"What's the best WordPress SEO plugin?"

I'm asked that question all the time, and recently took part in a debate discussing which plugin is best. I decided to draft a features list comparing the top three most downloaded SEO plugins to get a better picture of what each plugin has to offer, et voilà!

I'll be comparing and contrasting features of the All in one SEO Pack, vs WordPress SEO by Yoast, vs Platinum SEO. To be fair, there is no loser among the three because each plugin is impressive and will make your WordPress site much more search engine friendly. I'll talk about which plugin is my favorite in the conclusion, so you can review the features bias-free, and implement whichever plugin matches your specific set of needs.

If you know a developer – or anyone that would like their WordPress site to rank well in search engines – please help them out by sharing this review so that these plugins don't go unused. 

The plugins:

All in One SEO Pack
Downloads: 9,570,544
Author: Michael Torbert
Plugin page

WordPress SEO by Yoast
Downloads: 761,035
Author: Joost de Valk
Plugin Page

Platinum SEO Pack
Downloads: 656,205
Author: Techblissonline Dot Com (Rajesh)
Plugin Page

Honorable mention plugin: I can't leave out the oldie-but-still-goodie, SEO Ultimate.

Table of Contents

1. Setup and First Appearances
2. Plugin Features
3. Migration/Import/Export
4. Page-Level SEO Controls
5. XML Sitemaps
6. Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and Open Graph Schema

1. Setup and First Appearances

2. Plugin Features

3. Migration/Import/Export

4. Page-Level SEO Controls

5. XML Sitemaps

6. Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and Open Graph Schema

There you have it! I'll repeat myself in saying that all three plugins are fantastic and one of these three plugins should be active on every WordPress installation (that is intended to appear in search engines). With that being said, I'm a huge fan of Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin. It is by far the most complete and has the best looking user interface. I'm certain that it's only in second place in terms of downloads because it hasn't been around as long — but just give it some time.

Privacy and SSL encryption are important to a lot of internet users. Google recognizes this and is always looking for ways to improve online security for its users. A major announcement was published yesterday on the Google Blog, touting enhanced search privacy for signed-in users.

Last year, Google introduced an encrypted search service for those who opted to use it. Now that same service will be the default search experience for users signed-in to their Google Accounts, redirecting them to https://www.google.com. According to Evelyn Kao, Product Manager at Google, the change will encrypt search queries and the results page. “As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver,” wrote Kao. For those not signed in or for those who don’t have a Google account the secure site can still be accessed by navigating directly to https://www.google.com.

What does this mean for Analytics?

Currently webmasters are able to see when a visitor arrives via Google, complete with the query. Once this change rolls out, that search query will no longer be available. Those visits will still be attributed to organic search, but webmasters will see “not provided” in place of the actual search query.

Search query data will still be available in an aggregated list through Google Webmaster Tools and will show the top 1000 search queries bringing in traffic over the past 30 days.

Several Googlers estimate this change to impact a minor amount of website visits, and Matt Cutts estimates the impact to be as small as a single-digit percentage.

What are your thoughts? Is this a good or bad change for webmasters, business owners, and search marketers? For searchers?

Last week Google announced a change to the way they classify internal and external links in Webmaster Tools. The update shouldn’t change the number of links, but should report your links in a more accurate way in regards to where they are coming from.

In the past, links from subdomains (ie: example.seo.com) were classified as external links. Even a link from the non www version of your site was classified as external. With the changes, links from these types of domains will now be considered internal links, as long as you also own the root domain.

With this change you may notice your total number of external links go down, but this is only because some of your links that were previously classified as external are now being classified as internal. Your total number of links should remain the same.

image by TechWyse

While “man-scaping” may be a painful experience, “seo-scaping” certainly is not.

Here are a few simple guidelines to keep in mind when trying to SEO-groom your site. Whether the site is in its infancy or well seasoned, the items we will cover here will remain applicable.

Website Technicality

Usability — Your website’s purpose makes no difference if visitors cannot find it, view it correctly, or if the site takes any longer than a few seconds to load. Here are a few tips:

• See what the search engines see. Use a text browser like Lynx and examine your website. What you find will likely be similar to what the majority of search engine spiders do, too.
• Utilize the robots.txt file on your server. This will communicate to crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. As long as this is current with your preferences, you will be in control with what will be crawled and indexed.
• Test each Web page in the various Web browsers for both visibility and functionality.
• Pay attention to your website performance and optimize load times. The goal of every search engine is not only relevancy, but also a great user experience.

