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Yoast

Yoast

Overview

What is Yoast?

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…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Yoast, the WordPress SEO plugin, has been widely used by various individuals and organizations to optimize their websites and improve …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 14 features
  • Integration with web analytics tools (42)
    9.7
    97%
  • Site recommendations (42)
    9.7
    97%
  • Keyword analysis (49)
    9.6
    96%
  • Page grader (53)
    9.2
    92%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Premium

$99.00

Cloud
Per Site

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Quick Demo Yoast

YouTube

Demo Toko Online Anisa Bags (beserta Yoast SEO)

YouTube

Demo: Instalación de Yoast SEO y uso

YouTube

#DEMO Instalação Plugin Yoast SEO PREMIUM

YouTube

Facebook Yoast Demo

YouTube

Video SEO for WordPress by Yoast demo

YouTube
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Features

SEO

Core features related to search engine optimization

7.2
Avg 7.8

SEO Channels

Features related to optimizing your website for specific channels

7.8
Avg 7.6

SEO Platform & Account Management

Features related to scalability and integration of the SEO platform

9
Avg 8.4
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Product Details

What is Yoast?

Yoast SEO helps to ensure a site meets the highest technical SEO standards. It also provides tools to optimize content for SEO and overall readability. Yoast is built to:
  • Include everything needed to start ranking in search engines
  • Automatically take care of all of a site’s technical SEO
  • Provide access to 6 free academy courses

Yoast Video

Yoast SEO Demo

Yoast Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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 (e.g. Google Maps, a store locator, etc.), and Premium SEO redirect manager for dealing with common redirect errors and issues. Yoast Complete for a single site license can be obtained for $279, for up to 5 sites for $479, and for up to 20 sites for $849. The plugins may also be bought individually, and yoast.com now offers a Google Analytics (GA) plugin.

Yoast starts at $0.

Reviewers rate Site recommendations and Local SEO and Integration with web analytics tools highest, with a score of 9.7.

The most common users of Yoast are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(304)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Yoast, the WordPress SEO plugin, has been widely used by various individuals and organizations to optimize their websites and improve search engine visibility. Users have found Yoast to be particularly valuable for on-page SEO optimization, providing a comprehensive checklist for elements such as metadata, URLs, headers, and more. The plugin's red-yellow-green light icon serves as a visual indicator of how well optimized a page is, allowing users to stay on top of their optimization efforts.

Freelancers, small business owners, and marketing professionals have relied on Yoast to boost their online presence and attract potential customers. Additionally, Yoast has played a crucial role in helping bloggers optimize their pages for better rankings. The user-friendly interface and real-time suggestions provided by Yoast make it accessible to both non-expert users and SEO novices who are looking to optimize their own content. From optimizing blog posts and images to managing URLs and interlinking suggestions, Yoast offers a range of features that simplify the process of search engine optimization.

Furthermore, organizations and agencies have leveraged Yoast to set up SEO for each page or article on their websites, providing oversight of writers' SEO tasks. The structured markup capability of Yoast has proven invaluable in ensuring that pages meet SEO standards and comply with industry regulations. With its extensive training resources and comprehensive plugin options, Yoast has become the go-to tool for WordPress users looking to maximize their SEO efforts.

Overall, Yoast has proved indispensable in optimizing WordPress websites for search engines, attracting organic traffic, meeting deadlines, and maintaining structured content. By offering practical recommendations and insights into keyword density, readability scores, and meta data optimization, Yoast delivers valuable assistance in driving qualified traffic to websites.

Seamless integration: Users have praised Yoast for its seamless integration into the WordPress platform, eliminating the need to switch between different pages or platforms for optimization. This convenience has been highly appreciated by numerous reviewers.

Real-time tips: Many users have found Yoast's real-time tips to be invaluable. The ability to receive immediate feedback and guidance on optimizing their pages or posts through live scans of page templates, links, and copy has been highly valued by a significant number of reviewers.

Training resources: Yoast's training resources have received great praise from users. These resources are considered helpful in making the complex topic of SEO easy to understand and implement. They enable users to improve their knowledge of SEO effectively, as mentioned by multiple reviewers.

Unhelpful customer support: Some users have expressed frustration with the customer support provided by Yoast, stating that it has been unhelpful and lacking. This issue has been mentioned multiple times in user reviews.

Confusing user interface: The software's user interface has been criticized for being confusing and overwhelming. Users have found it difficult to navigate and complete tasks efficiently, leading them to believe that the software is not user-friendly.

