SEO or Search engine optimization is the primary source of traffic for most of the websites in the market. This article will look at the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market. It is good to use these tools if you want to enhance the SEO performance of your website.
You need to optimize your website to help it appear in the search results. When you carry out this process properly, your web page will even appear on the first page of the SERPs. However, if you are not an SEO expert, or you don’t know how to do it, you may not know where to begin.
WordPress is among the most popular platforms for developing websites all over the world. The beauty of using WordPress is that it has so many plugins to make the whole process simple. The secret is to just find out the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
Moreover, you will get most of these websites completely free. This article will make the work for you easy outlining the best WordPress SEO plugins for WordPress. Remember SEO is an immense topic and there are so many things that you need to track simultaneously. There are so many plugins on the market and each of them serves a unique process.
The table below summarizes a list of WordPress SEO plugins that will make your website search engine ready. It is one of the most important things that you need to know as the owner of a website. The next section will describe each of these tools while paying close attention to its features. It will help you choose the best WordPress plugin for your site.
Contents
Best WordPress SEO Plugins
| Theme | Free/Premium | Rating | Visit Demo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yoast SEO | Free/$89 | 4.9 | Click here |
| Schema – All in One Schema Rich Snippets | Free | 4.5 | Click here |
| Broken Link Checker | Free | 4.4 | Click here |
| Google Analytics by Monster Insights | Free/$99 | 4.8 | Click here |
| AMP | Free/$149 | 4.7 | Click here |
| EWWW Image Optimizer | Free/$12 | 4.5 | Click here |
| Jetpack by Wordpress.com | Free/$29 | 4.6 | Click here |
| All In One WP Security & Firewall | Free | 4.3 | Click here |
| W3 Total Cache | Free/$84 | 4.8 | Click here |
| Ultimate Nofollow | Free | 4.3 | Click here |
1. Yoast SEO
Most SEO professionals will tell you that Yoast is the king among all the available SEO plugins. No wonder this tool comes in the first position on our list of the best WordPress SEO plugins.
Currently, this tool has more than 25,000 5 star ratings and over 5 million active downloads in the WordPress repo. It will take long for another WordPress SEO plugin to break this record. These numbers tell you that Yoast is the most popular WordPress SEO plugin on the market.
Therefore, there is no doubt that Yoast comes out as the best SEO plugin for WordPress. There are so many things that you can achieve by using this tool.
Yoast SEO will help you with creating site maps and automatically submitting them to various search consoles. With this tool, you can also add Meta value to your homepage and control the indexing of the blog. Yoast also helps in the social media optimization of your description, title, and image.
It is a tool that you can easily use in adding values to your single posts. Experts will also tell you that Yoast SEO will help in editing .htaccess and robots.txt. It gives users full control over the breadcrumbs.
As if this is not enough, Yoast SEO helps in enhancing the readability of your blog posts. The tool also analyzes the on-page SEO factors and helps in setting the focus keyword.
The good thing is that you can access all the above features at no cost. Even though this sounds crazy, I can confidently tell you that it is the reality. You can download this SEO plugin freely from WordPress repo and begin to use it right away.
There is also a premium version of Yoast SEO on the market. It comes with additional features like focus keyword exporting and suggestions for internal Yoast internal linking. The pro version also comes with Twitter, Facebook, and Google previews together with redirection.
We have so many people who use different plugins for readability, sitemap generation and redirecting. Why bother yourself when you can get all these features in a single tool like Yoast SEO. It is an optimal solution to your SEO performance.
The other thing about Yoast SEO is that it is beginner-friendly. The developer makes so many things that are complex to become simple and most of them are now automatic. You will not invest so much time trying to understand the performance of this plugin.
If you have set aside some budget, you can confidently use the Pro version of this plugin. You can be sure of getting some additional benefits from this package. If not, the free version still has so much to give to you. If you don’t feel like using Yoast SEO for one reason or another, the best alternatives are Rank math and All in One SEO Pack.
