As the market for artificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow, most fields are looking for ways to leverage this technology to improve operations. When it comes to managing WordPress websites, there are already plenty of AI plugins available. Still, you might not be sure which one to use for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the best AI tools for WordPress SEO. When you know how these plugins work, you’ll be better prepared to choose the right one for your needs. As a result, you’ll hopefully be able to increase organic traffic to your site.
In this article, we’ll go over the benefits of using AI for SEO. Then we’ll provide a brief introduction to AI plugins and what they can do. Finally, we’ll recommend five of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. Let’s get to it!
The Benefits of Using AI for SEO
There are plenty of benefits of using AI for SEO. In fact, a study published in 2024 that analyzed over 2,600 businesses across the world found that 65 percent of them say they are consistently getting better results from using AI for SEO.
What’s more, 67 percent of businesses indicate an improvement in the quality of their content thanks to AI. Of course, that’s a combination of using AI for content generation and human labor for editing (to ensure that content meets user expectations).
That same report also shows that 34 percent of businesses that aren’t using AI shy away from it because they don’t understand how these types of tools work. With that in mind, it’s important that we dig into what is possible using WordPress and AI plugins for SEO.
A Brief Introduction to WordPress AI Plugins (And What They Can Do)
As you may already know, you can extend the functionality of WordPress using plugins. Many of them are free, and there are plenty of AI plugins available to help you improve your WordPress site.
When it comes to search engine optimization, here’s what you can expect in terms of features from AI plugins:
- Insights into content formatting. Formatting is critical for SEO. Proper use of keywords, subheadings, and post length can significantly impact rankings. Some SEO plugins with AI functionality now provide insights into how to improve these factors.
- Access to simple keyword recommendations. This can be extremely helpful if you’re new to keyword research. Having a tool in WordPress that can provide you with keyword recommendations can save you a lot of time.
- Built-in content generation tools. As you might expect, a lot of AI for SEO tools offer content generation. This can mean automatically adding keywords throughout existing content, or generating parts of a post or page for you. For instance, some AI tools can help you create an FAQ section faster.
It’s worth noting here that using totally AI-generated content for your website might not be the best idea. That’s because most AI tools can’t produce content that is competitive enough to rank highly in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Moreover, if you rely fully on AI for content generation and SEO, you miss out on learning best practices for improving your website.
5 Best WordPress SEO Plugins With AI Functionality
Now that you have a solid grasp of what kind of AI functionality SEO plugins can provide you with, it’s time to get to know some of the best options you can use. For each plugin, we’ll dig into how it uses AI and what type of user can benefit the most from using it.
1. Rank Math
Rank Math is a popular SEO plugin that offers features like content and readability analysis for your website. The plugin uses a modular approach that enables you to choose which features to use and which to disable.
If you want to use Rank Math’s AI functionality, you need to pay a monthly subscription for “credits”. You can use these credits to generate blog post ideas, outlines, titles, meta descriptions, and more.
The AI integration with Rank Math also gives you access to information about recommended word counts for posts and how many links and images to include in new content. This can be a useful guideline if you want to create competitive pages.
Price: Rank Math’s AI add-on subscriptions start at $6.99 per month.
2. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is by far the most popular WordPress SEO plugin in the market. It works similarly to Rank Math in the sense that it provides content and reliability analyses you can use to improve your content for search engines.
In terms of AI, Yoast SEO enables you to generate titles and meta descriptions for your content automatically. It analyzes your content to determine what metadata to use to potentially maximize engagement.
It’s important to note that this functionality is only available with Yoast SEO Premium. If you use the free version of the plugin, you’ll still need to set titles and meta descriptions manually.
Price: Yoast SEO Premium licenses cost $99 per year.
3. Alt Text AI
Alt text is an essential component for SEO. You can (and should) add this text to images to give search engines context about what they contain. WordPress makes it easy to manually add alt text without needing to edit a page’s HTML. But, this can be time-consuming.
Alt Text AI can help you by automating the process. It uses an image analyzer to try to understand each image and then generate alt text for it.
If you upload large numbers of WordPress images to your site, this plugin can save you a decent amount of work. However, you’ll need to pay to use it. Although the plugin offers a free trial, you’ll need to subscribe to the service to get recurring credits (which are used when generating alt text).
Price: Alt Text AI plans start at $5 per month.
4. TaxoPress
Taxonomy can help search engines better understand the relationship between the content on your site. In turn, this can help improve page rankings. For this to work, you need to develop a proper taxonomy – and then tag and categorize content in a way that makes sense.
TaxoPress automates this process. The plugin can help you generate tags and categories based on your content and classify it automatically within that taxonomy. The plugin also adds a Related Posts element to your blog content, to help improve time on site by pointing users toward other articles they might enjoy.
Price: The free version of TaxoPress includes the features we’ve discussed so far. A premium plan gives you more features, like the ability to add links to pages automatically. Licenses start at $59 for one site.
5. BetterDocs
Having a knowledge base, or adding FAQ sections to key pages and posts can help improve SEO. That’s because FAQ pages can directly address search intent, and give you the opportunity to answer questions you might not be able to while working on a page’s content.
BetterDocs enables you to set up FAQ sections for pages, a knowledge base for your site, and even add tables of contents to posts. You can do this manually using templates or use the plugin’s AI functionality to generate these sections (and then edit them).
The plugin integrates with the WordPress Block Editor and popular page builders such as Elementor. The premium version of the tool gives you access to additional templates you can use for FAQ sections and knowledge bases.
Price: Premium BetterDocs licenses start at $55 per year for one website.
Conclusion
AI for SEO is a field that is still relatively new. Just like hundreds of other industries, SEO services and tools are still trying to figure out how best to leverage AI to offer better features and to reduce the workload for users.
While the field is still new, there are several WordPress plugins that are leveraging AI for SEO in interesting ways. Our top suggestions are:
- Rank Math: This tool offers an AI add-on that enables you to generate content for your site. You can also use Rank Math to get SEO suggestions on content length, formatting, related keywords, and similar data that can help you improve your pages.
- Yoast SEO: The premium version of this plugin enables you to generate page titles and meta descriptions automatically using AI.
- Alt Text AI: This tool analyzes your site’s images and generates alt text for them using AI.
- TaxoPress: This useful plugin can help you create a taxonomy for your site’s content and automatically categorize and tag posts and pages.
- BetterDocs: This plugin can leverage AI to help you generate FAQs, tables of contents, and knowledge bases for your website.
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Image credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
