The Best WordPress SEO Plugins (and Must-Have SEO Tools for 2022)

Finding a great host for your WordPress site is sure to speed it up and boost your SEO rankings. However, there’s much more that goes into it, including which keywords you target for product pages and blog posts, how large your image files are, and whether or not your content is readable. Several WordPress SEO plugins make this task a breeze.

In addition, you can find some third-party SEO tools for bringing up powerful stats, keyword rankings, and backlink information.

SEO is confusing, even for experienced website owners. Finding posts and pages with high potential, fixing broken links, reorganizing site structure, or conducting a complete SEO audit is not easy for most website owners. But when you’re equipped with the right tools and the knowledge needed to implement those tools, you’ll be well on your way to search engine success.

Let’s start!

What Do SEO Plugins Do?

SEO encompasses a broad field of study. It can cover keyword research, content optimization, adding links, and much more. Generally speaking, any plugin that helps you optimize your pages so they can rank higher on search engines falls under this umbrella.

Some SEO plugins, such as Yoast SEO (which we use at Kinsta), go above and beyond when it comes to helping you improve your content for search engines. For instance, they help you avoid overusing the exact keywords and tips for improving your content’s readability.

It’s important to understand that SEO WordPress plugins don’t necessarily mean your content will rank higher on search engines. However, if you’re unsure how to optimize content for search engines, these tools provide a great starting point.

Using WordPress SEO plugins can help you gain a deeper insight into your audience and traffic sources. You can then use this valuable information to improve your content strategy and boost engagement.

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Does WordPress Need SEO Plugins?

You don’t need to use WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your posts and pages. If you’re familiar with SEO fundamentals and you keep up with the latest changes in algorithms, you can achieve fantastic results without using plugins.

In most cases, SEO plugins provide you with guidance on how to improve your content, so it’s more search-engine friendly. However, the actual optimization work still falls on your hands.

Out of the box, WordPress already includes all of the tools and features that you need to create SEO-friendly content. The Content Management System (CMS) enables you to add titles, meta descriptions, headings, alt text, tags, customize URLs, and much more.

Those small tasks (among many others) add to what we call SEO. If you don’t need a plugin to help remind you of basic SEO tasks, then all the more power to you.

However, even if you decide not to use SEO plugins, there are still a lot of unique tools that you can use for keyword research and competitor analysis. These can also help you figure out why your pages are slipping in the ranks and enable you to identify areas of improvement.

The Best SEO Plugins for WordPress (2022)

To start the list, we’ll talk about SEO plugins for WordPress. These are often easier to understand and install, and you can choose from a wide range of plugins with different features. The best plugins show you SEO projections and recommendations on your page and post editors, while others are limited in their feature sets. Still, they have unique assets like checking broken links or minimizing the file sizes of images.

The quick list of recommendations is shown above, but we highly recommend scrolling through the more thorough reviews we’ve completed on the best SEO WordPress plugin options below.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO reigns supreme as the king WordPress SEO plugin. It is what we use here on the Kinsta blog. With an astounding 16,700 5-star ratings at the time of this article, Yoast continues to wow the WordPress world with impressive updates, a beautiful interface, and the most user-friendly option for making your blog posts and product pages stand out.

What’s more is that Yoast SEO has its own website with premium support options, a thriving community in the forum section, an informative blog to learn more about SEO, and SEO courses for beginners, intermediates, and advanced users alike.

You can also gain access to Yoast SEO premium from that website, which offers more advanced features like keyword optimization for five keywords on a page, previewing what your page will look like on Twitter and Facebook, and internal link suggestions for sending users to other locations on your website. Keep in mind that that’s a small portion of the premium features provided.

The premium plugin sells for $89 per site, making it a desirable deal for anyone. However, those on a budget still receive the free plugin, which beats out most other SEO WordPress plugins by a long shot.

Features That Make Yoast SEO a Great Choice:

• Type in keywords and analyze how well you have optimized for those keywords on pages and posts.
• See exactly what your Google search engine result is going to look like. With this, you can adjust the meta description and title to make it more appealing and keyword-rich.
• A readability check is completed on all pages to understand if you need to break up paragraphs or add elements like numbered lists or headers.
• The plugin detects if you have duplicate content in your page or post.
• Yoast has some of the best resources and support we have ever seen from a plugin developer.
• They also update the plugin every two weeks.
• The premium plugin provides a redirect manager, free support, content insights, and an ad-free interface on the backend.

Kinsta officially recommends Yoast SEO, and we even have an automatic installer for the plugin when you add a new WordPress site.

