Looking for the best WordPress SEO plugin to improve your website's ranking on Google?
You've come to the right place.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for any WordPress website aiming for more visibility and traffic.
But let’s be honest – SEO can be a lot of work. Especially if you’re new to it.
The good news? There are WordPress plugins designed to make this 10x easier for you.
In this guide, we'll walk you through the best WordPress SEO plugins that can help elevate your site's search engine performance without the headache.
Why Do You Need an SEO Plugin for Your Website?
If you want your WordPress site to be discovered by search engines and your target audience, you have 2 options:
- Take weeks (or even months) to learn on-page and technical SEO and guess your way through creating the right SEO framework, or
- Download and install a WordPress SEO plugin to take care of most of the work and help you optimize your website the right way
We recommend option 2.
A WordPress SEO plugin can assist with:
- Simplified On-Page SEO: The right SEO tool provides you with an easy-to-follow interface for adding important elements like meta descriptions, meta tags, a focus keyword, optimized titles, etc.
- Internal Linking Recommendations: Good SEO is also about interlinking your site content. Most of the best SEO plugins make this easier for you by offering internal linking suggestions – helping you connect your site’s related content.
- Improving Content Quality: Reliable SEO tools offer content analysis to help you create content that’s easy to read and understand
- XML Sitemap Generation: SEO plugins generate XML sitemaps, which search engines use crawl through your website and index your content correctly
- Technical SEO: These plugins also take care of the technical aspects of SEO – canonical URLs, 301 redirects, configuring robot.txt files, etc. This saves you from having to learn HTML in order to manually code these elements – giving you more time to focus on content creation and the rest of your business.
There are a lot of SEO plugin options available, which could make it hard for you to find the right one. This list will help you find the best option that best suits your needs.
11 Best WordPress SEO Plugins (Breakdown)
This section covers 11 of the best WordPress SEO plugins in the market and the features they offer.
Let’s dive in:
1. All in One SEO (AIOSEO)
All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin to optimize your entire website.
Used by 3+ million users, this plugin offers the most comprehensive SEO toolkit to help you improve search rankings without needing to learn complicated concepts.
This tool is ideal for website owners with any level of technical experience – from beginner to advanced.
With AIOSEO you can:
- Create and submit XML sitemaps to help Google and other search engines discover your content
- Receive notifications on problem areas on your site that need to be improved for SEO – and how to fix them
- Optimize your on-page SEO by adding meta titles, descriptions, keywords, and more
- Use the Broken Link Checker to scans all links on your site to ensure they’re working correctly
- Optimize your eCommerce store with the plugin’s built-in WooCommerceSEO features
- Use AIOSEO's ChatGPT integration to create and improve your SEO titles and meta descriptions.
You can also configure local SEO settings (key for physical businesses) and use the rich snippets schema markup to get more traffic and improve your click-through rates.
If you’re running your business on a tight budget, you can use the free version of AIOSEO to get started. But we recommend upgrading to the pro version when you can, as it has all the advanced features you need to outrank your competitors.
AIOSEO’s pricing starts from $49.60 for its Basic plan. But its most popular plan, Pro, starts from $199.60 per year.
2. Yoast SEO
The Yoast SEO plugin is another solid choice as one of the best SEO plugins available on WordPress. Like AIOSEO, this plugin offers a massive range of features to help you optimize your site for search engines and your audience.
Yoast SEO offers a Content and SEO analysis tool that reviews your written content and provides detailed feedback to make improvements from an SEO and readability perspective.
That way, both search engines and human readers will love your content.
Yoast SEO also offers the following features:
- XML sitemap generation for better site indexing
- Set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content and Google penalties
- Control your website’s breadcrumbs to improve site navigation and boost your site’s user-friendliness
Other premium features include internal linking suggestions, Google Search Console integration, redirect manager to avoid 404s, and more.
Yoast SEO has a free version, and a premium plugin that costs $99 per year.
3. Rank Math
Rank Math is a user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines and social media.
Rank Math offers similar SEO features to most of the best SEO plugins – XML sitemaps, content analysis, optimizing meta titles, meta tags,etc.
Beginners can use Rank Math’s setup wizard to get started, without getting bogged down by anything technical.
One of this plugin’s standout features is its artificial intelligence component called Content AI. Content AI analyzes your existing web content and provides suggestions on what you need to improve.
This tool, however, comes with limited credits. Once you finish your credits, you’ll need to pay for more to keep using the feature – which has the potential to become expensive.
Rank Math’s pricing starts from $5.75 per month, billed annually.
SEOPress is known for its affordability and ease of use – but is rather limited compared to other plugins like AIOSEO and Yoast SEO.
It offers a free version that includes basic SEO tools like title optimization, meta descriptions, simple redirects, and XML sitemaps.
The premium version provides more advanced features like eCommerce integration, broken link analysis, and a variety of schema types.
Pricing starts at $49 per year.
5. Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO offers tools for keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and more.
Squirrly SEO offers over 600+ features, designed equip website ownner with everything they need to create a holistic SEO strategy.
Its keyword research abilities are limited compared to more advanced tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush, but you can still get good keyword suggestions for your content strategy.
Squirrly SEO also integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, but if you want in-depth details on your site’s performance metrics, we recommend using a dedicated Google Analytics plugin like MonsterInsights.
Pricing for Squirrly SEO starts from $20.99 per month, billed annually.
6. SEMRush
SEMRush is one of the most powerful SEO tools for keyword research and content planning. Mainly used by SEO experts, marketers, and more experienced small businesses, this software provides an in-depth set of tools to help you grow your traffic.
