I have received a number of requests recently about what are the best WordPress SEO plugins to use, when setting up a new WordPress blog or website.

What makes WordPress so attractive is that there are literally thousands of individual plugins available, which are designed to perform specific tasks for you. However, it can be a daunting and time consuming process, searching through all of these different plugins, in order to find the ideal solution to your particular problem.

From an SEO perspective, if you are designing a new WordPress blog or website, then I would recommend the following top 5 “must have” WordPress SEO plugins:

All-In-One SEO Pack

This is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins. It is very simple to set up and easy for beginners to use whilst providing more experienced users with sufficient options to refine their settings, as required.

This plugin offers a variety of useful SEO options such as, automatic page titling and meta tag content, avoiding common duplicate content issues, navigational link management and much more.

Google XML Sitemaps

XML Sitemaps provide an established and proven method to improve the indexing of your web pages, for all of the major search engines. This useful WordPress SEO plugin creates the XML Sitemap code automatically and alerts search engines when new content is created.

SEO Smart Links

Internal page linking within a website or blog can help to improve your ranking results. This plugin does all the hard work for you and will identify specific keyword terms within your web pages and automatically link them to other relevant pages or content.

SEO Friendly Images

Most website owners forget to add “alt tags” to their images. Although search engines cannot see images, they can read the text embedded in an “alt tag”. Adding “alt tags” to your images will help to boost the keyword density of your content. This plugin ensures that all your images are properly tagged, as the relevant “alt-tag” text is automatically completed on images where you have forgotten to do this manually.

Web Page Redirection

Websites and blogs are constantly evolving, changing pages and removing content is an ongoing part of this process. This redirection plugin will help you manage your web page redirects, ensuring that your URL’s do not end up on “404 Not Found” pages. More importantly, this plugin will ensure that the link juice for deleted web pages is redirected to an alternative page.

There are many other great plugins that can be used to help you manage your WordPress blog or website more efficiently, but as a bare minimum, I would recommend these top 5 WordPress SEO plugins to help improve your sites ranking results.

If you found this WordPress SEO post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Market News, direct to your inbox.

Alternatively visit our WordPress Blog Design page for further information.

If you have any other essential SEO WordPress plugins you use, please share them below.

If your website does not appear trustworthy, you are unlikely to secure many sales, even if your website enjoys high volume traffic. Although a high quality, professionally designed website, together with a secure and easy to use online order process are extremely important, there are a number of additional things that you need to get right, in order to convince your potential customers that they can trust you.

1. Make sure your company address and contact telephone number is prominently displayed on all pages of your website

I am constantly amazed at how many websites do not display their company address and telephone number on their website. This creates the impression of a faceless organisation, that is likely to offer poor customer service and will be difficult to contact, if something goes wrong with the product you wish to purchase.

Additionally an awful lot of websites only advertise a mobile telephone number as their primary point of contact. Again, this can create the impression of an unprofessional company that may not be trustworthy. For home based companies that do not wish to advertise their personal landline number, a more practical solution would be to use a free virtual telephone service, such as Phone Call Manager.

If your customers do not know who you are, where you are based and how to contact you by telephone, they may refrain from doing business with you.

On our own website our address and telephone number is displayed at the bottom of every Web Page. If you’re serious about your online business you need to show your visitors that you have nothing to hide and display your full contact information on your website.

2. Publish your privacy policy on your website

Potential customers are sometimes wary of providing email addresses due to concerns about privacy. Publishing your privacy policy on your site provides extra confidence for your customers that their personal details will be handled in a professional manner and will help to boost the integrity of your brand. Again on our own website we have published a link on every page to our Privacy Policy page.

3. Have other customers tested your products and services?

If other customers have tested your products and services then it is less risky for new customers to buy from you. Your website visitors need to be reassured that you are a serious business. If your current customers have something positive to say about your products or services, list these testimonials on your website.

In order to be successful online it is vitally important to establish your brand integrity and develop a trustworthy website. Show your visitors that your business is real and that they can trust you.

If you found this post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Internet Marketing information, direct to your inbox.

As ever, please feel free to comment on this post.

Have you ever considered how the loading time of your web pages might impact on your search engine rankings?

Both Google and Yahoo! have commented on this issue recently, so it might be a good time to take a closer look at how long it takes your web pages to load.

Google’s position on the issue has always been that the time taken for a web page to load does not have any impact in their ranking algorithm – until now! As part of their initiative to “Speed Up The Web“, Google have stated that page load times might possibly become a consideration in the future.