Features of Yoast SEO Plugins
- Paragraph structure
- Keyword density
- Meta description
- Prior keyword usage
- Keyword use in subheading
- Social sharing
2. Schema – All in One Schema Rich Snippets
The second tool that comes in our list of the best SEO plugins for WordPress is Schema. The aim of every blog or website owner is optimizing his or her website to increase the amount of traffic that comes in from Google. In some cases, it can help in ranking on the first page of the search engine results. However, some of your efforts may not be sufficient to drive enough traffic for your website.
Therefore, you should consider adding some extra optimizations like the schema markup. There is no better way of achieving this objective other than the rich snippet plugin.
A rich snippet is a visually rich snippet or additional interactive content that pops up on the Google search results. You may have come across some search results that have review marks and start ratings. It is a perfect example of a rich snippet.
However, we have so many bloggers who don’t use the All in One Rich Snippet and the reason for this is not known. After adding schema, search engines will be able to understand your content better. This tool is highly recommended for your on-page SEO efforts. Therefore, it is the best WordPress SEO plugin and you should not miss it.
Additionally, rich snippets will also assist your website to get better traffic and CTR. There isn’t a guarantee that your pages or posts will have better ranking once you add a schema plugin. There are so many other things that you need to so in order to enhance the ranking of your website in addition to the above step.
There are so many paid and free Scheme Schema Rich Snippets in the market. One of the best available tools is the Schema – All in One Schema Rich Snippets. Some of the Schema types that this plugin supports include video articles, software application, event, product, people, recipe, and review.
The other free plugins include WP SEO Structured Data Schema and Schema. On the other hand, one of the best premium plugins is SchemaPro. It is the most updated Schema WordPress plugin now in comparison with Yoast SEO.
It is easy to configure it for both a new of an existing website. The tool is a perfect solution for anyone who us looking for the best WordPress SEO plugin for 2020. You can also visit the website of the developer and have a look at what the tool has to offer.
Features of All in One Schema Rich Snippets
- Clean code that meets all the guidelines of Google
- Has filters for additional fields
- Supports custom fields
- Supports all the post types
- No coding needed
- Supports 13 schema types
3. Broken Link Checker
If you own a blog, it is important to create new content and update the old one on a regular basis. It is the top secret of success when it comes to search engine optimization. However, you will face a problem when it comes to managing all of them.
At this point, the Brocken Link Checker plugin from WordPress comes in handy. As the site continues to grow, you will have to manage both the external and internal links. I t is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins and you should not miss it on your website.
As the name suggests, this plugin checks your web content for missing images and broken images. One top feature of this plugin is the fact that it monitors the links that are in your custom fields, comments, posts, and pages consistently.
It will detect any redirects, missing images, and links that are not working. It also has an option that gives the broken links a look that is different in your posts.
With this plugin, you can also restrict the search engine from following the broken links. It also has the option for searching and filtering links by the anchor texts, and URL among others. These features make sure that you are getting nothing but the best from this WordPress SEO plugin.
Remember 404 errors and broken links have adverse effects on the SEO performance of your website. This plugin will help you to get rid of all these issues. The tool is highly recommended for fixing 404 errors ASAP. All you need to download this plugin from WordPress repo and then start using it with immediate effect.
If you own a blog, it is important to create new content and update the old one on a regular basis. It is the top secret of success when it comes to search engine optimization. However, you will face a problem when it comes to managing all of them.
At this point, the Brocken Link Checker plugin from WordPress comes in handy. As the site continues to grow, you will have to manage both the external and internal links. I t is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins and you should not miss it on your website.
As the name suggests, this plugin checks your web content for missing images and broken images. One top feature of this plugin is the fact that it monitors the links that are in your custom fields, comments, posts, and pages consistently.
It will detect any redirects, missing images, and links that are not working. It also has an option that gives the broken links a look that is different in your posts.
With this plugin, you can also restrict the search engine from following the broken links. It also has the option for searching and filtering links by the anchor texts, and URL among others. These features make sure that you are getting nothing but the best from this WordPress SEO plugin.
Remember 404 errors and broken links have adverse effects on the SEO performance of your website. This plugin will help you to get rid of all these issues. The tool is highly recommended for fixing 404 errors ASAP. All you need to download this plugin from WordPress repo and then start using it with immediate effect.
