Would you like to achieve a higher ranking on Google? Using an SEO plugin could be an great solution. SEO, which stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” is essential for driving traffic from organic (and thus free) search results. It works by enhancing your site’s position on Google’s first page through optimizing your content, structure, and technical aspects.
You don’t need a multitude of SEO plugins to make your site shine, but a few key ones can be very beneficial. In this article, we share 11 popular SEO plugin tools to help you boost your ranking.
Why You Need an SEO Plugin for Your WordPress Website
SEO plugins are invaluable for guiding you on necessary changes to optimize your WordPress pages or posts for search engines. They analyze your website, identify technical issues that could negatively impact your ranking, and provide suggestions for on-page optimization and readability.
These plugins also offer advice on content length, topics to cover, and competitive comparisons.
Most popular SEO plugins allow you to add SEO titles, meta descriptions, and identify primary keywords to create content that aligns with users’ needs, ultimately helping your site rank better and attract more traffic.
How Performance Affects SEO
Page speed is a crucial ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. When evaluating your site’s performance, Lighthouse considers your three Core Web Vitals scores:
- page loading time (measured by Largest Contentful Paint),
- interactivity (measured by First Input Delay),
- and visual stability (measured by Cumulative Layout Shift).
Improving these Core Web Vitals enhances both performance and user experience, which are important ranking factors according to PageSpeed Insights. Efforts to optimize these metrics will be recognized by Google, increasing the likelihood of better ranking for your WordPress site.
How The User Experience Affects SEO
Although user experience doesn’t directly impact organic rankings, it indirectly influences other ranking factors, such as page speed and mobile optimization. Maintaining fast page speeds can encourage visitors to explore more pages and stay on your site longer. According to Google’s research, the likelihood of a bounce increases by 32% when page load time increases from 1 to 3 seconds and by 123% when it goes from 1 to 10 seconds!
Checking Your Current SEO State
You can use PageSpeed Insights to test if your page meets basic SEO optimization criteria. This tool provides valuable tips to kickstart your optimization journey.
While PageSpeed Insights excels in measuring performance and offering advanced technical recommendations, its SEO report is relatively basic. This is where a WordPress plugin becomes valuable, as it helps track the quality of your site content by evaluating text readability and relevancy.
Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
Depending on your specific needs, there are several great SEO plugins you should consider for your next WordPress project.
#1. RankMath
RankMath has rapidly become one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. As a sister brand to WP Rocket, it has a 4.9/5 rating on WordPress.org and is installed on over 1 million sites.
RankMath audits your content and helps optimize your posts for search engines. It supports all schema markup (rich snippets), assists with keyword research, and has recently introduced an AI feature.
Choose RankMath if:
- You need an advanced SEO diagnosis of your website.
- You want to optimize the SEO of your images and WooCommerce products.
- You’d like to build custom schemas and add multiple schemas to a single post with ease.
- You’re a beginner looking to improve your SEO and work on your content effortlessly.
- You need to track the ranking keywords for each post.
- You want AI assistance to help you write and create SEO-friendly content.
- You prefer a solution fully integrated with Google tools, like Google Analytics, for tracking keyword rankings or getting automatic keyword suggestions from Google.
- You are using a page builder, particularly Divi or Elementor, which integrates tightly with RankMath.
Pricing: Freemium, ranging from $59 to $499 for an agency.
#2. Yoast Seo
With over 13 million users, Yoast SEO stands as the leading SEO plugin, offering comprehensive analysis of your content and readability. This on-page optimization tool includes features like redirections, SERP previews, XML sitemap creation, and more. It’s ideal for both beginners and advanced users aiming to enhance their SEO directly from the WordPress admin panel.
Yoast SEO’s intuitive interface – Source: yoast.com
Choose Yoast SEO If:
- You want to check your readability score and improve content for readers, including features like paragraph structure.
- You need a robust duplicate content detector.
- You want to preview how your results will appear on Google.
- You wish to manage how your content is shared on social media.
- You run a multilingual site (Yoast readability supports 19 languages).
- You also use Shopify.
Pricing: Freemium, starting at $109/year.
#3. All In One SEO
With over 3 million users, AIOSEO was the first SEO plugin introduced in the WordPress ecosystem. Their promise is simple: improve your website’s SEO rankings and uncover new SEO growth opportunities in less than 10 minutes. You won’t need an expert because the interface and features are well-explained.
Choose AIOSEO if:
- You need an advanced SEO diagnosis of your website.
