Honest Review on the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress

Yoast SEO is one of the most well-known, and, most widely used plugins for SEO optimization given its easy integration with WordPress CMS. On its’ website, Yoast SEO claims to be the # 1 WordPress SEO plugin being used today. Yoast’s easy end-user interface and SEO optimization insights mean that even relative newbies to content marketing will be able to catch on fairly quickly.

USP & Key Features

Yoast SEO is an easily integrated plugin for WordPress with the chief aims being:

• Helping you rank higher in search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo)
• Management of all of your technical SEO functions in the background
• Functioning as the most complete SEO solution for WordPress

Pricing Plans

Yoast SEO comes in two versions, one free and the other a Premium SEO version retailing at $89(excluding vat) for a single site. Yoast SEO Premium offers:

• Keyword Optimization with a limit of up to 5 keywords for each page
• Google, Facebook and Twitter previews of your page
• Readability check of written copy and calculation of the Flesch Reading Ease score
• Full control over your breadcrumbs via being able to set a primary category for your post, and determining the taxonomy for every single page on your website
• Non-generation of duplicate content by the use of canonical URLs
• Updated against Google’s algorithm every two weeks
• Internal linking suggestions for other pages on your website, as you write
• Content Insights through the display of 5 word or phrases you use most on your page stacked up against your chosen keywords
• Redirect Manager to easily redirect old URLs to new ones
• Focus Keyword CSV export with a clear overview of focus keywords and SEO scores
• 1-year free access to 24/7 support
• Free from ads feature

The free version has most of the above features except for internal linking suggestions, content insights, the redirect manager, Focus Keyword export, customer support and ad-blocking.

Pros & Cons

The Yoast SEO free version holds up well particularly for newbie marketers and website users just starting to ease into the basics of online marketing using WordPress. Advanced marketers, however, may find themselves looking at other more powerful tools for solid SEO stratagems. Some of the features such as redirect and breadcrumbs management are available in other free plugins with more flexibility and options. As a general theme, it does appear that other free tools are able to deliver more useful functionality than what Yoast is able to even within the paid version. While the automatic updates are a definite plus, google algorithmic changes are captured only once every two weeks which means a delay in real time information updates. As a free version for ease of use and simplicity, Yoast SEO for WordPress hits all the right notes. The paid version, however, could do with a bigger bang for the buck.

Yoast SEO resources:

Website:

Pricing Comparison: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

Learning Guides (focused on Yoast and SEO): https://yoast.com/academy/courses/