16 Best WordPress SEO Plugins & Tools For 2024: Grow Your Website Faster
Looking for the best WordPress SEO plugin to help you grow your website? You’re in the right place.
Below, we’ve listed our favorite WordPress SEO plugins and SaaS tools alongside everything you need to know about them. These tools will dramatically boost your website’s ranking power and send your organic traffic through the roof.
The best WordPress SEO plugins & tools – summary
TL;DR:
- Rank Math – Best WordPress SEO plugin overall. More features than other all-in-one SEO plugins. Free version + affordable paid plans.
- Serpstat – The best SEO toolset for website owners. SaaS app to handle backlink analysis, site auditing, keyword research, reporting, and more.
- Link Whisper – Best WordPress SEO plugin for adding internal links automatically.
#1 – Rank Math
Rank Math is a super popular all-in-one WordPress SEO plugin with over 1.2 million users. It’s marketed as ‘the swiss army knife of SEO tools for WordPress’ and boasts a very broad feature set.
There’s a lot you can do with RankMath. Too much to mention in one post, so we’ll just cover the highlights.
First off, the built-on Content AI helps you to write better content that’s more likely to rank. It analyzes your posts and pages as you write and offers suggestions based on SEO best practices.
Meanwhile, you can use the SEO analysis tool to run a more detailed analysis of your whole site. It looks at 30 different SEO issues and grades your site with an SEO score out of 100. Then, it provides a checklist of things you need to do to move the needle up. You can see all of the SEO problems facing your site in a neat list, ordered by priority, alongside a guide on how to fix them.
The built-in Schema Generator makes it easy to add structured data markup to your site and control how it appears in search. You can use a schema template, build your own custom schema, or even import one from another website.
On top of all that, Rank Math also provides a wealth of in-dashboard analytics. It integrates with Google Search Console and Google Analytics so you can see what keywords you’re ranking for, how many clicks they’re driving, any indexing issues you’re facing, your sitemap status, and much more.
Then, there’s also the RAnkMath Rank Tracker. It’s one of the most powerful and accurate rank trackers we’ve seen and can help you to keep a close eye on your site performance.
Pricing
You can use a limited version of Rank Math for free. Premium plans start from $59/year and can be used on unlimited websites.
#2 – SE Ranking
Serpstat is much more than a SEO plugin, it’s a SEO toolkit. But unlike SEOPress, it isn’t a plugin — it’s a standalone cloud-based platform that has over 30+ SEO and PPC tools built-in.
SE Ranking isn’t a WordPress plugin so you can’t use it from your WP dashboard. It’s a standalone platform that you can use to perform all the important SEO tasks, including keyword research, website auditing, backlink monitoring/building, rank tracking, and competitor analysis.
The Keyword Rank Tracker is very reliable. It’s 100% accurate and rather than just pulling data from the nearest server location, it lets you track your ranking position in the SERPs for specific locations all around the world. This is especially important for local businesses that need to know how they’re ranking for keywords in their area. You can also use it to monitor your competitors’ ranking positions.
You can also analyze all your backlinks to determine how valuable they are. SE Ranking will keep track of referring domains, link attributes (Dofollow/Nofollow), anchor text, and more.
Each referring domain is given a Domain Trust score developed by SE Ranking, which provides a good indication of how authoritative and trustworthy it is (and thus how much link juice it will pass).
Aside from that, there’s also the powerful keyword research tool, comprehensive website auditing tool, on-page SEO checker, and a bunch of other features that can help with all aspects of your SEO campaigns.
Pricing
SE Ranking uses a flexible pricing system. Prices are calculated based on factors including the length of the subscription, the plan you choose, the rank check frequency, and the number of keywords tracked.
The best way to get a figure is to use the calculator on the SE Ranking pricing page.
You can also sign up for a 14-day free trial.
Read our SE Ranking review.
#3 – SEOPress
SEOPress is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins on the market. It’s an all-in-one WP SEO solution that comes with all the features you need to dominate the SERPs, and one of the most generous free plans on the market.
The Free version of SEOPress comes with an impressive selection of SEO tools, including:
- Titles and metas — Easily add your own meta descriptions optimized for search to all your posts and pages
- XML sitemap generator — Create sitemaps of posts, pages, taxonomy, authors, images, etc., and submit them to Google to improve crawling.
- Content analysis — Choose your target keyword and SEOPress will analyze your content and perform dozens of checks to make sure it’s fully optimized. You can see what you need to do to improve in a checklist below the WP editor.
- Instant indexing — SEOPress pings search engines for new content so that your content shows up as fast as possible in the SERPs.