Features of Broken Link Checker
- Powerful search filters
- Manage redirections
- Remove or add no follow
- Fast link editing
- Fix broken links
- Multiple scan reports
- Powerful search filters
- Manage redirections
- Remove or add no follow
- Fast link editing
- Fix broken links
4. Google Analytics by Monster Insights
We have so many people who are using the Google Analytics tool in tracking top keywords, Avg time, sessions, and website visitors among the other similar information. If you are one of them, then the Google Analytics by Monster Insights is an excellent tool for you.
It is the most popular Google Analytics tool from WordPress with over two million active installations from all over the world. The best thing about this tool is the fact that it grants you the ability to check data on your Analytics right from the WordPress dashboard.
The other beauty about this tool is the fact that it has actionable analytics reports that will only display the statistics that matter to you. It is not a must to log in to Google Analytics to access this plugin. All you need to do is connect this plugin with Google Analytics. It will begin to connect the relevant data and display it on your dashboard.
The process of logging in the Analytics tools and checking out all these things is quite time-consuming. It is also quite complex to use Google Analytics and you need a clear understanding of all the functionalities.
The plugin will give you almost all the data that you get on Google Analytics. Both of them have premium and free options. The free version has limited stats and data. If you need more features, it is advisable to go for the paid option.
Features of Monster Insights
- Universal tracking
- Google Analytics dashboard
- Real-time stats
- Enhances ecommerce tracking
- Page-level analytics
- Affiliate link and ads tracking
- EU compliance and GDPR friendly
- Custom dimensions
- Performance and optimize
5. AMP
After releasing the mobile-friendly updates, you will realize the importance of mobile search if you are a site owner. Therefore, the journey towards mobile optimization will start.
The best WordPress SEO plugin for this purpose is AMP. Most themes are automatically optimized for mobile and making them highly responsive. However, it still takes a lot of time for most of them to load in mobile and this increases the bounce rate.
If the content does not load instantly, it will create a high level of dissatisfaction among the users. The only solution is accelerating Mobile Pages (AMP). From here, you can now understand the use of this plugin from the Website.
Accelerated Mobile pages – AMP is an open-source initiative project which is specially designed for optimizing mobile pages to help increase their loading speed.
AMP makes use of an Optimization HTML code that will render your web pages faster. It is a plugin you should not miss if you want to attain the best results in the SERPs. It eliminates certain aspects of the HTML code tag that may slow down your pages to help the page load faster.
Even though it may appear to be difficult, this plugin simplifies the whole process. There is so many AMP for WordPress plugins that are available for free. The plugin that we are talking about here is the official one from the AMP Plugin website. It is a tool that we cannot ignore at the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
The process of installing and setting up this plugin is a simple one. It will take you only a few minutes and you will be done. Even if you are a beginner, you will set up everything within a few clicks.
The WordPress AMP plugin comes with so many great features. The tool supports the recent version of Gutenberg Editor. The plugin provides a fast loading time on mobile devices and an enhanced user experience.
You can enable the AMP plugin on media, pages, and posts. You can also use caching to achieve the fastest loading time. All people can use it easily and you can use the option of adding Analytics.
Currently, Google has begun to display AMP results in its search results. You will have noticed a green lighting symbol just under the title.
It is obviously more attention-grabbing to the results and it leads to a better click-through rate (CTR). a better CTR will definitely increase your ranking in the SERPs.
Given all these advantages, the SEO community still does not accept AMP. To add to this, Google is yet to make it as one of its ranking factors.
AMP cuts down some of the HTML code, the user interface that most people don’t rich. Therefore, the AMP topic has a very lengthy discussion. When you install the official AMP plugin, you can be sure of enjoying the lighting speed.
Features of AMP
- AMP-first experiences
- Core theme support
- Compatibility tool
- CSS tree shaking
- AMP stories
6. EWWW Image Optimizer
In any content that is text-based, it is important to add infographics and images. You need these images regularly regardless of the niche of your website.
Images have a significant role to play when it comes to improving SEO and user engagement. Image optimization is also among the best SEO practices that you need to employ.
