Introduction
Did it ever cross your mind why some websites and even blogs get more highlighted and shared than they actually deserve? This article specifically throws light on this question. As you know there are a ton of creative websites, containing some really unique, and valuable information that does not get the visibility they deserve in the large ocean of what we call the World Wide Web (WWW). If you are wondering why this is so, then this article is going to shed some light on the fact that we just stated above.
The market of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been exaggerated and massively overhyped, especially for half a decade. With the advent of innovative marketing and social media like Facebook and Twitter, the SEO companies are now even more determined than ever to lead a common user to become clueless about Digital Marketing.
Is Search Engine Optimization difficult to do?
Absolutely NO. Does it take time to generate organic leads? Yes, depending upon the niche of your website. Is it possible to take a short route in order to get high rankings for your website? Short Answer, no. However, SEO is relatively easy when compared to the perception that most people have about it. It’s all about creating authentic, new links on the World Wide Web. The more you have it, the higher your website will rank in search engines.
What are WordPress SEO Plugins?
WordPress has now become a popular platform for hosting your website. If you ever need to blog, WordPress should be your preferred choice. SEO plugins, which are integrated with WordPress for the purpose of optimizing the website’s parameters, like meta title, description, keywords, canonical, etc. are called WordPress SEO Plugins.
Why does one need Word Press SEO Plugins?
Consider the Plugins as tools. The WordPress Plugins Tools are designed to save your time, in optimizing the main parameters of a website mentioned in the above paragraph. The Plugins do not eliminate the requirement of producing catchy or proper keywords, titles, descriptions [Forbes].
All these parameters can be optimized from the source code, however, that requires basic familiarity with the programming language HTML. This is why plugins are helpful for a person possessing non-technical background. Below we are going to discuss the best SEO plugins for WordPress, which can help to rank a website higher in the search engines.
YOAST SEO
Yoast SEO is the widely used SEO plugin for websites hosted on the WordPress platform. The free version contains a lot of features, like adding Meta titles, descriptions, SEO Keywords. It also helps to create XML sitemaps. Do you want to optimize your images? Yoast SEO is the easiest way to do it.
There is also a paid version of it. However, for most of the SEO optimization techniques, the FREE version is well sufficient. For anyone, who is looking to increase the search engine results of his website, Yoast SEO free tool is highly recommended [Shivar Web].
SEMrush
Semrush provides quality analytical data of competitors’ websites. It can significantly help, in finding keywords that are getting searched by a majority of people on giant search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Although a paid tool, SEMRush does provide tremendous value to the market of SEO.
It can be used for WordPress sites or for websites on other platforms also. It is an expensive paid tool. However, if someone is serious about finding backlinks, checking broken links, finding backlinks of competitors, etc., then he definitely needs to be at least aware of SEMRush.
Hummingbird
Page loading time is one of the critical parameters for Google, in order to influence a website’s SERP. Ideally, a website should load as fast as possible. However, in order to know whether your site is loading within the recommended time frame of milliseconds, one should definitely use Hummingbird [Page Pipe].
It scans the complete website, provides critical issues, regarding the load time of your website, and then with just a couple of clicks, it fixes all issues. The subscription is not free. However, HummingBird provides a trial for 14 days.
EWWW Image Optimizer
This is an extremely powerful yet easy-to-use tool that will help you to describe ALT tags for your images. People need to understand that Search Engine Crawlers are not humans. They are Bots. They can read a text and derive meaning from it. However, they cannot do the same with images. So it is a must to let search engines know the content of your image. This is why you need to put ALT Tags to each of your images, if you want to rank higher in SERP’s and EWWW Image Optimizer is the easiest way to do that [Wp Beginner].
Social Metrics Tracker
Social Media has now become more of a Hangout place rather than a need for people across the world. Although Social Media shares, likes, tweets are never considered by search engines for influencing rankings, they do however provide a ton of traffic from unique IP addresses and that can significantly help, in creating awareness and thereby improve search engine rankings of your website.
Ultimate Video SEO Plugin
Just like with images, Search Engines crawlers do not understand the meaning of a video. For video blogs, where most of the content is in the form of tutorial videos, it is highly important to optimize all the SEO aspects for each video. This is where you need a powerful SEO optimizer for video. We highly recommend Ultimate Video SEO Plugin.
It fetches all the detail from the video’s hosting provider and also generates Sitemap, which helps search engine crawlers to understand and then index the page.
Revive Old Post
If your website contains tons of valuable posts and content, then it is always a good habit to keep sharing the old posts, even after they have been residing on your website for a long period of time.
Most of the time, visitors care less about exploring your website archives of high-quality content. However, if some of your content is considered Evergreen by a fair share of people, then reviving those old posts from time to time will provide valuable traffic. For this purpose, a plugin called “Revive Old Post” is a perfect choice.
With the help of this plugin, it is easier to share the posts in a timely manner. One can also add hashtags, links to the posts. All this is done automatically by this plugin.
Conclusion
Although the above tools can significantly help in ranking higher in Search Engines, please do not consider them as a substitute for creating useful content of good quality. They are called tools for a reason. Creating valuable information should be the topmost priority. The information which adds value to a visitor will always compel him to come back later on.
References:
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2016/09/14/20-reasons-your-business-is-failing-at-seo-and-how-to-fix/#ca1f49322b31
[2] https://www.shivarweb.com/3902/beginners-guide-using-yoast-wordpress-seo
[3] http://pagepipe.com/hummingbird-wordpress-speed-plugin
[4] http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/optimizing-images-with-wp-smush-pro-cons-and-alternatives
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