To learn more about this awesome plugin, check our in-depth tutorial: How To Use Yoast SEO On WordPress: Complete Tutorial

2. The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework plugin does the trick for those who want a fast, lightweight SEO plugin for WordPress without any ads or upsells. It strips some of the bells and whistles you probably don’t need and focuses on helping those who are more concerned about keeping site speeds high while also spending less time with confusing SEO articles. It’s often considered the greatest alternative to Yoast. That has much to do with the visual nature of the SEO ratings and more flexible options for targeting keywords (like with slightly off words or synonyms).

The post SEO settings are controlled with a few tabs, one of which uses a colored scale to show exactly how close you are to making your post search engine-ready. With the scale, you can instantly tell where you need to put in some work for your SEO, unlike some of the more cluttered versions of Yoast.

As you may have already assumed, the interface is perfect for beginners. The API is also open for advanced users to get their hands dirty. The plugin began as a project within the WPMUDEV community, but it was eventually released to the masses for free. The SEO Framework plugin is all-inclusive, and it offers more advanced functionality with the help of extensions.

Some of them include:

• Local SEO
• An AMP integration
• Article enhancement
• Monitoring for SEO and uptime
• Incognito mode
• Redirects
• Comment caching for spammers

Features That Make The SEO Framework a Great Choice:

• The SEO framework doesn’t sell anything to you. It matches most of the needed features you find in Yoast, but you’re not required to pay for extensions or premium features.
• The visual, colored meter/scale provides a more user-friendly way to check whether your post will perform well on Google.
• It has a local SEO extension for companies that need to set up and display important local business information.
• The comment spam extension removes the need for an additional plugin.
• Most of the SEO settings are preconfigured so that there’s little to set up after installing the plugin.
• While other plugins utilize a focus keyword, The SEO Framework focuses on the focus subject to encourage more natural writing because Google sees synonyms in SERPs as the same thing.

3. SEOPress

SEOPress is a freemium SEO plugin for WordPress with no ads. It’s completely white-labeled with no footprints, even in the free version. It’s simple, fast, and powerful, letting you manage all of your titles and meta descriptions for posts/pages/post types/terms.

Create XML and HTML sitemaps, track your visitors with Google Analytics (with RGPD compatibility), and optimize tags (Open Graph and Twitter Cards) for sharing your content on social networks. The free version also provides content analysis to help web admins write better posts. Developers can use more than 75 hooks to set up the plugin as they wish.

The premium version extends its functionality and adds advanced features like:

• Local business SEO.
• Breadcrumbs optimized for SEO and accessibility.
• WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads optimizations.
• Video and Google News XML sitemaps.
• Google Structured Data Types (schemas.org): product, article, event, local business, recipe, review, FAQ, course, and video.
• Backlinks from integration with Majestic (third-party API).
• Google Page Speed v5 integration to quickly check the quality of your pages.
• Redirections and 404 monitoring.
• Google Analytics stats in your WordPress dashboard.

Features That Make SEOPress a Great Choice:

• No ads, and your editors will see a meta box with no reference to SEOPress. Same thing in the admin bar.
• It lets you add Google Analytics tracking to your site in seconds. You can exclude user roles from tracking, set up custom dimensions, enable remarketing, demographics, and interest reporting, track PDF, DOCX, XLSX, downloads, IP Anonymization, cross-domain tracking, and more.
• Quick and easy Twitter meta tags and Facebook open graph data.

4. Rank Math

Rank Math SEO is the swiss army knife of SEO tools for your WordPress website. It comes with everything you need to take full control of your on-page SEO. Rank Math combines the power of multiple plugins you might be using on your WordPress website for SEO and brings everything into one easy-to-manage plugin that is also lightweight.

With Rank Math, you can manage the on-page SEO of your posts, pages, products, or other taxonomies. You can also control noindex/nofollow/noarchive meta tags of all taxonomies in general and individual posts or pages.

It tightly integrates with Google Search Console to bring you essential information right inside your WordPress admin dashboard. Information like what keywords you are ranking for, how many search impression your website is getting, what errors Google sees on your site, etc., is available in one glance.

Apart from that, Rank Math comes with an inbuilt 404 Monitor, Redirections, Rich Snippets, Local SEO, XML Sitemaps, Automated Image SEO, Internal Link Building recommendations, etc.

Features That Make Rank Math a Great Choice:

• It is a one-stop shop for all your SEO needs.
• Each post/page/product runs through an SEO Analysis tool based on 40 factors.
• The user interface is very clean, and the options are easy to understand.
• It gives you options to add alt or title tags to images missing them automatically.
• Rank Math has a 404 monitor to tell you where users see errors.
• It also comes with a Redirection module that lets you point those 404 errors to something a little more useful on your website.
• XML Sitemap module comes bundled with Rank Math, and the plugin also pings search engines automatically once you make any changes to your posts.
• Rich Snippets support is included with an option to choose from 6 different snippets like Article, Product, Recipes, Events, Video, Local Business, etc.
• Breadcrumbs are also part of the plugin, so you don’t have to rely on another plugin for that.
• Open Graph and Twitter Card support is bundled.

