23 Best WordPress SEO Plugins in 2024

So you have decided the time is right to begin using an SEO plugin. But which do you use?

How do you select the best plugin for your needs out of the dozens of options?

We have been building websites and performing SEO for longer than we care to remember. In that time, we have used just about every plugin out there.

So what would we look for when shopping for an SEO plugin?

• Ease of use: If you’re new to WordPress or are trying to run a business, the last thing you want to do is spend forever trying to figure out how SEO works.
• Simple configuration: The ideal SEO plugin would be set and forget. It’s an ongoing process but if the plugin can cover the basics, you can do the rest in your own time.
• Technical SEO: A good plugin will have tools for sitemaps, audits, competitor research and other sitewide tools.
• On-page SEO: We would also look for the ability to create rich snippets, metadata, tags, keywords, alt text and check readability.
• Useful extra features: If a plugin can help manage redirects, social media and schema, all the better.

That list isn’t exhaustive, but if an SEO plugin satisfies all those needs, it’s worth checking out!

We appreciate that 23 is a lot and you may be short of time.

While every SEO plugin in this list is worth a look, here are the 5 we think stand out the most.

To make life a little easier, we have divided this post into two sections.

1. Dedicated SEO plugins that handle most search requirements
2. Plugins with an indirect SEO benefit to help you rank better

Both can benefit your site but will go about it in different ways.

As you probably landed on this page looking for a do-it-all SEO plugin, let’s start with those first.

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin with over 5+ million active installations. It’s the go-to solution for many as it works for everyone, from beginners to experts.

Yoast helps with titles and descriptions, slugs and all the basics. It also has a neat traffic light system so you can clearly see how optimized posts and pages are.

You can also add Open Graph metadata for your social media pages, add breadcrumbs and generate an XML sitemap so all bases are covered.

Top Features

Yoast offers:

• A lot of SEO features you pay for in other plugins
• Traffic light system that’s easy to understand and use
• Add title, meta, slug and schema to posts and pages
• Manage breadcrumbs for SEO and UX
• Feature-rich premium option with more powerful SEO tools

There’s a free version of Yoast SEO with premium plans at $99 per year.

We like Yoast SEO because it offers a lot for free. It’s also very easy to use even if you’re new to SEO. The traffic light system in particular, is great for newcomers to WordPress.

AIOSEO markets itself as the “Original WordPress SEO Plugin.” With over 2+ million active installs, it’s also one of the most popular and is just as good as Yoast in our opinion.

The setup wizard is particularly useful. It highlights key optimizations in order of impact and provides clear explanations for everything it asks you to do.

The free version includes all the essentials while the premium version adds SEO for social media, WooCommerce, RSS, local SEO and more.

Top Features

Top features of AIOSEO include:

• XML sitemap support
• Google Analytics support
• Support for custom post types
• Automatically notifies search engines about changes
• Built-in API so you can extend functionality if required

There’s a free version of AIOSEO with 4 premium plans starting at $49.60 per year.

We like AIOSEO because of the setup wizard and what it’s capable of. It’s just as good as Yoast and offers almost as much for free.

If we were starting over, we would choose either AIOSEO or Yoast.

Rank Math is another feature-packed SEO plugin and compares well to Yoast and AIOSEO.

It offers a lot for free and has an intuitive setup wizard that lets you either allow the plugin to handle settings or get into the detail as you prefer.

Rank Math lets you easily add meta titles, descriptions, and Open Graph metadata. You can also generate an XML sitemap and connect to Google Search Console.

Top Features

Rank Math’s features include:

• Easy to follow setup wizard with easy or advanced modes
• Integrated Google schema markup
• Search Console integration
• Google keyword ranking
• 404 Error monitoring

Price

Rank Math has a free version and 3 premium plans that cost from $6.99 per month.

We like Rank Math because you can choose how to use it. Use easy mode if you’re new to SEO and let the plugin handle everything. Use advanced mode if you know what you’re doing for full control.

Plus, there’s AI assistance with premium versions, which is nice.

The SEO Framework (TSF) is a feature-packed SEO plugin. The homepage is hard to get your head around but the plugin itself is very easy to use.

Once installed, TSF will automatically analyze your site and implement best practices. It generates a sitemap, enables breadcrumbs, performs SEO audits and creates titles and descriptions.

The main plugin is free but there are lots of optional premium addons to help with writing, structured data, local SEO and other tasks.