Google’s Matt Cutts has stated that, “We want the web to be faster and we want sites to load more quickly”, so it’s very possible that, in the future, Google could consider rewarding fast loading websites, via improved search engine results.

Take a look at what Matt Cutts has to say about the topic below:

Another interesting development has come from Yahoo!, who recently filed a patent with regards to web page loading times.

Their Patent Abstract summary states the following:

“Methods and systems are provided that may be used to characterise in some manner the performance that a user may experience when accessing a web document.”

The patent application goes on to discuss establishing some kind of “user experience information” which could be used to rank search results. Obviously web page load time will play a big part in the user experience, so this would be a contributing factor.

The patent application states:

“For example, information relating to whether a user might abandon or wait for a web document to be displayed may be useful when establishing certain quality or relevance factors for the web document.”

As both Google and Yahoo! appear to be placing increased relevance on the issue of page load times, it might be a smart move to ensure that your website has been optimised to load as quickly as possible, ahead of any potential changes to the search engine algorithms. Your Web Site Designer should be able to help you with this.

Apart from helping to make your site more search engine friendly, any improvements in speed will definitely help to improve your sites appeal to your visitors as well as improving your Web Page Optimisation efforts.

If you found this post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Market News, direct to your inbox. As ever, please feel free to comment on this post.

As promised here is the second Google video from their webmaster educational series – “Speeding up in a Slowdown”.

In this video you will hear tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google, about designing websites for the user.

One of the things Ricardo and his colleagues are responsible for, is making sure that Google websites are efficient and fun to use so that visitors keep coming back to them. Ricardo offers three valuable tips that he and his team think about daily, as they do their jobs. Ultimately, these tips reflect Google’s guiding principle: “if you focus on the user, everything else will follow”.

Tip #1: Design for the tasks that visitors complete on your site.

Think about tasks on your website first and layouts second. It’s tempting to want a flashy design that exercises your CSS skills, but remember that vistors come to your site with specific goals in mind, like reading your essays, or checking out your collection of sports photos. Write down the top three tasks your users might want to accomplish on your site, and design to make those tasks quick and efficient.

Tip #2: Use ads as potential exit paths, not interruptions.

Ads should complement your site, not distract from it. The most natural place for a user to evaluate an advertisement is after they’ve completed their goals on your site. Instead of interrupting your user’s main tasks, try to offer ads as potential exit path for users who were probably ready to leave anyway by placing them at the end of completed tasks.

Tip #3: SEO – only if it makes sense.

Only do search engine optimisation that benefit your users. For example, page titles that are relevant to the page content make it easier for your visitors to understand what your articles are about. On the other hand, there are lots of sneaky strategies out there for improving search engine rank. Most of those don’t work anymore, and they might actually harm your site’s reputation.

For further information check out the Google Webmaster Tools - Design and Content Tips or visit the Custom Web Site Design page on our main website.

Why not Subscribe to my Blog by email, in order to be notified when new posts are added and to receive free SEO Tips.

It is important to check that your website is compatible with all major web browsers. My preferred browser is Firefox. Obviously I review hundreds of different websites each week and it is not unusual to view web pages that appear to have missing text or images, over lapping text or specific functionality that simply does not work.

Inevitably the reason for this is because the site is not compatible with Firefox and the webmaster has not bothered to check if their website is compatible with the many different browsers that exist. Some web design companies are also guilty of not checking that a new site will function properly in all of the major browsers.

Because Inernet Explorer is deemed to be the major player in terms of market share, there is a tendency to forget that there are thousands of internet users, using alternative browser platforms. If your website does not perform properly when viewed through all of the major browsers then you are potentially losing out on a significant slice of business.

It is therefore vitally important to ensure that your site will function properly and look its best, no matter what browser your visitors are using.

The major web browsers and their market share as of December 2008, is as follows:

• Internet Explorer - 68.15%*
• Firefox – 21.34%*
• Safari – 7.93%*
• Chrome – 1.04%*
• Opera – 0.71%*

* Source – NetApplications.com

As you can see, if your website only functions properly with Internet Explorer, there is potentially a whopping 30% of visitors that are unable to view your site correctly.

You will need to download the latest version of each browser and install on your computer, in order to check that your site can be viewed correctly and is functioning properly. If you identify a problem with your site you should report this to your web designer/developer who should be able to fix the problem. Most compatability issued are easily resolved, once they have been identified.

If you require further information on any Web Site Design issue, please Contact Us