According to Search Engine Journal, 93% of all web traffic comes through search engines. We live in the age of SEO where, it is practically impossible to be a successful online business if you are not ranking in search engines.
A decade ago, the competition was relatively low. All you had to do to rank was focus on certain keywords and your website would start to pop up in the list. But times have changed. Today, there are over 1.5 billion websites in the world. Search Engines have a lot of options to choose from. So, you must distinguish yourself so that the algorithms choose you over your peers.
Add to this the fact, that according to Moz, the first page of Google captures 71% of all the clicks. So that basically means that the goal is not only to rank, but to rank as high as possible. So how do we do that? How can we be the first on Google? The answer is search engine optimization (SEO).
In the article, I will discuss with you what SEO is, how it works, and then go on to mention five best WordPress SEO plugins that you can use to drive traffic to your website.
1. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
As the name suggests, Search Engine Optimization is technically optimizing your content such that it is preferred by search engines, and hence leads to organic traffic. The purpose of SEO is to basically improve both the quality and the quantity of the traffic you get.
For instance, if you are an online clothing store. You really do not want people looking for fitness items in your website. The point is that you are going to benefit from the traffic, only if the people visiting your website are interested in your product or service in the first place.
Similarly, if your content is optimized and ranking at a higher spot in search engines, it is going to lead to more traffic to your website.
Search Engines are like libraries. So, when someone searches for a certain term, they just surf through their database, and return the results that match the content that was searched for.
As a result, when it comes to SEO, your job is two-fold. One is to make sure that the search engines understand what your content is about. This way, when someone searches for terms related to your content, they will be able to identify it and return your website. The other is to prove to them that your content is worthy of ranking. So, let’s take a deeper dive into understanding how SEO works
2. How Does SEO Work?
As I mentioned earlier, SEO has evolved significantly over the last few years. Due to the fierce competition on the world wide web, search engines now rely on multiple factors to rank websites.
There are various metrics that comes into play now when a search engine like Google is trying to rank your website. Some of these include your domain ranking, page ranking, page keywords, domain name, social media weight, age, etc. It’s described best in the Infographic below.
Now each of these parameters need to be looked at individually to be done well. For instance, some parameters such as Page Ranking and Domain Ranking are mostly built through networking and getting backlinks.
However, other parameters that include page speed, readability, content length, text distribution, etc. are stuff that you can control while producing your content.
If you are using WordPress for your website, then you are lucky! WordPress has several plugins that help you with SEO factors that you can control through content production.
By the way, in case you want to know about the SEO trends in 2021, feel free to click here.
3. 5 Best WordPress SEO Plugins
So, without further due, let’s have a look at five SEO Plugins that you can use to drive traffic to your website in 2021.
1. YOAST
Yoast SEO has an excellent 16,700 5star rating. Yoast has amazed the WordPress world with impressive upgrades, a gorgeous interface, and a very user-friendly plugin to make your website articles and product pages stand out.
It’s embedded using a broad group of internet search engine optimization programs. Yoast allows an individual to add meta tags, bread crumb navigation, and a XML-sitemap, making it easier for the Google search console to index your website. Additionally, it optimizes internet sites for societal media marketing pages.
Using Yoast, you can observe SEO friendly page material before it’s inserted to your website so you can tweak it before it’s published.
The Yoast plugin’s various functions make it useful for better content and to generate the maximum search engine traffic for your site.
The plugin’s purpose is to help you generate more traffic by making your WordPress website appear higher in the search engine results. Once installed, this plugin creates search engine friendly meta-tags and reformats URLs to provide SEO useful results.
2. All in One SEO Pack
With the All-in-one-SEO Pack, you’ll have the ability to avoid duplicate content topics that can really hurt your search engine ranking. It also has other useful features like a rich snippet, small XML sitemaps, RSS feeds, robots.txt editor, local SEO, video SEO and more.
High rankings boost your website’s chances of being found on the top of the search results pages and increase traffic.
This plugin is perfect for all types of business, blogs and other websites.
AIOSEO helps beginners with Search Engine Optimization through features such as:
- Smart Meta tag generator
- On-page checklist
- Rich snippet schema Mark up.
- XLM Site-maps
- And more…
But it also has a lot of features for more innovative Search Engine Optimization users, including:
- RSS packs
- Robot.txt editor
- Local Search Engine Optimization
- Google News Sitemaps
- Video Search Engine Optimisation
3. SEOPress
SEOPress is a powerful plugin that is completely white-labelled and free of charge. It includes comprehensive options that allow one to optimize a website thoroughly.
The plugin is completely incorporated with google analytics, helping you keep track of your search engine optimization efforts.
Also, its articles analysis tool will offer optimization tips that will assist you in writing better articles. Programmers can apply extra pins to personalize the plugin fully too.
Beyond this, also, it provides features such as:
- Intuitive installation wizard
- Service for infinite key words
- Image Search Engine Optimization
- Social networking observation
- Dynamic names and meta tag descriptions
- Custom canonical URLs
- ‘No-index’ service
- Free Search Engine Optimization tutorials
4. All in One Schema Rich Snippets
All in one Schema rich snippets will enhance how your pages appear in search engine results in rich snippets, which can be a short and much more interactive overview of your page. They feature things like pricing, photos, star ratings, or even testimonials.
This schema mark up plugin can help you incorporate items such as:
- Video Clips
- Content Articles
- Recipes
- Occasions
- People
- Services and Products
- Content Articles
Rich snippets are especially critical for e-commerce websites. Users won’t need to dig deep to acquire an overview of services and products. They will find what they need from the search engine results for your web page.
5. Rank Math
Rank Math is a search engine optimization plugin which is simple to utilize. It has an intuitive installation wizard and smart monitoring abilities that’ll help beginners maximize their articles in several clicks.
Besides that, it’s built-in 404 monitor makes it possible to solve mistakes for a far better user experience.
Some other essential features include:
- Schema Mark-up
- Service for infinite key words
- Advanced Search Engine Optimisation auditing
- Redirect manager
- Local Search Engine Optimization
- Bread Crumbs optimization
- Internal linking tips
- XML Site Map
- Image Search Engine Optimization
6. BONUS: W-3 Total Cache
W-3 Total Cache is one of the most widely used complementary SEO wordpress plugins. Once installed, it will strengthen your internet site rank and enhance the user experience by loading cached WebPages quickly.
A fast loading site enhances SEO overall performance and enriches the consumer experience. Page speed is a massive factor in bounce rate. W-3 total Cache can be a factor in turning an undecided visitor into a paying buyer.
4. Too Long Didn’t Read (TL;DR)
We live in the age of data and search engines. Successful online businesses are those that rank higher in search engines and get the maximum organic traffic.
To rank at the top of the SERP (search engine results page), you need to optimize your content. SEO basically increases the quality and quantity of your traffic. By drawing traffic based on your keywords, you will find an audience interested in your product or service. More than 93% of web traffic comes from search engines (Search Engine Journal).
As SEO has evolved over the last few years, search engines take into account many different factors when ranking different websites. While some of these parameters such as page rank and domain rating are built through getting backlinks and networking, others, such as content length, readability, etc. can be controlled when you are producing your content.
WordPress provides many plugins that can help optimize your content for search engines. Some of the best are noted above.
Fahim Ahmadi is an entrepreneur, blogger and marketer. Follow Fahim at fahimahmadi.com as he writes about making money online, emerging software and technologies, and his journey as an affiliate marketer.
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