Best SEO Plugins For WordPress 2012 (part 2)

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Following my recent post about the best SEO plugins for WordPress (part 1), this is the second and final part of the series. Again, before anything else, please ensure that you are not “exaggerating” on the amount of plugins you are using, as excessive plugins may slow your site down and that is bad for users experience. If you suffer this experience (slow site), consider improving your WordPress performance, by reading the following recommended articles:

Anyway, if you noticed in my previous paragraph, I mentioned that bad users experience is not good. Obviously, the contrary is what really matters, and anything that you do that can improve users experience is good for SEO, period.

That said, the first part dealt with on-page SEO and the “added technical” stuff necessary to enhance WordPress and its SEO capabilities. Rewind a bit, and you will find that my Best SEO practices for 2012 talks about other important elements you should consider in your SEO campaign.  The following plugins, deals with those “other” (or related) SEO factors. These are the ones I personally recommend. While these may not be directly related to on-page optimization, they form an integral part of your SEO efforts, considering that social engagement, page speed, authorship markup, to name just a few, now play an important role to rank well on search engines. Please note that there are some plugins that are available in both free and premium version (clearly marked), despite this being kept to a minimum.

Best SEO Plugins For WordPress 2012 (part 2)

Author hReview: Rich Snippets is all over Google’s Webmaster Central’s YouTube Channel. This just shows you that they are pushing its use substantially. Have you ever seen those “rating stars” when conducting a search (see image below)? Yep, they are not only eye catching but also improves CTR. In addition, I believe that Google can better filter posts that have adequate markup and within the process, gives you an added boost on your rankings. See also the plugins effect on a post: Audible Affiliate Review

My friend Hesham helped me implement the hReview setup here on my blog. The plugin was initially intended for Thesis users only. However, he has gone the extra mile and coded the plugin to fit any WordPress Theme. If you want to implement the hReview (Schema.org microformat data), use this plugin and avoid all the technicalities (it is complicated). As far as I know, this is the first of its kind and extremely easy to use. I love this one and it is 100% free. Just remember to provide an honest and quality review.

hReview Snippet Plugin

ShareBar: Adds a dynamic and fully customizable floating box to the left of your post. This contains links/buttons to popular social networking sites, making it easier for users to share your content on the social web, an increasing factor search engines are using. There are many ways you can configure the plugin and you can also add an individual button of just about any social network of your choosing. I recommend adding the Google+ 1 button, without a doubt.

In addition, I strongly recommend you to implement Google’s Authorship Markup (easy tutorial on how to get it done) on your site. You may not think that it helps, but I think that it helps and a lot.

SEO Auto Links & Related Posts: This plugin does both “deep linking” automatically and displays related posts based on several filters that you can use. All settings can be bypassed manually and you can define your own settings as you see fit. For the Auto Links part, I only use the “manual definition” for specific keywords.

Another alternative for “inter linking is SEO Smart Links (see part 1 of this post) and Yoast’s Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (this is the one I use here).

SEO Auto Links

RSS Footer: This plugin allows you to add an additional line of content either in the beginning or the end of your feeds. For example, you can use this plugin to create links with anchor text to point anywhere you want and it will appear on your feed. After that, submit your feed to quality RSS aggregators and voilà, instant backlinks. Although this might not be a lot, it still helps, plus you get to obtain some additional traffic from sites such as FeedAge RSS directory. See example of my feed on FeedAge below.

SEO RSS Footer

WP Super Cache or WP Total Cache (WTC): Cache plugins improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. Both these plugins are good and you should use only one or the other. WP Super Cache has an easier settings in comparison to WTC. However, if you are going to sue CloudFlare (CF), it is recommended that you install WTC, as it already integrates with CF CDN service.

SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2: Strengthen your on page SEO, by increasing the number of indexed pages, auto converting search terms into post tags, and more. Some features include:

  • Increase the number of pages indexed by adding a special link to search results.
  • Make sure all posts have been indexed by promoting the one that does not get traffic yet (use with care, do not overdo it).
  • Get detailed information about what are the best keywords for your web site and blog post by tracking your most popular search terms.

A very powerful plugin that even I limit its use depending on what website I am using it. Here for example, I only use it to track search terms to later optimize my content for specific keywords that are driving traffic to my blog. On another website, I also use the feature of showing “incoming searches” to display on my sidebar. Users can then see similar searches they have made and most likely click on it. Read the developers information carefully.