Top Features

Highlights of The SEO Framework:

• Automatically manages core settings to Google guidelines
• Creates a sitemap and enables breadcrumbs
• Automatically generate titles and descriptions
• All settings can be overridden and controlled per page or post
• Supports canonical URLs, follow and nofollow linking

The SEO Framework has a free version and 3 premium plans costing from $7 per month.

We like The SEO Framework because it’s great for beginners. The free version takes care of all the basics and then some.

You also get auditing, social media and duplicate content protection for free too.

SEOPress is a powerful SEO plugin that takes care of most needs in the early days.

It has the same features as Yoast SEO, including the ability to add meta titles and descriptions, social tags, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps.

Setup is incredibly easy for beginners and has advanced controls for more experienced users. Once set up, you have most SEO tools you’ll need to begin ranking.

Top Features

SEOPress features include:

• Installation wizard that gets you started fast
• Set SEO titles, meta and descriptions
• Supports Google Knowledge Graph and Google Analytics
• Integrates with lots of popular plugins and services
• Social media SEO tools

There’s a free version of SEOPress and 2 premium plans priced from $49 per year.

We like SEOPress because the free version is generous and easy to set up. Premium is actually worth it, with AI tools, local and WooCommerce SEO and a very useful redirect manager.

Slim SEO is a powerful SEO plugin that has all the same features as other dedicated SEO plugins in this list.

Slim SEO offers to save time by configuring all the basics automatically. You can do it manually too, but this feature makes it great for beginners. You can then get into the details when you feel like it.

Slim SEO helps you with meta tags and titles, redirects, sitemaps, structure data, alt text and all the essentials you need.

Top Features

Slim SEO features include:

• Automatically handles all SEO basics during setup
• Helps add structured data via JSON-LD
• Auto-generates meta tags and a sitemap
• Supports header footer code for Google Tag Manager
• Works with breadcrumbs, RSS feeds and more

Slim SEO is free to use.

We like Slim SEO because it takes care of the basics and performs well. It also manages redirects in the free version, which is unusual for an SEO plugin.

Premium SEO Pack, despite its name, is actually free. It’s a lightweight SEO plugin that delivers the fundamental features we look for.

It has the usual meta title and description options, Open Graph support, noindex and nofollow controls, and works with social media and WooCommerce.

You can set SEO at a site or page level too, offering a decent amount of control over ranking.

Top Features

Highlights of Premium SEO Pack:

• SEO patterns for each post and custom post type
• Meta title, description and keyword controls
• Supports Open Graph and Twitter Card
• Noindex and nofollow controls on a page or post basis
• Supports Woocommerce and WordPress multisite

Premium SEO Pack is free to use.

We think the Premium SEO Pack gets a lot right. It isn’t as feature rich as some of these others, but what it does, it does very well. It’s also very simple to use, which is an added benefit.

Squirrly is one of the most fully featured SEO plugins anywhere, yet doesn’t have much of a profile. That’s a shame as you can achieve a lot with it.

The SEO plugin has two modes, beginner and expert. Select during setup and the plugin will either use its built-in AI consultant to cover the basics or let you manually configure settings.

Either way, you get post and page level meta, rich snippets, Open Graph, redirects and a whole lot more.

Top Features

Squirrly includes:

• Beginner and expert mode
• AI assistant to help with settings and optimization
• Live Assistant provides real time feedback on SEO performance
• Research and auditing features
• Content optimization tools

Squirrly has a free version with premium plans from $9.99 per month.

We like Squirrly for its beginner mode, AI assistance and the fact all features are available in the free version, you’re just limited to numbers.

We do wish it was a little cheaper though.

SmartCrawl from WPMU DEV is a feature rich plugin that’s almost the full package. We say ‘almost’ because this plugin is one of many from a developer that isn’t an SEO specialist.

That said, you can use it to generate titles and meta, generate sitemaps and robots.txt, add breadcrumbs, use Open Graph, perform content analysis and manage 301 redirects.

The plugin also crawls your site as a search engine would and provides reports on what it finds. That’s something not many other plugins offer.

Top Features

SmartCrawl includes:

• One-click setup wizard with basic features taken care of
• SEO checkup and reporting
• Customize meta titles and descriptions
• Smart page analyzer scans pages and posts for readability
• Supports all current schema types

There’s a free version of SmartCrawl. Pro costs from $3 per month and provides access to all WPMU DEV premium plugins.