Remember speed is part of the key ranking factors. Therefore, like other website owners, you need to pay close attention to the loading speed of your website. A page that has heavy images will take a very long time to load. This will automatically result in a high bounce rate.
No one has the time to wait for your pages to load. The image optimizer comes in handy at this point. There are so many image optimizer plugins from WordPress repo and EWWW Image Optimizer is among the most popular plugins under this category.
This plugin will automatically optimize your images once you upload a new image. It also has the option of optimizing the current images that you had uploaded earlier. It will compress your images without losing the quality in any way.
The good news with EWWW Image Optimizer is the fact that it performs optimization on your website server whereas the other plugins use external servers. It is a tool that is completely free to use.
The tool will also save you hosting bandwidth and storage space. The tool is extremely helpful if your hosting plan has a limit on bandwidth and storage.
EWWW Image Optimizer works perfectly and does not require the use of any paid tools. Most people who have a photography site find it to be the best SEO plugin for WordPress because images are everything in the industry. You will not have any issues with your website when you begin to use EWW Image Optimizer.
It does not have any limitations on the number of images or file sizes that you can upload. The plugin has options for both lossless and lossy compression. You will also get an option for removing metadata. It is a plugin that also offers PDF, PNG, GIF, and JPG optimization. You will surely require this tool if you will be uploading several images on your website.
Features of EWWW Image Optimizer
- No speed limits
- Smooth handling
- High torque
- Adaptive steering
- Free parking
- Comprehensive coverage
- Safety first
- Roadside assistance
- Pack a spare
7. Jetpack by WordPress.com
After installing WordPress, you could have installed so many plugins. The number can vary but it is no doubt that they are many plugins.
WordPress repo has so many plugins that serve different purposes. There is always a plugin available for you regardless of the need.
Did you know that one plugin can do the work of at least ten plugins on your website? Why should you install so many plugins when Jetpack by WordPress.com can undertake several tasks simultaneously?
Automattic, which is the company that is behind WordPress, is the one that developed the Jetpack plugin for the self-hosted WordPress blogs.
This tool brings so many WordPress.com features into the WordPress.org blogs. It is among the most popular WordPress plugins in the repo with over five million active installations.
The website has improved website analytics and stats to help you understand your traffic. It also has SEO tools that maximize your search traffic.
You can integrate your website with the official WordPress mobile apps to help you manage it from anywhere. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin for performance optimization and website speed.
Jetpack by WordPress.com also comes with a lazy image loading feature to deliver a fast page loading experience. It also has the option of adding a mobile theme for the mobile traffic on your WordPress site. The other cool thing with the plugin is the fact that it has the site backup option. With the auto-publicize feature, you will automatically share your latest blog posts on various social networking websites.
Some of the security features include malware scanning, downtime monitoring, brute-force attack protection, spam filtering, and security scanning. Additionally, this plugin is updated constantly and adds on newer features.
Some of the hosting companies offer this plugin with the automatic WordPress installation. There is nothing that should prevent you from downloading this plugin after understanding all the benefits that it brings your way. For sure, Jetpack by WordPress.com is the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
Features of Jetpack by WordPress.com
- Engagement
- Customization
- Performance optimization
- Analytics and SEO
- Backup and restore
- Security
- Monetization
- Publishing
8. All in One WP Security and Firewall
No matter the effort that you put in to improve the performance of your website SEO, everything will sink if your website is not secure. It explains why you need the All in One WP Security and Firewall plugin.
WordPress, by itself, is a secure platform. However, there isn’t a wrong thing if you choose to add another security later on it. For this reason, you can install this plugin to enhance the security of your website. It is a tool that is completely free to use.
It comes with a password strength tool to help you in creating very strong passwords. The plugin also protects your website against the Brute Force login attack.
This tool automatically locks out any IP address that attempts to use an invalid username to login to your website. With the tool, you will automatically add the re-Captcha option in the different input fields.
Some of the features that you will love are the Security point breakdown and Security Strength Meter. This plugin will also show the real-time security strength of your website. These are some of the features that anyone who owns a website will not want to miss.
