One of the many reasons why you use WordPress , surely it is the great ease it gives you to do SEO and web positioning tasks.
Without WordPress you would have to know enough programming to be able to do them all. For other content managers you also have plugins that facilitate SEO optimization, but WordPress is the platform par excellence for search engine positioning.
The 40 Best WordPress Plugins for SEO
We wanted to share with you these 40 plugins that we have selected as the most important to have your website ready. Then you will have to perform many tasks and exercises with the Plugins, not all of them are to install them and that’s it.
I will try to explain how to use them and why it helps you in SEO. All I have linked to the official WordPress page so you can see more details and download them for free.
If you know of any other Plugin that can benefit SEO, we invite you to leave it in the comments. Surely we all make a good collection.
Off-road SEO positioning plugins
These first 3 plugins cover many functions to improve your SEO positioning. You need to have one of them, but only one. You will not be able to have more than one because they are incompatible and do the same functions.
1. WordPress SEO by Yoast
The WordPress SEO of the Yoast company is probably the most used Plugin in WordPress and one of the most complete. Once installed, your admin panel for editing a post will change completely. Now you can add an individual Meta Title and Meta Description for each article and page.
You can also indicate your keyword and it will review if you are using it enough in titles, bold and images. An easy way to optimize your articles.
You also have other functions for optimizing the structure of your site, such as making noindex to certain pages, configuring permanent links, sending sitemaps and reviewing internal links. An entire SEO package .
2. All in One SEO Pack
The All in One SEO pack is also one of the most used Plugins. It rivals Yoast’s for being the best WordPress SEO Plugin . Its functions are very similar except that it does not have as many functions in the article and page editor. It also works very well and you can choose one or the other depending on the compatibility with your template. Keep in mind that some templates already have SEO functions, and it is usually advisable to disable them if we install any of these 3 plugins.
3. SEO Ultimate
SEO Ultimate is the third most complete off-road SEO Plugin. Its use is becoming increasingly popular thanks to some new tools. It does the same as the previous ones, and also has a function to detect 404 errors and configure redirects, and another for tags in rich format ( Rich Snippets )
WordPress and SEO plugins for your links
In this category we have grouped the WordPress Plugins that help you to correctly have all your inbound links and internal links. This way you will not lose visits, you will link your articles and you will keep track of the pages that link you.
4. SEO Smart Links
This WordPress plugin helps you automatically put internal links on your site. You can select the keywords that you want to link to your best articles. With this you get to improve your bounce rate and pass authority and positioning from the oldest pages to the new ones. It is a good strategy to also do it manually, but it is easier this way.
5. Broken Link Checker
This plugin checks all your posts and pages and alerts you if it finds a link that does not work. This is going to be very useful as Google is link-based and doesn’t like pages with broken links . It also alerts you if an image is not available and does not load.
6. Simple URLs
This plugin allows you to create personalized links on your website to other pages and keep track of them. You will have a new section in your menu where you can save and view the statistics of each link to another page. It is a good option instead of using Bit.ly or some other method to measure the clicks of your links.
7. 404 Redirect
This plugin is very necessary since it is collecting all the 404 errors that appear on your server. These are visits that arrive at an address that does not exist.
It is very common for many to appear over time, and we must redirect them to other pages. This way you will not lose the visit and pass the positioning that this link could have.
In this way it is very comfortable to handle redirects, more comfortable than with the .htaccess file on your server. Essential for websites older than one year.
8. Link Manager
With this plugin you will be able to have the link widgets that were in previous editions of WordPress. It is still a very simple way to put important links on all the pages of your website. You can exchange links although little and carefully do not get penalized.
WordPress plugins to optimize images
Images are a key point in web positioning. They are one of the things that weigh the most on a page, and Google wants fast pages. And also Google does not understand them since it reads and saves only text. That is why you should be careful with its size, weight and description.
9. Smush it
Smush it is a very simple plugin that allows you to reduce the weight of your images when uploading them or at any time. They do not change in size but in compression. For the web, so many millions of colors are not necessary, and the human eye does not notice the difference. This will improve the loading speed of your website. Essential plugin.
10. SEO Friendly Image
Google does not understand images so it is essential to put a description and alternative text on all of them. If you have many to fill you can use this plugin that automatically fills in all the descriptions with the title of the article. at least you will no longer have images without description and use the keywords of each article.
11. Simple Image Sizes
Another problem with the images is that they are being scaled. This means that they are loaded larger than what is then displayed, so it is a big waste of time. Depending on your template, this can be a big problem.
Use the Gtmetrix tool to warn of this error. The solution is to make the WordPress thumbnail images the exact size of the thumbnails your template uses. You can select several sizes and you make sure that you always upload the image of the indicated size.
12. Regenerate Thumbnails
This plugin perfectly complements the previous one. The other lets us change the thumbnail sizes, and this one recreates all the thumbnail images with the new sizes . So you can easily adapt your entire image library to the sizes most used in your template.
