Best WordPress SEO Plugins – Top 6
Someone stated, “The second page of Google Search is the best place to hide your secrets!!” This quotation focuses more on the importance of SEO in modern times than anything else. Your posts might as well not be ranking on the landing page of Google search. But don’t panic. SEO can do the job for you. So, if you want to learn about SEO and the best WordPress SEO plugins, you are at the right place.
Let’s start with “what is SEO”?
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a term used to describe strategies that raise a website’s rank in search engine results pages. Doing SEO the right way, people using search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing to find answers to problems your company can solve, will have a higher probability of coming across your website.
Essential Elements For SEO Marketing
The following are the essential elements for SEO marketing.
- Keywords: Keywords are no longer the only SEO technique that matters, but they need to be more critical. The difference today is that keywords must be well-researched, carefully chosen, and used wisely in your content to be effective.
- Content: Content is the king in SEO since it is how you reach and engage people. Knowing your angle and creating content that meets the bill is critical.
- Off-Page SEO: Off-page SEO is optimizing things outside your site rather than on it. Backlink building is the basic approach adopted for off-page SEO. Building excellent backlinks to your site from other high-authority websites informs search engines that your site is resourceful and high-quality, which helps to establish your authority.
- Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is paid marketing. It includes native ads, Google AdWords, ads on social media, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, ads on Google Shopping, display ads, and more.
- Local SEO: As more and more people search on their phones, local SEO is becoming more and more necessary. 60% of all searches are done on a mobile device, and almost half of those are for local information. So, if you own a restaurant, local SEO would make sure that your site comes up when people in your area search for the best restaurants in town.
So, these were some essential elements for SEO marketing. Now, let’s just look deep into the importance of SEO for modern websites.
Importance of SEO for Modern Websites
SEO is the best and most cost-effective way to understand customers and reach them at important moments. Many companies and brands know the importance of SEO for their online presence and the advantages of having SEO work done for them.
There is no doubt that SEO will increase a website’s general searchability and visibility, but what extra benefits does it provide?
Let’s talk about some of the reasons why businesses need SEO to build their brands.
1) Trust & Credibility
Any skilled SEO expert wants to make a good foundation for a beautiful website with a simple, effective user experience that is discoverable in search results.
SEO leads to higher rankings in search engine results, which improves the credibility of both the website and the business. If the website is on the second or third page, people may think that the company is new or that they need more time to win their trust. This could cause the business to lose money.
2) SEO is Quantifiable
In case you are wondering, you can measure SEO, and there are many ways to measure how well and how much a website has grown after optimization. Such as an increase in website traffic, a rise in a site’s ranking on search engine results pages, conversions and sales, etc.
3) More Effective Ads
You’ve all noticed that online advertisements may be jarring. But the purpose of these advertisements is to attract users to the website. You can simplify this via SEO, where people can reach your website after clicking an ad and stay on the website due to a optimized design.
4) SEO Outweigh the Costs
Even though SEO costs money, it is better to have an optimized site. A well-optimized website is easy to use and gets more people to interact with it. It is also as quick and concise as possible. This means that SEO is worth every penny it costs.
5) SEO Leads to Increased Conversions
A rise in traffic from SEO results in an increase in conversions and an improvement in the conversion rate. You can achieve this by ensuring that the website has an optimized design that gently and effectively prompts visitors to complete the necessary actions. Such as signing up for the newsletter, purchasing, scheduling an appointment, etc.
Besides, local businesses want to sell to people in their area. So, it is essential for them that their websites are optimized for search engines. This leads to more people going to their website and more direct sales.
6) Increases Organic Search Web Traffic
You might ask, “What is organic search?” These are the search results on Google that are not paid ads. Organic search is a big part of how well a website works and helps in getting visitors to convert. If you want your website to work, you need SEO because it is a significant source of Organic Search Traffic.
Now that we have learned the importance of SEO. Let’s move on to the easiest method to achieve it. That is using WordPress SEO plugins for your website. Following are some of the top ones available in the market to help you choose from.