Navigation and Content

Site Navigation — While nearly every website will approach their navigation with slight differences, one thing should always remain: keep it simple and straight forward. Here are a few tips:

• Link Structure — Every top level page should have at least one link directing to it from each of your pages.
• Site Map — This is a great way to show the search engines the extent of your website and also help your users find what they are looking for when all else fails. A combination of both a plain html formatted map for users and an XML sitemap will do the trick. For a clear walk through on the standards for your XML sitemap visit the protocol.
• Overall Linking — A commonly held idea is to stay below 100 links per page. Anything more than this typically will not be crawled.

Content — The content placed on the page will be a main driving factor in who arrives and how they will interact once landing there. The first question that should come to mind when creating content is “does the page clearly communicate the subject and goal at hand?” This is often achieved by keeping your subject matter down to one topic per page. Here are a few tips:

• Make sure the page is actually useful and provides quality information.
• Check for broken links and correct the HTML.
• As much as possible use text over images to display prominent content such as headings, addresses, names and links.
• Brainstorm words people would commonly use when searching for your website, and make certain the website actually includes those words. (Go here for a more in depth walk through on choosing keywords wisely)
• Keep your URL structure simple. Remember when using URLs that are dynamic (for instance if it has a “?” character in it), not all spiders crawl dynamic pages. It helps to keep the dynamic parameters to a minimum or to write them completely out where possible. The following format is ideal for a URL:

Quality Assurance

With competition always on the increase, now is the time to show your true colors. And just this once, it does matter if you are black or white, otherwise you might experience what JCPenny did. Keep your website on the search engine good graces with these tips:

• Keep your links in the right neck of the woods: avoid links to Web spammers, which commonly have an adverse effect on the website.
• The best page is a natural page. Search Engine Optimization does not have to be forced. Make sure your pages are created primarily for users, not for search engines. Refrain from “cloaking,” or displaying content different to search engines than visitors.
• Avoid tricks solely dedicated to manipulating search engines. A test is to ask is, “Does this help my users?” SEO and website usability can play nicely together.

I feel confident in saying the best Search Engine Optimization is found in natural processes. Make sure the content you create is unique and worth sharing and then create lots of it. Do this and follow the above guidelines and you will end up with one handsome website.

A special thanks to my amazing wife, Tiana,—the SEO.com hair removal specialist and Doc for his amazing video production. The experience was an inspiration to us all.

Here’s the video:

Use the checklist below to first make sure it’s worth it to change your URL structure. If you decide it is, the rest of the checklist will help you to make sure you update everything you should. This will help to reduce your ranking drops (or at least the length of time those drops last).

Make Sure You Are Actually Changing to Something Better

Sometimes it is a good idea to change your URL structure, but sometimes you’re better off leaving things alone. Here are some examples of when it might be a good idea:

Switching from a dynamic URL structure to a static URL structure

The problem with a dynamic URL structure (example: www.siteexample.com/page.php?cat=231&prod=55234) is that you can end up with lots of different variations of the URL getting indexed. This can potentially create a huge duplicate content problem and split your link value. Changing your URLs to a static structure will give you one URL for each product or page on your site. This makes things a lot cleaner and helps to avoid splitting your link value between multiple URLs.

Just changing from dynamic to static isn’t enough of a reason to change your URL structure, though. You still need to make sure that you’re changing to URLs that are more descriptive and actually SEO friendly.

Making your URLs more meaningful/SEO friendly

I see a lot of sites with URLs that don’t explain what the page is about at all, even those with static URLs. For example, what does this URL tell you about the page: www.siteexample.com/store/prod1.html

If your answer was “Not much,” you’re right. Sure, you might be able to assume that it’s a product page, but you don’t know anything about the product.

If your site currently uses this kind of structure, it could be worth changing your URLs to make them more SEO friendly and meaningful to your audience. In other words, use some keywords. Use an appropriate keyword phrase in your URL and it will improve your SEO efforts and make the URL more user-friendly for your visitors.