WordPress SEO plugins for site optimization
In this section we have made a compilation of very varied WordPress plugins that help to give the best structure to your website. You will keep Google well informed with all your indexed pages and files, and you will avoid duplicate content.
13. Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML sitemap helps you by creating a new sitemap of your website every time you publish something new. A sitemap is an outline of the order of all the pages. It helps Google to index and review them quickly. In Google Webmaster Tools you can see if your sitemap is updated as requested by Google.
14. All in one Schema Rich snippets
This plugin will help you show rich formats on Google. These are the faces you see on Google for example.
These help to stand out more and increase the percentage of clicks. You can also get stars on Google, or addresses, or logos, or many more possibilities.
15. Authorsure
Authorsure allows you to set the Google Author and face in your search results. It also works very well if your page has different authors and you want to show a different face for each author on Google.
This sometimes gives incompatibilities, just like if an author writes on many pages as an author recognized by Google. With this plugin it always shows the link and positioning of Google Author.
Google is increasingly taking into account who writes each article, based on the positioning of their previous articles. You can see your author ranking at Authorrank.org
16. SEO Facebook comment
This plugin allows you to import the comments made on Facebook about this URL. You will have two comment boxes on your website where it will show the real ones and the Facebook ones. It is a good way to integrate the two channels and have more comments on the web.
17. Google XML sitemap for Video
This video creates a positioning file for each video you configure. This will allow a video image to appear in the search results and position a new URL for the video itself, without an article or anything. It’s a great way to get on Google just like YouTube , and also to be positioning two URLs, the one for the article and the other for the video.
18. WP Touch
If your template is not adaptable or responsive , then the users who visit you from the mobile will hardly last long on your page. This will lower your average, which is very important for Google to know if that page is interesting or not. WP touch helps you solve the problem until you improve your template. Create a copy of your site to make it look good on mobile. The only but is that the design is very generic and does not look like your original.
19. SEO Rank Reporter
This plugin will monitor how you position for each keyword. You will enter the search results that you want to study and the search engine to measure them. Every three days it updates its data and you can see the progress if you go up or down positions in the different Google results. Essential to measure your work and results in SEO and web positioning.
20. Tynt insight word
This plugin makes sure that when someone copies something from your website, when they paste it, they include a link to the original article . This way you will get more links from the sites that copy you. You will also ensure that some do not copy you what comes in handy to have original content and not duplicate.
WordPress Plugins for SEO Review and Checkup
These plugins will help you to review various aspects that are useful for SEO. You will check that your source code has no errors and that your server is working perfectly.
21. TPC! Memory Usage
This plugin studies memory usage in your WordPress installation. It is especially interesting when you are testing plugins and you want to see how much memory they consume and if they slow down the page a lot. You can configure email alerts when memory usage spikes.
22. Memory Viewer
A widely used plugin with the same function as the previous one. We can see the open processes of our WordPress and the memory that each resource uses. It allows us to close each plugin in real time to see its response time.
23. Theme Checker
Theme Checker examines your template code for errors, incompatibilities, or outdated WordPress code snippets. The templates are getting old if they use shortcodes that WordPress has been updating and improving. By using this plugin it tells you if some WordPress commands are better to adapt them. It will also help you to see if your template meets the minimum requirements.
24. W3c Validator autocheck
W3c is the main body that regulates and promotes good use of internet programming . With this plugin you can pass one of the essential tools and discover what html, css and php code you can update and improve on your pages. Google values very positively that your website is programmed correctly and is compatible in most devices and situations.
WordPress plugins for site speed
Google is determined to give us a great internet experience. If the internet was bad and slow, we would use it less. That is why Google prefers to show fast pages, and the slowest ones do not recommend them in its search engine. Take care of the speed of your pages and Google will love you a lot.
25. BJ Lazy Load
This plugin makes the contents load when they are visible by the user. This prevents it from loading everything at the beginning and improves loading times . It can help you if your page uses a lot of plugins and images and it takes a few seconds to display content, even if they are not all complete yet.
26. Cloudflare
Cloudflare is the most widely used CDN and highly recommended to ensure stability and security on your server . A CDN makes a copy of your website constantly and shows it to visitors instead of showing your server. This way you make sure that «your server» will be accessible 100% of the time and also any security problem. They also offer a built-in caching service. Above all, it will be useful for SEO if your server is not very fast and you can improve the response time with a CDN.
27. Google Page Speed Insights
This plugin uses the Google Page Speed tool to give you tips and recommendations to lighten your page. Google gives you a score from 0 to 100 and in errors it tells you how to correct them. A fundamental plugin for the periods in which you are adapting and correcting your website to make it faster and more efficient.
28. Lazy widget loader
It allows you to select your heaviest Widgets to load only when visible to the reader. Social network widgets usually take a long time to connect with Twitter or Facebook, and are the best ones to block their loading at the beginning. With the memory plugins above you can see which plugins are better to delay loading.
