SEO Plugins for WordPress We Can't Live Without

​If you host your website on a WordPress CMS, you may or may not be aware of the enormous supply of valuable plugins that you have access to. With more than 55,000 plugins available for seemingly everything about your website, it can be very tricky to identify the most ideal options for improvement. Here, we’ll highlight the five plugins most valuable for satisfying and managing SEO needs.
 
First, let’s start with big-picture, all-in-one plugins.
 
It’s hard to talk about WordPress SEO plugins without looking at Yoast SEO. Since 2008, it’s been available as an all-in-one solution for improving SEO, with a variety of tools and features geared toward pushing sites toward the top of the search results.  It includes templates to ensure you’re correctly handling titles and meta descriptions, while also helping to focus in on writing SEO-friendly content. A favorite feature is its snippet preview, which allows you to see how your pages appear in search results, before publishing them. Additional content is available through Yoast SEO Premium.

​For a substitute to Yoast SEO, we like The SEO Framework as an option. Offering an unbranded interface, this plugin provides automated SEO solutions for a streamlined user experience. While Yoast is the more accommodating of the two for beginners, this plugin is more ideal for users with more of a background in the world of SEO. If you possess a preliminary understanding of what you’re looking for, this plugin will bypass some of the more entry-level features that Yoast has to offer.
 
Next, let’s look at maintenance-focused plugins.
 
To keep everything running as smooth as possible, we’re partial to WP-Optimize. It helps you take care of unwanted and unneeded data that can slow down your site. Its scheduled weekly cleanup will get rid of unwanted comments, spam, and saved drafts and revisions that take up unnecessary data. Allowing WP-Optimize to do all the dirty work for you can work wonders in improving your site’s speed for a better user experience.
 
Taking care of broken links and deleted pages is crucial for a positive experience for users of your site. With the Redirection plugin, you can handle a variety of redirects from one convenient location. It will note each and every “404 error” that occurs on your site, making it easier for you to track, and fix sooner. It’s ideal for sites that may deal with only a couple of redirects, or a sit dealing with hundreds.
 
Use Akismet to keep harmful spam from your website. Any posts or comments with inappropriate or potentially fraudulent links on your website can hurt your reputation, and if enough people follow and report spam links from your site, it can damage your SEO rankings. From its dashboard, you’ll able to review all spam comments caught by Akismet, as well as those flagged by anyone that manages your site, giving you the ability to review everything from one location.

These five plugins are a great starting point for improving your SEO and the performance and efficiency of your website. It’s natural to receive feedback while continuing to develop ideas for improving the user-experience your website, and thanks to its large supply of plugins, WordPress is likely to always have something that can help your specific need.
 
Got a favorite (or least favorite) WordPress plugin? Tell us about it in the comments!