There are WordPress plugins for pretty much every purpose out there, but when it comes to Marketing and SEO, you can count the good ones on the fingers of one hand (maybe two, if your search goes deep enough).
In my 12 years old of blogging for personal and professional reasons, only 6 WordPress plugins made it to my top ranks in terms of user experience and quality of service, and in this round-up post, I briefly review each of them and tell you why it’s a good plugin to use for your blog.
1. SumoMe
Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sumome/
Also known on WordPress’ plugin page as the “Free Tools to grow your Email List, Social Sharing and Analytics”. SumoMe is an amazing plugin, easy to use soon after installation: all it asks is for you to register an account (name and email address), after which you will be shown a list of in-plugin functions you can activate, like a conversion bar, a newsletter, social buttons and more.
Some of the features I have found particularly helpful in running my blog are the lightbox “List Builder”, the full-screen CTA “Welcome Mat” and “Highlighter”, a function that allows readers to select part of the text and tweet it with a link to the full article. One of the big benefits of having SumoMe installed is that this all-in-one plugin will fullfill most of your marketing and SEO needs, so you need nothing else. You may as well have only SumoMe and be done with that.
You can also integrate SumoMe Can with MailChimp or Aweber to have the best of both platform.
2. Social Media and Share Icons (Ultimate Social Media)
Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/
Ultimate Social Media is a special plugin, one that asks you questions upon installation. For example, it asks which icons you want on your site and what do you want them to do, or if you want to display share count next to them (more details here). You will then select which icons to use (RSS and Email are labeled as “Mandatory”). Icons come in several designs (16 overall), so you get to choose the one that matches your blog design better.
This plugin allows your visitors to subscribe to your blog via email, too.
3. Marketing Optimizer for WordPress
Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/marketing-optimizer/
This is an A/B testing and conversion rate optimization software for WordPress that tracks and analyzes all your content and landing page, as well as offer professional landing page templates.
It helps optimize your conversion rate for better ROI and to work on your most trafficked pages.
4. SEO Post Content Links
Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/content-links/
This plugin automatically links to your categories when it meets the keyword in your posts. You can also add lists of keywords and key-phrases to automatically link to each of your posts from other posts.
If you need automated help to complement your internal link building efforts, go for this plugin. As the plugin author reassures, “You own links, that was created without this plugin, will stay untouchable.”
5. Yoast SEO (ex WordPress SEO)
Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
When it comes to SEO plugins for WordPress, Yoast SEO is the plugin. Almost all of the most popular bloggers and SEOs out there use it to optimize their websites for search engines.
Yoast SEO can make a difference for your blog posts, because it helps you analyze every aspect of your On-Page SEO, from keywords to readability to alt tags. Every analysis comes with recommendations and a yellow or green light to let you know whether you optimized the post just fine or if it needs more work.
I also recommend you watch Neil Patel’s “How to Fine Tune the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin” video tutorial at QuickSprout.
6. Broken Link Checker
Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/
Why is this plugin here, while not strictly SEO or marketing software? Well, first of all, because broken links negatively impact your SEO and UX; secondly, because bad UX leads to lost opportunities to market your content and anything your content tries to convey.
Broken Link Checker monitors your links, internal and external, to see whether they’re broken or not, or if they redirect to some different URL. You can also use an option to make the plugin add a rel=nofollow attribute to all broken links, to save your rankings.
More Plugins?
Check out the following resources (thanks awesome bloggers for sharing these gems!):
- How to Maximize Your SEO Traffic With These Must Have WordPress Plugins by Neil Patel at QuickSprout
- 7 Essential WordPress Plugins for Content Marketing by Syed Balkhi at Search Engine Journal
What plugins do you use to aid your Marketing and SEO efforts?
