Google Tag Manager vs. Yoast

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Tag Manager
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
From Google, the Google Tag Manager is a tag management application that facilitates creating, embedding, and updating tags across websites and mobile apps, thus gaining the benefits of data standardization and speed of deployment. Google touts an agency friendly system with multiple user access, and tools to improve tags performance like debugging, and rules, macros or automated tag firing. The Google Tag Manager also integrates with Google product DoubleClick. Moreover, Google Tag Manager is…N/A
Yoast
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Yoast offers a set of tools developed by Joost de Valk and team, founder of yoast.com and Wordpress enthusiast. These tools are designed to help content rank higher and are subsumed under the Yoast Complete pack, which includes Video SEO for rank climbing with embedded videos in a Wordpress site, WooCommerce SEO for the WP ecommerce plugin, News SEO for rank climbing in Google news, Local SEO for (as the name implies) climbing in local listings with more complete information so can be located…
$0
per year
Pricing
Google Tag ManagerYoast
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Premium
$99.00
Per Site
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Tag ManagerYoast
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Tag ManagerYoast
Considered Both Products
Google Tag Manager
Chose Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a little different than the other software we've used. This not only gives us the means for tracking our websites but it also tells us if we've implemented the tag correctly and how well the website has been performing after the tag has been implemented …
Chose Google Tag Manager
If you are using Google Analytics, then it only makes sense to use Google Tag Manager. GTM has better Event Tracking, data layer handling, and modularity. It is well documented and easy to find solutions and community support for almost any imaginable use-case scenario with …
Yoast
Chose Yoast
Yoast doesn't even compare to these other products. I would spend more time learning about SEO and doing everything yourself rather than trusting Yoast to do it for you. I chose Yoast only because of the off-platform websites we have and the clients wanted to understand the …
Chose Yoast
I've looked at a few other SEO plugins, such as the Premium SEO Pack, WP Meta, and All in One SEO Pack, but I haven't found anything that has the same set of tools and simplified interface. The ease of use and out-of-the-box tools are what have me committed to using Yoast.
Chose Yoast
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins are the best-in-class tools. They are better than what we have used before because they are more robust and have greater capabilities. In today's fast-paced business world, our company doesn't have time to utilize a bunch of different SEO tools and …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google Tag ManagerYoast
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
9.8
53 Ratings
13% above category average
Yoast
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions9.853 Ratings00 Ratings
Tag Management
Comparison of Tag Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
8.1
64 Ratings
1% above category average
Yoast
-
Ratings
Tag library7.859 Ratings00 Ratings
Tag variable mapping8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
Ease of writing custom tags7.563 Ratings00 Ratings
Rules-driven tag execution8.358 Ratings00 Ratings
Tag performance monitoring7.855 Ratings00 Ratings
Page load times8.346 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile app tagging8.432 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of JavaScript extensions8.735 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Management & Integrity
Comparison of Data Management & Integrity features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
9.0
64 Ratings
8% above category average
Yoast
-
Ratings
Event tracking9.961 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile event tracking9.844 Ratings00 Ratings
Data distribution management8.639 Ratings00 Ratings
Universal data layer8.755 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated error checking7.944 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
-
Ratings
Yoast
7.2
59 Ratings
8% below category average
Keyword analysis00 Ratings9.649 Ratings
Backlink management00 Ratings7.432 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking00 Ratings5.618 Ratings
Page grader00 Ratings9.253 Ratings
Competitive analysis00 Ratings6.823 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics00 Ratings7.040 Ratings
Site recommendations00 Ratings9.642 Ratings
Task management00 Ratings2.421 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
-
Ratings
Yoast
7.8
50 Ratings
3% above category average
Local SEO00 Ratings9.739 Ratings
Social SEO00 Ratings8.540 Ratings
Mobile SEO00 Ratings8.340 Ratings
Global SEO00 Ratings4.833 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
-
Ratings
Yoast
9.0
46 Ratings
7% above category average
Multi-domain support00 Ratings8.319 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools00 Ratings9.742 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Tag ManagerYoast
Small Businesses
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Score 8.9 out of 10
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Score 8.7 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Score 8.7 out of 10
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google Tag ManagerYoast
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(68 ratings)
9.6
(59 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(13 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(11 ratings)
7.7
(19 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.8
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Tag ManagerYoast
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Google Tag Manager is well suited when the marketer or marketing team does not work closely with the developers. In this scenario, it means that the marketer can deploy 3rd party tools such as live chat widgets, advertising pixels, and much more themselves in a timely manner. Google Tag Manager may be less relevant in an organization where the marketer is also the developer or has a strong development background, where they can implement the 3rd party tags directly on the site when they need. But even in this instance, there's still great benefit in using Google Tag Manager.
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yoast.com
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins is really great for any application - home pages, blogs, etc. It saves a lot of time researching keywords, but it is time-consuming crafting content, which I think is a necessary evil. I wasn't really seeing the immediate results I had hoped for, but there could be a variety of reasons for that (cookies, caches, etc.). Overall, if you have the time to dedicate and utilize the tool, it's awesome!
