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There are many website factors that effect SEO or search engine optimization. Some are simple, some more technical, so choosing the right platform for your website can save big bags of time. Luckily there are plenty of WordPress SEO plugins to make it a whole lot easier!

WordPress SEO By Yoast

SEO expert Joost de valk is the developer of WordPress SEO by Yoast. Joost claims it is the most complete SEO plugin for WordPress available today. Over 4.5 million plus downloads and an average 4.7 star rating on WordPress.org means there are plenty of people that agree with him!

WordPress seo by yoast has an awesome onpage analysis which is powered by Linkdex. Tweak title tags, meta descriptions, and other on-page content optimization elements all with a nice preview function that predicts what your listing will look like in the search results.

Broken Link Checker

Broken links are bad for website navigation and search engine optimisation. This plugin checks your website content for broken links and missing images, and displays a notification if any are found.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin creates an XML sitemap for WordPress, which will help search engines like Google to better index your website. You can give Google a link to your XML sitemap using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

SEO Friendly Images

It’s best to manually edit your image ALT tags, but if you find this tends to be an afterthought, or not done at all, this plugin, automatically assigns image ALT and TITLE text so they are more easily understood by search engines. Just name your image files appropriately!

W3 Total Cache

Website speed is another important SEO factor. W3 Total Cache is a powerful caching plugin that compresses and optimises your website files for fast loading and website speed. This plugin covers everything from combining and minification of both CSS and JS files to browser caching and more.

Redirection

Redirection is an easy interface to manage webpage redirects on your WordPress website. you can add redirects manually or you can upload a CSV file. This is especially handy for moving a website to a new domain or host or just tidying up any 404 errors from broken or moved webpages. You could just edit your .htaccess file but this plugin makes it much quicker and easier.

Google Analytics Dashboard For WP

A critical part of any Website SEO is monitoring traffic and usage statistics via Google Analytics. TheGoogle Analytics Dashboard for WP will display Google Analytics data and statistics inside your WordPress Dashboard.

This plugin connects with your Google Analytics API, so if you already have a Google analytics account set up, you’ll easily able to check all of your visitor information directly on your site.

Simply installing some of these plugins will help with SEO, but to use them effectively you should learn a little about website optimisation.

 

Sharing content via social media platforms should be part of every marketing strategy.

Using a WordPress social sharing plugin is a great way to make sharing blog posts easy and attractive for your readers. Displaying a share counter acts as “social proof” that your content is relevant and engaging, encouraging even more sharing.

The exposure from social sharing can effectivelycrowdsource your linkbuilding and boost your search engine rankings in the process.

Encouraging social sharing is also one of the best ways offorming an online community who are talking about your content and sharing it with their peers, ramping up your reader engagement.

There are a ton of WordPress social sharing pluginsavailable, which can be confusing, and finding one that works well and displays the sharing buttons nicely is a challenge.

After loads of testing we found a social sharing plugin that ticked all the boxes.

You can see it in action here on the  WP Copilot blog, and we are now huge fans of this social plugin calledEasy Social Share. And we think that you’re WordPress website could benefit from it too!

Why Easy Social Share?

First of all, while many other social sharing plugins have good functionality, they often have layout issues. You’ll often see sharing icons that are all slightly different sizes which looks untidy, and well, unprofessional. This is because they use the embedded code from each social media platform, which are not consistent.

Other plugins use their own images and buttons to get around this, which can also mean a faster loading time for your website.

Easy Social Share is one such plugin, with a clean, customisable layout that makes integration on virtually any WordPress website look great. Plus, the layout is customisable so that you can play around until you find something that is a great fit with your content and encourages sharing.

Aspects of the design that are easy to change are the button styles and counter positions. Perhaps you wish to have a small Facebook icon or perhaps you want to display all your sharing statistics at the bottom of your post. These features are easily customisable using the plugin. In fact there are 9 different templates to start from, below are just a few.

You can also add text or a call to action to further encourage engagement.

We noticed some social sharing plugins showing incorrect counts, Easy Social Share provides total accuracy. If you have strong engagement on your site, these figures will help to promote trust levels among your readership.

In order to make sure that your social sharing strategy is working in your favour,
it is imperative to use a plugin such as Easy Social Share that comes bundled with robust analytics. With a Click Log and access to other statistics, you will be able to know exactly how your readers are sharing your content: from which posts and to which social platforms.

Where To Get It

Easy Social Share stood out to us as the best WordPress social sharing plugin and is available on the plugin marketplace codecanyon.net. If you want to experience the benefits of a robust social sharing platform that can boost your engagement with style, it’s a tiny $12 investment.

One of the most useful aspects of the WordPress CMS is just how customizable any website is when supported by this platform.

This flexibility in terms of design and functionality is in no small part down to the number of WordPress plugins that are available to expand and improve any WordPress website.

