Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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…

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Yoast, the WordPress SEO plugin, has been widely used by various individuals and organizations to optimize their websites and improve …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

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
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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 28)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Yoast SEO Plugins is a major plugin on our website which has replaced an SEO freelancer who failed to provide a transparent service. We saw no ROI from his work. Now we do all SEO optimization ourselves and regret we had not installed a pro Yoast plugin earlier. Content marketing combined with Yoast plugin is the best combination for your website.
  • SEO recommendations for content
  • Good scoring system for every post
  • Pays attention both to optimizing text and images\video content
  • Some automatic features would be helpful
  • Before and after score
  • More tutorials
Yoast SEO plug-in is a must for WordPress websites. It is the best option to promote your site in search engines if you do not have funds for a SEO expert or you just have no time to learn how the SEO works. This plugin will guide you through the process. You just need to fill the fields and follow the recommendations
Justin McClelland | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Yoast helps us maximize the SEO efforts of our company blog and website. It takes what would normally be done with meta-tags and HTML and puts it in a very intuitive and easy-to-use format.
  • Intuitive
  • Alerts to help stay on top of meta data
  • Really good support
  • Sometimes it will break other plugins
  • Sometimes it breaks itself
  • Constantly needs updating
Yoast is great if you have a Wordpress Blog that is constantly being used to publish new content. In the SEO game, content must be 'fresh' as well as properly indexed. It won't help much if the website isn't updated frequently.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins in our content and digital development groups. The content team says "we can't work effectively without the SEO plugin". Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins provides a number of important features our writers rely on:
  1. Internal links to other content. We have over 40,000 posts and this feature makes it simple to link to relevant content.
  2. Readability analysis. Our writers require this to ensure their work is consistent and reads well.
  3. Overall SEO score. Our editors
The digital group relies on Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins for the following:
  1. Oversight of writers SEO tasks. The posts screen provides an overview of SEO scores of content as it's being produced.
  2. Yoast News plugin. This handles the publishing of content to Google News.
  3. Social media integration with Twitter and Facebook.
  4. Manage what types of content appears (and how) in search engines. Wordpress makes just about everything indexable and we use Yoast to tame some of that, especially custom post types.
  • Readability analysis is often overlooked but a poorly written article can turn visitors off. Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins helps with that to the extent we don't need a bunch of full-time editors.
  • Helps to build accurate meta data. Though not as important as it once was on its own, metadata is still important for Knowledge Graphing and Schema.org. Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins handles all of that without the need of developers.
  • The Insights section provides important data about content itself, including prominent words, internal links and link suggestions. Our writers rely on these features to provide the best content possible.
  • Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins does many things and does them well; however, there may be a need for a separate Schema.org plugin if you require finer control when it comes to metadata and which schemas you may want to use. Same applies to XML sitemaps.
  • In a recent upgrade (version 14), Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins added a new indexable feature that combined all metadata for objects on a site into a couple of new tables. For small to medium sites, this wasn't an issue. For larger sites (40,000 posts or more), it caused more problems than it solved to the extent we reverted to a previous version (13.5) and remained there until well after version 15 was released. Be aware that your database will grow more rapidly in size as a result.
  • We disabled the built-in XML sitemap generator as it caused excessive database usage when creating new maps. For now, we're using a different plugin for that function until the issue has been addressed with Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins.
For very small sites, the free version of Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins is sufficient. For small and medium sites, one should opt for the premium version. Not saying Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins doesn't work well on larger sites; it certainly does, but be advised there could be some performance headaches along the way. I really cannot think of a scenario where you wouldn't want to use Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins, but if you really don't care that much about SEO, there are a few alternatives that will provide SEO functions but without the depth of control available in Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins.
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.
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.
Oleksandr Torlo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The first time I encountered the problem of optimizing corporate website pages was when I was asked by partners to manage the process of redesign for website on WordPress. The site already had over 200 pages and I need to choose a solution to check and optimize the text on the pages. I usually used a different plugin, but this time I asked a SEO expert for advice and he recommended Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins to me. I was pleasantly surprised how this plugin made my work faster and I even performed site optimization ahead of schedule.
  • SEO rank scoring for pages
  • Auto generating meta
  • Automizated SEO
  • Auto generation still need to be improved
  • It would be great to show checklist for every page with problems
Imagine that you don't have an adequate budget for a qualified website optimizer, but there are people out there who can follow suit. So Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins is just for such a case. He does 90% of the work himself and tells you what to do and how to do it. You just need to show the assistant once what and how to do with the plugin, and you can be sure of the result.
But if you do not think and unconditionally apply everything that the plugin does, this may be an extreme that the search engine will not appreciate.
Ben Rubenstein | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Yoast for our marketing website, with the goal of making sure all our pages our structured optimally for search engines, and to flag any potential indexing issues. In particular, we use the snippet tool on individual pages to ensure that the right title and description shows for each page; we also use it to discourage search engine indexing across landing pages, or pages that are in development or for limited audiences only.
  • Intuitive interface that makes it clear what elements of a page/site you need to address for search engine optimization.
  • Very customizable - You can choose whether you want a setting to apply to an entire category or just a single page.
  • The readability feature is nice in theory, but I feel like it should adapt to the content/ audience focus of your site (or have the ability to manually set the desired level). I work on a site that is more advanced, and the flags for readability can be distracting.
  • It seems as though more and more features are being moved to the Premium version, which is understandable but can be frustrating. For example, it'd be nice to be able to manage robots.txt files directly in Yoast.
Yoast is the best SEO tool I've used for Wordpress. It's great for everyone from SEO beginners who just want to catch the low-hanging fruit, to more advanced/technical editors who appreciate things like breadcrumb customization and canonical URLs. The free version may be sufficient for most users, especially those teams who fall into the more novice category - there's definitely enough to make a difference without the cost.
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.
Dragan Nikolic | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Yoast WordPress SEO plugin is what we install on every WordPress website we maintain. It makes the websites SEO friendly and easy to configure in terms of titles, meta descriptions, visibility, Schema.org, robots.txt and sitemaps, taxonomies...which roughly translates to Onsite and Technical SEO.

