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One of the first plugins I heard about when I started using WordPress was Yoast SEO. The name stuck—it rhymes with toast. I had no idea what SEO stood for, let alone why I needed an SEO plugin for WordPress. Since then, I’ve learned the value of SEO, and I’ve used both Yoast SEO and Rank Math on my WordPress sites. But they’re not the only WordPress SEO plugins out there.
If you’re looking for a WordPress SEO plugin to improve your chances of ranking higher in the search results, you’ve come to the right place. I considered and researched dozens of plugins and did in-depth testing on the top contenders to narrow it down to these seven SEO plugins for WordPress.
The best WordPress SEO plugins
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Yoast SEO for content analysis and on-page optimization
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AIOSEO for all-around SEO assistance
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Rank Math for rank tracking and reporting inside WordPress
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Squirrly SEO for AI-powered keyword research and ranking projections
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SmartCrawl for balancing features with simplicity
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The SEO Framework for speed and automation
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Slim SEO for beginners who want minimal configuration
What makes the best WordPress SEO plugin?
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There are plenty of lists of the best WordPress SEO plugins, so what makes this one different? I didn’t just read these apps’ marketing materials and customer reviews. I spent dozens of hours researching and testing the best WordPress SEO plugins. I installed and activated each one in turn, followed the setup wizard instructions, and tested the SEO functionality.
Here, I’ve focused on the best free and premium SEO plugins for WordPress. Unlike other WordPress plugins I’ve tested, the free versions of these plugins have enough functionality to cover the SEO essentials and more. You only need to invest in the premium versions for specialized features, such as advanced schemas or link management.
The bottom line is that these WordPress SEO plugins all do much the same to varying degrees. But as I was testing the plugins, here’s what I was looking for:
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Setup. Unless you’re a seasoned professional, the world of SEO can appear daunting with its raft of technical jargon and acronyms. Each of these plugins comes with a setup wizard, minimal config, and in most cases, the option to migrate settings from other SEO plugins.
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Ease of use. Having installed and set up a plugin, you want something logical and not too overwhelming. Any plugins that weren’t intuitive, had a ton of settings to plow through, or used too much technical jargon were eliminated.
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Technical SEO. Before creating any content, you’ll want a robust site structure. These plugins enable you to implement sitewide technical SEO settings, like generating and adding an XML sitemap and running basic site audits to identify any problems.
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On-page SEO. You’ll also want a plugin that helps optimize your content. These plugins check for on-page SEO factors like meta tags, schema markup, keyword density, and readability to ensure your content is in good shape.
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Extra features. The best SEO plugin for WordPress will help you go beyond the basics. For example, you might want to tackle other areas like eCommerce or local SEO. So, I checked for integrations and automations with other plugins and apps to see how you could extend the functionality.
Overall, I whittled the list down to the seven best SEO plugins for WordPress.
The best plugins for WordPress SEO at a glance
|
Best for |
Standout feature |
Pricing |
Website |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Yoast |
Content analysis and on-page optimization |
Real-time SEO and readability analysis for content |
Free version available; premium version starts at $9.99/month, billed annually |
Visit Yoast |
|
AIOSEO |
All-around SEO assistance |
Automation and strong on-page guidance |
Free version available; $99/year, 50% off for first-time subscribers |
Visit AIOSEO |
|
Rank Math |
Rank tracking and reporting inside WordPress |
Extensive free feature set |
Free version available; premium version starts at $8.99/month, billed annually |
Visit Rank Math |
|
Squirrly SEO |
AI-powered keyword research and ranking projections |
AI-powered live assistant providing real-time feedback |
Free version available; premium version starts at $9.99/month |
Visit Squirrly SEO |
|
SmartCrawl |
A balance between features and simplicity |
Automatically prompts Google to re-crawl your site |
Free version available; premium version starts at $60/year |
Visit SmartCrawl |
|
The SEO Framework |
Speed and automation |
70+ automated SEO checks |
Free version available; premium version starts at $7/month, billed annually |
Visit The SEO Framework |
|
Slim SEO |
Beginners who want minimal configuration |
Hands-off, lightweight approach |
Free version available; premium version starts at $59/year |
Visit Slim SEO |
Best WordPress SEO plugin for content analysis and on-page optimization
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO pros:
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Real-time content analysis for SEO, readability, and
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Import previous SEO plugin settings and redirect data
Yoast SEO cons:
Yoast SEO is a firm favorite with the WordPress community, and it’s the first SEO plugin I used over a decade ago. You always feel like you’re in safe hands with Yoast SEO, as it’s a tried-and-tested solution. It’s a trusted source for SEO generally, and Yoast SEO Academy gives you access to valuable courses like SEO for Beginners, Yoast SEO for WordPress (block editor), and Structured Data for Beginners.
