SEO helps the website get more traffic which can be used by the companies in selling their products or in presenting their views.  In modern times, many of the WordPress theme would include schema markup, breadcrumb navigation etc. Some of the essential features that your WordPress website would need include

• Breadcrumbs with schema
• Meta Descriptions
• Open Graph Meta Data
• Removal of category base
• Schema Metadata
• Non follow link attributes

Let’s understand these features in a bit of detail

Breadcrumbs: It is an important feature, with the addition of the schema structured data, you will get enhanced rank when your rank in the search engine results page. It is possible to get a breadcrumb navigation without going for SEO plugin. The code goes to the “child” functions.php file.  If you are adding to the theme’s function.php file, you stand to lose those breadcrumbs if the theme is updated. Getting Breadcrumbs right can be complicated, as you have to associate them with the schema markup. You can opt for Breadcrumbs NavXT WordPress Plugin.

Meta description: Easy WP Meta Description can be good enough solution for the Meta description, these are not ranking factor but they show up every time your website ranks, it can be rewritten by Google if it finds a phrase in your website that better matches, it also provides relevant snippet from the webpage. It is up to you whether you would like to write a Meta description for your website on your own or let the Google tell you why your website is good match for a query.

Title Tags: You can write a title on your own for the topics on the website, or for your web page based on your experience and conviction, there are SEO plugins for them which can help you out.

Open Graph Meta data: It is not a main feature of SEO but can positively impact the traffic to your website, it helps in specifying the image, and the wording to show when the url is shared on Facebook and Twitter. Open Graph Meta Data plugin would present a professional appearance which can appeal to the potential site visitors.

Removal of Category Base from the WordPress: Category is not compulsory for the URL structure, you can shorten the url to the domain name, actual name in the category, and the page name which is a best practice. A shortened url is easy to remember, is less likely to get mistyped, let the users and the search engines know what the website about in lesser number of words.

Schema WordPress Plugin: This will integrate the schema structured data that would include reviews and article schema. Schema Markup can also be coded by hand. It manually adjusts descriptive field for the rating, product name etc. elements of the structure data can be done manually or even automatically inserted on a post by post basis or by editing the template., it is not compulsory to use a plugin, but it can be good way to scale the process and have it up to date, the WordPress can update as many times it likes.

Ultimate No follow Plugin: This plugin allows you to make a specific url a no-follow at the moment of creation of that url. There are options for using the site wide no follows but it is not preferred to use them.

Some of the optional features of SEO for WordPress include

• Attachment Pages Redirect: If you have created a web page for every image on your website, then this plugin can solve that issue. It will restore the individual attachment for their correct behavior, just install and activate, it is capable of looking into your issue. You just need to make sure that you have correct setting for redirecting attachment to the post when you are uploading media file in the future.
• Redirect Manager: If you are uncomfortable in editing of the htaccess files for creating the redirects, you can use this if you are redirecting the old page to new page.
• 404 responses: Do not use the redirect manager in redirecting a deleted page to a home page. Some 404 response are due to spammers linking to your site with partial url. A 404 response is a perfect response in the case. Some of the 404 errors can be due to the wrong interlinking of by you, that is you could have mistyped the url.

Some of the redundant SEO Plugin Features

Sometimes you could be tempted to use a All in One SEO plugin, but you might be surprised to know that you may end up with more plugins than you need, so be careful in selection as you must need to know the features that you need, a dedicated SEO plugin can be a better choice for organization that do not want to go for individual plugins or handcrafted solution.