9 Best WordPress SEO Plugins for Higher Ranking in 2024

Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for ranking higher for important keywords, driving more traffic, and creating consistent sales without relying on expensive advertising.

However, if you are unfamiliar with SEO, it may be tough to successfully optimize your website.

Here’s where WordPress SEO plugins come in.

With the right SEO plugin, you won’t need any outside help to rank high on Google and increase organic clicks.

In this article, we’ll see some of the best WordPress SEO plugins that can help you improve your on-page optimization easily.

What Do SEO Plugins Do?

SEO plugins for WordPress are crucial in optimizing WordPress websites for search engines. They offer an array of tools and features to help in various aspects of a site’s SEO.

Here’s a breakdown of what SEO plugins typically do:

• Content Analysis: It analyzes your content for SEO best practices. These include things like keyword density, readability, and the use of headings and meta tags.
• Technical SEO: Beyond content, SEO plugins help with technical aspects of SEO. These include creating proper canonical URLs, managing 301 redirects, implementing structured data, etc.
• XML Sitemaps: Automatically generate XML sitemaps, making it easier for search engines to discover and index your website’s content.
• Social Media Integration: Optimize your content for social media, ensuring that your posts look appealing when shared on platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
• Link Management: SEO plugins help in detect broken links, suggest internal linking opportunities, and manage outbound links.
• Keyword Optimization and Research: It helps in selecting the best keywords for your content based on their search volume, competition, and relevance.
• Local SEO: For local businesses, SEO plugins offer specialized features to optimize for local search. This includes the ability to add local business information and opening hours and integrate Google Maps.

Does WordPress Need SEO Plugins?

You do not need WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your articles and pages. If you understand the fundamentals of SEO and stay up with the current algorithm changes, you can get excellent results without using plugins.

In most cases, SEO plugins will advise you on how to enhance your content to make it more search-engine friendly. However, the actual optimization effort remains in your hands.

Furthermore, WordPress has all the tools and functionality you need to generate SEO-friendly content. The Content Management System (CMS) allows you to add titles, meta descriptions, headings, alt text, tags, customize URLs, and much more.

9 Top SEO Plugins for WordPress

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the #1 top SEO plugin for WordPress.

At its basic level, Yoast allows you to customize the title tag, URL slug, and meta description for your pages, which are all crucial in terms of SEO.

When it comes to content-level optimization, Yoast detects SEO issues in your content. And it highlights areas for improvement.

Remember that these are only suggestions. You don’t have to follow every Yoast recommendation.

Besides scanning your content for SEO-related issues, it also analyzes your content’s readability. And provides suggestions for improvements.

Top Features:

• The content and SEO analysis tool checks the readability and SEO of your websites and blog posts.
• Integration with Google Search Console.
• Support focus keywords for your content.
• You may use the redirection tool to perform 301 redirects, which will transfer visitors from one page to another of your choosing.
• Tracking of internal links.
• Automatically generates an XML sitemap for all of your content.
• Avoid Google penalties by using canonical URLs.
• Allows you to personalize what people see in Google when you appear on the search engine results page by editing/adding custom snippets.
• Customize breadcrumbs on your site so they are easier to navigate and index.

Pricing:

Yoast’s SEO plugin has both a free and a paid version.

The Yoast free version is limited in terms of features and functionality. The premium edition costs $99/year and offers access to all Yoast’s features.

Get Started with Yoast SEO

2. All in One SEO

All in One SEO is the WordPress SEO plugin, and it has been helping users with little SEO skills to get their sites to rank higher since its inception.

It has evolved to handle every element of SEO you could need. But don’t worry: you won’t be bogged down by sitemaps and JSON schemas.

Even if you don’t have any SEO experience, the plugin is surprisingly simple to use for its strength.

Download the plugin and follow the wizard’s steps to install it. You’re ready to proceed if you can answer simple questions like a blog or an online store. Your site would have all of the essentials locked down in 10 minutes.

It’s a piece of cake to troubleshoot and fine-tune things from there. AIOSEO audits your site regularly and explains the improvements you need to make in plain English.