Lack of comprehensive SEO insights: Users have expressed a desire for more comprehensive SEO insights and tools beyond just on-page optimization. They feel that the current features are lacking in providing competitive analysis and tracking SERP performance.

Users have provided several recommendations for Yoast based on their experiences with the product. The three most common recommendations are:

  1. Start with the free version: Users recommend starting with the free version of Yoast as it provides a range of useful features for optimizing website SEO. It is helpful for improving search engine rankings and increasing website traffic.

  2. Use for WordPress websites: Yoast is highly recommended for WordPress websites, as it offers specific plugins and tools tailored to this platform. Users find Yoast beneficial in expanding their understanding of SEO marketing and improving blog SEO, ultimately helping to boost website ranking in search engine results.

  3. Automate and save time: Users appreciate how Yoast automates various on-page metadata-related tasks, saving them valuable time. It is effective for day-to-day SEO activities and provides a helpful guide for implementing SEO improvements. By using Yoast, users can ensure proper optimization of content and keep up with changing SEO trends.

It's important to note that while many users recommend Yoast as a top SEO plugin for WordPress websites, some caution that it may not be the only tool needed for comprehensive SEO optimization. Additionally, some users express satisfaction with the free version and suggest that the premium version may not be necessary.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 59)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Michelle Green Arnson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress helps us make all of our web content more searchable- and findable- by making it super simple to optimize every post and page. The ability to audit new and existing content in real-time and get concrete suggestions on ways to improve our SEO makes it easy to keep up with ever-changing best practices.
  • SEO Analysis: This is the best. As you create content, you get a real-time audit of what you're doing right and, more importantly, what you need to fix in order to make that content as optimized as possible.
  • Set up wizard: Once Yoast is installed, their wizard helps ensure it can get to work immediately at making your website more Google-able. Could not be simpler.
  • Free training: Just getting started with SEO or Yoast? They have free training videos that make it so easy to get up to speed and start optimizing your content.
  • 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.
The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin has been ideal for our small shop. In designing a new website, we got lots of expert advice on how to structure it to be SEO friendly in its launch state, but there's no way we could pay the pros to continually optimize all of our new content day after day, month after month, year after year. Fortunately, our pros included the Yoast SEO plugin with our new WordPress site and gave us a quick and dirty tutorial before handing it all over. The free plugin has allowed us to make our content super SEO-friendly without taking up a dime of our nonprofit budget.
Rene Agredano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use it for my business blogging needs at Tripawds.com. We are on a WordPress Multisite platform and we use Yoast for five featured blogs.

I also use it in my freelance blogging assignments on various websites.

In all cases, it has helped us achieve better visibility as bloggers, and refined our writing into a more concise and SEO-friendly format.
  • Improves writing skills. By helping to identify long sentences and passive tone, our writing has improved by leaps and bounds. This applies to print writing assignments as well.
  • Points out important article features we may have overlooked. By telling us when we have forgotten to apply photo credits, internal links, etc., we set our articles up for greater visibility on the web.
  • Helped us achieve better page rank with Google. When our blog rankings fell to disappointing levels, we installed Yoast and quickly saw a return to previous rankings. Although we still need to go back and refresh pre-Yoast content, we are still much better off than we were without it.
  • Yoast does not account for scholarly or technical language. I wish there was a way to identify what type of tone the article will have (such as when uploading an article to Grammarly.com).
  • I wish Yoast could also make it easier to refresh old content with SEO-friendly features, though I'm guessing this is probably impossible.
  • Yoast's "Ease of Reading" feature is helpful but sometimes I feel it's forcing me to write to a lowest common denominator, whichy my community is not.
As a blogger, Yoast WordPress SEO is fantastic for helping our posts achieve higher rankings. And as I mentioned, it's helped us become better writers for the web and print. Any blogger, on any platform, can benefit from Yoast.

Yoast is less appropriate for academic and scientific blog writing. By trying to adhere to its recommendations, I feel that it dumbs down our articles and makes us less credible. When I write these types of articles, I tend to blow off many of the Yoast recommendations.
Victoria Hoete-Dodd | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, Yoast SEO Premium is used to help make it easy to quickly make adjustments to blog articles before publishing to ensure they are as optimized as possible. The other great use is the simple redirect tool which automatically detects and creates when a URL has been changed - this is a great feature, particularly at times when you are doing multiple tasks and may forget to go back and set one up!
  • Readability - makes it easy for you to assess the reading level of your piece to ensure it is correct for your intended audience.
  • SEO tips - red/orange/green traffic light system to provide tips on what aspects need improving to be SEO-focussed.
  • Redirect tool - easy, automated detection and setup.
  • Internal link counter - tool failed with other plugin capability and the "help" desk haven't actually helped...
  • Customer service/support - only offered for those who pay for a subscription but even when you have one they aren't exactly helpful (in my experience).
  • SEO notifications - it would be great to be able to specify which pages you want these for as currently, we get hundreds for irrelevant pages.
When the Internal link counter was working it was brilliant! Perhaps one of the features I utilized the most. It was a simple way to find orphaned posts and resolve that. However, the tool subsequently failed when the plugin was updated and I was told the problem was with other plugin capability and the "help" desk hasn't actually helped solve the issue. So - useful if it works!
December 04, 2019

We're toasty with Yoast!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it on most of our online magazines. Even though we don't really need SEO as part of our business model, the readability score, etc. are rather important for actual users as well. We trust that the developing algorithms help us create better content and increase our revenue.
  • Color coded signals for rating content
  • Previews of the content in Google
  • We don't use it enough to have problems with it. What we use is perfect.
We are building an informational website as a side project and create content there in our free time. We can't afford to go wrong there, because time is at a premium, so we make sure that all content is on point. Seeing the green lights next to each post is what we strive for. We hope everyone will find us first with the help of Yoast.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins is easily the most popular SEO plugin for Wordpress, and it's no surprise that our marketing and creative teams rely on it to help us stay ahead of SEO and meta description and title tag best practices. It helps keep us relevant with organic traffic and ensure we are using the right keywords for our content.
  • Great for editing meta tags.
  • Helpful with content optimization.
  • Great for backend SEO.
  • Readability tab is sometimes misleading.
  • Can't always trust results from a focus keyword.
  • Requires a strong SEO mindset so that you don't just trust the algorithm.
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins will always be a good bet for your team if Wordpress powers your website. It's best paired with a smart SEO mind on your team to ensure that its green light system isn't being blindly followed, but rather reviewed and implemented based on best practices that keep you from accidental keyword stuffing.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Yoast SEO on all public websites of the organizations as well as installing it on nearly all customer projects. It is a quick and easy way to get the SEO set-up right for each page, article or feature we write. Yoast SEO allows us to focus on writing the content and indicates where we need to make corrections without us having to study SEO deeply ourselves - it has all the SEO knowledge built-in.
  • Shows a beautiful snippet preview of how this page would be seen on Google search engine - You can easily edit the snippet.
  • Simple color codes for SEO analysis - Red means we need to fix it, orange is a warning, green is ok. Very easy!
  • SEO total score is displayed on the Post/Page overview screen, so you don't need to open every post to check the score
  • Keyword suggestions based on article I'm writing would be nice to have.
  • Some scores are red but it really doesn't apply to a particular post/product, etc. Eg. when you only have a video in a post there is a lot of red scores. It would be nice to be able to turn individual scores off.
Yoast WordPress is perfect for a business that wants to improve their own SEO score on their website without hiring a professional copywriter. It's well suited for users that are not necessarily tech-savvy.
Ayo Bamgbose, Assoc CIPD, MSc | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin that helps websites to rank higher in various search engines. I started using the plugin back in 2016, as it was a free tool recommended for beginners and said to be easy to get started with. Yoast is the only tool I currently use to help optimize blog post content, images, and for social integrations.
  • Free plan: for startups not yet ready to invest in an SEO tool, Yoast provides a free option with plenty of useful features.
  • Insights and analytics: Yoast provides a useful comprehensive analysis with the use of meta descriptions, keywords, and post length.
  • It's useful in helping to customize the text snippets when blog posts are shared from the website to Facebook and LinkedIn.
  • Lack of useful tutorials and tips on how to improve scores.
  • We've found that it frequently marks down scores due to passive voice assumptions, even though you might not have spoken with a passive voice.
  • I've found that at times it can slow down my site.
  • For it to truly help with SEO, you’ll need the advanced premium features.
The free Yoast SEO version is what I would only recommend to those interested in getting started with optimizing their website images and blog content.
For those that truly want to improve the visibility of their website in search engines, I would suggest an investment in the premium plan, as it offers plenty of integrations and features.
For those who create and embed video content on their website, the premium feature is a must, as you can SEO your videos with advanced add-ons with Yoast.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am personally using Yoast for promoting my personal website and my clients' sites. The SEO plugin (Yoast) is the tool I use to assure that Google and other search engines are detecting the keywords that I assign to a given site (either mine or a client's). I am a private web developer and offer services for SEO to clients. Yoast is the first plugin I began using many years ago for an individual client. When I saw the results that were showing in Google Analytics, I then used it for my site. As sites are developed, I have continued to provide the installation of Yoast, and I strongly encourage web clients to purchase the paid version in order to then have access to more tools within Yoast.
  • It has a user-friendly interface.
  • Directions for beginners to advanced users are provided.
  • My phrases and/or search terms are easily placed in the form during setup.
  • The installation is as simple as any other plugin, if not simpler.
  • It shows to slow down the sites I have used it on - so it is slow loading on the end-users part which could discourage them from using the site. It makes a WP site more bloated than it may already be.