The setup wizard has a nice, easy flow and guides you through all the essential SEO settings for your site in a few steps. If you’ve previously used other SEO plugins—like AIOSEO, TSF, or WPMeta—you can import the data settings and clean up the old plugin data afterward.
Yoast SEO’s content analysis and traffic light system ensures your posts or pages are shipshape, with a list of improvements you can make, like ensuring the meta description is under 156 characters, using your keyphrase in the introduction, and improving the (Flesch) readability score. You can see the traffic light scores for SEO and readability at a glance in the posts and pages dashboards, and inside each individual post/page.
The plugin integrates with other SEO apps like Semrush and Wincher, so you can perform keyword research and track keyphrase ranking positions without leaving WordPress. Plus, it integrates with other WordPress plugins, like WooCommerce and Elementor.
With Yoast Premium, you get access to more academy courses and more features, including automatic redirects to handle URL changes and deletions, internal link suggestions as you write, and two AI offerings:
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Yoast AI Generate helps create optimized titles and meta descriptions for your content so it appeals to audiences and search engines.
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Yoast AI Optimize suggests edits for your posts and pages, like including more words from your keyphrase in the introduction, which you can dismiss or apply.
For content teams using writers who wouldn’t necessarily access the WordPress site, the Google Docs Add-on lets them optimize their draft content directly in Google Docs to the Yoast SEO standards and save editors extra work.
Yoast SEO also offers specialist add-ons that provide more functionality:
Overall, Yoast SEO is a solid all-around tool. The free version covers all the essentials and gets you well on your way to optimizing your site and content for search engines. Then you can take your SEO game higher with the enhanced premium features and extra functionality of the niche add-ons.
Yoast SEO pricing: Free version available; premium version $9.99/month, billed annually
Best WordPress SEO plugin for all-around SEO assistance
AIOSEO
AIOSEO pros:
AIOSEO cons:
AIOSEO (or All in One SEO) is one of those tools that does so much it feels overwhelming. Whether that’s a pro or con depends on your perspective.
If you’re new to SEO, the features might be overwhelming, but the plugin does a great job of guiding you. The free version offers a schema generator, rank tracking, internal linking automation, and SEO audits. And AIOSEO offers a ton of integrations, like Google Search Console, Semrush, and Elementor. Like with many competitors, you can import your data from other plugins.
Experienced SEOs might balk at the performance impact and prefer a more lightweight tool. This is getting into the weeds (an SEO’s favorite pastime), but AIOSEO tends to have higher memory usage and a greater impact on page speed than competitor plugins. This kind of thing changes frequently, so test it yourself.
Still, the plugin has some darn helpful features for large sites, including redirect and internal link management. The tool can import existing redirect maps, suggest internal links, and automatically detect orphaned pages on your website. So you’ll get a smooth migration experience and ongoing visibility as your website expands.
You can get a free version of the tool using the WordPress plugin directory, and it’s quite robust at the free tier. But if you want to manage multiple websites, you’ll have to put up some cash. For one website, the costs are comparable to other plugins, but if you want to run it on multiple websites, the price increases fast. For more than three websites, you’re looking at the $399/year tier. The good news: all of the paid plans come with generative AI credits that you can use to create content, FAQs, summaries, meta tags, and social posts.
AIOSEO pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $99/year for one website, with 50% off the first year.
Best WordPress SEO plugin for rank tracking and reporting inside WordPress
Rank Math
Rank Math pros:
Rank Math cons:
Rank Math has the most extensive free feature set of the WordPress SEO plugins, including limited access to AI features. It also makes it affordable to scale when you move to the premium version—starting at $8.99/month for multiple sites.
The setup wizard lets you choose between easy or advanced mode. Easy is good for websites where you only want to change the basics and let Rank Math do most of the heavy lifting. With Advanced, you’ll be able to control every SEO aspect. But you can easily switch between them. For example, if you switch from Easy to Advanced, you can turn on image SEO to add image alt tags and title tags on the fly.
