Best SEO Plugins for WordPress 2021

WordPress is the world’s biggest CMS. It’s powerful, easy to learn, and free to use! Although it is very SEO-friendly out of the box, there’s always room for improvement. We have created this list of what we think is the best SEO plugins for WordPress in 2021. 

Whilst too many plugins might result in poor performance and poor SEO, picking the right ones can improve your performance and SEO significantly. 

We have chosen plugins that we know work based on our own experience, but that is also well recognised by the SEO community. 

Content Plugins

We probably don’t have to mention how important content is for SEO. And it doesn’t really matter if you are writing your own content or just publishing content from a freelancer or colleague.

Having a tool that helps you analyze the content from both a human reader perspective and from an SEO perspective is something we strongly recommend. Later we will recommend a plugin or two that does some of the work, but these plugins will help you as well! 

Grammarly

So this is one way to start a guide about the best WordPress plugins for SEO in 2020. Because Grammarly is not a WordPress plugin per se, but a multiplatform app on its own. To use Grammarly with WordPress it’s easiest to install it as a browser extension. This way it will work great with WordPress, as well as other web-based things. Basically, wherever you find a text field Grammarly will work.

We’ll let this one slide, simply because WordPress is a content management system and Grammarly does help you write better content. Grammarly is using machine learning to help you, not only when it comes to spelling and grammar, but also to express yourself better.

If we have to mention a con with Grammarly, it would be that they only support English for the time being. But hopefully, that will change in the future. 

Cost: Free (Premium for $11.66/month)
Active installs: n/a
Get Grammarly

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant

The SEO Writing Assistant from SEMrush is a pretty advanced tool with a lot of helpful features. With features such as readability, tone of voice, SEO-friendliness, originality and more. 

You start by choosing a main keyword and the writing assistant will suggest related keywords based on semantics. The tool will automatically analyze the readability and the tone of voice, which makes it easier to be consistent in your communication. The plugin will also check for plagiarism and originality. 

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant is free to use to a certain degree, but does require a SEMrush account. The tool is also available as an add on for Google Docs.

Cost: Free (Pr0 for $99.95/month)
Active installs: 10000+ 
Get SEMrush SEO Writing Assitant

Analytic Plugins

There are plenty of great analytics services out there to track visitors, rankings, user behaviour and so on. But sometimes it’s more comfortable to be able to access your data straight from the WordPress backend, or at least some of it.

The plugins that offer different analytic och tracking features are usually not as powerful as the real deal. But on the other hand, you rarely need to take a deep dive into all your data on a daily basis.

We can strongly recommend the following plugins to keep track of your SEO efforts and traffic.

Wincher

I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise that we are going to mention our own SEO plugin for WordPress, Wincher Rank Tracker! Our WordPress plugin is completely free to use and supports tracking for up to 10 keywords for your WordPress site. With our paid version you can track hundreds of keywords though.

You will get 7 days of ranking data, graphs showing average position, estimated traffic and some more nice features. Our WordPress plugin is far from as powerful as the service you find here. But we think it does a great job to give you a quick overview of how you are performing in Google. 

Cost: Free (100 additional keywords for €3/month)
Active installs: 2000+ 
Get Wincher Rank Tracker

MonsterInsights 

MonsterInsights describes themselves as the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. They are actually not doing any tracking themselves, but provide you with a neat interface so you can access your Google Analytics in WordPress. To be frank, why reinvent the wheel? Although there’s plenty of alternatives to Google Analytics, Google Analytics is probably still the king in their niche. 

Like our own plugin, Google Analytics is more powerful in its original shape and form, but for a daily peek on your stats it’s a lot more convenient to be able to see it from the same interface as your website. 

Cost: Free ($99.50 for Plus)
Active installs: 2+ million
Get MonsterInsights

Performance Plugins

As we use to mention quite often, the speed and overall performance of your website is a ranking factor. You want to make sure that your site loads quickly, otherwise you might lose the visitors interest. If your website is super slow, this will also directly impact your rankings in a negative manner. 