We like SmartCrawl as it seems very capable. It’s easy to use, with a very useful site checkup feature. You will get most out of Pro, but the free version is good enough to get you started.

Plugins That Benefit SEO

The plugins that follow all have SEO benefits but aren’t dedicated SEO plugins like those above.

You can usually install any of these as well as your primary SEO plugin if you need the extra features.

Schema Pro helps with structured data. It formats your posts and pages so they deliver the information search engines and people look for, and handles most of it automatically.

Schema is essential for SEO. It helps search engines understand what’s on the page so they can rank it more accurately. It also improves your chances of featuring in rich snippets.

Schema Pro supports all current schema markup and is updated whenever new markup types are released.

Top Features

Some of it’s best features include:

• JSON-LD output that complies with Google standards
• Includes all current schema
• Simple schema mapping
• Support for custom fields
• Works seamlessly with dedicated SEO plugins

Schema Pro costs $69 per year.

We like Schema Pro because it’s simple to use and can automatically assign schema to new pages and posts. It’s a well-designed plugin that performs a vital task.

GetGenie is an AI content and SEO plugin. It helps generate content within your WordPress website and GetGenie’s platform using Genie Webview.

The AI content tool is able to generate a variety of other content types, including product descriptions, taglines, features and benefits, listicle ideas, pros and cons and more.

It can also generate SEO-driven content for your website with its built-in SERP analysis and keyword research features.

Top Features

Highlights of GetGenie include:

• Performs keyword research, SERP analysis and content scoring
• Helps tailor content to rank higher in search engines
• Copyscape integration for plagiarism detection
• AIDA, BAB, and PAS models for copywriting
• GenieChat, Genie Mode, and Genie Webview

Price

There’s a free version of GetGenie with premium plans from $6 per month.

Get Started with GetGenie

XML Sitemap Generator for Google, formerly Google XML Sitemaps, is a free SEO plugin that helps you control which web pages are crawled.

If your SEO plugin doesn’t include sitemaps, this is what to use. It’s a no frills, no fuss way to create a sitemap to help search engine crawlers.

There’s little to configure, just install it and access the XML Sitemap menu to decide which pages are mapped and which aren’t.

Top Features

Features of XML Sitemap Generator for Google include:

• Simple to set up and use
• Select content categories and priority for crawlers
• Set that priority based on the average or total comment count
• Exclude post and pages from indexing
• Submit sitemaps automatically to search engines

XML Sitemap Generator for Google is free to use.

XML Sitemap Generator for Google is simple and effective, which is exactly what we look for in plugins like this. It does a simple but important task well and for free, so what’s not to like?

Broken Link Checker monitors all internal and external links and checks your content for broken links and missing images. It then helps you fix them to improve the SEO of your site.

Some SEO plugins include broken link checking but it’s usually a premium option. Broken Link Checker does it for free.

It regularly scans your site and provides a report on what it finds. It can even email or alert you to any broken links it finds. It’s essential for larger sites, especially if your SEO plugin doesn’t do it.

Top Features

Key features of Broken Link Checker:

• Monitors external and internal links automatically
• Detects broken links, missing images, and redirects
• Dashboard and email notifications
• Cloud-based checking so doesn’t slow your site down
• Can stop search engines following broken links

Broken Link Checker is free to use.

We think Broken Link Checker does its job very well. It is very easy to use and means you don’t have to pay for an SEO plugin just for the feature.

Plus, it improves the visitor experience, which is reason enough to use it.

MonsterInsights is one of the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. It turns data collected by Google Analytics into meaningful reports for real-world action.

It comes with a built-in Google Analytics dashboard that shows you actionable reports inside WordPress.

It helps you track user behavior, where users come from, how long they stay, where they go and what they do. That’s essential information for websites and online stores alike.

Top Features

MonsterInsights features:

Price

There’s a free version of MonsterInsights and 3 premium plans from $99.60 per year.

MonsterInsights takes data from Google and makes it accessible to everyone using dashboards. It simplifies data and gives you the information you need to learn exactly what visitors are doing. That’s invaluable!

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) is a feature-rich plugin that helps you display related content to increase engagement.

You know those ‘Featured Articles’ or ‘Popular Posts’ blocks on websites? YARRP can add those. If your theme or SEO plugin doesn’t offer this feature, use YARPP. It’s simple, free and works well once configured.