5. SEO Squirrly

SEO Squirrly is marketed for people who aren’t SEO experts. It lives up to that claim by offering a complete SEO suite without complicated elements. SEO Squirrly generates SEO recommendations differently than the other plugins we’ve already outlined. You start by typing in your article topic. The desired keyword is also punched in so that when you continue writing your content, a series of green lights is activated in real-time. It’s almost like you have an expert whispering into your ear as you’re writing.

Features That Make SEO Squirrly a Great Choice:

• The keyword optimization is done as you’re writing the article. This is a little easier than Yoast, where you often have to save the article to see suggestions and results.
• If you plan on replacing an old SEO plugin for WordPress with Squirrly, it still keeps all of your settings from the previous setup.
• There’s a tool that analyzes your competition to see how you can outrank it.
• Squirrly includes content reports, which you can send to other people in your organization. For example, a writer might need to learn more about SEO, so you might send it to them after writing an article.
• You receive progress monitoring weekly, along with a solid tool that shows recent tweets about your topics. This provides both inspiration and ways to improve your content.

6. Broken Link Checker

SEO isn’t only about filling your pages and posts with a significant number of keywords. It’s also not only about making your content readable. One way to make your way past the competition is to go through your site to remove any broken links. When Google sees a broken link (aka a link that leads to a 404 page), it sees this as a less than desirable user experience. After all, your customers have no interest in landing on an empty page.

The only problem is that it might take you hours or days to sift through all your content to locate every broken link. Enter the Broken Link Checker.

This gem does the dirty work for you by scanning through your blog posts and pages. All broken links are revealed within a few minutes. The list is populated with the links in question, so you can go and remove them completely or change them to better references. If you keep the plugin active, it continues to search your site and notify you when a link breaks.

After the links have been corrected, the list will be empty, and Google sees that you maintain your site quite well.

Important: Due to the constant scanning functionality of this plugin, we recommend enabling it, going through and fixing your links in batches, and then disabling it again. This will ensure it doesn’t impact the performance of your site.

Features That Make Broken Link Checker a Great Choice:

• You don’t even have to go to the post or page to change the broken link. All link modifications are done through the plugin‘s primary page.
• The WordPress SEO plugin has an option for searching and filtering links.
• It’s not only for finding broken links in posts and pages. The plugin monitors comments, custom fields, and more.
• Missing images and redirects are also detected–basically, anything that might confuse a reader and make Google look less favorably on your website.
• There’s an optional feature for preventing search engines from following the broken links on your site.

7. Rel NoFollow Checkbox

When linking to other pages and websites, it’s important to realize that those links mean something to Google. The search engine wants to know the quality of those links and the quality of the links going back to your site. The reason for this is that if you have hundreds of links leading to spammy sites, Google sees this as manipulative and unhelpful to users. This plugin is perfect for those of you with affiliate links.

One way to ensure your links aren’t hurting your rankings is to add “rel nofollow” attributes to all external links. This way, the link doesn’t influence the ranking of the external site. In short, it scares away advertisers who value those links for rankings.

Unfortunately, it’s a pain in the butt to go in and add “rel nofollow” tags to all links in your content. However, the Rel NoFollow Checkbox plugin provides an extra checkbox to mark when creating links in WordPress.

Below the “Open a link in a new window/tab” checkbox, you’ll also find a “rel nofollow” option, which cuts down on the time you would have to spend working through the HTML.

Features That Make Rel Nofollow Checkbox a Great Choice:

• It’s lightweight, so your site remains speedy.
• You have the opportunity to boost your SEO without spending an extraordinary amount of time sifting through HTML (to find your links and add a little bit of code).
• It makes the process much easier for non-coders.
• Perfect plugin for affiliate marketers
• The installation doesn’t take more than a minute or two, and there aren’t any settings that need to be configured.
• You can quickly go through guest posts or articles written by your writers to ensure that they aren’t trying to market certain products or companies without your permission.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, you might also want to check out a free link shortener plugin, such as Pretty Links, which can automatically add the nofollow attribute to your links.

8. All in One Schema Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are visual search elements such as star rankings, images, and other important details that might grab user attention by having something different from regular search results. Rich snippets are often used for eCommerce product page results and blog post reviews. Google enjoys rich snippets because they aren’t all that intrusive yet still reveal valuable information to the user.

There’s no built-in method for offering up rich snippets with WordPress, but the All in One Schema Rich Snippets plugin does the work for you.

Your search engine results are cut down to the most important elements with this plugin. In addition, users see everything from photos to star ratings to author avatars.