- Social sharing — Set your own social thumbnails and control how it looks when people share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Aside from the excellent feature set, SEOPress is also great for beginners. You can set it up on your WordPress site in 6 steps using the intuitive installation wizard. Once it’s up and running, you’ll be able to manage everything through the easy-to-use interface and SEO dashboard.
Another feature we like about SEOPress is the Universal SEO Metabox. It integrates with all major page builders so you can edit SEO meta information without switching back and forth between the default editor and page builder editor.
Pricing
You can get started with SEOPress by signing up for the free plan. It comes with all the core features, no ads, and is fully white label.
Upgrading to SEOPress PRO for $49 will bag you some extra premium features including automatic and manual schemas, video and news XML sitemaps, and local and WooCommerce SEO.
You can also sign up for SEO Insights for $99 per site to unlock rank tracking, backlink monitoring, and other off-site SEO tools.
#4 – Serpstat
Serpstat is another powerful SEO tool that offers a good balance of features and affordability. It’s ideal for website owners and an affordable solution for agencies.
Because Serpstat isn’t a WordPress plugin, you don’t have to worry about any conflicts with your existing plugin stack, and there’s no risk of it slowing down your site. The flip side is, of course, that you have to log in to the Serpstat platform separately to use its tools.
Speaking of tools, Serpstat has a lot to offer, but where it really shines is when it comes to keyword research, backlink analysis, and site auditing.
You can use the auditing tool to conduct an in-depth, expert-level analysis of your website and uncover insights about your SEO (search engine optimization) performance.
The built-in rank tracking tool can help you to keep tabs on your performance in the SERPs and see where you’re ranking in comparison to your competitors for your target keywords.
For keyword research, you can type in any URL to generate a list of missing keywords that might be worth targeting. Alternatively, pop in a seed keyword to uncover related keywords, question searches, and more.
You also get all the important metrics you need to analyze whether or not keywords are worth targeting, including the search volume, competition, CPC, and connection strength.
The competitor analysis tool allows you to spy on your SEO and PPC opponents and uncover insights about their ad campaigns, SERP performance, etc.
And let’s not forget the text analytics tool. It can help you to analyze your pages against similar content to see how well-optimized they are and provide suggestions on how to improve.
There’s a lot more we could talk about, but you’d have to try it out for yourself to see everything Serpstat has to offer.
Pricing
Serpstat offers several paid plans, starting from $45/month if you sign up for 24 months or more. Monthly plans start from $69/month.
#5 – SEO Framework
SEO Framework is another one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. It’s extremely lightweight and built with meticulously-crafted code, so it won’t slow down your site.
It’s another all-in-one SEO plugin that aims to do everything most website owners need. But unlike some of its competitors, SEO Framework manages to cram all those different features into a lightweight plugin that doesn’t have a negative impact on performance.
In fact, SEO Framework is 12x faster than similar WordPress SEO plugins. The upshot: No more slow queries or database hogging to worry about.
One of the coolest things about SEO Framework is the SEO Bar feature. It’s a neat content analysis tool that checks all your pages against over 70 common SEO issues to ensure it’s fully optimized, then depicts the result in the Bar so you can see what you still need to do at a glance.
It’s one of the only WordPress plugins that intelligently pre-fills important SEO meta tags for you automatically, saving you a ton of time. You can also edit titles, meta descriptions, etc. manually.
Behind the scenes, it handles a lot of other critically-important technical SEO tasks for you. For example, it prevents canonical errors for pages, categories, and subdomains. It also discourages search engines from indexing empty categories and 404 pages, automatically notifies search engines about website updates when sitemaps are enabled, and even helps to prevent SEO attacks by reducing the risk of pagination exploits.
Pricing
You can get started by signing up for the free version of SEO Framework. To unlock premium features, better support, and additional sites, you can upgrade to a paid plan from $7/month billed yearly.
#6 – Link Whisper
Link Whisper is the best WordPress SEO plugin for building internal links. It doesn’t offer as many different SEO tools as the all-in-one solutions we’ve looked at so far, but it does internal linking really well.
If you didn’t already know, adding internal links within your content is an important part of SEO. When you link between your different posts and pages, it helps to distribute authority (link juice) around your site, which can improve your organic ranking position.
Not only that, but it also makes your website easier to crawl for search engine spiders (which means faster indexing), boosts dwell time, and creates a better user experience. Needless to say, it’s important.
The only problem is that adding a bunch of internal links to all your posts and pages takes a lot of time. Fortunately, Link Whisper can help to speed things up.
