Local SEO Plugins

[Tim Colling]

I am aware of the Yoast local SEO plugin and there are a couple of other ones over on the WordPress plugins repository.

Is there one clear best choice? For what's worth, the environment I'm concerned with is WordPress websites built on the Genesis Theme and using the WordPress plugin by Yoast - one site with the premium version and the rest with the free version.

 

[Howell]

Most of the WP SEO plugins work similar, but Yoast is awesome.

 

[mborgelt]

I don't think there is a "best" plugin I just think it depends on your workflow, what does the things that you absolutely and what works best with your theme. I have used JetPack SEO on clients that already had it installed. I would tinker around with few and see what you like and what fits your needs most. In my opinion, JetPack isn't bad but it can cause issues with security plugins and updating.

 

[Tim Colling]

I may not have made this clear:

I am not asking about organic seo plugins. Not yoast's "wordpress seo" plugin, not the all-in-one-seo plugin etc.

I'm asking about specialized LOCAL seo plugins. For example, Yoast has a special, separate "Local SEO Plugin by Yoast" product that costs $69 per site per year. Also there is this one Local Business SEO.

That second one got some pretty negative reviews, including from at least one person here on this forum.

Thanks!

 

[cdawg2610]

I may not have made this clear:

I am not asking about organic seo plugins. Not yoast's "wordpress seo" plugin, not the all-in-one-seo plugin etc.

I'm asking about specialized LOCAL seo plugins. For example, Yoast has a special, separate "Local SEO Plugin by Yoast" product that costs $69 per site per year. Also there is this one Local Business SEO.

That second one got some pretty negative reviews, including from at least one person here on this forum.

Thanks!

I think if the Yoast Local plugin is too much for you, you are better off with piecing it together yourself and using a general SEO plugin with some others.

A Schema Generator tool can help you mark up your address
Schema Creator for 'Organization' schema.org microdata

Google maps can be embedded, and if you search through the plugins on wordpress, some of the other Yoast features are there. Including locations plugins.

 

[Chris Ratchford]

I've used Yoast's Local SEO plugin (over 25 websites).

To be brutally honest, I can't see any benefit of using their plugin over manually adding local schema to your website.

There are limitations with layout and design too. For example, if you want to display office hours, the shortcode generates schema in a table. You'll need to customize the css if you want to remove the table borders, etc.

If your website has multi-location offices, then I could sorta see the benefit. But if you're website serves 1-3 locations, I really don't see the value.

 

[paulg]

I believe the Yoast plugin would be the best one.

If you are mainly interested in generating local schema (schema.org) then we offer this as part of our platform and you can just copy the schema across to your wordpress page. We generate inline schema.org and more conveniently json-ld that can be just pasted into your page with no need to markup visual content.

You can also do it yourself using the free schema generating tools mentioned earlier and available elsewhere but we go a lot further and also keep the schema up to date with improvements and if your business data changes so you can also be sure your schema is accurate (we check against your website periodically and tell you when it is different).

There is an article about our managed metadata service on our blog if you are interested in reading more.