The most essential thing for any website is that it is visible and accessible to its audience. A good ranking status in the search engine results not only multiplies your website’s traffic but is also beneficial for your website in several other ways:

1. You get recognition. Most people think that the website that ranks better at Google or any other search engine is more reliable than other websites that rank lower.
2. It lets new users find you.
3. It saves you lots of money on advertising.

So, how do you rank better on Google or other search engines? There are two aspects: what you offer (i.e., content) and how you offer it (SEO). The second process is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short.

There are a few that you can follow to improve your site’s SEO. Why is SEO essential to your online business website? The guide here can help you understand why SEO is relevant to you and how can the SEO plugins help you.

It would be helpful to know the most essential SEO trends so that you can consider these factors when you craft your SEO strategy. There are some really good SEO plugins for WordPress that help you take better care of SEO for your site.

Here, we have curated a list of the top 9 SEO plugins you can use for your WordPress website.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugins

1. Yoast SEO for content analysis and guidance

Yoast SEO prides itself on being the favorite plugin of the WordPress community. You are bound to hear its name around WordPress and SEO. With Yoast SEO, thanks to its tried and tested solution, you always feel sorted and as if you are in safe hands.

The setup guide is very user-friendly, provides an easy flow, and guides you through all the essential SEO settings. If you switch to the Yoast SEO plugin from any other SEO plugins like TSF, WPMeta, etc., you can always import the data settings quite effortlessly.

Yoast SEO makes your life so easy that if you hear the word “WordPress SEO Plugin,” Yoast is up for a booster! Yoast SEO inserts a meta box to all your posts and pages, which helps you easily set your focus keyword (keyphrase), meta description, canonical URLs, and more.

Another great feature is its readability analysis, which helps the users optimize the post with practical suggestions for improvement in the overall quality of your content.

Some other features include:

• Schema markup
• Title and meta description templates
• Language support
• Breadcrumbs control
• Advanced XML sitemaps
• Support for ‘noindex‘ content
• Access to free Yoast courses

Pricing: Free.

The premium version has advanced functionality, including internal linking suggestions, a redirect manager, and content insights. Pricing starts at $99 per year for a single website.

2. Squirrly SEO for AI-powered suggestions throughout the SEO lifecycle

Squirrly SEO is a beginner-friendly AI-powered SEO plugin that generates real-time recommendations. It enables the user to optimize content for a chosen keyword as the content goes on to be written. It also provides a competitor analysis with suggestions for outranking similar pages like yours, that is, your competitors.

Squirrly also keeps the site speed in mind, which works with popular caching plugins like WP Rocket and WP Super Cache to ensure fast site speed. 

One of the strengths of Squirrly is that it covers the entire SEO lifecycle, from keyword research and content optimization to rank tracking and technical audits. 

It has cleverly gamified training classes like 14 Days Journey to Better Ranking, Daily SEO Goals, and The Race to the TOP, so even the SEO novices can equally benefit!

Besides that, Squirrly SEO comes with innovative features that aid your marketing efforts. For instance, it measures your audience engagement and offers suggestions that can be acted upon to improve your click-through rates (CTRs). It also enables the user to transfer all the pre-existing settings if the user is switching from another SEO plugin.

Other features include:

• Schema markup
• Free coaching sessions
• ‘Noindex’ options
• Custom Robot.txt for site crawlers
• Sitemap XML
• Social media monitoring
• Advanced eCommerce features
• Google Analytics integration

Pricing: Free.

For the advanced features, initial pricing starts at $20.99 for the first month and later becomes $29.99 per month.

3. SmartCrawl for perfect balance between simplicity and features

SmartCrawl is a tool that comes in, does its job well, and leaves. It is not flashy. You cannot quite get excited about it. However, it does a solid job!

So, whenever you post a new content piece on your website, SmartCrawl will let Google know it’s time to recrawl your site. This act is what earns that plugin its name, “SmartCrawl.” 

Users also get a one-click setup wizard to get started and menu options that help configure schema, meta, XML sitemap, and social settings. Not to mention that the admin panel and UI are excellent.

Users can also monitor their overall SEO settings and, with that, run SEO audits, which are powered by the Google Lighthouse. Under each page, there is a SmartCrawl section, which has four tabs:

• Readability: indicates how complex your content is to read based on the Flesch-Kincaid test.
• SEO: To edit the meta titles and the description
• Social Media: Helps customize the title, description, and featured image for social sharing.
• Advanced: Helps configure canonical URLs, indexing, and redirects.
• With the premium version, users can schedule SEO audits and white-label reports to check for broken URLs, 404s, and redirections.

Pricing: Freemium model with the premium features starting at $90/year for the WPMU DEV bundle of premium plugins.

4. Slim SEO the beginner friendly SEO plugin

Slim SEO is a powerful, full-featured, yet super lightweight WordPress plugin. It is the best choice for users who want to avoid getting bombarded with all the SEO terminology.

All you need to do is install and activate the plugin and select all the features you want the Slim SEO plugin to generate and optimize automatically.

• Meta tags
• Image alt text
• XML Sitemap
• Breadcrumbs
• Schema (structured data)
• Redirections

For example, with meta tags enabled, Slim SEO can automatically generate a meta description from your post. Users can also add the description of their choice, along with the image alt text.