Features That Make All in One Schema Rich Snippets a Great Choice:

• Google searches provide a more visual structure for the users. Google likes this and so do the users.
• The plugin supports several types of content, including events, reviews, people, products, recipes, and videos. So, for instance, a recipe might have a star rating, the number of reviews, and a photo of the food.
• Your search results are easier to share on Facebook, since the proper information is already compiled.

If you don’t have reviews on your site and simply need a more lightweight plugin, we recommend checking out the free Schema plugin.

9. WordLift

WordLift is a WordPress plugin that uses AI to bring advanced SEO in the hands of content editors and marketers. This plugin helps you organize your content while automating structured data markup. On top of that, WordLift improves content findability by adding internal links, recommendation widgets, and semantic-rich metadata. Plans start at €59 per month ($65/month).

By taking advantage of this plugin, you could also start translating your articles and pages into machine-friendly content that search crawlers, chatbots, and personal digital assistants — like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa — can use and understand your organic traffic.

Features That Make WordLift a Great Choice:

• Uses natural language processing and knowledge graphs for automating structured linked data markup.
• Adds WooRank’s technology to help you track the performance of your content and provides relevant advice on how to optimize your website.
• Integrates with Google Analytics.
• Some users of this plugin are Airbnb, Amazon Audible, Greenpeace, Merck Group, and TheNextWeb.

10. Redirection

Redirections are an essential part of modern SEO. If you want to redirect users from a page that no longer exists to another URL, you’ll need to implement a 301 redirect. With a 301 redirect, you can let search engines know that they should pay attention to the new URL and discard the former one.

Redirection enables you to implement 301 redirects using a simple URL manager. Without the plugin, implementing redirects is a convoluted affair that requires you to modify the .htaccess file and add manual entries for each new redirection.

The plugin also includes a system that enables setting up “conditional” redirects. This means you can implement redirects that depend on the user’s login status, what browser they’re using, their IP address, and other conditions. The best part of this conditional system is that it is simple to set up automatic redirects for 404 pages.

Features That Make Redirection a Great Choice:

• Redirection makes it easy to set up 301 redirects versus adding them manually.
• The plugin includes a conditional redirection system that supports parameters such as login status, page type, IP address, and more.
• It logs every redirect that occurs on your website.
• You can track 404 errors in WordPress.
• You can also change your website’s permalink structure.

11. Slim SEO

Most WordPress SEO plugins offer you so many settings and options that learning how to use them can be challenging. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but depending on your style, you might prefer to use a tool that doesn’t require you to spend too much time configuring it.

Slim SEO‘s primary selling point is that it enables you to automatically generate meta tags and sitemaps, add schema markup, and create redirects. The plugin also helps you set up Open Graph meta tags and configure how your content will appear on social media.

Moreover, you can use Slim SEO to add custom code to your header and footer. This is perfect for integrating solutions such as Google Analytics or other types of tracking code.

Compared to plugins such as Yoast SEO or Rankmath, Slim SEO lacks on-page analysis functionality. However, this plugin is a worthwhile option if you’re comfortable running optimizations without a cheat sheet.

Features That Make Slim SEO a Great Choice:

• Slim SEO can automatically generate meta tags, sitemaps, and add schema markup to your posts and pages.
• You can use the plugin to set up redirects for author pages.
• The plugin enables you to modify your content when users share it on social media.
• It is effortless to configure, and its default settings should be perfect for most users.

12. Internal Link Juicer

As you may know, internal links are one of the most critical elements of great SEO. The better your internal linking strategy is, the easier it is for users to find more content within your site and the more time they’ll spend browsing around. The problem is, as your content library grows, figuring out what posts to link to can become a challenge. This is where Internal Link Juicer comes in.

This plugin enables you to set anchor keywords for each post, and it automatically adds links to related internal content. You can configure how many links the plugin adds to each post and block content, so it doesn’t get linked to. Moreover, you get access to statistics concerning those internal hyperlinks.

The best way to use Internal Link Juicer is to let the plugin work its magic on your posts and then go over them to see if you can identify any additional linking opportunities. As good as the plugin is, it’s still no match for in-depth expertise of your content, but it will save you time.

Features That Make Internal Link Juicer a Great Choice:

• Set anchor text keywords for each post in your library
• Enable the plugin to automatically add internal links to each post based on the keywords you set
• Configure the number of links the plugin can add to each post and what content it can and shouldn’t link to
• Get access to reports about your internal links

13. XML Sitemaps

Many all-in-one WordPress SEO plugins will automatically create XML sitemaps for your website. However, suppose you’re not planning on using one of those tools, and you’re capable of optimizing your content without any help. In that case, you can still benefit from a plugin that takes care of generating a sitemap.

