| SEO Plugins | Key Features | Direct Link |
|---|---|---|
| RankMath SEO | ✓ All-in-one WordPress SEO plugin✓ Lightweight, clean, and simple user interface✓ Free version with premium features | Download |
| Yoast SEO | ✓ Powerful and the most popular SEO plugin✓ Manages meta values, sitemap, and breadcrumbs✓ Controls indexing and focus keywords for on-page SEO | Download |
| Broken Link Checker | ✓ Monitors, detects, and fixes broken links✓ Easy-to-use dashboard for quickly fixing links✓ Helps maintain a search engine-friendly website | Download |
| Schema Pro | ✓ Improves SEO with schema markup✓ Supports various schema types✓ Integrates with Yoast SEO plugin | Download |
| SEO Writing Assistant | ✓ Optimizes pages for target keywords✓ Assists in enhancing content for better ranking✓ Checks your writeup for plagiarism | Download |
| Image Optimization For SEO | ✓ SEO friendly image optimization✓ Inserts title and alt tags in images✓ Increases traffic from image search engines | Download |
| Easy Table of Contents | ✓ Automatically adds a table of contents posts✓ Simplifies navigation for readers✓ Supports the Rank Math plugin | Download |
| Image Compression | ✓ Reduces image size without compromising quality✓ Enhances page loading speed✓ Saves bandwidth and improves website performance | Download |
| Caching | ✓ Improves site loading speed through caching✓ Lowers server load and reduces response time✓ Enhances overall site performance | Download |
- Want to make your WordPress site more searchable?
- Wondering which are the best SEO plugins for WordPress you should install?
We’ll get to that in a minute, but before we do…
I’ve previously shared the 26 essential WordPress plugins I use on SidelinePlay . I hope you’ll enjoy reading this post.
For today’s post, I have something new – a compiled list of the best WordPress plugins for SEO.
Why should you listen to me?
As a professional blogger, I keep an eye out for new SEO techniques that work and discard those that don’t.
Using the plugins listed below, I am able to get over 600,000 page views per month.
In this list, you’ll find the best free SEO WordPress plugins and some premium plugins you can use for your blog.
Please read the description carefully to understand the functionality of this plugin and use this if you are not using any other plugin for the same purpose.
You can learn about these WordPress SEO plugins below, but before that, let’s look at some common questions:
Which is the Best WordPress SEO Plugin?
Yoast SEO plays the biggest role in WordPress SEO in 2025. However, there are other SEO plugins that can help with various aspects of WordPress SEO.
Can I have two SEO plugins for WordPress?
It is possible to have two SEO plugins in different categories. For example, one for onsite SEO and another for speed or image SEO. However, it is not recommended to use two plugins that do the same job. For example, there is no advantage in using Rankmath or All in one SEO along with Yoast SEO. In fact, it may create SEO issues for your WordPress site. In case of doubt, use the comment section below to resolve your queries.
Is WordPress the best for SEO?
Compared to other platforms, WordPress is pretty search-friendly by default. However, with these WordPress SEO tools and plugins, you can aim for the first page of Google searches.
Does Google favor WordPress? Not really, as Google is impartial towards any CMS or blogging platform.
I will also link to my previous reviews of individual SEO plugins so that you can learn more about them and decide which SEO plugin is right for your blog.
If you think there are any WordPress SEO plugins missing from our list, let us know and we’ll be happy to review them and possibly add them to our list.
Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
1. RankMath SEO
RankMath SEO is a young WordPress SEO plugin that has gained popularity for its features. This standalone plugin is more than enough to handle all your WordPress SEO needs. It took me a while to start recommending RankMath SEO plugin to ShoutMeLoud users because the plugin was so new. Now, since the plugin has proven its worth, it is now recommended as the #1 SEO plugin for WordPress.
At the time of writing, the RankMath plugin is free to use, and it includes many features that are usually found in paid versions of SEO plugins.
The plugin is lightweight and allows you to enable/disable the module to ensure that it does not add unnecessary load to your web server.
With a strong community-driven approach and an upcoming pro version, this plugin should be the first SEO plugin for any WordPress-based website.
2. Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin
With over 5 million downloads, Yoast is the first SEO plugin every WordPress user should install. This plugin handles many aspects of SEO for your WordPress website.
In fact, if you have been using a separate WordPress plugin for sitemaps , redirects, and some other features, then you can stop using Yoast SEO.
Using the Yoast SEO plugin has the following benefits:
- You can add meta values on your home page
- Adding meta values to a single post
- You can set the canonical tag
- Setting up custom breadcrumbs
- Optimize your posts for sharing on social media (images, titles, and descriptions)
- Generate a sitemap file
- Edit robots.txt and .htaccess
- Controlling the Indexing of Your WordPress Site
- Set focus keywords and perform on-page SEO optimization
- Lets you add questions and answers to Google SERP
Note: Meta values are meta title and meta description.
Here is a detailed tutorial on how to set up the Yoast SEO plugin .
You know what’s even better?
[](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/)You can download this plugin for free from the WordPress repo here .