CloudFlare WordPress Plugin: If you decide to use CloudFlare’s CDN service, don’t forget to install this plugin (a must). this ensures:

  • Correct IP Address information for comments posted to your site
  • Better protection as spammers from your WordPress blog get reported to CloudFlare
  • Optimization of your server database (optional)

No Follow Links: If you use your “blogroll” type links on WordPress and would like to “nofollow” them, this plugin will allow you to append the nofollow attribute tag for each link individually. It does not conflict with the link relationships (XFN) specified when you edit a link. It will just be appended to the end of the rel attribute when it’s displayed.

Broken Link Checker: This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found. Once you are notified, you can then rectify your broken inks as these type of links are normally frowned upon by search engines. If you do not want to use a plugin, try using Bing SEO Toolkit (older post but still valid).

Tweet Old Post: One of those plugins that on “reviving” your old post by automatically Tweeting them based on parameters you pre-define.

Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin:This plugin adds an option box to the WordPress editor section, where you can specify a redirect location and type of redirect that you want, temporary, permanent, or meta. this is very good especially if you are rewriting an old post and want to redirect that post to the new one. Has many features to be explored.

CommentLuv (free) or CommentLuv Premium (aff link): What is there to say about CommentLuv? So many actually that I rather you head over to this post and see all the benefits of having your blog CommentLuv enabled.

That’s it! Remember that WordPress SEO plugins are designed only to help and will not guarantee you high rankings, neither are they some sort of set and forget thing. Search algorithms changes often and monitoring your SEO progress is the next obvious step. For that, there are many SEO tools that you can use to measure your performance and progress. A post about that is coming soon :).

Anyway, while providing great content is your first priority, in my opinion, SEO does not and should not interfere with the quality of your website. At most, they work in tandem and despite many saying that providing “solely” great content is enough, I think that it is not the case. Helping search engines to identify your sites authority and content is better achieved by applying good SEO practices.

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

59 thoughts on “Best SEO Plugins For WordPress 2012 (part 2)”

  • Thanks DiTesco for Sharing best wordpress plugins, and Update most useful wordpress plugins.

  • Good additional list of information DiTesco from your part 1 article.
    Some of the plugins I have used, some I will try now as they do sound interesting.
    SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 is a new one for me, I will check it out.
    Thanks again for the info, keep it up, always good reading.
    Steve

  • Back with an FYI DiTesco.
    When I (Submit) the post I did above, CloudFlare sent me to an error page. I clicked the (view live site) and got back here and my comment was submitted.
    Just an FYI. You can delete this after reading it.
    Steve

    • Hi Steve. Thanks for the heads up. I know that this type of occurrence happen when my site gets a bit of a spike in traffic. Anyway, I am glad you found some cool plugins to give a test drive.

  • Wow, this makes me wish I had a wordpress blog. I still prefer Blogger for integrated SEO by Google. All that you’ve to take care of is Keyword usage and social media promotion. Still a great post.

    • Hmmm, integrated SEO on Blogger? I will have to check that out 🙂 Anyway, I started with blogger way back and moved to WordPress last year. I have to admit that it was the best move I did for my site. This is specially true if you want to use your site for business. It is so flexible that only your imagination is the limit.

  • Thanks for sharing these nice series of numbers of plug-ins which are specially handy for SEO’s and i had use some of the plug-in which you mentioned earlier and they given me good response.

  • Hi DiTesco, you mentioned some neat plugins here that I haven’t tried. I’d like to give RSS footer a try. I have a question about using CloudFlare, if you’re already using CloudFlare do you need WP Super cache also?

    Share bar is really cool and I also added Google +1 an the Buffer button. Great tools.

    Thanks!

    • Hi Ileane. I am running my site with both CloudFlare and WP Super Cache simultaneously. You don’t have to, but it appears to work well together. RSS Footer is awesome and it does spread a bit of links around, specially if you have enough subscribers 🙂

  • Thanks DiTesco its really a best wordpress plugins and im excited to see SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2.im going to check out it soon.

  • Hi DiTesco,

    I’m using several them. Cloudflare lately gave me offline several times, but it happens.
    I didn’t install its plugin. Worth? You put it as a must. I suppose, I have the correct IP from comments without the plugin.

    Broken link checker is very useful detecting outdated links.
    The SEO autolink seems very interesting to have it handy- I use Yoast for related posts, but I will have in mind just in case.

    Cheers and keep rocking!

