Table of Contents
- Introduction
- What Do SEO Plugins Do?
- The Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
- Improve your SEO with these plugins today
Introduction
WordPress comes with various features and tools right out of the box to help your website meet technical SEO standards. However, these features often pale in comparison to third-party SEO plugins that are designed with search engines and users in mind. Plus, these plugins offer ease and convenience for website admins to implement structural changes and identify areas of improvement.
Let’s delve deeper into SEO plugins and how they can help improve your website’s search rankings.
What Do SEO Plugins Do?
An SEO plugin helps optimize your website’s content and structure to make it search-friendly. A fully optimized website is more likely to be crawled and indexed by search engines as compared to its non-optimized counterparts.
Let’s look at different ways an SEO plugin can help put your website on the map and improve its visibility across search engines.
Optimizing Site Content
Gone are the days when SEO plugins would put greater emphasis on keywords than content quality. User experience is just as crucial as keyword optimization, and that’s what modern SEO plugins are designed to achieve with on-page content – a perfect balance between SEO strength and readability.
An SEO plugin offers suggestions to make your content readable and crawl-worthy. These suggestions include:
- Keyword frequency
- Number of subheadings
- Overall word count
- Internal links
All these parameters give you a cumulative score indicating how SEO-friendly your content is.
Besides, an SEO plugin offers suggestions that can help improve the readability of your content while retaining your unique tone of voice. Readability recommendations by an SEO plugin may include:
- Number of paragraphs
- Sentence length
- Passive-to-active voice
- Flesh Reading Ease
- Consecutive sentences
Content quality is subjective, and as a creator, you know what’s best for your readers. Chances are some of the readability suggestions by the plugin may disrupt your core message or intent. So, it’s up to you to accept or reject suggestions based on your discretion.
Plan and preview your pages in SERPs
When you work so hard on your website’s SEO, and it finally arrives on the first page of Google, you will want to ensure your audience likes what they see. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to how your website appears in search results. SEO plugins can help you make a great first impression by optimizing metadata, such as brand name, page title, and meta description.
Without an SEO plugin, optimizing metadata requires some level of technical expertise. An SEO plugin helps you bypass behind-the-scenes technicalities and optimize metadata with zero coding experience.
Spread the word across social media.
Social media sharing may not improve your ranking, but getting maximum eyeballs on your content is always a good idea. Some SEO plugins offer social sharing features that enable you to create a social media post with an OpenGraph image, custom title, and description. This is a great way to drive traffic from social media platforms to your website without spending an extra penny.
Set your site up for SEO success.
It is crucial for every website to have its content crawled and indexed by search engines. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen on its own. There are certain technicalities that need to be ironed out to make your site visible to the search engine.
With the help of an SEO plugin, you can create an XML sitemap, Schema structured data, a robots.txt file, and more – without having to write any code. These elements help search engines identify your content type and intent to rank your website for the right keyword and audience.
Content Management
As your website becomes content-heavy, you need efficient ways to manage it. An SEO plugin can help you avoid wrong redirects as you delete a page or change a URL. The SEO plugin will also send an alert for you to set up proper redirects immediately after you delete or change a URL – so that your users always land at the right page.
It can also help you streamline pages that are similar using canonical tags, which are automatically added by the SEO plugin.
Internal linking and structuring
How you structure your content and overall website can influence your search rankings. Internal linking is one of the important ranking signals, and it should be taken into account when structuring your website. An SEO plugin can help you determine how many incoming and outgoing links you need to make your site search-friendly. It can also help you identify and fix orphaned pages (the ones that do not have any incoming or outgoing links).
Besides, internal linking enables your site visitors to navigate through pages as they seek further information on a topic.
Does WordPress Need SEO Plugins
As discussed earlier, WordPress has many built-in features that eliminate the need for additional plugins, but those features are either hidden under complex layers of technicalities or do not offer the desired functionality for your unique SEO goals.
An SEO plugin can bridge the knowledge gap and help you set up your website for better search rankings. The SEO plugin does the heavy lifting, so you don’t have to struggle with technical features and concepts you don’t understand.
If you are not ready for an additional expense or unsure whether you need an SEO plugin for your WordPress site, there are various plugins available that you can try out for free. That way, you don’t have to worry about losing money over something that isn’t a good fit.
