14 Best WordPress SEO Plugins and Tools That You Should Use

Often we’re asked about what are the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that we recommend.

That’s because search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites on the internet. Optimizing your website for search engines can help you rank higher in search results and significantly grow your business.

In this article, we will share the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use. Some of these tools offer similar functionalities, so we will also highlight which ones are the best for specific use-cases.

Things You Must Know About WordPress SEO Plugins & Tools

When reading SEO tips or searching for “best free WordPress SEO plugins”, you will come across articles that feature several dozen tools.

This can be quite overwhelming for beginners and non-techy users.

The truth is that you don’t need dozens of top SEO tools to get higher search rankings.

While most blog posts (including ours) will share the top most popular SEO plugins, it is extremely important for you to understand the use-cases of each tool.

For example, you never want to use more than one WordPress SEO plugin on your website. We will mention Yoast, All in One SEO, Rank Math, and SEOPress. You need to pick only one to avoid plugin conflict.

We’ll mention SEMRush, Ahrefs, and few other powerful tools, but you don’t need them all when you’re first starting out since they have similar feature set. We will share what tools we use in our business, and which features are the best among each tool.

With that said, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It offers a complete website optimization tool that helps you improve your website.

It lets you easily add SEO titles and descriptions to all posts and pages on your website. You can also use it to add Open Graph metadata and social media images to your articles.

Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for all your website content which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. It also helps you easily import your SEO data if you have been using another other SEO plugin.

For more details, see our complete guide on how to install and setup Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress.

We use Yoast SEO plugin on WPBeginner to help optimize our on-page SEO meta titles and descriptions, manage SEO redirects, control index settings, generate sitemap, etc.

However we don’t use all of Yoast SEO features such as content analysis because we feel it falls short when compared to a more comprehensive writing assistant solution like SEMRush.

This brings us to the next SEO tool in the list.

2. SEMRush

SEMRush is the best overall SEO tool on the market. Used by professional SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, and businesses of all sizes, it provides a comprehensive set of tools to grow your traffic.

You can use it to find organic keywords and search terms that you can easily rank for. It also allows you to do competitive research and see which keywords your competitors rank for, and how you can beat them.

SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant tool helps you improve your website content to beat the top 10 results for your focus keyword. It integrates with WordPress, and this will help you write more SEO friendly content.

To learn more, see our complete guide on how to do keyword research for your website.

3. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.

It alerts you when Google is unable to crawl and index pages on your website. You also get helpful tips on how to fix those crawl errors.

Most importantly, it shows which keywords your website is ranking for, anchor texts, average position, impressions, and more. You can use this data to find keywords where you can easily rank higher by simply optimizing your content. You can also use this keyword data to come up with new blog post ideas.

For more details, see our comprehensive Google Search Console guide for beginners.

Yoast SEO comes with an easy integration that lets you setup Search Console without writing any code.

MonsterInsights, another tool we’ll mention later, helps you bring the Search Console reports right inside your WordPress dashboard for easy access.

4. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool for marketers, bloggers, and businesses. It is a popular alternative to SEMRush and offers a lot of similar tools and features.

It allows you to do keyword research, competition analysis, backlink research, monitor keyword rankings, and more.

It also offers a detailed content analysis tool that helps you improve content while targeting specific keywords.

While there’s a huge feature overlap, what Ahrefs does really well is backlink analysis. We can use it to see which sites are linking to multiple competitors, but not us. This helps us get more backlinks and build more partnerships.

They also help us identify which content multiple of our competitors are ranking for that we aren’t, so we can create content on those subjects to get more exposure.

Last but not least, Ahrefs helps us better identify duplicate content and keyword cannibalization which helps us merge and upgrade the right content to boost our rankings.

For the reasons above, we pay for both SEMRush and Ahrefs because they’re both good for specific use-cases.

5. Google Keyword Planner

No one on the planet has more insights into what people are searching for than the search giant Google.

Did you know that you can get your own keyword ideas from Google itself by using the Google Keyword Planner tool.

This free tool is offered to Google’s advertisers for free and anyone can use it. Its main purpose is to show advertisers the keywords they can bid on for their advertising campaigns.

