On the WordPress.org plugin repository, there are more than 1,100 SEO plugins for WordPress blogs at the time of writing this post. Before you finish reading this post, I’m sure that figure might have increased.
Let’s be honest; no one has time to search 53 pages for the best WordPress SEO plugins for his blog. We’re all busy with the core aspects of our digital and personal lives.
To save you the trouble and time, I have done the initial research. I tested, validated, and combined a list of optimization WordPress plugins for any blog – big or small.
No matter the size of your blog, this list contains a plugin that’s helpful in some way.
Which Plugin is Used in WordPress for SEO?
Several SEO plugins are used in WordPress; Yoast SEO is one of the most popular in terms of pure download count. The All-in-one SEO plugin by Syed Balkhi is another popular SEO plugin.
However, since SEO is beyond content optimization alone, other plugins are also categorized as SEO plugins. This list will include plugins for image optimization, speed, performance, user experience, etc.
With that out, let’s dive in…
Best SEO Plugins for WordPress Blogs
These SEO plugins offer several features and functions for WordPress blogs. Their features overlap, and anyone could actually do the work for you.
It comes down to preferences and available free features, especially if you consider using their free version before upgrading to a paid license.
1. All-in-one-SEO
For many reasons, All-in-one-SEO is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. It has over 3 million active installations, is easy to use for beginners, and makes optimization easy.
Configuring the plugin is also straightforward. The setup wizard walks you through the process.
The free version is ideal and enough for beginner WordPress bloggers, but if you want more optimization features, the pro version is worth every cent.
It will save you from installing many other WordPress optimization plugins. AIO SEO works seamlessly with most WordPress blogs and business websites.
Whether it’s an e-commerce store, blogs, portfolio websites, etc, every WordPress blog can use the All-in-one SEO plugin.
AIO SEO Top Features
- TruSEO on-page Analysis – You can easily add focus keywords, meta descriptions, title tags, and all you need to optimize the page. You can use the built-in templates variable to insert these tags.
- Custom User Role – This feature lets you grant specific SEO roles to users so they don’t exceed their access limit.
- Link-Assistant – Internal link-building suggestion features.
- Smart XML SiteMap – This tool automatically generates a sitemap anytime you publish or update your website. There is an option for video sitemap and Google News.
- SEO checklist lets you analyze competitors’ keywords, discover what search terms they are optimizing for, analyze your website for on-site SEO errors, and get actionable SEO tips to fix them.
- Rich Schema – The Pro plan allows you to generate rich snippet markup for products, reviews, FAQs, recipes, and more, improving the organic search click-through rate.
- Social Media Integration – AIO SEO allows you to generate beautiful social media shares, which improve engagement and traffic. You can preview how your content looks on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms before hitting publish.
The plugin comes with more notable and advanced SEO features such as local SEO, robots.txt editor, Woocommerce SEO, IndexNow, Crawl Cleanup, and Google search console integration.
It also integrates with other plugins like Memberpress and Woocommerce, and you can easily assign proper attributes (no follow, do follow, sponsored, and UGC) to your outgoing links.
AIO SEO Pricing
- Basic – $49.60/yr
- Plus – $99.60/yr
- Pro – $199.60/yr
- Elite -$299.60/yr
2. Yoast SEO
Another popular WordPress plugin is Yoast SEO. It has more than 5 million active installations and counting.
Like AIO SEO, Yoast offers a lite and a premium version of its WordPress SEO plugin. The lite version is ideal and enough for most beginner bloggers.
Yoast SEO is beginner-friendly, easy to set up, and allows you to optimize your content and blog for better search engine visibility.
Yoast SEO Top Features
- Auto-generated Sitemap – Yoast will generate sitemaps for your blog automatically. When you publish or update your blog content, it will create and submit a sitemap.
- SEO Meta Tags – This tool lets you add necessary meta tags to your post, such as a title tag, focus keyword, description, etc.
- Content SEO checklist – Yoast will scan your content for on-page SEO optimization and report if there are errors and opportunities to improve.
- Breadcrumb Trails – Yoast makes controlling your website’s breadcrumbs easy so users and search engines can understand where they are on your site.
