15 Best WordPress SEO Plugins in 2024 (To Boost SEO)

There is always an uphill battle between websites to take the top spots for SERP.

Then who would get the dream top positions for a targeted search query?

This is where the concept of Search Engine Optimization, or the popularly known term SEO, comes into play. 

To be honest, SEO is quite a lengthy process and demands a lot of tasks.

So it is obvious to skip some fundamental optimization processes.

Thanks to SEO plugins for making life easier for WordPress websites.

Under a single umbrella, you can optimize web pages for higher ranking in search results.

Moreover, everything can be done without leaving the WordPress dashboard.

We are getting a lot of requests for covering the topic best SEO plugin for WordPress.

So we decided to create a cluttered list of plugins that would be helpful for on-page optimization.

We will discuss all the highlighted features for each plugin. 

So let’s get started.

15 Best WordPress SEO Plugins

Creating a website and adding content is just one-half of the race.

So you are bound to follow fundamental SEO practices to make webpages more search engine friendly. 

There is a garden of plugins calming themselves as the best SEO plugin for WordPress. So we have done extensive research and tests on actual websites. 

On the surface level, you can differentiate these plugins into two categories.

In the first category, we can include plugins that feature various optimizations like headings, meta descriptions, customized URLs, readability, etc.

On the other hand, we can include plugins for specific uses like XML sitemap, link redirection, keyword rank tracking, schema markup, image optimization, etc.

So we have to cover both categories of plugins. Here are the recommended plugins to achieve a better ranking.

1. Rank Math SEO

Rank Math SEO is one of the most powerful all-in-one SEO plugins for WordPress. It offers tons of great features and has millions of active downloads.

This plugin is absolutely helpful and just takes a few minutes to complete the initial setup.

Rank Math SEO was developed by MyThemeShop and has taken the SEO industry by storm.

One of the significant reasons why pro bloggers and website owners are migrating from legacy plugins to Rank Math SEO is that it allows you to optimize a post for 5 keywords.

When you enter a target keyword, it shows LSI keywords automatically.

Targeting multiple keywords increases the chances of featuring for more search queries.

You can set SEO titles and meta descriptions for individual pieces of content.

This SEO plugin allows you to connect your website with Google Search Console and submit an XML sitemap automatically.

An advanced redirection manager allows you to set various redirections to avoid broken links. You can run an in-depth SEO analysis to figure out issues based on 30 known factors.

Get access to 20+ schema types, including FAQs, how-to, etc.

This WordPress SEO plugin shows all the vital information, like keyword position, clicks, impressions, etc., inside your WordPress Admin dashboard.

If you want to have a feature-packed SEO plugin to supercharge your ranking, then our recommendation would be Rank Math SEO. 

2. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is another popular WordPress SEO plugin.

Over 5 million websites worldwide are using the plugin to get a higher ranking. A clean user interface and easy setup process make it an appealing choice for any level of user. 

You can set the SEO title and meta description for a post. Select a focus keyword, and Yoast SEO will show various suggestions.

Color-coded suggestions help you to improve your SEO score. The readability score is assigned based on your content and how easy to read for your reader. 

This SEO plugin automatically creates an XML sitemap and keeps it updated when you publish a new post.

If you don’t want to index a page, then add a no-index tag in one click.

The social preview option allows you to see posts when shared on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Schema markup would be added automatically to your pages. Get access to free courses to sharpen your content optimization skill.

3. Site Kit by Google

Google is the biggest search engine in the world and handles billions of searches. The search engine giant offers various tools to check how your website is performing.

You don’t have to install multiple plugins for this because Site Kit by Google contains them all.

Get real-time insights from different Google Products like Search Console, Analytics, AdSense, PageSpeed Insights, Tag Manager, etc.

So you can see easy-to-digest stats directly on your WordPress admin dashboard.

No need to switch tabs and open these tools’ websites separately. Just authorize your website in a few clicks, and stats will keep flowing.

Google Search Console shows the stats like impressions, CTR, and clicks your queries/pages are getting. Analytics shows the visitor’s demographics, real-time visitors count, time spent on a page, etc.

AdSense shows the earnings received from display ads. PageSpeed Insights tool helps you to figure out the page loading speed compared to other sites.

Manage your tags easily without touching a single line of code using Tag Manager.

4. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the SEO tools that doesn’t need a lengthy introduction. Ahrefs has emerged from a basic link-building feature to complete an all-in-one SEO analysis tool.

So it would be a great addition to your SEO process and help for driving more visitors.

You can count it among the best SEO plugin for WordPress because of its basket full of advantages. Site Explorer is the most demanding feature.

Enter your competitor’s website, and it shows the traffic, backlinks, top-ranking keywords, etc. As you know, backlinks are among the most important factors in ranking a webpage.

So complete backlink profile extracted by Ahrefs would be very beneficial.

Keyword research should be your top priority when it comes to search engine optimization.