Best WordPress SEO Plugins
Following are some of the best WordPress SEO plugins that can help your site rank higher in search results:
- YoastSEO
- All in One SEO
- Slim SEO
- RankMath
- Squirrly SEO
- SEO Press
- Broken Line Checker
Let’s have a look at each of them one by one.
1) Yoast SEO
Yoast is an extremely popular and surely one of the best WordPress SEO plugins. The plugin gives you a vast number of SEO features and options that you can use to make your website better for both search engines and visitors.
Based on SEO best practices, Yoast guides element management. One of the essential features of this plugin is the on-page SEO insights. It will tell you how to best use your target keyword. Whether you’ve used it enough on the page, and how to optimize your title, URL for the keyword, and meta description.
If you have a team of writers who work for you, they will love that this plugin puts the reader’s experience first and gives actionable tips for optimizing content. With Yoast, they can please both search engines and readers without having to remember every SEO best practice.
Yoast SEO has its website with premium support options, a thriving community in the forum, and an informative blog to learn more about SEO. Also included are the SEO courses for beginners, intermediate, and advanced users.
Besides, there is Yoast SEO premium that has more advanced features like keyword optimization for five keywords on a page, previewing how your page will look on Twitter and Facebook. Also, suggest internal links to send people to other parts of your website. Remember that this is a tiny part of the premium features.
Here are some key features of Yoast SEO.
Key Features
- Schema markup
- Access to free Yoast courses
- Language support
- Advanced XML sitemaps
- Breadcrumbs control
Pricing
Yoast SEO has both free and paid versions. Pricing starts at $99 per year for one website.
2) All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO)
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is among the best WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your whole site. It helps you increase your web page rankings and get more traffic from free sources. The plugin has excellent features that speed up and simplify all your SEO work.
AIOSEO generates and uploads XML sitemaps for your website to search engines. This guarantees that search engine crawlers correctly find and index your website’s content. It also gives a TruSEO score to each page on your site. This provides a summary of potential issues and instructions on resolving them.
You can optimize on-page SEO using AIOSEO by adding and enhancing meta titles, descriptions, and keywords, among other elements. You may instruct Google and other search engines how to reach your website using a robots.txt file.
Here are some key features of AIOSEO.
Key Features
- Smart XML Sitemaps
- Video SEO Sitemaps
- Local SEO
- Social Media Integration
- Rich Snippets Scheme
- Link Assistant
- WooCommerce SEO
- Redirection Manager
- SEO Audit Checklist
Pricing
AIOSEO has both free and premium options that start from $124/year with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
3) SLIM SEO
SLIM SEO is an excellent tool for those who want to improve SEO on their website. It provides you with powerful SEO tools and it’s very easy to use.
One of the main advantages of this plugin is that it’s very easy to set up. Actually, SLIM SEO configures and integrates automatically with your website, saving a lot of time and pain for site admins.
Despite its name, this tool includes most of the features an excellent SEO plugin needs. And it does so very efficiently. Thanks to its high-quality code, SLIM SEO is lightweight, helping your website performance and speed.
This is a great alternative for those who don’t have advanced SEO knowledge and find it difficult to configure the SEO options.
In addition, Slim SEO offers some useful addons such as Slim SEO Schema, the most powerful and flexible schema plugin for WordPress, and Slim SEO Link Manager, which helps build and manage all internal links.
Key features:
- Meta Tags Optimization
- Redirection
- XML Sitemap
- Header Footer Code
- Schema (Structured Data)
- Image Alt Text
- Breadcrumbs
- RSS Feed
Pricing
SLIM SEO is a free plugin that you can find in the official WordPress.org repository.
The SLIM SEO Schema and SLIM SEO Link Manager are premium add-ons that start at $39 per year.
4) RankMath
RankMath is another user-friendly SEO plugin. This plugin helps you to optimize your website for social media and search engines. This plugin combines the power of several SEO plugins you might already have on your WordPress site and puts them all into a single, lightweight, and easy-to-use plugin.
RankMath comes with Google Search Console and keyword ranking tools if you wish to outperform your rivals. Also, its integrated 404 monitor help in error correction for a better user experience.