Read full review
Pros
Google
  • Selecting elements on a site [object, class, cookie, etc] (to later fire an event, send some data, etc) is very easy with triggers. Want to add an event when someone clicks on a button? Super easy. It was many many DOM selectors and you can even add custom functions if you need to do something more specific
  • In general, firing events in different circumstances is very easy mixing triggers and tags. You can track almost any element of the DOM and do whatever you want with it.
  • Testing is a great functionality. Only you can see what's on the site and you can debug it easily by seeing which events or tags were triggered and all the DOM elements involved (and why they matched the trigger).
  • Working in environments (staging, production) and versioning is easy to do, deploying changes in 2 clicks.
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yoast.com
  • Evaluate the SEO score of any given page's content.
  • Makes it simple to manage the title and description for a page (what shows up on Google search results).
  • Boils down complicated topics such as canonical URLs for non-technical users.
  • Easy explanations for any and all options, including why to use or not use an option.
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • There are several good integrations, but there can always be more. Native tracking for call tracking solutions, analytics providers, non-Google advertisers would be top of my list.
  • Documentation is just dreadful. Luckily there are some awesome folks out there doing crowdsourced tutorials (shout out to Simo Ahava) but by and large the Google Tag Manager instructions are worth what you pay for them.
Read full review
yoast.com
  • Density: Because even the free, basic Yoast SEO tool has SO MANY FEATURES, if you're brand new to SEO as a concept/practice, you might feel a little overwhelmed at first. Just go watch the training videos!
  • Bulk Title Editing: I'm sure this tool can be useful, but I've never found it to be particularly intuitive or helpful.
  • Limitations: I'm grasping at straws here, but it would be nice if some of the premium (paid) features- specifically the social media previews- were available in the free version. Like I said, grasping.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
Google Tag Manager makes tracking traffic to our websites effortless, which enables our developers to focus on other tasks. Setting up a new instance takes only minutes and additional scripts can be added/modified without touching the source code of a site in production. This enables our marketing directors to coordinate tests and experiments with minimal effort.
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yoast.com
I see no reason to discontinue using Yoast as it has been very beneficial for my website and my business.
Read full review
Usability
Google
Google Tag Manager is the definition of a learning curve. At the beginning, you can barely do the minimum and it can seem questionable as to why you would use it. However, as users begin to learn its offerings and see how it can do much more, they will have a moment where GTM becomes a tool that empowers their ability to track and efficiently collect data for important business questions.
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yoast.com
All the information is integrated on-screen while writing content and the scores and related score elements (i.e. paragraph/sentence length, transition words, keyphrase density, etc.) are all updated live as I write which I think is amazingly helpful.
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Support Rating
Google
It depends wether you are seeking official support from Google itself, in which case it would be rated very low because it's not their business model, they would rather have you work with one of their Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP). In terms of self-served support, Google offer extensive documentation at https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/, recently revamped training (https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course05/preview), has active forums and user community (https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104865292981489764063) which can typically answer even the most advanced questions.
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yoast.com
There are plenty of amazing articles published on their site, however, I don't rate their actual support team as being particularly helpful. I made multiple points of contact regarding the internal link counter not working and even though they began troubleshooting I think when it became too hard it was just forgotten about and so is still unresolved.
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Online Training
Google
I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.
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yoast.com
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Google
Planning and communication will help greatly with an in-house implementation. If there are large teams, try to limit the number of people involved to 1-2 developers (back-end dev may be necessary depending on your platform), one analytics marketer and one project manager.
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yoast.com
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
We moved to GTM from a standard Google Analytics implementation. GTM is much more flexible and easier to make changes, especially as the changes relate to multiple sites and environments. While there is a learning curve when figuring out how to use GTM, I believe the change has been worth it because it helps us understand at a more fundamental level how our tracking works and gives us a lot more control over what we track and how.
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yoast.com
This is my go-to plugin for SEO. It is easy, and I trust Yoast will give me solid results. In a short time period, our website has seen measurable results in organic search traffic. Our previous website didn't use page level SEO tools to this extent. We are systematically updating each page using the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin. We are pleased with the results
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Return on Investment
Google
  • GTM is very useful to determine if a particular element on the site is useful (i.e. is it being watched, is it being clicked, does it help customers navigate through more pages). As an SEO person, I can use this information to decide what to optimize for but also to track progress and see improvements in engagement.
  • With the use of Google Tag Manager, I was able to easily inject an A/B testing tool which lead to several improvements in lead generation.
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yoast.com
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin along with other SEO investments we have made with our new website has extremely paid off on new business opportunity creation. Since August 2018 we have added over $100K of new business opps solely sourced from SEO searches on pages and posts that Yoast has helped us optimize.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin saves our marketing team a lot of time. Since the plugin lives in WordPress and provides live tips we can make to the page or post, our team doesn't have to guess on what keyword, or meta-tag, or how many internal and external links a page or post should have using an additional platform. It is just conveniently there for us to use regularly.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin cannot be the only piece of software your website relies on to obtain SEO optimization with search engines. It is a piece of the puzzle, and you can only maximize its' value by making sure your website is scam free, the code under the hood is healthy, and the load time and page weight is light.
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