21 Best WordPress SEO Plugins to Blow Your Competitors Out of The Water

How to Choose a Good WordPress SEO Plugin

A good WordPress SEO plugin should have the following qualities:

• Clean and Efficient Code – A good SEO plugin should have a clean code that does not have unnecessary CSS or JavaScript entities that would add an unnecessary load on the site.

  This ensures the plugin is fast and efficient and does not slow down your website.

  The plugin code should also be well commented for an easier understanding of how every section of the code works. Clean code is the basis of a properly functioning WordPress plugin.

• Multiple SEO Features – The best SEO plugin should have more than one SEO feature to help reduce the number of other SEO plugins on your site.

  Although there are single feature SEO plugins that only do one task like the ‘301 redirections’, the best SEO plugins come with a host of features that make it a complete and efficient plugin since it handles multiple tasks.

  It is not advisable to have many plugins installed on your site since they will only increase the load time of your site.

• Extensive Documentation – Plugin documentation is important since it helps users to understand how every feature of the plugin works.

  The documentation can be in the form of video guides or articles with illustrating images on how to install, configure, and update the plugin.

  The majority of the SEO plugin comes with an admin dashboard, where the configuration is done.

  An excellent SEO plugin should have clear instructions on how every setting or configuration is done, preferably a tooltip guide should be used to make the user understand about the working of the plugin.

• Good Customer Support – A good SEO plugin should have good customer support. The free SEO plugins available in the WordPress repository come with free support in the respective plugin support forum.

  You should look out for the support that is offered by the plugin author on the support forum before you can decide on whether to use a given SEO plugin.

  You can also use the plugin support forum on WordPress repository to understand the common problems associated with the plugin and the solutions available.

• Good Reviews & Ratings – All SEO WordPress plugins receive reviews and ratings from the users, and this should be an essential guide on the value that the plugin adds to your website.

  For free WordPress SEO plugins, the reviews column on the plugin page is a good place to start to find out if the plugin is well supported or if it delivers value.

• Regular Updates – A WordPress SEO plugin should frequently be updated to ensure it is compatible with the latest WordPress version.

  A plugin that is not updated for a long time can predispose your website to getting hacked or can create incompatibility with the WordPress core files or other WordPress plugins.

  You should never compromise on the update of a plugin when you are choosing the best SEO WordPress plugin for your site. Check the changelogs of the plugin to see how regular the SEO plugin is updated and what changes have been done before.

• Plugins Compatibility – WordPress SEO plugins should be highly compatible with the other WordPress plugins.

  This is a significant quality since incompatibility with other plugins often leads to the WordPress screen of death, an error that causes your site to crash.

  Particularly, SEO plugins that utilize JavaScript libraries are more likely to cause these conflicts.

Best WordPress SEO Plugins

Choosing the right SEO plugin determines whether your site is going to be successful or not. There are diverse WordPress plugins that offer a broad range of SEO features but there are also some plugins that have all the necessary features for on-page SEO.

You should assess your SEO needs before making a decision on the plugin you need for your site.

There are plugins that only optimize images for fast loading speed while others just create XML sitemaps. This type of single task plugins cannot be used alone to optimize a site fully.

In a quick summary let’s now look at the features of each of the 21 best SEO plugins.

1 Rank Math SEO Plugin

Rank Math SEO plugin for WordPress is the only plugin that does everything related to on-page SEO. It is a complete package that comes with an on-page SEO analysis tool, Google search console integration, keyword recommendations, 404 monitor, redirections module, and a sitemap module.

Rank Math comes with the functionality of at least seven different plugins. It is an all-in-one SEO tool that helps you rank easily.

• It has an easy to follow Setup Wizard you can follow to get started quickly and without too much fuss.
• It does on-page SEO analysis of your posts on-the-fly and gives you recommendations based on proven statistics that will help you rank higher for the focus keyword you want to rank for.
• Crawl errors encountered by Google are shown within the plugin. It helps you know where errors are and how to fix them.
• Rank Math lets you automatically add alt and title tags to your images. This automates the process of image SEO.
• Sitemap functionality is built into the plugin.
• 404 Monitor and Redirections tool help you monitor and fix 404 errors.
• You don’t have to rely on a 3rd party plugin for Rich Snippets. It is integrated into the Rank Math plugin as well.
• Automatically pings search engines so that they can come and crawl your content as soon as new content is available.
• Local SEO options are included as well.

