Top SEO Plugins for WordPress Sites

If you run one of the 70 million websites built with WordPress, you are likely concerned about SEO, and overwhelmed by your options. These days, there is no shortage of plugins built to assist with SEO and social sharing, but it’s hard to find the gems in a sea of widget madness. Read on for advice on which are truly helpful in boosting your search engine efforts!

WordPress SEO Basics
Before you start installing a plethora of plugins, you’ll want to tackle a few basic SEO tasks on your WordPress site. These are must-haves for Google-friendly sites, and are a great place to start your strategy.

1) Map Out Your Site’s Structure

All you need to create an easy to follow site flowchart is a great MindMap tool. Mind42 makes an excellent one, and it’s totally free too. The tool will help you create a site guide that compartmentalizes navigation sections and lets you see a snapshot of the entire flow.

2) Setup Your Permanent URL Structure

First, set your preferred permalinks format in the WordPress settings; you’ll have several options to choose from, but none are completely SEO friendly. To rectify this, download the WP No Category Plugin, which will then remove the <word>/category sections of your URLs. This makes them clean, concise, and keyword rich.

3) Specify Which Folders Can and Cannot Be Crawled

Chances are there will be sections of your site that you would rather not allow search engines access to. To manage this process, create a Robots.txt file in the top-level directory of your site. For full instructions on how to add one to your site, visit the ‘Robots.txt how-to guide’ (http://www.robotstxt.org/ robotstxt.html). Once created, you can specify any folders that search engines will thereby ignore, and keep others from spying on this private content as well. It’s also a great solution for hiding duplicate content. Don’t forget that users can still access the pages through the direct URL.

4) Create a Sitemap
Many of the tools listed below will help you quickly generate a sitemap. When this is complete, don’t forget to submit it to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools as a request to start crawling your content.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugins

1) SEO Ultimate

This puppy is a meta data powerhouse, with access to controls for descriptions and keywords, Google Webmaster Verification, and integration with Google Analytics. If you have a lot of pages with separate titles, Ultimate will help you manage all this data with ease.

2) Local Search SEO Contact Page

Perfect for those just beginning their quest for great SEO, Local Search allows you to add all business information to your site’s contact page, and will also include an embedded Google map, which links to your Google+ Local account.

3) WordPress by Yoast

Yoast helps determine what your current SEO score is, and in tandem, lets you monitor the areas that require some improvement. Yoast will let you know if your keywords are missing from title and H1 tags, and looks at your content and metadata too. This tool is rumored to be the most-used WordPress SEO plugin, and for good reason. It assists in setting up XML sitemaps, helps you map out all title and description templates, and truly enables you to stay on top of all the SEO must-do’s. If you only have one SEO plugin, this should be it. It’s regularly updated too, which is a big bonus.

Top SEO-Friendly Image and Content Tools

1) SEO Friendly Images

This plugin does exactly what you’d expect – ensures all your images have alt attributes, title tags and all other relevant search engine data. There’s also a premium version that unlocks a myriad SEO features, like XML sitemap generators and custom settings.

2) SEO Content Control

If you’ve got a lot of content on your site, you need this tool to help you identify the weakest links. Options for SEO Content Control include viewing a list of all pages/posts that have lackluster (too short) text, missing meta data, and missing keywords.

Must-Have Analytics Plugins

1) SEO Rank Reporter

Rank Reporter is an awesome tool that allows you to monitor your Google ranking through your WordPress dashboard, and it’s updated every three days. This plugin will help you assess if and when more SEO improvements are needed. When your ranking slips, you can use the other tools to identify why this may have occurred, and then set out to address each one.

2) Google Analyticator

If you’re a fan of Google Analytics, download this plugin now and integrate the data directly into your WordPress dashboard. You’ll be able to view your top performing pages, referrers, and keywords, among many other invaluable metrics.

Top-Notch Social Plugins

1) Sociable
Sociable is a superior sharing plugin that is jam-packed with customization options. It features an excellent default setup,with the options to use all your own personal icons and images. It’s super easy to connect to most WordPress themes, and makes your social sites immediately accessible to your users.

2) Social Media Tabs

This one is a unique plugin that allows you to add a social media widget to your site in a tabbed format, showing data from your major social sites. It currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, and RSS.
You are now armed with a gaggle of excellent, functional and easy-to-use WordPress SEO tools. Go forth and enjoy your increased rankings!
Resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/15/top-seo-plugins-for-wordpress-sites/

Savvy Social Marketing Tactics to Improve SEO

Every online marketing department, no matter how large or small, is now implementing various strategies for SEO and social marketing. The really smart ones, however, don’t ever forgot how integrated the two really are. Social marketing campaigns are all about the creative sharing of content, and great content can mean great SEO. By employing many of the current SEO trends in every social marketing campaign you create, you better your chances to make both efforts a smashing success.
So what aspects of SEO should be considered when executing smart and effective social marketing strategies? There are many savvy tactics, but at the heart of every one sits a personal strategy to connect with and truly engage your audience. Below are some invaluable and current methods to make your brand memorable to both your customers and search engines.

