WordPress SEO Plugins
There are over 70 million WordPress-powered sites as of December 2012. Chances are that most of the SEOmoz community are currently running or working on a WordPress-powered website. I’ve noticed in recent months there has been some activity in the Q&A section about WordPress SEO help, which is why I put this roundup together. Here are 35 WordPress SEO Plugins that I have found useful over the years. These aren’t in any specific order, but anything with a picture I highly recommend.
General SEO Plugins
Perhaps the most popular SEO plugin to date. WordPress SEO by Yoast allows you to easily setup page Title/Description templates for any post-type, create XML sitemaps, verify your Google and Bing webmaster tools accounts, and edit your .htaccess directly. And those are just some of the powerful features this plugin offers. Without trying to toot the guy’s horn too much, this is a killer plugin that gets updated with new features all the time. Install this!
Scribe describes their plugin as “Scribe makes content marketing simple”; I can’t disagree with that. The plugin helps you create better content. A couple bonus features that are nice are the keyword and link research tools that you can use straight from the WordPress editor.
All In One SEO Pack is another featured SEO plugin that many SEOs rely on. While it has many of the same features as the Yoast plugin, the options panel lacks behind a bit. If you upgrade to the pro version for $39, you can get some more extended features.
Another solid SEO plugin that allows you to easily edit titles and meta descriptions, verify Google Webmaster Tools, add Analytics code, and is available in 21 languages. One downfall for me is that it doesn’t seem to have custom post-type support.
5. Local Search SEO Contact Page
This is a great plugin for the non-technical SEO or beginner who doesn’t know how to code. This plugin give you options to add your business information to your contact page, including a embedded Google map that can be linked to your Google+ Local account, with a link for users to leave a review.
Vibe SEO Pack is a pretty neat SEO plugin, it has some of the same features as All-In-One SEO Pack and Yoast. I don’t have direct experience with this plugin, but the backend content score tool looks great, and it has 4.5/5 stars on WordPress.org.
You can probably guess what this plugin does, but I’ll let you know anyways. SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt attribute and title tags to any images that do not have them. The options panel is easy to setup custom settings for your images. This plugin also has a premium version that gives you more features such as an images XML sitemap creator and more custom settings.
Sitemap Plugins
This is my favorite XML sitemap creator plugin, mainly because I’ve been using it for years and the author continues to support it. It’s simple to setup and supports custom post-types and taxonomies.
Another great feature of the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast is it’s the only all-around plugin that includes a sitemap creator. However, I’m not a huge fan of this feature, and usually keep the functionality turned off in favor of the plugin above. It does have a video add-on for $89.
3. Google XML Sitemap for Videos
An easy to setup XML sitemap for videos plugin, it automatically creates a sitemap for any page that embeds or links to a video.
4. Google XML Sitemap for Images
Built by the same author as Google XML Sitemap for Videos, this plugin automatically creates a sitemap that includes links to all of your images that are used in any page or post.
Content Optimization Plugins
I really like the simplicity of the content optimization tools in this plugin. You have the option of setting a “focus keyword” in the content editor, the plugin analyzes the content for your focus keyword and lets you know how many times your keyword has appeared in your copy, headlines, URL, images, etc. Another great feature is that the plugin gives you a live snippet of how your post will appear in Google, while also giving you warnings on title and description length.
It’s pretty hard to not create better content with this plugin, the research and analysis tools this plugin provides are some of the best in the business, and all of that is done directly through the post editor. Without doubt this is the best content optimization plugin for WordPress, and one of the best all-around content tools around. The only downfall is that the plugin starts at $97/month.
The SEO Content Control plugin is a great tool for identifying weak content on your site. The options panel shows you an overview of all the pages and posts that may not have enough content and are missing meta descriptions. It also lets you create unique excerpts for your archive and category pages that are different than the single posts.
Link Tools & Reports
The SEOmoz Widgets plugin adds a backend panel to your dashboard to show you your inbound links and top pages; there is also a widget to display a list of incoming links. You must have API access for the plugin to work. It seems the plugin has not been updated in some time, but it still seems to be working. I would like to challenge any readers to re-develop this plugin.
2. Comment Contact Exporter by Seer Interactive
If you have a credible blog that gets more than spam comments, you have to check this plugin out. The plugin exports the name, URL, and email address of each comment into an Excel file for you. Additionally, if you have access to the SEOmoz API, you can grab the domain and page authority for each URL.