    Gera

    • Hi Gera. CloudFlare sometimes goes down due to attacks that they suffer frequently. Not sure from whom, but they do and mitigate them as fast as they can. For now, I am still satisfied with them and mind you that I am only on the free version. As for their plugin, Yes, they do recommend you to install it, specially if you are not using W3TC. You may not notice it, but it could be filtering out something. Nothing to loose in playing safe 🙂 Lastly, Yoast plugin is good and I use it here. However I noticed in some other sites of mine that it uses more resources than Auto Links. That is my backup plugin for related post, lol

  • Thanks for feedback Francisco!
    I use CloudFlare and W3TC. I’ll install the plugin from them to see how it works.
    Interesting Auto Links – bookmarked this post for future reference 🙂

    • Welcome Gera. but now you got me confused 🙂 If you are using W3TC with Cloudflare then you don’t need the plugin. You only need the plugin if you are using other “cache” programs other than W3TC. Sorry about the confusion..

      • No problem Franciso! Sometimes this tech stuff can confuse. CloudFlare and W3TC are complementing each other, ok no plugin – thanks!

  • Hi DiTesco,

    Thanks for sharing this good information. SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 is new for me and i’m going to check it, I wish it will be useful for me.

  • That was a good list. I use most of those plugins, but forget about a few wehn I set up a new blog

  • That’s quite an exhaustive post DiTesco. I really have to give SEO Auto Links & Related Posts a try as my internal linking really deserves some work.

  • The Author hReview plugin is just awesome. Love it, I am writing a post on how to set up rich snippets using the plugin. may be you can check it out sometime next week. Thanks.

    • I will definitely check your post about it. If by any chance I miss it, please just “poke” me to remind me about it 🙂

  • Great post, thanks so much for putting this post (as well as part 1) together. I found just what I was looking for!

  • Thanks for the blogroll and shoutout. You’re on my reading list as you provide great info and you blog regularly. Keep on bloggin’

  • Di Tesco do you use SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2? if not wich one do you use for auto link?

    • Hi Miguel. I only use SEO Search Terms to view the stats about the keywords and search terms on the back end of my blog. For “inter links” or auto links, I prefer and use SEO Smart Links. Hope that helps. SEO Smart Links is great and if you want to go the extra mile you can always upgrade it to the PRO version (this is what I use actually), which gives you full control of what you want done. The free version is more than good enough though.

  • You know, aside from the fact that caching plug-ins have tried to EAT three of my blogs, now, over the years – this is great, and you know I trust your recommendations. I’m sometimes a bit slow to check them out, but eventually I do get there. 😉

    Thanks for this, DiTesco.

    • Hi Holly. LOL, I know that sometimes it is hard to “keep” track of so many plugins and even worst, which one should one be using. These plugins are the ones I already so I am pretty much comfortable in recommending them 🙂 good to see you here as always and I see that “Abhi” is rocking 😉

      • Yes he is – but it’s a close race. Hajra is giving him a run for it!

        Caching plug-ins and I simply do not get along. Every major disaster that’s befallen any of my blogs had to do with them. WT3 being the latest, but certainly not the only, culprit. (I think the key may be to knowing where all the hooks are, and properly disabling/uninstalling them BEFORE attempting to move a blog or make ANY significant changes to a database. BUT – that one time? It was nothing more than a time zone change in WordPress that triggered it to blow up on me. So no – never again.

  • Thanks for the awesome articles with SEO plugins review.I personally like commentluv plugin.

    • CL is great and the premium even better 🙂

  • very nice list of seo plugins 🙂 currently i’m using all in one seo pack.

  • I just started using Heshams Author hReview plugin and it is very impressive, its great to see how the reviews show up in the search results.

    • Hi Dan. I agree. Hesham’s hReview plugin is simply awesome and aside form the “stars” itself which is a bit catchy I must admit, actually do help to boost rankings a notch or two 🙂 BTW, test driving CBPoster and looking good. I love it. Just would like the ability to “edit” the descriptions.. that would be a blast. Are you think about that for the next update, lol

      • Thanks Ditesco, Yes we will have a new update to edit the description in the next few days or so, I will send an email out to all customers about this update when its done, keep in touch.

  • DiTesco, I think I’ve found the best SEO plugin setup currently available.
    I use the WordPress SEO plugin by Joost and the SEO Ultimate plugin. Normally this would create a ton of duplicate features, but SEO Ultimate lets you deactivate all overlapping modules.
    Oops. I just finished my P3 scan and it turns out that even with most features disabled, the SEO Ultimate is causing slow load times and increasing server load. I did like it’s autolink feature, URL redirects, and shortening of urls. I guess it’s time to find a replacement for those features.