Read on to learn about the best SEO plugins of 2023:
The Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
Yoast SEO
The number 1 on our list with over 13 million active users, Yoast SEO is your one-stop guide to a search-friendly website. As one of the best WordPress SEO plugins, it offers a myriad of new features & tools that reduce your SEO efforts, so you can focus more on growing your core business.
With Yoast SEO, you can optimize your website for search engines and users alike. The plugin supports over a dozen languages, including but not limited to English, Dutch, Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese, Hungarian, and Greek, allowing you to optimize your website for the local audience.
While this tool is ideal for SEO teams of all sizes, content writers can also benefit from the insights and recommendations to enhance readability and relevance.
The free version of Yoast SEO offers everything you need to get started, whereas the premium version starts at $99 a year. According to user reviews and feedback, the price is worth the additional features on offer.
All in One SEO (AIOSEO)
True to its name, All in One SEO is a one-stop solution for all kinds of websites and SEO objectives. With a user base of over 3 million, it’s falling behind Yoast SEO by a long shot. But that doesn’t mean it’s less effective. AIOSEO has all the features you could expect from a powerful SEO plugin.
It is so user-friendly that you don’t need an expert to set up your WordPress SEO. It has a setup wizard that helps you get started in 10 minutes flat. What’s more? It gives you a TruScore indicating your website’s optimization level and provides an actionable checklist of what you can do to improve.
Offering seamless integrations with Google Search Console, Google AMP, and other WordPress plugins, AIOSEO brings everything you need in one place. Although there’s no free version on offer, it does offer a 14-day money-back guarantee in case you are unsatisfied with the purchase.
Rank Math
Trusted by over 1.9 million users, Rank Math is a suite of tools you need to run your website successfully. Right out of the box, it comes with 15+ modules that can be customized according to your requirements. The plugin helps you run a detailed website audit and reveal issues and areas of improvement based on 30+ touchpoints.
Rank Math reduces the man hours required to align your website with SEO’s best practices. Despite your inadequate experience in SEO, you’d be amazed at what you can achieve with Rank Math. It comes with an auto-configure wizard that sets up SEO for your WordPress website in seconds.
Rank Math comes with Content AI, which helps generate SEO-friendly content based on simple prompts.
There’s a common notion that using plugins may slow down your website, but that won’t be a concern with Rank Math. It is fully compatible with WordPress and is built with performance at its core. And if you ever face an issue with your plugin, 24/7 customer support is just a phone call away.
SEO Press
With over 250,000 users, SEO Press features a built-in AI assistant and offers myriad ways to empower bloggers, businesses, developers, and SEO experts alike. If you are unsatisfied with your existing plugin, SEO Press will migrate your metadata at no additional charges. It offers an ad-free, fully white-label experience – even in the free version. Plus, its premium package starts at $49 a year, which is half the subscription fee of Yoast.
SEO Press integrates with various page builders and editors, allowing users to edit metadata according to recommendations without switching tabs. Additionally, SEO Press also offers social media sharing as a standard feature so that you can cross-pollinate your content for maximum reach and visibility.
If you have less than 25 websites to manage, you can go with the starter pack. However, agencies with an extensive portfolio will love the upgrade that supports unlimited websites.
WP Rocket
With online users’ attention span shrinking every year, website page speed has become a critical ranking signal. WP Rocket is a cache plugin designed to optimize your website’s core vitals, resulting in better performance and speed.
WP Rocket is easy to set up and requires zero coding experience. Since the plugin can improve page speed and other performance metrics right out of the box, it’s ideal for bloggers, agencies, and e-commerce websites.
Top WordPress professionals stand behind WP Rocket because of its broad compatibility with Managed WordPress hostings, themes, and other plugins.
WP Rocket is ideal for those who want high page speed for better rankings and user experience. The subscription starts at $59 a year for a single website and comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee – no questions asked. Agencies can go for the Infinite package @ $299 a year, which supports unlimited websites.
WP Meta SEO
If you don’t want to explore options outside the WordPress ecosystem, WP Meta SEO is the perfect plugin for you. This plugin by WordPress can be installed and activated with a few clicks from the Admin menu. WP Meta SEO allows you to optimize multiple website pages on a single view. Since you don’t have to work on pages individually, you can save a lot of time and effort.