It also helps advertisers choose the right keywords by showing them an estimate of search volume, number of results, and difficulty level.

As a content marketer or blogger, you can use this data to find keywords with high search volume, high advertiser interest, and more importantly keywords where you can easily outrank all other sites.

Bonus: See these 103 Blog Post Ideas that your Readers will Love (Cheat Sheet).

6. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack is a popular WordPress SEO plugin offering a comprehensive set of tools to improve your website. It allows you to easily add SEO title and meta tags, open graph meta tags, XML sitemaps, image sitemaps, and more.

It works out of box with WooCommerce to optimize your online store for SEO. It comes with easy setup and allows you to control access to different settings using a feature manager.

You may also want to see our complete beginner’s guide to All in One SEO Pack and our comparison of the Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Pack.

All in One SEO Pack Pro plugin gives you access to more addons, and it is a more affordable solution than Yoast SEO which is why it’s the second most popular WordPress SEO plugin in the market.

Note: All in One SEO Pack is a Yoast SEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.

7. SEOPress

SEOPress is another simple yet powerful WordPress SEO plugin. It includes all the features you would expect from a SEO plugin like meta title, description, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps, redirects, and more.

It comes with easier setup for beginners and advanced controls for more experienced users. It is comparable to all top WordPress SEO plugins on the market in terms of features and ease of use.

A big reason some users choose SEOPress over Yoast SEO is because the premium version is significantly cheaper and comes with a lot of the similar features.

Note: SEOPress is a Yoast SEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.

8. Rank Math

Rank Math is a fast growing user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your website for search engines and social media. It comes with a setup wizard and allows you to import data from other SEO plugins during the setup.

It allows you to easily add meta title, description, and Open Graph metadata to your blog posts. The plugin also allows you to generate an XML sitemap, connect Google Search Console, and control access to plugin features based on user roles.

Note: Rank Math is a Yoast SEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.

9. All in One Schema Rich Snippets

Rich Snippets allow you to make your website stand out in search results by showing star ratings below a review, prices below a product, image or video next to the description, and so on.

Search Engines use data available in Schema format to get this information. All in One Schema Rich Snippets helps you optimize your website by adding that Schema metadata to your website.

It supports reviews, events, people, products, recipes, software apps, videos, and articles as Schema content types. It works nicely alongside your existing WordPress SEO plugin.

10. KeywordTool.io

Keyword Tool is one of the best free keyword research tools available right now. It allows you to simply generate keyword ideas by typing in a keyword. These keyword suggestions are gathered from Google’s autosuggest feature. It also shows you keyword suggestions from Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and more.

These keyword suggestions are a treasure of information. You can also get search volume, cost per click, and other data for each keyword by upgrading to their paid plan.

11. Broken Link Checker

Broken links can affect your site’s SEO and create a bad experience for your users. If you have been running a blog for some time, then you should check your site from time to time for broken links and fix them.

Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to find broken links on your WordPress site. You can then fix those links without even editing your posts. See our tutorial on how to fix broken links in WordPress with Broken Link Checker.

It is a highly useful plugin, and it’s totally free. The only downside is that it can become resource-intensive and may slow down your WordPress hosting server. Some hosting providers like WP Engine already block this plugin.

Because this plugin can slow down your site if you have a lot of content, we use Ahrefs tool for broken link detection because it helps us make sure our website is always fast.

Bonus: Redirection is a free plugin that helps you redirect broken links to an appropriate page on your website.

12. SEOquake

SEOquake is a useful SEO tool for website owners. It is available as a browser addon for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari web browsers.

It provides SEO related information for any website. This data includes page health, age, last updated, Alexa rank, and many other parameters. It is one of the most downloaded browser addons by SEO professionals.

Apart from that, the SEOquake toolbar can show you all the same data search results when you type in a keyword. This information can be extremely useful if you are gauging competition for different keywords. You can even download search results in CSV format and prepare your own excel sheets of search data.

Bonus Plugins for WordPress Website Owners

These tools give you additional advantage when optimizing your website for SEO. They do not advertise themselves as SEO tools but they are essential for every website and play a significant role in your website’s search performance.

