According to Search Engine Journal, 93% of all web traffic comes through search engines. We live at the age of SEO where, it is practically impossible to be a successful online business if you are not ranking in search engines.

A decade ago, the competition was relatively easy. All you had to do to rank was focus on certain keywords and your website would start to pop up in the list. But times have changed. Today, there are over 1.5million websites in the world. Search Engines have a lot of options to choose from. So, you must distinguish yourself so that the algorithms choose you over your peers.

Add to this the fact, that according to Moz, the first page of Google captures 71% of all the clicks. So that basically means that the goal is not only to rank, but to rank as high as possible. So how do we do that? How can we be the first at Google? The answer is search engine optimization (SEO).

In the article, I will discuss with you what SEO is, how it works, and then go on to mention five best WordPress SEO plugins that you can use to drive traffic to your website.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

As the name suggests, Search Engine Optimization is technically optimizing your content such that it is preferred by search engines, and hence leads to organic traffic. The purpose of SEO is to basically improve both the quality and the quantity of the traffic you get.

For instance, if you are an online clothing store. You really do not want people looking for fitness items in your website. The point is that you are going to benefit from the traffic, only if the people visiting your website are interested in your product or service in the first place.

Similarly, if your content is optimized and ranking at a higher spot in search engines, it is going to lead to more traffic to your website.

Search Engines are like libraries. So, when someone searches for a certain term, they just surf through their database, and return the results that match the content that was searched for.

As a result, when it comes to SEO, your job is two-folds. One is to make sure that the search engines understand what your content is about. This way, when someone searches for terms relate to your content, they will be able to identify it and return your website. The other is to

prove to them that your content is worthy of ranking. So, let’s take a deeper dive into understanding how SEO works

How Does SEO Work?

As I mentioned earlier, SEO has evolved significantly over the last few years. Due to the fierce competition in the world wide web, search engines now rely on multiple factors to rank the websites.

There are various metrics that comes into play now when a search engine like Google is trying to rank your website. Some of these include your domain ranking, page ranking, page keywords, domain name, social media weightage, etc. Its described best in the Infographic below.

Now each of these parameters again need to be looked at individually to be done at perfection. For instance, some parameters such as Page Ranking and Domain Ranking are mostly built through networking and getting backlinks.

However, other parameters that include, page speed, readability, content length, text distribution, etc. are stuff that you can control while producing your content.

If you are using WordPress for your website, then you are lucky! Because WordPress has several plugins that help you with SEO factors that you can control through content production.

At the end of the day, for most people – the goal is to earn money and through organic traffic and proper search engine optimization, one can monetize their content and start earning some bucks. And while we are it, it is also important to understand the business models of other companies such as Zoom or Honey which on the surface look pretty free, but in reality earn a good chunk through commissions.

5 Best WordPress SEO Plugins

So, without further due, let’s have a look at five SEO Plugins that you can use to drive traffic to your website in 2021.

YOAST

Yoast SEO has an excellent 16,700 5star ratings. Yoast amazes the WordPress world using impressive upgrades, a gorgeous interface, and the very user-friendly plugin to make your website articles and product pages stand out.

It’s embedded using a broad group of internet search engine optimization programs. Yoast allows an individual to add meta tags, bread crumb navigation, and XML-sitemap, making it easier for the Google search console to index your website. Additionally, it optimizes internet sites for societal media marketing pages.

Using Yoast, you could observe SEO friendly your page material could be before it’s inserted to your website so you can tweak it until it’s published.

The Yoast plugin’s various functions make it useful for better content and generate the maximum search engine traffic for the internet site.

The plugin’s purpose would always help you generate more traffic from making your WordPress website appear better at search engine results. Once installed, this plugin creates search engine friendly meta-tags, reformats URLs and has got the most useful result from SEO.

With this specific All-in-one-SEO Pack, you’ll have the ability to avoid duplicate content topics that really can hurt your search engine optimization ranking. It also has other useful features like a rich snippet, small XML sitemaps, RSS feeds, robots.txt editor, local SEO, video SEO and many more.