Apart from these, Rank Math also helps you change titles and meta text of your posts, pages, categories, products etc. really easily.

2 All In One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack is the second most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin that is useful for optimizations of individual posts and pages. All in One SEO Pack is a very popular WordPress SEO plugin like Yoast SEO since it has more than 3 million downloads and comes with the following features:

• You can create XML Sitemap with this plugin and submit it to Google and Bing to help improve your search rankings.
• All in One SEO Pack supports Google Accelerated Mobile Pages making it an effective plugin for mobile search optimization.
• This SEO plugin supports Google Analytics and works perfectly to help you track the traffic on each of your website pages.
• Optimizing custom post types is also possible with All in One SEO Pack plugin.
• Canonical URLS are supported.
• You can create redirects from WordPress attachments to the parent posts making the attachment pages SEO compliant.
• You can automatically notify Google and Bing whenever there are new changes on your site.
• All in One SEO Pack comes with an inbuilt API that other plugins and themes can access to extend its functionality.
• All in One SEO Pack plugin is the only free plugin that is capable of SEO integration for eCommerce sites and also supports WooCommerce.
• It is compatible with PHP 7 and Nonce security is built into the plugin making it hack-proof and secure for all sites.
• This plugin automatically optimizes the posts, pages and custom post types titles for search engine ranking and also automatically generates Meta tags. It also helps you avoid duplicate content penalty.
• All in One SEO Pack is a good plugin for WordPress beginners since they don’t have to configure any settings; it works just after installation – out-of-box solution for WordPress SEO. For advanced users, you can tweak the features to make your site more appealing to search engines.
• Has a feature to override the title and the Meta description that are set automatically. You can add your own custom titles and Meta description just like in the Yoast SEO plugin.

Finally, All in One SEO Pack plugin is the second most popular free SEO plugin that has been used and rated highly on millions of sites. This plugin has a premium version that users can upgrade from the free version and receive premium support.

3 SEO Ultimate

SEO ultimate is another complete WordPress SEO plugin that is free and available for download from the WordPress repository. SEO Ultimate as its name suggests seems to be a complete on-page optimization plugin that comes with tons of features.

This plugin has more than 200,000 active installs and continues to define its top position among the best WordPress SEO plugins by its rising popularity.

One notable issue with this plugin is the fact that the support is not offered in the WordPress forums so if you need support you need to upgrade to the premium version to access the dedicated email support. The premium version also has exclusive features and training tutorials on how to use the plugin. The following is a summary of the SEO features offered on SEO Ultimate:

• Title tag rewriter feature allows you to edit your title posts and optimizes them for improved on-page SEO and to rank higher in the search results.
• Meta Description Editor allows you to add a Meta Description to your posts, pages, categories, attachments, tags and even the homepage. This allows you to optimize the Meta description for the potential keywords and rank higher in the search results.
• Deep link Juggernaut is an awesome anchor text driven internal linking feature that allows you to create deep links between related posts. These internal links are good for SEO.
• Ability to enhance the internal ranking pattern of SEO.
• The open graph feature allows you to automatically create open graph data for posts, user profiles, homepages, and attachments.
• Snippet creator allows you to add quality snippet code for reviews.
• Author highlighter creates code to ensure the author’s Google+ profile image is visible together with the post that appears in Google search results.
• The 404 monitor helps to improve the experience of users and spiders visiting your site by using a redirection on “page not found” errors.

4 The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework is a free SEO plugin that provides an automatic SEO solution that is ideal for any WordPress site. The plugin enables you to make enhanced SEO value for content on your website.

This plugin is ideal for both novice and experts looking for a reliable SEO solution. It is unbranded thus no one will be able to know the tools you have used to make your website or that of your client. The SEO plugin makes use of features found in the WordPress interface as if the plugin is part of WordPress.

It does not have any advertisements that can be annoying to most users. It includes small and hidden HTML comments that can be deactivated using a filter or extension. The plugin allows users to manually set different standards for each page, post, term and public CPT.

The code of the plugin uses flexible, object and temporary caching and can be enhanced on PHP-level. This helps to reduce the page load time of the plugin even when there are many Meta tags used. You do not require a caching plugin when using this SEO plugin.