13. WP Rocket

Site speed is a major factor in search rankings. That’s why you need to monitor your website speed & performance to make sure it’s not affecting your SEO.

The easiest way to boost your website speed is by enabling caching. WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market, which allows you to set up caching without diving into any technical stuff.

Alternative: WP Super Cache

14. MonsterInsights

Many beginners rely on their best guess to make their marketing decisions. You don’t need to do that when you can easily get the insights you need to improve your website’s SEO strategy.

MonsterInsights is the bets Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily install Google Analytics in WordPress and shows human-readable reports inside your WordPress dashboard.

It tells you where your users are coming from, your top content, what users do on your website, and more. It also allows you to track your WooCommerce SEO by seeing which products are popular and where you are losing customers.

Bonus tip: See what other marketing data you must track on your website to grow your business.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools for your website. You may also want to see our proven tips to easily increase your website traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14 Best WordPress SEO Plugins and Tools That You Should Use appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 18, 2019 at 07:00PM

How to Change Your WordPress Site URLs (Step by Step)

Do you need to change your WordPress URL? Whether you’re moving from HTTP to HTTPs, changing your domain name, migrating from local server to live site, or transferring to a subdomain, you will need to know how to change your WordPress site URL.

The WordPress address and site address are extremely important fields because they reference the address of your website on the internet and the location of your website files.

In this article, we will share four different ways to easily change your WordPress site URLs (step by step). This guide will specially come in handy when you are fixing common WordPress errors or moving a WordPress site.

Why Change WordPress Site URLs?

There are many reasons why you might need or want to change your WordPress URL. For example:

• You may need to update site URLs when moving WordPress from local server to live site.
• If you have moved your WordPress site to a new domain name, then you will need to change site URLs to reflect the change.
• If you’re moving WordPress to a different directory such as removing /wordpress/ from WordPress url.
• You will also need to change it when moving WordPress from HTTP to HTTPs.

Apart from that, you may need to change the WordPress address settings if you are seeing too many redirects error in WordPress or when troubleshooting another WordPress error.

WordPress Address vs Site Address

When changing WordPress site URL, you will need to update two separate settings: WordPress Address and Site Address.

This can be confusing for many beginners because they don’t know what’s the difference between the two settings.

Your WordPress Address (URL) is the address where WordPress files and folders are stored including your admin pages, media files, plugins, themes, etc.

Your Site Address (URL) in WordPress is the public facing part of your website. This is what your visitors will type in to reach your website. This is also the link that you put on your business cards.

For majority of users, the WordPress Address and Site Address URL will be the exact same link.

However in some cases, large companies may host their WordPress site on a different server because their corporate website has many other applications, and they want to isolate where each app is hosted.

But for majority of users, these two WordPress URLs need to stay the same.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily change WordPress site URLs. We will show you the following methods, and you can choose the one that works best for you.

• Change WordPress site URLs from admin area
• Change WordPress site URLs using functions.php file
• Change WordPress site URLs using wp-config.php file
• Change WordPress site URLs in the database using phpMyAdmin

Ready? let’s get started.

Method 1. Change WordPress Site URLs from Admin Area

This method is the easiest. If you can already access the WordPress admin area, then we recommend using this method.

Simply login to your WordPress website and go to Settings » General page. From here you can change WordPress site URLs under the ‘WordPress Address’ and ‘Site Address’ options.

WordPress Address and Site Address are usually the same address.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings. You can now visit your website to make sure that everything is working OK.

Method 2. Change WordPress Site URLs Using functions.php File

This method is recommended for users who cannot access the admin area of their WordPress website.

Simply connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client and go to /wp-content/themes/your-theme-folder/.

From here you need to locate the functions.php file and edit it using a plain text editor like Notepad or TextEdit.

Next, you need to add the following code at the bottom:

update_option( 'siteurl', 'https://example.com' );
update_option( 'home', 'https://example.com' );

Don’t forget to replace https://example.com with your own site URLs. You can now save your changes and upload the file back to your website hosting using FTP.

You can now visit your website to see if everything is back to normal.

The advantage of this method is that it updates the site URLs in the database. WordPress updates the database option for site URLs every time your functions file is loaded.