When to leave things alone

Just as there are situations when you should consider making changes, there are also situations when you should think about holding off. For example, if your site is already ranking really well, you may want to leave your URLs alone.

Sure, there are “ideal situations” in SEO where everything is perfectly optimized, but if you already rank well, you could be better off leaving things alone. This is where consulting with a qualified SEO can be extremely valuable since it is a very case-by-case thing.

If you decide you should proceed with changing your URLs, the rest of the checklist items can help you to lessen the duration of any ranking drops you experience.

301 Redirect Old URLs to New URLs

If you’ve done any reading about SEO, you’ve likely heard about 301 redirects. A 301 redirect is what you use to signal the search engines that you have permanently changed the location of a URL.

So if you’re going to change your URL structure, you have to make sure that you put 301s in place to redirect all of the old URLs to the new URLs. Otherwise, you’re going to send all of that previously accumulated link value to pages that give a 404 error and you’ll basically lose any link value those pages had.

Keep in mind that links that are 301ed lose some of their link value. This is one reason why you can almost always expect a drop in rankings when you change your URL structure.

Update XML Sitemap and Resubmit to Webmaster Accounts

Once you’ve updated your URLs and put your 301 redirects in place, you should also update your XML sitemap and resubmit it to the search engines through the various webmaster tools accounts. This alerts the search engines to the changes in the site and says they should come crawl it again.

Doing this can help your site to get re-indexed faster, which can help your rankings come back faster. The sooner the search engines realize you’ve made a permanent change the better!

Update All Internal Links

Probably the most time-consuming task of updating URL structure is making sure that all of the internal links in your site are updated to point to the new URLs.

You may be thinking, “I set up 301 redirects to take care of this. Why should I update all of my internal links as well?” It’s a good question. Here are a couple of reasons why you should do it

• Maintain all your internal link value. Remember what I said before about links that are 301ed losing some value? There isn’t a lot you can do about external pages linking to you, but you can retain all of the internal link value if you update the links.
• Avoid visitor confusion. If a visitor comes to your site with a slow Internet connection, it’ll be even slower when they click on a link that just redirects them. If this happens, they will likely just leave your site.

When you’re updating your internal links you should start with your navigation, footer links, and HTML sitemap. From there you’ll need to go through and clean up all of your contextual links.

Google Webmaster Tools has a tool that can help with this. Just go to ‘Your site on the Web’ and then ‘Internal links’ and you’ll see a page like this:

From here you can enter the URL you want to find links to and the tool will give you a list of the pages that have links to that URL. You might not find everything this way, but it is a great place to start.

Is It Worth It?

There are plenty of situations where cleaning up a site’s URL structure can really help it rank better. But before you go through all the trouble, take some time to evaluate your site’s structure to determine if it is really going to be worth it. Personally, I’d look at everything else I could change before I completely change a site’s URL structure.

If your site already ranks well and has an okay URL structure, you may want to leave it alone. Also keep in mind that almost any time you make URL changes, you’re going to see a drop in rankings. It’s hard to say how long this will last, because even different pages on the same site can be affected more than others.

Once you have made the above changes you should track your rankings frequently. Also keep an eye on search results to see when the search engines show your updated URL. This is a good indicator that things are starting to iron themselves out.

If you’d like to learn more about good URL structure, here are a few videos to watch from Matt Cutts at Google Webmaster Help:

1. Ranking Report – Google is now providing webmasters with an accurate and up to date (at least up to 48 hours) idea of where they are ranking for their top search queries, along with historical data. By setting a date range to different time frames, you can see what position you are most often showing up in by finding the position with the highest number of impressions for that time period. You can do with this data what you normally do with ranking data (find low hanging fruit on page 2 and 3 and optimize to get to page 1, watch trends of broad and new trending keywords, etc.)

2. Enhance your clickthrough rate through Title and Snippet optimization – This new feature set gives us the unique opportunity to test making changes to our title not just for SEO purposes, but for marketability. Does having a call to action in your title or description increase your clickthrough percentage? Does putting your company name first vs last vs at all? What about non-alpha-numeric characters? Is a pipe better than a dash? Does an exclamation mark or a question mark change things? or does it even matter? Does mention of your keyword more times in either your title or description increase clickthrough because they are bolded? These are all very good questions that, with some smart testing, each of us can have answers to.