Here is a summary of the Plugin:

• The Plugin supports custom post such as bbPress and WooCommerce.
• It provides beginner-friendly SEO solution.
• This plugin create a canonical URL to prevent duplicated content with full Domain Mapping, subdomain and HTTPS support.
• It allows you to create open graph images that can automatically be resized and enhanced to match the user’s requirements.
• The plugin lets you adjust more than 100 site settings such as Schema.org Structured Data output options.
• The WordPress plugin makes it easy for your pages to be shared in an attractive way through social sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
• The plugin is preconfigured to provide an ideal starting point for a range of websites.
• It lets you adjust SEO using global options.
• This plugin is designed to help avoid canonical errors with Multisite Domain Mapping, pages, categories and subdomains.
• It prevents 404 pages and empty classifications from being indexed despite them not sending a 404 response.
• You can automatically notify Google, Bing, and Yandex on your website updates by enabling sitemaps.
• You can disable the small and hidden HTML comments using a filter or extension.
• The WordPress plugin allows users to manually set different standards for each page, post, term and public CPT.
• It is unbranded thus no one will be able to know the tools you have used to make your website or that of your client.
• The plugin does not have any advertisements.

5 WordPress SEO by Yoast

WordPress SEO by Yoast is by far the most popular WordPress SEO plugin that is used by millions of webmasters for the on-page optimization of posts and pages on their WordPress websites. Yoast is popular because it allows you to set your preferred page titles, sitemap, URL and even the Meta description.

• Among the powerful features of Yoast SEO is the ability to create a sitemap and link up your site with Google Webmaster console for verification.
• You can also link up your site to Bing Webmaster console using Yoast SEO plugin.
• This plugin continues to lead as the best WordPress SEO plugin, now there are more than 3 million downloads of the free version.
• Yoast SEO plugin also offers users complete SEO page analysis and scores the page based on the focus keyword.
• You can easily tell if the page is well optimized or not based on the color of the SEO indicators.
• Yoast SEO plugin is free and can be downloaded from WordPress repository but there is a premium version available on the official Yoast website.
• The premium version allows you to add more keywords to the optimization and optimize your posts and pages for multiple keywords.
• Yoast SEO also has social media integration that helps optimize content for social media sharing.
• It is also compatible with WordPress multisite making it the best WordPress SEO plugin for multisite.

Yoast SEO is the most complete SEO plugin and it’s available for free.

6 SEO SQUIRRLY™

SEO Squirrly is a free WordPress SEO plugin that is designed to help those who do not know much about SEO. The plugin helps you create high-quality content that is both SEO and human friendly. This helps you improve the Google ranking of your website and also provide your readers with interesting content.

It allows you to track your content marketing strategy using one of the best SEO tools Audit website. This helps you see and improve your SEO statistics using weekly reports from the website.

You can also send the reports through email to your content writer or your SEO team. The reports show you areas where your WordPress website requires improvement as well as helps you learn different SEO strategies and more about content marketing through email training.

The plugin is compatible with most plugins and themes that are likely to be on your website. This WordPress plugin provides you with real time optimization of your articles as you write or edit them. Squirrly helps you find topics and keywords of interest to your customers to enable you out-rank your rivals. Here is a short summary of this WordPress plugin features:

• It provides you with copyright-Free Images that the user can use.
• The plugin helps you write high-quality content with the help of social intelligence with the Inspiration Box.
• The WordPress SEO Plugin lets you concentrate on your E-commerce SEO strategy with just a few clicks.
• The JSON-LD structure and the Squirrly Snippet help you define the way that your website looks on Google.
• It helps you create SEO content that is friendly for human readers.
• Squirrly plugin creates your site’s XML Sitemap for Google and Bing.
• It provides you with email alerts when there is something that requires speedy attention on your WordPress site.
• The plugin has open graph generator that includes the OG protocol to your articles to allow you to preview videos and images when you share posts and articles on Facebook.
• The Integrated Pinterest Rich Pin Validator includes more details when your website is pinned to help, users know whether the image pinned indicates an article, a product, a recipe or even an app.