The elite Keyword Explorer feature of Ahrefs shows how many people are searching for a keyword and determine how difficult to rank your page for that keyword, LSI keywords, etc. 

Content gap analysis is another interesting feature I found here. It shows the keywords and pages your competitors are targeting, but you are not.

Find critical technical SEO issues in your website using the Site Audit feature. Ahrefs rank tracking tool keeps an eye on a bunch of keywords and ranking changes over time.

You can use the WordPress plugin, but the website would be more reliable.  

5. SEOPress

SEOPress is another on-page SEO plugin to boost your website ranking. Currently, this plugin has over 200K active installations as per WordPress repository official stats.

The setup wizard guides you to configure basic things in a few seconds. 

You can manually add meta descriptions and SEO titles for individual pages. Otherwise, SEOPress uses OpenAI to generate SEO metadata based on the content.

The content analysis feature helps you to optimize content that Google loves.

This feature checks 16 parameters like heading, meta data, internal links, alternative text on images, etc. 

SEOPress automatically creates XML and HTML sitemaps for search engines. You can additionally include video and images in the sitemap.

Schema markups are very important for rich snippets. This SEO Plugin allows you to add a variety of structured data like local businesses, videos, recipes, FAQs, etc. 

Never struggle with 404 errors on your website, as SEOPress has an in-built redirection manager.

Integrate this plugin with your favorite page builder, e-commerce, and analytics tools and unlock more functionalities. 

6. Redirection

URL changes happen when we restructure a website or update old content. So if a visitor access the old URL, the website would show a 404 error.

This error negatively impacts user experience, which is considered as bad in search engine optimization.

To solve this issue, you can use the Redirection WordPress plugin. This plugin simply redirects visitors’ old page to the new location automatically.

You don’t have to dive into the technical side and use your site’s .htaccess file.

The user-friendly interface helps you to set permanent 301 or temporary 302 redirects. 

The redirection WordPress plugin is completely free and takes a few clicks to set up.

Broken links in your website also create crawling issues that hurt your SEO efforts.

Track all the 404 errors that occur on your website, and you can set bulk redirects. 

7. Smush

Webpage loading speed is considered one of the important ranking factors. Although the loading speed depends on various factors, images have a vital role.

If you upload high-quality images directly to your website, then it would take enough space and longer to load.

Thanks to Smush for offering a powerful plugin to compress images. It is absolutely free and saves a lot of time that might have been utilized for optimization.

When you install the plugin and upload an image, Smush will automatically compress it. The compression won’t affect the image quality.

The lazy loading feature show images when the visitor scrolls the page. There is no daily or monthly limitation on the number of images. 

8. Sitemap Generator for Google

Sitemap helps search engines easily navigate through your website.

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a widely used format in sitemap. Sitemap Generator for Google plugin automatically generates nicely structured sitemaps.

It supports custom post types and taxonomies. The user-friendly interface allows you to create search engine-friendly sitemaps in a few clicks.

When a new post is published, the plugin automatically adds to the sitemap and informs search engines.

So search engines like Google can easily discover your page and index it quickly.

9. Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP

It is very easy to get lost on the Google search results page, although you have strong search engine optimization.

To avoid this scenario, you should adopt schema markup.

This helps search engines understand the information on the webpage. 

You must have seen a rich snippet shown when searching for local queries. Schema markup is responsible for this.

To achieve such a rich snippet, you can use Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP.

This is the highest-rated and most downloaded plugin in the schema category. 

Get access to 35 popular schema types such as blog posting, local business, recipe, product, and much more. You would have complete control over the output of schema markup.

This plugin allows you to import data from other schema plugins if you are using it. AMP compatibility makes it a perfect choice for mobile-friendly pages.

10. All-in-One SEO

All in One SEO is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress, having 3 million plus active downloads. It is very powerful but comes with a user-friendly admin interface.

This all-around plugin takes care of everything you need to improve the ranking of your website.

The initial setup takes a few seconds, and you just have to click a few buttons. Then you can see the SEO health score of the entire website.

You have to pay special attention to the critical issues that could hamper your website ranking. Set up the knowledge graph information with essential metadata about your business. 

Proper on-page SEO suggestions help you to create search engine-friendly content.

All-in-One SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap and notifies search engines when existing pages are updated, or new pages are added.

You would get advanced WooCommerce SEO features to fine-tune product pages. 

Built-in redirection manager lets you easily manage broken links. AIOSEO also supports a variety of schema markups to achieve rich snippets.

Get robust suggestions for adding internal links and enjoy the benefit of link juice. Social media integration allows you to modify the content appearance on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

11. The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework is one of the newest plugins in the WordPress SEO category. It crossed the landmark of 100K downloads very fast and got hundreds of 5-star reviews.

There are a lot of features packed inside the plugin to boost your organic ranking.

Add an SEO headline, and meta description, for each post with an easy-to-use interface. You can see the live preview and know how the post would look in search results.

Color-coded guidelines suggest how to improve the on-page SEO score. You can control the social appearance of individual content.

