Presently, around 35 percent of the top 1 million websites are powered by WordPress, which in result, makes it a very popular content management system for SEO. However, despite being called it as the most SEO-friendly CMS(content management system) available in the market, we can not garner all the SEO benefits merely by WordPress default settings. We have to avail Plugins, which are used for optimizing the performance of your site. 

What is a Plugin?

A plugin is a piece of program that contains a group of functionalities which can be added on a WordPress website. The extended functionality support webmasters with everything ranging from analytics and performance management to caching and social integration. The primary reason for the WordPress platform popularity is its massive plugin library- WordPress.org plugin directory which contains more than 55,000 free plugins. So the question arises, which of these plugins users should install on their sites? Today, in this article, we are going to list the seven best WordPress plugins for SEO, that will be helpful in optimizing your site according to SEO. Let’s proceed-

1. Yoast SEO
2. All in One SEO Pack
3. Google XML Sitemaps
4. Broken Link Checker
5. The SEO Framework
6. SEOPress
7. Rank Math SEO Plugin

1. Yoast SEO 

With 4.5 million-plus downloads combined with a thousand reviews, Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress Plugins for SEO available in the market. In addition to improving your website’s SEO in all areas, this plugin goes an extra mile by taking care of the technical optimization as well. It comes with a variety of features that make it an all-in-one package.  Yoast SEO provides you with a lot of flexibility over the content of your site, allowing you to set meta descriptions, titles, and social sharing information on the posts. Yoast SEO includes several key ranking factors, such as Content, Keywords, Redirection, Twitter Cards, and much more. 

Features 

• Multiple Keyword optimization
• Content insights for premium subscriptions
• Optimize meta titles and descriptions on pages and blog posts
• Generate XML sitemaps and sync to Google Search Console
• Content analysis inclusive of readability check
• Generate Open Graph data for sharing posts on social media

Pros

• Wide range of features in a single plugin
• Yoast SEO is simple, quick and quite easy to work with.
• It is multisite compatible.
• Allows integration with social media channels.

Cons

• A significant number of security threats
• The speed of your website may reduce as all the features are loaded at once.

2. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO pack is yet another one of the best WordPress plugins for SEO. The plugin has a comprehensive set of features using which one can easily add meta tags, SEO titles, XML sitemaps, open graph meta tags and much more. It also aids in optimizing your WordPress website and the content for search engine providers. Since its launch in 2007, the plugin has accumulated around 2 million active installations. It works with an easy setup which permits you to access different settings availing a feature manager. 

Features 

• No setup required for this plugin
• Automatic meta tag generation
• Integration with Google Analytics
• XML Sitemaps support 
• Support for custom post types
• Free of cost WooCommerce Integration

Pros

• Cheaper than YoastSEO
• Provide access to more addons
• Automatic title optimization
• Avail its advanced tools to control indexing 
• Offers too many features in the free version itself

Cons

• No content analysis or SEO scoring
• No breadcrumbs navigation
• No importing data from Google Search Console
• The free version lacks support

3. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps is another useful name in the list of WordPress plugins for SEO. The plugin is used to help the search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing etc. to better index your website with a special XML sitemap. 

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is used by the search engine bots to view the complete structure of your website and fetch the results more efficiently. It keeps the navigation links organized by categories and predicts the manner in which dynamic links are going to function. While the architecture and navigational structure of a site are designed, the sitemaps come very handy in keeping the whole framework under control. As one activates the Google XML Sitemaps, the plugin will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your website which makes the indexing easy.

Features 

• Faster indexing of your stored content
• Individual Product control- control what products you want to be added/removed in your Sitemap.
• Individual Category Control- control which categories you want to add/remove in your Sitemap.
• Individual CMS pages control- control which CMS pages you wish to include/exclude in your Sitemap
• Dynamically generated Sitemap, i.e. always up to date.
• Increased conversions and reduced Bounce rate.

Pros

• Site indexing for Flash-based sites
• Revisit fresh and changing content
• Easy to create

Cons

• Limited File Size
• Not all URLs are crawled
• No Rank improvement

4. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker is a simple and powerful plugin used for detecting broken links. Broken links can impact your website’s SEO and give bad experience to users. Hence, it is vital to keep checking your site from time to time for broken links and also fix them. Broken Link Checker checks your site for any broken links, missing images and redirects. With the help of plugin’s dashboard, one can edit and fix these broken links directly without having to update each page or post manually. Or they can simply remove the link and let the text be in its place.

