SEO Companion Plugin for WordPress
I was reading a list of top WordPress plugins on another site and saw several that I use very often, but rarely mention because of the confusion they often raise. Believe me, I know how confusing it can be to see long lists of top WordPress plugins, and not know for sure which ones you might want to use on your sites, why they are important… and in some cases, why they are just a waste of time and resources!
In this article, I want to talk about a Kick-Ass Plugin to help you out with your SEO efforts as you work on building your Keywords to Websites review sites!
WordPress SEO Plugin
In this case, one of my favorite companion plugins for WordPress and SEO is the SEO SearchTerms Tagging Plugin. It can be downloaded directly from your WordPress admin by searching for “SEO Searchterms” in the plugin manager, or directly from the plugin author at his site, Exclusive WordPress. Many may wonder why I refer to it as a companion plugin and that’s simply because its a very small part of SEO for WordPress, and by itself… really does nothing for overall mechanics of SEO, its more of an analytics plugin, without the overbearing shadow of letting Google into your site!
What this Plugin Does
Pretty simple. Once you install the plugin it more or less monitors all your incoming traffic for referrer information from the major search engines. When it spots a visitor coming to your site from Google, Ask, or any of the major engines, it pulls out the search terms and the page that the user landed with.
Over time, (or within a few hours on busier sites) you end up with long lists of the exact keywords being used to land visitors on the exact pages they landed! More than just the info, you can actually choose to display it on the pages of your site, thus increasing the phrase relevance of the landing pages! Note: If your visitors are not targeted, its only going to get worse after installing this plugin and increasing the non-relevant terms! :-)
In the plugin admin you get 2 lists…
- Popular Search Terms, which shoes the 50 most popular terms over the past xx days (You set the auto-cleanup rate) that are linked to the pages people landed on.
- Recent Search Terms, showing the last 50 phrases that brought a search visitor, linked to the page they landed!
If you have sites that are listed in Google news, you can seriously play with some trend data with this info!
Why I Like it
At a glance… you can see if your efforts are paying off, and if the engines are delivering targeted (Your intentions) traffic to your pages! If they are, you are immediately rewarded with even HIGHER relevancy on the specific page! As I previously mentioned, if they aren’t, you have IMMEDIATE at a Glance Exposure, and can start making changes to the page to refocus the target!
Someone will say: “But everyone else can now see your targets also”… you are right! And if you don’t take a few extra minutes during the setup to somewhat kill the footprint of the plugin, competitors will have no problem seeing what your pages rank for, and taking those visitors away from you! AND… you don’t have to make them public, you can choose to keep them private if you prefer! :-)
How to Feed it
Do you have pages that just aren’t hitting on the terms you expected? After you make onsite changes (add a few onsite links from popular pages, increase the relevance of the content, etc) Find yourself a proxy like HideMyAss.com, that allows you to search behind a proxy, plug in your target phrase and find your page in the Google proxied serps, and click your link!
Best Practices
If you decide to use this plugin… there are a few things you should do to reduce the footprint, and make the way you use it, unique!
- Change the list header text, or remove it completely! The last thing you want is the generic “Incoming search terms for this article” text showing, it not only makes you look like a n00b, it screams “I’m running an SEO plugin to try and game search results”!
- Blend the phrases into your site! If you use the same UL and LI that every other person is using, it just looks spammy! You want to remove the list, separate your phrases with a comma or some other separator (like the words “and, or” etc) to separate the phrases.
- Remove the link on the Same Page! The plugin has the ability to show the phrases as links, or just text. I prefer “text only” on the exact pages the user lands… but creating a footer or sidebar tag cloud with the links is perfect to do! The last thing you want, is 10 phrases, all linked back to the same page, on the same page! [Screams: Spam!]
The bottom line is that ANY PLUGIN you use for things like this should be used smartly! Just because a plugin is designed to help, does not mean you cannot make some changes, reduce the footprint, and still get the benefits from it!
