SEO: WordPress Plugins to Surface Older Posts

Certainly Google is getting better at crawling JavaScript. But I prefer a plugin that creates plain HTML text links.
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• Related posts,
• Popular posts,
• Contextual linking,
• Internal linking recommendations.

WordPress Plugins for Internal Linking

Relevant can also link to the author of each popular article, increasing internal links.
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Luckily for WordPress users, there are plugins that facilitate internal links no matter the post’s age, solving the problem.
Moreover, a recent experiment by Moz found that internal links may improve the organic ranking of a linking page, not just the receiving one. Likely, internal links help a search engine understand a page better.
I prefer Relevant because of its flexibility in the number and location of included posts. Relevant can automatically select the posts, or users can hand-pick them. The “Popular Posts” widget box can appear sitewide or apply only to certain categories.

Popular posts. Making older posts more prominent and closer (in clicks) to the home page will help it maintain rankings. There are many popular-posts plugins to help.

The benefits of internal links go beyond passing link equity. For one, visitors who click on those links are more engaged with the content.
The benefits of internal links go beyond passing link equity. For one, visitors who click on those links are more engaged with the content.
The benefits of internal links go beyond passing link equity. For one, visitors who click on those links are more engaged with the content.
YARPP allows users to set the number of links for each section and order links by a YARPP relevancy score. Users can also include links to related Pages and other post types.
All-in-One SEO’s premium Link Assistant feature includes a report and internal linking recommendations. Click image to enlarge.

A challenge of optimizing a blog for organic search is that older articles fade into the archives. The result is fewer internal links to that dated content and a gradual loss of rankings.

You can automate that task with Internal Link Juicer, which links from any word or phrase to another internal page. The plugin generates a handy dashboard to see which posts have received those internal links. You can limit the number of links to or from each page to avoid overlinking.

Contextual linking. Search engine optimizers frequently claim that contextual links (from the body of an article) work better for passing link equity than a block of links. I’m unaware of Google confirming this, however.

Beyond Link Equity

What follows are my favorite WordPress plugins to surface older content. The list is deliberately short, as I prefer minimizing installed plugins. I’ve focused on scalable internal linking strategies:
All-in-One SEO provides a report and internal linking recommendations with its Link Assistant feature, available on the premium package starting at 0 per year.