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Only The Best WordPress SEO Plugins

Lots of SEO plugins are knocking around. Well here we have a review of the top plugins for WordPress SEO.

1 ) All in one SEO pack – A cracking plugin that easily allows you to noindex duplicate content, define the meta title/description tag setup, and other things too! In the admin settings area (once you have activated the plugin):

• Be sure to write a meta title and description for the homepage. Keep the title under 70 characters (including spaces). Include your blog/site name and any relevant keywords. Remember though it should be an appealing sentence, that fits with your branding. A call to action is also never a bad idea.

• Switch the blog title to the end of title – %blog_title% – so that in every meta title for posts, category and standard pages the blog title comes after the more unique bit of text (be it the name of the page or post).

• Leave the default settings other than that for the all-in-one-seo, but add a tick in the noindex box for tag archives. Again this will ensure no content is duplicated in search engine indexes.

2 ) Headspace2 SEO – This should installed and activated NOT with the All-in-one-SEO-pack. It’s one or the other. It’s very similar to be honest, in that it lets you configure meta data for titles and descriptions site-wide. It also lets you add Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, which is nice. A final bonus is that it lets you configure first time visitor messages.

If you decide All in One is not for you, Headspace kindly offer an import function to pull in all your settings from All in One. It also has good multi-language support.

3 ) Redirection – Important for users and search engines. With this plugin you can change your URLs and input via the admin panel the old and new URLs for a post or page that you may have modified.

Then you will have a permanent 301 redirect pointing the old page to the new location, which means if the old page is indexed in Google, the user will get safely forwarded to the new location. 301 is also vital for indexation in that if the often default 302 is used, the search engine thinks the new URL is temporary, which can affect ranking and even whether it is deemed worthy of indexing (since it is to be considered a temporary URL).

4 ) Google XML Sitemaps – Pretty self explanatory, but you need a good xml sitemap for all your shiny new posts. Ince you have created your first sitemap, be sure to login to Google Webmaster Tools, and specify its location, e.g. http://wp-admin.co.uk/sitemap.xml. The priority should be highest on the homepage (1.0) and main pages (0.8), then lower (say 0.6) for posts – as an example!

5 ) Dagon Design Sitemap Generator – Once you have your xml sitemap set up, online, and configured in Google Webmaster Tools, make sure you’ve got a nice html, on page sitemap. Ensure this sitemap is available via your website footer. If you want an automated html sitemap generator, this one is useful.

6 ) SEO Slugs – This is a nifty number, that removes silly words like ‘a’ and ‘the’ from your post titles to create more succint slugs. Not an absolute must have plugin, but every little helps.

7 ) SEO Friendly Images – This plugin automatically asigns ALT and TITLE to your uploaded images in WordPress. The title should be descriptive – so that when the visitor hovers their mouse over the image they get an extra bit of information about the image. The ALT can be pure keyword fun, again though should describe the image in the event the image cannot be served up.