The 19 Best WordPress SEO Plugins You’ll Need in 2020, Ranked

WordPress is arguably the best content management system (CMS) for SEO – and with a staggering 35 percent of the top 1 million websites powered by WordPress today, it’s also the most popular CMS on the planet.

However, despite being touted as the most SEO-friendly CMS available on the market, we can’t reap the SEO benefits using WordPress default settings alone. By adding apps called plugins, we can begin to optimize the performance of a website. Plugins add new functionalities and features to your WordPress site, supporting webmasters with everything from caching and social integration to analytics and performance enhancement.

One of the main reasons the platform is so popular is the massive WordPress plugin library: There are more than 55,000 free plugins available right now on the WordPress.org plugin directory. So, which of those plugins should you install on your website? In this post, we rank the best WordPress plugins for SEO, so you can ensure your website is optimized for users and search engines.

Here are the best WordPress SEO plugins for 2020:

1. Yoast SEO

Purpose: Complete SEO suite

Price: Free & Paid ($89)

Download Link: Download Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO Overview:

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular SEO plugins on WordPress, with over 5 million active installations and over 25,000 5-star ratings. This plugin comes with many useful features, making it easy to optimize your website and content for search engines.

One of the best parts of Yoast SEO is its content analysis tool, which helps you write SEO-friendly posts by analysing your content based on the focus keyword provided. It also has a snippet preview tool, which shows you how your post or page will appear in the search results – even on mobile. You can write meta tags and social media tags for each page individually.

Yoast SEO – Key Features:

• Create and manage your XML sitemaps.
• Add meta tags for every post. Also equipped with Facebook OpenGraph and Twitter card implementation to link SEO and social media.
• Full control over site breadcrumbs.
• Set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content.
• The snippet preview shows you how your post or page will look in the search results – even on mobile.

2. All in One SEO Pack

Purpose: Complete SEO suite

Price: Free & Paid (Starting from $68)

Download Link: Download All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack Overview:

All in One SEO Pack is another excellent WordPress SEO plugin that’s similar to Yoast SEO. This plugin helps you to optimize your WordPress website and content for search engine spiders. Since it launched in 2007, this plugin has garnered more than 2 million active installations. All in One SEO Pack comes with many useful features like creating XML sitemaps, generating meta tags automatically and more.

If you are already using Yoast SEO but want to take All in One SEO pack for a test drive, you can do that easily with the import tool, which migrates the data and settings from prior plugins for a seamless transition.

All in One SEO Pack – Key Features:

• XML Sitemap support – submit your sitemap to Google and Bing to facilitate crawling & indexing
• Image XML Sitemap submitted to Google and Bing to improve your Image SEO
• Google AMP and Google Analytics support
• Support for SEO on Custom Post Types
• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Redirect attachment pages to parent post
• Automatically notifies search engines like Google and Bing about changes to your site
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• Automatically optimizes your titles for Google and other search engines
• Generates meta tags automatically
• You can override auto-generated titles and meta descriptions with your own meta tags

3. Rank Math

Purpose: Complete SEO suite

Price: Free

Download Link: Download RankMath

Rank Math Overview:

Rank Math is another helpful WordPress SEO plugin that’s been gaining in popularity recently. They claim to provide more features for free than what we get in Yoast SEO and All-in-One SEO. You can see the comparison table on their site to learn about the additional features they provide that are missing from Yoast and AIO SEO.

Rank Math – Key Features:

• Optimal Settings Pre-Selected
• Auto Canonical URLs
• LSI Keyword Tool Integrated
• Google Search Console Integration
• Import Other Plugin Settings
• Role Manager
• Google Schema Rich Snippets Integrated
• Advanced SEO Analysis Tool
• 40 Detailed SEO Tests
• Social Media Optimization

4. W3 Total Cache (Free/Paid) — Speed Optimization

Purpose: To improve page speed – Caching

Price: Free & Paid ($99/year)

Download Link: Download W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache Overview:

W3 Total Cache is a very useful caching plugin for WordPress. It claims to improve overall site performance at least by 10x when fully configured. It has many configuration options and provides caching methods like Page Cache, Database Cache, Browser Cache, Object Cache and more. There’s also advanced support for CloudFlare and other CDN integration.

