We are often asked which are the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools we recommend. That's because search engines are one of the main sources of traffic to most websites on the internet.
Optimizing your website for search engines can help you rank higher in search results and thus significantly increase your business.
In this article, we'll share the best plugins as well as WordPress SEO tools you should use. Some of these tools offer similar functionality, so we'll also highlight which ones are best for specific use cases.
Things You Should Know About WordPress SEO Plugins and Tools
When reading SEO tips or searching for “best free WordPress SEO plugins,” you'll come across articles that feature several dozen tools.
The truth is, you don't need dozens of SEO tools to get higher search rankings.
Although most blog posts share the most popular SEO plugins, it is therefore extremely important that you understand the use cases for each tool.
For example, you never want to use more than one WordPress SEO plugin on your website. Let's mention All in One SEO, Yoast SEO, SEOPress and finally Rank Math. You need to choose only one to avoid plugin conflicts.
So let's take a look at the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.
All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO)
All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. Used by over 2 million users, it's the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps improve search rankings without learning any complicated SEO jargon.
It comes with the easiest setup wizard that automatically helps you choose the best SEO settings for your business. AIOSEO shows TruSEO analytics on the page with an actionable checklist to optimize your posts as well as pages.
The on-page SEO checklist includes a smart meta tag generator where you can use dynamic values (year, month, day, custom fields, copyright information, and more) in your SEO title and descriptions. This means that you don't need to update a post just to change SEO titles.
AIOSEO also comes with smart XML sites (with advanced controls), SEO health check, as well as other useful features to increase your search engine visibility.
There is a built-in social media integration to add Open Graph metadata as well.
That is, you can choose which image or thumbnail you want to show when your pages are shared on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.
AIOSEO also comes with built-in WooCommerce SEO tools for e-commerce sites.
This includes features like dynamic optimizations, individual product page optimizations, product image SEO, as well as other useful features to bring more organic traffic to your online store.
Experienced SEO Users
For more experienced SEO users, it includes full control of RSS feeds, Robots.text editor, local SEO, Google News sites, video SEO and more.
business owners
For business owners, it comes with SEO user functions, so you can manage access to important SEO features without handing over control of your website.
Overall, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the most beginner-friendly and comprehensive SEO plugin on the market. It eliminates the need to install various plugins to do things on your website and moreover it works perfectly for all types of businesses, eCommerce, blogs, news and other websites.
2. SEMRush
SEMRush is the best global SEO tool on the market. Used by professional SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, as well as businesses of all sizes, it provides a comprehensive set of tools to increase your traffic.
You can use it to find organic keywords, but also search terms that you can easily rank.
It also allows you to do competitive searches and see which keywords your competitors rank and how you can beat them.
SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant tool helps you improve your website content to surpass the top 10 results for your targeted keyword.
It integrates with WordPress, and this will help you write more SEO-friendly content.
3. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool provided by Google to help website owners monitor and maintain their websites' presence in Google's search results.
It alerts you when Google is unable to crawl and index your website pages. You will also receive helpful tips on how to fix these tracking errors.
Most importantly, it shows you what keywords your site is ranked for, anchor texts, average position, impressions, and more.
You can use this data to find keywords on which you can rank higher simply by optimizing your content.
You can also use this keyword data to come up with new blog post ideas.
4. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your WordPress website for search engines.
It allows you to easily add SEO titles and descriptions to every post and page on your website.
You can also use it to add Open Graph metadata and social media images to your articles.
Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for all of your website content, which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website.
It also helps you to easily import your SEO data if you are using another SEO plugin.
5. Google Keyword Planner
The Google Keyword Planner tool helps you generate your own keyword ideas from within Google itself.
No one on the planet has more information about what people are searching for than search giant Google.
This free tool is offered to Google advertisers for free and anyone can use it.
Its main purpose is to show advertisers the keywords they can bid on for their advertising campaigns.
It also helps advertisers choose the right keywords by showing them an estimate of search volume, number of results and level of difficulty.
As a content marketer or blogger, you can use this data to find keywords with high search volume, high advertiser interest, and most importantly, keywords where you can easily outperform all other sites.
6 Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a complete SEO tool for marketers, bloggers and businesses. It is a popular alternative to SEMRush and offers many similar tools and features.
It allows you to do keyword searches, competitive analysis, backlink searches, monitor keyword rankings and much more.
It also offers a detailed content analysis tool that helps you improve content while targeting specific keywords.
Although there is a huge resource overlap, what Ahrefs does very well is backlink analysis.
We can use it to see which sites are linking to various competitors, but not us. This helps us get more backlinks and build more partnerships.
They also help us identify what content several of our competitors are ranking for that we're not, so we can create content on those subjects to get more exposure.
Finally, Ahrefs helps us better identify duplicate content and keyword cannibalization that helps us merge and update the right content to boost our rankings.
7. SEO Press
SEOPress is another simple and powerful SEO plugin. It includes all the features you would expect from an SEO plugin like meta title, description, open graph support, images and XML content, redirects and much more.
It comes with a simple setup for beginners and advanced controls for more experienced users.
It is comparable to other top WordPress SEO plugins on the market in terms of features and options.
The paid version of the plugin is cheaper than some other premium WordPress SEO plugins on the market.
8. Rank Math
Rank Math is a fast growing WORDPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your website for search engines as well as social media.
It comes with a setup wizard and then lets you import data from other SEO plugins during setup.
You can use it to easily add Open Chart meta-title, description, and metadata to your blog posts.
The plugin also allows you to generate an XML sitemap, plug in Google Search Console and furthermore control access to plugin features based on user roles.
