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So you’ve created your online business. You’ve spent hours researching WordPress, setting up your theme, and configured your plugins accordingly.

You’re in love with your website and have received a ton of positive feedback from your circle. But you can’t come to shake off this nagging feeling- how do I optimize my site?

What even is SEO? What’s the difference between the thousands of SEO plugins in WordPress? Which do I choose?

Getting started with SEO is a daunting task for most. Tons of small to medium-sized businesses alike find themselves in this conundrum. Setting up your site’s SEO can feel like a massive hurdle.

With thousands of plugins, articles, videos, and online resources to sift through, we understand why many individuals either outsource for SEO or begrudgingly take on the task of optimizing their site on their own.

However, SEO is not and should not be that difficult.

Today, we want to help you get sorted.

We’re going to help you understand which WordPress SEO plugins are best suited for your businesses’ needs and a few other plugins that can aid in your online SEO marketing campaigns. We promise you, it’s easier than it may appear.

Let’s get started!

Top 5 WordPress SEO Plugins For 2021

There are a ton of articles and videos that list out some of the top WordPress SEO plugins. We didn’t want to waste your time by giving you an exhausted list. That’d be counterproductive, perhaps overwhelming you rather than providing you with the clarity and confidence to make your decision.

So instead, we decided to present to you what we believe to be the top 5 WordPress SEO plugins on the market. After pouring hours into research and from our own experience, we’ve come upon these 5 we find to be the best for 2021 and beyond!

Rank Math

Starting off with a new kid on the block in regards to WordPress SEO plugins is Rank Math. Rank Math is on the rise for favorites amongst users and it’s with reason. Recommended by Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Backlinko, Product Hunt, and Hubspot, Rank Math is delivering some of the most powerful WordPress SEO tools to over 600,000 active WordPress users. The plugin’s top features include:

• SEO Analyzer
• Google Search Console
• Keyword Ranking
• Schema Markup
• Easy One-Click imports of seamless migrations

As the self-proclaimed “Swiss army knife of WordPress SEO”, Rank Math provides a ton of stellar features that allow users to fully take control of their WordPress SEO in both their free and premium versions.

Yoast SEO

Following suit is an all-time favorite for WordPress SEO plugins, Yoast SEO is a classic. With over 5 million active WordPress users with a 5/5 review, Yoast SEO is the number 1 WordPress SEO plugin. Yoast is a powerhouse, offering a ton of amazing SEO features. Just to name a few, some of their top features include:

• SEO Keyword Checker & Tracker
• Writing Analysis Tool
• Automatic Sitemap Creation
• Google AMP
• SEO Blog Recommendations

Yoast SEO offers both a free and premium version of the plugin. Their website also features a ton of resources to help SEO novices learn how to optimize our site or become an SEO expert from their SEO training and SEO blog.

SEOPress

SEOPress is another beloved and trusted WordPress SEO plugin on our list. SEOPress is known and celebrated for its ease of use, being understandable and digestible for users regardless of their SEO knowledge. As an All-In-One for breadcrumbs, redirections, schemas, sitemaps, broken link checker some of SEOPress’ best features include:

• Installation Wizard for easy configuration
• Google Analytics directly connected
• XML & HTML Sitemaps
• Google Knowledge Graph connected
• Content & Keyword Analysis

With over 150,00 active users, SEOPress is ideal for users seeking an SEO plugin that’s simple, yet fast and powerful. SEOPress has also been celebrated on sites like GoDaddy, WP Crafter, Kinsta, Hubspot, Search Engine Journal, and WP Beginner.

All In One SEO Pack

With over 2 million active users, All in One SEO Pack is another WordPress SEO plugin that is worth reviewing. Know as one of the most reliable SEO plugins on the WordPress marketplace, All in One SEO Pack provides their users with some great features. Get your website optimized and search engine ready with some of their best features, including:

• Local SEO, Woocommerce SEO & SEO Optimized
• Webmaster Inclusion (Google Search Console & Google Analytics)
• Advanced SEO Modules
• Smart HMTL & XML Sitemaps
• Schema Rich Snippers

All in One SEO is trusted and used by over 2 million professionals. If you’re ready to become an expert in your site’s SEO and fully take control of your site’s SEO, this plugin is ideal for you. It’s robust, perfect for users wanting to take full control with their advanced features.

The SEO Framework

To conclude our list of top five favorites, we had to mention The SEO Framework. While last on our list, don’t be mistaken. The SEO Framework is one of the top WordPress SEO plugins on the market. With over 100,000 active users, businesses across the globe put their trust in this SEO plugin that delivers some of the best results.

Some of their best features include:

• SEO keyword indicator for on-page status reports
• Customizable SEO page titles and meta descriptions on-page
• SEO Social Media support, Open Graphs with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
• Search Console Webmaster configured
• Backlinks RSS feeds

The SEO Framework may seem dense to some, so we recommend this plugin for users who want to have expert capabilities with their site’s SEO. This plugin isn’t for beginning seeking ease in configuration, rather it’s robust, ideal for experts or businesses with an SEO team.

