Before Starting with the WordPress SEO Plugins I have a Question for you,
Are you familiar with Vodafone’s ZooZoo animation shorts?
They are one of the most memorable parts of the Indian Premier League, a cricket league event broadcasted from India, which viewers from across the world watch with an emboldened spirit.
If we take away the caricatures, we see that the plot is simply describing ordinary events.
Yet, the comical representation of human bodies, sounds, and overall design of the scene draw us in.
All of this happens in a second. Then we allow the advertisement to grab our attention for the next 30 seconds.
Now imagine if you have written an article that is filled with immense value after performing hours of research.
You have written and rewritten the story to ensure that it flows from one paragraph to the next.
Yet, when you publish it – it barely makes it past your friends and family.
To captivate an audience, you must first ensure that they know you exist.
David Mackenzie Ogilvy, a British advertising tycoon, conveyed the title ‘The Father of Advertising’ once said, “It’s not creative unless it sells”.
In the world of digital media where everyone passes their own comments – you have to stand out from the crowd.
And when it comes to grasping that #1 spot on Google (or Bing!) it all comes down to three simple letters: SEO. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is simply a method of ensuring that your content is what potential customers see first.
Keeping this in mind, let’s talk about the 5 best WordPress SEO plugins that you can use with WordPress.
If you stick around till the end, I’ll add in a few extra plugins that might suit your particular needs!
1.Yoast SEO
With features like keyword optimization, state-of-the-art indexing, update reminders, and readability checks, Yoast SEO keeps you up and running at all times.
Not only are they great at what they do, but they truly care about their community – Yoast is Open Source, regularly provides insights through their blog, and respects your privacy.
Social media marketing does not have to be invasive and Yoast seems to understand that.
Acknowledging the value of openness, their pricing model consists of two tiers: free and paid. The free version does have its limitations but is known to deliver immense value for beginners.
If you’re looking to really grab that #1 spot, Yoast offers a paid version for $89/year
which provides you with extra features like 24×7 support, internal link suggestions, and content insights.
An Internet Marketing Ninjas report states that the average click-through rate for the first position on a Google search query is 19.30% and the click-through rate for the second position is almost half at 10.57%. With Yoast, you can surely tweak your articles to reach those spots!
But sometimes, you want a little more control. Adjust the bass according to your ears, you know?
Enter – The SEO Framework.
The SEO Framework
The SEO Framework is a relatively young project in the Top WordPress SEO plugin list. In fact, it’s maintained by just one developer – Sybre Waaijer.
Built with the philosophy that SEO should be accessible to everyone, is better to understand and provides more features – it has been gaining steady ground over the past few years with over 100,000 users utilizing this plugin.
Oh, and one more thing – it’s fast.
When you pair your clean WordPress site with a reliable hosting provider, you can expect to load your site within 31 milliseconds. With The SEO Framework, that number goes up to…34 milliseconds.
That’s a 3-millisecond increase for an unlimited number of organic leads!
Google, through the work of its own research team, reported that 53% of users will abandon a page if it takes more than three seconds to load. With The SEO Framework, you truly get the best of both worlds.
In fact, Relja Novović (founder of I/O Gremlin) compared the performance of Yoast and The SEO Framework and found The SEO Framework beat it – on three separate occasions.
You will definitely find it easier on your wallet, with its pro-tier model priced at $7/month.
However, its agency model is priced around $27/month but well worth it if you have 200+ websites to manage.
99firms, an IT business and marketing service provider, reported that 44% of referral traffic goes through Google.
Oh yeah, and Google pays a lot of attention to how fast your website loads.
Next up, we have SEO Press -our next WordPress SEO tool
If you’ve ever heard of HTML Sitemaps, you’ll definitely enjoy the next one.
SEO Press
SEO Press has your run-of-the-mill features like breadcrumbs, redirects, schemas, broken link checkers, and white labels. But it strives to go one step further – with support for HTML sitemaps.
Yoast SEO and The SEO Framework, at the time of writing this article, do not support HTML Sitemaps – SEO Press does.
Furthermore, they also collect minimal information from you – making you GDPR compliant by default.
Perhaps the most alluring aspect of SEO Press is its price. It has a free tier and a paid tier starting at $39/year.
But that’s not enough you say? Fine. How about fixed pricing for life?
Yep. If you churn out $39/year today and next year the price increases to $45/year
you still pay out $39/year while new customers shell out an extra 6 bucks. Awesome!
Google’s Mobile Movement Study found out that 88% of consumers will interact with a local business within 24 hours of searching for it on a mobile device.
Looks like those extra savings can be used to serve customers – allowing you to overtake your competition by a wide gap!
If you prefer a featured-packed but nonetheless lightweight WordPress SEO plugins, the next one might be the one for you.
RankMath
RankMath prides itself on its efficient codebase. With a codebase that is 1.5x smaller than Yoast SEO and sitting at a mere 8.5 MB file size – it packs a mean punch for a small guy.
It also provides a pre-selected interface for SEO, as beginners just want to get things up and running and learn what works best for them as they go.
In fact, they also offer you Google keyword suggestions to help you cozy up to that Pagerank algorithm.
Did I mention that it’s completely free?
Shockingly, RankMath doesn’t even have a paid version yet.
While it is on their roadmap, they have explicitly stated that all features that are currently falling into the free tier will stay there – permanently.
No switcheroos here partner!
A Content Marketing Institute study says that many companies are increasing their content budget, and RankMath’s pricing may allow you some breathing room – or provide enough cash to hire a few freelancers. Either way, we can surely appreciate quality goods that are provided for free!
For our last spot, we’ve got a WordPress SEO plugin with some heavy influencer endorsements!
Squirrly SEO :
Squirrly SEO provides basic optimizations for free, but its real strength lies in the paid plans. Ranging from $20.99 to $75.99/month they offer features such as site audits, focus pages, rank tracking, and keyword research.
Relying on machine learning for optimization, they have done their job so well that top influencers like Neil Patel and Brian Dean have praised it for a job well done.
And if that wasn’t enough, marketers from companies like Microsoft, Top Gear, and BBC actively use it for their needs. Clearly, scaling up isn’t going to be a problem for this plugin!
And if you simply wish to hire Squirrly – you can! Their white-gloves service provides bespoke solutions to meet all of your SEO needs.
In fact, Hubspot reports that businesses with a consistent blogging habit get up to 97% inbound links. With Squirrly SEO taking care of SEO for you, you can surely focus more on creating valuable content.
Whew! That was a fascinating journey into the world of SEO plugins for WordPress, right?
But wait, there’s more! Remember how I talked about a surprise at the beginning? It’s time to unveil that little gift!
Just like we all have our strengths and weaknesses, websites are different too. This is why I’ve curated a small list of extra plugins for specific types of websites. Have a look below:
- Smush Pro: An award-winning image optimizer plugin.
- WP Rocket: A powerful cache plugin.
- Google Keyword Planner: Gain keyword insights from the advertising giant itself.
- Ahrefs: All-in-one SEO tool with exceptional backlink performance.
Wrapping Up,
In the end, remember that SEO is still about the human beings that search for content. The important thing is to decide on a tool that suits you and consistently adjust the gears according to your needs.
Traversing the land of SEO plugins has been extremely eventful for me, just as I hope it was for you.
Hope you have a blast with your SEO results by using any of the Best WordPress SEO Plugins in 2020.
Or as the ZooZoo would say: “Ojoko Toritori Maazaka Hashi-Hashi.”!