The XML Sitemaps plugin is plug-and-play. Once you activate the plugin, you can configure whether it notifies search engines about each update to your website. You also have the option to create a sitemap in HTML format.

Aside from those basic settings, the plugin will automatically generate a complete sitemap for your website. You may still want to submit that sitemap to search engine webmaster tools such as Google Webmaster Tools, but that part of the job is up to you.

Features That Make XML Sitemaps a Great Choice:

• It automatically generates XML sitemaps for your website.
• It notifies search engines about updates to your website.
• It adds your sitemaps URL to the robots.txt file.

14. Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP

Schema markup can transform how your content appears on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). If you’ve ever seen search results with images, ratings, and product prices, all on top of regular meta descriptions, those are rich snippets in action.

For rich snippets to appear, you’ll need to add schema markup to your content. However, there are dozens of schema types, each with a unique purpose. Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP helps you select and add the right schema for every type of content:

The plugin includes a feature that can automatically detect what type of content it’s dealing with and assign the proper schema. However, you can also choose manually from over 35 schema types, including blog posts, news articles, recipes, product pages, and more.

You can configure Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP to exclude specific types of content and not assign schema markup to them. The plugin also enables you to import data from other schema markup tools, so you can pick up and switch to it without needing to redo schema for your entire website.

Features That Make Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP a Great Choice:

• The plugin can automatically assign a schema to over 35 types of content.
• You can manually select what schema markup to add to each post and page.
• You can configure the plugin to exclude specific types of content from schema assignments.
• You have the option to import data from other popular WordPress schema markup plugins.

The Best SEO Tools for WordPress Users

If you need a quick list of the best SEO tools for WordPress users, or any user for that matter, feel free to click on the options we’ve provided in the list below.

If you’d rather go through the intensive research and really understand the features of each SEO tool, keep reading to learn about everything from keyword research features to SEO search volume rankings.

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO juggernaut and the closest thing you can get to cover every aspect of your SEO needs. The whole point is to give you insights into your competition and find backlinks and keywords that might work just as well for your own business. It’s also great for locating keywords that competitors might not have taken advantage of yet. We utilize Ahrefs daily here at Kinsta.  

As you can see in the screenshot, the Ahrefs dashboard provides several tickers, charts, and graphs for checking things like referring domains, organic keywords, and paid keywords. Yes, it’s a little pricey (starting at $99 per month for one user,) but an eCommerce store or blog could easily make that money back since it’s considered one of the best SEO tools on the web. In fact, it helped us clean up a negative SEO attack on our site.

Ahrefs can actually work for other websites not using WordPress since it provides a comprehensive site explorer and dashboard, separate from WordPress.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• Ahrefs is hands down the best keyword explorer on the market.
• It has one of the largest backlink databases on the web, and we rely on its data for many things.
• It provides a rank tracker to see how you stack up against comparable companies online.
• Content ideas are much easier to come by since you can search for topics based on what you sell or talk about on your site.
• You can find websites that link to your competition, then reach out to those same websites (or similar ones).
• Ahrefs shows people who are interacting with your brand on social media.
• You can configure several alerts to determine when a backlink is added or lost. It’s also great for seeing new keywords and web mentions.

2. GrowthBar

GrowthBar allows you to get keyword results, check your competition’s backlinks, Google Ads data, and generate blog content in one click. Bloggers and content creators will benefit the most from this tool. In fact, GrowthBar comes with a content generation feature that sets it apart from other SEO tools. Thanks to this, you’ll be able to create content outlines featuring the correct keywords you’d like to target, intro paragraphs, etc.

GrowthBar’s drag-and-drop content editor is unique and perfectly suited for WordPress users. GrowthBar is powered by a tool built using Open AI, which means — the most sophisticated language model ever made. That means the outcomes and recommendations will keep improving the more you use the tool.

Thanks to a simple user interface and robust data sets, almost anyone can use it, regardless of their technical experience. Entrepreneurs, small businesses, and freelancers can all take advantage of this powerful SEO tool!

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• GrowthBar’s content generation can help you save time.
• It allows you to export all your content outlines to Google Docs so that you or your team of writers can create content faster.
• It features a big index of keywords and backlink suggestions.
• It has a slick and easy-to-use UI.

3. Accuranker

Where Ahrefs excels at keyword research and backlink research, Accuranker takes charge with keyword tracking. In fact, the entire system is built on tracking your SEO rankings and the keywords that boost your SEO. The pricing is a little better than that of Ahrefs, but you should remember that it’s not the same type of SEO tool. We utilize Accuranker here at Kinsta to monitor our content marketing in SERPs.

Accuranker starts at $44.95 per month, allowing you to track up to 600 keywords. You can also use the tool on unlimited domains and check in on one competitor. As you upgrade to other plans, these numbers get bigger with agency and enterprise packages available.

