If you are dreaming of launching yourself online, WordPress is the best option for beginners. WordPress Touch Pro is the obvious choice with over 13 million of downloads. You run WordPress sites successfully if you have certain plugins. Only WordPress site with some kind of theme and your article isn’t sufficient to rank high and top appearance, you need some plugins as well for optimization. If your site is not optimized you may miss the opportunity for high organic traffic and so conversions.
There are so many plugins available to make your sites SEO friendly. If you are freshers to SEO you must have some basic and common plugins saved for your sites. You can make WordPress sites for your particular requirement, it may rank good on search engine results but it will be work best and optimized if you have certain plugins for your websites.
What are WordPress Plugins?
WordPress plugins are a small tool or you can say a tiny chunk of code, which is getting added to your websites to improve the performance. It is a different code from your WordPress code. You can install it, uninstall it, or deactivate it, it won’t impact your WordPress. WordPress plugins are used to improve your site’s look, performance, and efficiency. Many times it is possible to have so many plugins installed on your website, and those help to improves your site’s performance dramatically and make your site efficient. Even certain plugin improves user experience on your website if you use it correctly. You don’t need to write any code for that.
It is seen that an average of more than 55000 WordPress plugins is available at the official WordPress repository, you can use them as per your requirements and preferences. Some plugins may slow down your site or some maybe boost your site at a certain height. Different plugin plays different roles, some may be suited to your sites, some may not. It is mandatory that if you are running a WordPress site you should have some plugins installed.
Most importantly not all plugins are free, there are some plugins are paid, or may be available from third party or developers. Many are free plugins and many plugins are freemium that is, those may be a free plugins but you have to pay for some extra features.
Installation of WordPress plugins
There are many different ways to install plugins to your WordPress site. 3 ways of them are as follows
- You can use WordPress dashboards to install plugins
- Installation using admin Plug Upload for plugins, not in the directory list.
- Manual installation using FTP
Pro Tip: Make sure you have a backup of your websites, before uploading any plugin. There are some plugins also available for website backup. Many times issues occur while uploading and activation any plugin. In that case, it is better to have your website’s backup for safety so that you can access your original data if anything went wrong.
1. Plugin Installation using dashboard
This is the easiest way to install a WordPress plugin, following are the steps for installation
- go to your WordPress dashboard find the “Plugin” section
- Click on “Add new”
- Search for the particular plugin in the search box you want to install, you can see, many popular plugin suggestions will be advised and the number of options you can pick for installation.
- Click on the selected plugin and click on “Install Now”
- click on ”Activate” if you want to activate the plugin
And Now your Plugin is ready to use. It will work for your websites instantly, as per its specification. You don’t need to restart your device.
2. Install a WordPress Plugin by using WordPress Admin Plug Upload
This is the most common way to install your paid WordPress plugin to your websites using the first method you can only install a free plugin. following are the steps.
- Download your required plugin, it is always in zip format.
- Later go to WordPress and select “Plugins”
- Here at the top of the page click on the “Upload plugin” box and you will directly go to the uploading form.
- Next on the upload form you will see the “Choose file” option, click on that and select the plugin file from your downloads.
- And then Click on the “Install Now” button
- As the installation finished, click on “activate plugin”.
- Here you finish your installation and you may need to configure the plugin settings as per your site’s requirements.
3. Manual Installation of WordPress plugin using FTP
Many of the WordPress hosting providers have some restrictions, in that case, you have to install WordPress plugins manually using FTP. It is difficult to install the plugin through the dashboard.
Following are the steps to install the WordPress plugin manually.
- Download the source file, it is mostly a Zip format file.
- Right-click on file and extract the Zip file
- Zip file extraction creates a folder that needs to be upload manually using the FTP client.
- your host has given you login details, open the FTP clients and connect your sites using credentials.
- As you get connected, go to the /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your site.
- Here upload the folder that was extracted from the zip file to the /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your webserver.