  • The premium version is required for some of the simple items. I understand that the programmers have to be paid for the Premium, but more may use it if all or more of the basics were available to test it with.
  • A subscription payment is a bit much in my opinion. The option for support payments would work better, I think. I could get more clients to use the premium if that were the case.
  • Something that I have experienced is that other SEO techniques can't be used, as they often conflict with Yoast.
Yoast is one of the first of the main five plugins I advise WordPress clients to purchase. Within the recent six months of writing this review, I developed a WordPress site for an organization that is unique in its product offerings for physical health/fitness/rehabilitation, etc. The client was willing to pay extra for my SEO services, and I ultimately found this scenario to be a bit challenging because "physical fitness" and "personal trainer" are commonly used phrases that my client preferred. Yoast helped me in expediting the process of testing search terms, phrases, descriptions of the site and services, etc. I highly recommend this product to any that are trying to boost their site.
Jillyn Dillon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Yoast SEO in one way or another on nearly every site we build. It's a great SEO tool that is very simple to use and understand. As with so many things in life, it's easier and better to do search engine optimization as you go. Yoast SEO's stop-light rating system and easy to follow improvement suggestions make it ideal for non-expert users who want to write their own blog posts.
  • Easy to install and set up.
  • Easy to optimize posts and pages.
  • Simple to understand suggestions for improvement.
  • The free version is great, and there are even more benefits from the paid versions.
  • I can't think of a thing — we love Yoast!
For beginner to intermediate users, Yoast is tough to beat. They even offer free training to help users better understand why the suggestions improve search engine visibility. The installation and setup wizards are easy to follow too.
As with any plugin, occasionally conflicts occur. That's just the nature of using plugins from different developers. However, the issues we've experienced with Yoast have been few and far between — maybe three issues in more than six years across 70+ sites.
It's stable. It's useful. Install it!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin is being used as a marketing tool on our website. It reviews and "grades" pages and posts based on SEO and readability. It is a quick way to address SEO on pages.
  • This plugin is extremely easy to use. The interface is clean and simple. If you are at all familiar with the concepts of SEO, you shouldn't have a problem using this program.
  • With a simple toggle, this plugin will highlight areas within your text that need improvement. For example, if you write very long sentences, with a click of a button you can see which need attention.
  • The stoplight-type color coding is quick and easy to see how a page's SEO and readability are measured to industry standards.
  • As much as I like the highlighting of errors, as I fix one area I lose the highlight and have to scroll to the bottom and ask to show the highlights again.
The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin is a great overall tool for search engine optimization. If you are new to SEO this is a great start to search engine optimization. The program knows the standard rules and scans your pages to see if your content, images, URL, etc. reflect standard practice. Divided into what you're doing well and what needs improvement, you will start to see what the rules of SEO are. If you are familiar with SEO, this tool with the paid premium version opens a greater amount of control over the page's optimization.
Rachel Green | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In August 2018, Dyknow launched a brand new website using Wordpress. Wordpress has a variety of plugins, and our marketing team and SEO consultant swear by Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin. Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin allows our marketing team to easily optimize our website pages and blog posts for SEO favorability with the search engines. Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin takes the complexity out of SEO optimization for our marketing team, since it is plugged into Wordpress with recommendations and tips; our team saves time and produces a greater SEO impact with every page and blog created.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin is convenient. Since it is plugged into Wordpress itself, we don't have to go to another page or platform to ensure we are optimizing our new pages and posts.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin live scans your page templates, links, and copy when you are creating pages and posts in the backend. As a result, the plugin gives you live tips on how to further optimize your page or post health that you can easily adjust and apply in real-time prior to making the creative live.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin has great training resources. The onboarding process was seamless. The company's training resources make SEO, which is constantly changing and is not an easy topic to grasp, something that is easy to understand. When you understand how it works, you are more likely to put more effort into optimizing your pages.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin is really good at copy and link scanning and optimizing, however, I have not been able to find any assistance on image optimization on our pages and posts. That would be a good update!
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin is good at ranking pages and posts individually. I would like to see an overall dashboard of your entire website/blog's SEO health according to the software.
  • N/A