If the WordPress theme you have chosen for your website doesn’t have a contact form or doesn’t have pricing tables built in, it’s no big deal because there will invariably be a WordPress plugin out there that can do the job for you.

But with so many plugins in the marketplace, how do you actually know which one to choose?

This post will guide you through choosing the best WordPress plugins for your needs.

Searching For A Plugin

The easiest way of finding a plugin is via a Google search, although search functionality exists within the WordPress administration area. Head over to Plugins > Add New, and you can search for plugins in the search box. Just below the search box, you will also find a box full of tags that might help you in your search if you are looking for a plugin that is particularly popular such as a WordPress SEO plugin or asocial media plugin.

You can organise your search results by relevance, by date added, by popularity, and by user ratings. Alongside each search result, you will find a short description of what it does, the last time it was updated, the user rating, and how many times it has been downloaded. Of course, it is a good idea to choose a plugin that is trusted amongst end users and has the functionality that you need.

Reviews And Ratings

Before you hit the install button, it is a good idea to head over to the webpage designated to the WordPress plugin – there will also be a link to this in your search results.

Here you can find a more detailed breakdown of user ratings, including written reviews. You could well find that some questions that you have about a particular WordPress plugin will be answered for you within these reviews.

On this page, you can also often find screenshots of the plugin in action, enabling you to have a good idea of how to set up the plugin, and of the look and feel of the working plugin in action.

Plugin Updates And Security

Visiting the plugin page at the WordPress plugin directory will tell you the time it was last updated. WordPress actually puts a banner on pages where the plugin has not been updated in over 2 years which is a major red flag!


If a plugin appears to have been abandoned that means nobody is reviewing and fixing security issues that may be present. so it’s best to find an alternative with an active developer and community to avoidWordPress security issues.

Check Out The Support Thread

Each plugin also has a support thread on its webpage, where the plugin developer can answer any questions that users might have. Note that some plugin developers will provide support on their own website, Again, this is a great place to look for answers to any of your burning plugin questions, and you will be able to tell from the responsiveness of the developer whether the plugin is well supported or not.

It is a good idea to opt for a plugin that has a decent amount of support so that if you get stuck, you can get the issue resolved quickly and your website won’t have to suffer.

Free Or Premium Plugins?

The WordPress plugin directory has over 32,000 plugins both free and paid, or premium. You will often be able to find a free plugin that can do the job you need just as well as a paid version, so do have a browse through the options before you part with your hard earned cash. Having said that, paid plugins enable developers to be more active improving and supporting the plugin. Often bundled with superior customer service premium plugins and can perform niche or complex tasks that a free plugin might not be so great at.

Codecanyon.net is an online marketplace where you can find and purchase premium plugins from different developers.

Rate The Plugin

The only way that WordPress users can know if other website owners have found a plugin useful is through ratings and reviews.  So why not rate the plugin you decide to use so that you can help out other WordPress users and ensure that the quality of WordPress plugins is always rising.

Now that you know how to choose a WordPress plugin, you can download and activate it, and enjoy the new functionality that it brings to your WordPress site.

There are many website factors that effect SEO or search engine optimization. Some are simple, some more technical, so choosing the right platform for your website can save big bags of time. Luckily there are plenty of WordPress SEO plugins to make it a whole lot easier!

WordPress SEO By Yoast

SEO expert Joost de valk is the developer of WordPress SEO by Yoast. Joost claims it is the most complete SEO plugin for WordPress available today. Over 4.5 million plus downloads and an average 4.7 star rating on WordPress.org means there are plenty of people that agree with him!

WordPress seo by yoast has an awesome onpage analysis which is powered by Linkdex. Tweak title tags, meta descriptions, and other on-page content optimization elements all with a nice preview function that predicts what your listing will look like in the search results.

Broken Link Checker

Broken links are bad for website navigation and search engine optimisation. This plugin checks your website content for broken links and missing images, and displays a notification if any are found.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin creates an XML sitemap for WordPress, which will help search engines like Google to better index your website. You can give Google a link to your XML sitemap using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

SEO Friendly Images

It’s best to manually edit your image ALT tags, but if you find this tends to be an afterthought, or not done at all, this plugin, automatically assigns image ALT and TITLE text so they are more easily understood by search engines. Just name your image files appropriately!

W3 Total Cache

Website speed is another important SEO factor. W3 Total Cache is a powerful caching plugin that compresses and optimises your website files for fast loading and website speed. This plugin covers everything from combining and minification of both CSS and JS files to browser caching and more.

Redirection

Redirection is an easy interface to manage webpage redirects on your WordPress website. you can add redirects manually or you can upload a CSV file. This is especially handy for moving a website to a new domain or host or just tidying up any 404 errors from broken or moved webpages. You could just edit your .htaccess file but this plugin makes it much quicker and easier.