- You have several physical shops with multiple locations.
- You need to improve your local business SEO presence (with the local SEO module).
- You are looking for a plugin that works with the entire WordPress ecosystem, such as Divi, Elementor, WooCommerce, the Gutenberg blocks, etc.
- You want to connect your WordPress site with Google Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console to see additional insights (e.g., content and keyword rankings) directly from WordPress.
Pricing: Freemium, starting at $135/year.
#4. SEOPress
SEOPress enhances your ranking and boosts traffic with its robust on-page optimization tool. It offers essential features like a redirect manager, XML sitemaps, schema markups, WooCommerce SEO, GA4, and Matomo Analytics. This plugin is ideal for both SEO beginners and experts.
Choose SEOPress if:
- You’re a novice looking to improve your SEO with clear guidance to refine your content.
- You want to automatically generate titles and meta description tags with AI, even for bulk actions.
- You need to adjust your SEO and easily visualize your snippet in Google.
- You need to manage how content is distributed on social platforms.
- You seek a comprehensive SEO analysis of your website to enhance content for your audience.
- You use a page builder (Divi, Elementor, Oxygen, the Block Editor, etc.) that closely integrates with SEOPress.
- You aim to enhance the SEO visibility of your local business.
Pricing: Freemium, starting at $49/year.
#5. SchemaPro
Schema Pro allows you to add structured data to your WordPress site, making it easier for search engines to understand your content. It also helps attract users by customizing the layout with impactful wording and images.
Choose Schema Pro if:
- You need advanced snippets to make your website stand out in search results.
- You are using Yoast, as they have tight integration.
- You use a custom fields plugin like ACF to display custom content directly in the schema.
- You lack technical knowledge and want to implement schemas quickly and easily.
Pricing: Starting at $79/year.
#6. Broken Link Checker
Broken links negatively impact SEO by affecting user experience. Broken Link Checker is a useful plugin that monitors your WordPress site’s external and internal links, detecting non-functional links, missing images, and redirects. It features a notification system that alerts you to issues via email or dashboard.
Choose Broken Link Checker if:
- You want to fix issues directly from the WordPress admin.
- You don’t want to manually check every internal and external link.
Pricing: Free.
#7. XML Sitemaps
Use this plugin to create custom XML sitemaps that help search engines like Google and Yahoo index your website more effectively, significantly boosting your SEO.
Crawlers will more easily view your site’s entire structure and understand it more quickly.
Choose XML Sitemaps if:
- You only need a sitemap generator and not a full SEO plugin.
Pricing: Free.
#8. Redirection
Redirection is the most popular redirect manager for WordPress with it’s 2 million+ active installations. It allows you to easily manage 301 redirects, track 404 errors, and address any loose ends on your site.
Use Redirection if:
- You want to reduce errors and improve your site ranking.
- You need to automatically implement redirects for specific pages.
Pricing: Free.
WordPress Plugins That Help Improving Page Speed (and SEO)
#9. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the easiest and most powerful caching plugin, designed to improve your Core Web Vitals, boost your SEO, enhance your page speed, and ensure a fast user experience. Its main features include caching, GZIP compression, code optimization, and lazy loading.
Use WP Rocket if:
- You want to address most PageSpeed Insights recommendations.
- You need to improve your site’s speed without heavy lifting.
- You want to delay JavaScript and optimize your CSS delivery without touching the code.
Pricing: Starting at $59/year for one website.
#10. Imagify
Imagify is one of the simplest image optimization plugins available, enabling you to serve optimized images on the web effortlessly. It offers smart mode compression, bulk compression options, and WebP conversion (a next-gen format) directly from the WordPress admin. WebP files are lighter than traditional JPEG and PNG formats while maintaining similar visual quality, which helps ensure fast-loading pages and improved SEO.
Use Imagify if:
- You’re looking for an easy-to-use plugin that handles image compression for you.
- You need to address most PageSpeed Insights recommendations related to images.
- You want high-quality images with significantly reduced file sizes.
- You need to lower your page size to boost performance and enhance SEO.
Pricing: Freemium – free for up to 20MB of data per month, then from $4.99/month.
Wrap Up
SEO and page speed are closely linked, so improving your WordPress performance is likely to be valued by Google. Begin your optimization efforts with a comprehensive plugin such as RankMath, Yoast, or AIOSEO to audit your site and assess your current SEO standing. Next, use WP Rocket to implement caching, optimize your pages, code, and images, and give your WordPress site an additional speed boost.
10 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress