12 Best WordPress SEO Plugins in 2023 (Free and Paid)

Most potential visitors that a website receives come from search engines. However, it is not so simple for your target audience to find your website. The reasons why website owners are in search of the best WordPress SEO plugins is to optimizing WordPress sites and making it imperative for raising website ranking higher on the search engine result pages.

SEO plugins perform beyond your expectations when it concerns improving your website pages for search engines. While WordPress does offer multiple SEO capabilities, an SEO plugin will facilitate all these tasks.

The blog post will share a list of carefully curated WordPress SEO plugins or tools that you must have for your website. Looking at their features and other things you can make an informed decision when picking from an ocean of options.

Yoast SEO Plugin

With over 5 million active installations, Yoast SEO occupies the first place. This brilliant tool has been successful in aiding several websites hit a higher search results rank. Aiming to deliver SEO for anyone and everyone, they have a diverse population of users. While Yoast SEO offers enough tools to the users, a premium version offers an extended number of tools and features.

Talking about features, the plugin is brimming with features to enable your search engines and your users to have a seamless website experience. The top features include meta tags, the latest XML sitemaps, meta titles, meta descriptions, integration with Schema.org, complete site breadcrumbs control, and faster load times. All these will help you outdo your competition.

To set up Yoast SEO, you will first install it. You can do this either from your WordPress dashboard by searching for ‘Yoast SEO’ and activating it or you can do it manually by uploading the file to the directory for activation. Once you install the plugin successfully, you can start the first-time plugin configuration. This configuration will allow you to set up your plugin.

Pricing

A yoast SEO plugin is available for free and premium. The premium version is available for 89 USD for a website. For a faster, improved, and more robust site, this plugin will help you stay ahead of other sites.

All-in-One SEO Pack

In the list of the best WordPress SEO plugins, all in One SEO or AIOSEO is a popular tool to have for your website. 3 million users employ this plugin to optimize their websites for better ranking. Since hiring an SEO expert or web developer is not possible for everyone, AIOSEO is an all-inclusive WordPress SEO tool.

AISEO considers user experience and is a beginner-friendly tool for setting up your website SEO. The features of this tool cater to the algorithm of Google and various popular search engines. This ensures your website is following the latest practices and standards for SEO.

Its audit checklist will assess the website to identify errors and recommend actions to enhance SEO. It also generates sitemaps and automatically submits them to search engines for boosting your online presence. It also features AMP, local SEO, schema, knowledge graph, etc.

Same as before, you can activate AIOSEO after installing it via the dashboard. This will launch the setup wizard for basic configuration. You can proceed to choose a site category, title, meta description, etc. You can use featured images and add social profiles. Once you are done with the features, appearance, etc., you can complete the setup. You may always tweak all these details.

Pricing

If your business scale is small or caters to a local region, this plugin is available for 49.50 USD annually. Its free version is also available for marketers, SEO experts, and developers.

Rank Math

As one of the best WordPress SEO plugins, Rank Math understands your website's SEO needs. The smart features of the tool deliver the best SEO capabilities. Using the automation features, a few clicks equate to the SEO team's abilities.

As a game changer, it brings AI for creating highly optimized website content. Its exclusive features include a user-friendly setup wizard, easy rich snippets configuration, and optimizing infinite focus keywords. You also get integration for Google Search Console, tracking keyword ranking, and so on. The plugin offers tools for redirections, local SEO, 404 monitoring, link building, sitemaps,

After plugin installation and activation from the plugins page, you will be able to access the setup wizard. You can follow the various needed steps to configure the plugin and set it up for your website.

Pricing

With its free version, you can enjoy the basic features. For advanced capabilities, various yearly plans are available, including Pro for 59 USD, Business for 199 USD, and Agency for 499 USD. 

SEO Press

Among many best WordPress SEO plugins, SEOPress has over 200k active installations and is a robust tool to fulfill your optimization needs. These include increasing website traffic, building customized XML and HTML sitemaps, adding schemas, monitoring 301 redirections, optimizing breadcrumbs, and more. Additionally, it enables you to alter the SEO metadata using any page or theme builder.

The plugin offers image SEO to optimize your website images automatically to increase traffic. For faster and better indexing, it employs IndexNow API and Google Indexing API. It offers free content analysis offering infinite keywords to create optimized content.

It also offers a preview for Google, Twitter, and Facebook. You can integrate the plugin with multiple page builders such as Elementor, Beaver, and Oxygen Builder. Personal websites can make the most out of their free version.

The installation process requires you to upload a wp-suppress file to the directory, which you can access from wp-content > plugins. By visiting the Plugins option on your WordPress dashboard, you can activate the plugin. Next, select SEOPress and apply the changes.

Pricing

You may unlock its advanced features upon purchasing premium plans like the 49 USD Pro plan, 99 USD Insights plan, and 128 USD Bundle plan.

Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP

Google’s rich snippets or rich results are regular search results that display added content, such as ratings, photos, author of the post, or pricing. But you require schema markup to alter the appearance of the content in rich results.

To include all kinds of content, such as news articles, recipes, blog posts, and product pages, you can employ Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP that aids in selecting schema. This plugin uses Schema.org guidelines to arrange your site for SEO.

It is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins and is packed with features. It lets you automatically assign over 35 schema types, such as local business, article news article, product, blog posting, etc. The plugin allows you to add or remove pages, posts, taxonomies, and others. Its additional features include migration, compatibility, breadcrumbs, user-friendly, review mode, and more.