If you are familiar with the WordPress interface, using this plugin won’t be a problem for you. It is quick, intuitive, and easy to integrate with page builders like Elementor.
Using WP Meta SEO, you can optimize your metadata and images within the content, generate breadcrumbs, manage redirects and canonical URLs, and use Google Analytics to track performance improvements.
Ahrefs SEO WordPress Plugin
Ahrefs has been maintaining an impeccable reputation in the SEO industry since 2010. Ahrefs SEO WordPress plugin feeds on petabytes of data and SEO best practices accumulated over a decade to help optimize your WordPress website for search engines and users alike.
With a fully automated content audit, the plugin gives you a score on a scale of 100, as well as actionable suggestions for improvement. With built-in analytics, you can view organic traffic and backlinks for each page. Plus, the pages are divided into different categories based on performance, so you can prioritize the ones requiring immediate action.
You can rest assured that the content audit will be detailed and accurate since the plugin pulls data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console. It also offers seamless integration with other SEO plugins, such as Rank Math, Yoast, and AIOSEO, to name a few.
As far as the pricing goes, it is on the expensive side; however, the additional price will be worth the features and convenience on offer.
W3 Total Cache
Whether you manage a blog or an e-commerce website, page speed is a crucial ranking factor you can’t ignore. W3 Total Cache is a feature-rich performance package that can help improve your website’s page speed and other core vitals contributing to search rankings. W3 Total Cache is backed by WordPress’ robust infrastructure and customer support. No wonder it has over a million active users, supporting 16 languages.
This cache plugin is a perfect addition to e-commerce websites because it allows fast browsing with instant repeat page views. The faster a user can browse your website, the more quickly they are able to make a purchase.
W3 Total Cache users have reported up to a 10x increase in the overall website performance, eventually leading to improved search ranking and higher conversion rates. Since it’s a WordPress plugin, compatibility with hosting, themes, and other resources will never be an issue.
Google XML Sitemaps
Creating an XML sitemap makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website. And what’s a better way to create sitemaps than with a WordPress plugin that’s been trusted by millions of users for over nine years? Google XML Sitemaps does the job without slowing down your website. Plus, the plugin comes pre-configured with the best practices, so you do not have to lift a finger. Install the plugin, follow the instructions, and it will do the rest. However, you can customize the settings if you want.
By providing a sitemap, you are letting search engines easily navigate your website’s structure for indexing.
The latest release of Google XML Sitemaps in March 2023 comes with a beta testing program and a check for disabled PHP functions.
Squirrly SEO
While search engine optimization is a tough nut to crack, Squirrly can help. This AI-powered SEO suite is going places with its intuitive interface and various features that come pre-configured, so you have to do nothing other than paint by numbers.
Improving your site’s performance and search ranking has never been easier than this.
You have one tool for every SEO activity, from keyword research to content optimization and technical SEO to site audits and rank tracking.
It has a monthly subscription starting at $20.99, and you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel your plan anytime – no strings attached, no questions asked.
Squirrly’s comprehensive SEO suite offers over 650 features tailor-made for WordPress. If the developers of Squirrly are to be believed, these features are nowhere to be found in any other SEO plugin. No matter which page builder you use, Squirrly can be easily integrated for page audits and reports.
Improve your SEO with these plugins today
With millions of websites competing for the top spot, anyone who says they can succeed without SEO tools is probably lying. If there’s anything that can give you a better shot at success, it’s these SEO plugins.
Bloggers, businesses, and agencies rely on these plugins to gain accurate insights into their website’s structure and identify areas of improvement. By implementing recommendations and the industry’s best practices, ranking on page one of search engines seems like an achievable goal with these plugins.
If you are too busy to use these plugins to improve your website’s performance or handle any aspect of SEO, consider seeking help from someone who has access to these tools and can use them to your benefit.
The experts at Digital Web Solutions are hands-on with these plugins and know how to make the best use of them to improve your website’s ranking and drive more organic traffic. In case you need advice on choosing the best SEO plugin for WordPress, feel free to contact us.
Some of these WordPress SEO plugins are free to use, and you have nothing to lose besides your time. So, go ahead and try these SEO plugins for yourself.
