WordPress is by far the most widely used CMS platform in the world. It holds a market share of over 52%, giving you unique opportunities when it comes to plugins, forums and much more. In addition, WordPress is the most SEO-friendly CMS system, partly thanks to the Yoast plugin – but more on that later. First, let us introduce WordPress.
What is WordPress?
As mentioned, WordPress is a CMS system. CMS stands for Content Management System, which, put simply, means a platform for content management and maintenance. It originally started out as a CMS for bloggers. However, as it grew in popularity, it evolved into a fully-fledged CMS with endless customisation options. The strength of WordPress lies in its simplicity – anyone with minimal training can use the system. Plus, there are thousands of plugins available for every imaginable solution.
When it comes to SEO, there are three essential plugins you should use in 2020:
- Yoast
- WP Rocket
- Smush
Yoast
Yoast is the go-to plugin for SEO in WordPress. You will not find an SEO professional who has not heard of or used Yoast before. Yoast offers a wide range of tools to improve elements such as your titles, meta descriptions, sitemap, and much more. It makes SEO simple and easy to manage, so even those with little technical knowledge can use it – and best of all, it is free!
As you can see, Yoast is an extremely user-friendly tool that can help you with CTR optimisation and improve your general presence in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Additionally, it provides a thorough review of all SEO-related aspects of your individual pages. It gives you an overview of things like links, keywords, text ratio, and much more. While Yoast may not always give you the complete picture, it still points you in the right direction.
WP Rocket
This plugin is a so-called cache plugin – in other words, it saves a copy of your website on the user’s computer, significantly improving load times.
It also includes a range of other features designed to improve your website’s speed, which is a crucial factor for ranking higher on Google. Statistics show that if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, users often return to Google and potentially click on one of your competitors instead.
Some of the measures WP Rocket includes are lazy load, meaning images only load as the user scrolls down to them. Another feature is file compression, which reduces file sizes and thus improves your site’s speed.
These are just a few of the features WP Rocket offers. The only ‘drawback’ to this plugin is that it is not free. However, if you are serious about your website, it is a must-have plugin.
Smush
Lack of image compression is one of the main culprits when it comes to poor website speed optimisation. That is why you should use plugins like WP Smush, as it automatically optimises, compresses, and resizes your images. This plugin is 100% free, so there is no reason not to use it. It is incredibly easy to set up and will undoubtedly improve your site’s speed.
Once these three plugins are installed and configured, you are well on your way to having a fully optimised website. That said, here is a bonus tip which is not plugin-related, but is often overlooked and can boost your SEO.
Bonus tip: Permalinks
Your SEO will benefit if your subpages use an SEO-friendly URL that is relevant to the page.
If you go to Settings and ‘Permalinks’, you can quickly change your URL structure by telling WordPress to use the page name or post title as the URL.
This makes it easier for Google to understand what your page is about, and therefore easier for Google to index and rank your page.
Summary
If you use these three plugins, you will have a solid foundation and should notice a difference in your SEO results. Of course, there are many other steps you can take, but these are some of the basic improvements that are easy to implement. If you have any questions, or would like help with your WordPress SEO, you are more than welcome to contact us!
NB: Please be aware that different plugins may conflict with your existing plugins on your site. We recommend you keep this in mind. If you are unsure, you are welcome to contact us and we can help you install the various plugins without any issues.
