Are you looking to take an active role in your website’s search engine optimization? Do you need to know what the best WordPress SEO plugins are? Then you’ve come to the right place!
Search engines are a significant source of traffic. So optimizing your website for search engines can play a significant role in its success. Doing so can help your content rank higher in search results, increase your site’s organic traffic, and help your business grow.
In this article, we have put together a list of what we think are the best SEO plugins and tools for your WordPress website. We will also explain some things you should know about SEO plugins and what they are.
Instead of listing all the SEO plugins and tools together for you to sort through, we have split them into two separate sections.
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If you’d like to jump to the section you’re looking for, a hyperlinked table of contents is available.
What is a WordPress SEO Plugin?
WordPress SEO Plugins are software extensions that plug into your WordPress website. They allow you to manage and perform SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tasks. These tasks include content optimization, tips to improve the quality of your content, readability, keyword use, and more.
The best WordPress SEO plugins will help you gain a deeper insight into your traffic sources and audience, which can help improve your content strategy and increase user engagement. SEO plugins can also help you find opportunities to improve your content ranking and readability by identifying its weaknesses.
Although SEO plugins for WordPress can help you optimize your content, it does not guarantee that your content will rank higher.
WordPress SEO plugins are designed to guide and help you improve your website by providing alerts, suggestions, and tools to help make your content more search engine friendly.
What You Should Know About the SEO Plugins and Tools on this list
You may be wondering if you can use more than one WordPress SEO plugin. The answer is no. You should only install 1 SEO plugin on your website. Using multiple SEO plugins can cause plugin conflicts, and usability issues, that will impact your website’s performance.
Best WordPress SEO Plugins
Below is a list of what TarttWeb thinks are the best SEO Plugins for WordPress that can help you improve the quality of your content and overall site health. Below we have provided a screenshot, a short description, and a list of top features that stand out for each.
RankMath
RankMath is a WordPress SEO Plugin relatively new to the market that went live in 2020. It includes a clean, user-friendly, intuitive design and many amazing premium features in its freemium version that has quickly propelled it to the top as one of the best WordPress SEO Plugins. It also offers an excellent onboarding process to help you choose the best settings for your site.
Key Features:
- Setup Wizard
- Content AI (Artificial Intelligence)
- Role Manager
- Smart Linking Suggestions
- 5 Focus Keywords
- Google Search Console & Analytics Integration
Yoast SEO
With more than 5 million active installs, Yoast SEO is another amazing plugin that offers many great features to help you maximize your Website’s SEO. It allows you to easily add SEO titles and descriptions to your posts and pages and includes helpful tips for optimizinging your content.
Key Features:
- Internal Linking Suggestions
- Keyword Optimization
- Full Control over Site Breadcrumbs
- XML Sitemaps
- Keyword Optimization
The SEO Framework
The SEO Framework is another great option to take control of your website’s SEO. This plugin is best known for its user-friendly design and simplicity. It includes lots of useful features that are preconfigured for easier management.
Key Features:
- Strict Privacy Policy
- Automated Meta Tags
- Overview Pages with Color-coded Guidelines
- Prevents Duplicated Content Mistakes
- Helps you Optimize your Metadata
SEOPress
SEOPress is another terrific option for managing your SEO. It includes all the features you would expect from an SEO plugin. It is equipped with a straightforward setup process for beginners and advanced controls for more experienced users.
Key Features:
- Installation Wizard
- Open Graph Support
- XML & HTML Sitemaps
- Redirects
- SEO Plugin Migration
- Google Analytics Integration
All in One SEO (AIOSEO)
AIOSEO is another popular SEO plugin with over 3 million active installs. This plugin includes many of the same great features that are included in other SEO plugins. It includes a setup wizard to help you choose the best settings for your website and offers an on-page analysis tool with an actionable checklist to optimize your posts and pages.
Key Features:
- Setup Wizard
- XML Sitemaps
- Open Graph
- Social Media Integration
- Google Search Console Integration
- Webmaster Tools Integration
Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO is a little different than the other SEO plugins mentioned here. This plugin is an AI-powered SEO suite that takes the guesswork out of search engine optimization. It offers all the same features as other SEO plugins but holds your hand along the way with a paint-by-numbers approach.