SEO – The Numbers Don’t Lie

A recent study presented by SearchEngineWatch shows just how critical it is that your business land on the first page of results for your keywords. The good news: if you’re smart about your tactics, you don’t have to pay for top placement. 85% of clicks land on organic links, as opposed to paid features, which means the majority of users gravitate to sites that used brains, not dollars, to get their attention. The more alarming news: 53% of those clicks hit the first organic listing. This means if you’re not on the first page, and darn near the top, you will likely be overlooked.

Make SEO a Multi-Pronged Approach

Most of us already incorporate SEO best practices into our website marketing strategies. But by making SEO a top-of-mind consideration in every marketing effort, you up your chances at a high ranking. Your business website, local directories, blogs, and social media profiles should all work hard to carry out your SEO goals. The more consistent they are in word choice, tone, style and engagement, the better.
Why? For starters, it’s a numbers game. The more quality content you have on the web that consistently and accurately reflects your brand, the better. Social media can arguably generate a vast majority of your content, so be consistent with your keywords in all your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn shares, and you’re well on your way.

Social Marketing and SEO – Create a Perfect Marriage

The first step in weaving SEO tactics into you social media is to ensure all your profiles are complete to the last detail. Create a vanity URL that best expresses your brand (and remember, with sites like Facebook, you only have one chance to lock this in – choose wisely.) Try and make all your URLs as consistent as possible too. Then, make sure the About sections and related areas have content that is readable, accurate, and full of your targeted keywords and style. If the social media partner allows it, don’t forget to backlink to your business’s site as well.
There is often a tendency for businesses to overlook these details, placing generic sentences that indicate there’s an assumption no one will ever read it. Here’s a tip: Even if few users ever will read this text (which may or may not be the case), search engines will. Make every opportunity to share information and content about your business matter.
Likewise, never leave the geographic details on social media sites blank either, especially if you service a physical area or group of areas. Customers will likely be searching for you in a given area, and these stats placed on various social sites make you that much easier to find.

If It’s Not Engaging, It’s Not Social

You already know you need quality, shareable content on your social media pages. The difference between something that earns a handful of Likes, however, and content that actually engages your customers means everything in online marketing. Your social content should not just aim to gain a few eyeballs, but to encourage viewers to keep coming back. Engagement, therefore, is far more valuable than just content that people read, “Like”, and leave. One-off Likes don’t create enviable conversion rates – engagement does. Engagement means asking questions your customers actually want to discuss, offering discounts or deals that they act on immediately, or supplying viral videos that incite users to watch and share, among others. Each of these social events also helps your SEO. The more people engage and share your content, the more search engines view that content as valuable. Much of great SEO is about establishing consistent authority, and social media is an obvious opportunity if you work to authentically engage the masses.
Of course, creating regular engagement with your brand requires you to regularly engage with your customer. It is absolutely imperative that you not only post content on a consistent basis, ideally similar times each day/week, but that you respond to your social fans in as close to real-time as is conceivable for your business. If someone actually takes the time to comment or ask something on a social page of yours, a speedy response is integral to keeping that customer engaged. And again, if people are reading, sharing and engaging with your content, search engines are noticing.

Consistency is Key

One core strategy to consider regarding the integration of your SEO and social campaigns revolves around tone and voice. If possible, it’s a very good idea to let one person become the voice and face for your brand, so that users can engage with an actual person, rather than a generic logo/ideal. People trust people more than they trust companies. It’s also easier for one person to stay mindful of keywords, content consistency, and release schedules than it is for a disjointed team.
Look at Google – they have no shortage of employees, but it’s Matt Cutts that often speaks front and center for the mega-business with regards to SEO. Although he gets plenty of slack, he does an outstanding job of maintaining a friendly and approachable image.
If you do have an online ambassador, make sure he or she not only understands your business inside and out, and can create a friendly and likeable persona, but that he/she can also handle the onslaught of negative commentary that is often unavoidable in a public space. As we all know, the internet can be a very cruel place, so your representative should stay positive in the face of some friendly (and not so friendly) feedback.

The Big Picture

Every piece of content and every last reply, tweet and post you create, should all share a common goal and message from your brand. How you engage with your audience is and always will be up to you – you know your customers best. Good marketing strategies consider every nuance of the customer, and now, those executions must bear in mind successful SEO strategies as well. The good news is, they are not mutually exclusive. People love quality, consistency and credibility, and so do search engines. By carefully monitoring the success of all your social campaigns in terms of traffic, audience engagement, and SEO rankings, you can create a multi-pronged strategy that improves each critical aspect. It’s the true definition of a win-win.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/05/savvy-social-marketing-tactics-to-improve-seo/