Yoast SEO also has a pro version which adds some extra features, such as:
- Redirect
- Yoast Internal Links (helps to better link your blog)
- Incoming and outgoing internal links
At SidelinePlay, I use Yoast Premium, and if you have the budget and need those extra features, go for the pro version. If not, the free version is great too.
Here are some popular alternatives to Yoast SEO:
Despite the popularity of these alternatives, Yoast SEO remains the best SEO plugin for WordPress in 2025.
3. Broken Link Checker Plugin
A simple yet powerful plugin that continuously scans your WordPress site for broken links. It provides an easy to use dashboard from where you can quickly fix those broken links.
It helps to find and fix all internal and external broken links (404 links). 404 links are just dead ends for search engine spiders. It is highly recommended to remove or fix such links.
4. Schema Pro WordPress Plugin
I have talked about Rich Snippets many times and I cannot stress its importance enough. I see many bloggers and marketers not taking advantage of easy to use WordPress Schema markup plugins to display Rich Snippets in WordPress.
In fact, by adding Schema you help search engines understand your content better and it’s highly recommended for on-page SEO.
Using a good WordPress rich snippets plugin will help you get better visibility in search engines.
Remember those star ratings in search engines?
See the screenshot below:
Using Rich Snippets will help you get better click-through rates and traffic.
SchemaPro is the latest Rich snippet WordPress plugin, which is also compatible with Yoast SEO plugin. It supports the following schema types:
It is easy to configure and can be used on any existing or new WordPress website. It also helps you get your website’s knowledge graph in Google searches.
Download Get Schema Pro plugin
5. SEMRUSH: (SEO Writing Assistant)
[SEMRUSH]/visit/semrush/) is one of the tools I have been using for the past five years and it has been a huge help right from the keyword research stage to optimization and tracking keyword rankings .
SEMRush used to be a web-based tool, however, it recently launched a WordPress SEO plugin called “Writing Assistant”, which alone can improve your content SEO to a great extent.
This plugin works as follows:
This plugin allows you to optimize your pages for your target keywords. It scans the existing top 10 ranking pages on Google and suggests what is missing in your content (e.g. words, word limit) to improve your ranking.
Using Semrush Writing Assistant
6. SEO Image Optimizer
By optimizing your images, you can get a lot of traffic from image search engines. Even at ShoutMeLoud, almost 1% of our traffic comes from image search engines, which is a huge number.
This plugin will add ALT attributes to your images, but you need to be careful about the image names. If you upload an image named image002.jpeg or DSC001.jpeg, STOP NOW !
This is a huge mistake.
I recommend that you start giving your images more useful names right away.
For example, in this post, I named the image I used “WordPress SEO.”
Download the SEO Image Optimizer plugin
7. Simple Directory Plugin
TOC plugin example
This is the WordPress SEO plugin that every content-based WordPress website and blog should use in 2025. This plugin helps you add jump links in Google searches .
The best thing about this plugin is that after the initial configuration, it automatically adds a table of contents to all existing and new posts.
Speed optimizer plugins provide a better user experience:
When it comes to WordPress SEO, user experience is one of the least mentioned things. In addition to a strong design, the speed of your WordPress site also has a huge impact on overall SEO optimization. For years, Google has emphasized that user experience is one of the most important parts of overall SEO.
They have also publicly stated that website loading time is now one of the search engine ranking factors. Therefore, it is now crucial for you to optimize your website speed.
If you’ve never done a speed test on your WordPress site, now is a good time to do it. Visit this site and enter your domain name to complete a speed test.
That’s why in this section of WordPress SEO plugins, I’m going to share some of the top plugins (in different categories) to improve your blog loading time.
8. Image Compression Plugin
Images are an integral part of our WordPress website. On average, I use three images per blog post, which adds more than 400kb to the page size.
On a desktop, this might be fine, but on a 3G or 4G connection, serving fast pages is critical.
Image compression is a technique that reduces the overall size of an image without affecting its quality.
This technique alone (especially for image-heavy WordPress sites) can have a noticeable impact.
ShortPixel is the plugin you should use. It automatically compresses new images and also gives you the option to compress old images in one go.
You can find a comparison of image compression plugins here .
9. Cache plugin
Caching is a well-known technique that can make your WordPress website load faster.
There are many well-documented case studies and surveys.
Using a caching plugin can also help reduce the load on your server, thereby improving the overall performance of your WordPress site.
Nowadays, many popular hosting services like SiteGround and WPEngine offer built-in caching and you may not need the extra plugins I mention below.
However, if you are using any other hosting service that does not offer built-in caching, you can opt for one of the two caching plugins I have mentioned below. Both of them are very easy to use.
If you’re looking for more recommendations, here’s a list of the best WordPress caching plugins .
I hope the information in this article helps you improve. If you think we missed any important or useful SEO WordPress plugins, please let us know in the comments section.
What other WordPress SEO plugins do you use? Feel free to recommend plugins that should be added to this exclusive list.
A few other articles you might be interested in:
- Best SEO Keyword Research Tools: 2025 Edition
- How to Write SEO Friendly Content (Beginner to Advanced)
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click through to visit us, at no extra cost to you. See how SidelinePlay is funded, why it’s important, and how you can support us.
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