The following plugins optimize parts of your website to perform better.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket has a great reputation among WordPress users, and not without a reason. If you read tests where WP Rocket has been put up against the competition they are usually the winner! Not only when it comes to performance but also ease of use and support.

So are there any cons with WP Rocket? Well, it might be out of budget for some users, since they are only offering a paid version of their plugin. But the more licenses you buy, the cheaper it gets. 

Cost: $59
Active installs: +1 million
Get WP Rocket

Autoptimize

Autoptimize is a WordPress plugin that minimizes and optimizes several parts of your website. It minimizes CSS and HTML, offers lazy loading for images, asynchronous non-aggregated JavaScript and much more.

It’s also compatible with most cache plugins, although some cache plugins do offer a lot of the features you find in the Autoptimize plugin. 

Cost: Free
Active installs: 1+ million
Get Autoptimize

Compress JPEG & PNG images

TinyPNG’s WordPress plugin Compress JPEG & PNG images do wonders for your media gallery. It automatically compresses the images you upload and much more. For PNG’s the compression is lossless. 

Compress JPEG & PNG images are free to use for up to 500 images a month. TinyPNG also offers a free web service for image compression.

Cost: Free ($0.009 per image after 500 images/month)
Active installs: 200000+
Get Compress JPEG & PNG images

Cache Plugins

We are still looking into WordPress performance enhancement, but we felt caching is such a vital part of WordPress performance these days so it deserves a bit of extra attention.

Basically what a cache plugin does is to cache your content and deliver it as static content, rather than dynamic content which takes up more CPU resources.

Here are some of the most popular WordPress cache plugins, which all will have a positive impact on your website’s performance and SEO, when used right. 

When it comes to caching plugins you should choose one, unless you know exactly what you are doing. Using multiple cache plugins will most likely not increase your website’s performance, but might break your site or have the opposite effect. 

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a more than great alternative if you are looking for a free cache plugin. Performance and featurewise WP Super Cache is not as good as their commercial counterparts, but it’s definitely doing a good job!

WP Super Cache is developed by Automattic who also runs WordPress.com

Cost: Free
Active installs: 2+ million
Get WP Super Cache

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is also a good option if you are looking for a free cache plugin for your WordPress site. But I would say that W3 Total Cache is better for more experienced users because of the configuration. W3 Total Cache is also performing slightly worse than the two above, based on a few performance tests that have been made. 

It should also be mentioned that although the plugin is working fine for most users, there’s a good percentage that has been experiencing various problems with W3 Total Cache, such as broken WordPress installations. 

Cost: Free (Pro for $99/year)
Active installs: 1+ million
Get W3 Total Cache

Monitor Plugins

As your WordPress site grows there’s more and more stuff to keep track of. Also, the more your site grows, the more things use to break, especially with time as a factor. If you keep your WordPress, your theme and your plugins up to date you will usually have less trouble.

And as something on your site might break or if it becomes vulnerable you are putting your SEO at risk. We have listed some plugins that might not directly affect your SEO, but they will help you to protect your site and what you might have invested in your visibility! 

Broken Link Checker

No one likes a broken link. Not search engines, not users – no one. Having broken links will obviously ruin the user experience, but it might also affect your SEO in a negative manner.

Broken Link Checker from the quite well-known developer WPMU DEV is a highly configurable plugin which fills one simple task. Monitoring for broken links. Broken Link Checker automatically finds redirects, links and images that don’t work. When one is found you will see it on your dashboard or receive an email.

Cost: Free
Active installs: 700000+ 
Get Broken Link Checker

Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan

Wordfence Security is a great plugin for monitoring your sites health and potential vulnerabilities. Wordfence also makes a great job keeping unauthorized logins out. 

You might be surprised to know how many hackers would try to break into your site, only to place a backlink to their own site. 

