Here we are with our selection of Best Free WordPress SEO Plugins!
Building a successful website requires more than a catchy domain name and colorful graphics. In order to truly get ahead and succeed online, especially in highly competitive markets: SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, must be a priority.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of boosting a website’s visibility by honing in on target keywords, headlines, and even article titles that are relevant to a target audience or specific demographics. Using various tactics, improving a website’s overall SEO can help to boost your website within top search engines such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, and Bing.
We talk more about SEO in our What is SEO article, as well as in our WordPress SEO. We’re now at the point where we know we have further things to do, and plugins help us get there.
If you have a WordPress website, installing an SEO plugin should be one of the first steps you take before launching your site live. With an SEO plugin, you gain an advantage over your online competition while helping your website to become more recognizable, and therefore trustworthy, to search engines across the board.
Choosing the right SEO plugin can feel confusing and overwhelming, especially if you are new to SEO or new to working with WordPress altogether. There are many top-tier WordPress SEO plugins that are available for free to get started with, as listed below.
However, it is important to note that although the following plugins provide free versions for users, for the best results, the pro versions are highly recommended.
There are also specific SEO Plugins that focus on a particular pain point and they may be useful, depending on your website needs, but they are very specific. We will cover them in another article.
We will have video guides on how to work with each of the plugins we talk about.
Are Free SEO Plugins Good?
Free SEO plugins for WordPress are extremely useful and helpful, especially for those who are just starting out with WordPress for the first time. While many of today’s top free SEO plugins for WordPress are extremely robust, they do lack some features that are only available via Pro or Premium versions of the plugins.
What do I need SEO Plugins For? (standard features most have, just a quick list)
Did you know that each day Google receives more than 3.5 billion (yes, with a B) search queries? That is without calculating the number of queries other search engines such as Yahoo!, Bing, and DuckDuckGo receive. Boosting your website’s overall search engine optimization is a way to maximize your online reach, ultimately providing you with more traffic and more opportunities to generate sales and revenue.
Some of the standard features most free SEO WordPress plugins offer include:
- Local SEO optimization and geo-targeting options
- Open Graph metadata for social media sharing (those big images and article descriptions)
- Simple Schema markup
- XML sitemaps
- Automated image/hyperlink SEO
- Advanced SEO analysis and SEO auditing
- Meta Descriptions / Keywords to help search engines better understand our content
- Optimization of breadcrumbs
- Redirect assistance
- Easy UI (user interface) and fewer lines of coding to work through
- rich snippet
- broken links check or redirect
There are too many SEO tools, which do I choose?
We talk about several SEO tools, use cases and a plethora of things to do; do not get discouraged, or confused.
One step at a time, and only consider further tools when the use case applies.
As we lay our foundation, we need one general SEO plugin that covers most of the basic features, so we’re going to talk about the most common free ones. It’s more than enough to get started.
You can also decide for one SEO plugin and then later switch. The most popular SEO plugins have configuration importing between each other to make switching easy and seamless.
Best 6 Free SEO Plugins for WordPress
Before selecting the SEO plugin that is ideal for your WordPress site, I highly recommend to research and compare all of your options. If you enjoy the features that are provided with free versions of plugins for WordPress, be sure to investigate premium and pro versions to determine which solution will truly deliver what you need.
It might also be a good idea to use the free version of a plugin while knowing what the Premium version offers, so that if you outgrow the Free version, you just need to upgrade.
All the plugins we talk about here are plugins we know and use or have used and we recommend.
All of those plugins can easily be installed, check How to install a plugin for more information
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular and downloaded free SEO plugins for WordPress. Yoast SEO is easy to use and simple to integrate. Use Yoast SEO to implement proper SEO where it matters by targeting specific keywords, meta descriptions, and even canonical URLs. Yoast SEO helps to streamline the process of optimizing any WordPress website for top search engines.
On their own website, there is a very popular community as well as SEO courses, both free and paid, for newbies and advanced users, plus a blog with even more information.
Characteristics:
- Tons of informative content and resources to improve
- duplicate content detection
- frequent updates
- Cluttered interface. Some like it, some don’t.
Pricing:
Yoast SEO is available to download for free from the WordPress repository. The premium version of Yoast SEO is also available for $99 annually for each website. Features of the premium version of Yoast SEO include:
- Advanced content insights
- Redirect manager
- Internal linking suggestions, and more
The Plugin Subscription available at $229 per year per website includes all the 5 Yoast SEO plugins
Rank Math
Rank Math is one of the fastest-growing SEO plugins for WordPress. The plugin itself is extremely intuitive and user-friendly, making it appealing to just about anyone, even those who are new to building websites or an online presence.
