Are you starting to research the best SEO plugins for WordPress and wondering which ones will be best for your website?
Adding the right set of SEO plugins and tools to your WordPress website is the easiest way to get more organic traffic from search engines like Google. Even beginners without a lot of experience can get great results.
That said, WordPress site owners have a huge number of choices when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) plugins and tools. It can be hard to choose which one(s) to use!
Check out our roundup below of the best SEO plugins for WordPress to boost your site and page rankings. You’ll also discover the best SEO tools to use outside of WordPress for keyword research, image optimization, link analysis, and more.
How We Ranked The Best SEO Plugins
Before we dive into our list, here’s a quick look at how we chose the plugins and tools on our list:
- We tried them. We’re either actively using or have tried most of these ourselves!
- Reviews. We listen to what other users have to say and won’t recommend anything that consistently gets poor ratings about its functionality.
- Functionality. We’re looking for plugins with the best features and the most useful tools.
- Ease of Use. We don’t want you to install a plugin, try it out, and then uninstall it because it’s too complicated or unuser-friendly. All the plugins and tools on our list are user-friendly!
Alright, now that you know how we chose these plugins and tools, let’s get started!
The Best SEO Plugins & Tools for WordPress
- Overall Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
- Best SEO Analytics Tools
- Best SEO Keyword Research Tools
- Additional SEO Tools to Help Search Rankings
The Overall Best WordPress SEO Plugins
1. All in One SEO (AIOSEO)
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is our number one pick because it’s the best search engine optimization plugin for WordPress overall. With over 3 million users, AIOSEO is both popular and extremely powerful. It can handle many of the SEO tasks you have on your plate, all without requiring a developer.
AIOSEO checks all the boxes for website optimization:
- Advanced SEO for local businesses, eCommerce businesses, and images
- On-page SEO analysis and recommendations with TruSEO scoring
- Internal link assistant to optimize your internal linking structure and suggest new links
- Smart schema markup and sitemap generator
- Keyword rank tracking
- Author SEO
- And much more
When you have AIOSEO installed, every page and post on your site receives a TruSEO score after you input a focus keyphrase. This gives you a quick page analysis, alerts you to any potential SEO problems, and tells you how to fix them.
This makes it so you can easily optimize on-page SEO by adding and improving meta titles, descriptions, keywords, and more.
AIOSEO also automatically generates XML sitemaps for your website, ensuring that search crawlers properly find and index your website content. Additionally, this plugin has a feature that checks the indexing status of your posts and pages, so you can easily spot issues and fix them.
Another major SEO tactic you should think about is using schema. With AIOSEO, setting up schema is super easy.
AIOSEO can even connect your website with Google Search Console and provide organic traffic reports right in your WordPress dashboard.
Just like the name suggests, AIOSEO really is the best all-in-one SEO tool!
Get started with All in One SEO (AIOSEO) today!
2. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is another strong choice as one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. The plugin provides a large range of SEO features and options to optimize your site for search engines and visitors.
Yoast helps you create better content overall with its Content and SEO analysis feature. It checks every piece of content you write and shows you how it looks from the SEO and readability points of view. This helps to make both the search engine bots and your human readers happy!
Not only can you optimize your site’s on-page content for readability, but you can also:
- Create and submit a Google XML sitemap for better site indexing
- Add a focus keyword for your content
- Edit the meta description that appears in search results
- Find out how optimized your entire site is and get suggestions for improvement
- Set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content and Google penalties
- Control site breadcrumbs for better site navigation and site indexing
Additionally, it has several other more advanced features like internal linking suggestions, multiple focus keywords, Google Search Console integration, and more.
Get started with Yoast SEO today!
3. SEOPress
SEOPress is another popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It has a free version with basic SEO tools for optimizing titles, meta descriptions, and other content. SEOPress Free can also generate XML sitemaps and set up simple redirects.
The premium versions of SEOPress give you more advanced features such as eCommerce integrations, broken link monitoring, and structured data schema types. Like AIOSEO, it can connect with Google Search Console. However, that’s actually a separate plugin called SEOPress Insights.
Overall, SEOPress is a good SEO plugin that’ll help you optimize your site to appear in search.
Get started with SEOPress today!