 W3 Total Cache – Key Features:

• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support
• Secure Socket Layer (SSL) support
• Caching of (minified and compressed) pages and posts in memory or on disk or on (FSD) CDN (by user agent group)
• Caching of (minified and compressed) CSS and JavaScript in memory, on disk or on CDN
• Caching of feeds (site, categories, tags, comments, search results) in memory or on disk or on CDN
• Caching of search results pages (i.e. URIs with query string variables) in memory or on disk
• Caching of database objects in memory or on disk
• Caching of objects in memory or on disk
• Caching of fragments in memory or on disk
• Minification of posts and pages and feeds
• Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party JavaScript (with automated updates)
• Minification of inline, embedded or 3rd party CSS (with automated updates)

5. WP Super Cache

Purpose: To improve page speed – Caching

Price: Free

Download Link: Download WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache Overview:

One way to enhance the performance of a WordPress website is through caching. Caching improves page load time, which directly impacts search engine rankings. WP Super Cache is one of the most popular caching WordPress plugins, with over 2 million active installations.

This plugin serves cached static files in 3 ways: Expert, Simple and WP-Cache caching. You can choose which ever method suits you. If you’re not comfortable with editing PHP files, then choose simple mode.

WP Super Cache – Key Features:

• Extensive mod_rewrite capabilities for static caching (which is significantly faster than PHP-generated HTML caching.)
• Automatic page compression.
• Basic cache scheduling functions.
• Custom caching.
• Garbage collection – to delete old files in the cache directory.
• CDN support.
• User-friendly export capabilities, enabling you to transfer your caching settings to additional sites with ease.
• Mobile device support.

6. Autoptimize

Purpose: To improve page speed – minifying code

Price: Free & Paid (Starting from €149)

Download Link: Download Autoptimize

Autoptimize Overview:

Autoptimize is one the easiest and most helpful plugins for optimizing the page load times of your WordPress website. It speeds up your site by minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. Set up and configuration is easy – just check the boxes for the code you want to be minified, and it does all the work for you.

Autoptimize – Key Features:

• Script and style cache, aggregation, and minification
• CSS injection in the page head
• HTML minification
• Google Fonts and image optimization
• WordPress core emoji cruft removal
• Optimize (and even convert to WebP) and lazy-load images

7. Schema Pro

Purpose: Schema markup

Price: $79 (single website) and $249 (Agency)

Download Link:  https://wpschema.com/pricing/

Schema Pro Overview:

Schema Pro is a premium WordPress plugin built with the latest JSON LD technology. It has an easy-to-use interface and provides everything you need to mark up your site pages with the correct structured data markup. With the help of advanced page targeting options, with just a few clicks you can implement optimized Schema markup on multiple pages.

Schema Pro – Key Features:

• JSON-LD code implementation
• Easy-to-use interface for faster mark-up implementation
• Add schema mark-up to your existing content.
• Automatic – rather than needing to set up schema for each individual post/page, you can create schema mark-up configurations one time and then have Schema Pro automatically apply them to the relevant posts/pages.
• Third-party plugin support for custom fields and the Yoast SEO plugin
• Adds code in the backend and does not affect frontend design

Schema Pro – Supported Schema Types:

This plugin supports the following types of Schemas:

• Event
• Review
• People
• Recipe
• Product
• Video
• Articles
• Local business
• Service
• Course
• Job postings
• Software application
• Book

8. All In One Schema Rich Snippets

Purpose: Schema markup

Price: Free

Download Link: Download All In One Schema Rich Snippets

All In One Schema Rich Snippets Overview:

All In One Schema Rich Snippets is a free plugin helpful in adding mark-up code to your pages/posts. This plugin is very easy to set up and supports many rich snippet types, but it lacks impressive design and offers very few customization options.

