WordPress Plugins for SEO
As you probably know, WordPress is a free, easy-to-use open-source blogging tool and CMS. It is used by over 455 million websites around the globe, accounting for about 40% of the market share. WordPress users produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments each month. If you have a WordPress website, there are a lot of user-friendly plugins to help with different features, including ones for SEO, designed to get your site listed on search engine results pages (SERPs). While most digital marketers have opinions on every plugin available for SEO, we narrowed the following list down to our favorites. If you want to get ahead on WordPress SEO, here are some great plugins to try out.
Yoast SEO
This tried-and-true plugin was developed by Joost de Valk, Omar Reiss, and the team at Yoast. The free version of the plugin is equipped with all of the tools and settings needed to boost your ranking in search engines, and the paid version includes even more. It also helps you write better content by rating your readability and SEO score based on a specific keyword you choose, along with other optimization tools.
All-in-One SEO
Perfect for those just starting out in the SEO world, this plugin does much of the grunt work automatically for your website. It can optimize titles, generate meta tags, add schema markup, and more. This tool works right out of the box in the lite version but is customizable with paid options for more advanced users. It also provides SEO for eCommerce WordPress sites, which not all SEO plugins offer.
Rank Math SEO
Rank Math is a newer plugin that is quickly becoming a favorite among digital marketers. Along with the same set of SEO tools included in other free plugins, Rank Math is the first to use artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure your content is not only good for visitors but search engines as well. This plugin also automates most optimization processes once you complete the initial setup wizard.
Smush
Unlike the others, this plugin focuses on one aspect of SEO, particularly maintaining images, which can be challenging when done manually. Smush includes tools like lossless compression, lazy load, image resizing, incorrect size detection, automated optimization, and more. The free version of the plugin is stacked with valuable tools, and the Pro version expands on this functionality even further.
XML Sitemaps
This free plugin generates specialized XML sitemaps, which makes it easier for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to view and index the complete structure of your blog site. The XML Sitemaps plugin supports various WordPress content pages and custom URLs. It also alerts all major search engines every time you create a post that includes any new content.