7 All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets

All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets is a free WordPress plugin that provides you with a short summary of your website page in the search results of Google, Yahoo as well as Bing and at times in the Newsfeed of Facebook in a setup that show star ratings, author photo, and image among other details. Below is a summary of the plugin features:

• The plugin provides the search engine with only the necessary and specific information to show in the snippets of the search result.
• It provides very interactive snippets with images, star ratings, price as well as author to make it easy for you to overcome the competition.
• The Rich Snippet plugin helps to improve the Click Through Rate (CTR).
• It helps you rank higher in the search results.
• The WordPress plugin helps Facebook display correct information when users share the links of your posts on Facebook.
• The plugin supports a wide range of Schemas such as reviews, articles, people, products, events, and recipe among others.

8 Smush Image Compression and Optimization

Smush Image Compression and Optimization is a free plugin that helps you enhance and compress images using the WordPress image smusher. It is one of the tested and proven image enhancement plugins for speed and quality. The plugin allows you to resize the image by setting a maximum width and height to scale down large images. This plugin helps to resize the size of the files without losing its quality.

It uses WPMU DEV’s super servers to smush every image and remove the unnecessary data without slowing down your website. It scans each image uploaded or included in your website and removes all the unwanted data prior to adding the image in your media library. Here is a summary of the plugin features:

• The plugin allows you to resize and compress images uploaded and those found in any other directory including those in NextGEN, Amazon S3 and images in other WordPress plugin and theme.
• It is compatible with all media library plugins.
• The WordPress plugin utilizes innovative lossless compression procedures to resize and compress your images.
• It allows you to choose a maximum width and height to automatically scale large images prior to including them in your media library.
• The plugin asynchronously and automatically smushes your attached images for fast compression whenever you upload.
• You can manually smush each of your attachments separately in the media library, or in sets of 50 attachments sequentially.
• It uses WPMU DEV’s fast and dependable Smush API to avoid any slowdown during smushing.
• The plugin provides individuals and global settings ideal for multiple sites.
• It allows you to see innovative compression statistics for each attachment and library totals.

9 Broken Link Checker

The Broken Link Checker is a WordPress plugin that checks for broken links on your website or blog. When the plugin detects any broken links, it notifies you.

When installed, the plugin starts by analyzing posts, bookmarks and any other content on your website to look for links. The plugin then starts checking each link to see if it is working properly. If it detects any broken links, the plugin will show the broken links in a new tab on the WP admin panel in the tools category.

You will then receive a notification in the “Broken Link Checker” widget on the Dashboard. When you have the list of broken links, you can choose to edit the broken links to ensure that they are working. This can be done with the help of “Edit URL” feature.

The “Unlink” button allows you to remove the broken link but leaves the link text untouched. When you realize that a link has been wrongly identified as broken, you can manually mark the link as working using the “Not Broken” button. The user can also make a new link filter by clicking on the “Create Custom Filter” button.

• The plugin allows you to monitor links in your pages, comments, blogroll, posts as well as custom fields.
• The WordPress plugin not only detects broken links but it also detects redirects, missing images and links that are not working.
• It notifies you through email or dashboard when it detects broken images.
• You can make the broken images to be seen differently in posts.
• The plugin prevents search engines from following broken links.
• It lets you search and filter links using anchor text or URL.
• You can edit broken links directly from the plugin’s page, without physically updating every post.
• The plugin can easily be configured.

10 Rankie – WordPress Rank Tracker

Rankie – WordPress rank tracker is a premium SEO WordPress Plugin that helps in checking the rank of your website on Google. This plugin helps you to closely follow the keyword position.

The plugin updates the keywords rank positions every day and creates comprehensive reports. The plugin also combines high-quality research tool that creates quality keyword lists people are already searching. The following is a quick summary of the features :

• The plugin allows you to track WordPress ranking on Google through keywords by updating the ranks regularly to ensure it works like a WordPress SERP plugin.
• Rankie plugin provides you with ranking reports monthly, annually or regularly to keep you updated on your website ranking.
• The plugin also lets you download the reports in PDF format.
• This plugin not only works as a WordPress SERP tracker but it also acts as a keyword research tool that provides a large list of quality keywords that are created from Google suggestions.
• The WordPress plugin includes auto track searched keywords to the dashboard for effective tracking.
• It provides four procedures for locating the website position on Google for keywords.
• The 4 site location positions include: Google Directly, Google Custom Search API, Google via F-secure.com and Google via kproxy.com proxy.
• This plugin sends you an email every day with each position change from up or down.
• Rankie plugin provides distinctive ranking information and create a ranking graph for every keyword tracked.
• The WordPress rank tracker plugin lets keywords tracked to be promptly clarified by site, group or by search term.
• The Rankie WordPress plugin is capable of using proxies when retrieving Google for search.
• The plugin provides you with comprehensive action log that shows every action completed by the plugin.