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin is well suited to help you optimize your website's page and blog copy and linking in Wordpress when being created. Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin provides you with a red, orange, or green ranking with tips on how to improve each pages SEO performance. Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin is not intended to be used after your page and post is public and live on the internet.
Linda Sasenick | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are an affiliate for a primarily digital product. Web presence is practically the only entry into the sales funnel, so building traffic is fundamental. We use Yoast WordPress SEO plugins for all our blogging, because it encourages "best practices" for SEO - good SEO plus thoughtful keyword selections are the keys to getting traffic to the site.
  • SEO coaching - best practices for SEO are always in flux. Yoast gives step by step guidance for APPROPRIATE use of keywords in text, headings, subheadings, titles, and images. Yoast also provides reminders for other elements - outbound and internal links, customized meta and the like.
  • Readability analysis - Whether readability is essential to SEO, I'm not sure, however, I do believe good writing will provide a better guest experience, which helps entry into the sales funnel. Yoast provides a variety of analytics on readability, such as use of subheadings, sentence length, passive voice, reading ease, etc. Great discipline in becoming a better writer, and hopefully improving SEO!
  • Integration - Yoast "plays nice" with other tools! You can integrate Yoast with Google Search Console and your social media for a better, more comprehensive view of your traffic, your site, and your audience.
  • Great for beginners and experts alike - even if you had to google "SEO," Yoast is for you! It's easy to set up and walks you through everything you can and should be doing. As you get more advanced, it's highly customizable -- well, there's settings for advanced customization, I'm not an SEO expert, so I haven't gone there yet!
  • SEO is complex, and Yoast can seem a little overwhelming just going through all the options available. It would be nice if there were some help with prioritization - "this is essential," "this will is useful, but may only marginally improve your reach," or some other priority generalization.
  • Over-reliance on Yoast can be detrimental to your traffic! It's not entirely their fault, but, it's easy to "fall asleep at the wheel," and let your Yoast dashboard become your sole SEO adviser. Well, like every product, there are sometimes bugs and issues which can affect rankings, so, you have to be aware and make sure you also independently check your results!
  • Keyword research integration would be great - I don't know if it's available in the premium package, but, I still use my google adwords to research appropriate keywords
I don't mind getting in the weeds, a bit, and, it is easy to spend a lot of time in the early part of the SEO learning curve, "in the weeds." Unless you already know what are the most essential elements for your application, it's easy to find yourself spending more time learning than doing.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins on our main website to help improve our SEO and to check-- whenever changes are made-- that our site is still all clear without errors.
  • Ease of operation -- Install the plug-in and follow their step-by-step instructions. It's really that easy.
  • Level of detail -- This plug-in will inform you when your page is not optimized, but also shows you the steps you need to correct the problems without any of the guesswork.
  • Plays well with WordPress -- I know this seems like a no-brainer, but it does not mess up your site. Yoast does a great job of making sure that their plug-in works correctly with the most current version of WordPress.
  • Can be a little too aggressive -- Sometimes you just don't need the level of detail that it recommends. And also sometimes even after completing their recommendations, it still kicks back errors.
  • The interface hasn't been updated in a while, so while it does work it is starting to look stale in comparison to similar products.
  • They could make it easier to change things site-wide.
Yoast is great for beginners like myself who know that they need to optimize their site for SEO but aren't sure how to get started or what to adjust. If you are an advanced user, you probably wouldn't like it very much (and probably wouldn't be using it anyway!) since it seems to do a good job at the basics, but lacks ways to adjust things on a more granular level. I am fine with that, but some may find that to be a deal breaker.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Yoast SEO in order to set header tags, meta descriptions, and more for all of our pages within WordPress.
  • Set header tags
  • Set meta descriptions
  • See recommended length and best practices for SEO
  • UI is a little clunky, but overall easy to use
Yoast SEO is perfect for companies using WordPress as their CMS that are interested in best practices for SEO, but maybe do not have the necessary resources to either outsource or to internally find talent. We have the ability to modify header tags, meta descriptions and more from every webpage we have on our site.
Liz Wade | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am a professional freelance photographer. As such, SEO is extremely important to my business. Since I don't have a storefront or physical presence, I need to be found online by potential customers. My website is powered by WordPress, so I chose Yoast SEO to accomplish the task of boosting my online presence.
  • The biggest plus to me is how user-friendly the plugin is. I'm not very proficient in the area of web design and SEO, so having a plugin that is so powerful yet so easy to use is important. The snippet previews which show how a post will appear in a search engine make content-creating much more effective.