Key Features:
- Preconfigured Settings during Install
- Keyword Research
- Customized To-do’s from an AI Consultant
- Step-by-step Guidance
- Rank Tracking
- Site Audits
That’s it for our best WordPress SEO plugins. If you need help installing any of the plugins mentioned here, please read our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Now let us look at the best SEO tools you can use to optimize your website for search engines.
Best SEO Tools to Help You Improve Your Website
Below is a list of what TarttWeb thinks are the best SEO tools to help you increase your search rankings and grow your audience.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a great tool offered by Google to help webmasters and website owners maintain and monitor their website’s search results. Best of all it’s free!
It provides you with numerous tools to help you with your website’s online presence. For instance, you will get alerts when Google has problems indexing your site and will provide tips to fix crawl errors.
The best feature of Google Search Console is how it shows which keywords your website is ranking for, links, average position, and more. This data can be used to find keywords to rank higher by optimizing your content. You can also use the keyword data to help you create new content.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is another free tool for website owners that allows you to generate your own keyword ideas.
This free tool was created for Advertisers to allow them to bid on keywords for their advertising campaigns. It also helps advertisers to choose keywords based on search volume, number of results, and difficulty.
As a website owner, you can use this data to find keywords with high search volume to help you rank your content in Google’s search results.
To use this tool you will need to create an advertising account with Google.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools is a tool offered by Microsoft to help webmasters and website owners to maintain and manage their search results in the Bing search engine. This tool is similar to Google Search Console and is also free to use.
This tool allows you to monitor your Bing search performance, submit URLs, submit sitemaps, troubleshoot crawling and indexing issues, and more.
It also allows you to see what keywords your site is ranking for, do keyword research, get SEO reports, and view your website’s backlinks.
Even though Google is the most popular search engine it is still worth using Bing because every bit of traffic helps.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular website that offers a comprehensive set of SEO Analysis tools website owners can use to grow their traffic. It is an all-in-one suite that provides keyword research, backlink research, competition analysis, SEO Audits, and more. And many of their tools are free to use!
You can use their content analysis tool to improve your content while targeting keywords to help you outrank your competitors.
Ahrefs also has an amazing backlink analysis tool that you can use to check out who your competitors are linking to so that you can too. This can help you get more backlinks and more partnerships.
You can even use Ahrefs to peak into what content your competitors are ranking for so you can increase your exposure.
SEMRush
SEMRush is another popular tool on the market used by professional SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, and businesses to grow traffic. Like Ahrefs, SEMRush offers many of the same tools.
You can use it to find keywords and search terms to help you rank your content in search results. It also allows you to see what content your competitors are ranking for.
You can even use their SEO Writing Assistant tool to improve your content and increase your search engine ranking for your focus keyword which integrates with WordPress.
With SEMRush, you can even generate SEO templates and get simple search engine optimization suggestions along with advanced SEO recommendations for your content.
KeywordTool.io
KeywordTool.io is a free keyword research tool that allows you to generate keyword ideas by typing in a keyword. This tool is an alternative to Google Keyword Planner.
The keywords generated by this tool are gathered from Google’s autosuggest feature. You can also get keyword suggestions from YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and more.
Not only can you get keyword suggestions you can also get information like search volume, cost per click, keyword difficulty, and other data by upgrading to a paid plan.
SEOQuake
SEOQuake is a web browser add-on SEO tool. You can add it to Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. It is a toolbar that shows you SEO-related information when you visit a website.
You can see data like page health, age, last update, rank, and lots of other valuable information. It is one of the most downloaded browser add-ons among SEO professionals.
It can be used to conduct on-page SEO audits, examine internal/external links, compare multiple domains/URLs in real-time, data export, and more. You can also connect your SEMRush account to your SEOQuake toolbar.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use more than one WordPress SEO plugin?
The answer is no. You should only install 1 SEO plugin on your website. Using multiple SEO plugins can cause plugin conflicts, and usability issues, impact your site’s performance, and possibly break your site.
Do I need to use all the SEO tools listed here?
The answer is no. You do not need to use all the SEO tools listed here to achieve higher search engine rankings. What’s important is to understand each of the SEO tools and their use cases.
Wrapping Up
In this article, we showed you some of the best WordPress SEO plugins and the best SEO tools that you can use to improve your website’s search engine rankings.
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