WordPress Plug-in’s For A Fully Optimised Site

Picture from Flickr: Nikolay Bachiyski

We regularly work with WordPress websites, which is no surprise as it’s used by more than 23% of the top 10 million websites. Most of them are great and they’re simple for our clients to use. But some are awful and will never help businesses achieve their business goals.

We often work with designers and developers too, who usually struggle with focusing on SEO or only have a limited knowledge of the fast-paced industry. So with the fact that millions of people worldwide use WordPress and designers need a helping hand, I’ve created a list of useful plug-in’s that will help with the SEO basics, as well as adding useful functionality.

The SEO Basics

Yoast SEO:

With over 20 million downloads, Yoast SEO is arguably one of the most popular SEO plug-ins and rightly so. There are tonnes of things you can do with this plug-in, but most importantly it helps you sort the basics really easily.

You can customise much of it, being able to add title tags and Meta descriptions at page level, even replicating what that would look like in Google search results. But it’s not just this, you can create XML sitemaps, run page analysis to spot things like missing ALT text, automatically optimising meta tags, built-in breadcrumbs (theme dependant), social integration, RSS optimisation, import functionalities and more!

There are other highly recommended SEO basic plug in’s such as All in One SEO Pack, SEO Ultimate and SEO by Squirrly but Yoast is by far the most installed SEO plug-in.

Local SEO:

For most businesses, local traffic is key as they often operate within a specified geographic area. The landscape of search results has changed in favour of local results across many search phrases, so any help you can get from a local angle is worthwhile. There aren’t too many plug-in’s out there, but there are a few worth checking out:

• WordPress Local SEO: utilising schema.org, GEO sitemap and Google Maps
• LBC Local SEO: generate optimised location pages with schema.org and hCard mark-up
• Local SEO and Business Listings: a step-by-step guide to getting more local business and identifies incorrect business listings

To add you location to Google Maps check out WP Google Maps which allows you to create a custom map with high quality markers, descriptions, images and links.

Tracking and Reporting

Something that can be overlooked by designers and developers is the need to track site performance. Once again, this is really easy to sort out, providing Google Analytics has been set up. Yoast steps up again with one of the most downloaded plug-ins for analytics with Google Analytics by Yoast – of course it’s set up to cope with Universal Analytics too.

There are other plug-ins suitable for analytics tracking including:

• Google Universal Analytics: loads of customisable options
• NK Google Analytics: adds the necessary javascript
• Better Google Analytics: tracking everything you need and with real time dashboards

You can also add in some analytic dashboards within your WordPress dashboards with Google Analytics Dashboard for WP and Google Analyticator.

And if you don’t go with any of the above technical plug-ins and just want to confirm Google Webmaster Tools (now Google Search Console) then you can use Verify Google Webmaster Tools.

Site Speed & Other Technical Stuff

Site speed is tied to customer experience. You’ve all been there, you’ve clicked on a search result and you’re waiting for the page to load. You wait. And wait. That’s it, you’re off. No one likes waiting, especially when it comes to websites (and even more so when you’re on your phone!)

Picture from Flickr: proby458

There are all manner of ways to improve your site speed, most of which would involve developers, but once again, there are a few plug ins that will sort you right out:

• Speed Booster Pack: a wealth of features including moving scripts to the footer, eliminates external render-blocking JavaScript and css plus much more (basically most of the stuff Google Page Speed Insights usually tells you to sort out!)
• WP Super Simple Speed: one of the key benefits is the plug-in is seriously lightweight (less than 20kb) yet includes gzip compression, loading jQuery from Google CDN, removes clutter from WordPress head plus much more.

You can also improve server performance with a simple W3 Total Cache plug-in, which reduces download times, has mobile support, caching of minimised and compressed CSS and more.

There is a standalone plug-in for this that allows your site to use Google Libraries for common JavaScript rather than using your own server, which is worth checking out.

With the influx of mark-up off the back of Google Hummingbird updates, sites adopting schema mark-up has increased, but still remains very low. Yet the benefits of schema for many businesses is very clear, especially if you are a restaurant, hotel, retailer or service provider. Schema mark up can really make your listings stand out in Google’s search results with prices, video’s, stock availability and average reviews (with shiny little gold stars too!).

However, once again, adding schema mark-up doesn’t have to be a pain. Check out these plug-ins to get you started:

• Schema Creator by Raven: easy to use, simple form filling
• Add Meta Tags: does what it says on the tin! Also included Open-graph and Twitter Cards

Images

Ahhh the visuals. How your site is represented visually is key to portraying the right message, which I’m sure your designer will tell you is the most important part of your site! Images can play a huge role in ebbing out as much SEO value from your site as possible.

Picture from Flickr: Alexandere Dulaunoy

While search engines cannot directly “read” images, they are helped out with ALT text which describes the image and adds usability for those who are visually impaired. But it’s not just what the image shows that will impact the SEO of your site.

Ensuring your images are SEO friendly is important as they will significantly contribute to your site page load speed if not optimised. All of this sounds a bit much right? Never fear though, much like Apple’s apps, there’s a plug in for that:

Optimise your images with Kraken Image Optimizer or if you need to change the size of an image but you’ve just uploaded it, you can use Resize Image After Upload.

The Must Have Social Plug-ins

There are some designers that I have spoken to who think Social Media is SEO. Honestly. Social Media works very well with SEO as can significantly boost brand awareness, generate links to content created and much more.

Photo Credit

Setting up your site to be socially shareable will always be recommended, and it couldn’t be easier. Check out these bad boys:

• Social Media Feather: quick and simple to add social sharing buttons
• SumoMe: not only does this plug-in add sharing buttons, it adds them over images supporting Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter and even provides stats!
• Shareaholics: another feature packed plug in that helps with not only share buttons, but promoted content, affiliate links and more

Although these are not the full solution, they would certainly get most basic WordPress users up and running on the SEO front and should be full of useful tips for designers out there.

If I’ve missed out some of your favourite SEO plug-ins, then please let me know in the comments below. Of course, we’d be happy to chat to you about your site if you need some help too.