Tag Archives: Tools

8 of the Best SEO Tools & WordPress Plugins For Maximum Visibility

[ad_1] Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial for any website that wants to maximize its traffic and visibility. As such, most websites will want to employ a number of SEO tools to help. WordPress websites can also install plugins for all sorts of SEO-related tasks. The real challenge is to choose the most valuable ones to help get you to the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). For this post, we’ll look at the best SEO tools around, mixed in with top-tier WordPress plugins. We’ll also summarize everything in a handy table towards the end, answer some burning questions, and give you advice on how to choose the right plugin for your needs. What You Should Look for in SEO Tools and WordPress Plugins While it would be straightforward to head to a list of generic, all-purpose SEO tools, this isn’t possible. In fact, you have two areas to consider when it comes to choosing SEO tools and relevant WordPress plugins: The tool’s focus. There are different types of tool that all cover different ground. For example, some help you manage 301 redirects, while plenty of others let you research keywords. Of course, you’ll want to look for SEO tools that match your specific needs. Your potential tool’s quality. Once you have tools on a shortlist, you have to make sure they are high quality solutions. There are a few ways you can do this, and combining them will be the best approach. When it comes to the latter, we recommend a few considerations. Social proof is important (such as ratings and reviews), as you will also likely be one of the happy bunch. Also, checking how much the developer updates a tool will help you decide how ‘invested’ they are in it. You won’t want to spend money on a premium solution only for the developer to move onto other products in their range. The Top 8 SEO Tools And WordPress Plugins For Maximum Visibility Next, let’s look at the eight SEO tools we want to feature. Right now, they’re in no order. Later on though, we’ll rank them – more on that shortly. For now, let’s go through the list. 1. Semrush Finding keywords is an SEO fundamental. Without them, your content won’t have any direction (from an SEO standpoint anyway). Semrush is one of many keyword research tools, and it’s also one of the best. In fact, this is a collection of over 55 different tools to help with lots of SEO aspects. It includes keyword research, but also competitor analysis, market analysis, on-page SEO, and much more. Semrush offers almost every tool you’ll need to help your SEO strategy succeed. 👍 Pros 👎 Cons Almost every tool you need for SEO Cost could be prohibitive Best-in-class keyword research The huge number of tools Semrush offers could be overwhelming The official WordPress plugin doesn’t have good reviews from other users. Pricing: Semrush offers three premium tiers starting from $129.95 per month. Each tier will include a greater number of features and functionality. Try Semrush 2. Rank Math Rank Math represents the first WordPress SEO plugin on our list. It lets you optimize your posts and pages using a variety of tools from the WordPress dashboard. Its on-page SEO functionality is excellent, but it can do lots more for your site. For instance, you can preview how your content will appear across SERPs, social media, and more from within the Block Editor. You’re also able to view Google Search Console content from the WordPress dashboard. This means you can log into your site and see all of the most valuable metrics to help improve your SEO. 👍 Pros 👎 Cons Fantastic SEO analysis within the Block Editor sidebar The whole package may be too overwhelming for some users who want simpler functionality. Plenty of extra Includes Content AI, which helps you write articles with near-perfect SEO Pricing: Rank Math’s core plugin is free to download. However, a premium subscription begins from $5.75 per month and gives you the ability to track a greater number of keywords, the use of a Schema generator, and more. Related: Rank Math Vs Yoast SEO: Which Is The Best WordPress SEO Plugin? Try RankMath 3. Yoast SEO When it comes to WordPress SEO analysis, the champion for millions of users is Yoast SEO. It was one of the first of its kind available, and uses a ‘traffic light’ system to highlight where your SEO is good, bad, and able to improve. While we could give you all the juicy details, we have a comparison article elsewhere on the blog that looks at Rank Math vs Yoast SEO in depth. You’ll want to read that to understand how to find out more about Yoast SEO, and how both of these excellent plugins differ. 👍 Pros 👎 Cons As a free SEO plugin, there’s arguably no better option on the market Lots of users don’t enjoy the inline ads for premium Yoast SEO products The traffic light system to analyze your SEO is near-perfect for efficiency and prioritization The plugin can be buggy at times, especially if an update breaks a particular piece of functionality Some of the metrics in the Readability section are valuable and unavailable in other SEO tools. Pricing: Yoast SEO is free to download from the WordPress Plugin Directory. The vast majority of users will only need this version of the plugin. However, the premium edition is $99 per year and gives you further ways to analyze your site’s SEO, social media previews, and more. Try Yoast SEO 4. Mangools If Semrush doesn’t appeal for whatever reason, there are numerous competitors. Mangools is one of the best, thanks to its straightforward usability and fantastic price. Our main focus is on the keyword research tool here, although there are other apps that focus on backlink mining, SERP rank tracking, site profiling, and SERP analysis for specific keywords. However, the keyword research app is almost a one-page tool. You have keyword

