For over a decade, Yoast SEO has been the go-to WordPress SEO plugin for optimizing content and sites. With its robust set of features, ease of use, and continual evolution, Yoast SEO remains a top choice for WordPress site owners seeking to improve their search visibility and traffic. As a long-time user of Yoast SEO, I’m going to share my in-depth Yoast review of this invaluable plugin.
Founded in 2010 by internet marketer and SEO expert Joost de Valk, Yoast SEO was one of the first WordPress SEO plugins on the market. The plugin aimed to make search engine optimization accessible for regular users, not just SEO experts.
Yoast SEO quickly became a hit among WordPress site owners. Its initial free version offered basic on-page optimization, while premium versions provided advanced functionality.
In recent years, Yoast SEO has expanded into a suite of products beyond its original WordPress plugin. This includes plugins for other platforms like Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. The company also offers SEO training courses and tools.
However, the WordPress plugin remains Yoast’s flagship product, now being used on over 8 million websites.
Yoast SEO offers excellent value for the price. The free version provides a robust set of SEO features for most sites. Premium pricing is very reasonable for sites that need additional capabilities.
Yoast SEO Premium for WordPress costs $99 per year and includes a robust set of expanded capabilities, including:
For ecommerce sites using Shopify, Yoast SEO for Shopify is available for $19 per month. Key features of this SEO plugin include:
The premium Yoast SEO plugins provide robust SEO capabilities and support for WordPress and Shopify sites. The reasonable pricing reflects the immense value they provide for improving search visibility and traffic.
The plugin is extremely beginner-friendly, with intuitive interfaces, clear guidance, and excellent documentation. Optimizing pages and sites is simplified for users of all skill levels.
Yoast SEO is packed with an extensive set of optimization features including on-page optimization, readability analysis, site audits, sitemaps, and more. It covers SEO needs comprehensively.
Support options include detailed docs, FAQs, forum, email support, and premium phone/live chat support. response times and knowledge are generally excellent.
In summary, Yoast SEO earns top scores across the board for offering a robust SEO plugin with premium features and support at reasonable prices. The combination of power, ease of use and value is unmatched.
So what exactly does the Yoast SEO plugin do, and what value does it provide for WordPress sites? Here are some of its most important benefits and features:
Yoast SEO makes it easy to optimize WordPress pages and posts for search engines and users. When editing a post or page, the plugin provides a metabox with real-time feedback about:
This allows you to perfect the on-page elements most critical for SEO and usability as you write and edit.
The plugin can auto-generate a full XML sitemap for your WordPress site, helping search engines index all of your content. This includes sitemaps for video content from plugins like Wistia.
One of Yoast SEO’s most valuable features is its content analysis. It scans your posts and pages to assess readability, keyphrase usage, title length, and more.
The in-depth content analysis gives you actionable tips for improving each piece of content. This helps you better optimize pages right from the editing screen.
In the dashboard, Yoast SEO provides audits and reports to evaluate your overall site optimization. This includes a complete site analysis, readability analysis, SEO scorecard, and more.
The plugin can auto-generate SEO-optimized breadcrumbs for your WordPress site using schema.org structured data. This provides users and search engines with a navigation trail.
Yoast SEO seamlessly integrates with Google Search Console to import key data like crawl errors and analytics. It also works with tools like Google Analytics to add automatically generated analytics script.
While packed with default features, Yoast SEO offers extensive customization through its settings. Here you can fine-tune features, add synonyms, customize titles and metas, and more.
As you can see, Yoast SEO enhances WordPress sites in multiple ways, from on-page optimization to technical site enhancements. Next I’ll cover my hands-on experiences using the plugin.
I’ve used Yoast SEO on dozens of client sites over the past 5+ years. The plugin has become an essential part of my WordPress installations.
Here are some key benefits I’ve experienced first-hand from implementing Yoast SEO:
By optimizing content with Yoast SEO, I’ve seen substantial improvements in search rankings across client sites. The plugin makes it effortless to target keyphrases and improve page elements for SEO.
For one client’s blog, key target keywords now consistently rank on the first page of Google – a dramatic change from 2-3 pages back previously. Their overall organic traffic has grown 34% in a year.
With features like XML sitemaps, site audits, and Google Search Console integration, Yoast SEO eliminates much of the tedious technical SEO work I used to handle manually. This saves a significant amount of time and effort.
Thanks to the readability analysis and usability recommendations from Yoast SEO, I’ve been able to improve page content for users substantially. Pages are now more scannable, clearly structured, and focused on target keywords. This leads to lower bounce rates.
Through the metabox content analysis, site audit, and other feedback, Yoast SEO is educational for clients. Site owners gain a much better grasp of SEO best practices by seeing the plugin’s optimization recommendations first-hand.
In my experience, Yoast SEO integrates flawlessly with most other plugins and themes. Unlike some SEO plugins, it doesn’t cause compatibility issues that break sites. The plugin remains reliable after WordPress and plugin updates.
For these reasons, I continue using Yoast SEO as my go-to SEO plugin for WordPress sites. It has become an invaluable tool that saves me time while optimizing and enhancing sites in multiple ways.
While Yoast SEO is a robust plugin, there are still areas which could be improved in future versions:
While these improvements could enhance Yoast SEO, they reflect minor nitpicks given the plugin's already extensive capabilities.
Yoast SEO justifiably earns its status as the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. It's packed with customization options to enhance on-page optimization, technical SEO, content, and more.
After years of using Yoast SEO extensively, I'm continually impressed by its depth and flexibility. The plugin evolves and expands over time, incorporating new techniques and integrations.
For WordPress site owners serious about improving SEO, useability, and traffic, I firmly recommend installing Yoast SEO. The free version provides immense value, while premium versions expand capabilities for those needing advanced optimization.
In summary, Yoast SEO remains the gold standard for optimizing and enhancing WordPress sites. Its dedicated team of developers keeps it at the forefront of WordPress SEO plugins. Serpfocus's SEO tools reviews should be your go to for new tools.
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