There will never be any shortage of WordPress plugins. With more than 50,000 plugins available on WordPress.org, you could easily find tons of articles showcasing the topmost plugins that you should use to enhance your website.
In this wild treasure hunt, you’ll end up reading similar articles with most commonly used plugins getting repeated all the time. I’m sure you know everything about Yoast SEO, All in One SEO & Google XML Sitemaps.
Now here’s why this post is different. By the end of it, you’ll find 4 plugins that are not very common yet very important for the on-page SEO of your website. These plugins
- are highly rated by WordPress users.
- are extremely easy to use
- will end up easing the difficult tasks in just a matter of seconds.
The idea is to offer something that you can immediately use to improve on-page SEO.
WordPress is quite ‘SEO friendly’ out of the box. On top of it, on-page SEO requires a minimal effort to make your website a hotbed for potential traffic. It’s almost a crime not to use these simple tools.
The selection here is based upon my research and experience. These plugins have already brought good results for me. Without wasting any further time, let’s dive in and discover 4 lesser-known plugins that can make your life easier.
The plugin automatically renames your media files depending upon their respective titles. Once these files are renamed, the references (like posts, pages and metadata) are also updated with it. It’s simple, yet powerful. Let me explain the process:
The image filenames are always relevant to the page they are linked to and they are taken into consideration by search engines. However, it’s a factor that is often overlooked. Renaming a file is usually a cumbersome process. It’s a simple plugin that lets you change the names directly from the backend.
When you are done, all the links to the particular individual file will be automatically updated.
Note: File renaming is a complex procedure. Before renaming everything, try to perform a beta test on few files first. Check whether all the references have been properly updated and then proceed.
With speed being a vital factor for healthy on-page SEO, this one is probably the most underrated plugin in this list.
Google library plugin would help reduce the strain on the server by increasing caching and improving load times. Hence, improving the overall loading speeds.
Instead of loading the most commonly used JavaScripts from WordPress servers, use Google libraries plugin to pull them from Google’s AJAX Libraries API.
The users visiting your web-pages already have these libraries cached in their system. Look at the performance benefits here:
- takes load off your server
- increase browser speed
- better parallelism and improved caching
It’s a great way to optimize your WordPress site.
If you have an image heavy website, this one’s a must.
You can:
- Automatically optimize your images as you upload them on your website. It’s the best way to optimize JPG and PNG images.
- The plugin uses a loss-less optimization approach which means image quality will be same before and after the optimization.
- The plugin runs on your own server. Hence, you don’t have to be dependent on a third-party service to procure the images.
- Smaller image size means faster backup and quick loading times with minimum usage of bandwidth.
Even if you don’t have an image heavy website, consider including this amazing plugin in your arsenal.
What if I tell you that with a single plugin, you could
- enhance the internal linking of page, post and categories
- vastly improve the indexing with search engines
- almost automate ‘behind the scene SEO’ of your website
To achieve these benefits, consider using SEO Post Content Links plugin.
The best part here is the ability to automatically link keywords or phrases between different pages of your website. In a way, it becomes an intelligent interlinking of your complete website.
Moreover, if for some reason you’re looking to remove this plugin at a later stage, all references created will be removed automatically.
Worth giving a try, isn’t it.
Conclusion
By no means, this is a definitive list, but it’s a good start to create a solid foundation for any website looking to enhance the on-page SEO. You can fill the gaps and improve the overall user experience with great SEO benefits.
Although, avoid using too many plugins on your website. The best way is to keep testing and find out the ones that work best for you.
That’s it for today. If there’s a rare plugin that I’ve missed, do let us know in the comments section.
As they say, “There’s probably a plugin for everything!”
I’m confused, which seems to be my natural state of mind when dealing with all this. I see two prices, with no explanation. The themes are $45.00 or so, and there is a choice of fees, starting with $250.00 for services.
Do both of these fees apply? — Bjo, the utterly lost
These are 2 Different things. $250 is for when you want your own custom theme, unique design and everything.
$45 is when you wish to buy an existing pro version. No Other Fees at all.