WordPress SEO Plugins that You Need to Install Today for Better Rankings

So you’ve got your core SEO plugin installed for proper WordPress search engine optimization. But is that really all you need to do to optimize your WordPress site as well as it can be for Google and other search engines?

Unfortunately, it’s never that easy. If it were, everyone would have top rankings instantly. So here’s what else you need in order to make sure your site enjoys the best possible conditions for better rankings.

Rank Math SEO Plugin

Do you want something more than an all-in-one SEO plugin – something that gives you greater fine-tuning and control over pages while having a clean, easy-to-understand interface? Then Rank Math is the plugin for you. It includes a redirection module, a 404 error checker and an XML sitemap module to add in these powerful and yet often overlooked SEO tools.

The plugin also supports rich snippets and lets you choose from among six different types of snippets, including article, product, events, video and much more.

SEO Squirrly

Need an SEO plugin that guides you as you’re writing instead of after you finish the writing? SEO Squirrly is exactly what you’ve been looking for. Instead of generating recommendations after you write, you simply type in your topic and the keyword you want to rank for, and the plugin gets to work, “reading” your content as you write to make sure that it essentially “ticks all the boxes” of good SEO as you go along.

One of the best reasons to consider making SEO Squirrly part of your search optimization arsenal is that if you’re considering upgrading or switching from another WordPress SEO plugin, it keeps all the old settings of your previous plugin, so you don’t have to re-do everything with regard to your SEO. You can also generate content reports from within the plugin to send to others (such as your writers or marketing department) to help them improve their content.

Need more inspiration for your posts? SEO Squirrly will give you “content progress reports” each week along with the top tweets that include your keyword or phrase so that you can always have a finger on the pulse of what your target market is talking about and looking for.

Broken Link Checker

Over the course of managing and maintaining a WordPress blog, you’ll inevitably run into the issue of broken links. When Google comes across a broken link, it determines that this page would (understandably) not be of interest to its customers and quickly removes that page from its index.

This can be detrimental to your sites ranking, especially if there are several broken links. That’s why you need a free plugin to check them for you, and that’s precisely what Broken Link Checker does. Stop spending hours (or even days) sifting through all your pages and posts trying to find broken links on your own. This free plugin saves you time and helps you fix broken links the moment they’re spotted.

When this plugin finds broken links, it shows you the broken links so that you can go in and either delete the not found pages or correct them to updated or different versions. Keeping the plugin active after this point means it continues to search your site and notify you of any other broken links it finds. If you have a lot of posts or pages, it’s a good idea to run this plugin in batches and fix the broken links in parts so that the performance of your pages aren’t impacted.

One of the major bonuses of this link  checker over the competition is that it also looks at missing images and redirects that could cause Google to not rank your site as well.

Rel No Follow Links

Every page or website you link to gives a little bit of your site’s “link clout” to the other sites. But the more links you have on your site, the more you run the risk of devaluing your site in Google because of all the outbound links you have. The Rel NoFollow Links plugin can fix that.

All it does is add a checkbox when you add a link on your site. Checking this box prevents any of your link clout from going to these other sites, and essentially can add “nofollow” to all external links. This ensures that you give SEO clout only to sites that you choose, and not to advertisers who are just looking to use your site for backlinks. It’s a particularly helpful plugin for affiliate marketers who want to send their visitors to these third-party sites but doesn’t want to lose any of their valuable ranking “juice” in the process.

Should I Really Install All of These Plugins for Better Rankings?

You probably don’t need all of these plugins in order to improve your rankings, but it certainly pays, for example, to do a thorough broken link check from time to time, get some inspiration and an SEO check as you’re writing, and make sure you’re not losing out on any of that valuable SEO clout as you work hard to optimize your site.

The most important thing when working to grow your WordPress site is that you have a competent, proficient and experienced team on your side that can be there to help you if you run into problems or have questions. At WPDandy, we specialize in WordPress management and maintenance so that you can concentrate on building your business and growing your blog.

Contact WPDandy today if you need WordPress help, ongoing maintenance or management of your WordPress site, including fixing programming errors, upgrading WordPress or your plugin or making changes to your theme among other things. You’ll be amazed at the effect that smart changes can have for your website to improve the user experience as well as your search engine rankings!  Reach out to us today to learn more about our comprehensive WordPress services for all websites, large and small.