Many people have asked me why my blog ranks so well on Search Engines, and sometimes for some really good search terms. The secret sauce is using Wordpress as a platform and adding some very cool SEO plugins that I would like to share with my readers. Please backup your blog before trying them out, and use them at your own risk – none of them gave me any problems. Not all of them are strictly SEO plugins, but they all help me.
I’m guess that probably less than 5% of Wordpress users even have half of these installed, so if you take the time and effort, it should boost your search engine traffic by about 2-3x (which is what I’ve seen since installing them last year).
Permanent Redirection of Posts
This plugin helps when you need to move a post or a page to another location. Very useful in that you don’t disrupt the value that the incoming links to that page offers your site and preserve the PageRank that Google may allocate.
This plugin will really help you to migrate pages from poor page structures (i.e. http://www.vinnylingham.com/2008/01/endeavor.html to a better structure such as: http://www.vinnylingham.com/endeavor.html). Remember that having pages or blog posts that are 3 levels deep into your site is not optimal for SEO. I highly recommend that you use this plugin and move your posts to the root (i.e. the blog post should basically site on the highest level in your site directory structure).
Wordpress comes standard with NoFollow tags, that basically tell search engines not to apply weighting to links posted by readers who comment on the blog. I personally moderate every comment on this blog, and if sometime takes the time to post decent comments, I believe that they deserve a link back to their site. I obviously delete silly comments like “nice site”, etc. If used correctly, this can really incentivize your readers to interact more on your blog.
This plugin is great for getting a sitemap submitted to the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo & Ask. I used it right after changing the permalink structure and it helped them to reindex the site a lot quicker. I had a few minor problems here, but I think the new version might have fixed those bugs.
Decent enough plugin thats assist in getting meta data into your posts. Meta data is not highly regarded anymore with the major search engines, but it might be worth inserting them.
This is a brilliant plugin. When readers come to your blog via a search engine, it reads the keyword term and offers them links to similar posts based on the initial term they searched. This is one is a must, and it greatly increased my internally pageviews from search terms ratios.
This post probably helped the most with my SEO rankings. It basically inserts the heading of my post’s keywords into the Title tags for the page – simple but effective. I recommend removing things like your name in the title – it should just be the name of the post.
My archives page is very clean. Have a look. It shows a list of posts, by month with number of comments. Good, Clean & Fresh – Nuff Said!
Here is a list of some other really good wordpress SEO plugins. Most of the plugins listed above will have links to other similar ones. I really suggest that you check them out and if you’d like, post comments below to others that are worth trying! Happy SEO’ing!
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Comments On This Post
January 28, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Great post, will save these tips I am sure I’ll use this and also share this with many of our affiliates!, thanks for sharing!!!
A few days ago I came across another plugin (I haven’t tested it yet, so any feedback is welcome):
http://www.joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/meta-robots-wordpress-plugin
As the name says this plugin enables the users of it to define what robots should follow or not I believe (correct me if I am wrong).
Happy blogging
January 28, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Great post, will save these tips I am sure I’ll use this and also share this with many of our affiliates!, thanks for sharing!!!
A few days ago I came across another plugin (I haven’t tested it yet, so any feedback is welcome):
http://www.joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/meta-robots...
As the name says this plugin enables the users of it to define what robots should follow or not I believe (correct me if I am wrong).
Happy blogging
January 30, 2008 at 8:14 pm
You have a couple of really great ones here and some I’ve definitely like making use of the redirects. But I do think you missed out on one.
Cheers from a fellow South African
January 30, 2008 at 6:14 pm
You have a couple of really great ones here and some I’ve definitely like making use of the redirects. But I do think you missed out on one.
Cheers from a fellow South African
January 31, 2008 at 3:20 am
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February 2, 2008 at 11:38 am
[...] If you use WordPress for blogging, then Vinny Lingham has an interesting post for you to go read entitled “WordPress SEO Plugins“. [...]
February 4, 2008 at 11:28 pm
[...] 91.  Why not submit a sitemap to Google, Yahoo, and MSN? [...]
February 12, 2008 at 9:50 am
Hi Vinny,
Love the post, I am a little confused though. Regarding the permalink plugin in which you describe moving ones posts to the root, I came to your site using the Search: Vinny lingham+seo plugins wordpress. The Google results show this page as the number one result with the old page (the older version of this page just a few folders deep) as a nested result.