High rankings boost your website’s chances being found on the top of the search results pages and increases traffic.

This plugin is perfect for all types of business, blogs and other websites.

AIOSEO helps beginners with Search Engine Optimization through features Such as:

• Smart Meta tag generator
  • On-page checklist
  • Rich snippet schema Mark up.
  • XLM Site-maps
  • And even more…

But it also has a lot of features for more innovative Search Engine Optimization users, for example:

• RSS packs
  • Robot.txt editor
  • Local Search Engine Optimization

• Google News Sitemaps
  • Video Search Engine Optimisation

SEOPress

SEOPress is just a powerful plugin that is completely white-labelled free of charge from adverts. It includes comprehensive options that allow one to optimize your website thoroughly.

The plugin is completely incorporated with google analytics, helping you keep track of your search engine optimization efforts.

Also, its articles analysis tool will offer optimization tips that will assist you in writing better articles. Programmers can apply extra pins to personalize the plugin fully too.

Beyond this, also, It provides features, for example:

• Intuitive installation wizard
  • Service for infinite key words
  • Image Search Engine Optimization
  • Social networking observation
  • Dynamic names and meta tag descriptions
  • Custom canonical URLs
  • ‘No-index’ service
  • Free Search Engine Optimization tutorials

All in One Schema Rich Snippets

All in one Schema rich snippets will enhance how your pages come in search engine results in rich snippets, which can be a short and much more interactive overview on your page. They feature things including pricing, photos, star ratings, or even testimonials.

This schema mark up plugin can help you incorporate items, for example:

• Video Clips
  • Content Articles
  • Recipes
  • Occasions
  • People
  • Services and Products
  • Content Articles

Rich snippets advantage many internet sites; nevertheless, they’re especially critical for e- commerce websites. Users won’t need to go through as many measures to learn an overview of their services and products. They will observe that the Star Rating from your internet search engine results on a web page.

Rank Math

Rank Math is a search engine optimization plugin which is simple to utilize. It is accompanied by an intuitive installation wizard and smart monitoring qualities that’ll help beginners maximize their articles in several clicks.

Besides that, it’s built-in 404 monitor makes it possible to solve mistakes for a far better user experience.

Some other essential features include:

• Schema Mark-up
  • Service for infinite key words
  • Advanced Search Engine Optimisation auditing
  • Redirect manager
  • Local Search Engine Optimization
  • Bread Crumbs optimization
  • Internal linking tips
  • XML Site Map
  • Image Search Engine Optimization

BONUS: W-3 Total Cache

W-3 Total Cache is just one of the most widely used complementary SEO wordpress plugins. As soon as installed, it will strengthen your internet site rank and user-friendly expertise by sending and sending cached WebPages into your users.

With W-3 total Cache empowered, any page a user has visited may currently be delivered superb while the significant lifting has been carried out.

A more quickly site perhaps enhances SEO overall performance and enriches the total consumer experience. Page speed is a massive factor in bounce rate. W-3 total Cache may be the reason for turning an unsure visitor to a paying buyer.

Too Long Didn’t Read (TL;DR)

We live in the age of data and search engines. The successful online businesses are those that are ranking higher in search engines and getting the maximum organic traffic.

To rank at the top of the SERP (search engine results page), you need to optimize your content. SEO basically increases the quality and quantity of your traffic. By directing the traffic based on your keywords, you tend to find audience with people who are interested in your product or service. Similarly, if your content is ranking higher in the search engine. Your traffic will grow since more than 93% of web traffic comes from search engines (Search Engine Journal). You can also earn a good chunk of money.

As SEO has evolved over the last few years, search engines take into account many more different factors into consideration while ranking different websites. While some of these parameters such as page rank and domain rating are built through getting backlinks and networking. Others, such as content length, readability, etc. can be controlled when you are producing your content.

WordPress provides several plugins that help in terms of optimizing your content with respect to search engines. Some of these plugins include, Yoast SEO, All in One SEO Pack, SEO Press, All in One Schema Rich Snippets, Rank Math, and W-3 Total Cache.