If you’re serious about ranking higher in search engines and driving organic traffic to your WordPress site, then you need to make sure you’re using the best WordPress SEO plugins.
In this article, we’ll share with you the 7 best WordPress SEO plugins that will help you rank higher in search engines and get more traffic in 2022.
Wp-Rocket- The Overall Best WordPress SEO Plugin
WP-Rocket is a cache plugin on WordPress, over the years it has proved to be the best and most used caching plugin on WordPress because of automatic features and optimization.
Once it’s activated it drastically enhances the page speed as your site will get to load so fast which is good for SEO rankings and conversion.
Before you choose a caching plugin for your site the first thing to put in consideration is if it can actually increase the site speed, another thing to have in mind is the configuration process, if you can actually configure it properly on your own to give you the best results .
Now let’s discuss the features of the WP-Rocket.
CDN Compatibility – The CDN (content delivery network) is the easiest way to migrate files on several servers around the globe and it actually helps to boost the site speed, so you can integrate it with the WP-Rocket to reach an amazing page speed and improve your overall site speed too.
Caching Exclusion – The WP-Rocket comes with an easy to use interface thereby making it easy for you to exclude scripts and plugins you don’t want to be included in your cache, because sometimes you can configure a plugin and it won’t work or can’t work with a caching plugin so all you have to do is go to the advanced settings and exclude the plugin from being cached.
Media Optimization – Large image files takes up space and thereby slowing your site so the WP-rocket has a feature called LazyLoading which delays the loading and display of images until the user has scrolled down to that part of the page, and you also have the feature that helps with the loading of emoji’s on your page from the user’s computer, and it also has imagify which compresses your site images to increase load time without altering it.
Database Optimization – The WP-Rocket has a feature to clean out your database because overtime it gets filled up with useless data, old posts and tons of things you don’t need, but note you should always backup your data before the optimization process.
Cache Preloading – Whenever you’re caching you usually have to wait till someone visits the site before it can be built, but with cache preloading your cache is built even when no one has visited your site making it faster than a bolt.
So this and many more are the features of WP-Rocket, whereby the Cons is only about the price range , because most beginners using the WordPress plugins are usually up for the free ones.
RankMath- Fastest Growing SEO Plugin
RankMath is a search engine optimization plugin on WordPress that makes it way easier to optimize content with built-in suggestions based on accepted best practices.
RankMath helps with the actualization of high SEO quality and ranking of your website, it focuses on on-page SEO and uses both fundamental and sophisticated SEO techniques example: when you type in a keyword it highlights it and shows you the ones that need improving or changed.
Let’s talk about the features of RankMath.
Rank Monitor – Among the key features of RankMath is the Rank Tracker, the Rank Tracker tracks your site for SEO purposes. With the keyword manager you can see the keywords which your site ranks the most in search engines, CTR (click through rate), position and the keyword history is also shown.
User Friendly Interface – RankMath is highly recommended because of the clean and easy user-friendly interface, you don’t have to be looking for keys or options as everything that will help the optimization of your site is right where it’s supposed to be.
Google Schema Markup (Rich Snippets Integrated) – Configuration of google schema markup is quite easy with RankMath, Schema is a type of HTML markup that helps search engines like Bing and Google better understand what the page entails and how to display it in search results pages.
Page Builder Seo – RankMaths SEO plugin works perfectly with popular page builders and themes like WPBakery, Avada, BeaverBuilder, Themify, OceanWP etc
404 Monitor – The 404 Monitor checks your site for 404 errors, which you can redirect to other pages on your website.
Search Console – It connects your website to Google Search Console and automatically submit sitemaps, and you can view the search console analytics on your WordPress dashboard.
The Reviews will tell you that there are no Cons about RankMath because it has a free version that has many features which are cool and also the premium version which is paid, that’s if you want to get more out of it.
But Note that migrating From RankMath to Yoast is not that easy if you don’t know how to do it as there are no options there to migrate.
Semrush- The Market Leading WordPress SEO Plugin
Semrush is a digital marketing tool that helps you understand your competitors well and how they tend to be ranked so you can replicate it for your own business as well.
It is an all In one Software, perfectly designed to help digital marketers optimize their websites for better organic search results, you can see what keywords your competitors are actually using to outrank you in search results and make better decisions on what keywords to use for a great organic search results and Ad campaigns.
By using this tool you can really know trends and patterns in your particular niche.
Traffic Analytics – The Traffic Analytics tool helps you understand how and where your traffic came about, this includes organic traffic, mail traffic, ad traffic or traffic that comes directly to your website.
As well as the bounce rate too and it shows exactly where the traffic is going like if it’s a subdomain.
Keyword Research – The Keyword Research tool on Semrush helps you know more about your keywords performance and know how to implement it to get more users on the site.It is the best tool for competitor research because you can actually know everything about your competitor’s website and the pages they’re ranking for the same keyword as yours, and CTR (click through rate) of the keywords and actually know the ones that are using ads and the keywords they are using for their campaigns.
