by what is called 301 Redirects.
This plugin makes it easy to set these up.
Ideally you should create a redirection from every page on your old website to go to one on the new one. If you are not sure what pages used to exist, then you can register the website with Google-Webmaster-Tools and find out what pages Google has currently indexed. Alternatively, most search engines will give you a list of indexed pages if you do a search in the form site:www.website.com. Any page indexed should be given a redirect to a page in the new website.
XML Sitemap
Plugin Source: Google Sitemap Generator
XML Sitemaps help search engines index your website. Once first installed and run, this plugin will automatically generate your sitemap when posts change as well as inform the search engines that its changed.
Speed Improvements
Plugin Source: W3 Total Cache
The speed of a website can effect user experience and recently Google has announced they take it into account when assessing websites. This plugin uses lots of ways to speed up your WordPress website.
Facebook Like Button
Plugin Source: Wordpress Facebook "Like" Button
Social Networking can be a great way to increase awareness of your business. One of the latest ways to do that is by adding a Facebook "Like" button to your website. This lets visits add you to their Like list in their facebook account.