Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
If you’re an avid WordPress user, then you should know the importance of plugins. There are WordPress plugins for literally everything and anything. In fact, every day dozens or even hundreds of them are released into the WordPress community and sold for a lot of money. They CAN help your blog succeed. They can help your blog load faster, get more traffic, or improve search engine rankings. As I said, there are plugins that do everything…
Need a plugin to auto-share your posts on social networks? – Done.
Need a plugin to automatically build backlinks? – Done.
Need a plugin to tuck you into bed each night? – Working on it. (Kidding)
The point is you absolutely must utilize WordPress plugins to help your blog succeed. You’d be missing out if you didn’t. Here are 9 of the best SEO plugins for WordPress:
- All In One SEO Pack
- Platinum SEO Plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps
- SEO Smart Links
- 404 SEO Plugin
- SEO Friendly Images
- Nofollow Case By Case
- 1 Click Retweet/Share/Like
- Robots Meta
>>> Click Here For Part Two <<<
Comments
Alea
I really appreciate this post, it’s packed with valuable information! I’m already using a couple of these plugins, but I never knew about some of the others. I’ll definitely be trying out the SEO Smart Links and Platinum SEO plugins. Thanks for sharing this, David!
Bryce
This seems too good to be true! Can these plugins really make that much of a difference in search rankings? I’d love to see some data or examples of success stories where these plugins were game changers. Are there any case studies available?
Caitlyn
I’m a bit confused about how the Nofollow Case By Case plugin works. Could you explain more about when to apply the nofollow attribute versus follow links? Also, can this plugin help me optimize my internal linking structure?
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I’ve used some of these plugins before, and I must say, not all of them are as effective as advertised. For instance, I found the Platinum SEO plugin a bit redundant compared to All In One SEO. Why do you prefer it over the others? I’d love to hear your reasoning.
Emerson
Hey David! It’s been a while since we last connected. I’m glad to see you’re still crushing it with these SEO insights. We should definitely catch up sometime. Let me know when you’re free for a coffee or a chat. Keep up the great work, my friend!
Farah
I’ve been struggling with optimizing my blog for search engines, and this post couldn’t have come at a better time! I had no idea about SEO Smart Links or that alt tags were so important for images. It’s good to know I’m not alone in forgetting to add them! Thanks for the tips, David.
Gavin
There’s another plugin called Yoast SEO that offers features similar to All In One SEO and Platinum SEO. Have you tried it? I find its user interface a bit friendlier, especially for beginners. Also, SEMrush can be a great companion for tracking SEO metrics. You should check them out.
Hannah
This post was super informative! I had no idea that there were so many plugins available to help with SEO. I’ve learned a lot, and I’m excited to try out Google XML Sitemaps and SEO Friendly Images. Thanks for breaking it down in such an easy-to-understand way.
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Installed six of these nine on a test site back in January to see what actually changed. Google XML Sitemaps and SEO Friendly Images did something measurable within about three weeks — image search traffic ticked up maybe 15%. Nofollow Case By Case I couldn’t tell was doing anything at all after two months, and eventually deactivated it along with 1 Click Retweet, which just cluttered the sidebar.
Small correction worth flagging: Nofollow Case By Case hasn’t been actively maintained in a long time, and running an unmaintained plugin that touches your link structure is a bigger risk than most of the others on this list, which are mostly cosmetic by comparison.
All In One SEO and Platinum SEO were already duking it out for the same job back when this list would’ve been current, and one of them quietly won that fight years ago. Watching a ‘best plugins’ post age is like watching a cast list from a show that got cancelled — the names are all still technically correct, just not relevant to anyone anymore.
Gus, that cast-list line is exactly the right way to put it. Good way of explaining why old ‘top plugin’ lists age worse than almost any other kind of post.
Read this whole list twice before installing a single one of these, which is probably its own small problem — I wanted to know exactly what each plugin did before touching my site, and ended up spending longer researching than the plugins would’ve taken to just try and undo if wrong. Not sure if that’s caution or just another way of not shipping.
Which of the nine would you actually keep, having read all this twice?
Worth noting Ivy’s question assumes there’s one right answer that applies across sites, which the post itself doesn’t establish. A caching-heavy image blog and a text-only newsletter archive don’t need the same three plugins, and the post never separates its recommendations by site type at all.
Anneke’s distinction matters more than it might first appear, and I say this as someone starting again at sixty-one with considerably less patience for trial and error than I once had. A list of nine plugins presented as universally useful invites exactly the kind of caution Davey describes, because without knowing which of them actually apply to a site like mine, a fairly simple teaching blog with very little imagery, I am left guessing at which three or four are worth my limited time, and which five are simply noise dressed up as thoroughness. A more useful version of this post would have sorted the nine by site type rather than presenting them as a single undifferentiated must-install list.