Easy WP SEO is a WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your posts for on-page SEO. If you want to rank well in the search engines, then you probably know that on-page SEO is an important factor to consider. In my experience, a well optimized site will have a much easier time ranking for competitive keywords than one that is not.
One of the major reasons to use Easy WP SEO is that it will grade each of your posts for a variety of common on-page SEO factors and give you an easy to read SEO score. By highlighting the important factors that you are missing, you can easily improve your content structure quickly and painlessly.
There are quite a few of these types of WordPress plugins out there, including Scribe SEO, SEOPressor, and others. The Easy WP SEO WSO has been getting some rave reviews though, which is why I decided to try it out.
In this Easy WP SEO review, I’ll take you through what the plugin can do, and how it’s going to help you out.
How It Works
After installing the plugin, you will notice the new Easy WP SEO panel on your Edit Post page. Here is where you can see the SEO Score and Keyword Density of your post.
Nothing displays here though until you specify the primary keyword you are trying to rank for and then Save Draft or Publish your post. You can refresh your scores whenever you update an existing post as well.
Once your post is analyzed, you can look at the various on-page SEO factors that the plugin is checking for. A green check means that you passed, while a red check means you failed.
Easy WP SEO doesn’t just work with new posts. You can also use it to grade the existing posts on your site.
This can be done by using the Manage Keywords settings page. Basically it lists all your posts and gives you a field next to each to input your primary keyword. If you have a lot of existing posts, like I did for JoshKotsay.com, the process can take you awhile. But it’s not too bad, and it’s really a one-time thing.
What Makes Up the SEO Score?
Easy WP SEO looks at 23 different on-page SEO factors to analyze. Some of the important ones include.
- Keyword in title, permalink url, meta description, headings and image ALT attributes.
- Minimum content length, keyword density.
Most of the on-page SEO factors I agree with and I’ve already been incorporating into my posts for years now.
However, there are a few that I don’t think matter like, like Keywords meta tag contains keyword.
What’s nice is that I can turn off these specific factors I don’t like if I want. And when I do that, they are no longer counted toward my SEO score.
I can also modify other factors like keyword density and minimum word count. So instead of the default setting of 300 words, I could change it to 500 if I thought it was a better threshold to use based on my own experience.
This flexibility is extremely important, and one of the things I like best about the plugin. The SEO landscape is constantly changing, so being able to adapt the plugin to what’s currently working is extremely important.
Other Easy WP SEO Features
Easy WP SEO can also do some other cool things.
You can have it automatically bold, italic, and underline your primary keywords. And have it automatically add your keyword to the ALT tag of any images you add to your post.
The plugin can also generate LSI keywords for you. These are basically related keywords and sprinkling them throughout your site can also give your on-page SEO a boost and help your content appear natural to the search engines.
Final Thoughts
After installing Easy WP SEO on this site, I found that in general, my on-page SEO is pretty good as I usually follow most of the guidelines that Easy WP SEO looks for.
But still, the plugin makes it easy to identify posts where I did not do such a good job so I can go in and change them.
Probably the most useful feature for me, is identifying the keyword density of each post. Now, I don’t normally subscribe to the theory that there is an optimal keyword density value that you should always follow.
But I do like to know if my keyword density falls in one of the two extremes. Too low or too high. Easy WP SEO helps me do this really easily.
So all in all, I really like Easy WP SEO. It is super flexible, and it does a good job doing what it’s supposed to do. If you have never given much thought to on-page SEO before, then I think you will really benefit from installing this plugin on your sites.
Unlike Scribe SEO which requires you to pay a monthly fee, Easy WP SEO is only $37 for an unlimited site license. That is a really good deal, and I think it will definitely help your search engine rankings if you use it.
I feel that keyword density is very important and also how you use your keywords. You definitely don’t want to be accused of spam. I don’t suppose you could recommend any other wp plugins that would help with rankings?
Bradley Coats recently posted..Things Everyone Is Able To Do To Help Self Improvement
I’m also a fan of the WP SEO Plugin by Yoast which is the other main SEO plugin I use.
Wow, I can’t believe there are no comments on this post!
I was using ScribeSEO from March to November (just a couple weeks ago). ScribeSEO is good, and I admit that I’ve not used Easy WP SEO very much yet. But based on what I’ve seen so far, ScribeSEO is falling behind. Why?
1: Well, as far as functionality is concerned, (so far) it seems they are exactly the same at the end of the day… having great On-Page SEO optimized content. So, #1 is a draw (to me anyway, IMHO).
2: Price… One is $27 monthly for a limit of 120 uses…., the other is $37 “one time” for unlimited uses….
Thanks for letting me ring in here Josh! (I think this is my first comment on your site).
Gary Anderson II
Thanks for stopping by Gary and letting us know how you think Easy WP SEO compares to Scribe SEO. I used Scribe awhile back, and I was never too impressed with it. Especially when having to pay that monthly fee.