We have some people who avoid installing dedicated security plugin for their WordPress websites. However, according to me, if you are shopping for the best WordPress SEO plugins, you have to include a security plugin on the list. It will make sure that you have a secure website all the time.
Features of All In One WP Security & Firewall
- Automated backups
- Protection against the ‘Brute Force Login Attack’
- Restores and migrations
- Configurable Time for Force logout
- Security scanning
- Monitor or view account activities for all user accounts
- Expert support
- Adding Google reCaptcha to your WordPress login form
9. W3 Total Cache
As we have stated below, it is obvious that speed is one of the most important aspects that everyone should have on his or her website.
Both searchers and the search engine love the element of speed. It explains why Google includes it in the search rankings. Slower websites rank low while the fast ones rank highly in the SERP.
WordPress uses PHP programming language as the main server-side programming language to write its databases. When a user lands on your website and requests for a page, the WordPress based website will run PHP scripts in your server and then fetch the relevant page displaying it.
The resource-hungry process is very slow and it can even become slower if your website is hosted on a hosting environment that is shared. In such a case, what can assist you out is a caching plugin.
Caching plugins perform their tasks in an intelligent manner and stores a version of all the pages in the cache. When users visit your site and request for a particular page, they will be served with the cached version.
It eliminates the resource-intensive PHP scripts to run. You will be able to observe a fast loading speed and your server will become highly responsive.
W3 Total Cache has more than one million active installations which make it to be the most famous plugin in the WordPress repo.
Once you install, the setup process is a bit complex and you can fall into the puzzle by seeing the options easily. It has so many options that can be quite confusing at some point.
The most important option that you should not forget to enable is the page caching one. Once you enable this option, this plugin will begin to store the pages in its cache memory and also serve the same pages to those who visit your website.
Each time you update a page, it will store the updates page in the cache memory and hence serve the updated page and not the old one. According to this developer of this plugin, users experience a minimum of ten times improvement in the overall performance of their website.
Even though this claim appears to be a bold one, you can analyze the difference after installing and configuring it on your website. We have some hosting providers who offer support for the automatic caching feature. Therefore, if the hosting service provider gives you this option, do not hesitate to grab the opportunity.
You will get this plugin for free and it comes with so many features. In case you need more, you can choose to go for the paid version. Installing this SEO plugin can be one of the best ways to boost your SEO efforts. There are clear steps on how you can install this plugin. There is a clear tutorial on how to install the W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin on your Website.
Features of W3 Total Cache
- Improved performance of the webserver
- Minification of CSS and JavaScript
- Reduced page load time
- Magnification of feeds, posts, and pages
- CDN (transparent content delivery network) management
- SSL (secure socket layer) support
- Support for AMP (accelerated mobile pages)
- Compatible with all forms of hosting
10. Ultimate Nofollow
One of the most important Google ranking factors is a backlink. There are so many outgoing links on any blog or website. Google is extremely curious to learn more about the link that is on your website. Therefore, the Ultimate Nofollow link is the best SEO plugin for WordPress for any website owner.
In the SEO world, Dofollow links will pass link juice and the Nofollow links don’t pass any link juice. No one wants to have a site that is a link manipulation hub. Google is highly attentive to this particular issue.
If you do affiliate marketing for your blog, there is a thumb rule that requires you to make affiliate links as the Nofollow. When you make a link Nofollow, it will tell Google that it should not passant the link juice to the given link.
The challenge with WordPress is that it does not give you the option of making a link Nofollow by default. It is a painful process to ass the ‘real Nofollow’ tags manually to several links in your content in the code.
At this point, the Ultimate Nofollow links come is as the best WordPress SEO plugin. It gives users an additional checkbox in WordPress to mark while creating links.
To add to this, you can either add or remove the Nofollow tags from all the links that are present in the comments. Some of the links also place the Nofollow tags in the comment section of links. It is a plugin that you should not miss on your WordPress website.
Features of Ultimate Nofollow
- Addition of the Nofollow checkbox while inserting links in posts
- So many Nofollow shortcodes
- Remove or add Nofollow tags from all the links in the comments
- Nofollow for all the blogroll links alternative
Buyer’s Guide: How to Choose the Best WordPress SEO Plugin
The best thing about WordPress is that it gives users maximum control over their content. You don’t need any coding skills to use this platform to publish your content. Therefore, you can do everything with WordPress out of the box.