Once everything gets back to normal, don’t forget to remove the two lines of code from your WordPress functions file.

Method 3. Change WordPress Site URLs Using wp-config.php File

This method is only recommended if you are unsure which WordPress theme you need to edit or cannot find the functions.php file.

For this method, you will be adding the site URLs to your WordPress configuration file called wp-config.php. This file is located in the root folder of your website and contains important WordPress settings.

Simply connect to your website using an FTP client and edit the wp-config file. You need to add the following code just above the line that says ‘That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing’.

define( 'WP_HOME', 'https://example.com' );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://example.com' );

Don’t forget to replace https://example.com with your own domain name.

You can now save your changes and upload them back to your server. After that, visit your website to make sure that everything is working fine.

Method 4. Change WordPress Site URLs in the Database Using phpMyAdmin

Another way to update WordPress site URLs is by changing them directly in your WordPress database.

First, you need to make a WordPress database backup. This step is really important and will help you undo database changes in case anything goes wrong.

After that, you need to go to your web hosting account’s dashboard and click on the phpMyAdmin icon under the Databases section.

Note: Our screenshot is from Bluehost but most other WordPress hosting companies will also have the ability for you to edit database settings.

Once you click the link, it will launch the phpMyAdmin app, which provides a web-based interface to edit MySQL databases. To learn more about it, see our guide on how to WordPress database management with phpMyAdmin

Inside phpMyAdmin interface, you need to click on your WordPress database from the left column. The app will now display tables inside your WordPress database.

Next, you need to scroll down to the options table. By default the database prefix is wp_ but since you can change WordPress database prefix, your screenshot may have a different prefix.

PhpMyAdmin will now display the rows inside the options table. You need to locate the rows where option_name is siteurl and home.

Next, click on the pencil icon on the left to edit each row and change the option_value field to the new site URL. After that, click on the tiny Go button at the bottom right corner to save your database changes.

You can now visit your website to see if everything is working fine.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Over the years we have helped hundreds of thousands of users create a WordPress website, start a blog, or start an online store. In this time, we have answered many different questions related to changing WordPress URLs. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions.

Why are my WordPress Address and Site Address fields greyed out?

If the WordPress address (URL) is greyed out on the settings page of your admin area, then it means that the URLs are hard coded in the wp-config.php file.

To change your WordPress URL, you will need to follow method 3 in our article to edit the wp-config.php file and change the URL accordingly.

How to recover WordPress after url address change in settings?

Sometimes non-techy users can accidentally change WordPress URL and Site Address settings from the WordPress admin area. To recover from that, you will have to follow our guide above to change the WordPress URLs back using functions.php, wp-config, or the database method.

Is there a WordPress change URL plugin that can bulk update URLs in all blog posts, pages, and other content areas?

Yes, you can either use the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin or the Better Search Replace plugin.

When you change your WordPress URL, you will need a way to bulk update links through your WordPress posts, pages, and other areas in your database. The above plugins are a huge time saver.

Aside from using them to update URLs when moving websites, we also use them for various other platform migrations such as moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org, Blogger to WordPress, Weebly to WordPress, etc.

We hope this article helped you easily change the WordPress site URLs. You may also want to see our guide on the must have WordPress plugins, and how to speed up WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Change Your WordPress Site URLs (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 17, 2019 at 03:27PM

How to Update a WordPress Theme without Losing Customization

One of the best things about WordPress is the easy customization options that you get with WordPress themes and plugins.

You can also take these customizations to the next level by adding your own code snippets and CSS styles to your WordPress theme.

The problem arises when an update becomes available for your theme. If you are not careful, then there is a high chance that you’ll lose some of those changes you made to your theme.

In this article, we will show you how to easily update a WordPress theme without losing customization. We will also cover how to properly customize your themes, so you are not affected when a new theme update is released.

How Theme Updates Work in WordPress?

WordPress comes with a powerful system to install updates for not just WordPress itself but for plugins and themes as well.

Your WordPress website regularly checks for updates and display them under Dashboard » Updates page.

When a theme update becomes available, you’ll also see a notification on the Appearance » Themes page.

