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For many, maximizing the traffic on their WordPress site is a major part of running an online business. Equally as important is the ability to measure and analyze this traffic for insight into the efficacy of marketing tactics.
There are several options available for improving and tracking your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), with some more costly and time consuming than others. Plugins offer a simple and effective way to better your SEO and obtain useful analytics along the way.
Good news! The results for the top 100 most downloaded plugins are in, and among them are the most popular plugins for SEO. In this article, I’m going to provide an overview of the top 5 plugins (all within the top 20 most downloaded plugins) to help you optimize and analyze the traffic on your WordPress site.
1) All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack is number 2 on the list, and has over 18 million downloads.
It provides a bundle of support tools for SEO, XML Sitemap, and Google Analytics. In addition to offering compatibility with most plugins, this is the only plugin to provide SEO integration for WordPress eCommerce sites.
All in One SEO Pack automatically generates metadata tags and optimizes your titles for Google and other search engines. The plugin is perfect for beginners and advanced users alike because of its automatic features and customizable capabilities.
2) Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps is a simple and effective plugin that helps search engines better index your blog. Supporting a variety of WordPress-generated pages and custom URLs, it has easy configuration, and is perfect for generating a special XML sitemap to make your site more searchable.
A notable feature of this plugin is that it notifies all major search engines each time you create a new post. It is number 4 on the list with over 12.8 million downloads.
3) WordPress SEO by Yoast
This plugin goes above and beyond to provide systematic instructions for bettering your SEO. Its user-friendly abilities guide you through the process of adding metadata, selecting keywords, and effectively adding “nofollow” tags. It also offers a page analysis to ensures you’re not forgetting any small details; such as effective image tagging.
It includes a slew of other features to ensure your posts possess the qualities that search engines love. WordPress SEO by Yoast has over 9.5 million downloads, and is the 7th most downloaded WordPress plugin.
4) Google Analytics for WordPress
Google Analytics for WordPress is an intuitive plugin that allows users to easily track their WordPress site.
The plugin provides extended metadata for greater tracking capabilities—such as views per author and category, and overall pageviews. It uses the asynchronous Google Analytics tracking code to provide the fastest and most reliable tracking.
This easy-to-install plugin has over 5.5 million downloads, making this Yoast plugin the 10th most downloaded WordPress plugin.
5) Google Analyticator
Google Analyticator is the first plugin to display Google Analytics directly to your WordPress dashboard. It enables your Google Analytics logging on virtually any WordPress blog. This plugin includes a dashboard widget for easy access to performance details.
This easy-to-install plugin is number 17 on the list with over 3.1 million downloads.
Conclusion
Plugins are a great tool for improving your SEO. Due to the overwhelming amount of downloads for each of these plugins, they are most definitely worth trying out.
For the full list of the most downloaded WordPress plugins, click here.
What plugins do you use for optimizing your SEO?
Marie Dodson is an editorial assistant at Torque. She graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Biology and Society. She enjoys wine, good books, and travel.
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