- Schema Markup – The lite version allows you to generate rich snippet markup for your posts, pages, reviews, products, recipes, locations, etc.
- Webmaster Verification – Using the built-in webmaster verification tool, you can easily verify your site with search engines like Google, Bing, and Baidu.
Yoast Pricing
Starts at $99/yr (excluding VAT)
3. RankMath
RankMath is a major contender for the best SEO plugin for WordPress. The plugin offers many features and has crossed the 1 million download mark.
Like other SEO plugins, Rank Math SEO offers a lite version and a premium version of its plugin.
The lite version has helpful SEO features that let you do most of the on-page SEO tasks.
Rank Math’s lite version offers more features than Yoast’s free version; you can integrate Rank Math with Google Trend and track keywords’ positions.
The setup wizard guides you through the configuration process, so you don’t have to guess your way around necessary SEO settings.
Rank Math Top Features
- Content AI – An AI-powered content optimization feature that guides you through on-page word and keyword usage. It lets you know whether specific search terms are present in your content and the frequency of such words.
- Google Search Console Integration – The plugin lets you integrate with the search console to share and analyze data. You can see your ranking keywords, sitemap status, coverage, etc.
- Google Index Status – With Rank Math, you can see your Google index page status, last crawl date and time, URL inspection, and more.
- Rank Tracker – Track your ranking keywords and see how your website performs against your competitors.
- Schema Generator – Rank Math has lots of structured data markup to enrich your content and provide search engines with more information about your content.
- Import Schema From Other Websites – Rank Math has a feature that allows you to import schema markup from other websites.
Rank Math Pricing
- Pro – $59/yr
- Business – $199/yr
- Agency – $499/yr
4. MonsterInsight
Not an SEO plugin, MonsterInsights lets you integrate Google Analytics with the WordPress dashboard. This allows you to see your traffic and user data from the WordPress admin dashboard.
The best part is that Monster Insight simplifies the Google Analytics data so you can understand what metrics to focus your resources and time on.
The plugin tracks website metrics such as website visits, top-performing keywords, landing pages, etc.
The lite version offers basic features; if you want to experience the plugin’s full potential, you need the pro version. Monsterinsights has been downloaded more than 3 million times.
MonsterInsights Top Features
- Google Analytics Data – The core function of the plugin is the ability to view your Google Analytics data in your WordPress dashboard. You can view real-time website traffic data in your MonsterInsights dashboard.
- Referral Traffic – Just as you do in Google Analytics, you can track referral traffic and analyze the data to know where to focus more on your promotion.
- Performance and Optimization – You can run A/B testing, set your speed rate, and select your winning optimization sample.
- Headline Analyzer – Write high-performing headlines that attract and increase readership.
- Scroll Tracking – Track how far users scroll down on your page so you can make better optimization decisions to reduce bounce rate and increase time on site and engagements.
- Integrates With Other Tools – MonsterInsights integrates with popular plugins like Memberpress, Gravity Forms, Formidable Forms, Restrict Content Pro, and more.
- Email Summaries – The plugin emails you a weekly summary of your traffic report and tips for improving traffic and engagement.
MonsterInsights Pricing
- Plus – $99.50/yr
- Pro – $199.50/yr
- Agency – $399.50/yr
5. Broken Link Checker
On-page optimization involves several WordPress SEO checks, and links are one. SEO is not only about the content or ensuring your pages are optimized; you need to confirm your links are not leading to dead or broken pages.
Broken links are not good for search engines and user experience, so to improve optimization and user experience, you must, from time to time, check the status of your internal links.
If you have a website with several hundred pages, manually finding broken links could be tedious and time-consuming.
You need a plugin that scans your website pages and detects 404 error codes. One of the best link status checkers is the WordPress broken link checker.
This plugin lets you detect, manage, and fix broken internal links on your website. It also detects externally broken or non-responsive links. This allows you to fix these quickly, set up redirects, or unlink them.
Broken Link Top Features
- Manage Links from the Plugin Interface – You don’t need to search through posts to fix broken or dead links; you can manage and fix broken links from the plugin interface.
- Get Notification – The plugin notifies you of broken links on your website so you can act promptly.