  • Yoast helps identify technical issues within my website. Web design, even within the WordPress platform, is very complicated, and I would not be able to identify problems, such as with indexing, on my own. These problems are clearly shown in my WordPress dashboard, so I never miss them and always have the opportunity to correct them.
  • Keywords are one of the most important factors when it comes to being found online. Yoast guides me through my posts by checking my content against the keywords I'm using, reminding me to include these keywords in specific areas and to use them the proper amount of times. It makes post-creating so much easier and I have more confidence in my writing.
  • While Yoast is an important tool to use when writing posts, its guidelines shouldn't always be followed 100%, since it is, after all, a plugin and not a human. The green "go" lights can be misleading. I always try to trust my instincts when Yoast is encouraging me to word a phrase in a way that I know is not best. Yoast is a guide, not a science.
  • With Yoast, it is possible to fall victim to keyword stuffing. It wants me to use a keyword a certain number of times, but it doesn't account for variations of that keyword I've already written that would be recognized in Google, such as the plural form, for example. So even though I've used a keyword in various forms the proper number of times, Yoast might not be giving me the green light yet, so I might stuff in more of that keyword, ultimately to the detriment of my post.
  • My last complaint about Yoast is that the plugin does not keep up with Google, which is a huge problem since I use Yoast precisely to boost my website's presence within Google. And, when it doubt, I don't find that I can turn to Yoast support for help because their customer service is truly lacking.
Yoast can be a powerful and easy tool to use to help boost your website's presence online. It guides you in your writing and warns you about technical problems within your website. However, it can actually be detrimental if you follow Yoast's guidelines exactly and shy away from your instincts as a human reader. You should use Yoast as a guide, but do not tailor your posts precisely to achieve the plugin's green light.
Rachel Hensley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Yoast Plugin is the go-to SEO app for any WordPress website. As a blogger I have a self-hosted WordPress site, Yoast has been instrumental in getting my pages to rank. It's like an SEO checklist at your fingertips and the fact that there is a free version is amazing! I teach marketing classes and actually tell the business owners and bloggers in my classes to make sure they use this app.
  • Multiple Focus Keywords to choose from. I find it hard to only focus on one keyword and the paid version ensures you don't have to which is a nice bonus to this feature.
  • Social Previews do pretty well and gives insight in to how the post will look when shared.
  • Internal Linking, Even though I have been in marketing for 10 years I sometimes do forget to do internal linking and this app always reminds me!
  • Content insights sometimes misses the mark but I understand it a program so it can't truly analyze the data! I would suggest taking this portion with a grain of salt and trusting your vision for the page over the programs.
  • You can find a lot of what is offered here through other platforms but the fact that they have so much in one spot is what sets it apart.
  • Some may not enjoy the price especially when you can get a lot of the same things in the free version.
Yoast will work and is needed for any self-hosted WordPress website. It will only help the SEO if people adhere to the guidelines and changes it's recommending. It can work on any type of website, I especially love it with blogging because even if you are brand new to blogging your SEO will still be great by using this app.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Yoast SEO is an excellent Wordpress plugin that allows me to check the SEO of my blog post as I type. It is only being used by myself for personal use, but as we have acquired more clients who are blogging on Wordpress I will recommend this tool. It allows me to test readability and make sure I am linking enough relevant links to my posts.
  • Provides me with a readability score in the moment that allows me to edit my writing as I go.
  • I love the content optimization for multiple keywords, on the free version it was one which was really limiting
  • I like how it suggests links to other pages of my site as I type, so its easier for me to link
  • It's pretty expensive for a plug-in and not something a lot of our clients would invest in
  • I would prefer chat support to email support
  • It would be helpful if it could auto generate meta descriptions and titles
If you are trying to write blog posts to drive traffic and leads to your site, I would recommend using the Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins. If you have a very distinct writing style and that is important to your post, you may get frustrated using the plugin and you'll never get that green light!
Emily P | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use the Yoast WordPress plugin for multiple projects to facilitate the improvement of our SEO results. The plugin is used on the sites we create for ourselves as a company as well as the sites we use for our customers. We populate the keyword and readability information internally as well teaching our customers to use the tool.
  • Metadata - The plugin gives you an easy way to edit metadata.
  • Keywording - The premium plugin lets you add multiple keywords for SEO.
  • Redirects - The plugin automatically handles redirects of removed and renamed pages.
  • Social Display - The plugin lets you customize how you want a page to display when linked within social media.
  • It would be nice to be able to add keywords in the same box without creating new tabs for each keyword.
  • When using a framework the plugin doesn't always pick up on word count, readability, and other things that are on the page.