11 WordPress Ping Optimizer

WordPress has an internal mechanism of pinging services whenever a new post is published on your WordPress site. The ping services to be notified can be added on the settings page in the WordPress dashboard.

Sometimes when you excessively ping these services, your site may be penalized as spam. To prevent excessive or unnecessary pinging when a post or page is updated, you need to use a plugin like the WordPress ping optimizer. The following are the features of this plugin:

• The WordPress Ping Optimizer helps to prevent your blog from being marked as a ping spammer. WordPress blogs tend to have unnecessary pings that happen each time you edit a post.
• WordPress blog pings all the times that you click on the “Save and Continue Editing” or “Save” button. This plugin is designed to help prevent those unwanted pings.

12 W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is a free WordPress plugin that is designed to help you enhance the user experience and SEO of your website. The plugin helps to reduce the download time using features such as the content delivery network (CDN). This plugin helps you to improve the search engine results ranking, particularly for websites with a responsive design and those that use SSL certificates.

It also helps to enhance the conversion rates and the “site performance” that is known to affect the ranking of the site on Google. The WordPress plugin also helps to better web server performance to ensure high traffic times.

The plugin saves you about 80% of bandwidth through minify and HTTP compression of HTML, feeds, CSS and JavaScript. Here is a brief summary of the plugin:

• The plugin provides you with enhanced progressive render for quick rendering and interaction.
• It is compatible with shared hosting, dedicated servers and clusters.
• The WordPress plugin provides transparent content delivery network (CDN) board with Media Library, WordPress itself and theme files.
• It provides mobile support for individual caching of pages by referrer or groups of user agents as well as theme converting for groups of referrers or user agents
• The plugin supports Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
• The cache WordPress plugin supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
• It allows caching of minified and compressed pages and posts in the memory or on disk.
• The caching of minified and compressed CSS and JavaScript files in memory, on CDN or on disk is supported.
• It also allows caching of feeds, search results pages, database objects, objects and fragments in memory, on CDN or on disk.

13 Redirection

Redirection is a free WordPress plugin that is designed to help you handle 301 redirections, track all the 404 errors and organize any unattached ends that may be found on your site.

This makes it easy for you when you are migrating pages from an old website to a new one. It also makes your work easier when you are altering your WordPress installation directory.

• The plugin helps in monitoring 404 errors by capturing a log of the errors and easily mapping the errors to 301 redirects.
• It supports routine ‘pass-through’ redirection letting you pass a URL through to another page, website or file.
• The WordPress plugin allows full logs for all redirected URLs.
• The plugin allows all URLs to be redirected.
• It supports WP CLI.
• Redirection is established upon user agent, login status or referrer.
• It automatically includes a 301 redirection whenever a post’s URL changes.
• You can manually include 301, 302, and 307 redirection for a WordPress post or for other files.
• The plugin allows complete import/export to Nginx rewrite.rules, JSON, .htaccess, and CSV
• It provides support to full regular expression.
• The plugin works wholly inside WordPress thus it does not need Apache .htaccess to work
• It provides support for Apache and Nginx.
• It provides you with redirection data informing you on the number of times a redirection has happened, the last time it happened, the person who tried to do it and the location they found your URL.
• This plugin is completely localized and available in different languages.

14 WooCommerce – All in One SEO Pack

The WooCommerce – All in One SEO Pack is a WordPress plugin that is designed to act as an extension of the All in One SEO Pack Plugin by Michael Torbert. This plugin shows the All in One SEO Pack dialog on the Add or Edit Products screen in WooCommerce.

The plugin allows you to edit, add and organize All in One SEO Pack Meta information. Prior to installing this WordPress plugin, it is important for you to note that the plugin has a disclaimer to the effect that the author is not responsible for any harm that might happen to your site when you install the plugin. It is, however, a straightforward and easy to install plugin and essential for those users with WooCommerce sites. You can also check this guide for more tips on WooCommerce SEO.

