WordPress SEO Plugins – A Brief Guide

As a low-code platform, WordPress enables you to build websites without writing lengthy and complex code. It further simplifies web development by allowing you to choose from over 59000 plugins. As lightweight software applications, plugins help you add new functionality to a website or extend the website’s existing functionalities in minutes.

You can use many WordPress SEO plugins that divert organic traffic to your website by increasing its search engine visibility. Each of these plugins improves the quality and quantity of website traffic by providing built-in features and tools. You can leverage these features and tools to implement SEO strategies as well as automate routine SEO activities.

Why Should You Use WordPress SEO Plugins?

Most WordPress SEO plugins come with built-in features and tools to boost your website’s user experience and search engine performance simultaneously. Hence, you can utilize these plugins to get organic traffic to the website and keep the website visitors engaged in a number of ways.

Easy to Integrate

Often programmers have to write longer lines of code to make a website look professional. But you can make your website look professional simply by integrating the right SEO plugin into the website built using WordPress. The plugin can be downloaded and installed from the WordPress Plugin Directory straightforwardly.

Boost User Experience

A website can no longer impress search engines and visitors without delivering an outstanding user experience. Most SEO plugins come with native features to improve your website’s navigability, accessibility, and searchability. Also, you can use these plugins to improve your website’s look and feel across devices and platforms.

Speed up the Website

Your website’s loading speed will impact its user experience and search visibility simultaneously. SEO plugins for WordPress focus on improving a website’s search visibility by improving its speed. They come with built-in tools to calculate web page loading speed and suggest measures to make the web pages load faster.

Publish Great Content

The creation and publication of high-quality content have become an integral part of SEO strategies. In addition to coming up with great blog post ideas, your SEO strategy must focus on optimizing content and conducting content audits. WordPress SEO plugins use intelligence technologies to analyze content and suggest content optimization ideas. 

Automate Routine SEO Tasks

The outcome of SEO strategies depends on a slew of routine and recurring activities. The popular SEO plugins for WordPress are developed with built-in tools to automate routine activities like SEO audits, keyword research, content quality analysis, and XML sitemap creation.

Track SEO Campaign Performance

Most organizations these days target multiple search keywords by running several SEO campaigns simultaneously. SEO professionals have to put in extra time and effort to boost SEO campaigns by taking the right action at the right time. WordPress SEO tools make it easier for you to track and measure campaign performance by checking the SEO ranking history of targeted keywords regularly.

What are the Best SEO plugins for WordPress?

The market share and web usage statistics posted on various websites suggest that Yoast SEO is more popular than other SEO plugins for WordPress. The statistics compiled by SimilarTech suggest that Yoast SEO is currently used by over 2,226,208 websites and 2,082,872 unique domains. However, you have the option to choose from many alternatives to Yoast SEO.

For instance, many bloggers and web developers these days choose these WordPress SEO plugins instead of Yoast SEO.

• Rank Math
• All in One SEO Pack
• The SEO Framework
• Site Kit by Google
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant
• SEOPress
• Structured Content
• Broken Link Checker
• Redirection
• Premium SEO Pack
• WP Meta SEO
• Squirrly SEO

We have compared these widely used WordPress plugins in a previous blog post – How to Choose the Best WordPress SEO Plugin. Please read the blog to know and compare these widely-used SEO plugins for WordPress, including Yoast SEO.

How to Choose the Right WordPress SEO Plugin?

While implementing SEO strategies, you have the option to choose from thousands of plugins. Some of these all-in-one SEO plugins provide tools to automate multiple SEO activities. At the same time, you can choose SEO plugins to automate specific SEO tasks.

Hence, you must use your precise SEO requirements as the primary parameter to compare the features and tools provided by these plugins. However, it is also important to use additional parameters to select the right WordPress SEO plugin for your website.

Compatibility

While building a WordPress website, you have to use a single theme and multiple plugins. When the SEO plugin is not compatible with your choice of theme and plugins, you have to fix many technical issues. You can avoid site crashes, error messages, frozen screens, and similar issues by shortlisting WordPress SEO plugins that are compatible with the specific theme and plugins.

Features and Tools

The WordPress SEO plugins differ from each other in the categories of features and tools. As noted earlier, the all-in-one SEO plugins come with features and tools to automate multiple tasks. On the other hand, many plugins automate a single SEO task. Hence, you must compare the features and tools provided by individual plugins according to your precise SEO requirements.

Website Speed

You can combine multiple plugins to add more functionality to the WordPress website. But the increase in the number of plugins will impact your website’s speed directly. Hence, you should consider SEO plugins that do not affect the website’s search visibility and user experience by decreasing its speed.

Security

There are many instances when free WordPress plugins were used as instruments to execute cyber crimes. You must not choose a WordPress SEO plugin that impacts your website’s security adversely. It is always important to consider the reputation and credibility of the developer while shortlisting SEO plugins for your project.

Update Frequency                  

Some developers and publishers update WordPress SEO plugins more frequently than others. The regular updates keep the plugin compatible with the most recent version of WordPress. Also, developers always fix performance and security issues while updating the plugin. Hence, you must opt for SEO plugins that developers update regularly.

Ratings and Reviews

WordPress users make it easier for you to choose the right SEO plugin by posting ratings and reviews. You can read the ratings and reviews posted by existing users to evaluate the features and tools provided by a plugin based on real-time information.

Conclusion

You can boost your website’s search visibility using several free and premium WordPress SEO plugins. But it would help if you remembered that each of these SEO plugins for WordPress has its pros and cons. That is why; you must compare these widely-used WordPress SEO plugins using multiple parameters. You can even evaluate multiple SEO plugins in real time to choose the best option for your website.