Top 15 WordPress SEO Plugins for 2017

The increasing number of plugins is really confusing when selecting the best one for a site. The WordPress users often encounter some of the plugins are indirectly affecting their SEO. So, which are the best plugins that could be inserted into a WordPress powered website?

Many WordPress care plans do offer a list consisting handful of “good” SEO plugins. But, you have to pay for that, don’t you? Or, you could just go through this blog that consists 15 SEO plugins ideal for WordPress.

1. Contents

   • 1 WordPress SEO by Yoast (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 4.9)
   • 2 Akismet (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 3.3.2)
   • 3 Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP) (Free | Last Updated Version: 5.0.1)
   • 4 Google XML Sitemaps (Free | Last Updated Version: 4.0.8)
   • 5 All in One SEO Pack (Premium | Last Updated Version: 2.3.13.2)
   • 6 Google SEO Pressor (Free | Last Updated Version: 1.3)
   • 7 W3 Total Cache (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 0.9.5.4)
   • 8 SEO Squirrly (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 8.0.2)
   • 9 Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin (Free | Last Updated Version: 3.0.0)
   • 10 Redirection (Free | Last Updated Version: 2.6.2)
   • 11 SEO Internal Links (Free | Last Updated Version: 2. 3. 1)
   • 12 WP Meta SEO (Free | Last Updated Version: 3.3.1)
   • 13 Rel NoFollow Checkbox (Free | Last Updated Version: 1.1.5)
   • 14 SEO Friendly Images (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 1.1.0)
   • 15 Shareaholic (Free | Last Updated Version: 7.9.0.0)

   WordPress SEO by Yoast (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 4.9)

This plugin is probably the celeb plugin that is installed by almost every WordPress users. This popular plugin takes care of all of the on-site SEO needs. WordPress SEO by Yoast helps to boost online SEO as well as optimizing the contents.

Optimizing all of the site contents for SEO is not an easy task. Yoast helps you to match all of the SEO criteria before publishing the contents. It allows you to set up ideal page title, Meta description and create XML sitemaps. With Yoast, you can directly edit .htaccess.

This tool is a goldmine for the WordPress users.

2. Akismet (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 3.3.2)

Akismet is open source software that will help you to “clean” spams from your comment list and protect your site from publishing poor or malicious contents. This plugin automatically checks all of the comments starting from their source and history. Any comment that looks like spam is removed from the site.

This plugin helps the SEOs to make the site “spam free” and improve site authenticity. Although a free trial version is available for personal blogs, you have to select paid version for commercial and small business sites.

3. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP) (Free | Last Updated Version: 5.0.1)

With this plugin, you can monitor Google Analytic stats within your WordPress system. The GADWP allows you to set general stats and create in-depth page report. Creating in-depth page reports and in-depth post reports is truly helpful to monitor your site performance.

With the installation of GADWP, you will have access to learn:

• Real-time traffic sources details
• Real-time number of visitors
• Real-time acquisition channels

You can also track events like: downloads, outbound links, affiliated links, emails, telephone, fragment identifiers, and page scrolling depth.

4. Google XML Sitemaps (Free | Last Updated Version: 4.0.8)

The addition of this plugin can help you to make a better position in terms of SEO. How? This plugin generates an XML sitemap, which draws the attention of the popular search engines, like Bing, Google, Ask.com, Yahoo and much more.

With this kind of sitemap, drawing the attention of search engine is as easy as scraping a butter. As a bonus, this plugin supports every WordPress generated page and notify search engines each time you upload a fresh content.

5. All in One SEO Pack (Premium | Last Updated Version: 2.3.13.2)

With 3+ million active installations, this is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. This premium plugin covers almost all aspects of online SEO.

Following are the key features of this plugin:

• XML sitemap support
• Google Analytics support
• Google AMP support
• Built-in API
• Automatically optimize ideal titles for Google and generate Meta tags
• Automatically notifies the search engines right after any changes are made on the site
• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Compatible with other plugins
• PHP 7 100% Compatible
• Translated into 57 languages

6. Google SEO Pressor (Free | Last Updated Version: 1.3)

Most of the website is now trying to rank for the featured snippet. The reason is, it simply helps you to increase your CTR. This free SEO plugin automatically generates ideal SEO friendly snippet with schema.org.

You can uniquely define each of the page, post or product and impress the users. You can also add the G+ profile of the authors with the snippet to attract followers.

Advantages of using this plugin:

• Easily improve website ranking in Google
• Turn visitors into potential customers
• Helps authors to build social relationship
• Reduce bounce rate

7. W3 Total Cache (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 0.9.5.4)

W3 Total Cache is an impressive WordPress plugin that helps to improve site performance and thereby improving the SEO. It helps reducing download times with the integration of content delivery network (CDN).