As you work through the setup, you can connect with Google Search Console and Analytics to get a complete SEO picture of your site. You can also import settings from previously used SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, AIOSEO, or SEOPress. I found it to be the best importer—most other plugins missed some of the settings on import.
Once you’ve configured the basic site settings, like XML sitemaps, you can move on to the on-page SEO editor to edit the meta title, description, social sharing, and schema. The SEO analysis highlights areas for improvement and shows you how to fix errors. Of note: the readability analysis wasn’t as detailed or clear to understand as Yoast SEO, in my opinion.
Rank Math works seamlessly with the Elementor and Divi page builders as well as the WordPress Gutenberg and Classic editors. It also integrates with other page builders like Oxygen and Beaver Builder, so you can manage all your SEO settings in one place.
And out of the box, Rank Math offers many features for free that most other plugins charge for, like:
Even with significantly more features than other plugins, Rank Math loads quickly and keeps your website running fast.
With Rank Math Pro, you get access to an advanced schema generator, advanced SEO analytics, keyword rank tracker and position history, plus advanced content SEO overview. You also have the option of purchasing Content AI credits to leverage 40+ AI tools that can help generate ideas, intros, conclusions, titles, descriptions, and more to optimize your content.
Rank Math pricing: Free version available; then premium plans starting from $8.99/month, billed annually for multiple personal sites. Client websites require higher plan tiers.
Best WordPress SEO plugin for AI-powered keyword research and ranking projections
Squirrly SEO
Squirrly pros:
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Covers the entire SEO lifecycle, from keyword research to rank tracking
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Built-in AI, even with the free plan
Squirrly cons:
Squirrly SEO is an AI-powered WordPress plugin and SaaS combo. It integrates with Google Search Console and Analytics to deliver results inside WordPress—no need for switching tools. It also works with popular caching plugins like WP Super Cache and WP Rocket to ensure site speed is unaffected.
Squirrly SEO offers a live SEO assistant as well as customizable advanced settings, making it suitable for everyone from small business owners and bloggers to marketing teams and agencies. You can opt into a guided “14 Days Journey To Better Ranking” guide inside the plugin, which helps you through your SEO strategy. If you’re an expert already, you can configure and tweak settings yourself. And if you’ve previously used other SEO plugins—including Rank Math, Yoast SEO, and The SEO Framework—you can import those settings, too.
Like other SEO plugins, Squirrly SEO includes settings for each page/post covering meta tags, rich snippets (schema), open graph (social sharing), and visibility (indexing and redirects). But its SEO Live Assistant gives you real-time SEO feedback on your content as you type in the WordPress editor, whether that’s the Classic Editor, Gutenberg Editor, or other page builders like Elementor, Oxygen, and Divi.
One of the differentiators with Squirrly SEO is that it covers the entire SEO lifecycle, from keyword research and content optimization to technical audits and rank tracking. It also includes AI-powered goal suggestions tailored to your website.
Squirrly pricing: Free version available for one site; then premium plans from $9.99/month.
Best WordPress SEO plugin for balancing features with simplicity
SmartCrawl
SmartCrawl pros:
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Excellent technical plugin focused on site architecture, crawling, redirects, and schema
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Solid without being flashy
SmartCrawl cons:
SmartCrawl is one of those SEO plugins that slips under the radar. You can’t get excited about it, but it does a solid job without being flashy.
Every time you add new content to your site, SmartCrawl will let Google know it’s time to re-crawl your site—hence its name, SmartCrawl. This is something I didn’t see on offer on the other apps I tested.
There’s a one-click setup wizard to get you started, and then further menu options to configure sitewide meta, schema, social, and XML sitemap settings. But aside from that, working in the clear, uncluttered interface and admin panel is excellent.
From the SmartCrawl dashboard, you can monitor your overall SEO settings and run SEO audits (powered by Google Lighthouse) to get recommendations for improving SEO. One limitation.
Underneath each page and post, there’s a SmartCrawl section with four tabs:
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SEO: To edit the meta title and description output on search pages and action optimization suggestions for your content
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Readability: Indicating how difficult your content is to read based on the Flesch-Kincaid Test
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Social media: To customize the title, description, and featured image for social sharing
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Advanced: To configure indexing, canonical URLs, and redirects for the page
The premium version enables you to schedule SEO audits and white-label reports, automate linking for specific keywords, and check for broken URLs, 404s, and multiple redirections.