It takes care of several key things that WordPress doesn't do well upon clean install.
  • Onsite SEO (titles, descriptions, content analysis...)
  • Technical SEO (breadcrumbs, robots, sitemaps, Schema.org)
  • UI (it doesn't use standard WordPress dashboard elements or design language and it should).
  • Marketing (it should slow down with ads).
Yoast WordPress SEO plugin fixes several key things when it comes to WordPress websites. It handles taxonomies and prevents duplicate content issue. It is good if you want to improve your content marketing as it analyzes the content and suggests improvements. It handles technical SEO issues in the background so your sitemaps and Schema.org markup is taken care of upon installation.

If you're looking for a solid SEO plugin, this is the one to have, but don't update it the second new releases comes out, because it can be buggy.

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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
Jeremy Hawes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Yoast WordPress SEO plugins for all our WordPress website clients who pay for our SEO and marketing services. The plugins give us control and insight over our website's meta data that is crucial for all the latest in SEO standards, which WordPress does not provide by default.
  • Provides insight into your pages/posts content as it relates to keywords that you wish to target.
  • Provides complete control over your title tag, meta description, OG/Twitter Card meta data, robots meta tag, and canonical tag.
  • Generates automated sitemap.xml files.
  • Connects with console tools (i.e. Google Search Console).
  • There are some UI improvements I think could be implemented to make the editing of the title and meta description tags easier to spot (it's very crucial to customize this per page/post).
I really can't think of a situation where the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins would not be useful and arguably the best go-to SEO tool for WordPress. I don't believe I manage a single WordPress website without these plugins.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We utilize the Yoast SEO plugin on every WordPres site we build and/or manage. This is a very quick and simple solution for high level SEO factors in regards to content and page structure.
  • Great for analyzing content and recommending improvements.
  • Excellent for implementing SEO friendly meta tags and page titles, with just a few clicks.
  • Quick analysis tool for general on-page optimization.
  • Some of the content recommendations are a bit vague.
  • More direction for implementing schema.
  • It would be great to include semantic content ideas, similar to SEMRush.
Yoast is a great tool for anyone managing a WordPress site. It simplifies the optimization process, but does not integrate more advanced strategies.
Seth Tucker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Yoast as a tool and guide to optimize our content pages for SEO. It helps us better understand how the content on the page, page title and descriptions align with our target keyword for the content.
  • Strengths: the plugin is super easy to use, and the color coding showing when things are good, medium (needs work), or bad. It makes it easy to sort through a list of posts and see which ones need improvement. It also makes it easy to ensure that new posts going live are focused on a keyword and are checking off the largest amount of the SEO checklist for an optimized article as can be. The plugin also: makes and publishes a sitemap to list in the Google Search Console to help maximize the indexing of your site, it automatically ads the rel="canonical" to each page, unless you specify otherwise, which is great it's one less thing to code into the theme. Yoast also adds the Organization schema to the site, which is nice for updating the Google Knowledge Graph data, but it's a fairly low-impact feature.
  • I would really like the Yoast plugin to add more of the Schema functionality to each page and post. Especially if it could add the JSON-LD formatting for blog posts and other page posts. Right now it's not as big of an impact on overall SEO performance, but as a built-in feature it would be great to have it site-wide before it becomes and absolutely critical element to have.
  • Weakness: it's easy to misunderstand and think that the Yoast plugin is "doing" SEO for you. That's a total misconception, the plugin is a guide to help manage your SEO for each page. The only thing the Yoast plugin does for you are the things listed in strengths.
I always recommend the Yoast plugin unless someone is a power user/professional SEO person. The reason being is because of its extreme simplicity. Most people are not tech savvy or very knowledgeable about SEO, which makes this plugin ideal. There are other plugins out there that can do a "better job" as far as technical performance goes, but for the average person, Yoast is easier to understand. In my opinion, it's the best for helping gauge how well the content is correctly geared for ranking. Which, at the end of the day, is the most important factor in getting organic traffic!
Return to navigation