Surely this could be construed as duplicate content? I am no expert so may just be confusing myself but would like to hear your opinion on it.
Many Thanks
Skye
February 12, 2008 at 10:06 am
Hey Skye
I’m not sure I understand and I’ve tried searching and can’t find what you’re referring to. I can’t find any nested results. Could you post a link to a screenshot?
Thanks
Vinny
February 12, 2008 at 2:40 pm
The non www version of your site also produces 404 errors, might want to look at that.
February 12, 2008 at 7:50 am
Hi Vinny,
Love the post, I am a little confused though. Regarding the permalink plugin in which you describe moving ones posts to the root, I came to your site using the Search: Vinny lingham+seo plugins wordpress. The Google results show this page as the number one result with the old page (the older version of this page just a few folders deep) as a nested result.
Surely this could be construed as duplicate content? I am no expert so may just be confusing myself but would like to hear your opinion on it.
Many Thanks
Skye
February 12, 2008 at 8:06 am
Hey Skye
I’m not sure I understand and I’ve tried searching and can’t find what you’re referring to. I can’t find any nested results. Could you post a link to a screenshot?
Thanks
Vinny
February 12, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Hey Glen
Thanks – sorry, we were moving servers yesterday, hence the fact that the site was down. Just fixed the problem.
Thanks
Vinny
February 12, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Hey Vin,
I used the permalinks plugin to move my posts to the root. That worked 100% and all posts moved automatically. Then I installed the redirection plugin you suggested and followed the instructions. Maybe I’m missing something, but if my post is already in the new location, how will adding a custom redirect field to it have any benefit?
Wordpress seem to have moved all my posts to the root automatically, which is great, but now my incoming links don’t work & I’m not sure how the redirection plugin can fix it…
Thanks man
Jan
February 12, 2008 at 12:40 pm
The non www version of your site also produces 404 errors, might want to look at that.
February 12, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Hey Glen
Thanks – sorry, we were moving servers yesterday, hence the fact that the site was down. Just fixed the problem.
Thanks
Vinny
February 12, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Hey Vin,
I used the permalinks plugin to move my posts to the root. That worked 100% and all posts moved automatically. Then I installed the redirection plugin you suggested and followed the instructions. Maybe I’m missing something, but if my post is already in the new location, how will adding a custom redirect field to it have any benefit?
Wordpress seem to have moved all my posts to the root automatically, which is great, but now my incoming links don’t work & I’m not sure how the redirection plugin can fix it…
Thanks man
Jan
February 13, 2008 at 12:37 am
Hey Jan
You should be using 301 redirects, to redirect any links to the location of the old posts, to the new location, using the redirection plugin, based on the old file structure. I hope this helps?
V
February 12, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Hey Jan
You should be using 301 redirects, to redirect any links to the location of the old posts, to the new location, using the redirection plugin, based on the old file structure. I hope this helps?
V
February 13, 2008 at 11:22 pm
[...] a follow up to my last post, in which I try to help my readers with SEO on their blogs, I thought about a great resource that I’d like to share. Darren Rowse’s [...]
February 15, 2008 at 2:04 am
Thanks for the plugins – i searched for them – I think its time to start my own blog now, with these cool tools. Thanks for sharing these here! Tobi
February 15, 2008 at 12:04 am
Thanks for the plugins – i searched for them – I think its time to start my own blog now, with these cool tools. Thanks for sharing these here! Tobi
March 14, 2008 at 8:43 am
Hi Vinny,
I am a newbie, and I was trying my hands at wordpress blogging.
I picked up a theme from one of the many sites available, and then realized that there were embedded links to drugs/movies sites in the theme.
Since then, I have stayed away from using theme/plugins from sites other than wordpress.org.
I was just wondering if you have personally tried these plugins, and sure that they do not have any malicious code in them
thanks
shan
March 14, 2008 at 6:43 am
Hi Vinny,
I am a newbie, and I was trying my hands at wordpress blogging.
I picked up a theme from one of the many sites available, and then realized that there were embedded links to drugs/movies sites in the theme.
Since then, I have stayed away from using theme/plugins from sites other than wordpress.org.
