There are thousands of plugins on WordPress but you don't need all of them to optimize your website so in this article, I will share must have WordPress plugins for blogs to help you with six free and best WordPress SEO plugins that will make your website search engine friendly.

WordPress plugins are great because it allows you to do complex things without the need for coding or building them.
SEO plugins will help you grow your traffic and understand how your competitors are getting a ton of traffic but as you know there are many methods in SEO like on-page SEO and off-page SEO (I mean link building) and technical things which should be taken care of on your website.
On the technical aspect plugins would help you know the page speed, canonical URL so I have curated six important SEO plugins that will make search engines and visitors happy
6 Best WordPress Plugins For Blogs
1. Rank Math - SEO Plugin
You could be well aware plugins like Yoast SEO or All In One Seo plugin but Rank Math, when compared to both of these plugins, is better because this plugin will help you with on-page SEO and all in one SEO.







Image Source & Credits: Rank Math WordPress plugin
One best option I liked in this plugin is adding rich snippets, for example, you have a review article so you don't have to deal with structured data rather direct select rating and that will be applied in the snipped which will attract more visitors to your website.
Also with this plugin, you can easily select a no-follow tag for the outbound links without using additional plugins. So this comes handy when you have affiliate links or a website that you don't trust much.
Rank Math is one amont the best onpage seo plugins
Rank Math will automatically generate sitemaps and any link click on your article will open in a new tab.
It manages 404 error on your webpage because if more people are landing on 404 error page then it's better to redirect to another relevant page
2. A3 Lazy Load - SEO Plugin







Image Credit - a3 Lazy Load WordPress plugin
Importance of page speed:
Ranking FactorPage speed is one of the important factors that will help your page rank better on search engines. Also, when page load time is lesser the engagement will improve which will further help your SEO your website.
Improves user experience
Quick Tip: Remove all unused or unnecessary plugins which will automatically your web page speed on your WordPress website.
My website speed improved when I activated this plugin because whenever I checked the page load time on Pingdom tools I saw Performance grade of C with the page load speed of 1.60 seconds.
But now the performance grade is B and page load time is 1.41 seconds. So this one of my best image seo plugin in WordPress.
In addition to these the page size reduced with more than 100 KB that you can refer to from the below image.
3. Bulk Smush
This plugin will help auto compress all your new image uploads so you can set it and rest be assured that all images on your website are compressed and optimized.







Image Credit - Smush Compress Optimize and Lazy Load Images WordPress plugin
This plugin is developed by WPMUDEV who has a list of other plugins to their credit.
Users enjoy reading an article with images because what remains in their memory is the images that give value to the article and in that way they would connect to your article.
Having said that image is very much important but the issues are that HD images will take more space which results in a delay of loading the page.
So Bulk Smush plugin will help you through compressing this image without disturbing the quality of the image so that people would continue to enjoy the article and images.
This plugin uses WPMDUDEV servers to remove that extra size of the images and squeeze it so that downloads will be fast.
This plugin supports Elementor, Amazon S3, and NextGen so that if you have installed or using any of these plugins then even Bulk Smush would take care of it.
4. W3 Total Cache
Speed is one of the important factors to rank on search engines so every second matter when your page is loaded so this plugin helps in SEO of your website.







Image Credit: W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin
This cache creates duplicate for every page on your website
When a user visits your website the request is sent to the server and it retrieves the data to the user to further read and react on your content so this would include the text, images, menus, and header which is loaded on the user's browsers.
This cache plugin comes into play by making a duplicate copy and delivers the data fast which is accessed by the user. So the page load s ten times faster.
This plugin is compatible with shared hosting or virtual private servers. It supports AMP and SSL.
You have to maintain the plugins like clearing the cache manually to improve its performance so if you are not sure about it you can contact you
5. Easy Table Of Contents
This plugin creates a table of contents for each post with few clicks after you have installed this Easy Table Of contents plugin scroll down and check the box for insert table of contents and publish and update your post.







Image Credits: Easy Table Of Contents
This plugin will automatically show a list of headings that will be based on heading tags
If you have a longer post with many header tags ( h1 - h5) so this will confuse the reader and he may find it too much to go through the list rather in this case you can select a particular header tag which is available in the plugin.
So that those heading will be published on the post which will be user-friendly and readers can easily navigate on the page.
This plugin will help with:
More time spent on page
More engagement time
Reduce bounce rate
Dwell time
Win jump links in SERP which may help increase CTR
6. WordLift AI-Powered SEO plugin







Image Credits: WordLift AI-Powered SEO plugin
WordLift is an artificial intelligence-powered plugin that will help you boost your organic traffic and meant for online content creators which supports 32 languages.
- It supports your writing process with contextual facts
- Enrich your content with rich pictures and links
- Readers will be engaged with relevant content recommendations
- Publish metadata to share, sell and distribute your valuable content
This plugin helps you by providing full-text analysis and vocabulary suggestions from DBpedia, Wikidata and many similar sites.
When your content is enriched and structured then it is easy for search engines to understand and bring it on the first page which will give you more organic traffic.
You are guided with relevant links and media so that readers can access more related information.
Conclusion
If you have a basic setup of your website then you may not need many of these plugins discussed in this article so I would suggest you work on content rather focusing on these plugins.
I would suggest you to optimize images and then see dramatic changes in your SEO
You can try with the FREE version of these best WordPress plugins for blogs before you opt for pro version because you need to understand and experiment on them and later switch to professional paid versions.