You’re either using WordPress or considering using it for your website or blog. Right? It isn’t the only solution for managing a modern website that attracts viewers, but it is one of the best. One the reasons WordPress is so good is because there are many themes and plugins (including these free SEO plugins) that you can add to extend the power of the software. And although you might need some help with a few things – there’s nothing wrong with hiring a professional (as consultants we encourage that sort of thing), although most of WordPress Themes and WordPress plugins are very accessible to average people.
Among the tools you need, particularly if you are running a business, are SEO related tools. Not all of these are strictly SEO – or maybe I’m just using a very broad definition of SEO – but these are tools you need to help you have a site that can be found by the visitors you want, engage them , and turn them into subscribers, clients, customers, referrers, or just repeat visitors.
The first two things you need to do (if you haven’t already) is to add your site to your Google Webmaster and Google Analytics accounts. You can substitute other webmaster and analytics for Google but, to successfully manage your site, you need the insight webmaster tools and analytics brings. Bing has a well-respected webmaster tools suite. Hubspot offers excellent (paid) analytics.
The next step is to insert your analytics tracking code into your site pages. There are several ways to do this. The old, hand-coded way is to paste the javascript code into the php programming file that is used for a header on every WordPress page. The files you want are in your site directory for your WordPress theme. You probably don’t want to do this. Most people would rather not mess with site code directly.
Another approach supported by many modern themes is to paste the code into a settings area reserved for header scripts. This is waaaay easier than the previous method because you don’t need to edit any web server files directly.
But the best way to solve this problem is to use a plugin such as Google Analyticator, Google Analytics for WordPress or your SEO plugin if it supports this. The reason I prefer this method is because the other two solutions are theme-specific; if you change themes – sometimes if you only update a theme – you will lose your tracking code. I’ve been a victim of this more than once. Putting your tracking code in a plugin makes sure your tracking code is present regardless of the theme you use.
Now you’re ready to choose and add an SEO plugin to WordPress. I believe an SEO plugin is essential if you are serious about having a viable web site. Some SEO plugins do more than others and some do what they do better than others.
I had used All-in-One SEO Pack for years. It has consistently been highly rated by WordPress users. But I’ve recently changed to WordPress SEO by Yoast and already regret the years I had spent with All-in-One SEO. It isn’t that All-in-One SEO is bad, it’s just that Yoast is so much better.
One of the things all SEO plugins try to do is guarantee all your pages and posts have SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions. They default to using your page or post title for the html page title and the first characters of your text as the meta description. You can define what to append to the end of the title – usually your site name.
However, you can often improve SEO and human understanding of your page by customizing the html title and meta description. The html page title does not have to be the same as the WordPress title. All-in-One SEO gives you a place to customize these two items and tells you how many characters you have used so you don’t go over the search engine limit.
Yoast improves on this by showing you an example snippet that the search engine might show on the search engine results page (SERP). It also shows a checklist of best practices for SEO and whether there’s anywhere you can make an improvement. Yoast has a separate tab for more detailed page analysis to help you write the best text you can. Like this:
Yoast has other features as well. I like that it includes XML site maps as part of the plugin. With All-in-One SEO I had to have a separate plugin. On the other hand, All-in-One SEO includes the ability to insert your Google Analytics tracking code. Yoast has a separate plugin for that function.
Whichever free SEO Tools you choose, make sure you pick a top-rated one that’s compatible with your current WordPress version.
What plug-ins have you tried and liked (or not).
