3 WordPress Content Optimizing Plugins for Better Blog Posts

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There are a lot of WordPress SEO plugins, more than you could possibly imagine and they all do similar yet different things. For this post I’m going to look at three premium plugins that optimize on-page content. The plugins may do additional things but for the purpose of this article I’m going to focus on how they help your blog posts perform better, and my thoughts surrounding each content optimization plugin.

Squirrly SEO

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/squirrly-seo/

Cost: $19.99 USD a month

Usage: unlimited searches, maximum 3 blog sites.

Training: Video guidance

Additional notes: 14 days free trial

Support: Excellent

The plugin is installed via the dashboard and the next step is to optimize your site. I use Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin and the

Squirrly SEO  plugin did not conflict with it here.

The next step is to optimize a blog post. I chose to optimize Content Curation Basics for the phrase content curation… yeah I know, I should have gone for a nice long-tail keyword, but I was pushed for time

As you can see the green indicates that certain aspects are okay, and the red indicates that I’d mentioned the phrase content curation too many times. The solution would be to add 16 more words, which I did.

Then I noticed at the top of the post was a section on keyword research, so I clicked that…

As you can see there are suggestions for other phrases that I might like to optimize for

My post was 67% optimized for on-page SEO.

So far, so good. Or so I thought. After optimizing the post’s content, I adjusted the meta information and published the post. For some reason my sidebar was pushed to underneath the content and the comments became page wide. I didn’t whack in a support ticket, I made the assumption that I have to many SEO plugins trying to do the same thing and that what was causing the conflict. I decided to adjust the theme settings on that page and remove the sidebar entirely.

Florin Muresan, the plugin creator knew that I’d been testing the plugin and he was on hand to answer any questions I had as I went along. Also on your account at Squirrly there is a prominent feedback tab where you can submit any queries. My queries were answered swiftly and courteously :)

There’s video training available to show you how to use the plugin and I would suggest that you spent a few minutes watching the videos instead of jumping in feet first like I did

Additional likes…

• Ever suffer from blogger’s block? Squirrly can help with that… you can get ideas for content from the plugin
• Curate content? You can get links and images via the plugin and it’s all attributed correctly.

Scribe SEO

I’ve used Scribe SEO for the last 3 years and I like it a lot. Scribe SEO is now on it’s 4th incarnation and does a lot more than it used to do. Sadly it doesn’t like my site or a clients site so I can no longer use it in dashboard like I used to, in the past I have had problems closing the analysis window on my laptop as its too big for my screen.

Cost: $97 USD a month

Usage: 300 searches, unlimited blog sites.

Training: Video guidance, library

Additional notes: trials available but it varies from month to month

Support: Excellent

I uploaded my content to the Scribe SEO website, and performed the analysis on their site rather than using the plugin. Scribe conflicts with cache plugins among others -

• Ad Management Plugin
• Advanced Custom Fields
• EZwebplayer-wordpress-pro-video
• Find Me Elsewhere
• Flickster
• Follow Me
• IDX Broker
• Link Vault
• plus others…

If you use any of these plugins and cannot live without them then you can at least use the Scribe website to complete your content evaluations. I have to admit this is an inconvenience as I’ve become used to using the plugin in the dashboard. I hope that it will be fixed to work with cache plugins in the future. Speaking of annoyances, I also find it difficult to close the results window on my laptop, whether its on the Scribe site or the dashboard.

I’m pleased that both Scribe and Squirrly gave me the same score, for the same post.

Scribe also shows a graph, you can see mine for the content curation post above.

Scribe also offers keyword advice, allows you to generate a report and gives advice surrounding link building. Scribe also needs an SEO plugin that allows you to adjust the meta description and title tag. Theme frameworks like Thesis and Genesis have this ability built in.

Scribe also gives you a score surrounding readability – Flesch Reading Ease score. This means you can adapt your writing style so it’s more easily understood.

I used to love Scribe a lot, as its advanced its not so great to use but I still have a soft spot for it in my heart and I still use it on a regular basis. If you are not using caching plugins or are happy to deactivate them when you need to analyse your content then Scribe is a very good option for on-page content optimization.

SEOPressor

I have a love-hate-love relationship with SEOpressor. I discovered this on page optimization plugin after Scribe but before Squirrly (Squirrly is the newest of the three). And it was hate at first site, in fact I was annoyed that I’d purchased a multi-site license and had no intention of using it…

Cost: $97 USD one time payment

Usage: unlimited searches, unlimited blog sites.

Training: Video guidance, email newsletter advice and tips

Additional notes: There are a lot of nice extras such as optimising for Facebook open graph search

Support: Excellent

I recently reactivated SEOPressor on an old site and put it through its paces. It seems to have improved greatly and as far as I am aware the only WordPress SEO plugin that promises to optimize for Facebook Open Graph searches.

From the SEOPressor website:

What it analyzes: Keywords in Title, H1-H3 Tags,keyword density, content length, exact placement of your keywords, images, links and font decorations.
It also automatically and intelligently decorates your keyword fonts and adds ALT Texts to your images.
SEOPressor V5 also:
- Calculates On-Page SEO Scores instantly upon refreshing
- Possesses the Secret Algorithm That Correlates With Google
- Provides One-Glance Fast & Easy SEO Management
- Intelligently Gives Suggestions On What To Tweak
- Drives Red-Hot Organic Traffic To Your Website
- Runs super fast – doesn’t slow down your WordPress site like other plugins

So I run the content curation basics post through SEOPressor.

I’ve got a slightly higher score when compared with Squirrly and Scribe, yay

I’m thrilled to see that I score a cross for not underlining the keywords. One of my initial dislikes of SEOPressor was the underlining of keywords. When I see something underlined on the web, I think it’s a link. If I go to click it, and it’s not, I get a tiny bit frustrated. Since I first purchased SEOPressor a lot has changed and I’m back in love with it

Under the content of the post there are more SEO settings for you to tweak – including Google Authorship, social SEO options and my favourite – Rich Text Snippets. If you’ve ever seen a review on Google with stars underneath, that’s Rich Text Snippets in action. Thesis is the only WordPress framework to incorporate them so far, and SEOPressor the only premium WordPress content optimization plugin to have them too. If you care about your reviews, recipes and other specific content types then rich text snippets are a must.

When I started to write this post I felt the outright winner would be Scribe SEO, despite my irritations with it I still use it on a regular basis. However, as I started to write things up, I realised that SEOPressor and Squirrly saved me more time and were less of an inconvenience, and when time is a finite resource… I’ll possibly cancel my Scribe subscription. I say possibly, but my needs and these plugins change regularly, so maybe not.

With the exception of SEOPressor, you can try before you buy and I recommend that you use the trials and see which option suits you and your needs best.

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Sarah Arrow

Director of Special Projects at Sark eMedia

Blogging an issue for you? Social media not quite working how it should be? I started out as a transport blogger for a same day courier company, and grew into a kick-ass blog coach as well as creator of Birds on the Blog (listed 3 times by Forbes as a top 100 website for women). You want your blog to make a difference, so subscribe here and stay in touch, my updates will help you connect the dots.

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