It automatically prioritizes issues, highlighting what has to be fixed right now and missing optimization opportunities. Follow the steps in the checklist, and you’ll be well on your way to maximizing the potential of your website.

Top Features:

• XML and RSS sitemap support.
• Schema markup.
• Avoid Google penalties by using canonical URLs.
• Google analytics support.
• API support.
• Duplicate content detection.
• Automatically notifies site changes to search engines.
• Ecommerce SEO.
• AMP support.
• Image SEO.

Pricing:

The All In One SEO plugin has both a free and a paid version.

The paid version’s price depends on the plan you choose. The most basic paid plan starts from $49.50/year.

Get Started with AIOSEO

3. SEOPress

SEOPress is another straightforward yet powerful WordPress SEO plugin. It has all of the SEO capabilities you’d expect, such as meta titles, descriptions, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps, redirects, and more.

It has a simple setup for beginners as well as complex features for more experienced users. In terms of functionality and options, it is comparable to other top WordPress SEO plugins on the market.

The plugin’s premium edition is less expensive than some other premium WordPress SEO plugins on the market.

Top Features:

• The setup wizard is simple to use.
• Dynamic titles and meta descriptions.
• Improve social media sharing using Open Graph and Twitter Cards.
• White label SEO.
• Create your XML Sitemap to help in search indexing.
• Image XML sitemaps to Improve Google Images Search Indexing.
• Custom canonical URL.
• Image SEO.
• Content analysis using unlimited keywords to help you in creating search-engine-optimized content.

Pricing:

SEOPress is a freemuim WordPress plugin. The free version has limited features.

The paid version (which starts at $49 per year) gives you extra features and advanced functionality, such as OpenAI integration, a redirect manager, and so on.

Get Start with SEOPress

4. Rank Math

If you are looking for the best free seo plugin for WordPress, check out Rank Math. Rank Math helps you with basic on-page SEO. For example, you can create title tags and meta descriptions.

In addition, you can preview these items to see how they will show in search results.

The plugin can also generate robots.txt and sitemap files. Both of these are important to control search engine crawling activity on your website.

Furthermore, Rank Math has several features and tools that allow you greater control over the SEO of your WordPress site.

Learn more in our complete Rank Math review.

Top Features:

• Easy-to-use setup wizard.
• You may easily add meta titles, descriptions, and Open Graph metadata to your content.
• Create an XML site map.
• Google Search Console integration.
• Control over who can do what via user roles.
• Advanced SEO analysis tool.
• Integrated Google Schema Markup (Rich Snippets).
• Internal link suggestions.
• Automatic keyword suggestions from Google.
• Optimize unlimited Keywords at once.

Pricing:

Rank Math offers both free and paid versions. You can use the basic features for free.

For more advanced features, you can upgrade to a paid version starting at $6.99/month.

Get Started with Rank Math

5. Squirrly SEO

Squirrly SEO is a beginner SEO tool that offers real-time recommendations. It allows you to optimize content for a specific keyword as you’re writing it. It also gives a competitive analysis with tips for how you may better outrank similar pages.

Aside from that, Squirrly SEO has several unique features that will aid your marketing efforts. It may, for example, track your audience’s engagement and provide you tips on how to improve your click-through rates (CTR). Furthermore, if you move from another SEO plugin, it will transfer all of your previous settings.

Top Features:

• Schema markup.
• Google Analytics integration.
• Custom robot.txt for site crawlers.
• Google Search Console integration.
• XML sitemap.
• Advanced eCommerce features.
• Social media monitoring.

Pricing:

Squirrly SEO offers both free and paid versions. You can use the basic features for free.

The paid version starts at $20.99 for the first month and, thereafter, costs $29.99/mo.

Get Started with Squirrly SEO

6. The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework is a feature-rich SEO plugin that looks and functions similarly to the others on our list. The key difference is that this plugin is lighter than the others, making it a good alternative.

With the simplicity of use in mind, this plugin is a must-have. The feature to pre-fill meta tags allows you to save time by not having to do it yourself.