Features 

• Detect links from posts, pages, and even comments that aren’t working
• Mark the broken links differently in a post.
• Gives an option to restrict the search engine from following a broken links
• Send notification via dashboard or email when some broken link is found
• Gives an option to search and sort the links by anchor text, URL, and much more.

Pros

• A simple and powerful Plugin
• Highly Configurable
• Free WordPress plugin
• Easy to use Dashboard

Cons

• Slows down your blog
• File size is large
• Becomes Resource Intensive
• Doesn’t check CommentLuv links

5. The SEO Framework

The next name in the list of best WordPress plugins for SEO is of The SEO Framework. The plugin is designed with the aim to offer a more advanced SEO experience than many other WordPress plugins present in the market. It is an open-source, free of cost plugin with the range of advanced settings for operations. Owing to the advanced settings option, users can take control of all the aspects of SEO. A standout feature of this plugin is its intuitive “SEO Bar”, which gives a colour-coded representation of your post’s SEO status. This functionality sets apart the framework from other free SEO plugins.

Features 

• Option of social media integration
• Automatically generates titles, descriptions and sitemaps.
• It is compatible with many extensions for extra features
• Useful for switching SEO plugin
• Support for custom types posts for WooCommerce and bbPress kind of plugins.

Pros

• No subscriptions or addons to worry as the framework is 100 % free
• Wide range of advanced settings
• The visual SEO bar is quite helpful
• Well optimized Plugin code which runs quickly and efficiently

Cons

• Since it is a new plugin, therefore it lacks a few support resources
• Absence of content analysis tool on posts 
• Not so user-friendly 

6. SEOPress

SEOPress is yet another WordPress plugin for SEO. It is a fast, simple and powerful plugin which includes tons of features that can be enabled/ disabled as quickly as possible. It has all the features that a SEOPress must consist just as descriptions, meta title, image and content XML sitemaps, open graph support, redirects and much more. For experienced users, this WordPress plugin comes with an easier setup for beginners and advanced controls. Also, the premium version of SEOPress has advanced functionality like Backlinks Integration, eCommerce Optimization, Video XML Sitemaps, Google News and Google Structured Data.

Features 

• With the help of Google’s suggestion tool, discover the suggested keywords for your content.
• Implement Google Structured Data types: product, article, video, product, event, recipe, business, course, review, and much more.
• Well-tuned content with the Content Analysis tool
• Track Google Analytics traffic and events via the built-in dashboard
• Generate and monitor 301, 302 or 307 redirections in one place
• Check the performance of your website with the help of Google Pagespeed

Pros

• Premium Version is cheaper in comparison to other plugins
• Beautifully integrates with third-party apps like WooCommerce, Google Analytics etc.
• Support Custom Post Types
• Doesn’t slow down your website

Cons

• Does not offer social media integration
• Updates and support of SEO press is not on a regular schedule

7. Rank Math SEO Plugin

Rank Math, another WordPress plugin for SEO, calls itself as the Swiss Army Knife of WordPress SEO. It is a fast-growing plugin for WordPress platform that permits you to optimize websites for social media and search engines. The plugin has a setup wizard and even during setup, it allows one to import data from other SEO plugins. Using Rank Math SEO plugin, one can easily add meta descriptions, titles, and open graph metadata to your blog posts. Rank Math also enables the generation of an XML sitemap, connection with Google Search Console and control access to plugin features depending on the user roles.

Features 

• Integration with Google Search Console
• Advanced SEO analysis tool
• Google Schema Rich Snippets are integrated
• Consist of 40 detailed SEO tests
• Social media optimization
• Auto Canonical URLs

Pros

• Claim to provide more features than All-in-one SEO pack and Yoast SEO.
• Relies on Auto-configuration that makes it easy to use
• Fastest growing Word Plugin
• All the functionality that is currently available is free
• Rank Math gives great tips when it comes to Content Analysis

Cons

• One can revert to previous Plugins
• SEO settings are a bit complicated to comprehend 
• Bit of incompatibility with other Plugins
• Can’t be used on Live sites as it is difficult to revert to past plugins

The Verdict

This concludes the list of best WordPress plugins for SEO, using which, one can optimize the SEO for their site. SEO is a never-ending process; one has to keep juggling between new techniques and plugins for raising the site’s traffic and ranking. Millions already use the plugins mentioned above for their website, you must have used a couple of them also. If not, then do it. Try a few and then find the best suiting your needs. Got some suggestions or maybe we have forgotten to add your favorite one on the list. Share in the comment box, and we will certainly add it. Happy Reading!