- Once it uploaded go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the “Plugins” button
- If your Plugin is successfully installed, it will be shown on your Plugins page
- Then click on the “Activate” Button
- As the activation is finished you might need to configure the plugin form setting as per your website’s demand.
Here are Top Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
There are so many WordPress plugins are available, but selecting the best and appropriate plugin for a website is a challenge. It truly depends on what type of your WordPress site is and it’s needs. There are many different plugins available as per site genres and requirements. Not all plugins are equal, all plugins are different in their performance and individuality. Some are better suited for your sites, some are not, and you will always find another best plugin all the time you are using.
In this article, we tried to categorize the plugins on their functionality, and most in demand and user-friendly plugins covered. Hope this will fulfill all your requirements and solve your queries regarding selecting the best plugin.
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We categorized plugin as Free, Technical, paid, images
Free WordPress plugins
In this category we include some plugins which are free as well as paid, that is you have to pay for some pro version of plugins
1. Yoast SEO (Free/ Paid from $ 89)
Yoast SEO highly used and trusted SEO plugins, it has thousands of glowing reviews. It is a premium plugin that includes several powerful and useful features. Still, it is the most convenient and easy to use, and easy understand plugins.
The most important features include
- Internal link suggestions and guidance
- Focused keyword analysis and reports.
- It gives page and content analysis.
- Built-in Redirect manager (for error 404 URLs).
- Generates XML Sitemaps.
One of the features of Yoast SEO is page analysis tool is very useful in the manner that it provides a snapshot of the performance of every page. The readability, content length, alt attributes, links, keywords density, title tags, meta description, and many other SEO tactics are all analyzed and assures you of whether your site is on right track.
2. SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant (Free)
One of the most popular and highly used On-page SEO Plugin for WordPress, this is always adored by SEO experts, bloggers, marketers, and online business experts. SemRush Plugin has an extraordinary feature that allows you to compare your website with your competitors. Competitors’ research is one of the best features it provides. At the same time, it is useful in finding appropriate organic keywords and ranking for your site.
SemRush Plugin also provides a writing assistance tool, that will also useful in improving your writing skill and make your content search-friendly. This is so much important in user engagement is one of the most important factors in ranking.
It also offers:
- It gives scores to the readability of your content and improvement recommendations.
- Organic Keyword recommendation.
- Writing assistance.
- Check Plagiarism and avoid data duplication
3. Google XML Sitemaps (Free)
As the name suggests this plugin creates an XML sitemap of the website. This feature is truly useful and search engines like google, bin, etc, can easily crawl and index your website. With such sitemaps is will be much easy for crawlers to study the complete structure of websites and retrieve the required data more efficiently. This Plugin always informs search Engines when you add an article or any data to your website.
XML sitemap Plugin is a highly recommended plugin for almost the last 9 years.
- This Plugin automatically sitemap, whenever you publish a new article
- Easy to understand and use
- Once install, you don’t need to worry about your sitemap and other adjustments.
4. SEO Ultimate (Free/Paid from $49)
This is a fantastic SEO plugin created over 13 years before for real-time users. Data flexibility is one of the most important features of SEO Ultimate. some of its other specialty we put in an article
- Automatically keyword setup.
- Generates internal links.
- Automatically creates an open graph for posts and pages.
- Has a file editor feature that means you can modify robots.txt in the dashboard.
5. Squirrly SEO (Free/Paid from $20/month)
This plugin is designed basically for SEO freshers or beginners. It is one of the best on-page SEO Plugins for WordPress if you want to create a successful SEO strategy. There are more than 3millions installs and excited reviews this becomes the most important SEO plugin. This plugin has more than 200 features, which will help you in all the way you required. It has a premium version so that you can access some additional features.
- Live assistance and site optimization
- Itself navigates Google ranking factors.
