WordPress SEO and General Performance Plugins – A Few Top Picks to Try

It’s easy enough to get a WordPress site together these days and to make the whole thing look pretty impressive top to bottom. However, it’s not until the site is starting to come together that you might say the real work begins – and by that we of course mean making sure folk get to your site in the first place and ideally stay there long enough to convert.You know the basics of SEO to follow across your site, but along with this there are plenty of plugins that can give your efforts a well-deserved shot in the arm. In fact there are thousands of them, but rather than confuse you with a list longer than the M4, here’s a quick rundown of a few of the very best to try out:     WordPress SEO by Yoast - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/You must have heard of this one by now, which of course prompts the question as to why on Earth you aren’t using it? As the name sort of gives away…not to mention its reputation…this is essentially your bread and butter plugin to get your site headed in the right direction SEO-wise. In fact, there are plenty that insist there’s really no point bothering with anything else until you’ve got this little beauty up and running, so consider this a precursor to anything else you do for your site.Download this plugin now and use it on every WordPress site you own. This plugin, in my opinion, is as important as the WordPress installation itself. It's also extremely easy to use.Simple URLs - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-urls/It’s a rule to follow and plugin to use too – simple URLs in both sense of the term are your best friends for WordPress SEO. Not to be confused with a URL simplifying tool however, Simple URLs is used to monitor, track and control outbound links from a simple central hub.RB Internal Links - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rb-internal-links/Some might warn you away from plugins that haven’t been updated in quite a long time, but to be honest this one is pretty foolproof…or at least it has been so far. It’s basically all about making sure your site is as free of internal 404 errors as possible, by linking internally using post IDs as opposed to their URLs. As such, even if the URL of a post changes, the link will still work, which is a good thing considering that neither Google nor your readers particularly appreciate 404 pages.Gravity Forms - http://peadig.com/go/gravityforms/You’ll have to be willing to fork out about $40 for this one…at least at the time of writing…but it’s a genuine must have for WordPress business sites of all shapes and sizes. It’s basically a plugin that goes way beyond what the title would have you think it does and covers everything from basic contact form generation to email routing contact forms and right through to the full generation of pages and posts.Twitter Feed Pro - http://peadig.com/wordpress-plugins/wp-twitter-feed-pro/And finally, $20 will net you a neat plugin that will embed either your own Tweets or those of someone else on your website, while also listing favourites, mentions, replies and so on. Great for SEO, great for keeping your content fresh and great for encouraging discussion…just great, really!