Must-have Free SEO Plugins for WordPress to Dominate search rankings

Did you know that WordPress controls around 42.7% of all the sites found on the internet? That is a huge number, especially when compared with other CMS available in the market. In fact, the next top rival of WordPress, Joomla accounts for only 1.8% of all sites.

However, this popularity has resulted in an abundance of WordPress SEO plugins in the market, more than 55,000, to be precise. Thus making the selection process overwhelming. But fear not; we are here to help.

In this article, we won’t list all of the available plugins. However, we will share the details of the most powerful plugins available on the market. All of these are free and very useful for transforming your site.

So, let’s begin!

1- Broken Link Checker

Have you noticed broken links on your WordPress Website? They could have a negative impact on your site.

Fear not; there is a plugin for the same – Broken Link Checker. This free tool monitors your entire site for broken links and notifies you of the same through mail. Once the broken link is located, you can get rid of it in a single click. Also, the tool provides suggestions for replacement links, further simplifying things for you.

Just ensure that you disable the plugin after fixing broken links to avoid slowing down your site. With regular usage, your site ranking will eventually improve.

2- SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant

This is yet another handy tool to optimize a WordPress site and boost its search engine rankings. SEO writing assistant provides tailored suggestions based on top-ranking Google pages for your keywords in a specific location. With this tool, you can enhance –

readability,
optimize focus keywords,
and receive suggestions for related terms.

You can use SEO Writing Assistant even without a SEMrush subscription. However, for comprehensive keyword improvement and competitive edge, investing in SEMrush, an all-purpose tool, is recommended.

3- Google XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap is crucial for search engines. It helps to efficiently organize and index your website’s pages. Google XML Sitemaps is a WordPress tool that automatically constructs an XML sitemap for your website. Thus simplifying the process for you.

You can create a sitemap effortlessly by activating this plugin. Moreover, you have the flexibility to customize settings, prioritizing specific pages and excluding others, such as archive and tag pages, from the sitemap. Best of all, it’s free!

4- Really Simple SSL

There are two perks of SSL –

It enhances your site’s security
It boosts search engine ranking

To seamlessly transition from HTTP to HTTPS, consider using Really Simple SSL. This tool automatically configures your website for secure HTTPS operation. Thus ensuring a smooth transition. It also provides various customizable settings so you can customise the plugin to achieve your specific website requirements.

The free version of Really Simple SSL is capable of resolving most SSL-related concerns. But there is a Pro subscription available at $29, too. It comes with advanced features such as mixed content detection and certificate expiration checks.

5- a3 Lazy Load

This is yet another free SEO Plugin for WordPress that directly helps boost a site’s ranking. a3 lazy load selectively loads images and videos only when they appear on the screen. This, in turn, significantly improves the page loading speed, boosting both SEO and user experience. This plugin effortlessly blends into your WordPress website, offering easy installation and setup.

For users of WP Rocket, enabling lazy loading within the plugin settings is an option. However, for those not utilizing WP Rocket, the a3 Lazy Load WP Plugin provides an alternative to implement lazy loading effectively.

Upon installation, the plugin activates lazy loading for all images and videos by default. However, if you prefer to exclude specific images from lazy loading, you can customize these settings within the plugin.

6- Autoptimize

This powerful tool comes in handy in enhancing the performance and optimization of WordPress websites. Autoptimize reduces the size of scripts and styles (CSS, HTML, Javascript) and stores them on your server. This revs the site loading time immensely.

Autoptimize also optimizes Google font usage and improves the efficiency of loading images and videos.

For the majority of WordPress sites, the free version of Autoptimize is sufficient. However, if you have a larger website or require additional support, you can utilize Autoptimize Pro Services for easy setup and advanced features.

7- Rel NoFollow

Although Nofollow links have no impact, they are still considered impactful by many SEO experts. In WordPress, all links are followable by default unless specified otherwise. If you’re comfortable with HTML, you can manually add “nofollow” attributes in the text editor.

For added convenience, you can use Rel Nofollow to simplify the process. This free tool integrates a “nofollow” checkbox directly into the WordPress visual editor, allowing you to easily designate links as nofollow without needing HTML knowledge.

8- Rank Math

Rank Math streamlines the optimization process by providing real-time insights directly within the WordPress interface as you write content. With features like snippet previews, you can optimize titles and meta descriptions. Thus minimising potential errors in SERP displays on Google.

What sets this plugin apart is its optimized speed, ensuring that your site’s performance doesn’t hinder your SEO efforts.

Additionally, Rank Math offers a range of SEO functionalities, including –

redirections,
404 monitoring,
and specialized SEO support for WooCommerce sites.