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7 Best WordPress Image Optimization Plugins and Tools (Tested) – 2022

[ad_1] Searching for the best image optimization plugins or tools to speed up your WordPress site’s images? By now, you probably know the importance of website loading times and page speed. The internet has been abuzz with news about how loading times impact your bottom line and Google has been pretty clear about favoring fast loading websites and blogs. While there are many ways to optimize the speed of your website, one of the first places you should look to make improvements are the images you use. To help you with optimizing your images, in this post we’ll take a look at seven best image optimization tools and compare their results with real testing. We’ll start by sharing details for each image optimization tool along with its individual performance. At the end of the post, we’ll put everything together into a few different comparison tables so that you can easily see how the different tools and plugins stack up. 📚 Here’s everything that you’ll find in this post: Seven Best WordPress Image Optimization Plugins and Tools: Individual Details and Performance Below, we’ll share details for the seven best WordPress image optimization tools and plugins. Beyond sharing basic features and pricing information, we also tested each plugin on this list by seeing how well it was able to optimize the same two test images using both lossless and lossy compression: Both images are 1280 px wide and we’re sharing data for the full size image (rather than one of the smaller thumbnail sizes that WordPress automatically generates). We also did not convert them to WebP, which is a feature that a lot of image optimization tools offer. Instead, we kept them in their original image formats. Of course, beyond the file size savings themselves, you also might be concerned with the quality of the compressed images. To my eye, all of these tools resulted in more or less the same image quality, so I don’t think it needs to play a role in your decision: For lossless compression, there was no difference in quality (which is the definition of lossless). For lossy compression, there was a small reduction in quality, but it was very difficult to notice and I didn’t see any noticeably different results between the different tools in terms of image quality. 1. EWWW Image Optimizer When you install and activate EWWW Image Optimizer, it will automatically optimize any images that you upload to your website. It can optimize JPGs, PNGs, GIFs, and PDFs and it also allows you to go through your existing media library and optimize already uploaded images. The plugin can also convert images to the best format if you decide to enable this option in the plugin settings. One of the benefits of EWWW Image Optimizer is that it allows you to optimize images using their specialized servers to provide both lossy and lossless compression. In short, this means that image optimization won’t cause additional load on your server. The paid service also offers other enhancements such as a built-in CDN, WebP conversion, automatic scaling, and more. Alternatively, you can do the processing on your own server for free, but you can only access lossless compression if you use your server. Pricing: If you use your local server for processing, you get unlimited usage for free. However, this only supports lossless compression, which is a pretty big limitation. Paid plans start at $7 per month for unlimited image optimizations for a single site, along with a built-in CDN. 👉 Use our exclusive EWWW Image Optimizer coupon to get 15% OFF. How did the plugin do? Image File Type Compression Type Original Size Reduced Size Percentage Reduced JPG Lossless 271 KB 271 KB 0% JPG Lossy 271 KB 151 KB 44.2% PNG Lossless 416 KB N/A* N/A* PNG Lossy 416 KB 105 KB 74.8% *I couldn’t get EWWW Image Optimizer to run a lossless PNG compression for some reason. Even if I chose lossless, it still used lossy compression. 2. Smush Image Compression and Optimization Developed by WPMU Dev, Smush Image Compression and Optimization plugin is available in both free and premium versions. After you install the plugin, you’ll be taken to the plugin settings page where you can see how many images were already optimized and configure which thumbnail sizes you want the plugin to optimize, whether images should be resized, and more. The free version of the plugin lets you optimize unlimited images, but each individual image cannot exceed 5 MB. The plugin can optimize your JPEG, GIF and PNG images individually or you can use their bulk optimize feature. In addition, you can optimize image files that are uploaded outside your media library such as images stored in your theme files. Pricing: To remove the 5 MB limit for individual images and access other paid features such as CDN image delivery, WebP conversion, and more, the paid plans start at $7.50 per month. How did the plugin do? Image File Type Compression Type Original Size Reduced Size Percentage Reduced JPG Lossless 271 KB 268 KB 1% JPG Lossy 271 KB 224 KB 17.5% PNG Lossless 416 KB 320 KB 23% PNG Lossy 416 KB 74 KB 82.3% 3. ShortPixel ShortPixel is a freemium plugin that can compress JPGs, PNGs, and GIFs. After the plugin installation, you will prompted to sign up for an API key by providing your email address. The plugin will automatically optimize every uploaded image and you can also bulk optimize images already present in your media library. The plugin supports both lossy and lossless compression methods. It will also optimize all the thumbnails created by WordPress, remove EXIF data, set a maximum resolution for your images, and save a backup of every image you upload to a new folder. Other useful features include the following: Conversion to WebP or AVIF formats for smaller file sizings. Retina image serving. PDF optimization in addition to images. The original ShortPixel plugin optimizes the images on your site’s server. However, there’s also