Other Plugins Perfect For Your SEO campaign

Depending on your chosen WordPress SEO plugin, some of these additional plugins can enhance your website’s SEO. Increasing your website’s page speed, security, site index, and so on are some additional features that must be included to rank high in search engines.

Double-check before installing these plugins as your chosen SEO plugin may already include these features. Installing them may cause conflict with your plugin as it already featured in the software. Nevertheless, here’s our list of additional plugins we believe are key to enhancing your site’s SEO.

JetPack (For Security)

JetPack is an absolute necessity when having a website powered by WordPress. Powered and developed by WordPress itself, JetPack is the plugin for security.

JetPack allows users to keep their site secure while making it fast in order to grow their audience. Having a secure and fast site is what aids in your SEO efforts of ranking high in search engines.

JetPack does this by automatically backing up your site both daily and hourly, completing hourly scans to ensure your site secure and free from any attacks, while aiding in your site’s speed with image compressing (important for SEO!), automatically generating and indexing your sitemap and more.

WP Rocket (For Speed and Cache)

WP Rocket is the plugin for speed. Recognized as being the most powerful caching plugin on the WordPress market, this is the WP plugin for site caching for speed. This plugin is loaded.

Offering features such as page caching, cache preloading, sitemap preloading, GZIP compression, browser caching, lazyload, minification, just to name a few. If you want to take your site to its limits with speed, this plugin is worth the investment. Fast sites rank first in search engines.

ShortPixel (For Images)

Continue on the theme of speed, ShortPixel is another WordPress plugin worth considering installing as it compresses and optimizing images with your site in order to enhance your site’s load time and speed. ShortPixel improves your site’s performance by reducing image size. It does this by compressing the images, but not affecting the image quality, so no worries there.

Speed is what increases your site’s SEO ranking so it’s necessary to not only have a robust SEO plugin but to also have plugins for security, speed and cache, and image compressors in order to give your site the best chances of ranking first in the search engines.

Google Analytics By MonsterInsights (For SEO Analytics)

While most SEO plugins include an option of configuring Google Analytics into your plugin’s dashboard, some don’t include this feature. That said, it is important to include Google Analytics in your SEO efforts as Google Analytics is what provides you the knowledge to know your traffic, insights, and audience. Monster Insights is the plugin that places Google Analytics on your WordPress dashboard, making it easier to access these key analytics to improve your site’s SEO and experience for users.

Alongside the inclusion of your Google Analytics, Monster Insights has features such as universal tracking, real-time stats, enhanced e-commerce tracking, page-level analytics, an affiliate link and ad tracking, and more.

Off-Site SEO: Google Analytics & Google Seach Console

You’re probably wondering about the other off-site SEO tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Which is fair. Most SEO plugins do include Google Analytics and Google Search Console as your webmaster or analytics tool in their plugin dashboard, however, you still do need to have them set up with Google in order to have them configured into your chosen SEO plugin.

Getting these platforms setup with Google is easy. Simply add your website’s URL or domain name to your Google account and you’re done. You can also link these two together so the data and insights are concise and accurate.

But what’s the difference between Google Analytics and Google Search Console? This is a commons question so we’ll address it here as well.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool powered by Google that allows business and organizations to reach their SEO goals by providing digital analytics to their team. The platform gives insight into your customer or user’s journey, measuring how they find you, where they found you, their demographics, your site’s bounce rate, site visits, average time on site, and much more.

This is perfect for teams wanting to better understand their site’s visitors so they can improve the user experience both on and off-site and rank higher on search engines by knowing just how to connect with your intended and desired audiences.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console, on the other hand, is similar to Google Analytics but it’s more specific to you. It gives you insight as to how to improve your site for you and then your users. It’s a webmaster tool, therefore, it focuses on issues such as performance, click-through rates, search queries, crawl errors, HTML errors, mobile issues, and so on. It gives you the tools needed to know any blind spots on your site, allowing you to know where and how to improve these issues to enhance user experience and rank higher on search engines.

In short, both are tools to be used in order to improve your site’s ranking and user experience. Google Analytics is more so geared specifically for SEO data and user analytics while Google Search Console is more about performance and usability. Again, both platforms should be used together alongside your chosen WordPress SEO plugin.

Enhance Your WordPress Experience With Possible Web

Creating a compelling online business is a journey on the courageous and perhaps crazy embark on. It’s a tasking voyage, yet the rewards of this journey are ever so fulfilling. Choosing proper WordPress SEO plugins is apart of this voyage, yet it’s only a fraction of this journey.

We at Possible Web want to be the guide in your WordPress voyage. We help small and large businesses by caring for their WordPress in providing some of the best WordPress services. Contact us today and ask us about our plans.

We’d love to help your continued success in this journey.