The algorithm considers post title, tags, category and content while gathering the most suitable items to display and works automatically once set up.

Top Features

YARPP features include:

• Control exactly how the plugin works and selects content
• Well-designed algorithm that works well once configured
• Supports REST API, shortcodes and WordPress Multisite
• Caches popular selections for faster operation
• Professionally maintained and supported with regular updates

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) is free to use.

We like anything that helps increase engagement and keeps people on the page. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin does both those things.

It’s also free, so if your theme or SEO plugin doesn’t do it, use YARPP.

Security is important to you, your visitors and SEO. WordFence is a trusted security plugin with 3+ million active installs and has all the basic tools to keep your site safe.

WordFence is a reliable security plugin. It has a user-friendly dashboard, a firewall and malware scanner, brute force protection, login attempt limiter and two-factor authentication.

The free version is very good while the premium version adds real time threat intelligence, IP blocking, country blocking and unlimited security scans.

Top Features

Wordfence includes:

• Firewall and malware scanner
• Security scanner
• File change detection and intrusion alerts
• User-friendly dashboard with plain English explanations
• Login security tools including 2FA

There’s a free version and 3 premium plans from $119 per year.

We like Wordfence because it’s set and forget. Install and configure the plugin and you can forget all about it until it alerts you to something. That’s exactly the approach we like!

Speed is also important to visitors and SEO, which is why we recommend using W3 Total Cache (W3TC). It’s a feature-rich WordPress caching plugin that provides the tools to optimize your WordPress website.

It lets you speed up load times by using browser caching, web caching, optimizing page loading, minify CSS and JS, and a ton of other speed optimizations.

It’s a quick and easy way to implement many best practices to improve the SEO and user experience of your website.

Top Features

The top features of W3TC include the following:

• Easy to set up and use
• Includes a raft of performance features to speed up load times
• Compatible with CDNs and video hosting
• Includes minification and defer tools
• WebP image converter included

There’s a free version of W3 Total Cache with a premium plan that costs $99 per year.

We like W3 Total Cache because the free version is probably all you’ll need. It’s easy to use and can make a real difference to how fast pages load, which benefits users and your SEO.

WP Rocket is a premium alternative to W3 Total Cache. It was built to solve the problem of slow loading websites and confusing caching plugins.

It does that by automatically implementing effective speed optimizations so you don’t have to. You can still control everything if you want to, but there’s less to do at first.

WP Rocket supports page caching, preloading, browser caching, GZIP compression, file and media optimization, database caching and every speed tweak you can think of.

Top Features

WP Rocket’s features include:

• Page and browser caching
• Cache and sitemap preloading
• GZip compression
• Minification and concatenation
• Prefetching and CDN support

WP Rocket is a premium that costs from $59 per year.

We like WP Rocket because it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Install, activate and let it do its thing. You can still fully customize it, but that’s purely optional. Oh, and it’s pretty good at speeding things up too.

Redirection is one of the oldest and most trusted WordPress redirection plugins. If your SEO plugin doesn’t handle redirects, this one will.

It lets you easily keep track of 404 errors, manage 301 redirects, and reduce link errors. All things that benefit users and your SEO ranking.

It uses a simple dashboard similar to a posts page that lists your redirects, 404 errors, logs and other tools. It’s simple to use, easy to manage and works for eCommerce as well as standard websites.

Top Features

Key features of Redirection include:

• Easy to set up and manage
• Uses a familiar dashboard layout with simple controls
• Monitors for 404 and offers control over 301 redirects
• Logging feature so you can track errors and activity
• Supports both Apache and Nginx servers

Redirection is free to use.

We like Redirection because it offers a lot for free and handles an important SEO task without fuss. If your primary SEO plugin charges extra to handle redirects, use this instead.

AMP is designed to make your site more attractive to mobile users by optimizing it for speed and small screens. It’s not an essential plugin, but it might be useful if you run a news site or don’t use Astra.

AMP includes limits for mobile designs and uses pre-rendering tricks to speed up load times. Both help improve the speed and responsiveness of your site.

If you use a responsive theme and a caching plugin, you may not need AMP. If you run a dynamic site like a news outlet or want to improve mobile load times, it’s well worth checking out.