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5 Top Tools to Help You Manage Multiple Sites from Single Dashboard

[ad_1] It’s normal to run multiple WordPress websites as a modern site owner. The best place for visibility is on the internet, which means each business or blog will often have its own site. Though, running all of these sites could be a hassle and an administrative nightmare. As such, you’ll need a tool to manage multiple sites from a central location. The great news is that there are lots of services to make running multiple WordPress websites a breeze. The time you save can go back into running your business, rather than your site – and you could save some money too. In this post, we’ll look at a few solutions to help you manage multiple sites from a central WordPress dashboard. By the end, you’ll be able to find a service that fits your needs and say “Goodbye” to your old method of multiple site management. 5 Top Tools to Help You Manage Multiple Sites from Single Dashboard We’re going to look at five different ways to manage multiple sites from one dashboard. While some integrate with the WordPress dashboard, others have a custom solution. Here’s the list we’ll look at: MainWP. This runs from WordPress, and balances budget, functionality, and complexity within its features and functionality. ManageWP. The tool is a mainstay of WordPress site management, and comes with a unique pricing model. InfiniteWP. While the free tier is light on features, the premium solution will appeal to developers. Glow. This newcomer is going to become a front-runner for managing multiple sites, given its feature set and price. WP Remote. If you have the budget, and run a lot of sites, WP Remote could fit the bill. The list isn’t in any order, so feel free to jump around to look at a tool that appeals to you. Though, we recommend reading the whole list at some point, if only to compare your chosen solution to the rest. 1. MainWP First up, MainWP is a free, open-source tool for WordPress websites, with a lot of powerful features in the box. It offers great flexibility when looking to manage multiple sites and keep them secure. The MainWP dashboard features an intuitive interface that takes the hassle out of managing plugins, themes, and other aspects of your site. For example, it checks the update status of your themes and plugin, and sends you a summary notification. Though, it can do more than notify you of updates. MainWP’s one-click access to your network of sites makes it a breeze to administrate sites. A big time-saver is that you don’t have to type in individual URLs. Instead, there’s a direct link to each admin panel, which means you’re in an instant position to start managing the site. Once you’ve configured each site’s login credentials from the dashboard, you won’t need to remember them. On the whole, MainWP offers a stellar experience for WordPress users who want to manage multiple sites. What’s more, you can extend the platform using a number of free and premium extensions. Pricing MainWP’s core services are available on a free tier for unlimited sites. Though, there’s also MainWP Pro – a premium version (around $20 per month) that includes a number of otherwise inaccessible extensions. This includes functionality such as Wordfence and Yoast SEO integration, staging functionality, and advanced reporting. 💲Don’t forget to use our MainWP Coupon to get 15% OFF. 2. ManageWP Our next tool to manage multiple sites is ManageWP – one of the popular and best services for the task. It lets you access all of your sites through a single dashboard, and makes carrying out site admin a straightforward process. As you’d expect, the service is a snap to use. You’re able to perform almost all common routine tasks for your site through ManageWP. For example, you’re able to carry out basic updates to plugins and themes. Though, you can also add content to a site, create backups, and even start a new WordPress site. No matter what the task is, ManageWP features an intuitive, user-focused interface. It lets you jump in and begin regardless of your technical expertise. In addition, ManageWP offers premium-quality customer support. It’s available 24/7, highly knowledgeable, and on hand to help you solve any issues. Pricing The pricing model for ManageWP is unique. While, it offers core features for free, the service takes a modular approach. In other words, you can upgrade your experience on a per-extension basis. For example, you’re able to white-label your site, add backup functionality, and more, all for $1–2 per site, per month. This keeps the cost down for a handful of sites, but could see prices scale. Though, ManageWP also offers bundles of add-ons and extensions to help keep costs down for large-scale management projects. 3. InfiniteWP Next, InfiniteWP is a powerful tool to help you manage multiple sites without wasting time, effort, and money. You can manage all of your sites from a single intuitive and powerful admin panel, without the need to remember your admin credentials. Because it focuses on agencies, developers, and freelancers, it’s almost unique in the niche. InfiniteWP offers a global overview of your sites from a centralized admin panel. Its one-click update feature makes it easy to update site elements across your entire network of websites. What’s more, it includes a free backup and restore service – something not all solutions offer. Compared to the competition, InfiniteWP is light on core features. In fact, the free edition gives you little more than one-click admin access and updates. This isn’t enough to compete with other free solutions, although the premium upgrade is great quality. Pricing At the base level, you’re able to install InfiniteWP for free. Though, as we said, this only gives you one-click admin access, one-click updates, and backup functionality. If you decide to upgrade, you unlock more of InfiniteWP’s features. There are a number of premium features to choose from, including a lot of reporting and monitoring tools. One feature we like for developers is the

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