Top Features:

• Pre-configured right out of the box.
• Titles and descriptions are automatically generated according to Google’s standards.
• Edit Open Graph Metadata with ease.
• Breadcrumbs for Google Search are enabled.
• Support forums are open to the public.

Pricing:

Like all other plugins on this list, the SEO Framework has a free version with limited features.

The premium version starts at $7 per month and is available on two sites.

Get Started with SEO Framework

7. Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant plugin allows you to create content that is optimized for users and search engines.

It analyzes the content you write based on readability, tone of voice, originality, and SEO. And gives suggestions for improving these qualities.

For example, if the plugin notices that your article’s title does not contain your target keyword, it will flag it as an issue and recommend adding it to your title.

Or, if the plugin discovers duplicate or plagiarized content, it will highlight the offending text.

Duplicate or copied content on your website might have a negative impact on rankings. The SEO Writing Assistant plugin is an excellent addition to your SEO strategy since it highlights issues like these.

Top Features:

• Plagiarism checker to check the originality of content.
• Rparaphrase content with AI.
• Recommendations on relevant keywords to use in your content.
• Readability analysis to tell you how easy or difficult your content is to read.
• Tone of voice analyzer to improve the writing style and tone of your content.

Pricing:

To use a Semrush SEO Writing Assistant, you must have a Semrush account.

For a free Semrush account, you can check one article. To check more, subscribe to the Guru plan for $208.33/month (billed annually).

Get Started with Semrush

8. Redirection

Some plugins are so simple but essential that it’s difficult to imagine running your website without them. Redirection is one such plugin.

Broken links and deleted pages are common occurrences on all websites. However, this plugin allows you to keep the traffic, rankings, and backlinks connected with a deleted page by easily setting a 301 redirect.

While many SEO optimization plugins, such as AIOSEO, provide an outstanding redirect manager, Redirection is the ideal solution if you don’t want to utilize more feature-rich SEO plugins and instead want a basic redirect manager.

Top Features:

• Set up conditional redirects.
• Import and export system.
• Track 404 errors.
• Full logging option for redirects.
• Supports regular expressions.
• Integration with WordPress REST API.

Pricing:

The Redirection plugin is free.

Get Started with Redirection

9. WP Rocket

WP Rocket isn’t an SEO plugin but rather a WordPress caching plugin that improves site speed and performance. Once you install the WP Rocket plugin, it will automatically implement 80% of the recommended settings and measures to your website. This will offer your website an instant speed boost.

Why should you have this in your SEO toolkit? Speed directly impacts user experience and can affect how search engines rank and crawl your site.

Google’s algorithm determines the quality of user experience by considering a number of criteria, including website speed. Pages that load faster are more likely to be ranked higher since they offer a better user experience.

WP Rocket can help you speed up your website even if you have no technical experience.

Top Features:

• Caching of all the pages.
• Minification of JavaScript and CSS files.
• Deferred loading of images.
• Database optimization.
• Preloading the cache of pages.
• CDN integration with RocketCDN and Cloudflare.
• Lazy loading of images and videos.
• GZIP Compression of files.

Pricing:

WP Rocket is a premium cache plugin that starts from $59/year for a single site usage.

Get Started with WP Rocket

Improve Your SEO With These WordPress Plugins Today

SEO is an important task for any website owner. Fortunately, thanks to the large number of SEO plugins, WordPress users may now do this work with ease. The right tool can help you stay on top of your meta descriptions, optimize content to rank for your targeted keyword, create XML sitemaps, and more.

In this article, we’ve looked at nine of the best WordPress SEO plugins to help you with your on-page optimization. Yoast SEO is the go-to option for many, although All In One SEO and Rank Math have equivalent feature sets.

For more, check out these other helpful resources:

• Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Comparison
• Rank Math vs Yoast SEO Comparison
• 12 Best SEO Tools for Small Businesses
• 10 Best SEO Writing Assistant Tools

Lastly, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on the latest WordPress and blogging-related articles.