Both Bing and Google are tracked with Accuranker, as it delivers precise daily results based on keywords or other metrics.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• The keyword tracking is done daily. But you can also manually refresh your keyword rankings at any time. This is one of the best features! Most keyword tracking tools limit the ability to do this.
• You can track by city, state, and zip code for the local businesses out there.
• You can jump back in history to see how you have reached your goals and how certain keywords have performed over the years.
• The keyword tracking is strengthened by additional analytics data for each keyword, such as traffic potential, traffic per keyword, and search volume.
• The SEO tool provides an automated reporting area where you can drag and drop items on a report template for the future. That way, when you need to download a specific report, it’s always there for you.
• You get rankings for mobile, desktop, and local keywords and searches.

4. SEMRush

SEMRush has a rather simple interface for those getting started with their SEO and don’t want to feel too intimidated. The pricing is still high (starting at $99.95 per month), but you receive a few domain overview metrics for free. That said, you need to sign up for an account first, and the upsells start coming fast.

Overall, SEMRush focuses on SEO, paid traffic, social media, and content. The technical SEO audit is where you find most of the information. The position tracking works similar to Accuranker, and the competitive intelligence is easy to understand.

One of the main reasons you would go with SEMRush is the analytic section. It does an awesome job of comparing paid traffic vs organic traffic. We also enjoy the ad strategy analysis, since this is bound to push more people to your website once you start learning how to post Google Ads more strategically.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• The interface is simple enough for an average user to understand.
• SEMRush covers most SEO tools you would need for a small to mid-sized business. The competitor analysis is rather strong, and the keyword research uses your own website and the competition.
• It’s a great program if you’re running reports and analytics for multiple clients. The professional-looking reports are some of the best in the business, and you can send them to other people regardless of location.

Check out these six different ways you can use SEMRush to dominate SERPs.

5. KWFinder

KWFinder offers more affordable pricing for those on a budget. The pricing starts at $29.08 per month. That includes support for keyword research, SERP analysis, rank tracking, and backlink analysis. The highest price point is $79.08 per month, increasing the number of lookups and keyword trackings. You also have the option to sign up for a free account, but you’re limited to five lookups per 24 hours. This might be okay for a small blog, but not much else.

The KWFinder user interface is colorful and intuitive, with rankings displayed clearly for beginners to understand. The primary features suggest keywords for your website and also compare those keywords to what other competitors are doing.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• You can’t find a cleaner user interface.
• The search volumes seem to be more accurate than other keyword planning and searching tools on the market.
• The pricing is hard to beat, and you have the option to play around with a free plan.
• The keyword difficulty score not only makes more logical sense than the competition, but it’s perfect for those who aren’t going to be analyzing hundreds of keywords per day.

6. Google Keyword Planner

If you have no intention of spending money on a keyword research tool, but would like some power behind your SEO planning, check out the Google Keyword Planner. This is what many online marketers use when they’re looking to sift through the best keywords to pay for. Google Keyword Planner has a hyper-local search volume tool, which makes it essential for those running small, local businesses. You can also target people based on their demographics, so eCommerce companies should have this in their arsenal.

The main problem is that it relies on averages instead of hard trends. However, you can pair this with Google Trends to find the right keywords and then test how they perform. However, if you need more accurate data, we recommend going with a premium tool.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• Companies looking to rank for local businesses and products should have fun with the geographic tools.
• It’s one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress since you don’t have to integrate anything, and it’s easy to cross-reference the data with other tools.
• Google Keyword Planner is from the folks at Google, so you’re utilizing a system that’s directly involved with the most prevalent search engine.
• You don’t have to pay a dime to use the Google Keyword Planner.
• If you plan on posting Google Ads with your keywords, the Google Keyword Planner lets you upload a list of keywords to get forecasts for your campaigns.

7. Moz Open Site Explorer and Pro

Moz is most famous for its use of the domain authority metric. Since Google has stopped updating PageRank, many SEOs utilize other metrics such as domain authority from Moz and domain rating from Ahrefs to quickly judge how powerful a site might be as it pertains to SEO.

Moz Open Site Explorer is free for the most part but is limited by the amount of data you can see without upgrading. For example, searching your own website brings up a list and analysis of inbound links, top pages, linking domains, and more. You can run a spam analysis to protect your site and look at link opportunities based on what you and your competitors do. Moz also has an area for anchor text, where you learn which keywords the site might be ranking for.

If you want additional data and tools, you can upgrade to Moz Pro, starting at $149 per month. That’s obviously on the expensive side, but the suite is quite impressive and great for beginners that are just starting with SEO. They have similar tools in the premium version, such as their keyword explorer tool.