The following are some features of this plugin :

• The plugin shows the All in One SEO Pack dialog on the Add/Edit Products screen in WooCommerce.
• It allows you to edit, add and organize All in One SEO Pack meta information
• This free WordPress plugin act as an extension of the All in One SEO Pack Plugin by Michael Torbert.

15 Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP

Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP is a free plugin that incorporates Yoast SEO into your AMP pages. The WordPress AMP plugin offers you the technical execution of the AMP specifications to ensure that your website pages have valid AMP code. The plugin also ensures that your meta-data is applied properly.

• The plugin gives you an easy way to modify your AMP pages.
• It includes rudimental styling in the form of link styles and colors to give your AMP pages a similar feeling to your main pages.
• This WordPress plugin allows you to change your AMP page design.

16 SEO Optimized Images

The SEO Optimized Images WordPress plugin allows you to effectively add Seo Friendly title attributes and alt attributes to your images. When you install and activate the plugin, you need to select the pattern you want and the plugin will automatically switch the title tags and alt tags without changing the database.

This means that if you want your site to go back to how it looked before you activated the plugin; you can just deactivate the plugin and everything will be back. This plugin also allows you to add image name, post category and post title in title and alt attributes of images.

• This WordPress plugin provides you with an effective way to include SEO friendly title attribute and alt attributes to your images.
• It automatically switches the title tags and alt tags without changing the database.
• The plugin makes it easy for you to return your site to its original state that it had before you activated the plugin.
• The WordPress plugin allows you to add image name, post category and post title in title and alt attributes of images.

17 EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer is a WordPress plugin that is designed to help you intensify the speed of your page using image optimization. Increasing your page speed can help you improve your search engine ranking. It can also help you better your conversion rate thus increasing your sales.

An increase in the speed of your pages can also reduce your bandwidth and your storage space. This plugin automatically enhances new images that are uploaded.

The plugin is also capable of modifying the images that have already been uploaded and change them to the ideal file format. It allows you to either select high compression selections that are visually lossless or pixel perfect compression.

• The plugin does not have a speed and file size limit.
• It utilizes optional Parallel Optimization and automatic Background Optimization to prevent upload delays.
• The plugin ensures smooth management with pixel-perfect optimization with the help of industrial standard tools and progressive translation.
• This WordPress plugin provides you with the top compression quality ratio available with a range of options for JPG, PDF and PNG files.
• It provides adaptive navigation with quick conversion selections to get the ideal image format.
• The plugin is free and provides you with API to ensure that you never pay for an image that cannot be compressed.
• The EWWW plugin offers you ample coverage without leaving out any images and optimizing everything on your website.
• The plugin uses high quality SSL encryption for all communications to ensure safety.
• It provides free image backup that allows you to store your original images for 30 days.

18 Simple 301 Redirects

The Simple 301 Redirects is a free plugin that is designed to provide you with a simpler way of redirecting requests to other pages on your website or somewhere else on the web. This makes it convenient for you when you migrate your website to WordPress and you are unable to retain your URL structure.

You can setup the 301 redirects from your old pages to your new pages to ensure that any inbound links are effortlessly passed along with their page rank.

• It is a plugin that gives you an easier way to redirect requests to other pages on your website.
• The plugin allows you to setup the 301 redirects from your old pages to your new pages so that the inbound links are passed along with their page rank during WordPress migration of your Website.

19 Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps is a plugin that helps to improve the SEO of your site by generating distinct XML sitemaps to help search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and Bing to easily index your website.

The sitemaps make it easier for crawlers to easily see the whole structure of the website and regain it effectively. This plugin is compatible with all types of pages created by WordPress and custom URLs.

• The plugin sends notifications to key search engines each time you make a post about new products or content.
• This WordPress plugin is ranked as one of the best WordPress plugin that helps you create XML sitemap for search engines.
• It a free WordPress plugin that comes with several translations.
• The plugin is compatible with different types of pages made by WordPress and custom URLs.
• The plugin makes it easier for crawlers to see your website.