4. Rank Math
One final alternative in the running for best WordPress SEO plugins is Rank Math. While it offers some similar functions as All in One SEO and Yoast SEO, it has a different look and feel from those tools and some extra features.
Like all the best SEO plugins for WordPress, Rank Math can evaluate and improve page titles, meta descriptions, and keyword usage. It also offers an artificial intelligence component called Content AI that analyzes existing web content and gives you suggestions on the fly to improve your content’s potential search ranking.
One con of Rank Math’s built-in AI tool is that it requires additional credits to use this feature. Every account level, from Free to Agency, includes a certain number of Content AI Credits. When you run out, you must purchase more to continue using Content AI.
If you want to explore one more option for SEO plugins for WordPress, Rank Math might be worth a look.
Get started with Rank Math today!
Best SEO Analytics Tools
5. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress for tracking how your SEO efforts are doing. It tracks your website performance and user behavior and shows you how well your optimization efforts are working to generate more traffic and higher conversion rates.
Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics tool on the market, but its complexity is a downside for some users. There are so many different options, reports, and settings that it takes a long time to figure out what you need and how to find it.
That’s why MonsterInsights is such a valuable tool for WordPress users who are working hard on their SEO. It’s the most user-friendly, most powerful Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. The plugin allows you to connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics and track your most important website statistics inside the WordPress dashboard.
MonsterInsights shows you how visitors behave when they’re on your site. This data helps you to improve your SEO strategies and rank better in search results. You can track different metrics, including:
- Most popular content on your site
- Your site’s top keywords (by connecting to Google Search Console)
- Top referral sites that link back to your site
- Top outbound links from your site
- Top affiliate link clicks
- Traffic channels
- Top landing pages
- Campaign traffic
- And much more
For more details, see our guide on the 10 Best Ways to Measure SEO Performance in Google Analytics.
Additionally, MonsterInsights makes Google Analytics even easier with two new AI features: Conversations AI and AI Insights.
Conversations AI allows you to interact with your Google Analytics data through simple questions. Instead of navigating through numerous reports, just ask Conversations AI for the specific information you need.
For instance, you might ask about your site’s best-performing articles or top traffic sources and get instant, accurate answers:
MonsterInsights also offers connections with All in One SEO, Yoast SEO, and Semrush, so you can see vital SEO information at the same time you’re viewing your other site metrics. These integrations give you the ability to track on-page SEO scores, focus keywords, competitor keywords, and more.
Get started with MonsterInsights today!
6. Google Search Console
If you’re not using the free and powerful Google Search Console tool, you’re missing out on vital data that can help your search result rankings.
Search Console tells you exactly how your website is performing in terms of Google indexing and organic search. For example, you can do the following:
- Submit a sitemap and new content for indexing
- Hide content from Google indexing to avoid duplicate content
- Find and fix malware and spam issues
- See which search terms people use to find your web pages
- Find out what other sites are linking to your website
- See how mobile-friendly your site is and how fast it loads
For details on setting up Search Console, see our guide on how to connect your WordPress site with Google Search Console. Better yet, if you use MonsterInsights you can view highlights in the Search Console Report right in your WordPress dashboard.
Find out your site’s top Google search terms along with clicks, impressions, CTR, and average search result position. Here’s a sample of the MonsterInsights Search Console Report data:
Get started with Search Console today!
7. Google PageSpeed Insights
Site loading time plays a significant role in your website search result rankings. Slow loading times affect the user experience and can increase your site’s bounce rate.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a tool that shows you exactly how fast different elements of your website load. All you have to do is enter your site’s URL and PageSpeed Insights will check your website and generate a detailed report.
If there are any issues with your site’s speed or performance, this SEO tool should help you identify the source of the problem.
This simplicity and wealth of information make PageSpeed Insights one of the best SEO tools to diagnose and optimize your website’s loading performance.
If you have MonsterInsights, you can see a few of the most important speed stats inside your WordPress dashboard.
Just click on the Site Speed report and find loading speeds for mobile and desktop. You’ll see site speed metrics, an overall speed score, and actionable recommendations to boost your loading speed and improve user experience.
Get started with PageSpeed Insights!
8. SEOquake
SEOquake is a web browser addon made by Semrush that will show you some basic SEO analysis right in your browser window.
