10 Top-Notch WordPress SEO Plugins to Boost Your Website’s Visibility

Search engines provide most websites with a large amount of their overall traffic. After all, anytime someone enters a keyword or phrase and clicks Search, millions of related websites appear instantly for that person to begin perusing. And the last thing you want to do is allow your website to be the one millionth search result. If you do that, no one will ever even know you exist.

That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) of every part of your WordPress website is crucial if you want better site indexing and higher search rankings. By optimizing your website, you give people more opportunities to find your website and explore what you have to offer them.

However, mastering the art of SEO is nearly impossible. With so much to learn in the dynamic environment that is the internet, the average website owner has way too much on their plate to focus solely on optimizing their content.

But don’t worry, there is help for you!

Many WordPress plugin developers have created easy-to-use SEO plugins that integrate nicely with WordPress. And, even if you only take a minimal approach to SEO, you can boost the visibility of your website significantly. So, let’s look at the top 10 WordPress SEO plugins on the market today and get you headed in the right direction when it comes to ensuring that your website ranks as high as possible.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugins On the Market Today

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins on the market. With over 3 million active installs and an impressive 4.8 out of 5-star rating, this plugin does a lot right when it comes to optimizing your website for better search rankings. For example, you start by choosing your content’s keyword. Next, using the snippet preview, see what each post or page will look like in an actual search result by adding a metadata description complete with your target keyword in place. You can also set site-wide metadata in a flash!

Lastly, get a complete page analysis of your post or page that grades things like images, post length, if a snippet was created and whether it contains your keyword, and any subheadings your content has. In the end, the developers of Yoast SEO sought to build upon the WordPress core’s ability to optimize your website for better site indexing and higher search rankings by giving you an easy to use plugin that helps with the little things you might forget.

Additional features include:

• Pretty permalinks
• Automatic XML sitemap creation
• Built-in breadcrumbs
• Multisite compatibility
• 24+ language translations

PRICE: FREE

2. All-in-One SEO Pack

All-in-One SEO Pack is another highly popular SEO plugin that comes packed with plenty of features to get your content found by major search engines, crawled properly, and indexed for first-page search results. To start, you can submit your XML sitemap to Google and Bing and rest assured that any updates you make to your website will automatically update with them as well.

In addition, integrate Google Analytics so you can track your website’s traffic, user behavior, and more. Then, you can build upon those metrics and become even more successful. Altogether, this WordPress SEO plugin is designed for even the most novice of website owners and can make a world of difference when it comes to boosting your website’s organic traffic.

Additional features include:

• WooCommerce SEO integration
• Built-in Nonce security
• Automatic meta tag generation
• 57 language translations
• Custom post type SEO support

PRICE: FREE

3. SEO Ultimate

Designed just like many of the other WordPress plugins, SEO Ultimate sets itself apart by offering a few truly unique features. For instance, take advantage of the title tag rewriter for improved keyword SEO. Additionally, override <title> tag contents for any post, page, attachment, category, post tag, or post format archive on your blog.

Interested in more? Consider the fact that SEO Ultimate also includes a meta description editor for adding snippet descriptions en masse to old posts, and it will even auto-generate descriptions if you want. In all, this exceptional SEO plugin comes with in-depth functionality for making your content stand out from other websites, all vying for a spot on Google’s first page.

Additional features include:

• Customized footer links
• Over-optimization controls
• Google+ author highlighter
• Multisite compatibility
• Internal link pointer

PRICE: FREE

4. SEO by SQUIRRLY

SEO by SQUIRRLY helps you write better content for SEO purposes and for improved readability. Best for those with little to no knowledge about SEO, this plugin will direct you to where improvements are needed using an intuitive green light system.

When your content is ready for publishing, SEO by SQUIRRLY gives you the green light – all in real time. Moreover, this plugin has an SEO Live Assistant for checking whether your intended keyword is a good option for your content. Aiding both the creation of content and optimization of that same content, this plugin takes a unique stance on SEO.

Additional features include:

• Compatible with other popular WP SEO plugins
• Automatically add keyword relevant images
• Add snippet previews
• Receive weekly analytics reports
• Find what others are writing about

PRICE: FREE

5. Broken Link Checker

We’ve written about Broken Link Checker before, and it’s included in this roundup because it monitors your website for external and internal broken links, automatically notifying you in your WordPress dashboard when something isn’t right. It will detect things like missing pages, redirects, or links that don’t work. You can either change the URL, mark the link as Not Broken, or even Dismiss the notification.

