WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system for building websites due to its flexibility and how easy it is to get a site started. The wide variety of plugins available for the WordPress platform offer web developers the option to add custom functionality to a site and can play a major role in optimizing your site for SEO. Making sure you have the right plugins installed for the type of content that will be published is a critical component of any WordPress SEO strategy. Here are some plugins that will make posting and optimizing content for SEO a breeze on your WordPress site.
Finding the Right Plugin for SEO Optimizations
There’s a plugin that can help you add almost any type of custom functionality to a site but the huge number of plugins that are available can make it tough to find the one that works best. There are a number of awesome plugins available that can help your site shine but there are also plugins with tough to use mechanics that could potentially break a site. Here’s a list of our favorite WordPress plugins to use when the situation calls for it and how they can help you post content that ranks in search results.
Yoast SEO
The free version of Yoast SEO gives WordPress users the tools they need to make changes to page meta info, analyze keywords/readability, preview mobile search listings, generate XML sitemaps, and more. Yoast SEO is the most popular SEO plugin on WordPress and has over 5 million active installations.
The breadcrumbs option available with the Yoast SEO free plugin is particularly valuable for SEO because breadcrumbs help visitors navigate your site.
There’s also a premium version of Yoast SEO that will unlock even more tools that can help your site rank in search results.
Events Calendar
Adding events as a custom post type to a calendar on a site is a great way to publish unique content that can be added to Google’s Event index. The Events Calendar plugin creates a calendar page and adds the ability to add event posts with a time/date and location to a WordPress site.
The plugin also allows for partial template overrides and other options that give experienced web developers the ability to create beautiful custom event pages.
Translate WordPress – Google Language Translator
Translate WordPress gives you the option to add a translator widget powered by Google Translate to your site. The widget gives user the option to translate text on a page to over 100 different languages that can be enabled in the plugin settings. Offering content in multiple languages is a great way to reach a global audience and improve SEO.
Gravity Forms
Giving site visitors a way they can reach out to learn more about the services you offer is one of the best ways to give them a clear endpoint and make landing pages more attractive. Gravity Forms is a paid plugin that offers an easy-to-use form builder in the WordPress admin panel. Fields can be individually set to be required or not and use conditional logic to help keep forms short so they’re more likely to be filled out.
Gravity Forms also has a number of add-ons available to add custom functionality like credit card payments, login/user registration, CRM integration, and more.
Enhance WordPress Site Functionality with Plugins
Finding the right plugins for your WordPress site can streamline your publishing process so new pages look great and get indexed as unique content by Google. Yoast SEO is the best way to manage SEO settings for individual pages sitewide and find opportunities to make improvements. Plugins like The Events Calendar, Translate WordPress, and Gravity Forms give you the tools to add page elements that make landing pages more interesting and drive user engagement.
It’s important to note that adding new plugins to a WordPress site should always be done with care because there is a potential for conflicts with existing code. Running a backup and testing site functionality whenever you install a new plugin is the best way to ensure a plugin doesn’t break your site.