Updates are really important for the security and performance of your WordPress website. Aside from security and bug fixes, theme developers can also introduce new features with these updates.

You can simply click on the update button to install the new version.

WordPress will then download the theme package, unzip it, and replace the old files with the newer version.

This will overwrite all old theme files installed on your website. If you manually added custom code to your WordPress theme files, then you’ll lose those changes.

That being said, let’s take a look at which theme changes are safe and which customizations will be erased.

What Type of Theme Customizations Can You Lose During an Update?

There are multiple ways you can customize a WordPress theme. Some of these theme customizations are safe because your changes are stored in the WordPress database itself.

This includes all changes made through the built-in WordPress theme customizer which you can access by visiting Appearance » Customize page.

The theme customizer allows you to modify your WordPress theme and store all changes in the WordPress database. You can change the header image, colors, layout, custom CSS, and more.

Your WordPress widgets and navigation menus are also not affected by the theme updates.

Popular WordPress themes like Astra and Ocean WP now come with companion plugins. These plugins are used to add extra features to your theme. Any theme changes made using these companion plugins are also not affected by the theme update.

If you customize your WordPress layout using a WordPress page builder like Divi, Beaver Builder, Elementor, etc, then those changes will also not be impacted.

Any other features that you have added to your website using a plugin are also safe. For example, your WordPress contact forms, Google Analytics, email newsletter popups, and more.

Customizations that you’ll lose during the update

If you have added any code to your theme’s functions.php file, then it will disappear. Any CSS changes that you have added directly to your theme’s stylesheet (style.css) file will also be wiped off.

Now that we know which changes will be erased, let’s talk about how to preserve and restore them after the theme update.

Step 1. Preparing for The Theme Update

First thing you need to do is connect to your WordPress hosting account using an FTP client.

Once connected, go to the /wp-content/themes/ folder and download your theme folder to your computer.

This folder will be the backup of your theme, and we will use it later to copy and paste customizations after updating the theme.

Step 2. Download The Updated Theme and Move Customizations

Now we want to transfer customizations we have made to the old theme files to the updated version.

Simply visit your theme’s website and download the latest version to your computer. Locate the theme’s zip file and extract it.

You should now have both, the new version and your old customized theme on your computer.

If you remember the changes you made to your theme, then simply copy and paste the code snippets from the old theme to the new version.

On the other hand, if you do not remember the changes you made, then you will have to find them first. The easiest way to do this is by comparing your theme files.

You’ll need to use a file comparison software like WinMerge (kaleidoscope for Mac, Meld for Linux).

Open both theme folders in file comparison software. It will show files side by side allowing you to quickly compares files to locate the customizations you have added to the old theme.

You can then copy and paste the code from the old theme file to the same file in the new theme.

Step 3. Upload the New Theme Folder

After copying your changes to the new theme, you are now ready to upload the updated version to your website.

Simply connect to your website using the FTP client and go to the /wp-content/themes/ folder. Select the new theme folder and update it to your website.

Your FTP client will warn you that the files with the same name already exist. You need to choose <strongOverwrite to make sure that your old theme files are replaced by new files.

That’s all. You have successfully updated your WordPress theme. Visit your website to make sure that everything is working as expected.

How to Avoid Losing Changes During Theme Update

If you want to add code snippets or custom styles to your WordPress theme, then there are some best practices that you should follow.

The best solution is to create a child theme and add your custom code to child theme’s files.

However, many WordPress beginners may not feel comfortable creating a child theme. Luckily, there are easier solutions available.

For all your custom code changes, you can use the code snippets plugin.

It allows you to safely add custom code snippets without breaking your website, and your changes will not be affected by theme updates. You can even change your WordPress theme without losing those changes.

For CSS code, you can save it all under the theme customizer’s ‘Additional CSS’ tab.

For more information, see our guide on how to add custom CSS in WordPress.

Alternatively, you can also use the powerful CSS Hero plugin to easily customize the styles without even writing any CSS code.

We hope this article helped you update your WordPress theme without losing customization. If you come across any issues, then check out our guide on most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Update a WordPress Theme without Losing Customization appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 16, 2019 at 05:00PM