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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)
    9.6
    96%
  • 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 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

(1-25 of 38)
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Sorin Ciornei | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use Yoast on all my websites. www.academy.thereach.ai, www.thereach.ai and www.vividatelier.pl . Amazing insights, I can tailor the blog posts properly and understand how I can make my websites grow organically over time. Great tool and I think most people recommend it.
  • good insights
  • reliable information
  • trusted by many
  • Better tier plan
I write almost daily blog posts on my news website. A plugin like Yoast basically tells you what you need to improve if you hope that the article will rank organically on google: better title, better keywords, phrases, subtitle a ton of various things. What it can do better, and what other tools already do, is using Gen AI to suggest alternatives. Example: my choice of title is extremely bad for some reason, but give me 2-3 other alternatives that Yoast thinks will be better.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Yoast helps us to optimize posts and tell us where we are lacking. I can say that this plugin is best for SEO the best thing in Yoast is focus keyword through which you can optimize the post according to your target keyword.
  • On Page Optimization
  • Help to rank on SERP
  • Best Plugin to add meta tags
  • I think they have to add more schrma.org features so that use can target specific page for schema
Yoast suggested to me to add internal/external links to tell me the best opportunity to optimize content as per reading grade and last but not the least Yoast provides rank author pages as well.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Yoast SEO is best for SEO on page optimization it helps me to add schema like FAQs. One of the best parts of it is the updated version of Yoast. if you add FAQs by using the Yoast widget you don't need to add FAQs schema it will add automatically. Also, Yoast suggests the optimal meta tags limit so that you won't forget to optimize.
  • On Page Optimization
  • Allow to setup bulk meta tags
  • Yes, I have one major concern with Yoast Seo, I see that if I didn't update the plugin for a long time then it has created a breach and allowed bots to publish the bots website. I request the team please work on it.
It helps me to suggest the keyword density on the page. Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins provides me the reading score and many on-page things that help me to rank my content on the top of the page.
Emily Hammell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I utilized Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins when I managed our main website to assist in optimization for our local catering and event venue business. It helped me craft written content to appear higher in search results so we were able to reach our customers more efficiently, based on their search keywords. Mainly it was only me using the tool, as I was a dept of one, but it saved me a lot of time doing keyword research.
  • Easy to use
  • Understandable
  • Time saver
  • Phrasing suggestions
  • Competitor Comparison
  • Tutorials/Lessons
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!
Nahian Mahmud Shaikat | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I [have been] using Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins for the last few years to Optimize the Contents for search engine which ensures a better ranking in google and other popular search engine. Actually, it is the most popular and advanced SEO tool available in the market. Choice of target keywords and send a signal to the search engine.
  • Better Ranking in the Search Result
  • Target a particular keywords
  • Target related keywords
  • Add meta description
  • Although this tool is user friendly, i think there is scope of improving the color combination and visual outlook.
It is suitable for Wordpress platform rather than any other available platform like bogger. This plugin is suitable for beginner to advanced level users to rank a particular keyword in the search engine. For the free version, one target keyword can add but for the premium user, you can add multiple keywords which is the attractive section of this plugin.
Natalie C. Winslow | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin to help easily optimize our WordPress websites for SEO. We install it on all the websites we build, and we encourage all of our SEO clients to install the plugin on their WordPress sites. It makes optimizing metadata, adding nofollow attributes, and making sure your pages are optimized easier.
  • Metadata optimization
  • Optimizing for social sharing
  • Keyword optimization analysis
  • Could work better with Divi
  • Implementing automated internal linking would be nice
  • Easier to export/import from old websites and plugins
If someone needs to easily optimize their WordPress website for SEO, then I would encourage them to install Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin. If their website is used only for ads or similar, then it might not be necessary. Or, if they're not on WordPress, then this is irrelevant, since it's built for WordPress only.
Nabin Poudel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins are being used in our organization to quickly optimize posts and pages for various search engines and social media. With the bundle of plugins for SEO it is easy much easier to optimize video content, news posts, and woocommerce products. It provides a user-friendly interface to add meta keywords on any page and see its score with a preview from search engines result.
  • Optimize any post, page, or product with the best keywords
  • Get previews of sharing on social media and search engine result
  • Gives SEO and readability score and ways to improve
  • Generates clean XML sitemap
  • $199 for an annual subscription is quite expensive in the WordPress ecosystem
  • The plugins can integrate features to add rich snippets
  • The suggestions shown by the plugins are not applicable all the time
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins automatically configures metadata and open graph information required by search engines and social media. It is always best practice to use its plugins to quickly make any WordPress site search engine friendly. If any website has very high-quality engaging content, then it is not necessary to use its plugins as the content likely will rank in the search engine results without its SEO.
Andrew Davison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins mainly for analyzing our site pages, but it has also helped us to boost traffic and grow our search engine rank. The plug-in mostly helps by highlighting the main keywords on a page and making sure they are used in the correct manner. It’s really helpful for beginners because it not only ensures high SEO rankings, but also gives other valuable information like readability scores, keyword density and content length.
  • It's incredibly easy to create a well-optimized post for search engines and readers by showing you tips and how to improve your content in terms of keywords, focus keywords, readability, accessibility and length.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins automatically checks for spammy links that could harm the reputation of your site because it looks through the text on all posts as well as any media files you include on your site
  • It can check if all are images are labeled with both alt and title tags or which provides the reader with more details about what's going on in an image which is especially helpful for users who don't use sight reading software (a.k.a totally)
  • It seems noticeably slower than other plugins.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins imposes a penalty on sites for not having social shares, regardless of the size or fame of the site.
  • It really needs automatic boilerplate generation, so you don't have to manually include basic tags like title and description.
Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins is most suited for people who want to improve the rankings of pages on search engines. Specifically, it's best for people who have a lot of content (blog posts, product descriptions) and are using WordPress as their platform.