3. Model out position share for a particular niche – We’ve all wondered what the clickthrough rate difference is between the top 10 rankings. Does the number one ranking really get ~50% of all SERP clicks? Obviously there are multiple variables that go into the SERP clickthrough percentage (title, description, relevancy, etc), but I believe that there is a possibility to model out a general position share based on particular niches and keywords. Do broad informational keywords have a higher clickthrough rate on the #1 position? If I search for the keyword “Angioplasty”, for example, I’m most likely just looking for information and or a definition of the word, so the fact that wikipedia shows up #1 for that search is probably best and I bet the clickthrough percentage for that keyword for wikipedia is in the 60-70% range (anyone with access to wikipedia GWT care to verify?). Whereas, a search for “Best laptop Deals” most likely has a more even spread of clickthrough because of the type of search. Also, what about industries? Does the SEO industry have a general clickthrough position share that is different than the real estate industry? We now have access to find out.

4. PPC and SEO Co-Optimization – This is a big one in my eyes. So far it has proven somewhat difficult to co-optimize PPC and SEO together. Testing is tedious, difficult and results vary greatly on whether the different mediums cannibalize or compliment each other. Now we have some incredibly helpful information to assist in testing. Here’s an example: Say you’re showing up number 1 for a keyword organically. You also show up #1 in the PPC listings. Is your PPC listing cannibalizing your organic listing? (are you paying for traffic that would otherwise be free?).  Test it with credible data! Now you know your clickthrough rate for your #1 organic listing AND you know your clickthrough rate for your #1 PPC listing. Put your PPC listing into position 2. What happens with your organic clickthrough rate?  What about position 3? 4? 5? Now you can test to see where you get maximum value from both campaigns.

I think there is much more that could be written here so I promise to have a follow up post down the road, but I also expect to see a lot of other posts with testing and proving coming up in the future.

Bottom line, this is very exciting data to have. Get in, get dirty. And let’s all thank Google for giving us what we want!

Below is a list of some of my favorite SEO plugins. I have also included a short list of web developer plugins that have some crossover into SEO. I know there are other tools out there, so if you have some additional plugins you like to use, please add them in the comments!

Plugins Specifically for SEO

SEO for Firefox

This one is a standard tool for most of the SEOs that I personally know. This plugin gives you a ton of additional information when you do a search on Google. You can see a site’s PageRank, age, Yahoo links and other data that can help you when analyzing your competitors.

It also gives you access to a handy little tool called SEO XRay. This sub-tool will show you the meta information, H tag use and internal and external links on a page. There are so many ways to use SEO for Firefox, it’s no wonder that it’s a standard tool! Aaron Wall (SEOBook) did a great job with this one!

Get it here: SEO for Firefox

Rank Checker

This is another great tool from Aaron Wall. If all you want to do is a quick ranking update, Rank Checker is the way to go. This tool is usually quick, and you can export your findings to a CSV document if you want to compare them with previous rankings.

As with any rank checking tool, it is not always 100% accurate. However, it is still a great free way to keep up on all of your keywords.

Get it here: Rank Checker

SearchStatus

Do you ever get tired of the Google Toolbar? If you’re like me, the only reason you really use the Google Toolbar is to find out the PageRank of the page. Well, with SearchStatus, you can get PageRank, Alexa Rank, Moz Rank and Compete Rank in your status bar. There are many other things that this tool does, but that’s what I mainly use it for.

Get it here: SearchStatus

SEO Link Analysis

I consider this plugin to be one of the essentials in my toolbox. This tool works when you go to the Yahoo Site Explorer or into your Google Webmaster account looking for back links. Rather than just seeing what sites are linking back, you can see the anchor text and the PageRank of the page linking back. You can also find out if the link is still there or has a no follow attribute.

This tool is great for spying on your competition. Go to the Yahoo Site Explorer and you will very quickly find out what keywords your competition is targeting. This makes it great for site analysis and competitive analysis.

Get it here: SEO Link Analysis

Helpful Web Development Plugins

If you’re going to do SEO, you need to know some of the basics of web development as well. Because of this, I thought it might be helpful to list a few plugins that you can use mainly for web development, but also have a crossover into SEO.