6. Rank Math (Free)
It is the most common plugin installed millions of times for its social media specification. Rank Math plugin helps its user to optimize their sites for search engines as well as social media
- Easy setup and configuration
- Integration of Google Schema markup
- Unlimited keyword optimization
- Time saver
7. The SEO Framework (Free)
This is the only WordPress plugin that follows all the white hat SEO guidelines imposed by search engines and WordPress. This plugin is truly clean, trusted, extensible, unrestricted and no strings attached. It optimizes your site using all white hat SEO techniques and guidelines.
- Generate meta tags in any language.
- Clean, and search engine recommended
8. Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin (Free/Paid from $199)
Over 29 millions install, Google analytic dashboard is a brainer choice for the Google Analytics plugin. Installation is a bit more complicated than other plugin but efforts are worth as you get its results. It gives your site visitors, bounce rate, views, ranking keywords, and real-time statistics.
- It can be accessed from the WordPress dashboard
- Links tracking features make it different from others.
- Traffic and user engagement tracking feature
- give a real-time comparison
Paid WordPress SEO Plugin
1. WPML (Paid from $29)
This an excellent multi-language WordPress plugin. You can translate your whole website into multiple languages using this plugin.
- Optimise site for multiple languages
- SEO Meta translation
- site map transfer to search engines
- drive right traffic in correct language
2. Premium SEO Pack (Paid from $44)
As name suggests this WordPress plugin is truly developed for SERP and SEO optimization. This plugin tracks your SERP appearance and image optimization
- Manage page speed for different devices
- track 404 pages
- automatically update images with alt attribute
3. SEOPressor (Paid from $9)
This word press plugin is highly recommended and regarded. SEO Pressor stands out as it developed according to the latest google algorithm and its updates.
- Controls over optimizing your website.
- manages crawlers
- help in reducing bounce rate
WordPress SEO Plugins for Images
1. ShortPixel Image Optimize (Free 100 credits a month/Paid $4.99 for 5,000 image credits)
This plugin in managing your image size on websites. This plugin manipulates the image size as per page requirement and this feature is so important to rank high in SERP.
- It makes a copy of your images as per size required and stores the original image in different folders
- it will allow you to compare both image’s size and quality differences.
2. TinyPNG (Free/Paid from $0.009 per image)
This image optimization plugin use to differentiates and compress JPEG and PNG images
- Optimise images
- JPEG image compress up to 40-60%
- PNG Images compress up to 50-80%
- Helps to improve your site speed and manages bandwidth
There are so many highly used and most important WordPress plugins are in use, here we are unable to explain those in detail. So We have given you a small list of highly recommended WordPress plugin list as follows
1. General SEO Plugin
- Rel NoFollow Checkbox (Free)
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin YARPP (Free)
- Redirection (Free)
- W3 Total Cache (Free)
- SEOPress (Free/Paid from $39)
- All in One SEO Pack (Free/Paid from $79)
- Broken Link Checker by ManageWP (Free)
- All in One Schema Rich Snippets (Free)
- Premium SEO Pack
- SEOPressor Connect
- All in One WP Security & Firewall (Free)
2. WordPress Site Speed Plugins
- W3 Super Cache
- Media File Renamer
- WP Smush
- WP-Optimize
3. Mobile Optimization Plugins
- WP Touch Pro
- Autoptimize
4. WordPress Analytics Plugins
- Monster Insights
- Google Analytics Dashboard (Exact Metrics)
- Analytify
5. Image Optimization plugin
- reSmush.it (Free)
- EWWW Image Optimizer (Free)
- WPtouch Mobile Plugin (Free/Paid from $79)
- WordLift (Paid from $59)
Conclusion:
WordPress Plugin plays a very important role in SEO optimization. You can develop a better site with quality content and features but WordPress plugins give you a height or a touch of optimization. Using plugins your site becomes most user-friendly, device friendly, and SERP friendly. Your site will it’s ranking high in SERP. Keep in mind that too many Plugins may also hamper your websites. So think once before adding unnecessary.