A great host will speed up your WordPress site and increase your SEO ranking. Many other factors go into this, such as which keywords you use for product pages or blog posts, the size of your image files, and whether your content is easily readable. This task is made easy by several WordPress SEO plugins.
You can also find third-party tools to help you improve your stats, keyword rankings and backlink information.
Even for experienced website owners, SEO can be confusing. Most website owners struggle to find pages and posts with high potential, fix broken links, or reorganize their site structure. Conducting a complete search engine optimization audit can be difficult. You can achieve search engine success if you have the right tools and knowledge to use them.
Let’s start!
What do SEO Plugins Do?
SEO covers a wide range of subjects. SEO can include keyword research, content optimization, linking, and many other topics. This umbrella covers any plugin that optimizes your pages to rank higher in search engines.
Some Best WordPress SEO Plugin like Yoast, which we use at Kinsta, go beyond what is necessary to help you optimize your content for search engines. They can help you avoid using the exact keywords and provide tips to improve your content’s readability.
Does WordPress Need SEO Plugins?
You need not use WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your pages and posts. You can get amazing results if you are familiar with SEO basics and keep up to date with algorithm changes without needing plugins.
Most SEO plugins will guide how to improve your content to be more search engine friendly. The actual optimization work is still up to you.
WordPress comes with all the features and tools you need to create SEO-friendly material right out of the box. You can add headings, meta descriptions, headings and tags to the Content Management System (CMS) and customize URLs.
The Best SEO Plugins For WordPress.
We’ll start with SEO plugins for WordPress. These plugins are easier to install and understand, and a broad range of features are available. While the best plugins provide SEO projections and recommendations for your site, others have a limited feature set. They still have unique features like checking broken links and minimizing file sizes.
- Yoast SEO
- The SEO Framework
- SEOPress
- Rank Math
- SEO Squirrly
- Broken Link Checker
- NoFollow Checkbox
- All in One Schema Rich Snippets
- WordLift
- Redirection
- Slim SEO
- Internal Link Juicer
- XML Sitemaps
- Schema & AMP
This quick list of recommended plugins is displayed above. We recommend you scroll down to the detailed reviews below on the best SEO WordPress plugins.
1. Rank Math
Rank Mathematics SEO is your best choice for SEO tools for WordPress websites. This package includes everything you need for complete control over your on-page SEO. Rank Math combines multiple plugins you may use for your WordPress website’s SEO. It then makes it easy to manage all the plugins in one lightweight plugin.
Rank Math allows you to manage your on-page SEO for pages, posts, products and other taxonomies. You can also control noindex/nofollow/noarchive meta tags of all taxonomies in general and individual posts or pages. This is considered as one of the best WordPress SEO plugin by most of the users.
It integrates tightly with Google Search Engine to provide you with all the essential information from your WordPress admin dashboard. In one glance, you can see information such as keywords that rank high, the number of search impressions your website receives, and what errors Google finds on your site.
2. Yoast SEO
Yoast WordPress SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin. It is the one we use on the Kinsta blog. Yoast had received an astonishing 16,700 5-star ratings when this article was written. It continues to amaze the WordPress community with its beautiful interface, impressive updates, and the best user-friendly option to make your product pages and blog posts stand out
Yoast SEO also has its website, offering premium support options, a vibrant community in the forum section and an informative blog.
Yoast SEO premium can be accessed from this website. This includes advanced features such as keyword optimization for five keywords per page, previewing how your page will appear on Twitter and Facebook, and internal link suggestions to send users to other areas on your website. This is only a fraction of the premium features available.
Premium plugins are available for $89 per website, which makes them a great deal. The plugin is free for those with a limited budget, and it beats most SEO WordPress plugins hands down.
3. SEO Framework
The SEO Framework WordPress plugin is fast and lightweight. It does not require any upsells or ads. It cuts out unnecessary bells and whistles and focuses on helping people who care about site speed and spend less time reading confusing SEO articles. Yoast is often considered to be the best alternative. This is due to the flexibility of targeting keywords, such as synonyms or slightly different words, and the visual nature of SEO ratings.
There are a few tabs that control the post SEO settings. One uses a colour scale to indicate how close you are to making your post search engine-ready. The scale lets you instantly see where you need to work on your SEO. This is in contrast to some of the more complicated Yoast versions.
The interface is ideal for beginners, as you might have guessed. Advanced users can also use the API to learn more. The WPMUDEV community originally developed it. However, it was eventually made available to all users for free.
4. SEOPress
SEOPress, a freemium WordPress SEO plugin with no ads, is available. Even in the free version, it is completely white-labelled and leaves no footprints. It is simple, fast and powerful. You can manage your meta descriptions and titles for pages/post types/terms.
You can create XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps. Track your visitors with Google Analytics (with RGPD compatibility). Optimize tags (Open Graph, Twitter Cards) to share your content on social media. The free version includes content analysis to help web administrators write better posts. Developers have access to more than 75 hooks for setting up the plugin.
5. SEO Squirrly
SEO Squirrly was designed for those who aren’t SEO experts. It delivers a complete SEO suite with no complicated elements. SEO Squirrly generates SEO suggestions differently from the other plugins we have already discussed. Start by entering your article topic. You can also enter the desired keyword so that a series of green lights activate in real-time as you write your content. It almost feels like an expert is whispering in your ear while you write.
