So, over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at how you can improve your blog’s SEO. Up until now, we’ve talked about a bunch of different methods, but now it’s time to look at some plugins that will make your ability to search engine optimize your blog easier.

Here are 4 plugins that I love and use every day.

WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast: this may, in fact, be the most important plugin on your blog, next to your Google Analytics. This little plugin is certainly the most important plugin you can have on your blog when it comes to SEO. First off, it creates an XML sitemap for you (we talked those way back in Post #2). And then, every single time you write a blog post, Yoast helps you to optimize that blog post for search engine optimization. Once you’re done writing, it’ll give you three “grades;” red, yellow, or green, based on how well you’ve done so far. You can then follow their directions to get your blog post rated “green” before you hit publish. This plugin is not optional! All bloggers need to have it installed on their site!

Quick Cache: one of the things Google looks for is how quickly your site loads. The faster your site loads, the higher you score in terms of SEO. “Quick Cache takes a real-time snapshot (building a cache) of every Page, Post, Category, Link, etc. These snapshots are then stored (cached) intuitively, so they can be referenced later.” This saves time when people are loading up your site, making it load faster.

SEO Friendly Images: Back in Post #7 we talked about how to SEO optimize the images you share on your blog posts. One of the things that’s important to do is to fill out the ALT and TITLE attributes. Well, this li’l plugin does that automagically for you.

YARPP: Unlike the previous three plugins, whose sole function is to increase your SEO, Yet Another Related Post Plugin affects your SEO indirectly. It suggests posts that are related to the ones your reader has just read. The final result is that you pull the reader deeper into your blog, therefore lowering your bounce rate. Lower bounce rate = higher SEO.

Okay! So get outta here and go download these plugins and help kickstart your SEO!