Whether you’re managing content, SEO, or overall website health solo, Rank Math’s advanced SEO analytics module puts essential data right at your fingertips.

9- Monster Insights

This tool comes in handy in simplifying tracking analytics and performance for SEO by bringing Google Analytics directly to your WordPress dashboard. It eliminates the need for code to install Google Analytics tracking scripts and offers helpful tips for improvement.

With MonsterInsights, you can effortlessly monitor how visitors discover and interact with your website, including which pages are most popular. Even if you find Google Analytics daunting, MonsterInsights provides a straightforward and intuitive way to access your data without navigating the Google Analytics platform.

There are both free and paid (starting at $99.50 per year) options available on Monster Insights.

10- Yoast SEO

Among all of the SEO Plugins for WordPress, Yoast SEO stands out for its all-inclusive features and assistance. Here is what it can help you with –

Customize tags for open graphs
Enhance the title and description for pages and posts displayed on the search engines.
Activate the breadcrumb feature for improved navigation.
Optimize pages and posts to align better with desired keywords.
Yoast SEO’s readability analysis checks content for factors like the Flesch reading ease score to improve audience engagement.
Utilize advanced settings to control how search engines treat your site. Also, set preferred indexing URLs and add navigation links for user navigation.
Generate and submit a list of webpage links in XML format.

Well, all of these features are available in Yoast’s free version. With an investment of $89 per site, you can enjoy features such as –

redirect manager,
advanced context detection,
and a filter for outdated content.

11- All-in-One SEO

All-in-One SEO is a widely favoured alternative to Yoast SEO. It serves as a robust tool for optimizing your WordPress website’s SEO to boost its visibility in search engine rankings. Notably, it’s the sole free plugin for WordPress that enhances SEO for online stores. This includes WooCommerce.

With over 2 million users, it ranks as the second most popular plugin in the WordPress directory for enhancing SEO on WordPress sites. Its prominent features encompass Schema.org markup, Google AMP support, XML sitemap support, and advanced canonical URLs.

12- Short Pixel

Optimizing your website’s images is crucial. It helps in faster loading times and improved search engine visibility. ShortPixel, a user-friendly WordPress plugin, efficiently reduces image sizes to enhance website performance. Once installed, it automatically compresses existing and new images.

With three compression options (Lossy, Glossy, or Lossless), ShortPixel offers flexibility to meet your specific needs. Simply choose your preferred compression level and let ShortPixel do the rest.

ShortPixel offers a free option allowing you to optimize up to 100 images monthly. For more extensive image compression needs, use paid plans that start at $4.99 per month. It accommodates up to 5,000 images monthly.

13- SEOPress

SEOPress is a relatively new contender in the SEO plugin arena, competing with established options like Yoast SEO. While not as widely recognized, it offers simplicity and ease of use.

Setting up SEOPress on your website is a breeze with its installation wizard. Thereby making it one of the most user-friendly plugins available.

With the free version of SEOPress, you can easily enhance your blog posts. However, for advanced users, the Pro version is priced at $39 per year. It offers additional features such as

a video XML sitemap,
automatic schemas,
Google Analytics stats on the dashboard,
and more.

If your WordPress site has limited content, the free version of SEOPress is recommended.

14- Redirection

Redirects play a crucial role in preserving link value and SEO when URLs change. However, improper implementation of 301 redirects can negatively impact a website’s search engine optimization. Therefore, a reliable WordPress plugin is essential to handle these tasks seamlessly without compromising SEO.

Redirection is a widely acclaimed plugin for managing redirects on WordPress. With this free tool, you can effortlessly redirect web pages and monitor 404 errors on your site. Creating redirects is straightforward—all you need to do is input the original URL and the new URL.

15- Squirrly SEO

The last plugin on our list is Squirrly SEO. Although this tool is also fairly new and used only by 20,000 people on WordPress, big names like Neil Patel and Brian Dean support it. This suggests its capability as a go-to SEO plugin choice.

This tool uses machine learning algorithms to audit websites based on various factors. These include keyword utilization, internal architecture, web authority and so on. Squirrly SEO is capable of identifying gaps so you can focus on them to improve your site’s ranking. The tool’s aim lies in achieving bug breakthroughs with little effort. Thus saving time and money.

Bottom line

Search engine optimization is one tedious task. It, in fact, becomes challenging without the right tools to aid. Thankfully, there are thousands of WordPress plugins assembled to streamline the SEO optimization process.

The above-mentioned list provides insights into 15 of those, thereby narrowing down the never-ending list for you. Choose one, multiple, or all plugins to transform your site. And, of course, dominate the search rankings!