SEO Squirrly is a great choice because of these features:
- As you write the article, keyword optimization will be done. This is slightly easier than Yoast, where you may need to save your article to view suggestions and results.
- Squirrly will still preserve all settings from an older SEO plugin for WordPress.
- A tool analyzes your competition and shows you how to outrank it.
6. Broken Link Checker
SEO doesn’t just mean putting a lot of keywords on your pages or posts. SEO is not just about making your content easy to read. You can make your website stand out from the rest by removing broken links. Google will flag a broken link as a bad user experience. Your customers don’t want to land on an empty page.
It can take hours, if not days, to review your content and find every broken link. Enter the Broken Link Checker.
This tool scans your pages and blog posts for broken links. Within minutes, all broken links will be revealed. You can remove the broken links or make them better by editing the list. The plugin will continue to search your site and notify you when a link breaks.
Once the links are corrected, the list is empty, and Google will see that your site is well maintained.
7. Rel NoFollow Checkbox
Google will interpret links to other websites and pages as a link. Google wants to know the quality and quantity of links linking to your site. Google considers spammy links with hundreds of links to your site manipulative and unhelpful. This plugin is perfect for affiliate links.
To ensure that your links don’t harm your rankings, you can add “rel-nofollow” attributes to any external links. The ranking of the external website won’t be affected by the link. It scares away advertisers who value links for ranking purposes.
8. All in One Schema Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets are visual search elements that include images, star rankings, and other important details. They can grab users’ attention because they have something unique from regular search results. Rich snippets can be used to review blog posts and eCommerce product pages. Rich snippets are a favorite of Google because they don’t seem intrusive and still provide valuable information to users.
The All-in-One Schema Rich Snippets SEO plugin for WordPress can offer rich snippets for WordPress. This plugin reduces the number of search engine results to only the most relevant elements. Users can also see all the information, from star ratings to authors’ avatars to photos.
9. WordLift
WordLift, a WordPress plugin, uses AI to improve SEO for content editors and marketers. This plugin allows you to organize your content and automate structured data markup. It also gives you access to search engine results page features in Google. WordLift also improves content discoverability by adding internal links, recommendation widgets and semantic-rich metadata. Plans start at EUR59/month ($65/month).
You can also use this plugin to translate your pages and articles into machine-friendly content search crawlers, chatbots, and personal digital assistants (like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant) to understand and interpret your organic traffic.
10. Redirection
Modern SEO includes redirections. You will need to implement a 301 redirect to redirect users to a no longer available page. You can tell search engines that the URL you have chosen should be viewed first, and the old one should be ignored.
Redirection allows you to create 301 redirects with a simple URL manager. Without the plugin, it is difficult to implement redirects. You will need to modify the .htaccess file and manually add each redirection.
You can also set up conditional redirects with the plugin. You can create redirects dependent on user login status, browser used, IP address and other conditions. This conditional system’s best feature is its simplicity in setting up redirects to 404 pages.
11. Slim SEO
Many WordPress SEO plugins have so many options and settings that it can be difficult to learn how to use them. This is not necessarily a negative thing. However, depending on your preferences, you may prefer a tool that requires less configuration time.
Slim SEO is a plugin that allows you to generate sitemaps and meta tags, add schema markup and create redirects. You can also set up Open Graph metatags and control how your content appears on social media.
12. Internal Link Juicer
You may already know that internal links are a critical component of SEO. Your internal linking strategy will make it easier for users to find content on your site. This will increase the time that they spend looking around. Finding the right posts to link to as your content library grows can be difficult. Internal Link Juicer is here to help.
This plugin allows you to define anchor keywords for each blog post and adds links to relevant internal content. You can control how many links this plugin adds to each blog post. Also, you can block content, so it doesn’t get linked. You can also access statistics about those internal links.
13. XML Sitemaps
Many WordPress SEO plugins can automatically create XML sitemaps. Even if you don’t plan to use one of these tools, you can still optimize your content by yourself. You can still use a plugin to generate a sitemap.
It is easy to install the XML Sitemaps plug-and-play plugin. After activating the plugin, you can set it to notify search engines about any updates to your website. A sitemap can also be created in HTML format.
The plugin will automatically generate a sitemap for your website, aside from the basic settings. The plugin will still generate a sitemap for submission to search engine Webmaster Tools such as Google Webmaster Tools. However, that is entirely up to you.
14. Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP
Schema markup can transform how your content appears on Search Engine Results Pages. Rich snippets are what you see in search results. This SEO plugin for WordPress is easy to use and helpful in optimizing SEO for your wordpress.
Summary
SEO can seem complicated and tedious if you don’t have the right tools. You can easily make tasks such as keyword planning, competitor analysis and reporting with the right WordPress plugins.
Although this list is extensive, different companies may have different SEO requirements. Our final recommendations are based on our extensive research into the best SEO tools and plugins for WordPress.
- The best SEO plugin to optimize pages and posts – Yoast SEO Framework, Rank Mathematics
- The best SEO tools Ahrefs and Semrush
- The best white-labeled SEO plugin with no ads SEOPress
- The best SEO plugin. – Slim SEO
- SmartCrawl’s best SEO plugin is user-friendly
- Best SEO tools for people on a budget KWFinder Keywords Everywhere and Google Keyword Planner
- Misc. The best SEO tools and plugins – Are broken Link Checker and Copyscape.