If you're using WordPress you should be using Yoast SEO. In my opinion, it is the best tool to get the job done. You get metadata, keywords, readability, and social media integration all in one place. It's included on the page/post editing tool so it's front and center where you're more likely to add the information right away rather than waiting.
James McQuillin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I run a small business in my town providing in-home computer lessons and technology support. I created my website using WordPress and I am not an SEO expert by any means. Yoast has been extremely helpful in helping me strategically write content, and organize URLs, headers, etc. to ensure I am visible in organic search results and it has paid off immensely.
  • Keyphrases are powerful so I can determine the main purpose of a page or post, and Yoast helps me write content that includes the keyphrase effectively without being excessive.
  • Yoast also helps with overall readability using their red/yellow/green light indicators. Even better are the detail explanations that help guide you to understand HOW and exactly WHAT you need to do to achieve the green light status (i.e. sentence length, passive voice, etc...).
  • Snippet preview is also great to be able to control what will appear in an organic search result so I can ensure it contains the most important and relevant information to a potential visitor.
  • There are times when I disagree with some of the readability suggestions but overall they are extremely helpful.
  • Nothing else comes to mind, Yoast honestly has been very helpful and works great!
Without all the guidance and tips that Yoast SEO provides, my websites local visibility would be much lower. I gain new clients from my website and it is critical I am found when certain keywords or keyphrases are searched online. Yoast has helped this to become a reality. Plus, I can always revise existing content or write new content and the scores/tips are updated dynamically as I write.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization currently uses the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins for enhancing SEO on our website. I am the website manager, so I am the person that directly downloaded it, installed it, and used it on every page of our website. It addresses the business problem of integrating keywords and tags on our website.
  • The area in which you edit your snippet and keyword is very easy to complete. The green/orange/red colors indicate whether it's good to go, needs improvements or has problems. Very intuitive.
  • The analysis area of the page goes into thorough detail of the problems/improvements/good results and has links in the descriptions that go to Yoast's SEO Blog on their website. It's a great tool for beginners to get a good grip on terms such as "meta description, outbound links, subheadings, SEO title, etc"
  • There's also a section that allows you to edit how the page will look if it's shared on Facebook or Twitter - really allowing you to dive deep into controlling how your website appears across social.
  • When viewing the list of pages on your website, Yoast displays the SEO Score and Readability Score by color. If you hover over the color, there is a short description of how you can improve it. I wish the description was just a little more detailed - or if the score is hovering just below green or orange, it would state "one more recommendation needed" or something to that effect.
  • I wish there was a discount option for Yoast SEO Premium for Non-profits - or at least a one month free trial to be able to pull reports and prove the value of the plugin to our Board that builds the budget.
I think that Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins is well suited for websites of any size. The free version is good for basic to intermediate websites, however, any website with 50+ pages should definitely consider paying for the premium version. Using it for redirects and the 24/7 assistance is worth the ~$8/month, in my opinion.
Joseph Condon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Yoast SEO Plugins on 4 of our ecommerce websites, all using Wordpress. A challenge with any website has been becoming visible within the search engines. While Wordpress makes it easy to get a site online, it is never easy to be found on search engines such as Google and Bing. Yoast has helped us to pinpoint SEO gaps in our website and fix them as we publish new posts and pages to our site.
  • Helps improve posts. What we love most is that is instantly analyzes each post and gives us feedback up to the second. We know what needs to be corrected before we even publish the post or page.
  • Suggests keywords to add to pages. Keywords are the most important part if you are trying to rank on Google. This is what people search for to find specific sites. If you have properly implemented your keyword within your content, you rank higher. Yoast points out when you are not using it enough and suggests that you add it if the page is lacking.
  • Helps keep meta tags updated. This is something we didn't know was so important until using Yoast. The plugin does a great job of helping us keep our meta tags correct on each page to accurately tell the search engines what content is on that page.
  • It could be more lightweight. We have noticed that things run a bit more slowly one we installed Yoast. We understand it offers a lot in the plugin, but it does seem to be quite bulky.
  • Premium version is needed to have advanced SEO settings. This is expected because the plugin is very useful and they need to make money. However, there are constant banners asking you to upgrade to premium (costs money) and you will need to do so if you intend to take full control of your Wordpress SEO. Some may not be able to afford this if just starting out.
Yoast is well suited for any website or small business trying to sell products or rank higher on search engines. Great content is important, but if SEO is poor, you won't rank. This plugin is probably not needed by anyone with a smaller presence that is looking to just have a personal blog that they share with a few people. There would be no need for the extra code bloat in that case.