The SEO Framework has a built-in feature for adding a variety of schema markups. You would have complete control over the Robots.txt and define noindex tag to pages.

In the extension manager tag, you can see a lot of add-ons from the same developer.

12. Squirrly SEO

Searching for the best SEO plugin for WordPress? Then have a look at Squirrly SEO which stands with 200K active installations.

This plugin uses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to perfectly optimize your web pages. 

The SEO automation feature start adding commonly used post types for each post. The plugin automatically generates an SEO title and meta description based on your content.

Define the keyword you want to target, and Squirrly SEO start showing optimization recommendations.

A keyword research tool is equipped inside this plugin for searching low-competition keywords. You can monitor how the keywords are performing on search engines through a centralized dashboard.

The site audit tool analyses various things like SEO, traffic, links, etc, and provides personalized recommendations to improve them.

13. Broken Link Checker

In simple words, broken links are hyperlinks that point to a page that does not exist. The page might have deleted or changed the URL without redirection.

Broken links harm the website’s SEO. Google’s Quality Rating Guideline admits that the search engine checks broken links to determine the quality of a website.

So you can use Broken Link Checker for identifying such links. This plugin detects bad links faster with high accuracy.

More than 700K websites are using Broken Link Checker to detect inaccessible web pages. It is next to impossible to search for broken links if you have a huge website. 

This SEO plugin comes with no page lamination. You can define which links to check, and the plugin will work accordingly.

Run manual scans or schedule automatic scans to stay on top of broken links. After finding such a link, you can replace or redirect to a working page. 

14. LiteSpeed Cache

Google admitted that page speed is among the top factors in ranking pages. So the quicker your page loading time, the better ranking you can expect.

So you never wanted to put a bad user experience and rank lower. To accelerate the speed, you can use the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin. 

Website loading speed indeed depends on many factors, such as hosting, coding standards used, image optimization, etc.

If you don’t want to dive into the tech ocean and improve overall performance, then the LiteSpeed plugin would be great. This all-in-one plugin can work on any web server like LiteSpeed, Apache, NGINX, etc.

LiteSpeed Cache minifies CSS, Javascript, and HTML to load pages quickly. Responsive image placeholder and lazy loading images take care of image loading properly.

It supports multiple CDN that significantly improve website performance. You can check the page speed using Google PageSpeed Insights. 

15. Internal Link Juicer

Internal links are hyperlinks pointing to different pages of the same website. It is one of the most neglected SEO processes. But it has a remarkable role in boosting the overall SEO value of a website.

Rather than placing these links manually, you can automate the whole process using Internal Link Juicer.

Set your keywords and pages to link using the intuitive interface. You can configure the link behavior for a target keyword.

Then whenever you create a new post, the plugin looks for matching keywords on it.

Based on the defined keywords, appropriate page links would be placed automatically. However, you can customize the generated links.

Which SEO Plugin for WordPress Is The Best?

Do you know that more than 500K new websites add to the internet every day?

The number is very shocking, and how would your website get noticed in the sea of other websites?

Well, the simple and effective solution can be search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO contains multiple steps, and you should checkmark them to achieve a higher ranking.

SEO WordPress plugins come in handy here and guide you through the whole journey.

As we have discussed earlier, we can divide the plugins into two categories. I suggest you go with an all-in-one plugin first and then individual feature-based plugins second.

When it comes to all-in-one SEO plugins are some great names in the industry. But I prefer Rank Math SEO for its robust features and user-friendliness.

This plugin will help you to take wise optimization decisions following the latest SEO standards. 

According to the WordPress repository report, the plugin is used by over 1 million websites worldwide. Moreover, it is the first plugin to use AI in SEO.

The free version is good to go for entry-level users. But I would suggest spending a few bucks and buying the premium version.

It would unlock tons of features to attract more organic visitors to your website. Our special link would avail some additional discount with no extra cost. 

Conclusion of best WordPress SEO Plugin

So these are some of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. We have covered both all-in-one SEO plugins as well as dedicated single-feature ones.

SEO is a never-ending battle, and the landscape is changing beyond imagination.

So SEO plugins would keep on track of proper optimization and be ready for search engines. 

Frequently asked questions related to the best WordPress SEO Plugin

What is the best WordPress SEO plugin?

Rank Math is the best SEO plugin that comes with all the features you ever wanted. It features on-page optimization, keyword rank tracking, a smart redirection manager, schema markup, and much more. 

Should I use an SEO plugin in WordPress?

Yes, you should use SEO plugin in WordPress to rank your web pages higher in SERP. 

What is the best free SEO plugin for WordPress?

You can find a lot of options. But Rank Math is the best free SEO plugin for WordPress. 

How do I improve SEO on WordPress?

You can use SEO plugins like Rank Math to improve the overall SEO score of your website.

Are WordPress SEO plugins free?

There are some SEO plugins like Yoast, Rank Math, and All in One SEO that offers a free version. However, you can upgrade to the premium version to enjoy additional features.