3. Majestic SEO Dashboard Widget
Another great plugin that pulls in backlink data straight into your dashboard. I love this one because of the graph view and the ability to pull in competitor link data on the same graph.
Track your Google rank through your WordPress dashboard. Rankings are updated every three days. This is a great rank tracking solution for the small business or blog owner.
This plugin integrates Google Analytics data straight into the dashboard. This shows you your top referrers, top pages, top incoming organic keywords, and more. Great plugin to get a quick analytics overview.
Another plugin that integrates Google Analytic data into your dashboard. This plugin has a little more options than Google Analyticator, you can install your tracking code from the settings page, view multiple graphs, and install widgets such as the most popular content widget that pulls in your top posts based on visits.
404’s, Internal Linking, Canonicals, and More
1. Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin
The Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin is a handy little plugin that adds the correct canonical tags to your archive and search results pages that most general SEO plugins don’t include.
This plugin is a lifesaver for anyone who doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to edit their .htaccess file. You can create 301 redirects on the fly! Great plugin for anytime you are moving content or deleting old files. I have found it a lifesaver on small- to medium-sized sites that have just been converted to WordPress, just enter the old and new URL and you’re all set!
3. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Otherwise known as YARPP, this plugin automatically adds related posts to the end of your single blog posts. You have some template control straight from the backend options panel. If your comfortable editing your theme files, you can integrate the related posts directly in your theme.
This plugin allows you to search and replace strings in the WP database tables. I found this plugin super helpful on a project where I needed to mass change link URLs that were included in the page/post content editor.
This plugin will automatically replace text with links site-wide depending on the variables you set in the backend. In older versions of this plugin, you really had to be careful not to fill up your posts with links as the newer version only replaces the first variable of the word it finds.
Now integrated directly into the Yoast WP SEO Plugin, you can easily add breadcrumbs to your theme. There is an automatic integration option, but if your theme doesn’t support that option, you can integrate the code manually into your theme files.
Social Media Plugins
This is a useful all-in-one sharing button. On rollover, the button lets you chose which social networks you want to share the content with and you can also share the content via email. Useful plugin if you want to offer your users a lot of sharing options, but don’t want to clutter your design with a lot of buttons.
A great sharing plugin with a lot of customization options. You can choose your own icons if you don’t like the default setup, and it’s very easy to integrate into any part of your theme.
Sharebar adds a customizable vertical sharing box on the left side of a blog post, with an optional horizontal sharebar. This plugin is also very easy to add anywhere in your theme files or you can automatically include it.
Another great plugin to easily integrate social sharing buttons into your posts and pages. One of the main benefits of this plugin over some of the others is if you have a ShareThis account, you can track your sharing metrics.
Formerly known as “Sexybookmarks,” this plugin is more than just a social sharing tool. This plugin also has a related content widget allowing users to explore other similar posts. While I would use YARPP over the related posts feature in this plugin, some might find it useful to have sharing options and related content options in one plugin.
This is a pretty basic plugin that adds sharing icons to the bottom of your posts. There aren’t to many customization’s you can do with this plugin, but it gets the job done.
This is a very cool plugin that adds a tabbed social media profile widget to your site. Right now it supports Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Flickr, RSS, and has a feature where you can add another tab and populate it with a shortcode.
A widget that shows the most shared posts on your blog based on +1’s, likes, and tweets. The plugin also gives you a more in-depth overview of your most shared pages/posts in the WordPress dashboard.
The Social Metrics dashboard gives you an in-depth view on how many shares your pages and posts have. You can quickly filter by categories and months. Currently you can track performance on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, StumbleUpon, Digg, and LinkedIn.
Sweet, what next?
Well, that’s all I have for you. Do you know and use any other WordPress SEO related plugins besides the ones I’ve listed here? I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions in the comments on any plugins I may have missed!
This roundup was intended to be a resource of tools you can include in your next SEO strategy. With that said, I’ve had many conversations with aspiring SEOs who mention something like “Yeah, I installed the XX SEO Plugin…. now I’m and SEO expert.” Don’t be one of those guys. Make sure you know what you are doing and take the time to properly setup and configure each plugin you install.