  • You might have mentioned it before but WordPress SEO by Yoast is my go-to for title tweaks and indexing adjustments. I like the ability to disable date-based and author-based archives and in some cases noindex tags which can help pagerank sculpt a site to the most important pages. Thanks for the list!

    • Hi Jenks. Indeed, I mentioned SEO by Yoast. It is the first part of this series 🙂

  • Very nice article but I can’t understand How ShareBar plugin helps in SEO?

    • It does not really directly help Ammar. however, since one of the elements that helps to rank well is social engagement, the idea is to make it easier for your users to share your content on the web. Having the sharebar floating nicely there will help “entice” your readers to share.. hope that helps

      • Thanks DiTesco for this great explanation. I am using Sharebar for 2 months. I think this is just to share articles on social networks but they help in SEO too. 😀

  • Author hReview & CommentLuv are no doubt my favorites. Thanks for suggesting me this post Francisco 🙂 I not only found a plugin I wanted from a long time – Author hReview but couldn’t find it as I didn’t know the name!

    Saksham

  • DiTesco, I thought I had a good picture of what plugins to use, but you pushed me down on the ground again! 🙂
    I’ll get back to this post and go through your list again, and again, and again…
    One question, are some of these plugins more likely to open up for hackers? I have seen that happen sometimes.

    Thanks again!

    • “Hackers” tend to look for “weak” or vulnerable coding. There are plugins that “contain” malicious code and this is why it is always safe to install only those that have been tested and are from credible developers. All plugins here are from developers that have proven themselves to be credible and reliable so it is a safe bet to install any of these in comparison to “others”. If you are concerned with security, which you should, try installing an anti-virus an test plugins for malicious codes. You can also “add” additional security measures on your blog to make it “less” hackable. If you are not sure how to do that, shoot me an email 🙂

      • Thanks. Appreciate your reply. I do have some questions and will send them to you.

  • thanks for the info.. this SEO info is very useful for me n my blog,.. i’ll upgrade my blog for SEO..

  • Thx. Francisco – nice SEO post for WordPress. I agree with you on Yoast as well; they are really going the extra mile with their plugins. Again, thx.

  • I love the idea of the AuthorhReview plugin. The only downside I see is that it forces you to put a link to the product in – even if you don’t recommend the product or service at all.

    • Hi Paul. The plugin is great and definitely needs some minor adjustments. Hopefully, Hesham, the developer of this plugin will see this and include the ability to “disable” the link when necessary on the next update. Thanks for your thoughts

      • I talked to him about it on his blog for the plugin – he said he’ll be implementing it.

  • This is just awesome set of plugins list. I am just starting my new blog and searching some seo plugins for my blog. Thanks for the tips.

  • Thanks DiTesco for putting all of em at one place. I am surely missing most of the needed plugins for my blog. It helped a lot.

  • Awesome ! But if we install these many plugins in our WP. will our site perform faster or slower ? I find each and every plugin mentioned here is useful.. How do i select which one is the best among 2 similar ones ?

    • HI Satish. Any of the plugins mentioned above are good. The best way to see which one will work best for you is to try each of them and see which ones works best with your overall site structure. If you do install too many, then yes, they may slow down your performance. Use P3 Profiler to see which plugins are affecting your sites performance.

      • Wow, that works like a charm. I was having many problems with some plugins. Like if i install WP CACHE. Sometimes it will crash my whole site. I have to go back to FTP and then delete it and reinstall it again. This is what i had been pissed of from years. Guess this will help me. Thank you very much.. Di Tesco:)

  • Nice list of seo plugins, I am already using author hreview, comment luv and yoast’s seo plugins. I am in love with these three.

  • Awesome list DiTesco. It’s captivate me. Many times I have listen about WordPress SEO plugin but never try it. After your suggestion I really appreciated to use it.

  • Auto – links looks interesting, that is, I haven’t heard about it before… Nice list…

  • hi ditesco ihave one question for you if you can help me : is good to use tags in your blog and on your posts? and plugins like wp traffic force that use tagging?

    • using tags can help a bit but don’t overdo it. 3 – 5 tags is enough and make sure that they are the same as a category. I don’t and never used plugins for tags alone, and I am not sure that it will even help. If you are on WordPress, just use the editor.

  • thanks ditesco i vee seen a lot of plugin on intertnet like wp traffic force that..thalk about long ther domination by tagging…can google penalty your site for using plugins like that?

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