All In One Schema Rich Snippets – Supported Schema Types:

All In One Schema Rich Snippets supports the following types of Schemas:

• Event
• Review
• People
• Recipe
• Product
• Video
• Articles
• Software Application

Unfortunately, they don’t have Schema type support for Local business or Breadcrumbs.

9. SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant

Purpose: Content writing help

Price: Free & Paid (Starting $99.95)

Download Link: Download SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant Plugin Overview:

Need help writing content with SEO in mind? Worried about which keyword variations to include in your post? This SEO Writing Assistant plugin from SEMrush provides instant recommendations for content optimization based on Google’s top-ranking pages for your given keyword.

You only need an SEMrush account to install SEO Writing Assistant. Paid accounts have different keyword budgets depending on the subscription plan.

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant – Key Features:

• Overall score – checks the article’s general quality calculated according to metrics such as readability, text length, and target keywords.
• Readability score – evaluates your text’s difficulty based on the recommended Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease score. You will get recommendations for sentences and words that need improvement.
• Target keywords – shows recommendations regarding the given keywords, their volume and their difficulty.
• Recommended keywords – shows semantically related keywords, that should also be added to your text.
• Plagiarism – validate that your writer has submitted original content.
• Linking – check your links for possible errors and problems.

10. TinyMCE Advanced

Purpose: Content writing help

Price: Free

Download Link: Download TinyMCE Advanced

TinyMCE Advanced Plugin Overview:

TinyMCE Advanced is a very helpful plugin for content writing. This plugin expands the functionality of a standard editor. It provides numerous formatting options like search and replace and the ability to set font family and font sizes within the content. Inserting tables into posts is much easier with this plugin. It has a very simple drag-and-drop interface that allows users to add and re-arrange buttons.

TinyMCE Advanced – Key Features:

• “Classic Paragraph” block that can be used instead of or together with the standard Paragraph block.
• An option to set the Classic Paragraph or Classic block as the default block in the block editor.
• Supports converting of most default blocks to classic paragraphs, and from classic paragraphs back to the default blocks.
• Support for creating and editing tables in the Classic blocks and the classic editor.
• More options when inserting lists in the Classic blocks and the classic editor.
• Search and Replace in the Classic blocks and the classic editor.
• Ability to set Font Family and Font Sizes in the Classic blocks and the classic editor.

11. AMP

Purpose: Mobile SEO

Price: Free

Download Link: Download AMP

AMP Plugin Overview:

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages are recommended by Google to make your website load faster on mobile devices. It does this by loading the pages using a limited set of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The faster your website loads, the better your user experience will be on mobile – and your organic performance in the mobile search results. This official AMP plugin enables AMP on your site, automatically converting your template and content for you.

AMP – Key Features:

• AMP-first Experiences: enabling full-site AMP experiences without sacrificing the flexibility of the platform or the fidelity of content.
• Core Theme Support: enabling AMP compatibility for all core themes, from Twenty Ten all the way through Twenty Nineteen.
• Compatibility Tool: when automatic conversion of markup to AMP is not possible, debug AMP validation errors with detailed information including the invalid markup and the specific components responsible on site (e.g. theme, plugin, embed); validation errors are shown contextually with their respective blocks in the editor.
• CSS Tree Shaking: automatically remove the majority of unused CSS to bring the total under AMP’s 50KB limit; when the total after tree shaking is still over this limit, prioritization is used so that the all-important theme stylesheet important is retained, leaving less important ones to be excluded (e.g. print styles).
• AMP Stories (beta): the AMP plugin enables the creation, editing, and publishing of AMP Stories in WordPress

12. Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP

Purpose: Mobile SEO

Price: Free

Download Link: Download Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP

Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP Plugin Overview:

The standard AMP plugin for WordPress comes with very few customization options. You can add a few more customizations to your AMP pages through this plugin, but you must install Yoast SEO first.

Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP – Key Features:

• Provides a simple way to customize your AMP pages
• Rudimental styling in the form of colors and link styles

13. Redirection

Purpose: On-page SEO

Price: Free

Download Link: Download Redirection

Redirection Plugin Overview:

Redirection is one of the most trusted and oldest WordPress plugins with over 1M+ active installations used to handle redirections from the dashboard. You can easily manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors. Reducing redirect chains and 404 errod can greatly improve your overall site performance. It can also automatically create a new redirect when the permalink of a post’s URL is changed.

Redirection – Key Features:

• Redirect manager
• Automatic redirections when permalinks changed
• Full logging
• Track 404 errors
• Query parameter handling
• Conditional redirects

14. Really Simple SSL

Purpose: On-page SEO

Price: Free & Paid (Starts from $26)

Download Link: Download Really Simple SSL

Really Simple SSL Plugin Overview:

It is well-known fact that Google favours HTTPS websites over HTTP by giving them a slight ranking boost. HTTPS sites ensure that your users are connected to a secure site, and builds trust and confidence in your brand. It is high time to redirect your HTTP website to HTTPS if you haven’t already. The Really Simple SSL WordPress plugin provides one of the easiest ways to switch to HTTPS from HTTP with just a few clicks (provided you already installed a properly signed SSL certificate).

Really Simple SSL – Key Features:

• This plugin handles most issues that WordPress has with SSL, like when you’re behind a reverse proxy/loadbalancer, or when no headers are passed that WordPress can use to detect SSL.
• All incoming requests are redirected to HTTPS. Default with an internal WordPress redirect, but you can also enable a .htaccess redirect.
• The site URL and home URL are changed to HTTPS.
• Your insecure content is fixed by replacing all https:// URLs with https://, except hyperlinks to other domains. This is done dynamically, so no database changes are made (except for the site URL and home URL).

Really Simple SSL Pro – Key Features:

• The mixed content scan, which shows you what you must do if you don’t have the green lock yet
• The option to enable HTTP Strict Transport Security
• The option to configure your site for the HSTS preload list
• Mixed Content Fixer for the back-end
• More detailed feedback on the configuration page.
• Certificate expiration check: get an email when your SSL certificate is about to expire.

15. Broken Link Checker

Purpose: On-page SEO

Price: Free

Download Link: Download Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker Plugin Overview:

Broken links have always have a big impact on website performance. Broken links not only confuse and slow down a search engine spider’s ability to crawl your site and rank your content accordingly, but they also are a simple waste of crawl budget. It is very important to find and fix broken links –both internal links to other pages on your site, and outbound links to resources you’ve provided to your readers. Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress plugin that does that job for you, no matter how big your site is. It crawls all your pages to check for broken links not only in posts and pages, but also in comments and in the blogroll. It also helps to detect missing images and redirects.

Broken Link Checker – Key Features:

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, comments, the blogroll, and custom fields
• Detects links that don’t work, missing images, and redirects
• Notifies you either via the Dashboard or by email
• Makes broken links display differently in posts
• Prevents search engines from following broken links
• You can search and filter links by URL, anchor text and so on
• Links can be edited directly from the plugin’s page, without manually updating each post
• Highly configurable

16. WP Smush

Purpose: On-page SEO

Price: Free & Paid ($49)

Download Link: Download WP Smush

WP Smush Plugin Overview:

Image optimization is a crucial step in the on-page SEO process, but it’s often skipped by many. The size of the images on your page directly impacts the page load time and, consequently, your rankings in the SERPs. WP Smush is an award-winning free WordPress plugin designed to help you optimize images by applying various compression techniques. It compresses images automatically while you upload, but it can also be used to optimize existing image files. You can also set image max width and height, and your images will scale down to more reasonable sizes without sacrificing the look.

