Have you used any specific measures to ensure you’re optimizing your WordPress site for search engines like Google and Bing? If not, it’s never too late to turn things around.

And even if you’ve already laid down the groundwork to make your WordPress site search engine-friendly, there are several other SEO strategies you can implement to improve and/or protect your rankings.

How SEO-Friendly Is WordPress?

The good news is that WordPress is one of the more SEO-friendly content management systems (CMS) out there, often described as being optimizable “out of the box.” Below are a few reasons why.

Content creation: Adding regular content to a WordPress blog is a joy. And the more high-quality content you have on your site, the better it will be for SEO.

Adding regular content to a WordPress blog is a joy. And the more high-quality content you have on your site, the better it will be for SEO. Standard SEO-friendly features: WordPress’s out-of-the-box SEO features include custom permalinks (more about this here), a clean site structure (e.g., adding content to categories, which in turn have a parent category), and image optimization (i.e., alt attributes) among others.

WordPress’s out-of-the-box SEO features include custom permalinks (more about this here), a clean site structure (e.g., adding content to categories, which in turn have a parent category), and image optimization (i.e., alt attributes) among others. Clean code: 5-star WordPress themes/templates made by a WordPress developer usually come with clean and SEO-friendly code. Of course, some themes are better than others, so be sure do your research before implementing one.

Aside from these standard features, you also have a variety of WordPress SEO tools and plugins to choose from, a few of which could be all it takes to turn a vanilla WordPress site into an SEO powerhouse.

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Start optimizing your WordPress site with these 10 awesome SEO plugins.

1. Yoast SEO

Any discussion of SEO plugins would probably start with the WordPress users’ favorite — Yoast SEO. Boasting thousands of 5-star reviews, the Yoast SEO plugin is one of the premium plugins, often called the ultimate SEO plugin because of its assortment of powerful features, which include:

Internal linking suggestions

Redirect manager (for those annoying 404 URLs)

Focus keyword reports

XML sitemaps

Content and page analysis tool

Yoast’s page analysis tool is particularly useful for SEO beginners, providing a snapshot of a page’s SEO-friendliness. It evaluates its readability, content length, alt attributes, focus keywords and density, title tags, meta description, outbound links, and URLs among others, ensuring that you’re checking off all the important SEO factors.

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Website: Yoast.com

2. All in One SEO Pack

With more than 45 million downloads and counting since 2007, All in One SEO Pack is a feature-rich plugin that’s also great for SEO beginners.

This WordPress plugin provides:

XML sitemap support

Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support

Google Analytics support

Redirect manager

Built-in API

SEO integration on e-commerce sites like

WooCommerce

Automatic meta tags

Automatic blog title optimization

Advanced users can override the plugin’s default settings to create custom blog headlines, title tags, meta descriptions, and meta keywords according to how they see fit.

Overall, All in One SEO Pack is perhaps the perfect plugin for SEO newbies, giving you as much control as your skills require. As you gain experience, you can move up the plugin’s power-user features little by little to do your own A/B testing.

Website: All in One SEO Pack

3. Premium SEO Pack

Featuring more than 24 robust modules, Premium SEO Pack more than earns its premium branding. For a one-time payment of $44, you get:

Focus keyword analysis (up to 10 keywords for the basic pack)

Page analysis and SEO recommendations

Page SEO reports and scores

Keyword suggestions

Custom permalinks

W3C validator

Facebook planner

404 monitoring

Local SEO

Video sitemap

Mass optimization

Premium SEO Pack might not be cheap, but its comprehensive set of SEO features, such as image optimization plugins, SERP monitoring, and social media sharing among others, make it a must-have for SEO pros running WordPress sites.

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You can also install the light version, which has limited modules but should be enough if you want a preview of how the plugin works.

Website: PremiumSEOPack.com

4. SEOPressor Connect

SEOPressor takes the most critical SEO data from your website and presents them in one intuitive dashboard, giving you at-a-glance insights about your WordPress site’s search engine visibility.

The plugin’s real claim to fame, however, is how it has managed to keep up with digital marketing and Google’s evolution, emphasizing a focus on contextual content instead of keyword focus.

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For a subscription of $9.00 a month, you get access to SEOPressor’s key features, which include:

Automatic internal linking

Dynamic spider/crawler control

XML sitemap generator

Readability scoring

Over-optimization checking (e.g. overstuffing, irrelevant keywords)

This complete SEO toolset for wordpress may not be the easiest tool to use in this list, but the learning curve is worth overcoming if you want to develop a comprehensive understanding of search engine optimization.

It also comes with a 60-day money back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with your results.

Website: SEOPressor.com

5. WPtouch

WPtouch is unique for being a feature-packed mobile plugin for WordPress that automatically adds a simple, elegant, and more importantly, fast mobile theme to your WordPress site.