29. Js and Css optimizer
The javascript of your page is usually the files that weigh the most. With the images, they are the files that you are most interested in being light. This plugin allows you to combine several Javascript in one and / or optimize its code. This is very useful to make fewer requests to the server, by only calling a java, and in loading time as it is less heavy. Try the different settings and make sure all the effects and buttons on your page work.
30. P3 Plugin Performance
This is the plugin for plugins. It makes a performance study of all the installed plugins , so that you can see how many resources each one consumes and how long they slow down the page. It is essential to help you choose only the necessary plugins. Having many plugins installed is not good and from this collection of 40 you will have to choose the ones that really use the most and slow down the user the least. If they are from administration they can slow down the internal panel, but that does not affect SEO.
31. W3 Total Cache
There are hundreds of Caché plugins, but W3 Total Caché is the most widely used. The cache is a copy of elements of your website that the reader’s browser stores. This means that there are items that you do not have to download again because you already have them stored . It is essential today to have a fast website. All browsers support caching. Furthermore, this plugin compresses your page in gzip , which makes it even faster. The only downside is that you will have to get used to emptying the cache after making big changes to your website. If not, it seems that nothing changes.
32. Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
This plugin organizes and deletes the revisions of your databases , and reduces space on the server. You can also optimize the databases to compress them and occupy less.
If your website is very new this is not important, but if your website is several years old, the database will weigh a lot. The database is continually providing information and it is a great idea to have it optimized to improve response times.
WordPress SEO plugins for social media
Google greatly values the data of how many times a certain URL has been shared on social networks. It does not count anything else in the networks and it takes them into account almost as if they were links from any page. People are doing Google’s work for free by saying what we like and what we tweet. Google shows what we like the most. For this, it will be very necessary to develop a good strategy in social networks for a good positioning.
33. Tweet Old Post
This plugin tweets a random article of yours every so often. You can select the time range and the article categories you want it to include.
This is very useful to keep tweeting all your articles and add more tweets and retweets to the counter of each URL.
I do not recommend that you automate many or all of your publications, but you can alternate some automatic with other original ones.
34. Social Sharing Analytics
With this plugin you can see how many times each entry and each page has been shared on social networks.
From your posts panel you can easily see it and study which ones need more shares to position better. You can run specific social media campaigns for the least shared URLs on each social network.
35. Digg digg
You have to encourage your readers to share your content on social networks . This happens precisely because of what you count, for your words and also for tools and buttons that facilitate it.
This plugin will put a left sidebar with the buttons of the social networks that you decide. If you are reading this on a computer, it is the bar you see on the left on this website. Great if you use it! ?
SEO plugins to optimize content
Optimizing the text of your articles and pages is going to be essential to position yourself in certain results.
You will already know that you have to put your keywords in the titles … it’s the most important thing! But in addition to that there are more factors, such as the density of words, the bold, the subtitles, the images …
36. SEO Content Control
This WordPress plugin checks for empty descriptions and titles . Also check that you do not have duplicate internal content.
This is very common for you to accidentally use the same paragraphs of text on multiple pages.
I also recommend that you write an Excerpt for each post, so that the same text is not displayed on your blog page and in the article.
37. InboundWriter
This plugin gives you advice on phrases and keywords to use related to your text. Also study if you are focusing well on your keywords and where to put them. A tad in diapers in Spanish.
38. WP Local SEO
Add rich formats to your pages to show geolocated results on Google. Add data visible in Google maps for your articles, categories and images. It also allows you to easily add Google maps windows of a certain address on your website.
39. Magic Action Box
Magic Action Box will help you get subscribers with different boxes and calls to action. One of the forgotten parts of SEO is conversion.
Because there is no use going out first on Google if you don’t sell or convert later. Email is the only secure means of contact you have with your readers and potential clients.
It will also be an audience interested in the content you propose and they will be eager to share your valuable content if it is very good.
It works with Mailchimp and Aweber , the most used mailing services.
40. Social Locker
This plugin is the one I have used to hide the last 8 SEO Plugins . When you have tweeted it has shown the content.
It can work very well to encourage your readers to share your articles. If you have worked it out, they will surely do it delighted.
It is the only Plugin of all that is not free, it is worth € 17. Still very interesting. Best of all is a statistics panel where you can see how many people have unlocked content.
It offers us the data day by day, represented in a graph, and of each shared article.
The most important thing is not the Plugins, it is you
The SEO is mainly based on meet certain standards of usability, to offer a really good content for users in making these remain long on the page, and make him share and link social networks and web pages. Then, as you have seen, there are many more tricks . Here I have told you quite a few … but that is the main and most important thing.
If you want to know more SEO tricks , here I have written SEO steps to improve your ranking NOW.
Remember that offering content of incredible value is the best secret. Hope you give these plugins a try and they help you get Google first.
We in the WordPress Course install and test them all, but remember then to delete the ones you are not going to use.
And if you are really interested in SEO and want to learn everything about search engine optimization.
Do you know any other Plugin that helps SEO in any way ? Have you used any of these plugins to improve your positioning? Do you need help setting one up? Until another one, Thank you very much for reading and sharing.