More than 1 million WordPress users & WordPress website maintenance services trust this plugin. The key features of installing this plugin may include:

• It is compatible with dedicated servers and shared or personal hosting
• Caching of pages in memory or on CDN
• Caching of javascript and CSS on CDN or in memory
• Aching of feeds in memory or on CDN
• Caching of database objects in memory
• Minification of pages and feeds
• Different security features

8. SEO Squirrly (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 8.0.2)

This is an ideal SEO plugin for the non-SEO experts. With SEO Squirrly you can get excellent SEO optimized contents, analytics, and ranking. Two eminent influencers of this industry have already praised for this plugin, namely Brian Dean and Neil Patel.

Contents developed with this plugin are not only SEO-friendly but also human-friendly, which means good for UX and lesser bounce rate. Besides, you can also check your content stats at the same time. Check your weekly analytics report and improve your website. From basic SEO settings to content marketing, -all of the SEO aspects are covered by this plugin.

9. Stallion WordPress SEO Plugin (Free | Last Updated Version: 3.0.0)

If plugins like Yoast and All in One are used in a wrong way then it can gravely damage the website SEO. These two plugins believed in “no follow” and “noindex” method. Unlike Yoast and All in One SEO plugins, Stallion WordPress SEO plugin does not believe in noindex.

This plugin offers an alternative solution depending on the canonical URLs. This feature is extremely helpful to recover ~15% of the link benefits that could be loose via noindex.

The attractive features of this plugin are:

• Not Index login pages redirecting link benefit to home
• Redirecting link benefit from not index search results
• Not index tag benefits redirecting to home
• Not Index paged comments pages redirecting link benefit to static page

10. Redirection (Free | Last Updated Version: 2.6.2)

This awesome plugin is helpful to manage 301 redirections as well as tracking the 404 errors. It also helps to tidy up the loose ends that your page may have. This free plugin is immensely important to reduce the bounce rate and improve SEO.

Some of the key features of this plugin as follows:

• 404 error monitoring
• Use of “custom pass through” redirection to redirect a URL to another page
• You can redirect all of the URLs
• You can manually add 301, 302 and 307 redirections for a particular post or other files
• Statistics available to know how many times a URL is redirected
• Available in 25 different languages

11. SEO Internal Links (Free | Last Updated Version: 2. 3. 1)

This is an automatic SEO for the websites. In white hat SEO, contents and the internal, as well as external links to the content, play a critical role to achieve higher ranking in SERP. This particular plugin can automatically create links to some of the keywords or anchor texts with suitable posts.

If it finds similar words more than once in a single piece of contents, it changes the first one to make sure the author is not using Black Hat SEO.

Several features of this plugin may include:

• Compatible with modern browsers
• It has simple configuration
• It allows o set your own keywords and URLs to link up
• You can custom keyword list
• It automatically sets internal link allows to set no follow attribute

12. WP Meta SEO (Free | Last Updated Version: 3.3.1)

WP Meta SEO is a complete package that conducts bulk edit all website Meta within a short time. It is also helpful to Meta title and Meta description of the content with live SEO analysis. We also found that HTML image resizing becomes easier with WP Meta SEO. Bulk editing of SEO title and Meta tag of image files is very less time to consume with this plugin.

This plugin not only helps you to edit your meta tags but also helps to monitor 404 errors redirect. This plugin is itself a complete package that boosts SEO by creating ideal SEO titles and meta tags, creating HTML sitemaps and checking broken links.

This efficient plugin has 20,000+ active installs.

13. Rel NoFollow Checkbox (Free | Last Updated Version: 1.1.5)

This plugin is very simple to use. The Rel No follow Checkbox just adds a “nofollo” check box in the insert/edit link box. This simple check box helps you to create nofollow link instant without taking hectic of changing codes. Many of the WordPress users are novice and they are barely comfortable to edit “codes.”

This simple but awesome plugin is a precious shortcut for novice WordPress SEOs.

14. SEO Friendly Images (Freemium | Last Updated Version: 1.1.0)

We are bound to use images within our contents to make it user-friendly and sometimes information rich. According to Google, 20% of all of the searches are now image searches and the percentage are increasing profoundly.

This plugin helps to insert ALT text to the images and improve SEO. It is found that with the appropriate tagline and ALT text the image search ranking could be improved and thereby improving the website SEO.

15. Shareaholic (Free | Last Updated Version: 7.9.0.0)

This plugin could be described as the “All-in-one Content Amplification Platform.” It offers free social sharing buttons. This plugin is easy to download and use. With approximately 100,000+ active installs, this is definitely a popular plugin.

While with sharing button the Shareaholic helps you to make your content easily shareable, it also recommends related contents, help in social following, promote content, ads, and use social analytics.

This plugin is official support for WoComerce and available in 15+ languages. With Shareaholic make your content 1-click sharable.

The Sum Up

Plugins are always essential when you have a WodPress site. From the beautification of the site to ease access to social sharing can now easily be done with plugins. Most of the WordPress maintenance services include ideal plugins to boost website SEO.

But, it is not easy to make sure which SEO plugin is ideal for your site. We have tried to select those plugins, which are best suited in terms of WordPress SEO. Hope, this short list will help you to experience advanced level of SEO.