It can also be used by bloggers and internet marketers who don't really know how to properly optimize their own page content for better rankings in Google's algorithm. Yoast Webmaster Tools is really great too because its SEO tool will give you the exact information about what your website should have so that it ranks better.
February 26, 2020

It's Okay

Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company has a few websites that are off our platform and using WordPress, so as their SEO analyst I had to become familiar with the software. The SEM department of the company uses Yoast and quite honestly it becomes useless when we are trying to target a handful of focused keywords.
  • Creates a redirect when I change permalinks, something most other redirect plugins don’t do.
  • It gives internal link suggestions.
  • The internal link suggested aren't always great suggestions.
  • I don’t need the content insights feature telling me what words I use most on a page.
There are so many other software out there that give you so much more helpful information than Yoast SEO Plugins. If you're new to the digital scene this this is something that's great to start out with. But if you've been in the field for a while then Yoast can actually be really frustrating to use because you're smarter than the system.
NaveenKumar Namachivayam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Yoast fulfills the need of search engine optimization. It integrates with WordPress and quite easy to get started. It helps me to attract the organic traffic from the internet search engines like Google, Bing, etc. It also helps to keep structured and organized content throughout the blog. Search engine algorithm often changes, but with Yoast plugin, no need to worry it.
  • Keyword optimization.
  • Quick indexing.
  • Expensive.
  • Social media previews are limited.
For freelancers, bloggers, the free version of Yoast might be very useful. If you are a beginner, Yoast is a good plugin to get started with your search engine optimization. It gels with WordPress well and it comes with the wizard to set up and get started. You can also generate site map.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We had used the Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins for our company’s website. Our website is not very dynamic but a decent one which gives information about what we do - our product line. Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins helped in showcasing the info in the manner we needed. It is easy to use and not very expensive
  • Easy to use
  • Reasonable price
  • Flexibility
  • More choices
In any product-oriented industry, customers or the public will search based on the keywords or products, Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins helps website come in the search engine when the customer searches using those keywords. It specifically depends on the type of industry and the product line, based on my experience, one need to keep revisiting the SEO algorithms to make sure they are current.
David Hoffman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Because of regulations within our industry, we aren't allowed to do very much in terms of outbound marketing. That being said, a good portion of our new business relies solely on prospects finding us, becoming interested, and passing our pre-qualification checks. In addition, because our company name is fairly common, with some examples even operating within our industry, having good SEO practices in place equates to survival. Yoast is integrated within our Wordpress installation (managed by myself and accessed by one other user within marketing), and its automatic checks and ratings for page/content scoring have proven invaluable as we continue to create and organize educational content within the different verticals on our website and educational portal.
  • Content assistance - Focus keyword reports, content insights, and Yoast's active content checker have been incredibly helpful as we continue to produce new content and refresh old content.
  • Redirect manager and technical configuration - An organized and regularly-updated site structure is crucial for ensuring an effective behavior flow throughout our website and educational portal. Yoast helped us avoid crawler confusion by updating our link structure and removing orphan links, deleted pages, and content pages that had been moved and/or consolidated.
  • Conflicts with other plugins - Occasionally, Yoast is the number one enemy of site optimization plugins and has caused the site to crash a small handful of times when updates are mismatched. It's also fairly resource-heavy, which can present some issues for developers/admins looking for a lean Wordpress install.
Any company that has a web presence should not only be dedicated to and focused on SEO practices, but should also have a tool like Yoast in their arsenal. It's easy to set up (a few clicks), easy to manage, and the benefit it provides is worth far more than the price. Yoast is basically like an SEO consultant that works for free, and that's great for smaller businesses that don't always have the budget for dedicated help.
Jim Nelson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We migrated all our WordPress websites to using Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins to help improve SEO for all posts and pages. I host 1500+ blogs on the Tripawds multisite network and make the plugin available to all members who wish to implement SEO on their blogs. The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins scoring system allows us to optimize key phrases and content efficiently.
  • The Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins Score is beneficial for optimizing key phrases and content.
  • Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins Analysis and ranking provides expert direction for optimization.
  • Import of previous SEO plugin keywords did work as expected.
  • The Yoast Readability highlighting feature does not always work due to specific plugin conflicts.
I highly recommend Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins Premium for its ease of use and built-in rank scoring system for optimizing keyphrases and content. Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins is especially helpful for those with limited understanding of optimization thanks to its wizard interface and "green light" SEO score feature. I never rate any product a service as 10 out of 10 except in extreme cases of superior functionality and customer service.
Maddy Osman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Yoast on every website I build and the vast majority of the blogs I write for. Yoast makes it easy to ensure that you're doing everything in your power to optimize for a given keyword (or multiple keywords), as well as cover your bases regarding related onsite SEO best practices. If you have a WordPress blog, you need Yoast. Best of all, the basic plugin is completely free to use!
  • Useful readability checker with feedback.
  • User-friendly interface for editing meta data.
  • Readability checker could get more specific (like Grammarly).
  • It's hard to understand the difference between premium plugin offerings (like Yoast SEO Premium versus the WooCommerce SEO plugin).
If you have a WordPress website/blog, you really need some type of SEO plugin and Yoast is the best one on the market. If you're not optimizing for SEO, you're missing out on relevant organic traffic.
December 13, 2019

