Joost de Valk

Yoast

Jip Moors

Anton Timmermans

Taco Verdonschot

Omar Reiss

The purpose of this SEO plugin is to purge attachment URLs out of Google’s index as fast as possible. This helps sites 
that might have suffered from having too many thin content pages in the search index by removing them in the fastest 
way possible.
<h3>What does this plugin do?</h3>
This plugin makes all your attachment URLs return an HTTP 410 status. It then creates an XML sitemap with a recent last 
modified date, containing all those URLs. The XML sitemap with recent post modified date makes Google spider all those 
URLs again. The 410 status code makes sure Google takes them out of its search results in the fastest way possible.
With a nice trick, we also show end users the actual attachment image, so the user experience is not as poor as when 
they see an error page.
<h3>Yoast SEO required</h3>
This plugin is an extension to <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/" rel="ugc">Yoast SEO</a>. It requires it to work.
<h3>How long should you run this plugin?</h3>
After 6 months the attachment URLs should be gone from the search results. If you then remove the plugin, and keep 
Yoast SEO’s redirect setting on “Yes”, you have the best long term behavior for attachment URLs: to redirect to the 
actual attachment.
<h3>Does Google condone this?</h3>
This method has been discussed with and OK’d by Google.
<h3>From within WordPress</h3>
<ol>
<li>Visit ‘Plugins > Add New’</li>
<li>Search for ‘Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge’</li>
<li>Activate Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge from your Plugins page.</li>
<li>Go to “after activation” below.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Manually</h3>
<ol>
<li>Upload the <code>yoast-seo-search-index-purge</code> folder to the <code>/wp-content/plugins/</code> directory</li>
<li>Activate the Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress</li>
<li>Go to “after activation” below.</li>
</ol>
<h3>After activation</h3>

Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge

Remove attachment URLs from Google's index as fast as possible to prevent thin content penalties.

xsvet

handywp

Ahrefs SEO WordPress Plugin is being deprecated
We’re retiring the Ahrefs SEO WordPress plugin on October 31, 2025. 
Before that date, please export any content audits you want to keep, as the plugin will no longer be available afterward. 
You can continue checking your traffic, ranking keywords, backlinks, and running Site Audits — all inside Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, completely free for domains you own. 
<a href="https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools" rel="nofollow ugc">Learn more at ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools</a> 
We’re also bringing the same functionality as this plugin directly into the Ahrefs Toolkit, so stay tuned for announcements. 
Have questions? Our support team is here to help: <a href="mailto:support@ahrefs.com" rel="nofollow ugc">support@ahrefs.com</a>
Automate content audits and grow organic traffic to your WordPress website with Ahrefs SEO plugin.
The Ahrefs WP plugin shows you how each article on your blog performs for a chosen target keyword based on Ahrefs, GA and GSC data. Then, it suggests what you can do to improve their performance.
Content audits
Most of us are so focused on publishing new content that we neglect the content we already have.
This is a mistake because not everything you publish will be a home run. Sometimes, it’ll fail to rank on Google, or convert, or contribute to your business goals in any meaningful way.
When this happens, you shouldn’t just leave the page to die a slow, painful death. You should revisit it, figure out what went wrong, and take action to improve its performance.
The Ahrefs WP plugin automates the entire content audit process and kicks back recommendations.
Related guide: <a href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/content-audit/" rel="nofollow ugc">How to Do a Content Audit</a>
Unique to Ahrefs SEO plugin
There are a lot of other SEO plugins in the market. So you must be thinking, why another one? Since the Ahrefs WordPress plugin focuses on content audits, it complements other SEO plugins rather than replaces them.
<ul>
<li>
Content audit 
The plugin regularly conducts content audits of your website and gives actionable suggestions on improving article performance for a target keyword based on Ahrefs, GA and GSC data.
</li>
<li>
Performance score 
The plugin puts audited pages in 1 of 3 buckets based on their performance (well-performing, under-performing, non-performing). Besides evaluating individual pages, it also calculates the performance score that reflects the overall performance of the website’s content
</li>
<li>
Integration with GA and GSC 
We don’t just pull data into your WordPress Admin and show you the same information that you can see on your GA and GSC dashboards. Your GSC and GA connection helps us to provide you with better target keyword recommendations and ideas of what to do next, so you can take actionable steps towards getting more search traffic. All GA and GSC data is stored in your website’s database and is never sent to Ahrefs.
</li>
<li>
Integration with other SEO plugins 
If you have preconfigured target keywords in Yoast, RankMath or AIOSEO, you don’t need to enter them in our plugin. Ahrefs SEO will pull and update them automatically with every content audit.
</li>
</ul>
And the usual best-practices
Other than the unique features, we make sure that we adhere to the best-practices for WordPress plugin development.
<ul>
<li>
Lightning fast 
The plugin puts a minimal load on your WordPress servers.
</li>
<li>
Easy to setup and configure 
The setup wizard is a three step configuration that gets you started in less than 5 minutes.
</li>
</ul>
Read more
<ul>
<li><a href="https://help.ahrefs.com/en/collections/2253902-wordpress-plugin" rel="nofollow ugc">Help center</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/" rel="nofollow ugc">Ahrefs blog</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/AhrefsCom" rel="nofollow ugc">Ahrefs TV</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ahrefs.com/vs" rel="nofollow ugc">Things only Ahrefs can do</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ahrefs.com/seo" rel="nofollow ugc">Beginner’s Guide to SEO</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ahrefs.com/academy" rel="nofollow ugc">Ahrefs Academy</a></li>
</ul>

Ahrefs SEO

Automate content audits and grow organic traffic to your WordPress website with Ahrefs SEO plugin.

Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge vs Ahrefs SEO