Best SEO WordPress Plugins to Help Your WordPress Website Rank
WordPress is one of the most used CMS platforms, and there are good reasons why. It’s easy to set up, install plugins, and get started relatively quickly, even without any prior knowledge. Even your 80-year-old grandmother could press a few buttons and have a blog up and running in minutes.
That’s all well and good, but when it comes to getting your WordPress website to rank higher in search engines like Google, and Bing, then you’re going to want to use a few key SEO tools which take the hassle out of it, especially if you’re not tech-savvy.
This is where our list of the best SEO WordPress plugins comes in. These are additional add-ons that you can install directly from your WordPress site and have some basic SEO functionality working hard for you within a few minutes.
- Perform an SEO Audit on your site
- Add content schema to your website pages
- Integrate social media schema
- Edit your XML sitemap
- Add Meta Titles, Descriptions
- Add schema to your content
- Rank Tracker: Keep track of your keywords
- Content Analysis for better SEO content
- Add content schema easily to post and pages
- Create AI written content
- Advanced redirection management
- Internal linking suggestions and more
Of course, it takes some time, some setting up, and a little knowledge or learning about how they all work to get the most out of them, but these WordPress SEO plugins can help get you on your way to competing with the competition.
However, note that just because you’ve installed a plugin doesn’t mean that’s the end of your website SEO strategy. SEO is important in small business website marketing efforts, and as search engine optimization marketing is an ever-evolving creature, there’s a whole load of aspects to cover.
These include on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, backlinking, keyword research, content creation, and more, which are whole topics in themselves.
Read on as I guide you through some of the better SEO plugins that can help boost your on-page SEO and technical SEO score for your WordPress installation.
My pick of the best SEO WordPress plugins
1. SEOPress
SEOPress offer three different plugins for WordPress websites that can help boost your rankings via different means.
The first is SEOPress Free which has over 200,000 installs across the web, comes with no adverts, and helps you increase your traffic without any technical knowledge required.
It lets you optimise your content with Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions, Open Graph (for Facebook sharing) and Twitter Cards for social media integration.
You’ll be able to set your canonical URLs, structure your site through sitemaps, and add redirects for pages and posts while telling the robots which crawl your website what they can and can’t look at via the meta robots.
Throw in content analysis, which helps you write better content, and this free SEO plugin offers more than most.
If you’re after more functionality, then you can use the SEOPress Pro add-on for around $39 per month.
You’ll need the free SEO Press plugin to install the add-on, but you’ll get access to more features when you do.
Main features include:
- Schema Generator to automatically or manually add various types of Schema to your content
- You’ll have access to your Google Analytics right from the dashboard
- Be able to increase your local search visibility to local business schema
- Add breadcrumbs for better search engine visibility
- Access your .htaccess file
- White label the SEO tool to help your customers out, great for website builders and agencies
And then there’s the SEOPress Insights plugin which, instead of helping with your on-page SEO, focuses on your off-site SEO strategy for around $99 per year, per site.
You’ll be able to:
- Keep track of your keywords with their Keyword Rank Tracker
- Search through the latest Google trends for insights into key areas
- Monitor your backlinks with their backlink tracking tool to help detect bad links or missed opportunities
SEOPress has created its own Custom Rankings API, which crawls search results daily, and another reputable company, Majestic SEO, provides its backlinks data.
If you’re after a freemium SEO plugin, then SEOPress should be near the top of your list and is worth looking at as it’s cheaper than most other costs.
2. All in One SEO
When it comes to a comprehensive WordPress SEO toolkit, then the All in One SEO Plugin is not only well named but lives up to its name.
Great for bloggers, small businesses and WooCommerce stores looking to boost their SEO rankings without any coding skills needed, AIOSEO (for short) comes packed full of features, including:
- Rich snippet schema
- Social media integration
- Robots.txt editor
- Xml sitemap editor
- SEO audit checklist
- Custom breadcrumbs
One key feature that can instantly identify any problem areas of your WordPress site is the SEO audit. It’ll help find critical errors and give you recommendations on how you can fix and improve them in real-time.
It’ll also help provide notes on ways to speed up your site to help your all-important site-speed score.
That’s in the basic plan, which comes in at around $99 per year at its regular price, which, compared to SEOPress, is a little steep given what you get.
If you’re after more functionality like the use of their Redirection Manager, 404 error tracking, and more SEO modules, you’re going to be looking at their Pro plan, which comes in at around $399 per year.
You can give All in One SEO a try for free, thanks to their 14-day money-back guarantee, letting you test out all the features without the risk.
3. RankMath
RankMath are another big competitor to be the best WordPress SEO plugin fight. With over 1 million users, this search engine optimization plugin helps you easily transform your SEO efforts through its built-in tools.