20 Pretty Link Lite

Pretty Link Lite is a free plugin that provides additional tools and redirection that makes it possible for you to automatically create pretty links as well as cloak links. You can replace the keywords in your blog with pretty links to improve your SEO. Pretty links are intended to help you use your domain name to shorten links.

Pretty Links not only helps you to create links but also helps you track every hit on URLs for a detailed report on the origin of the hit, the host and browser. This plugin is however not ideal for those who want to clear their affiliate links, Twitter links to come from their domain, track clinks through email or improve the reach of their website through distributing the links on comments, forums and other blogs.

• The plugin allows you to create quality and simple URLs on your website that you can redirect to other URLs.
• It allows you to create random 3-4 character slugs for your URL as well as let you name a custom slug for your URL.
• The plugin lets you track the number of clicks for each link.
• Pretty Link Lite allows you to track the number of unique clicks in every link.
• It provides you with a reporting interface to allow you to see an organized chart of clicks per day.
• The plugin allows you to filter the report based on the precise link clicked; the date choice or exclusive clicks.
• It lets you see click details as well as remote host, ip address, referring site, browser and operating system.
• The plugin features a spontaneous Javascript/AJAX Admin user interface.
• You can permit custom bounds to your scripts using pretty link and enjoy full tracking ability.
• This plugin makes it possible for you to except IP Addresses from data.
• It allows you to send your pretty links through email right from your WordPress admin.
• The WordPress plugin lets you choose temporary 302 or 307 redirections or permanent 301 redirections for pretty links in your site.
• It provides a cookie-based structure for effective tracking visitor actions across clicks.
• This plugin also helps you to establish links into groups, generate nofollow/noindex links and switch on/off tracking on each link.
• It provides you with Pretty Links Bookmarklet.

21 WP SEO HTML Sitemap

WP SEO HTML Sitemap provides an HTML sitemap for those who use plugins that do not provide them with HTML sitemap features such as WordPress SEO Yoast plugin.

You do not need WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin to use this plugin. However, you may not be able to reap the full benefits of the plugin’s settings linked to the XML sitemap settings. These are the features of this sitemap plugin :

• The plugin spontaneously uses all sitemap xml settings from common WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin
• It allows you to select the number of columns you want to display.
• It offers you columns with a masonry effect and works with all current browsers.
• The plugin gives you overwrite, shortcode, prepend and append options for posting on your sitemap page.
• It provides fully responsive HTML on all devices.
• The output of the plugin is polyglot friendly.
• The HTML code used in the plugin has W3C Markup Validation approval with no errors.
• The plugin gives you the ability to deactivate the plugin’s CSS.
• It lets you create an optional link to your sitemap_index.xml file.

Final Thoughts

WordPress SEO plugins play a vital role in ensuring that the content published on the site is highly optimized for the search engines.

The SEO WordPress plugins also offer a wide range of features that helps to ensure your on-page SEO is 100% compliant with all Google requirements. As an SEO necessity, every post or page published on your site should have a properly written meta description with the focus keyword included.

The keyword placement in the title, URL, and the content should be properly done. You should also ensure you configure the robot.txt file properly and submit the XML sitemap to the Google console for proper indexing of your website. It helps if you can find a plugin that does all these tasks without having to install a plugin for each of the SEO tasks.

The advanced SEO WordPress plugins go the extra mile to ensure your website is linked up with the Google Webmaster console, an essential step for checking crawl errors and also ensuring you are compliant with Google’s SEO standards.

SEO is a continuous process, and you should check the health of your site from time to time by fixing any errors that are reported on the search console.

To cite one example; Yoast SEO plugin also helps users to link and verify their sites with the Google Webmaster, Bing Webmaster, and Yandex Webmaster. It also helps users to generate an XML site map for submission to search engines.

Finally, you will often find out SEO plugins only help improve your on-page SEO, there is a lot more effort needed for you to rank higher.

The quality of the content published on your site plays a central role in the ranking of your site. Another essential off-page SEO factor that you need to pay attention to is your backlink profile. This backlink profile comprises of the number and quality of the links that point to your site.

If the backlinks pointing to your website are spammy, it is best suggested to disavow them as soon as you notice them as otherwise there is a high chance of your website getting penalized by Google.

Which is your favorite SEO tool? What features would you like to have in your dream SEO tool? Do share your views in the comments section below.