Looking for the best SEO plugins for WordPress but not sure which ones to choose?
If you’re a business owner, you know that ranking high on search engines is essential for acquiring new leads. However, with more and more businesses competing for that top spot, it’s becoming harder and harder to achieve. There are various SEO strategies available to help businesses reach their goals, but there are also a number of factors that could impact the success of your strategy.
So, then how do you get the top rankings in google with WordPress content when you don’t have a big team of writers or the budget to hire experts?
This is where SEO plugins come in handy. Because with the right tools at your side, it’s like the work of an entire SEO department to rank your site.
That’s why today we’re going to cover the best SEO plugins that you can start using right away. First, let’s make it clearer why you should still use an all-in-all SEO plugin.
What Is SEO (And Do You Still Need It)?
SEO is the process of creating content for your website related to the topic that you are trying to rank for. Your main goal when working on SEO is to offer valuable, unique and interesting ideas and advice to visitors so they will want to share it around with their friends.
And the benefits of SEO are hard to ignore:
- Consistent : As your site authority grows, it becomes easier to rank. This leads to a consistent flow of traffic that regularly visits your site.
- Affordable : Creating content to rank takes nothing but time. This can make it a more viable option than paid advertising for small businesses.
- Longevity: While it may eventually drop in rankings, the effects of SEO can last for months (or years). If you maintain your content, you have a long-term and sustainable marketing plan ready to use.
The problem is that SEO has evolved a lot in the last 10 years and popular search engines like Google are constantly improving their algorithms.
As the positive effects of SEO became clear, larger companies began to double down. This causes many small businesses to wonder how they can compete. After all, if you have a small team, can you really produce enough quality content to compete with the “big guys”?
You will find the answer to this question reassuring: Yes, of course you can!
Well, let’s make this answer more accurate: Yes, with the right tools , of course you can.
So we will now turn our attention to the best SEO plugins that you can start using to rank your site.
Ready to see the list? Let’s go inside!
Best SEO Plugins
1. Rank Math
Rank Math is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress and was the preferred choice before AIOSEO came onto the scene. It is a very powerful plugin with many features to guide your SEO efforts.
Rank MathSEO has everything you need for both technical and on-page SEO. For blog posts, after you enter your keyword, it analyzes the content to make sure it’s ready to rank on Google.
You will then receive a checklist so you can make changes to the content as needed.
Technically speaking, you can use Rank Math for:
- Setup Wizard (Easy to follow)
- Optimize Unlimited Keywords
- XML sitemaps
- Canonical URLs (to avoid duplicate content)
- OpenGraph tags
- Schema.org structured data
- And more
The downside to Rank Mathis that you can train yourself to keep your eyes on the prize.
In other words, while the 2 may not always agree, it can be easy to start writing to make Rank Math happy rather than Google happy.
So when you use a plugin like Rank Math, you should have a strong grasp of how search engines like Google rank. That way, you can take or leave Rank Math’s suggestions more effectively.
2. All In One SEO Pack (AIOSEO)
All in one SEO (AIOSEO) is the best SEO plugin for WordPress. It comes with powerful features to ensure your ranking.
With AIOSEO, you can get things started with a helpful setup wizard that helps you find the best SEO settings for your business. You will then receive an actionable checklist that will help you optimize your page content.
AIOSEO helps SEO beginners through features such as:
- Smart meta tag generator
- On-page checklist
- Rich snippet schema markup
- XLM sitemaps
- And more…
But it has tons of features for more advanced SEO users, such as:
- RSS feeds
- Robot.txt editor
- Local SEO
- Google News sitemaps
- Video SEO
- and much more
The bottom line is that AIOSEO cannot be renewed. In terms of features and pricing, this is undoubtedly the best plugin for WordPress at your disposal.
3. SEOPress
SEOPress is another SEO plugin that has gotten some attention over the past few years. This is a free SEO plugin, meaning it has a free and a paid plan.
The free version is more comprehensive than other free SEO plugins like Yoast, but you probably want the paid plan to unlock all the features.
With SEOPress you get everything you expect from an SEO plugin, for example:
- Title and meta descriptions
- XML and HTML sitemaps
- Content analysis
- Google Tag Manager
- And more…
But again, more advanced features like 404 tracking, WooCommerce SEO, editing your robots.txt file, and the like are only available in the paid plan.
One of the downsides is that it’s a fairly new addon which means it hasn’t stood the test of time. Now, this may or may not be an issue (everyone has to start somewhere), but it’s worth mentioning.
New addons run risk or “surprise” issues, an overwhelmed support team, or developing new features (as they often focus on keeping up with established competitors). That said, SEOPress seems to be an excellent SEO plugin on its own.
4. MonsterInsights
You probably know MonsterInsights as the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. So what does it do on this list for SEO tools?
Because without the right data, SEO does not exist.
The best way to improve ranking is to create and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs). This way, you can improve your SEO strategy and make sure you’re constantly moving in the right direction.
This includes using MonsterInsights to monitor:
- Pageviews
- Unique user sessions
- Popular content
- Bounce rates
- Outbound links
- And more…
These are some of the basic KPI examples you can follow to increase your SEO, but there are many others. The point is that MonsterInsights gives you all the power of Google Analytics right from your WordPress dashboard.
And the best part is that it presents the data in an easily understandable format. That way, you can make smarter, data-driven decisions to get better results fast.
5. The SEO Framework
SEO Framework is a free SEO plugin that makes it easy to get things started. Most of the settings come preconfigured and cover most of your base. However, the settings are easy to change.
This is because SEO Framework has an easy-to-use interface that leaves out confusing technical jargon. Here are some of the features that come with this plugin:
- Comes preconfigured
- Optimizes metadata
- Enables breadcrumbs for Google
- Makes social sharing easy
- Checks for duplicate content
- And more…
One interesting thing about the SEO Framework is that it focuses on the keyword topic rather than the keyword itself. This can be great for general SEO, but frustrating for more advanced marketing teams.
This post contains everything you need to find the right topics that drive lots of organic traffic to your site.