WP Smush Key Features:

• Lossless Compression – Strip unused data without affecting image quality
• Lazy Loader – Defer offscreen images with the flip of a switch
• Bulk Smush – Optimize up to 50 images with one click
• Image Resizing – Set a max width and height and large images will scale down as they are being compressed
• Incorrect Size Image Detection – Quickly locate images that are slowing down your site
• Directory Smush – Optimize images even if they are not located in the media library
• Automated Optimization – Asynchronously auto-smush your attachments for super-fast compression on upload
• Unlimited & Free – Optimize all your images up to 5MB in size forever (no daily, monthly, or annual caps)
• Gutenberg Block Integration – View all Smush stats directly in image blocks

17. Wordfence Security

Purpose: Website Security

Price: Free & Paid (Price per license starts from $99 and the discount applies if you take two or more)

Download Link: Download Wordfence 

Wordfence Plugin Overview:

Wordfence is one of the most trusted WordPress security plugins, with 3M+ active installations. This plugin includes endpoint firewall and malware scanner which scans core files, themes and plugins for malware, bad URLs, backdoors, SEO spam, malicious redirects and code injections.

This plugin also has a premium version which provides real-time threat intelligence to protect your WordPress website. It helps to identify and blacklist suspicious IP’s in real-time.

Wordfence – Key Features:

Purpose: Website Security

Price: Free & Paid (Price per license starts from $99 and the discount applies if you take two or more)

Download Link: Download Wordfence 

Wordfence Plugin Overview:

Wordfence is one of the most trusted WordPress security plugins, with 3M+ active installations. This plugin includes endpoint firewall and malware scanner which scans core files, themes and plugins for malware, bad URLs, backdoors, SEO spam, malicious redirects and code injections.

This plugin also has a premium version which provides real-time threat intelligence to protect your WordPress website. It helps to identify and blacklist suspicious IP’s in real-time.

Wordfence – Key Features:

• Quick Recovery
• Real-time Malware Signature Updates
• Monitors live traffic by viewing things like Google crawl activity, logins and logouts, human visitors, and bots.
• Two-Factor Authentication
• Country Blocking
• Real-time Firewall Rule Updates
• Block attackers by IP or build advanced rules based on IP Range, Hostname, User Agent and Referrer.

18. Sucuri

Purpose: Website Security

Price: Free & Paid (Starting from $199)

Download Link: Download Sucuri Security

Sucuri Plugin Overview:

Sucuri is one of the most popular WordPress security plugins, created by website security and auditing company Sucuri Inc. This plugin offers various security features like security activity auditing, file integrity monitoring, malware scanning, blacklist monitoring, and website firewall. The best part is you will receive notifications instantly if anything goes wrong with your website.

Sucuri – Key Features:

• Security Activity Auditing
• File Integrity Monitoring
• Remote Malware Scanning
• Blacklist Monitoring
• Effective Security Hardening
• Post-Hack Security Actions
• Security Notifications
• Website Firewall (premium)

19. Export All URLs

Purpose: On-page SEO

Price: Free

Download Link: Download Export All URLs

Export All URLs Plugin Overview:

This free plugin is very useful to extract post/page titles, URLs and categories. The output can be exported into a CSV file or viewed directly in the dashboard.

Export All URLs – Key Features:

• Filter by Author
• Filter by Date Range
• Specify post range before extracting (especially beneficial in case of timeout/memory out error)
• Generate CSV file name randomly (sensitive data protection for security reasons)
• Set preferred CSV file name (provides more control)

That concludes our list of the top SEO plugins for WordPress. From image compression with WP Smush to structured data markup with All In One Schema, this list outlines the must-have tools every SEO needs in their toolbox in 2019. Are we missing your favorite SEO plugin? Share in a comment below and we’ll be sure to add it!