On-Site Analysis – Semrush will run an analysis on your website and lets you know the errors that need fixing from a Technical/Optimization standpoint and guide you on how to fix it, and can also make suggestions for you to improve your site visibility.
Link Analysis – Semrush has tons of referring domains in its index and over a billion link on their site but it really doesn’t reflect on the one that Google sees, it creates a more profound image of your backlink profile on your dashboard, this is highly needed when a business wants to conduct a full backlink audit.
The Link Analysis dashboard makes a chart to show the quality and quantity of links pointing towards a particular domain, this will help you study the strength and weakness in your current strategy before knowing what actions to take and you can equally compare the domain link profiles side by side, and the advanced filters are just the best for analyzing all the data.
Ease of use – Semrush is quite easy to use with a user-friendly interface, but it can be a bit overwhelming for new users because it’s loaded with features, but it also has a lot of resources to guide you through.
Social Media Review – Semrush has a social media toolkit which helps you plan and strategize your posts on your social media platforms as it is seen today that social media has a very huge role to play in every business today.
It comes with a Social Media Poster which helps in scheduling of posts, it also checks the performance of these posts, and analyzes your audience like their age, location, and gender. And there is also a Social Media tracker that helps you track down the social media profiles of your competitors and see what’s going on in their Social Media platforms, and see how they run their Ads using these platforms all under Semrush.
The Cons of using Semrush is the pricing, and it provides data for only one Search Engine which is Google.
Long Tail Pro- WordPress SEO Plugin For Keyword Research
Long Tail Pro is a keyword research tool that allows you to generate unique Long Tail Keywords in minutes, you can get tons of keywords from one single keyword or you can use multiple keywords as well.
You can as well access your competitor’s domain to uncover new keywords in your niche, it uses data from Google Adwords and Majestic to provide useful results like the rank value, advertiser bid, keyword competitiveness and search volume and also goes as far as showing you the trust flow, site age, citation flow, external backlinks about your competition.
Key feature of the Long Tail Pro includes
Keyword Research – This tool helps you generate Long Tail Keywords which will help to rank your site. If you wish to do it manually with the Long Tail Pro tool you can research metrics and keywords such as, SERP, volume, CPC etc and can also use the advanced search option to filter the results.
Related keywords are based solely on the keywords inputted by you. Long Tail Pro helps you with related keywords obtained from different metrics that will help you in finalizing on the right keywords.
Competitor Keywords this tool is actually helpful when you want to see why your competitors are making more sales than you, with this tool you can get the keywords in which they are targeting and making sales.
Manual Keywords helps you filter and recheck the keywords selected.
Rank Tracker – This Long Tail Pro tool helps you keep record of keyword improvement, you can add your domain or a particular page to track and you can compare it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Backlink Analysis Tool – This long Tail Pro tool allows you to spy on your competitor’s website and analyze the backlink profile they’re using and with it create your own offline strategy.
User Friendly Interface – The Long Tail Pro is seamlessly tailored to make things easy for a new user, but it has lots of features though it won’t take up to 2 minutes to master.
The Cons of using Long Tail Pro is there is no free trial so you get to buy it first to try out which is not refundable, and it gets to be slow when showing results that are much and every optimization software also does that too.
Nitropack- Best Optimization Plugin
Nitropack is an all in one WordPress plugin for speed and optimization it helps users pass the webcore vitals test and enhance their site speed.
It offers tons of optimization tools such as image optimization, caching, smart resource loading, it has a built in CDN, Lazy Loading etc. it’s quite easy to set up and use.
Here are some of the features:
LazyLoading – This tool in Nitropack delays the load time of images, videos and iframes until the visitor scrolls down to the part where they are before they load thereby increasing the page load speed.
Nitropack Caching – The Caching tool optimizes the pages loaded by users and it has a display on the dashboard where you can choose to purge the cache.
It also has an option called the Cache warming which optimizes the pages even if the user does not load them, but it’s not actually required if you have a steady flow of traffic.
HTML Optimization – Right on when you install the plugin it will automatically optimize your site’s HTML, and you can minify JSON for linking data it’s not usually found in many Website Optimization plugins, but should you have issues with JSON, Nitropack can help.
Critical CSS Tailored for each unique layout – Most plugins that have the Critical CSS option do a single Critical CSS file per post type. But on Nitropack, even if you have multiple pages with the same post type but another type of layout, Nitropack detects this and sends unique Critical CSS for each unique layout.
And because desktop and mobile devices have different viewports, Nitropack uses different Critical CSS for each device.
No Risk To Your Site Files – Nitropack works only with copies of your site data, so you can purge your cache anytime and even when you disable Nitropack plugin your site goes back to normal without any issues.
Image Optimization – A Website without an image is always boring, images enrich the content and makes it look good and entertaining for the user. But they are resource intensive and heavy when you compare them to texts. With the default, Nitropack gives you a loose compression so it can optimize your images for the best performance without altering the quality of the image, and if your images are not sizing properly Nitropack send Preemptive Image Sizing and Adaptive Image Sizing to make sure they fit well and look good.