You can download the plugin from the WordPress dashboard. After plugin activation, visit your dashboard and go to the Structured Data menu. Make any changes in the default settings. Next, visit the Structured Data and select Add New to add details.

Pricing

Other than a free option, the premium personal plan is available at 99 USD. There are other plans like webmaster for 149 USD, freelancer for 299 USD, agency for 499 USD, and lifetime for 999 USD.

Squirrly SEO

Although SEO is a major source to drive visitors to your website, succeeding with building and applying strategies is crucial for long-lasting WordPress site success. But there are several challenges behind a successful SEO. Therefore, individuals who lack SEO expertise can employ Squirrly SEO. More than 200k users employ this plugin to build all kinds of websites.

This is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins that offer a range of features to cater to everyone, regardless of their SEO expertise. Some of its features to consider are keyword optimization, AI consultant for personalized guides, content analysis, rank tracking, site audits, technical SEO, and more.

Content creators, freelancers, business owners, bloggers, and agencies can set up this plugin for their websites either manually or via a WordPress dashboard. After activation, add your email to sign up, which will provide you with email lessons to start developing the best content.

Pricing

The pricing of Squirrly SEO includes three monthly plans, including Pro for 29.99 USD, Business for 71.99 USD, and Agency for 75.99 USD.

Autodescription

With over 100k active installations, Autodescription is one of the fastest and most robust SEO plugins. It offers several key features but automation is what sets it apart. You can view your and your competition's SEO ratings to see the page's performance.

Those starting with optimizing SEO content can enjoy its multiple features like synonyms inclusive keyword targeting, colored scale, plugin extensions to expand functionality, integration for customized social sharing, and more.

For installation, the plugin needs a PHP 7.2 and above, a 5.5 and above WordPress version, and the latest browser. You can install and activate the plugin via the dashboard for site optimization and protection from SEO attacks.

Pricing

You can choose its free plan or pay a monthly fee of 7 USD for Pro, 17 USD for Business, and 27 USD for Agency.

SEO Simple Pack

SEO Simple Pack is an uncomplicated and easy plugin to use. More than 80k users employ this tool. It offers fundamental Meta tags necessary for SEO. You can set it up with individual page types. It enables users to establish the OGP details important for social media like Twitter or Facebook.

Using the plugin offers the option to customize the information for Meta tags separately for different page terms, and posts. You can also adjust the measurement code for Google Analytics and the verification code for Webmaster tools.

Pricing

For installation, enter SEO Simple Pack into the search field for plugins. Download and activate to start using. Its business plan is available for free.

BoldGrid

Your next option for the best WordPress SEO plugins is BoldGrid. It has over 90k active installations and helps increase website ranking. For better SEO practices, it assesses the content of your page in actual time to offer recommendations.

The plugin’s dashboard offers easy suggestions on boosting page SEO after you select a keyword. It offers automation for perfect keyword frequency, optimize title and description of pages, content and header tags, alt tags in images, and more,

It requires WordPress 4.4 and PHP 5.3 for installation. You can install and activate it via the search field in the plugin. Plugin can also set up manually by uploading the folder to the directory to activate and use the plugin.

Pricing

You can use this plugin for free to enjoy various features.

WP Meta SEO

The WP Meta SEO has over 20k active installations and offers complete control over your SEO optimization. You can bulk edit various website Meta using the plugin. It features a breadcrumb generator, a Gutenberg SEO content checker, and custom social elements for Twitter and Facebook, etc.

You may also edit the image’s file Meta and name and SEO link title in bulk. It also includes features for checking 404 errors, redirects, and broken links. So you won't feel need to install separate plugin for redirection. There are several more features it offers. For this plugin, you can automatically install it via WordPress admin or by manually uploading the file to the Plugins menu and activating the plugin.

Pricing

You can employ its features for optimizing your site for free or buy Pro for 49 USD.

Ahref SEO

The Ahref WP plugin displays how various articles on your website are performing for your target keywords depending on GA, Ahref, and GSC data. The plugin will give suggestions for boosting your website performance.

The plugin engages in content audits to provide recommendations for improving performance. It calculates your pages’ performance score and offers GSC and GA integration. You can integrate it within other SEO plugins like AIOSEO, Rank Math, or Yoast.

You can install and activate this plugin automatically or manually. After activation, you can check the setup wizard and follow all the relevant steps to connect the plugin to your site.

Pricing

Gain all these features for free. Or you can subscribe to its lite package for 99 USD. 

WP SEO Structured Data Schema

Finally, the last of the best WordPress SEO plugins for your website is the SEO Structured Data Schema. It enables business owners and web designers to add schema without much problem. It has over 20k active installations. These could be for events, audio, news articles, reviews, products, and more.

Its pro features offer auto-fill functionality, support for custom post types, WordPress Multisite, books, courses, WooCommerce, item lists, etc. To install the plugin, download and unzip the plugin file and upload this file to the directory. Later activate it from the plugins page.

Pricing

You can gain this plugin for free from WordPress official Directory.

Conclusion

The visibility of your website largely relies on the success of your SEO. With a better presence, you can draw in more visitors and grab opportunities for increasing conversion rates. The best WordPress SEO plugins work towards optimizing every aspect of your website by performing tasks that influence SEO, online marketing, web analysis, etc.

Since SEO requires progressive efforts, it can become overwhelmingly difficult to reach desirable results. Hence, there are SEO plugins to lower your burden and facilitate the tasks. You can study more about and invest in the tools recommended in this blog to help you reach your goals. 

However, simply adding SEO plugins will not instantly and automatically take you to the top of the search results. You will have to make relevant changes and keep track of your SEO to maintain its performance.