I was just wondering if you have personally tried these plugins, and sure that they do not have any malicious code in them
thanks
shan
March 17, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Wow, the only plugin I knew from this list beforehand is the XML Sitemaps Plugin.. The Landing Pages one sounds especially cool.. gonna download that right now
March 17, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Wow, the only plugin I knew from this list beforehand is the XML Sitemaps Plugin.. The Landing Pages one sounds especially cool.. gonna download that right now
May 31, 2008 at 8:45 am
[...] http://www.easywordpress.com/labs/wordpress-plugins-wp-o-matic/ http://topwpthemes.comhttp://www.vinnylingham.com/wordpress-seo-plugins.html [...]
June 11, 2008 at 4:20 am
Great, a nice collection i hope my ranking goes up
thx …
June 11, 2008 at 11:20 am
Great, a nice collection i hope my ranking goes up
thx …
August 26, 2008 at 3:23 pm
The SEO Title Tag plugin sounds like a must. I managed to triple search engine traffic to one of my sites just by making the page titles more descriptive.
Of course, to get the page titles right, you've got to get the post titles right so using this on a log isn't a surefire route to success. Nevertheless, I'm going to give it a go.
August 27, 2008 at 8:08 pm
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August 29, 2008 at 1:09 am
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October 20, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Very interesting list, i'll give a try to some of these.
Thanks for the hint!
October 30, 2008 at 11:15 am
Great collection! I especially love the landingpages plugin! It is just great!
November 23, 2008 at 7:47 am
SEO title tag is the best plugin of the world.
December 13, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Was just wondering, do the tips you mention above improve both spidering and ranking? Are backlinks contributive as well?
January 4, 2009 at 6:29 pm
[...] better is to use the special Wordpress plugin, designed especially to get every old link perfectly to its new [...]
February 22, 2009 at 4:31 am
good post man! i've also written a post on wordpress plugins, entitled "The 9 Most Useful Wordpress Plugins" found here: http://codefusionlab.co.cc/the-9-most-useful-word...
February 22, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I would like to add two more plugins.
Platinum SEO pack and All in SEO plugin. Those are another essential plugins for SEO in wprdpress.
March 4, 2009 at 7:49 am
Thank you for the tips. I am in the process of designing a new site and researching SEO so that I can optimize my blog for the search engines, sooner than later.
March 16, 2009 at 9:57 am
I never realised how easy it was until you showed all the tips. Thank you.
March 27, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Very nice.
March 27, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Thanks for this article.
It sums of everthing I need for SEO
March 29, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Cool Tool. Nice for seo. Thx
April 4, 2009 at 6:06 am
I like the ideas. You helped put my mind at ease
April 13, 2009 at 10:37 am
I was not aware of couple of them, will be trying them out. Maybe one important that's not listed here is something like 'sociable' where users can easily tag or bookmark our posts.
April 30, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Cool, i just started with a new project and its my first with WP. Thx for this tools. Now i will try some of them.
June 3, 2009 at 8:29 am
Nice post. very useful and informative..
June 6, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Very nice Plugin, tkx is very usefull for SEO.
Dear Girokonto
June 12, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I think SEO all in One can be configured to the title job instead of Seo Title tag, at leaste partially. Other plugins are quite nice, especially I liked Landing pages.
Thanks for sharing this!
Tony
June 23, 2009 at 1:45 am
Great info, thanks for sharing.. i think i'll us it for my wordpress blog..
July 10, 2009 at 4:21 am
I’m guess that probably less than 5% of Wordpress users even have half of these installed, so if you take the time and effort, it should boost your search engine traffic by about 2-3x (which is what I’ve seen since installing them last year).
July 13, 2009 at 9:21 am
Hi
Is the title tag plugin worth having if you use the "all in one seo" plugin, as that allows you to add titles etc?
July 30, 2009 at 6:08 am
It's a nice suggest. i think my site ranking goes up. thanks
August 2, 2009 at 7:27 am
I wasn't able to locate the "landing pages" plugin with the link that was provided in the post. Seems like the site has changed with a new design and didn't see any plugins. was very interested in what the landing pages plugin was about.
August 16, 2009 at 9:27 pm
You should be using 301 redirects, to redirect any links to the location of the old posts, to the new location, using the redirection plugin, based on the old file structure…
August 20, 2009 at 6:58 pm
The link to the landing page plugin doesn’t work any more.
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.