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Adding your First Plugin to WordPress
- New WordPress Plugin – WPBayAds – Developing
- Build a Niche Store WordPress Plugin Review – WPBans
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
“I was reading a list of top WordPress plugins on another site…” you stalking a certain someone again? lmao
@Daniel – I DID for sure see the list on another site, and it DID for sure prompt this post! :-/
lmao i dont give a crap, it was just funny watching him get his panties in a wad about us discussing a relevant issue in a thread
@Daniel – :-) Unfortunately, he and I have been butting heads ever since he got deputized on the BANS forum…
It would be nice to see a comparison of this and SEO Booster Pro by Clever Plugins which looks really good, but it’s not free.
@Tim – SEO Booster is interesting Tim. It appears to have very similar functions on the Analytical side, but it takes those analytics and does more with them, like finding your ranking, finding and seeding deeper ranking, etc.
I have several sites in similar verticals… so I may just contact the team at SEO Booster and see if they are interested in a comparison as well.
Thanks for the heads up!
This just keeps getting better and better. I was able to use this to practically make a complete sentence with the keywords. Put some text before and after the separators and whalla, a sentence is generated when keywords hit your page. Pretty neat. Then used the widget function to display the popular searches to display some related items underneath the Tags widget section of the site and it blends well.
Hi Mark, Still looking at the ocean as I write this. What are your thoughts/comparisions between this plugin and SEO Pressor/SEO Power plugins, do you think that they do the job just as well as this one?
@Cherie – Hey Cherie – EACH of them actually a different use, and each is very valuable!
AIOSEO – sitewide SEO
SEOPressor – Single PAGE content optimization.
SEOSearchTerms Tagging2 – Site and PAGE Analytics (+ density and linking benefits)
I wonder if you just saw the writeup I did about web page optimization and SEOPressor plugin?!
Enjoy that beach!
Mark
After much thought, I purchased this earlier today. I just installed it to a site that I’m working on, and was shocked by the low score I initially earned (somewhere around 50%). It took me less than five minutes to increase my score to 96.67%.
Okay, I admit it. This is a nifty little plugin. It’s pricy, but in the long run, I’m hoping it will pay for itself many times over by brining in traffic as a result of the recommendations it makes. It truly is helpful to have this plugin right there, in my face, reminding me of what I still need to do.
Rochelle
P.S. This time, I made sure you got the affiliate commission ; )
Thanks Rochelle! :-)
@Rochelle – I absolutely LOVE this plugin! Its not 100% perfect and there are a few things I would like to change in it (Like the ability to check off the h1 (10 points), since a theme already has it, tighten the keyword density based on the public page, etc)
But truly… I LOVE it! Its like you say… in your face and forces a reminder to pay more attention to the details!
M
Yep, I already grumbled about the H1 issue. But, I resolved it by removing the page title from my theme’s code, and then created my own H1 tag out of the opening sentence for the page. I actually like this better, because I never liked how the page title looked above my text.
@Rochelle – I just ignore it… and add +10 points to the overall score.
A little (but very relevant) birdie advised using the h tags like this.
(15% relevance) h1 – [target phrase] + [action words like review, guide, etc]
(15% relevance) h2 – [target phrase] + [deal words like sale, buy, price, etc]
(70% relevance) h3 – [exact target phrase]
From what I have been reading and hearing, the H1 and h2 are losing (for now) relevance, compared to previous thought. The new Mayday algo puts a LOT of weight on:
- Intext links to authority pages on the same topic (On or offsite)
- h3 exact match!
- Page title phrase match (make sure your title has your phrase)
- Code-level phrase match (like a id=”[keyphrase]” href=”[keyphrase-url] etc)
Several other things… but like everything, its highly speculative! (aka SEO)
I made some changes on this site yesterday afternoon to affect my google serps for a specific phrase, which I ranked 6th for at the time of the change. Overnight, it was a 2 place movement to 4th! My goal is second within 30-45 days.
Its not really a target any longer, but I wanted to have a place to test… why not here! :-) I should have a better picture in a few more days, but the changes I made here were VERY basic, and done in less than 15 minutes!
[...] about on site optimization earlier this and last week. If you want to read them, you can the free companion plugin that measures page level search visitor analytics, and also the SEOPressor Plugin review I [...]
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