It provides AI-powered internal linking suggestions within the WordPress editor so you can add links in one click. You can also set it up so that it automatically adds links on specific keywords whenever and wherever they appear—even on past mentions in your old posts.
And that’s not all. It can also discover and fix broken links, find ‘orphan content’ and build new links to it, generate in-depth link reports, and more.
If you own multiple sites in a similar niche, you can even connect two entirely separate domains together with Link Whisper and get external link suggestions between them.
Pricing
You can download a limited free version of Link Whisper from the WordPress library.
To unlock premium features, you’ll need to purchase a license. A Single Site License costs $77/year, a 3-Site License costs $117/year, and a 10-Site License costs $167/year.
#7 – All In One SEO
All In One SEO is another very popular WordPress plugin for SEO. It’s used by over 3 million people across 19 million websites and has one of the most sophisticated feature sets around.
Like most all-in-one WordPress plugins, it offers all the most important SEO features, including a content analysis tool (TruSEO Score), readability checker, site auditing, XML sitemap generation, and Open Graph tags (social sharing optimization).
On top of that, you also get access to AIOSEO’s schema markup tool, which enables you to use structured data to stand out in Google’s rich snippets; the innovative Link Assistant, which provides smart internal linking suggestions (much like Link Whisper); and the Redirection Manager, which manages broken link redirects correctly to preserve authority.
In addition to regular XML sitemaps, AIOSEO also supports video sitemaps, which can help you to get featured in the video carousel widget on Google.
Pricing
All In One SEO paid plans start from $49.50/year. You also get a 14-day, risk-free money-back guarantee.
#8 – Squirrly SEO
Squirrly SEO is another awesome all-in-one WP SEO plugin. It packs dozens of SEO marketing tools and powerful AI technology in one neat package.
SEO Squirrly aims to be a one-stop solution for all your SEO needs across every stage of the SEO funnel. There are tools to help with everything from keyword research and content ideation, right the way through to site auditing and rank tracking.
One of the best things about SEO Squirrly is its keyword research tools. Unlike most plugins, you can discover new keywords and put together your SEO strategy from within your WordPress dashboard — there’s no need to rely on third-party platforms.
The SEO Live Assistant is another cool feature. It’s SEO Squirrly’s on-page optimization tool and offers optimization tips to improve your content in real-time as you’re creating posts and pages, right there within the editor interface. Just complete the to-do list and turn red items green to stand the best chance of ranking.
And it doesn’t end there. SEO Squirrly offers more than 650 different features in total — which is more than you’ll find in most plugins. But despite all those features, the simple interface means it’s still very easy to use, even for beginners.
Pricing
Squirrly SEO offers a limited Free plan. Paid plans that come with premium features and other benefits start from $71.99/month.
#9 – Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is an incredible content optimization tool built to improve rankings. It integrates easily with both WordPress and Google Docs via a Google Chrome extension.
Surfer SEO uses AI technology to help you plan your content strategy and write content that stands the best chance of ranking.
All you have to do is assign a keyword, then Surfer SEO will create a content template for you. It will automatically pull data from the top-performing pages for your target keyword and use it to generate a suggested word count, structure, and a list of related keywords to include.
When you add your content to the Surfer editor, it will be graded and assigned a score out of 100 based on how metrics such as word count, paragraphs, images, and related usage. Suggested keywords will be listed in the sidebar alongside the suggested frequency — just add them into the post to turn red items green and improve the content score.
Surfer SEO is also an invaluable tool for content strategists, website owners, and anyone else who outsources work to writers. You can use it to create detailed briefs for writers to follow and edit their work within the Surfer dashboard.
Aside from content optimization, you can also use Surfer SEO to carry out site audits and more.
Pricing
Plans start from $89/month with annual discounts available. Try with a 7-day free trial of their features.
Read our Surfer SEO review.
#10 – Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one marketing platform. It’s one of the most well-known names in the SEO industry and stands out for its excellent keyword research, competitor analysis, PPC, and backlink analytics tools.
The backlink analytics feature can help you to find new link-building opportunities and put together your off-page SEO strategy. Then, use the built-in link-building tool to carry out outreach campaigns.
Semrush also offers accurate, reliable rank tracking, comprehensive site auditing, and content analysis via the ‘writing assistant’. We’ll talk more about this next.
Pricing
You can get started with a limited free account, but it’s capped at a low number of requests. Paid Semrush plans start at $129.95/month.
Read our Semrush review.
#11 – Semrush SEO Writing Assistant
The SEO Writing Assistant is one of Semrush’s most powerful features. It’s a smart writing editor that can help you optimize your content for SEO and user engagement, and is included as part of Semrush’s content marketing dashboard toolkit.