Firebug

I have loved this plugin ever since I first found it. As an SEO, I find that I am constantly helping to fix web development problems as part of the job. This tool will let you go through a site and find the different elements so you can see where the problems are in the HTML or CSS of the page. You can also make changes to a live site to see what would happen if you tweaked certain things.

Get it here: Firebug

HTML Validator

By having your HTML valid, your site is more likely to look the same in the different browsers. This tool will show you where the problems are in your code that could be causing inconsistencies from browser to browser. It also gives you suggestions on how to fix them.

Get it here: HTML Validator

Web Developer

This tool has similar functionality to some of the other tools above and is very handy. I use it frequently to turn off JavaScript so I can see how a site is handling its main navigation. Most web developers that I know of use this plugin.

Get it here: Web Developer

Add to the List!

Now it is your turn. Do you have some favorites that I did not include on this list? If so, please add them in the comments below!

Admittedly, understanding the webmaster’s behavioral patterns and motivations won’t guarantee successful webmaster interaction–I’m sure Jane Goodall had her share of standoffish chimps. The idea, however, is to maximize your chances for link-building success by understanding the creature called “webmaster.” By looking at his website, you can learn about the kind of webmaster you’re dealing with and what you must offer as a worthy exchange for the link you desire.

A profile of various species of webmaster:

Nativus hermiticus – Think “geocities” or “angelfire,” these webmasters usually started early on and have continued to maintain their visually unimpressive, yet highly resourceful sites (usually with decent PR because of their longevity). They can be elusive when they forget to provide an e-mail. Typically a friendly species, they thrive on positive feedback about their site, have linked to many, and are easy to approach, provided your site fits with their collection and you give them the pre-built link or html.

Strategis generalus – The most common species of webmaster, they know their audience and aim to please. They employ minimal to moderate SEO, choosing to focus on design and accessibility. They are generally more concerned about having a quality website than about their site being used for your SEO purposes. Therefore, they can be won over with evidence that your site fills a void in their content. Expect them to look with much more scrutiny at your site than any other species of webmaster. Try to discover why they have already linked to particular sites and position yourself accordingly.

Strategis capitalus– These webmasters are all about monetization through sell-offs, affiliate marketing, etc., are familiar with SEO tactics, and own several domains with little emotional attachment to them. They are more concerned about getting link juice from your site than your site’s relevancy. They have a link submission page with reciprocal link requirements and mandated anchor text. The PR on their sites is generally low. You either play by their rules, or you don’t get the link.

Bloggerus amatorialus – These webmasters are just happy to have web presence and its social benefits without thinking about development, readership, or SEO. That being said, they can be very protective of their templated Blogspot site. They generally don’t link to anyone, except friends, but you can work with that. Develop a relationship over time by faithful readership and comments as a sure way in. If your blitzkrieg approach to link-building makes this unfeasible, just make contact and keep your expectations low.

Diglicious flicktwittus – These hyperactive webmasters crave popularity. Their content is replete with social bookmarking dot coms you’ve never heard of. SEO takes too long. They’re always on the lookout for new friend- and follower-cultivation tactics and they only link to “web celebs.” Accept that your link request e-mail will become fodder for their next “retweetable” status update or blog post (maybe you can get a backlink for that). Don’t worry—you’ll feel much better when their 15 minutes is up and their site is down.

Remember that the psychological and behavioral nuances of webmasters are the spice of SEO life. To enhance your approach I recommend a few other tactics to complement your webmaster familiarity.

1. Quality content. This is obviously the most important. Expect that everyone you request a link from will visit your site. If you don’t have a lot of content or if the content is bland and doesn’t fit the webmaster’s site, you’ve got work to do before requesting a link.
2. Quality web design. First impressions will be made visually when the webmaster visits your site. Maintain a site that will add visual and professional credibility to their site. Make sure your site looks accessible and engaging before you request the link.
3. Quality offer. You build credibility and rapport by having something constructive to say rather than “I like your site.” For example, you can run their site through a quick link check, like Xenu’s Link Sleuth and inform them of broken links (conveniently offering a link to take its place). If you’ve established a rapport with a history of blog comments, you may refer them to articles that fit their niche (but won’t likely be linked-to because they’re articles).

The webmaster is only feared by those that don’t understand him. You now have all the necessary knowledge to be an effective webmaster psychologist. Put the knowledge to action and you will successfully tame the wild webmaster and earn your link.