Easy breezy page editor

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SEO is a buzzword that's been around for a while. For many, it's this elusive mysterious thing, that businesses have heard of and should be doing, but many don't know how to implement. This is especially true, in my experience at small companies, that don't have a dedicated SEO specialist. Enter Yoast WordPress SEO. This plugin makes it easy to identify SEO problem spots on your website.
  • It is extremely easy to use. You don't have to be an SEO expert to make improvements to your site.
  • There are multiple price levels of service. This makes it affordable for businesses.
  • Yoast WordPress SEO plugin doesn't take formatting into consideration. The plugin often suggests that I don't have enough transition words in my text. With multiple paragraphs, text divided into columns taking that suggestion would read strangely.
If you are getting started with keyword and SEO research and writing, this is a great start. It checks every page, and leave you notice of what is good and what needs improvement. Even if you are not new to SEO this is a good program to use.
Christopher Boyd | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I implement Yoast as the de facto SEO plugin on various WordPress sites that I manage. Whereas it isn't necessarily the best SEO tool in any one area, it has proven to be the simplest to set up and for my non-technical clients to make use of. Overall, it serves as the best all-around SEO WordPress plugin. In most cases, I set it and forget it and only when new features come out or when a client wants to deploy an overall change to their SEO strategy do I even need to make changes to the plugin.
  • 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.
  • Some default options are the opposite of what is considered a "best practice".
  • The differences between the free tier and the pro tier are explained, but for non-technical users, it still isn't always clear.
For quick WordPress installations and configurations, Yoast is fast to set up and helps guide you through the common configuration options. It tries to be helpful whether you are coming at things from a technical or non-technical background. The emphasis on white hat SEO topics like improved content, keywords, descriptions, and titles is really appreciated by someone like me who doesn't utilize gray and black hat SEO tactics.
If you are an SEO expert, and you want finite control of each individual aspect of your site, Yoast, like most plugins, engines, tools, etc, hides a lot from you or gives you limited options. It really is meant for someone who wants to apply a general strategy to a whole site. That being said, you can manage Yoast per page on a WordPress site, but even then, I know some SEO experts prefer other tools that are meant for very specific purposes.
Overall, Yoast is the best plugin for SEO in WordPress when applied as a whole.
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.
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.
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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.
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!
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