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is by far the best content analysis tool out there. It does much more than most plugins and offers a deeper level of analysis that can help you dramatically improve your SEO content.
Most content analysis tools just do the basics: they check your title tags, keyword density, image alt text, etc., and make sure there are no glaring issues—but the Writing Assistant goes much further.
It analyzes your work in four different areas: readability, originality, tone of voice, and SEO. Then, it gives it a percentage score in each of these different categories and provides actionable steps you can take to improve it.
The SEO checker uses real-time data and insights from your top-ranking rivals and suggests recommended keywords that can enrich your content. The readability checker analyzes how complicated the language you use is and tells you which sentences and paragraphs need to be rewritten.
It also integrates easily with Google Docs (via an add-on), MS Word 365, and WordPress, so you can check your content wherever you write it.
Pricing
It’s free to install Semrush SEO Writing Assistant. However, to use it, you first need to create an SEO Content Template and specify the target keywords.
With a Free or Pro Semrush account, you can only create one Content Template. Higher-tiered plans (Guru and above) have different keyword budgets and give full access to the Content Marketing Platform, which includes SEO Content Template and SEO Writing Assistant.
#12 – Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a simple, beginner-friendly WordPress SEO plugin. It’s incredibly popular thanks to its generous free plan and powerful on-page content checker.
The best thing about the Yoast SEO plugin is its content checker. It uses a simple traffic light system to grade your content within the WordPress editor based on various factors including readability, keyword usage, meta description, title tags, alt attributes, etc.
If you get the green light, your post is well-optimized. Orange means there’s room for improvement, and red means it still needs work. All you have to do is tick items on the checklist until you get the green light.
Aside from the content checker, Yoast SEO also helps with all the backend stuff including XML sitemaps and SEO maintenance tasks. The free version is great but the premium version is even better.
Pricing
Yoast SEO plugin offers a free version that includes most of the core tools and features website owners need. The Yoast SEO Premium plugin costs $99/year and includes additional premium features, like social sharing previews, content quality and link suggestions, etc.
You can also sign up for the plugin subscription for $229/year and get access to 5 powerful Yoast plugins, all online SEO courses, 24/7 support, and more.
#13 – Schema Pro
Schema Pro is the best WordPress plugin for adding schema markup to your website pages. It makes the process super easy so that anyone can do it without having to touch any code.
Schema markup is a type of structured data that you can add to the pages on your website in order to help search engines to better understand the content. This, in turn, enables Google to add rich snippets below your website pages in the search results, which has been shown to increase click-through rates.
With Schema Pro, you can choose a schema type and select the pages/posts you want to add it to. Once you’ve configured everything, the WordPress plugin will take care of the rest. There’s no need to mess around with the HTML code and add tags, Schema Pro handles that all for you.
Pricing
Schema Pro costs $79 per year when billed annually. You can also purchase a lifetime plan for a one-off cost of $249. There’s a no-risk, 14-day money-back guarantee.
#14 – Labrika
Labrika is another SEO toolset that can help to improve your ranking position in the SERPs.
It offers three main tools: the AI-powered SEO auditor, an interactive content editor, and an advanced rank checker.
The audit tool checks your site against over 200 ranking factors and generates a detailed report with useful insights. It’s perfect for teams and agencies that work with lots of clients.
The content editor provides tips on how to improve new and existing content. It analyzes competitors that are already ranking for your target keywords and uses this information to provide suggestions.
Pricing
Labrika offers three subscription periods: monthly, tri-monthly, and yearly. Plans start from $15/month.
#15 – WebCEO
WebCEO is one of the best SEO tools for agencies. It provides over 23 pro-level digital marketing tools in one package and gives you everything you need to cater to your clients.
14 of the 23 tools are built specifically for SEO, including a keyword analysis tool, rank tracking tool, backlink checker, competitor analysis, and technical audit tool.
One of the coolest features is the content submission tool. It submits your content to dozens of niche directories, blog communities, directories, and shopping search engines to quickly build tons of backlinks that boost your domain authority.
There are also email alerts, SEO checklists, and other tools that are ideal for large teams that need to stay organized and collaborate with clients.
Pricing
Prices start from $33/month for the Solo plan or $83/month for the startup plan (when billed annually). You can try it out with a 14-day free trial.
#16 – All In One Schema Rich Snippets
All In One Schema Rich Snippets is a free WordPress plugin for adding schema markup. It’s a great alternative to Schema Pro if you’re not ready to invest in a paid tool just yet.