Wordfence malware scan keeps an eye on the WordPress core, plugins and themes to detect any sort of malware or malicious code. Wordfence is also reminding you to update themes, plugins etc. 

Cost: Free (Premium for $99/year)
Active installs: 3+ millions
Get Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan

Akismet Anti-Spam

You might already have it installed. If not, maybe it’s about time. Even though comment spam isn’t as bad as someone actually hacking into your site, it’s pretty darn annoying.

You are most likely receiving spam comments for the same reason some people try to hack your site, they want a backlink. Akismet Anti-Spam is probably one of the oldest WordPress plugins and one of the best at filtering spam comments. 

Akismet was developed by the very same Matt Mullenweg who back in the days founded WordPress. Akismet is kind of free for personal sites, for commercial sites it comes with more features but at a monthly cost.  

Cost: Free (Plus for $5/month)
Active installs: 5+ million
Get Akismet Anti-Spam

Schema Markup & Featured Snippet Plugins

If you were Googling a few decades ago you might remember that it was quite a different experience back then, compared to now. Except for the actual content, most SERPs looked more or less the same. Today, no SERP is the same as the other.

Todays Google SERP is full of different boxes in different places. These are called featured snippets, which can appear in a lot of different ways. Schema Markup is the easiest way to help Google find content on your website that suits as a rich snippet.

We probably don’t have to mention that most of them are really good for your SEO, if you manage to get them.

Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippets

All in One Schema Rich Snippets by Brainstorm Force supports a lot of different markups. The current version includes Applications, Articles, Events, People, Products, Recipes, Reviews, Software and Videos. 

These are probably the most popular markups, but if you are familiar with Schema Markup you know there’s more. On a positive note, Brainstorm Force is continually developing their plugin adding more features and supporting more rich snippets.

Cost: Free
Active installs: 90000+
Get Schema – All in One Schema Rich Snippets

FAQ Schema For Pages And Posts

The FAQ snippet is one of my personal favourites for the time being. I think if you manage to get this one to show in Google it looks very neat, and it’s probably increasing your CTR. 

There are a lot of plugins like this, that only provide you with one simple markup, or rich snippet. Usually, they are not further away than a Google search. 

So back to this plugin, it helps you to create a nice FAQ with the proper markup which gives you the possibility of a featured snippet in the SERP.

Cost: Free
Active installs: 2000+
Get FAQ Schema For Pages and Posts

The Finale: Takes WordPress SEO from Good to Great!

Let’s face it. If you have read other guides to WordPress plugins for SEO, you are probably quite used to seeing Yoast at the top of the lists. In no way do we think that Yoast doesn’t deserve that spot, but we wanted to make this list a little differently from everyone else. We also do think All in One SEO Pack is a great alternative to Yoast, depending on what kind of user you are.

If you are not familiar with these two, it’s the plugins that take WordPress’s SEO from good to great. 

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO’s features include the option to set custom meta titles and descriptions, set rules for what you want to be indexed or not, set canonicals and much more. And yes, Yoast also helps you to analyze and improve your content based on a set of rules. 

Yoast has been around since 2008 and actually started as an SEO guide for WordPress. Today they are at the top of their niche. 

Cost: Free (Premium €89)
Active installs: 5+ million
Get Yoast SEO

All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack has actually been around a little longer than Yoast, with its first release back in 2007. But All in One SEO Pack is very similar to the competition above in terms of features and functionality. 

You can set custom meta information for your post and pages, get advice on your writing, setup XML-sitemaps and much more. 

Whilst Yoast has far more active installations then All in One SEO Pack, a lot of people actually prefer the latter. Some users claim that All in One SEO Pack is faster and more straightforward for advanced users.  

Cost: Free (Pro for $79/year)
Active installs: 2+ million
Get All in One SEO Pack

Please let us know what you think about this article in the comments below. We would also love to know which your favourite WordPress plugin for SEO is!