The Cons of using the NitroPack should be that it is expensive but also has a free version, and it minimizes Ad scripts which will be a problem for people monetizing their website.
Mangools-The Juicy WordPress SEO Plugin
Mangools is an SEO software used for Search Engine Optimization, it consists of five different SEO tools in one package.
It Consists of;
- The KwFinder for Keyword Research
- SERPChecker for SERP Analysis
- SERPWatcher for Rank Tracking
- Link Miner for Link Tracking
- SiteProfiler for SEO metrics and insights.
The KwFinder – KwFinder is a keyword research tool that helps you through a critical SEO strategy which is Keyword research, It creates tons of keywords with a single keyword search, It also presents the SERP results from the keywords which enables you to access the websites that has the same keywords, which is also cool when you’re doing research for content marketing.
SERPChecker – SERPChecker is a Search Engine Results Analysis tool that helps you keep track of your keywords and also know the sites that are ranking for your target keywords in different places around the globe, and it also has the feature of checking mobile rankings, you can also view featured snippets and similar queries to expand your search.
SERPWatcher – This is a tool in Mangools for Rank Tracking, you can use it to keep track of your keywords to see the effects of your SEO on your keywords.
LinkMiner – The LinkMiner is a tool in Mangools for backlink analysis, it allows you to monitor the backlinks on your website and also helps you analyze the backlink profile of your competitors and find link building opportunities.
SiteProfiler – The SiteProfiler is a tool in Mangools that helps you take a peek on your competitors website, see their tops posts if you’re looking to get an insight of what they’re really doing to rank so high, and also measuring its total backlink strength.
The Feature of the Mangools is as follows;
- Mangools has an all IN one tool set so you don’t go looking around for other SEO optimization plugins or software when using it.
- The Interface is also user friendly which makes it easier for a beginner to just master it and take control of their SEO management.
- It has a really amazing link building index with the LinkMiner tool you can get the job done with less stress.
- It helps you immensely with the keyword research strategy and giving you the option of tweaking and making changes to get the right keywords you need.
- And it also allows you to be versatile because you get to see what the search results will look like not only in your country but other countries as well you wish to target.
The Cons of using Mangools are that the free trial version is so limited and logs you out sometimes, The SiteProfiler does the same work as the link Miner so it’s just an extra addition doing nothing.
Spyfu- Best WordPress Plugin For SEO & PPC
Spyfu as the name implies is a tool used to get an in-depth look at a competitor’s website at great length, it will give you a clear picture of what drives your competitor’s website and thereby giving you a map of how to plan your SEO strategy.
Here are some of the basic features of Spyfu;
Keyword Rank Tracking – The Keyword Rank Tracking tool allows you to track the position of your website in Google Search rankings, like other SEO tools it helps you track your competitors also.
PPC Research – This tool gives you an insight on your competitors PPC Ads, you will have the opportunity to monitor Domain bidding for your Google Ads Campaign and spot any difference in Ad spending, and it can also show you the bidding history of your competitors Google Ads. It can also suggest keywords and rule out the ones that have been unsuccessful among your competitors.
SEO Backlinks – With Spyfu you can request a link profile for any high ranking website you can lay your hands on, it tells you how strong your backlinks are and where they came from. So with this you can also look at your competitor’s site and know where they get their major backlinks from and apply on your site.
Competitive Analysis – The main function of Spyfu is the ability to use it to find information about your website and that of your competitor, They even go deep with their Competitive Analysis tool and provide reports specifically designed to analyze your competitors, you get to see who your Organic Competitors are and as well as your Commercial Competitors as well. You can easily pinpoint the keywords you need as it will help you for your Ads Campaign.
SEO Keywords – In the keywords tab you will see the Organic Keyword that has a great performance on Google, This gives you the advantage of assessing your own website and that of others, for each particular keyword you get to see the CPC, the position it is, the keyword difficulty, the number of times it has been searched, and the number of times it has been clicked.
And they are furthermore classified in categories like the newest keywords, the most valuable keywords, the keywords that are on the first page and the keywords that are yet to attain the first page, the gains and the losses.
Domain Leads and Top Lists – This particular service gives you the opportunity to make your own customized list of Domains which you can filter out according to search traffic, industry, location, Ad spending etc.
Spyfu uses the Google Keyword Planner to actually determine keywords with the highest search volume and CPC.
Cons of using Spyfu it might give you some incorrect information about your competitor if you’re using the free version, it does not have a versatile web coverage as the database contains keywords of selected domains, And its also paid for.
Out of all the WordPress SEO plugins on the market, which ones are you using? Do you have a favorite? Let us know in the comments below. And if you’re looking for more information on how to improve your website’s SEO, be sure to check out our other blog posts on the subject. We cover everything from keyword research to link building and beyond. Thanks for reading!
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