WordPress Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plugins market themselves as the only tool you need to optimise your website for search engines. Relying solely on an SEO plugin won’t magically help your site rank higher in search results, though. While these plugins are useful, they can’t replace a well-rounded SEO strategy. Effective SEO requires thorough keyword research, quality content creation, and ongoing optimisation. SEO plugins are still worth installing, but they’re just a start, and you need to do a lot more if you want to improve your site’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Why You Should Use An SEO Plugin (How Plugins Help)
While they’re not a one-stop solution, SEO plugins should be installed on every WordPress site as a basic requirement. Popular SEO plugins, like Yoast SEO, All in One SEO Pack and Rank Math, are well worth installing if you use WordPress as your content management system (CMS). Having one of these SEO plugins installed is the bare minimum and ensures you have at least the foundation for good SEO on your website. These plugins are tried and tested, with very little risk to your website involved compared to lesser-known SEO plugins that can cause issues in your site, or worse, have vulnerabilities for hackers and security flaws.
SEO plugins provide a lot of features like:
- A recommended word count for your post
- A recommended number of links for your articles
- Basic site ranking analytics
- See how SEO-friendly your meta titles and meta descriptions are
- Add schema markups to your site.
- Get an estimated SEO score.
SEO plugins are a great starting point for any website owner and create a basis for further enhancing your website’s SEO. Overall, a free SEO plugin will do a great job of on-page SEO, and paid versions of these plugins will even help with more advanced SEO techniques – but they don’t have a massive impact when it comes to search engine rankings and overall SEO value.
Why WordPress SEO Plugins Aren’t a Substitute for an SEO Strategy
They offer basic guidance, but that’s it. WordPress SEO plugins rarely go beyond the absolute basics of on-page and technical SEO. A common question we get from clients is about all the fields within an SEO plugin. When they edit posts and pages and see a ‘score’ and a lot of green-coloured fields, they often believe that this high ‘score’ will lead to better SEO. In reality, the high ‘score’ is simply an attempt by SEO plugins to simplify SEO for the average person. However, achieving a high ‘score’ here will likely only lead to a 1% increase in SEO, if anything at all. We generally encourage clients and website owners to ignore this altogether.
SEO plugins mainly focus on things like meta tags and keywords. They don’t actually cover important areas like content quality, user intent, or competitor analysis. A good SEO strategy for your website needs a customised approach that fits your specific goals and audience, which plugins can’t provide.
Understanding how users interact with your website is a big part of improving SEO. Plugins don’t give detailed insights into user behaviour, such as click-through rates or bounce rates. These metrics are essential for refining your strategy and are just some of the metrics we use to measure the success of SEO campaigns. It’s also important to note that while plugins help with basic technical SEO tasks, they don’t handle everything. Complex issues like server configurations and the structure of your site need expert knowledge that plugins can’t offer.
SEO Plugins Don’t Do SEO For You
While WordPress SEO plugins can be helpful to make sure you follow the basic ‘rules’, like page title length, it’s still on you to do keyword research and write well-optimised content. SEO requires a deep understanding of your audience and their needs, which plugins can’t provide. You need to identify the right keywords to target and understand the intent behind those searches.
SEO plugins might suggest keyword placements and meta descriptions, but they can’t craft engaging, high-quality content for you. Writing well-optimised content means creating articles, blog posts, and web pages that are informative, valuable, and relevant to your audience. This requires time, effort, and a good understanding of your niche rather than just ticking the boxes.
Plugins often try to simplify SEO. They’re simply an SEO tool rather than something that educates you about all SEO elements or even how SEO works.
Technical Optimisation Isn’t All It Takes
SEO is about a lot more than just submitting sitemaps and ensuring you have metatags. SEO plugins can help with some technical optimisation tasks, but that’s just a tiny part of what you need for a successful SEO strategy. If you want to rise in search results, you will still have to put in the time and effort it takes to do that and do it well.
Plugins also don’t go far enough to ensure the technical aspects of your website are up to scratch. User experience is hugely important and things like checking page speed and for broken links won’t cut it. Web design also plays a huge role in SEO – If your site is hard to navigate or slow to load, visitors will leave quickly, hurting how Google ranks your website. Using SEO plugins for WordPress can help with site speed and structure, but they can’t design a user-friendly site or improve your overall user experience the way a clear SEO strategy and human expertise can.
Plugins Won’t Help You Create Quality Content
SEO plugins will not help you create quality content. It should go without saying that good content is more than just using the right keywords and following basic rules of optimising for search. It’s about providing value to your readers and addressing their needs in a meaningful way.
Plugins can suggest keywords and offer tips for readability, but they can’t understand your audience or create content that resonates with them. Quality content starts with knowing what your audience wants and needs. This requires research and a deep understanding of your market, which plugins can’t provide.
Writing engaging, optimised content also requires creativity and skill. You need to write in a way that grabs your reader’s attention and keeps them interested. This involves crafting compelling headlines, writing clear and concise text, and using visuals to enhance your message. SEO plugins can suggest improvements, but they can’t create this level of engagement for you. If you’re looking for guidance, read our article on how to write for the web and get better engagement from your audience.
Plugins Don’t Help With Off-Page SEO
SEO plugins don’t help with off-page SEO tasks like building backlinks. Backlinks, especially from reputable and popular websites, signal to search engines that your content is authoritative and valuable. Getting quality backlinks requires a strategic approach that plugins can’t provide.
Building a strong backlink profile means reaching out to other websites, writing guest posts, and creating content that others want to link to. These activities require manual effort and strategic thinking. You need to identify relevant websites, build relationships with other content creators, build a strong brand, and create valuable content that people in your industry naturally want to link to. SEO plugins can’t do this. You need human interaction and a personal touch that plugins simply can’t replicate.
Off-page SEO also includes social media engagement, brand mentions, and online reputation management. These activities help build your site’s authority and drive traffic. Active participation in online communities, engaging with your audience on social media, and maintaining a positive online reputation require ongoing human effort.
Install an SEO Plugin – But Don’t Entirely Rely On It
Every WordPress website should have an SEO plugin, even if it only assists with establishing a foundation for good SEO. Even free SEO plugins work well and will provide some foundational SEO benefits. While how much they actually help improve SEO and traffic to your website is dubious, installing them certainly won’t hurt. I think they can be useful if you’re learning the absolute basic SEO practices. However, you shouldn’t think that an SEO plugin will do your job for you. As we’ve explained, there are still so many other elements of SEO that you will need to be mindful of. No single plugin or tool will do it all for you.