You could definitely argue that Moz has the most important features you would expect out of an SEO tool. From domain analysis to offsite SEO, and competitor analysis to keyword tracking, it’s hard to find anything wrong with it.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• Moz Local is also an option if you own a locally-based business.
• The free Moz tool offers a wide range of SEO tools.
• You can also utilize their free MozBar extension to quickly see domain authority in your toolbar when browsing a site.
• Although many argue that the interface is clunky, it excels at providing a sophisticated look at competitor data and technical SEO analysis.

8. SEOquake

SEOquake takes a completely different approach to SEO in that the majority of the work is done through a Chrome extension. This way, you can navigate to a page and conduct an on-page SEO audit without any complicated dashboard. You can also check external and internal links while comparing URLs and domains, all in real-time.

What’s more, SEOquake exports all of this valuable data into a file for you to place into a different program or send off to coworkers. You might initially think that a simple Chrome extension isn’t enough for your SEO needs, but the amount of information contained in the tiny SEO plugin is pretty impressive. For instance, you can see URLs, titles, servers, and meta descriptions. It’s also nice to view the social activity and Alexa Pagerank.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• The SEOquake tool comes as a simple Chrome extension and is completely free. However, you might want a SEMRush account if you want some additional data.
• It’s one of the easiest ways to grab quick SEO information without a clunky dashboard.
• You also have the option to use SEOquake in Firefox.
• Printing and exporting SEO data is available.

9. Copyscape

Unfortunately, we live in a day and age where if you produce high-quality content, there will always be someone out there trying to copy it for their own gain. This happens to us a lot here at Kinsta. In fact, at the time of writing this, we have 4 DMCA complaints and cases open. Not sure whether or not someone has copied your content? Well, that is where the Copyscape tool comes in.

Copyscape essentially scans the web and checks to see if similar pages are floating around. It bases everything on a percentage match, such as someone copying 80% of your content word for word, or 50% with partial matches, etc. While Google is pretty smart about duplicate content issues and ranking the original, you shouldn’t let someone else take the credit for your hard work.

The free version works great for periodical checks, but you can also pay for the premium version and regularly monitor more of your sites.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• If you really want to protect your site, you can have Copyscape scan your sitemap file and automatically notify you if it finds copies of your content on the web.
• Copyscape has been around since 2007 and is by far the best tool on the web when it comes to detecting online plagiarism.
• Easy to use, even for beginners. Copy and paste your content or URL, and it will check it against the entire web in seconds.

10. Keywords Everywhere

There are a lot of tools that you can use to do keyword research. Services such as Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs will return more information than you can imagine regarding keyword suggestions.

However, you might be looking for data about specific search terms. This is where Keywords Everywhere comes in.

With this Chrome/Firefox extension, you’ll get access to data for each search that you run in Google. On top of regular search results, you’ll also see keyword difficulty, history search data, suggestions for related keywords, and more.

The free version works on both Google and Bing, and it gives you access to a wealth of data. If you choose to pay for the premium version, you’ll get access to more in-depth data and support for additional platforms, including YouTube, Amazon, and more.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• Keywords Everywhere is straightforward to set up, so you can immediately access keyword data.
• You get a lot of information for any search term you lookup using either Google or Bing.
• You can use this tool to lookup keywords quickly you’re interested in and gauge their difficulty, whereas using tools such as Keyword Planner can be more time-intensive.
• Keywords Everywhere returns several related keyword suggestions for any search term you look up (assuming there’s enough data available).

11. Similarweb

If you spend a lot of time looking at your competitors’ websites, you’ll love this Chrome extension. Similarweb enables you to look up SEO metrics for any website that you visit, including global rank, visitors over time, bounce rate, average visit duration, and much more.

For a free extension, Similarweb gives you access to a massive array of data for any site you visit. To use it, all you have to do is click on the extension’s icon while browsing a website, and it’ll open a tab showing the information you’re looking for.

Another upside of using Similarweb is that the extension gives you information about the top traffic sources for any site. You can use it to determine if a given page gets most of its traffic from search engines, direct hits, referrals, social media, email links, or display ads. At a glance, that information can tell you which traffic sources work best for your competitors and help you determine whether you need to rethink your strategy.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• Similarweb enables you to look up SEO information for any page quickly you’re interested in.
• You get access to data such as overall traffic, monthly visits, bounce rate, average time on site, and more.
• The extension shows you what visitors are looking for.
• You can look up traffic sources for any website.

12. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a powerful tool for helping you discover keyword ideas, trending topics, and what questions users are asking on the web. The platform also includes a suite of social media tools that enables you to identify the top influencers for any given topic and get their contact information.

With BuzzSumo, you can identify which content gets the most engagement and on which platforms. When you put that information together with keyword and traffic data from other sources, you get a comprehensive overview of what makes content users are willing to share.