With this awesome plugin, know that your pages, posts, comments, custom fields, and blogroll are all being monitored so that anything that is linking incorrectly can be fixed immediately. Stop harming your SEO efforts and user experience with broken links and use a simple SEO plugin instead.

Additional features include:

• Highlight broken links in posts
• Prevent search engines from following broken links
• Edit links directly from plugin’s page
• Dozens of translations
• Search and filter links by URL, anchor text, and more

PRICE: FREE

6. SEOPressor

SEOPressor is a comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin for your website. Supporting both Dublin Core and Scheme markup for the most structured website data possible, this SEO plugin lets you optimize up to three keywords. In addition, you can receive help from the LSI Keywords Engine to make sure your written content complies with your target keyword for maximum optimization.

With actionable advice given to you on-page, you will learn how to boost rankings, avoid over-optimizing content, and even manage all internal links for increased reader engagement. In the end, this all-in-one SEO plugin has what it takes to help you write better and increase traffic, all at the same time.

Additional features include:

• XML Sitemap generation
• Broken link redirect
• Local SEO rule settings
• Monitor your site’s progress
• No-index internal pages

PRICE: $9/month

7. SmartCrawl

SmartCrawl aims to boost your PageRank and drive more traffic to your website. To do this, it automatically creates an XML sitemap and sends updates whenever something on your site changes. It also allows you to add custom keywords, descriptions, and titles, and see how they will appear as a search result.

Moreover, SmartCrawl will let you exclude things like categories, tags, custom taxonomies, images, posts, or pages from the crawl and index of major search engines. In conclusion, this WordPress SEO plugin requires very little effort on your part but reaps all of the rewards one would expect from a perfectly SEO-optimized website.

Additional features include:

• Built-in Moz integration
• Multisite compatibility
• Auto-link keywords to any URL
• Full site SEO analysis with feedback
• Author and date archives

PRICE: $49/month (as part of a WPMU DEV membership)

8. SEO WordPress

This simple yet effective WordPress SEO plugin requires very little setup or configuration and is suitable for website owners of all levels. For example, you can link your Google+ profile to any content you write for better page rankings using the Google authorship feature.

More so, integrate Google Analytics so you can monitor the success of your website as you make substantial SEO improvements. Add meta titles and descriptions, optimize for specific keywords, and even enable no-follow and no-index settings. In the end, this basic SEO plugin gives you what you need to optimize your site’s content.

Additional features include:

• XML sitemap creation
• Breadcrumb functionality
• Google and Bing Webmaster Tools verification
• Simple shortcode available
• Alexa verification

PRICE: FREE

9. Google XML Sitemaps

As one of the simplest WordPress SEO plugins there is, Google XML Sitemaps does little more than create XML sitemaps for major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com. With a generated sitemap outlining every detail you have on your website for site visitors to view, crawlers can see your content more clearly, index it appropriately, and get your website found by site visitors more effectively thanks to higher search rankings. What more could you ask for from a simple SEO plugin?

Additional features include:

• Support for all pages, posts, and custom URLs
• Automatic sitemap updates
• Several translations
• Comments define post priority
• Exclusions rules for categories and posts

PRICE: FREE

10. SEO-Friendly Images

SEO-Friendly Images handles SEO optimization of all of your site images. This means that your images are automatically tagged with proper alt and title attributes relating to your SEO efforts if not manually added. Though a very simple task, optimizing images is something many people fail to do, which can affect your overall search rankings in the competitive online world.

Additional features include:

• Improve Google image search results
• Google Webmaster integration for indexing images
• WooCommerce product image support
• Custom page, category, and tag rules
• Featured image support

PRICE: Starting at $149

Final Thoughts

In the end, SEO plays an important role in your WordPress website’s success. After all, it determines how crawlers find your website, how your content indexes for search results, and how you rank when it comes to searches conducted by your target audience. That’s why taking a little bit of time to monitor and improve your search engine optimization is worth the time spent away from other important, website related tasks.

Thanks in large part to the many WordPress SEO plugins available today, optimizing your website for higher SERPs is not that difficult. And, despite the concept of SEO being so intensive and hard to understand at times, many plugins are developed with beginners in mind. In fact, most plugin options do the work for you.

If you are looking to amplify your website’s visibility in popular search engine results, consider using one of the above-mentioned WordPress SEO plugins. You will see a difference immediately and wish you had taken on the task of optimizing your website earlier.

Have you ever used any of the above WordPress SEO plugins? Which one do you recommend? I would love to hear all about it in the comments below!