If you forget to enter some alt text when you upload an image, then Slim SEO automatically adds the file name as alt text. That’s not brilliant, but it’s better than nothing. 

Users can also migrate and import SEO data from other plugins, like Rank Math, Yoast SEO, SEO Framework, Redirection, and 301 Redirects. Slim SEO also integrates well with all the other plugins, especially page builders like Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Divi.

Users get the option at the end of each post to edit the meta title and the description, canonical URL, hide/unhide page for the search engine, and specify images for sharing on Twitter and Facebook. 

However, it only offers a little in the on-page content optimization. Also, some readability and content analysis features are absent, like in other plugins.

Overall, if you are looking for a WordPress plugin that covers all the SEO essentials, then Slim SEO is a solid choice.

Pricing: Slim SEO offers a freemium version. The premium part starts with the choice of two $39/year premium add-ons: Slim SEO Schema to add structured data to the content and Slim SEO Link Manager to build internal links and fix the broken ones.

5. The SEO Framework for automation and speed

The SEO Framework (TSF) is a freemium plugin with options to add premium extensions depending on the user’s needs.

Upon activating the plugin, it uses AI to read and configure your WordPress environment automatically. Although, users can always tweak the settings as per their choice.

It also allows migrating the previous SEO data from plugins like Rank Math, SEOPress, and Yoast SEO.

TSF also automatically creates a sitemap, generates relevant titles and descriptions, and enables breadcrumbs according to Google’s guidelines. A lesser-known fact is that the plugin initially started as an “auto description” generator.

But the users also get individual on-page SEO settings to set the meta description and the title, canonical URL, social graph, no-follow, do-follow links, etc.

The color-coded guidelines make it easier for the users to quickly get a mental snapshot of what’s wrong, like the blocked indexing or the unbranded titles.

Pricing: Freemium model, with the premium extensions starting from $84/year.

Also read: The Top 9 Competitor SEO Tools

6. Rank Math for an extensive free feature set and affordable scalability

Rank Math has the most extensive set of free features as we are looking at the WordPress SEO plugins.

It is also quite affordable once you consider switching to the premium version, which starts at $79 per year.

The setup wizard lets the user choose between two modes — easy and advanced. Easy is suitable for users who want to change the basics and let Rank Math do the heavy lifting. 

However, users can control the tiniest SEO aspect with the advanced mode. Users can switch between them easily, too. If you want to SEO optimize your images, you can switch to Advanced mode, where you can add titles and alt tags on the fly.

Users also get the option to connect Rank Math with Google Analytics and Search Console to get a holistic picture of their site’s SEO. Unlike the other plugins, Rank Math enables users to import settings from SEO plugins like AIOSEO, Yoast SEO, SEOPress, etc. It is also well-known for being able to import all the settings without leaving behind any.

Once the basic settings are configured, like the XML sitemaps, users can proceed with the on-page SEO editor to edit the meta title, description, schema, and social sharing. The SEO analysis highlights areas for improvement and shows you how to fix errors. Of note: the readability analysis wasn’t as detailed or straightforward to understand as Yoast SEO.

Rank Math seamlessly works with page builders like Divi, Beaver Builder, and Oxygen and with editors like Elementor WordPress Classic and Gutenberg.

Some premium features that Rank Math offers for FREE are:

• Image SEO
• Basic WooCommerce SEO
• Basic local SEO schema and optimization
• Internal link suggestions

Even though Rank Math has more features than some of the plugins we saw earlier, it does not affect your site’s loading speeds. That’s another great thing about it!

Pricing: Freemium scheme with affordable premium plans starting from $79/year ($69 for the first year) for multiple personal, business, or client sites.

Conclusion

SEO is one of the essential activities that cannot be ignored, especially in 2024. And thanks to the vast array of WordPress SEO plugins, users now have a lot easier jobs.

The right tool that suits your business needs can help you stay at the top of your SEO game. We saw the 6 best WordPress plugins in 2024 in this simple guide. Which one is the best according to your business needs? Please let us know in the comments below.

And do make sure that you are adding those ALT texts to your images. Happy SEO-ing!

Also read: The Effect of SEO on your hosting

FAQs

What features should I look for in an SEO plugin?

Key features to look for include:

• On-page analysis.
• XML sitemap generation.
• Social media integration.
• Schema markup support.
• Easy editing of the title tags and meta descriptions.

Also, a user-friendly interface and regular plugin updates are good features to watch out for.

How do SEO plugins improve on-page SEO?

SEO plugins assist with on-page SEO by providing functionality to optimize content. These include optimizing the meta titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, and proper keyword usage. They may also offer readability analysis and suggestions for improving the overall content structure of your webpage.

Can I use more than one SEO plugin on my site?

It’s not wise to use multiple SEO plugins simultaneously, as some may conflict with each other and cause issues. Choose the plugin that best suits your business needs.

Can SEO plugins improve website speed?

Some SEO plugins include features to help improve website speed but, at times, indirectly. They may offer recommendations for optimizing images, managing scripts, and other factors contributing to enhanced overall site speed.