Semrush vs. Yoast

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Semrush
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Semrush is a relatively popular search engine optimization tool set from the company of the same name based in Pennsylvania and founded in 2008. Largely the platforms relies on competitive intelligence, and features SEO staples like backlink checking, keyword analysis to refine SEO and PPC campaigning and locate low-cost / high-yield keywords, analysis of competitors who co-occupy desired ad and listing spaces, domain vs. domain analysis, as well as site audit and domain tracking. Semrush can…
$129
per month
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
SemrushYoast
Editions & Modules
Pro
$129.95
per month
Guru
$249.95
per month
Business
$499.95
per month
Premium
$99.00
Per Site
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SemrushYoast
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details17% discount for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SemrushYoast
Considered Both Products
Semrush
Chose Semrush
We use Yoast SEO from within WordPress sites to help with the effectiveness of individual pages and posts. It has great value due to being built-in to the website. Semrush provides us with a much more detailed analysis though to look at the overall health of the sites and has …
Chose Semrush
Semrush is a little pricey; it works very well and is very useful.
Chose Semrush
I alternate several tools. But for example, I used to use Moz and Ahrefs, now I only use Semrush for technical issues.
For Keywords research I use Semrush and others, to have different sources of information and compare to validate.
Yoast
Chose Yoast
Yoast is essentially a light version of SEMRush combined with WPMU Dev. It features the most important on-page optimization features, while SEMRush and WPMU go into more detail.
Chose Yoast
From a micro-business perspective, it's cost prohibitive to fund a true "all in one" SEO solution. SEOquake and SEMRush are great for SEO data, site analysis and competitive analysis, but we at this time we want content focus, which is where Yoast shines. Longtail Pro is …
Chose Yoast
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins is the simple solution that most small businesses are looking for. It gives you quick easy tips that can be followed according to best practices. If you're looking to increase your SEO investment, you can pay for bigger tools like SEMRush that give …
Chose Yoast
Yoast's free tools compete, with the affordability of the premium plugin making it an even better deal. We briefly used SEMRush due to a partnership with a local SEO firm at my previous position, and while it was also fantastic service, I found that it was significantly more …
Chose Yoast
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins was a little easier to understand and offered a real-time guided plugin that helped me write throughout my drafting process. Semrush was much more helpful as a reporting tool, not so much in content creation. Both tools are useful in different ways, …
Chose Yoast
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins is better than some other apps only because it is integrated into your WordPress. You have everything inside your dashboard. Sure, there are some other more powerful SEO tools, but Yoast is right where you need it. The best way is to use it alongside …
Chose Yoast
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins are very easy to get started. Its suggestion for focus keywords and readability score based on the content helps us to quickly publish search engine-friendly web pages. Unlike other popular SEO products, Yoast plugins are integrated into WordPress …
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
It does not appear to be on the list, but the one SEO plugin that we have tested against Yoast is All In One SEO Pack. After comparing the two we decided on Yoast as we felt that overall it just did a better job. If we didn't have Yoast that would be our second choice. In …
Chose Yoast
Yoast is unique in the sense that it makes implementing SEO recommendations that we pull from the other comparable tools a real breeze! It's simple to use and saves hours that would ordinarily be used for training and can be used for the implementation of recommendations. No …
Chose Yoast
Yoast is much easier to use than many of the more advanced SEO tools. That being the case, it is a perfect solution for beginner and intermediate users. Since most of our clients fall into that category, Yoast SEO is a tool that they can feel confident using to optimize their …
Chose Yoast
Ultimate SEO is a pretty good plugin, but it's really meant more for the "power-user" SEO person. For the average user I've found from feedback to be too complicated.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SemrushYoast
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
Semrush
8.5
148 Ratings
9% above category average
Yoast
7.2
59 Ratings
8% below category average
Keyword analysis9.4148 Ratings9.649 Ratings
Backlink management8.3141 Ratings7.432 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking8.3144 Ratings5.618 Ratings
Page grader8.5123 Ratings9.253 Ratings
Competitive analysis9.0143 Ratings6.823 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics9.0144 Ratings7.040 Ratings
Site recommendations8.2133 Ratings9.642 Ratings
Task management7.188 Ratings2.421 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
Semrush
7.7
135 Ratings
1% above category average
Yoast
7.8
50 Ratings
3% above category average
Local SEO6.0123 Ratings9.739 Ratings
Social SEO7.7101 Ratings8.540 Ratings
Mobile SEO8.5108 Ratings8.340 Ratings
Global SEO8.8109 Ratings4.833 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
Semrush
8.5
120 Ratings
1% above category average
Yoast
9.0
46 Ratings
7% above category average
Multi-domain support9.0110 Ratings8.319 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools8.0114 Ratings9.742 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SemrushYoast
Small Businesses
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights
Score 9.9 out of 10
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
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
SemrushYoast
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(148 ratings)
9.6
(59 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
6.9
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.9
(17 ratings)
7.7
(19 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SemrushYoast
Likelihood to Recommend
Semrush
This is suited to plan for keywords in a single market, but it struggles when you need to consolidate several markets. It is well-suited to discover new keywords directly related to the ones being used currently to expand the content the company is creating to get better results.
Read full review
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
Semrush
  • Great visuals for keyword position tracking, love that you can see the page that is ranking
  • Enjoyed the auto-generated reporting feature (specifically in the context of keyword position tracking)
  • Shows many different and useful views for competitive research
  • Great templated keyword research tools for those who are not as hands-on with SEO
  • I LOVE the Keyword Magic Tool for honing in on longtail, high-opportunity keywords
Read full review
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
Semrush
  • Extra seats can be expensive, as [an] agency with multiple team members this can be frustrating
  • Backlink data is not great, misses out a lot of backlinks (better off using a specialist backlink tool like Link research tools LRT)
  • Tracking multiple keywords, across multiple clients can be costly
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
Semrush
I [previously] used Semrush for many years and I cannot find any other tool being so complete and easy to use.
Read full review
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
Semrush
SEMRush has a slight learning curve, but everything is organized really well. Once you learn where everything is, using the software and running reports is incredibly easy. You can easily add new projects, get help for improving on-page SEO, and there are even video tutorials that walk you through the whole system if you still feel uncomfortable with it.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Semrush
Semrush available when you need it!
Read full review
yoast.com
No answers on this topic
Performance
Semrush
SemRush performs well with few errors!
Read full review
yoast.com
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Semrush
I'm in a FB group for Semrush paid users and it amazing! They are fast to respond, take suggestions and help with questions. I have not felt alone in using this product at all. Highly recommend their support team. When I had an issue I can jump into the group and they will help get me the right person to help or even tag their programmers to look at something that is going on. Love the group!
Read full review
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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Implementation Rating
Semrush
I did it by myself and do not have a comment!
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yoast.com
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Semrush
We have used both Ahrefs and Semrush extensively at our agency and Semrush remains the tool of choice. We find that Semrush has the largest selection of tools & features to use, with the highest accuracy, and provides top-tier analysis recommendations. It's really is the ultimate all-in-one tool when comparing other performance measurement tools in the digital marketing space.
Read full review
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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Scalability
Semrush
Semrush is flexible and scalable software which can be deployed across multiple departments and sites as needed.
Read full review
yoast.com
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Semrush
  • Using Semrush on behalf of our clients, we have seen some impressive growth in organic visibility, traffic, conversion and revenue, across multiple industries.
  • The site checks available with Semrush have helped us to pitch and sell our services, securing new clients.
Read full review
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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