- Link Status Classification – It categorizes broken links according to their impact on your SEO status. This lets you attend to the most critical link error first.
Broken Link Pricing
- Free
6. WP Rocket
Page speed and performance are critical parts of an SEO strategy; the faster a page loads, the higher its conversion rate. Applying a cache is part of what you can do to improve page speed.
WP Rocket is the best WordPress cache plugin on the market. No other plugin comes close to it in terms of setup, page speed improvement, and instant boost.
The plugins offer many optimization features that work straight out of the box. You don’t need any technical SEO knowledge to configure it.
The only downside to the WP Rocket plugin is that there is no free version.
WP Rocket is a premium plugin only. However, there is a 14-day money-back guarantee if you’re unhappy with its performance.
You must request a refund within 14 days of your purchase, and you will receive your money back.
The plugin helps with page cache, browser cache, cache preloading, database cleanup, minification, mobile cache, GZip compression, etc.
WP Rocket Top Features
- Optimize CSS Delivery – You can either remove unused CSS or load it asynchronously.
- JavaScript Defer – This helps solve the render-blocking issue in page speed testing tools like Pagespeed Insight and GTmetrix.
- Optimize Critical CSS automatically improves the loading and performance of above-the-fold area images. It prioritizes the images at the user viewport early in the page’s rendering.
- Minification helps reduce file sizes and remove white spaces to make smaller files.
- Mobile cache – WP Rocket caches mobile traffic separately.
- Combine CSS and JavaScript Files – It helps reduce HTTP requests and speed up connection time.
- Link Preloading – This feature improves user experience by downloading a page in the background when the user hovers over the link.
Check this article to learn the best WP Rocket configurations.
WP Rocket Pricing
- Single – $59/yr for one website
- Plus – $199/yr for 3 websites
- Multi – $299/yr for 50 websites
- Multi – $399/yr for 100 websites
- Multi – $599/yr for 500 websites
FAQ – WordPress SEO Plugins
What are SEO plugins?
SEO plugins are scripts, codes, or modules developed to extend the functionalities of the core WordPress blogging software. They bring more features and functions to the content management systems so you can do and achieve more with your website. Some WordPress SEO plugins are developed to perform specific SEO tasks, while others can perform multiple complex tasks, such as JetPack.
Which SEO plugin is best for WordPress free?
Does WordPress need an SEO Plugin?
The short answer is no. You don’t need an SEO tool to run a WordPress blog. However, this assumes you know more about coding and are comfortable editing core files. SEO plugins will make your task easier to complete, simplify complex blog management tasks, and help you increase efficiency and productivity.
Can I use 2 SEO plugins?
Don’t use two SEO plugins meant for the same task. Doing so will hurt your site’s usability and performance, and compatibility issues might break your blog.
Conclusion
SEO plugins in WordPress are indispensable tools that streamline the on-page optimization processes, guide you in the right direction, and ensure you check all the necessary boxes.
Aside from entering your meta keyword and image alt text, SEO plugins like RankMath and AISEO do much more.
For example, these tools help with schema structure; they provide hundreds of relevant schema you can use to better describe a page’s content to search engines. They also handle redirects, which are essential for preserving link juice and improving user experience for dead pages or links on your site.
Whatever your need for a WordPress SEO plugin, this post provides excellent options catering to different user needs.
Hi Shamsudeen,
I’ve used Yoast for years on several sites but with a newer blog of mine, I went with RankMath and love it. I may change my others to it as well in the coming year. Thanks for the review of these important plugins for WordPress sites.
Hi, Lisa,
Thanks for reading through and sharing your thoughts. Like you, I’ve been a fan of Yoast for years, but in my new blog projects, I tested RankMath, which seems like a better choice. Though, I’m still looking around and seeing how it compares to Yoast.
Thanks for coming.
Hi Shamsudeen,
I use Rankmath on my blogs and can proudly say that it is the best WP SEO plugin, I’ve ever used. You disclosed the must have list of WordPress plugins that may take any blogger’s graph to the success level.
Hi, Nitin,
Thanks for sharing voice here. Glad you find this list helpful.