You can install the addon to Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge browsers to see a mix of SEO properties and metrics for any web page or domain.
With this tool, you can also conduct simple on-page SEO audits on your web pages, which allows you to identify and fix potential issues.
SEOQuake has a link examiner tool that shows you details for both internal and external links. Plus, it allows you to see a web page’s backlinks, last crawled date, Alexa rank, and much more.
We recommend this handy SEO tool to get a quick overview of your site’s optimization, and for conducting competitor research.
Get started with SEOquake today!
Best SEO Keyword Research Tools
9. SEOBoost
SEOBoost is an AI-powered content optimization and management tool that helps you research, optimize, and manage SEO content from start to finish.
In your SEOBoost dashboard, you can do everything from seeing the competitors and the average number of words in ranked articles for a keyword to getting keyword and phrase suggestions for an article based on all the search competitors.
Start by creating a content report to see what the average word count, reading level, and keyword frequency are for your focus keyword.
Then, head to the Content Optimization tab to find out what keywords your content is missing, what your readability level is, how your word count compares to top-ranking articles, whether your headings are optimized, and much more.
SEOBoost goes beyond simple keyword research to provide an entire set of content optimization tools.
Get started with SEOBoost today!
10. Semrush
Semrush is a powerful SEO and marketing tool and a favorite among SEO professionals. It’s the best SEO keyword research tool you can get your hands on.
It comes with a full set of features to supercharge your site’s SEO, content marketing, social media, and paid traffic. Semrush also provides a WordPress SEO plugin called Writing Assistant that helps you analyze and optimize your content inside the WordPress page editor.
This premium service lets you analyze keywords for search volume so you can know which keywords to add to your content and which keywords to bid on if you use Google Ads.
Plus, it lets you research other URLs, like your competition’s, so you can see what keywords they are targeting and their rankings for those keywords. This information helps you develop new strategies and tactics to improve your own site’s rankings.
For example, you can use new keywords to create marketing content that’s more appealing to your target audience. Or, use backlink research to request links from sites that already link to your competitors.
Using the right keywords on your website to attract your ideal audience will not only help you with search rankings but also help you grow your business and attract more loyal followers.
Get started with Semrush today!
11. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the best WordPress SEO tools for anyone from SEO experts to small business owners. It allows you to audit and optimize your site and reveals your competitor sites’ SEO performance and keywords. With these insights, you can learn what you need to do to outrank your competitors.
Using Ahrefs, you can see detailed organic search reports, including your top organic keywords, their position in the search results, rank movement over time, competing pages, and so on.
Similarly, Ahrefs has advanced backlink research options that allow you to see the full backlink profile for any site. You can see all the links pointing to a particular site, anchor text for the backlinks, referring pages, and other details.
There are many more options for keyword research, content research, rank tracking, and web monitoring in Ahrefs. It’s a great tool to boost your site’s SEO and organic search traffic.
Get started with Ahrefs today!
12. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is also one of the best SEO tools for WordPress. Keyword Planner was designed to help Google Ads users find keywords to target with their ads. However, it has a lot of SEO value in finding new keywords for your business website or blog, too. Although you must sign up for a Google Ads account to use this tool, you can pause any campaigns you create without spending any money.
To use Google Ads Keyword Planner, simply enter words, phrases, or a URL related to your business and start your search. Then, you’ll see the top keywords with average monthly searches on Google.
Plus, you can see bidding amounts and competition levels. Although the bidding value is designed for advertisers, you can learn a lot about how much competition there is for specific keywords.
Keyword Planner is a free tool offered by Google, based on their vast amounts of search and advertiser data. Thus, you get precise information about keyword search volume, advertiser interest, and your competition without spending any money.
All of these factors make Keyword Planner a great tool for improving your keyword research and SEO results.
For step-by-step instructions on using Google Keyword Planner, check out How to Use Google Keyword Planner (A Step-by-Step Guide).
Get started with Google Keyword Planner today!
Additional SEO Tools for WordPress
13. Broken Link Checker
Broken Link Checker is a WordPress SEO plugin from AIOSEO that regularly checks your site content to find broken links and help you fix them easily.
