Now comprising one out of every four websites on the internet, WordPress has gone from a simple blogging tool to a powerful content management system in under a decade. The single most common platform through which to build an online business, website or blog, WordPress comes packed with tons of features and access to tens of thousands of plugins that help webmasters and bloggers do just about anything they can imagine. Recent versions of WordPress are designed to make SEO an easy task from the get-go, but with so many websites now having access to the same tools, you may want to go above and beyond the competition and/or default settings. Below, we’ll discuss three great WordPress plugins that you can use to boost SEO potential immediately.

WordPress SEO

One great plugin, WordPress SEO by Yoast, combines an array of features that make optimizing your pages and posts simpler than you could have ever imagined. With a free version available, users can quickly edit meta descriptions, titles of pages, configure keywords to ensure proper distribution and density, integrate a variety of programs such as Google Webmaster Tools, and several other solutions to ensure that you are pinging links with the best of them. Any existing SEO plugins you may be using can have the data imported to WordPress SEO, allowing you to move any and all meta data or page titles to it. A paid version of this plugin is also available, which currently costs $89 for one site. There are no substantially different features with the paid version; rather, it’s a way for those who want to support the project to be able to give back.

Simple Share Buttons

The Simple Share Buttons Adder plugin is a dream come true for those who quickly want to be able to integrate social sharing options to each piece of content – or even individual, static elements – on a website or blog. This free plugin not only allows you to add sharing buttons in a jiffy, but also provides the ability to customize the buttons with a set of default icons that can be colored. You’ll even be able to upload your own custom graphics, in the event you want to combine the social platform’s look with your own brand in button form. While the plugin refers to buttons, you can also configure them to be displayed as ribbons and squares.

W3 Total Cache

The final app on our list can be a great way to ensure that your site is optimized for search engines, pinging links aplenty and makes accessibility a top concern. W3 Total Cache is designed to drastically improve the site loading speed on WordPress installations that tend to run slower. In some cases, the theme in use may be affecting this (many reported speed issues with the Twenty Fourteen WP theme when it was first released, for instance), while other speed issues may arise from hosting problems. This is a free app and widely compatible, but we do recommend checking with your hosting company prior, since some companies provide a similar integrated solution that may cause complications when used alongside W3 Total Cache.