This plugin fills a void in the SEO plugins that are available for WordPress.  Most SEO plugins tend to focus on keywords, titles, and metatags.  While those are important, one of the areas that is missed is how Search Engines rank your links based on how your backlinks are titled.

Google has an algorithm that filters for link spam and other search engines (including Google) look for keyword rich links.  Your keyword rich post is not benefited when sites are linking to it with “click here.”

But how can you control the text that people use in linking to your site?  SEO Link Rotator fills this void by giving you the ability to rotate the link text that people use when copying a link to your site.  Much like social bookmarking plugins that provide a “link to me” type of button, SEO Link Rotator provides a button to provide a link, but it rotates through up to 5 possible sets of link text that you define via the WP admin.

Pros

This plugin is a snap to set up.  And there is a free version that allows you to try before you buy.  (The free version is fully functional, but does not allow you to set 5 possible links.  It defaults the the post title.)

Not only is it easy to set up and install, it’s easy to start using.  Once activated, it will automatically place a button at the end of each post, encouraging your readers to link back to you.  No edits to your theme are required.  If you are using the pro version, you can set your 5 possible text links on the post edit panel.

Cons

As a WP Plugin developer, I am generally a little more critical of plugins from both an operability standpoint and how the plugin is built and coded.  The SEO Link Rotator plugin is pretty well written from a php development standpoint.

This is more nitpicky rather than a major flaw, but I’d like to see admin panel functions broken out to a separately loaded file rather than the main plugin file.  While this isn’t a concern for someone running a blog that doesn’t get much traffic or is on a dedicated server, if you have a high traffic blog or are on a shared system, this is extra and unnecessary bulk that should be trimmed.  I would suggest the developers consider breaking out the admin functions to a separate file that loads only if the user is an admin.  This makes for a much more efficient plugin for busy sites.

Give it a try

Overall, I like the plugin.  It is not an “also-ran” of the many social bookmarking/linking plugins out there already; ditto for the meta-tag SEO plugins.  This plugin is unique, and as I said before, it fills a void in the the WP SEO plugin arena.  Give SEO Link Rotator a try.  With the free version, you can easily determine if this plugin is right for you.

This is a sponsored review for which I received compensation.