Install RankMath for free and you’ll find an easy to use dashboard waiting for you with:
- 5 content AI credits waiting for you to use
- 18 pre-defined content schema types to choose from
- SEO breadcrumbs integration
- Open Graph & Twitter Meta Cards
- 404 Monitor
- Advanced Redirection Management
- Internal Linking Suggestions
- Optimize keywords
- Post optimization with Meta Title, Meta Description, Content analysis
- SEO Analysis tool
All of that is included in the RankMath free version. When it comes to the Pro, Business and Agency plans you’ll open up:
- More Content AI Credits
- The ability to track keywords
- Email reports
- 6 extra schema types
- Google News & Google Video SEO sitemaps
- Local SEO
- The ability to track top performing pages and keywords
- SEO performance of individual posts
And more features on top.
The paid plans start at $59 per year (excluding VAT) for the PRO package, with their most expensive plan, the Agency plan, for $499 per year (excluding VAT).
If you’re a small business or freelancer, you’re probably going to be looking at the Business plan for around $199 per year, excluding taxes.
If you sign up for one of their plans, you’ll get a 30-day money-back guarantee, which gives you plenty of time to evaluate whether or not this is the right WordPress SEO tool for you.
Overall, RankMath is a feature-rich SEO plugin that can help create some great content ideas with its primary focus to help with the on-page SEO.
4. Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO plugin takes your SEO game to the next level with an all-in-one implementation for your WordPress websites.
You’ll be able to do keyword research, track your rankings, perform technical SEO audits and find helpful suggestions on how to optimize your content for your readers and, of course, the search engines like Google and Bing.
Squirrly doesn’t quite have the market share on SEO plugin installs as some others on this best WordPress SEO plugin list. However, with over 600,000 installations and growing, you’ll be in good hands here.
One thing that makes Squirrly stand out is the personalized list of suggestions you get to help rank your content higher. You’ll get keyword ideas that might not be on high-volume keywords but ones that your site could currently compete for, letting you gain more traffic in return.
As you write your content, you’ll get instant feedback thanks to their live assistant message board, helping you optimize your content on the fly.
With its SERP checker and analytics built-in, the Squirrly plugin offers plenty for the average blogger or small business looking to improve their overall content and rankings.
Squirrly’s three price plans start from $29.99 per month for their PRO, $71.99 per month for their Business plan, and $75.99 per month for their Agency plan. But it’s the Business plan that most should take as it has all the features, including use on up to 7 sites and the ability to check rankings on demand.
5. Yoast SEO Plugin
If you’ve been researching SEO plugins online or know a little about the subject, then you’ve probably come across the name Yoast.
Yoast has three levels of plans, from FREE to Premium to their Plugin subscription, which gives you access to 5 Yoast plugins and training courses.
The Yoast SEO free plugin allows you to add schema types for posts and pages, meta titles and descriptions, and on-site technical SEO help.
However, to unlock all the features, you will have to spend around £89 / per year, excluding VAT. This gives you access to the Premium Plugin, where you’ll be able to find broken links and get internal linking and content suggestions with 24/7 premium support.
One helpful feature is the internal linking suggestion, which can save you time and money and keep track of content that needs updating if it hasn’t been in over six months.
Yoast might be a big name in the business, but it’s not as intuitive as others on the list with a bit of technical knowledge needed to get the full benefits of what it can do. Of course, they do have lots of online help via forums and support.
If you are going to use Yoast, then the free version is a good start but lacks the ease of use and many of the functionality that you’ll need to optimize your site the right way.
Which WordPress SEO Plugin is best?
Much like snowflakes, each plugin with SEO capabilities is slightly different. Each comes with a different set of skills, different file sizes, and some adding more bloat to your WordPress site than you need.
That’s why it’s best to figure out what you’re trying to accomplish by installing an SEO plugin in the first place.
Are you trying to do better at your on-page SEO? Do you want to get in the featured snippet spot? Maybe you want to do a website audit to check your backlinks. Or perhaps its’ to review your keywords and content for errors and rank-ability?
Whatever the purpose, choosing the best SEO plugin for what you want to achieve will help speed up your site, improve your SEO score, and improve your rankings.
Each of the WordPress plugins you install to your site can slow it down, so to gain the most benefits, it’s best to try and stick to just one plugin that does all you need.
Adding multiple SEO plugins could cause you to run into compatibility issues later down the line, so if you are going to do this, be sure to see if they are compatible with the plugins you have.
For a small business, the Squirrly SEO plugin gives you some great features at a reasonable price. If you have the budget and knowledge, then the All-in-one SEO and SEOPress plugins are feature-rich and will help you rank your content higher with a bit of time and effort.
Whichever you choose, it’s not always an install and leave kind of scenario. You’ll need to keep track of what it’s doing, update the plugin regularly and see what changes you’ll need to make to keep up with current SEO trends.
If you’re not after a plugin, then there’s always lots of online SEO software that can help do the same job but without installing anything on your site. It’s a little more involved because you’ll have to do some of the changes yourself manually, but it can be combined with your favorite plugin to increase your rankings in the SERPs.
A few feature-packed SEO tools to consider include:
- Semrush Tool – great for keyword research and technical SEO audits
- Ahrefs SEO – all-in-one SEO tool for rankings tracking and link backlinks management
- SpyFu – great for competitor analysis
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