SmartCrawl pricing: Free version available; then $60/year for the WPMU DEV bundle of premium plugins.
Best WordPress SEO plugin for speed and automation
The SEO Framework
The SEO Framework pros:
The SEO Framework cons:
The SEO Framework (TSF) is the fastest full-featured SEO plugin. It’s also free, with the option to add some free and premium extensions.
When you first activate the plugin, it uses AI to read your WordPress environment and configure the settings automatically to what it thinks is best. You can go in and edit the settings as you want, but you might find the panel long to navigate. You can also migrate previous SEO settings from plugins like Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or SEOPress.
Behind the scenes, TSF automatically creates a sitemap, enables breadcrumbs for Google Search, and generates titles and descriptions (in any language) according to Google’s guidelines. In fact, the plugin started out purely as an “auto description” generator. Basically, it uses the beginning of a post or page to automatically generate a perfectly-sized meta description.
Then, for each page/post, you also have individual on-page SEO settings to set the meta title and description, social graph, and visibility settings like canonical URL, indexing, and following or not following links. The color-coded guidelines give you a snapshot of what’s wrong, like unbranded titles or blocked indexing.
You can extend the plugin’s functionality via the Extension Manager with free and premium extensions, such as:
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Focus to help you write content with focus keywords and synonyms
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Articles to automatically add structured data to your published posts
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Local to inform search engines of local business information
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Title Fix to ensure you configure your page title correctly
Overall, if you’re looking for an SEO plugin to do the grunt work automatically and efficiently, then The SEO Framework is an excellent option.
The SEO Framework pricing: Free version available, with the option to add free and premium extensions from $7/month, billed annually.
Best WordPress SEO plugin for beginners who want minimal configuration
Slim SEO
Slim SEO pros:
Slim SEO cons:
Slim SEO is a super-lightweight but full-featured SEO plugin that automatically configures your WordPress site. It’s ideal if you want a hands-off approach and don’t want to get bamboozled with SEO terminology.
Simply install and activate the plugin, and then select which features you want Slim SEO to automatically generate and optimize, including:
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Meta tags
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Image alt text
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XML sitemap
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Breadcrumbs
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Schema (structured data)
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Redirections
For example, with meta tags enabled, Slim SEO automatically generates a meta description from your post or page. You can always add your own description—just consider it a failsafe mechanism. The same principle applies to 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.
You can migrate and import SEO data from other plugins, including Yoast SEO, Rank Math, AIO SEO, and SEOPress. And Slim SEO integrates well with other plugins, especially page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi.
However, Slim SEO doesn’t offer much in the way of on-page content optimization. At the end of each post/page, you can edit the meta title and description, specify images for sharing on Facebook and X, add a canonical URL, and hide/unhide the page from search engines. But there are no content analysis or readability features like some of the other plugins.
Overall, if you want a WordPress plugin that covers all the SEO essentials, then Slim SEO is a solid choice.
Slim SEO pricing: Full-featured free version; premium plans—with schema markup and link management optimization—start at $59/year. Alternatively, you can purchase either of the $49/year premium add-ons independently: Slim SEO Schema to add structured data to your WordPress content and Slim SEO Link Manager to fix broken links and build internal links in WordPress.
Should you use an SEO plugin for WordPress?
You don’t have to use an SEO plugin since WordPress has the basic tools to create and customize permalinks, meta descriptions, image alt text, and other basic aspects of SEO. But if you want to take your site to the next level, an SEO plugin can get you there.
The good thing here is that you can accomplish much more with a free SEO plugin before taking the final step and investing in a premium solution. It all comes down to what your requirements are. With these seven WordPress plugins, you can go from an automated, hands-off approach to a fully controlled, hands-on experience. The choice is yours. For now, I’m happy to continue using Yoast or Rank Math for my sites.
You can get even more from WordPress by connecting it to other apps using Zapier. Automatically create WordPress posts when your content is ready in other tools, or keep a running archive of your blog posts in a spreadsheet for easy filtering. Learn more about how to automate WordPress.
Related reading:
This article was originally published in October 2023. The most recent update, with contributions from Ben Steele, was in May 2026.
