Search engines are the lifeblood for most websites, it's how almost all websites gain their most traffic. WordPress, one of the best content management systems, offers excellent plugins to optimize SEO for your website. 

With over 58,000 WordPress plugins to choose from, it could overwhelm you, especially if you’re a beginner. To optimize your webpage, you will need to decide on an SEO plugin that best suits your needs. You want it to handle aspects like meta tags, interlinking, XML sitemaps generation, and on-page SEO analysis. 

Here is a list of some top SEO WordPress plugins for 2021 to help you pick. We will look at both free and paid plugins focusing on those with good ratings and many users.

1. Yoast SEO plugin

With millions of downloads, Yoast SEO is the #1 WordPress SEO plugin so far, with a 5-star rating from WordPress users. SEO by Yoast is a high-quality plugin that handles most aspects of SEO. Thereby ensuring that your website is highly ranked in search engines. 

Yoast SEO Free contains all you need to manage your SEO, while Yoast SEO Premium offers additional tools and functionality. The aspects handled by Yoast include:

• Automated technical SEO improvements by adding metadata and meta descriptions
• XML sitemaps generation
• SEO & content Analysis ensures SEO-friendly content with focused keywords.
• The readability analysis and an in-depth org integration increase your chance for rich results. Allowing users and search engines to understand your content.
• A Google preview of the search results and social previews of how your content will appear on Facebook and Twitter.

There are various more features, aids, and tools to ensure your website is fully optimized.

2. All In One SEO (AIOSEO)

Started in 2007, All In One SEO has over 2 million users and is one of the main competitors for Yoast SEO plugin. Awarded one of the most beginner-friendly WordPress SEO plugins. It's both straightforward and powerful to use. 

This user-friendly plugin lets you set up all the advanced WordPress SEO features like SEO meta titles and descriptions, XML sitemaps, SEO search console tools, and SEO keywords. It optimizes search appearances and social media integration. Also offering panel information, local SEO, and schema markup. 

Another feature of AIO SEO plugin detects duplicate site content to prevent Google Panda penalties. It can also automatically add Alt tags to your images, ensuring that they show up in search results. AIOSEO comes in a free and a pro version. The pro version includes extra features like premium support and professional plugin installation.

3. Jetpack

Jetpack by WordPress.com is another feature-full, free plugin that will take your WP site to another level. It includes powerful tools like advanced site stats and analytics, automated sharing to social networks, XML sitemap generation, and automatic ad placements.  It integrates with top WordPress plugins and other tech products like PayPal and Stripe. 

This plugin has 24/7 auto site security, uptime monitoring, and protection for brute force attacks. On the paid plans, Jetpack includes malware scanning and spam protection.  Along with real-time backups and restores. 

Jetpack has a high-speed content delivery network for images and automatic updates. At the same time, optimizers for mobile users enhance speed and performance. The paid plans also include video hosting and more.

4. Rank Math

Rank Math offers a host of intelligent features and smart automation designed to increase traffic to your website. No wonder it is rising in popularity on WordPress with more than 600K downloads and a 5-star user rating. 

Here are some top features for Rank Math SEO plugin:

• A simple setup wizard with pre-selected settings for optimal use
• Easy to use and clean user interface
• Google search console, Keyword rankings, and Schema Markup are all integrated into the plugin.
• Social media optimization with previews offered.
• Advanced content analysis and Readability tool with post previews on Google.
• Powerful and single post/page optimization and image SEO
• XML Sitemap Generator
• Advanced Redirection Manager with Automatic Post Redirects

Rank Math offers unlimited keywords in its free version, unlike many other SEO plugins that need you to upgrade to the paid version.

5. Wordfence

Wordfence is the most popular and most downloaded WordPress firewall and security plugin. The free plan offers a good security level by protecting your site from malware and hacks. 

There are several security tools that Wordfence offers. These include WordPress endpoint firewall and malware scanner, blocking features, security scanner, enhanced login security, and WordPress caching features. The premium plan has more benefits like real-time firewall rule and malware signature updates and IP blocklist blocks.

6. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML sitemaps will significantly improve SEO. It generates special XML sitemaps that enable search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com to better index your WordPress site. 

It supports all kinds of site pages, custom URLs, and custom post types on WordPress. Additionally, for every new post, the plugin will automatically notify search engines to quickly index the new content.

This simple plugin has long-standing support and is one of the best free WordPress plugins on the WordPress.org plugin repository. 

7. WooCommerce

Currently, the best and most used eCommerce platform, WooCommerce, is the power behind 30%+ of all online stores. With this plugin, you can turn any WordPress website into an online store by blending content and commerce. 

Built to integrate with WordPress, this plugin does not require any technical knowledge or coding. Some of its features are:

• Create themes and custom pages that suit your brand and industry.
• Choose your payment method. Conveniently manage payments with 100+ payment gateways.
• Make shipping easy by configuring your shipping options. Print labels schedule pickups and connect with well-known carriers.
• Integrated marketing and social media channels with Google Ads, Facebook, MailChimp, and HubSpot.

WooCommerce will enhance and improve your online stores' functionality. Choose from hundreds of free and premium extensions. Make use of the free mobile app to manage your store from anywhere.

8. Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippets

Get eye-catching rich snippets of your page displayed in search results with All in one Schema Rich Snippet.  This free WordPress plugin allows you to display important and precise information in the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and sometimes Facebook. 

These rich snippets are very interactive and display things like photos, star ratings, price, author, video thumbnails, and more. The content types supported are reviews, events, recipes, people, articles, products, and services.

By using this plugin, the Rich snippets will increase the Click-through rate (CTR) of your site. All to help you rank higher in search results and increase traffic.

9. Redirection

With over one million active installs, Redirection is one of the most popular redirect managers on WordPress. Keep track of your 404 errors on your WordPress website and manage 301 redirects. 

The plugin keeps full logs on redirects, including information about the visitor, the browser used, and the referrer. You can also import and export to various doctypes and import from various other plugins like Rank Math and Simple 301 Redirects.

Redirection helps to improve SEO and reduces errors. With proper redirects to other pages, you improve your site's rankings and the user experience. Create and manage redirects quickly without technical knowledge and automatically create a redirect to the new URL should something change or go wrong.

Final Words

With so many WordPress SEO plugins to choose from, you may not know where to start, especially if you are a beginner. To create a good WordPress website, you might have to use more than one plugin to meet your needs. 

When faced with what SEO plugin to use, first try to identify your site needs.  The correct plugins for your site will enhance your site performance, speed, and traffic. So please take a look, do some research, and make a choice; it’s that simple.