BuzzSumo can also show how many websites link back to specific posts and pages. If you’re looking to increase backlinks to your website, analyzing pages that get a lot of links can help you learn what your content is missing.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• BuzzSumo is a fantastic tool for determining which content performs best on different social media platforms.
• You can use BuzzSumo to identify the top influencers in your niche and contact them.
• This tool helps you identify trending topics, keywords, and questions in your niche.

13. Keyword Insights

Finding potential keywords is relatively simple. However, figuring out which keywords are viable choices is another matter entirely. Some keywords might be too competitive, while others might not have enough volume. Moreover, not every keyword could work well for your targeted region.

Keyword Insights can take those lists of keywords and tell you which search terms you can target on the same page. It will also suggest which options you’re better off targeting with unique content.

In a nutshell, this tool can help you organize keywords into clusters. That way, you’ll maximize the potential traffic for each page without cannibalizing traffic by grouping search terms that have better potential on their own.

Keyword Insights can also suggest what content you should focus on for each keyword. It generates that data by analyzing the intent for each search term to identify why users are looking for those specific keywords.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• You can feed Keyword Insights lists of keywords, and it’ll tell you how and where to use them.
• You have the option to divide long lists of keywords into clusters.
• You can analyze search intent for each keyword and get suggestions on what content to generate around it.

14. Ubersuggest

There are plenty of great free keyword finder tools, but Ubersuggest is definitely near the top of the pack. Although it doesn’t provide you with as much sheer data as Google Keyword Planner, this tool organizes the information it shows in a much more user-friendly way.

With Ubersuggest, you can analyze keywords to determine their popularity, level of competition, and find related search terms. The tool will also show you some of the best-ranking content for each keyword, including estimated traffic, the number of backlinks, and social shares.

On top of keyword data, Ubersuggest can help you analyze specific domains to find out how well they’re performing. You’ll get access to detailed information, including traffic, keyword rankings, top pages, and more.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• If you’re scared of keyword research tools due to their complexity, Ubersuggest packages all that information in a more user-friendly way.
• You can use this tool to research potential keywords, find the best performing content for them, and receive related search term suggestions.
• Ubersuggest enables you to analyze your competitor’s top-performing content.

15. SpyFu

There are many ways to look into your competitor’s websites and figure out how well they’re doing from an SEO standpoint. However, most SEO tools include competitor analysis as an afterthought. SpyFu, on the other hand, is all about peeking into your competitor’s living rooms and seeing what they’re doing.

This tool enables you to enter any URL, and it’ll return an in-depth SEO overview for it. You can check out how much traffic a site is getting, whether organic or paid, if it has climbed up or slipped down the rankings recently, and much more.

With Spyfu, you can see what keywords your competitors share among each other, and what their top search terms and pages are. The tool even shows organic ranking history charts with specifications covering search algorithm updates. That’ll enable you to see how those changes affected their organic traffic. The best part is that all that information comes in a single-page report, so it’s easy to digest.

Why We Love This SEO Tool

• Researching competitors can be very time-consuming, but SpyFu makes it easy by laying out all of the essential SEO metrics you need to know in a single-page report.
• You can see how much traffic your competitors are getting and whether organic or paid.
• SpyFu enables you to look at any competitor’s top keywords and pages.
• Thanks to historical traffic and rankings charts, you can see how specific search algorithm updates affected your competitors.

Want to optimize your content for search engines better… and gain deeper insight into your audience and traffic sources? Check out these helpful SEO plugins Click to Tweet

Summary

SEO seems tedious and complicated when you don’t have the right tools on your side. However, when you find the best WordPress plugins for SEO and spend some time learning how to use them, tasks like keyword planning, competitor analysis, and reporting will become a breeze.

This list covers quite a bit, but some companies have different SEO needs. So, here are our final recommendations based on our research of the best SEO plugins and tools for WordPress:

• The best SEO plugin for optimizing pages and posts individually – Yoast SEO
• The best all-in-one SEO tool – Ahrefs
• The best white-labeled SEO plugin with no ads – SEOPress
• The best lightweight SEO plugin – The SEO Framework and Slim SEO
• The best user-friendly SEO plugin – SmartCrawl
• The best all-in-one SEO plugin – Rank Math
• The best SEO tools for those on a budget – KWFinder, Keywords Everywhere, and Google Keyword Planner
• The best misc. SEO plugins and tools – Broken Link Checker, Copyscape, and BuzzSumo

We utilize Yoast SEO, Ahrefs, and Accuranker daily here at Kinsta. If you have any questions on finding the best WordPress SEO plugins or tools, feel free to drop a comment in the section below!

Check out our video on growing traffic with SEO:

The post The Best WordPress SEO Plugins (and Must-Have SEO Tools for 2022) appeared first on Kinsta®.