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This Google-recommended plugin automatically creates a mobile-optimized version of your site that not only ensures your site passes Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test but also does this without changing a single line of code.

Key features include:

Comprehensive settings : The plugin’s administration panel and WordPress Customizer lets you pick mobile themes and deliver unique landing pages to mobile users among others

: The plugin’s administration panel and WordPress Customizer lets you pick mobile themes and deliver unique landing pages to mobile users among others WorPress Speed: WPtouch claims its themes are “up to 5x faster than desktops or responsive themes.”

WPtouch claims its themes are “up to 5x faster than desktops or responsive themes.” Smooth integration: WPtouch supports WordPress’s top 30 plugins.

WPtouch supports WordPress’s top 30 plugins. Optimized footprint: The plugin uses low server memory and comes in an installation packaging of 1.9MB.

In today’s age of mobile-first websites, this WordPress plugin should be a no-brainer.

Website: WPtouch.com

6. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is another specialized WordPress SEO plugin, this time focusing on website speed optimizations. This open-source plugin helps your WordPress site scale and accommodate an increase in visitor traffic without crashing, all while enhancing its SEO-friendliness and user experience.

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Key features include:

Content delivery network (CDN) integration of theme files, Media Library, and WordPress

Support for dedicated servers, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and shared hosting

Google AMP support

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) support

With Google reiterating that site speed is one of its critical ranking factors and should be a must-check in any SEO audit, this plugin is a great solution for delivering a lightning-fast experience to your users.

For even more plugins that will increase your WordPress site’s speed, check out this post: 6 WordPress Plugins That Will Speed up Your Site

Website: W3 Total Cache

7. Broken Link Checker

If there’s one thing all SEO pros know, it’s that the more content you create and share, the harder managing your WordPress blog will be, especially when broken backlinks are concerned.

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This is where Broken Link Checker comes in, taking the pain out of identifying, fixing, and disavowing bad links.

As the name suggests, Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress SEO plugin that sniffs out broken links on your site, allowing you to repair or disavow these links without touching your content. Key features include:

Automatic link monitoring on posts, comments, and the blogroll

Detection of links, redirects, and missing images

Email and dashboard notifications

Search and filter function for URLs and anchor text

Repair broken links in one dashboard instead of going to each post

Broken Link Checker is a useful WordPress plugin if all you want is a simple tool that does one thing well.

Website: Broken Link Checker

8. SEO Squirrly

With over 30,000 installs and a 4.5-star rating, Squirrly’s over 200 features and tools for WordPress will surely help your content optimization efforts, regardless of the content types you are interested in writing.

Here’s a video that outlines how you can use some of the more than 200 tools and features of the plugin:

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This plugin is available in both a Light Version (Free) and a Pro Version which costs $19.99 per month.

Website: SEO Squirrly

9. Media File Renamer

One of the most time-sensitive components of SEO is going back through large sites and optimizing images: file names, alt attributes, and image titles if you’re so inclined. Combined they can be an incredible time suck. Not to mention, file renaming can be a dangerous process.

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Luckily, Rename Media Files can help.

The Media File Renamer plugin automatically renames media filenames depending on their image titles. Thankfully, when the image files are renamed, the references to it throughout the site are also updated (posts, pages, custom types and their metadata).

While the free version is an automatic renamer, there is also a Pro version which allows for manual renaming and a few other options.

Note: Before renaming all images automatically, it is recommended to try renaming a few files first to ensure all of its associated references have been properly updated on your website.

Website: Media File Renamer

10. SEO Auto Image Tags

Are you already naming your images with SEO in mind? Or do you need to update your image titles before using the Media File Renamer?

Then, let me introduce you to one of the first plugins I install on every site.

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SEO Auto Image Tags will auto-generate clean alt attributes and image titles based on the file name. The screenshot from my personal site above shows how the image file name automatically populates both fields.

Best of all, hyphens, periods and other characters are automatically removed leaving you with clean SEO-friendy tags.

Website: SEO Auto Image Tags

Conclusion

As you give the WordPress plugins featured in this list a closer look, you’ll realize just how useful having a tool that automatically does the dirty work of checking your site’s SEO-friendliness can be.

But don’t let an SEO plugin usefulness trick you into thinking that the more plugins you have, the easier optimization will be and the better search results you’ll get. On the contrary, too many plugins can mess with your loading time and just might slow down your site.

Plugins are all about quality over quantity, so try to limit your choices to the SEO plugins and tools that are most relevant to your needs.

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More WordPress SEO Resources:

Image Credits

Featured Image: chrisdorney / Shutterstock.com

Screenshots taken by Jon Clark, May 2018