It doesn’t have as many advanced features as Schema Pro, but it still makes it easy to add structured data to your site without any coding knowledge. You can implement all the main schema types including videos, recipes, articles, products, events, services, etc.
Pricing
All In One Schema is free to use. It’s open-source software that you can download through the WordPress plugin database.
Frequently asked questions
What is a WordPress SEO plugin?
Plugins are small software applications that ‘plug in’ to your WordPress website in order to extend its functionality. WordPress SEO plugins are a specific type of plugin that helps website owners to optimize their website for search.
They typically come with features like XML sitemap generation, content optimization, insights, site auditing, as well as various other tools to help with many more technical SEO tasks.
What do WordPress SEO plugins do?
Different WordPress SEO plugins do different things. All-in-one SEO plugins aim to offer all the different tools you need to optimize your site in one package.
That might include, meta data such as SEO titles, an XML sitemap generator that you can use to submit your site to Google for faster indexing, a content analysis tool to help with on-page optimization, automatic pinging, schema markup, internal linking automation, etc.
How do I add meta information in WordPress?
Meta tags are HTML code snippets that help search engines to understand the content of a website page. Adding meta descriptions to your posts is an important part of SEO.
There are two ways to add meta information in WordPress:
- You can open your header.php file and add a snippet of code under the <head> tag. (not recommended)
- You can use a plugin (recommended)
It’s a much better idea to use a plugin to add meta information than to edit your header file directly. Not only is it easier, but it means you can apply unique descriptions to each post or page, whereas if you add them to your header.php file, they’ll apply to your entire website.
The process of adding meta information with a plugin will vary depending on the plugin you’re using. Usually, you just have to open the page/post that you want to add meta information to in the WordPress editor, then scroll to the bottom. Below the editor, you should see an SEO metabox, in which you can enter your meta description and other information.
How do you add schema markup in WordPress?
You can add schema markup in WordPress using a plugin like Schema Pro or All In One SEO.
With All In One SEO, you can set up site-wide schema markup through the setup wizard, or by navigating to All in One SEO > Search Appearance > Knowledge Graph from your WordPress dashboard.
You can also change the schema markup for each individual post and page through the AIOSEO Settings box below the WordPress post editor. Just switch to the Schema tab, select the schema type, and then fill in the relevant information.
Can you use two SEO plugins on WordPress?
You shouldn’t use two all-in-one SEO plugins at the same time to avoid plugin conflict. This is because many SEO plugins do the same job and will interact with each other, which can break your site.
That said, it may be possible to use two complementary SEO plugins at the same time but you’d need to make sure that there won’t be any conflicts first.
As always, test any new plugins in a staging environment before you roll them out to your live website, and always backup your website just in case.
How do I SEO my WordPress site?
There are a lot of steps involved in SEO, and many different tasks you’ll need to perform to maximize your chances of ranking in the SERPs.
SEO WordPress plugins can help with many of the technical, backend tasks like submitting your XML sitemap and managing titles and meta descriptions.
Then, there’s on-page SEO. This involves optimizing the content on your page around different ranking factors to maximize your chance of ranking in the SERPs. Many plugins help with this too by providing a content analysis tool and SEO checklist in the WordPress editor.
And of course, don’t forget about off-page SEO. You’ll want to build backlinks to your WordPress website in order to boost your domain authority and maximize your ranking potential. According to a study, the top-ranking result on Google typically has 3.8x more backlinks than those below it.
There are many ways to build and earn backlinks, but it’s best to focus on white-hat techniques like guest posting and submitting HARO pitches.
Wrapping it up
As you can see, there are plenty of awesome SEO plugins for WordPress out there—but which is the best choice for your website? Here’s what we’d recommend:
- Choose Rank Math if you’re looking for an all-in-one SEO solution. It’s a full-featured plugin that can take care of all the SEO tasks most website owners need and more, including XML sitemaps, social tags, content analysis, etc.
- Try Serpstat if you’re concerned about plugins slowing down your site. It’s a cloud-based SaaS platform (not a plugin) that offers a wide selection of SEO tools. It’s the best choice for backlink analysis, keyword research, and site auditing.
- SEOPress is a good option if you don’t need all the extra features that Rank Math offers. It’s lightweight and still includes all the essential features you’ll need for WordPress SEO.
- Check out Link Whisper if you just want an SEO plugin to help with internal linking. It’s the best SEO plugin to add internal links and its powerful automations are a huge time-saver.
And remember: Most of the tools on this list offer a free trial or free version. So if you still don’t know which one to use, try them out for yourself and pick the one you like best.
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