Technically, SEMRush isn’t a plugin but it is a tool used by millions of WordPress websites to optimize their on-page and off-page SEO.
You can use this tool to analyze your potential keywords and evaluate important factors like search volume, keyword difficulty, related keywords, and more.
SEMRush also offers an SEO Writing Assistant tool to help you improve your website content and bring it up to the level of the top 10 search results for your focus keyword. This tool integrates with WordPress, making it easier to create SEO-friendly blog posts.
Lastly, you can integrate SEMRush with All in One SEO to refine your keyword research and identify related keyphrases right from WordPress.
Pricing starts from $108.33 monthly, billed annually.
7. WPBeginner Free Keyword Generator
WPBeginner’s Free Keyword Generator is the perfect keyword research tool for SEO beginners and small businesses with limited budgets.
If you can’t afford to pay for advanced tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs, WPBeginner’s keyword generator is the perfect tool to find a large set of relevant keywords for your content marketing strategy.
All you need to do is plug in a keyword and this tool will generate a long list of potential keywords you can use in your content.
8. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the best WordPress SEO tools for bloggers, small business owners, SEO Experts, and even beginners.
With this tool, you can conduct an in-depth SEO audit to identify areas of improvement and optimize your site.
Ahrefs’ SEO audit feature also shows your competitors’ SEO performance and the keywords they rank for in real-time.
This tool also offers detailed organic research reports to show your topic's organic keywords, their position on search engine results pages (SERPs), and performance compared to competing pages, etc. That way you can identify what’s helping you bring in more organic traffic.
You can use Ahrefs' expansive set of keyword research, content research, backlink analysis, and website monitoring tools to boost your site’s SEO and gain a competitive advantage in your industry.
Pricing starts from $75 per month, billed annually.
9. Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a useful SEO tool for initial keyword research.
Use this tool to find questions and phrases related to your potential keywords. Answer the Public includes a location and language filter, to help you find the most relevant results.
You need to create a free account to use this tool and this allows you to conduct 3 daily searches. To increase your daily search limit, you have to pay for a premium plan.
Pricing starts from $9 per month. You can also pay for a lifetime plan, with the lowest tier going for $99.
10. WP Optimize
WP Optimize is a site speed optimization tool – essential for SEO.
Site speed plays an important role in your site's user experience. If your website is slow, your visitors will drop off and this will signal to search engines that your website does not offer value.
WP Optimize improves your website’s speed in the following ways:
- Cleans your database to remove unnecessary data (e.g. deleted comments and trashed items)
- Compresses your images to lower your website’s load time
- Uses site caching to help your server run faster and load pages faster for your visitors
11. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the best free SEO tools available.
Use this tool to gather detailed information on your website’s SEO performance and discover the keywords you’re getting the most clicks from.
You can also analyze individual web pages to compare performance results and identify the ones with the most impressions and clicks.
Google Search Console integrates with WordPress plugins like AIOSEO and MonsterInsights, which makes it easier for you to track your SEO performance right from your WordPress dashboard.
Which Is the Best WordPress SEO Plugin?
Out of all the options listed, the best WordPress SEO plugin is All in One SEO (AIOSEO).
All in One SEO has everything you need to optimize your website and improve your search engine rankings.
We recommend AIOSEO because it is:
- Easy to use and set up
- Trusted by millions of WordPress website owners
- Easy to integrate with WooCommerce, SEMRush, Google Search Console, and other tools to strengthen your SEO strategy
- …and so much more.
Whether you’re a solopreneur, small business owner, or experienced blogger, AIOSEO offers you all the advanced tools you need to get your website’s SEO in top shape.
FAQs: Best WordPress SEO Plugin
Q: Which WordPress plugin is best for SEO?
A: We recommend All in One SEO. But you can also take a look at Yoast SEO and Rank Math.
Q: Do WordPress SEO plugins work?
A: Yes, they do. While WordPress itself is optimized for SEO through its clean code and basic SEO functionality – you need an SEO plugin to take care of both the on-page and off-page aspects of your website.
WordPress SEO plugins are useful for improving your website’s visibility, so search engines (e.g. Google and Bing) and your target audience can find it faster – leading to more traffic and, hopefully, more conversions.
Q: Is there a free SEO plugin for WordPress?
A: All in One SEO has a free version known as “All in One SEO Pack” that includes the essential features you need to get started with SEO Optimization. But if you want to outrank your competitors and get your website in front of more eyes, you’ll need to purchase the plugin’s premium version.
Optimize Your Website for More Conversions
Now that you’ve found the best WordPress SEO plugin, it’s time to make sure your website will encourage your new traffic to convert.
Remember, driving traffic to your site is important, but the main goal is to turn those visitors into leads and customers.
Here are 4 free tutorials to assist you with this:
How to Use Pop-Ups on Your WordPress Website (+ 8 Best Practices)
How to Add Click to Email and Click to Call Buttons on WordPress
Your website design needs to focus on directing your visitors to take action. To achieve this, you need the right tools.
We recommend using Thrive Suite to get the job done.
Thrive Suite is the best WordPress plugin bundle to use to turn your traffic into engaged leads and customers.
With this powerful plugin toolkit you can:
Create a user-friendly website design your visitors will love
Design clean, SEO-friendly posts and pages that look great
Set up lead-generation forms to promote your irresistible free offers
Build engaging quizzes to get to know your audience & direct them to relevant content
Create & sell online courses and other digital products
Seamlessly collect, manage, and display glowing testimonials and reviews
…and so much more
The best part?
You don’t need to be an expert coder or web designer to use these tools. Thrive Suite comes with drag-and-drop functionality and hundreds of templates to help you design the perfect website and user experience for your visitors.