If you really desire your visitors to view your content, you should optimize it for the search engine. You can achieve the objective by using the best WordPress SEO plugin.
SEO is among the most important ranking factors for any website. Whether you are running a company portfolio, a static website, or a WordPress website, you need on-page SEO optimization to make sure that both the search engine and Google consider your site for top ranking. Here are some of the top qualities that define the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
Efficient and Clean Code
The best WordPress SEO plugin comes with a clean code that doesn’t have any irrelevant JavaScript or CSS entities. It will make sure that the SEO plugin is fast and efficient by increasing the loading speed of your website.
The plugin codes should be will commented on all the time to make sure that it is understandable. The clean code is a basic element that assists WordPress to perform its role properly.
Multiple SEO Features
The best plugin will have more than one SEO features to help you reduce the number of SEO plugins on your website. There are so many single feature SEO plugins that only carry out a single task. On the other hand, the best WordPress SEO plugin will have a host of features that make an effective and complete plugin that handles multiple tasks.
If you install so many plugins on your website, it will increase its loading time hence compromising on the user experience. Therefore, it is a better move to use a single plugin that has multiple features.
Extensive Documentation
Detailed documentation is crucial as it assists the user in installing and using the plugin without any difficulties. You can get these documentations in the form of articles or guides with full details and images.
You will learn how to install, configure, and even update the plugin. Most of these WordPress SEO plugins come with an admin dashboard where you do the configuration. The best WordPress SEO plugin will have all the instructions that users need including how to carry our every setting.
Excellent Customer Service
The best WordPress SEO plugin should come with excellent customer support that helps in solving the difficulties that customers go through. Some of the free WordPress SEO plugins that you get in the company’s respiratory come with free support.
Choose the tools that come with the support forum that will help users to understand the most common challenges that are associated with the plugin. You will also get insights on how to solve all these issues.
Good Reviews and Ratings
All WordPress SEO plugins collect ratings and reviews from the users. This information act as an essential guide to help you assess the value that is in a certain tool. It will help you differentiate the best SEO plugin for WordPress from the worthless ones.
You can read the reviews of WordPress plugins from the product page. It will help you know whether the plugin is supported well or not. You should never ignore the opinion of previous users when shopping for the best WordPress SEO plugin.
Regular Updates
You have to update your plugins frequently to be sure that it is compatible with the modern version of WordPress. If your plugin isn’t updated for a long period, your site may become incompatible with the main WordPress files and other plugins.
A plugin that is not up to date can also compromise the security of your website and even result in hacking. Therefore, don’t accept to compromise on the updates of the plugin if you want to get the best WordPress SEO plugin for your website.
You can observe the changelogs of the plugins to check whether the WordPress SEO plugin is updated regularly and check the changes that have been made so far. Make sure the plugin is up to date so that it can give you the best service.
Plugin Compatibility
If the plugin that you choose is not compatible with the other plugins, it can result in the death of your WordPress screen or any other error that can lead to the crashing of your website. Therefore, make sure you are using a plugin that is highly compatible with the other plugins from WordPress. SEO plugins that use JavaScript libraries have a higher possibility of coursing these issues.
Conclusion
This article presents some of the best WordPress SEO plugins. However, it does not mean that you need to install all of them on your website. Each WordPress plugin works differently and hence you need to pick the one that will meet your needs with the highest level of precision.
SEO is a never-ending process and hence you should keep on trying new plugins and methods to improve the traffic and ranking of your website. Millions of people globally are using the above plugins on their websites.
I know you could have used some of them before. The secret is to search for a WordPress plugin that matches your needs on the list. Once you came to a conclusion, feel free to start using the tool.
Read also:
- Best WordPress Backup Plugins
- Best Free Ecommerce WordPress Themes
- Best WordPress Slider Plugins
- Best WordPress Database Plugins
- Best Free Shopify Themes
- Best Free Photography WordPress Themes
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