Moreover, its module-based design allows you to choose the required functionality without overburdening your website with pointless features. Owing to its popularity, it ranks high among the best WordPress SEO plugins.
Here are some key features of RankMath.
Key Features
- Internal linking suggestions
- XML Sitemap
- Image SEO
- Support for unlimited keywords
- Schema markup
- Local SEO
- Advanced SEO auditing
- Redirect manager
- Breadcrumbs optimization
Pricing
RankMath has both free and premium versions. The Premium version starts from $129/year and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
5) Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO is an SEO tool for beginners that provides suggestions in real-time. This plugin helps you optimize content for your selected keywords while writing your content. Also, it analyzes your competitors and makes recommendations on how you may better compete with other pages.
Also, Squirrly SEO has innovative features to support your marketing initiatives. For instance, it analyzes audience engagement and provides helpful recommendations to raise click-through rates (CTRs).
Another exciting thing about Squirrly SEO is that if you switch from another SEO plugin, it will transfer all your current settings.
Here are some key features of Squirrly SEO.
Key Features.
- Custom Robot.txt for site crawlers
- Free coaching sessions
- Social media monitoring
- Sitemap XML
- Google Analytics integration
- ‘Noindex’ options
- Schema markup
- Advanced eCommerce features
Pricing
Squirrly comes in both free and premium versions. The Premium version starts from $71.99/month.
6) SEOPress
SEOPress is another one of the best WordPress SEO plugins that are white-labelled and free from ads. It is a premium SEO plugin that is simple, fast, and powerful. You can manage redirections, build your custom XML sitemap, analyze content based on keywords, and more. This plugin has comprehensive features that help you to optimize your site.
The plugin works with Google Analytics so that you can keep track of your SEO results. Also, its content analysis tool will help you write better posts by giving you real-time optimization tips. Developers can also add more hooks to the plugin to customize it.
Here are some key features of SEOPress.
Key Features
- Redirections and 404 monitoring
- Video and Google News XML sitemaps
- Google Analytics stats in your WordPress dashboard
- Local business SEO
- WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads optimizations
- Image SEO
- Social media monitoring
- Intuitive setup wizard
- Support for unlimited keywords
- ‘Noindex’ support
- Custom canonical URLs
- Free SEO tutorials
- Dynamic titles and meta descriptions
Pricing
SEOPress has both free and premium versions. The premium version costs $148/year and is suitable for many sites. It has advanced features for optimization for breadcrumbs, WooCommerce, and more. Besides, you are covered under a 14-day money-back guarantee.
7. Broken Link Checker
Broken Link Checker is a free and straightforward WordPress SEO plugin. This plugin is among the best WordPress SEO plugins that help you find broken links on your site and fix them. When google finds a broken link that opens a 404 page, it thinks there are better things for the user. After all, your customers want to stay on a full page.
Since making new content is the primary goal of most websites, you may find it hard to manage time to go back and fix old posts. This plugin can help you clean up your site in that way.
Broken Link Checker looks at all the published content in your WordPress archive and tells you about broken links and missing images. It checks internal and external links to ensure they work and can stop search engines from going to the wrong links.
The only problem with using Broken Link Checker is that it can slow down your site because it takes many resources to review your site’s links and check for errors.
Here are some key features of this plugin.
Key Features
- Broken Link Scan.
- Email report.
- Edit broken links.
- Scheduled Scan.
- Deep Scan.
- Edit Posts.
- Status of Broken Links.
- Redirect link report.
Pricing
Broken Link Checker has both free and premium versions. The Premium version starts from $99/year with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Conclusion
SEO is something that every site owner needs to do. With the right tool, you can keep track of your meta descriptions and optimize your content to rank for your chosen keyword. Thanks to the array of SEO plugins, this is now easy for WordPress users to do.
Recommendations
In this article, we have discussed the six best WordPress SEO plugins. Each plugin has its unique features.
Yoast SEO is the overall best SEO plugin for optimizing posts and pages individually. SEOPress is the best White-labeled SEO plugin. If optimization for social media and search engines is the goal, you can use RankMath.
We hope this article helped you in your quest. So which SEO plugin do you use? Tell us in the comment section below.
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