Top Features

The key features of the AMP plugin are the following:

• Automatically generates AMP-valid markup for posts and pages
• Limits design options to maintain performance
• Smart pre-rendering to speed up load times on small screens
• Validation tools to help deal with AMP incompatibilities
• Can improve performance on dynamic websites

AMP is free to use.

We like any plugin that improves the visitor experience. AMP isn’t as useful as it once was, but if you don’t use Astra or run a fast-moving website, it’s still an essential plugin.

Autoptimize is a performance plugin that concentrates on minifying and optimizing WordPress files. It doesn’t offer caching or other performance tweaks like WP Rocket, but it’s a very effective plugin.

It helps performance by aggregating, minifying and caching scripts and styles. It can also inject CSS in the page head or inline critical CSS.

It can also defer the aggregated full CSS, move and defer scripts to the footer, minify HTML, and a whole lot more. All designed to speed up page load times.

Top Features

Autoptimize features include:

• Aggregate files by combining CSS and Javascript
• Minifies files by removing unnecessary content and white space
• Cache HTML files, scripts and CSS to reduce server load
• Defers some scripts to the footer
• Compatible with caching plugins like WP Rocket and others

There’s a free version of Autoptimize with a Pro version costing $11.99 per month.

We like Autoptimize because it’s very good at what it does. If your web host offers caching but you still want to optimize files, this is the plugin to use. It also plays nicely with caching plugins, so there’s no reason not to try it.

ShortPixel is a popular WordPress image compression plugin that also helps improve page load times.

Install the plugin, set it up and it can compress and optimize existing images and every image you add from that moment on. It can also convert JPEG to WebP or AVIF too.

Optimization is set and forget but there are also tools to crop, manage image galleries, remove EXIF data and work with other WordPress plugins.

Top Features

ShorPixel features:

• Supports JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, and PDFs
• Bulk-optimize images in the WordPress Media Library
• Automatically converts existing and future images
• Supports both lossless, lossy, and glossy compression algorithms
• No file size limit

There’s a free version of ShorPixel and two premium plans costing from $9.99 per month. There’s also an option to add more optimization credits for the free version.

We like ShorPixel because it manages to shrink image files sizes significantly with no noticeable reduction in quality. It’s also a set and forget plugin, which we like!

The a3 Lazy Load plugin is a mobile-oriented plugin that helps speed up load times by lazy loading as much as possible.

Even though WordPress now has its own lazy load, this plugin works better. It can also lazy load scripts, videos, iFrames, posts and below the fold content.

It will take a little testing to make sure your site still loads properly but it’s time well spent.

Top Features

• Supports lazy loading YouTube, Vimeo and HTML5 video
• Works with iFrames, images, AMP and embeds
• Configuration options for all settings
• Exclude images and video by class name
• Compatible with many WordPress plugins

The a3 Lazy Load plugin is free to use.

We like the a3 Lazy Load plugin because it has a ton of options and is very good at what it does. If WordPress isn’t cutting it or your caching plugin doesn’t perform, try this instead.

Conclusion

What do you think of our list of the 23 best SEO plugins?

We think they represent the best of what’s on the market right now. The 9 dedicated SEO plugins can genuinely get you off to a great start in search.

The other plugins help support those efforts with some very useful features.

They are all ideal for busy website owners or newcomers to WordPress. Anyone who doesn’t have the spare time to learn SEO.

Do you use any other SEO plugins? Any SEO stories top tell? Let us know in the comments below.

WordPress SEO Plugin FAQs

Still have questions on search engine optimization?

No, an SEO plugin will not make you rank #1. In fact, nothing can guarantee that coveted number 1 spot. You’re definitely better with them, but don’t expect to magically rank first on Google with common and popular keywords even with these plugins installed.

SEO takes into consideration a lot of things including content, images, bounce rates, page quality, and other factors that these plugins cannot control for you.

SEO plugins are definitely useful, but cannot guarantee an improvement in rank. They also can’t do much about the competition and their SEO efforts either. There’s a lot going on in search and very little of it is within our control.

SEO plugins will give you a great head start but search is an incredibly tough place to be. Don’t give up though, as the more you put in, the more you get out.

Yes, if your SEO plugin doesn’t handle schema or doesn’t have features you need, use a secondary plugin like Schema Pro.

It provides schema markup for all current schema types and uses a simple mapping process to work. It’s easy to use and works with all the dedicated SEO plugins on this page.