4 Great WordPress Plugins That Can Help with Search Engine Marketing

If you spend hours designing a great website and no one ever sees it, all that hard work goes to waste. For this reason, marketers, business owners, and web developers have realized the importance of ranking as high as possible in Google search engine results. As the world’s most popular desktop search engine, Google still remains the primary source of new visitors for many businesses.

While Google doesn’t release in-depth information about how to deliberately develop a site to rank well, there are enough marketers carefully watching their results. Using their tips, designers have created several plugins that can walk WordPress users through the steps of optimizing websites for maximum search engine visibility. Here are a few plugins that may help, depending on your own personal needs.

About the Author

Drew Hendricks is a tech, social media, and environmental addict. He’s written for many major publications, such as Developer.com, Forbes and Entrepreneur.

This popular plugin was designed by the team at website optimization specialists Yoast. One of the top reasons to pick this plugin is that Yoast is consistently studying the market and tweaking its plugin in response to changes. That means the guidelines you’re following as you set up your posts are based on the latest information available.

Yoast provides a snippet preview as you type that shows you how your listing will appear in Google results. You can also use this plugin to automatically generate XML sitemaps, optimize for RSS, and edit your .htaccess and robots.txt files. The Page Analysis tab analyzes your content and provides suggestions to improve your content’s rankings.

Another popular WordPress SEO plugin is this SEO pack that includes XML sitemap support, automatic META tag generation, and options for both beginner and advanced users. One benefit of the All in One SEO Pack is that you can either allow it to automatically generate your tags, title, and descriptions, or you can override all of this by manually inputting your own SEO information if you’re a more advanced user.

One issue with this plugin, however, is to get some of the more advanced SEO features, you’ll have to upgrade to the $39 “pro” version. This version is where you’ll get the XML sitemap generator and set site-wide defaults. Many of these same features are free with Yoast’s plugin.

If you’re ready to get really serious about your SEO, SEOPressor is the option for you. You can either pay $5 per month for unlimited domains or pay a one-time fee of $47 for a single site or $497 for unlimited sites. This plugin would work well for a web design firm developing websites for multiple clients, allowing that firm to advertise that it provides SEO-optimized sites. This plugin replaces the need to have an SEO expert on staff, advising your design team on the steps they need to take to make sure a site ranks well.

SEOPressor5 analyzes the entirety of a website, including titles, images, links, and content, calculating a score based on what it sees. Once you have your score, you can view the plugin’s suggestions on what you can improve to boost that score. Unlike other plugins, SEOPressor5 will also let you know if you’ve over-optimized your content, which can hurt you in search rankings as much, if not more than, under-optimizing.

Video content is all the rage, whether it’s explainer videos, video blogs, or content intended to go viral. Most SEO plugins offer no help with video SEO, which is where the Ultimate Video SEO plugin can help. The plugin automatically fetches details about a video and adds it to your sitemap, where it will be visible to algorithms as they scan your site.

If you have multiple videos on your site, you’ll especially like the plugin’s xml video sitemap. At a glance, you can see all of the videos that have been posted, along with their SEO details. This will immediately pinpoint those videos that might not be generating the SEO you need to rank well.

Whether you’re at beginner level when it comes to search engine marketing or you have years of experience, these tools can make optimizing your websites easier. If you’re a design firm, you can provide these plugins as part of your service, giving your clients a way to make sure each piece of content they post keeps the site as visible as possible.