How to get better SEO with five useful WordPress plugins
Traffic in downtown Bangkok, Thailand
By using these plug and play WordPress plugins, you can rapidly improve your website’s SEO and increase overall traffic.
1. Google XML Sitemaps
Description: This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
Created by: Arne Brachhold
With options to auto-notify major search engine providers about updates to your site as well as sort the sitemap by the amount of comments on a post, Google XML sitemap is a smooth behind-the-scenes plugin that makes search engine optimizing literally as simple as clicking a button.
Along with the pure ease that this tool provides, the creator of this plugin smartly included links to resources and reference pages regarding best practices and FAQs related to sitemaps.
2. Socialize This
Description: Adds social widgets to your blog posts. It also can update your twitter status when you publish a post
Created by: Mike Rogers
Socialize this is a great utility for many reasons: it allows you to easily include social widgets in your posts, auto-updates different social networks, and creates short links using URL shortening services where applicable.
On top of all of that, it also has a feature to include open graph (og) tags in your pages and posts – automatically. With this excellent option, you can quickly provide correct and actionable content for Facebook and other open graph consuming services.
3. WordPress Popular Posts
Description: Showcases your most popular posts to your visitors on your blog’s sidebar or anywhere in your theme
Created by: Héctor Cabrera
Popular content on your blog is kind of like a snowball, the more popular it is, the more views it gets, and the more popular it becomes.
With this plugin, also known as WPP, you can take advantage of popular articles by placing them at the top of your sidebar or homepage, and effortlessly increase the overall traffic coming to them from search engines (and site users).
4. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
Description: Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds
Created by: mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)
Just like the idea behind the popular posts plugin, this one aims to increase in-site traffic to other posts within your blog. The difference with this one is that it finds other posts based on criteria from the current post, therefore providing relevant and related posts for the site visitor to read next.
5. Yoast Breadcrumbs
Description: Outputs a fully customizable breadcrumb path.
Created by: Joost de Valk
When a user or search engine comes to one of your articles, the structure of your site may not be immediately obvious.
With a breadcrumb mini-nav at the top of your site, users can easily navigate back to the homepage or within the category of the current post with an easy to use interface.
Now when they read an article and enjoy it, they can find a similar post to read from the same section of your site without any hassle!