Google Analytics Dashboard For WP

A critical part of any Website SEO is monitoring traffic and usage statistics via Google Analytics. TheGoogle Analytics Dashboard for WP will display Google Analytics data and statistics inside your WordPress Dashboard.

This plugin connects with your Google Analytics API, so if you already have a Google analytics account set up, you’ll easily able to check all of your visitor information directly on your site.

Simply installing some of these plugins will help with SEO, but to use them effectively you should learn a little about website optimisation.

 

There are several ways to translate your site from one language to another, when you want to run a multilingual site. You can shell out the big bucks for a professional translator, to make sure you have a high quality localization for every blog post you write. This can, of course, get extremely expensive, particularly when you have a huge log of blog posts and pages you want translated.

If that option doesn’t work, you can try to hire a writer who is bilingual. They can probably create translated versions of their own content, for a lower fee than what a third party translator might charge. This is in many ways ideal, because it’s the right mixture of expense and quality in translation. This, of course, assumes that the bilingual writer is fluent in their second language. This also has the added benefit of ensuring that the translation carries through the author’s intent.

If you’re looking for a free method, you can go the absolute bottom of the barrel method and run everything through Google Translate. This has a number of issues, though. Despite the quality of Google’s, well, everything, their translation is necessarily sub-par. No translation software has been invented that has perfect translation, particularly when using obscure industry terms or complex phrases.

Of course, if you’re on WordPress, you can do it one better and use one of the many translation plugins available for the platform.

The Top Translation Plugins

There are a bunch of different translation plugins. Some of them are free, some of them cost money for a premium version. If you have a large site and you want quality support, don’t skimp on the fee just because there are free options. Here are six options you can use.

WPML is a premium plugin that has a wide range of costs depending on what you want it to do. The cheapest version is $29 and includes post translations, tag translations, menu translations and browser language detection. The mid-range plan is $79 and offers all of that, but additional custom fields, e-commerce, widget, themes and other translation options. Both options are one-year subscriptions. The final option, for $195, includes all of the features of the mid-range plan, but is a one-time lifetime fee.

WPML is a multilingual plugin and is one of the most popular, long-lived plugins available, and with good reason. It automatically uses over 40 languages, and tailors the translation to the language and content. By all reports, it’s really quite good. It also has a lot of active support, it’s constantly updated for new WordPress installations and it’s well supported by the translation community.

qTranslate is a similarly high quality option, but it has somewhat less support than the premium WPML. The reason for this, primarily, is that it’s free. It has quick and easy installation, but it’s not a constant automatic on-the-fly translation like WPML. Instead, it allows you to publish translated versions of your content form your dashboard. You can automate this, so you don’t need to go through the process with every post.

qTranslate only supports around 17 languages at the moment, with an additional option to hire a human translator to go over your particularly important or sensitive content.

Transposh is another free option, if you want something that isn’t created and maintained by one single person. If qTranslate doesn’t support the language you want to use, Transposh almost certainly does. It supports over 70 languages. Other than that, there’s not much to separate the plugin from others of its kind.

For the coming year 2015, Transposh is set to get more useful and interesting. They plan to release additional features over the next ten months, including widget support for custom widget writers, support for numeral systems beyond European numerals, and some other features. You can see what’s going on in their news posts.

Multilingual Press is yet another free option, with a twist. Rather than posting tagged translations on your main blog, MP is designed to support multiple sites, each with a different language focus. It does mean that you need to have a multisite setup to run, with different sites and different URLs for each individual language. However, once you have it all set up, it will automatically create translated versions of all of your content, and continue to create translations when you post new content.

Properly Using Translation Plugins

Any time you run a multilingual site, you should make sure that more than just your content is translated. Ideally, you will have a multisite setup that allows you to have translated versions of your themes and widgets, in addition to your content. After all, your content does no one any good if they can’t navigate enough to find it.

This means you may have to pay for a separate translation of your theme and your static pages, as well as finding multilingual versions of your widgets or manually translating them as well.

Don’t rely on automatic language detection to serve all of your customers and readers. A lot of people browsing primarily in a different language will still use an English browser, either due to their location or due to the availability of other language browsers in their area. You have two solutions to this problem. You can either do no detection, and rely on the user finding the right content, or you can use user selection.

User selection is available on many of the plugins above, as well as many other plugins, if none of these work for you. If you have a significant number of users coming from languages other than English, and they aren’t predominantly all one second language, you’ll do well to use a user-selection plugin.

Finally, of course, make sure to keep your translation plugin up to date. There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, when WordPress or a plugin makes an update, chances are it’s to fix security holes, even if other features are added. Always update everything, whenever possible. Second, it’s possible with automatic translation plugins that the update improves the quality of the translations you receive. This can help improve the quality of your site overall, as well as the quality of individual pieces of content.