Some of the key features that Rank Math offers include:
- Schema markup
- SEO auditing (advanced)
- SEO analysis tools for each post/page/product/post type
- Local SEO optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
- Redirect manager and 404 monitor
- Breadcrumb optimization
- XML sitemap generation
- Internal link suggestions
- Open Graph and Twitter Card Support
- Image SEO
- Clean interface
- Rich snippet
- Google Search Console Integration
- Quickly add Google Analytics
Rank Math is quickly becoming a go-to all-in-one SEO plugin source for many WordPress site owners and bloggers alike. While the free version of Rank Math is available to all, there is also a premium version of the popular plugin that offers several extra features and a lot of SEO insights on keywords shown in the plugin and via reports.
The Free version alone, however, packs a heavy punch and is full of features that are sometimes in paid plugins.
The Premium version adds more general information for your SEO efforts, such as Search Terms, Keyword ranking, comprehensive stats and reports, but all you need to get started is with the free version.
Slim SEO
Slim SEO is an extremely lightweight high-quality WordPress plugin that requires zero configuration and programming to get started. Slim SEO uses modern, up-to-date, modular coding developed by WordPress experts who have more than 12 years of extensive programming experience. From auto-generating schema types for your website to optimizing meta tags, Slim SEO delivers.
Currently, Slim SEO is available free of charge and can be downloaded and installed directly onto any WordPress site.
Rather than a PRO version, Slim SEO’s developers are developing extra features as stand-alone plugins, such as the excellent Slim Schema PRO.
Characteristics:
- Not much to configure, it can generate tags, sitemaps and basic schema markup on its own
- can modify how shared content appears
- easy setup
SEO Press
SEO Press is an extremely attractive free WordPress SEO plugin users who are interested in white label solutions. White label provides more customization and personalization options without promoting or linking the developer of the plugin on your website, therefore helping to boost your professional online image.
With SEO Press, easily optimize your website with a generated XML sitemap while analyzing content using specific tags and keywords that you choose to track. SEO Press also includes social media features such as Twitter Cards and Open Graph for those interested in integrating their social media into their WordPress SEO plugin.
Pricing: While there is a free version of SEO Press available, the premium version of the plugin will cost $39 each year. Some of the advanced features that come with SEO Press premium include:
- Breadcrumb optimization
- WooCommerce eCommerce integration and more
Finding the best free SEO plugins for WordPress for your website does not need to feel stressful and overwhelming, especially once you familiarize yourself with the top options available today. With the right SEO plugin, further optimize your website to increase traffic while building a name and reputation for yourself or your business online.
Characteristics:
- No bloat, no clutter
- breadcrumbs
- Google Analytics integration
- Open Graph
- White label plugin
SEO by Squirrly
Don’t let the strange name fool you, Squirrly SEO is well known and has many installations. Its focus is not only on SEO, but also on helping its user configure it properly with several instructional tutorials and videos baked in the plugin itself, instead of separate courses.
While having most of the features of its competitors, Squirrly SEO really helps non-experts with its hand-holding approach.
Characteristics:
- hand-holding to use the plugin and optimize SEO
- competition analysis
- assistant when writing (some may like it, some deactivate it)
The SEO Framework
fast and lightweight, The SEO Framework focuses on the fundamentals and works very well with less need to configure every single detail.
The SEO Framework is one of the most reputable and known plugins for SEO, and its ease of use with no bloat makes it easy to setup, especially when compared to the clutter of Yoast.
Works well for beginners, but it’s also not a slouch and SEO experts also appreciate the plugin.
A premium version is present, which allows for premium extensions and more SEO data.
Characteristics:
- user friendly interface
- no clutter or bloat
- local SEO
- comment spam extension
- most of the settings are preconfigured
- focus subject rather than focus keyword
WPDojo’s Conclusion
Our aim was to show off the best and most popular Free WordPress SEO plugins, to give informed choice and allow you to try and test them out.
The article strictly focuses on those, without combining them with any other SEO tool, extra features that are out of scope such as a Keyword Research Tool, knowing your SEO Ranking or other considerations.
There is a place for those SEO tools and they are helpful, but we want to avoid confusion by adding a plethora of tools together without focus on the objective.
A well configured free WordPress SEO Plugin is enough to bring organic traffic from search engines and allow you to focus on creating great content.
We suggest trying one of the recommended plugins, or more than one (one at a time, always!), pick your favorite, learn how to use it and take your time.
Premium features and vertical plugins are only important when you know you need what they do.
Our series on SEO continues!
We appreciate comments and feedback, as always