Anthony Burke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use the Yoast SEO plug-in for WordPress almost every day. As a web content writer, business blogger, and de facto "editor in chief" for our agency, I use WordPress a lot an for a variety of content types. Yoast serves as a great checklist for on-page SEO. As you may know, there are many elements that go into on-page optimization. Without Yoast, it would be easy to occasionally forget one or two of them if I was in a hurry. Yoast provides a very visible red-yellow-green light icon that lets you know how well optimized your page is. Long story short, if you use WordPress, you should have the Yoast plug-in.
  • The traffic light icon serves as a visible signpost telling you, at a glance, how far along your optimization of a given page is.
  • The checklist offered educates users about which elements factor into SEO.
  • Yoast provides a Google Snippet editor so you can customize exactly how you want your SERP snippet to read, which is a big advantage.
  • Yoast also offers a readability score, which can serve as a reasonable guide for new writers.
  • Yoast's plug-in is great for on-page but does not provide insights into your ongoing SEO strategy, and how different pages on your site interact with one another.
  • The readability score feels a bit crude. I understand that it provides a nationally recognized readability standard, but as a (dare I say) expert writer with an extensive background in many styles, I sometimes disregard this score. Maybe Google prefers the readability standard to my own, but as it sometimes shoots down sentences with more sophisticated structures, I believe that I know better. Maybe I'm a fool, but sometimes a writer's just gotta write.
  • Offering keyword research and data would be nice. There is very little input about the quality of keyword you are choosing. If you are confident that you know your keywords without input, then this won't be a problem.
  • To my knowledge, Yoast does not offer a competitive analysis or track your SERP performance for you. Tools for on-page only.
If you regularly publish content on a WordPress site, Yoast SEO is simply a necessity. It works very well as a guide for on-page optimization. It holds your hand through editing all of your metadata and some of the things you might not think about if you are new to SEO. Landing pages, blog posts, and really any kind of web content benefit from the optimization tools provided by this plug-in.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin in our blogs for 4 countries, because we need to improve SEO. It's only used by my team (marketing). Using this plugin is usually easy, but sometimes it does not work well. We use the Free version. When I add the keyword for a post, it does not recognize this word in Yoast, so I'm trying to update the page, but nothing happens, I need to close the session and then log in to make it work.
  • Yoast SEO identifies what it is that you need to improve in the whole page, it is very easy because it shows it with colors to facilitate recognizing errors
  • Yoast SEO helps you to write an article correctly, indicating the limit of each paragraph
  • Yoast SEO is perfect to increase the organic traffic in your site
  • sometimes it takes a long time to recognize that everyone is being met
  • Yoast SEO sometimes does not recognize the images and links on the page
  • The limit in the title and the description is outdated with what Google recognizes
Use Yoast SEO to improve organic traffic, it's fine, but when you want to create a snippet it's better to use other techniques
Gwendolyn Kestrel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've used Yoast in most of my recent roles. If the company isn't already using it, it's at the top of my list to recommend. It's especially helpful with multiple contributors who don't have a good SEO foundation. Its intuitive interface guides SEO novices away from common mistakes and toward good practices.
  • The Yoast WordPress SEO plug-in makes managing your metadata very easy.
  • The free version is a great tool that enables you to easily put in focus keywords, meta titles, and meta descriptions.
  • The paid version enables you to automatically assess the viability of your page for your focus keywords.
  • The help features and tutorials don't always keep up with the changes to the interface, so following their guidance requires a moderate amount of interpretation.
I use the free version with my personal websites which include a general information site, an e-commerce site, and an author site. The paid version is great when working with multiple authors and having them put in the first draft of metadata. It heightens awareness and overall improves SEO. If most of your site is behind a log-in and password protected, you probably don't need this.
October 03, 2017

Improve your SEO

Alexis Correa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Searching for the best SEO we found this plug-in. It is excellent to configure your presence in the main search engines. We use it for our customers, they quickly learn how to configure it. In every update, they add more functions and facilities to achieve our positioning goals. The only problem is the high cost of all services.

  • Helps to improve the writing of my publications.
  • The look in the search engines.
  • Easy to position according to keywords.
  • Multiple keywords should be easier.
  • The regularly update. I have not had a bad experience.
  • Recommendations or suggestions in the titles and content.
It is used for any type of website. Commercial or personal, the purpose is to improve the positioning and make your site visible in search engines. And you can do it in a simple way, by acquiring this plug-in. If you don't want your website to be visible to users, in this scenario it is the least appropriate.
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