Bad links don’t just create a terrible impression among site visitors; they also harm your site’s SEO. Google and other search engines view broken links as a poor user experience, which can lead to lower search rankings.
Since most websites focus on creating new content as a priority, it’s often hard to find time to review and update old posts. That’s where this plugin helps with your site housekeeping.
Broken Link Checker saves you time with auto SEO for WordPress links. It analyzes your entire WordPress archive of published content (or you can specify the content to check) and notifies you about broken links.
It checks the validity of both internal and external links, and it will stop search engines from following bad links until they’re fixed. Plus, it saves you a ton of time by letting you use inline editing to fix broken links, so you don’t have to open and edit individual posts.
Get started with Broken Link Checker today!
14. Moz Link Explorer
Link Explorer is a powerful off-page SEO tool created by Moz. It includes a host of features for backlink analysis, competitor research, and link building.
The number and quality of backlinks pointing to your site are incredibly important for getting high search engine rankings for your web pages.
With this tool, you can quickly discover all the links pointing to your web pages, as well as find out who links to your competitors’ pages. This lets you target the best websites for requesting links back to your site.
Moz’s Link Explorer also finds lost and broken links, gives you Moz Page Authority and Domain Authority scores, and helps you find the top-performing content on your site and others.
You can search up to 10 queries every month with a free Moz account. To unlock full access and features, you’ll need to subscribe to Moz Pro.
Get started with Link Explorer today!
15. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best WordPress cache plugin on the market. A caching plugin speeds up the loading of your site’s most commonly accessed files to boost website performance. Since speed is a key Google ranking factor, a caching plugin is a must-have plugin.
WP Rocket comes with powerful features like gzip compression, page cache, and cache pre-loading. This plugin also supports lazy loading images, CDN for WordPress, DNS pre-fetching, and more to further improve page load times.
Get started with WP Rocket today!
16. Schema Pro
Schema Pro is a schema plugin for WordPress that can help you set up schema quickly and easily, with zero coding required.
Schema is an awesome way to boost your website’s SEO. It helps you get special extras to show up in search results, like recipes, reviews, FAQs, products, and more.
Schema Pro is easy to set up, includes all the schema types you need, and it can even automate your schema markup. You’ll be seeing rich snippet results in Google’s search results in no time!
Get started with Schema Pro today!
What Is the Best SEO Plugin for WordPress?
We reviewed quite a few SEO plugins and tools, but our favorite is AIOSEO. All in One SEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress because its robust features, like automatic XML sitemaps, rich schema markup, on-page SEO analysis with a TruSEO score, a robots.txt editor, an internal link-building tool, and much more, make it a must-use plugin for improving your SEO and search rankings. It’s got different license levels too, so you can grab just the features you need for your unique website.
Plus, we love the handy checklist provided in the editor with suggestions for how to improve your content’s SEO. And, AIOSEO’s seamless integrations with Semrush for keyword research, MonsterInsights to easily track keyword performance in WordPress, and WooCommerce to optimize categories and product pages are the icing on top!
Well, that’s it for this article!
We hope this article helped you find the best SEO plugins and tools to increase your website’s search engine performance.
If you liked this article, you might also want to check out:
How to Use Google Search Console for Keyword Research
Quick-Start Guide to Topical Authority in SEO
The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Visibility
7 Best Free Keyword Generator Tools to Master SEO
Finally, don’t forget to follow us on YouTube for more helpful reviews, tutorials, and Google Analytics tips.
Great article, thanks. You helped me figure out all these plugins. I installed 3 plugins at once, which duplicated each other. The site was very slow. Then I realized my mistake and started looking for advice on the best SEO plugin. Now I know which plugin I need. Thanks guys! Great article)
Hi Andy,
Thank you for the kind words! 🙂
I am using the Yoast SEO pack right now. I just switched to WordPress, so I am still learning the ropes of all the plug-ins.! Thanks for all of these posts. It’s really helpful.
Sudhir from India
I started making my site. But I’m a beginner. That is, I have no experience, I am experimenting and hope for success)))))) Now I am choosing a plugin for seo. Your article answered many of my questions and made my life easier. Thanks guys!
All great SEO tips! Very helpful in making a great site!
Article is very much informative. Thank You for this.