Item: Yoast
Rating: 7
Author: Victoria Hoete-Dodd

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, Yoast SEO Premium is used to help make it easy to quickly make adjustments to blog articles before publishing to ensure they are as optimized as possible. The other great use is the simple redirect tool which automatically detects and creates when a URL has been changed - this is a great feature, particularly at times when you are doing multiple tasks and may forget to go back and set one up!

Pros and Cons

Readability - makes it easy for you to assess the reading level of your piece to ensure it is correct for your intended audience.
SEO tips - red/orange/green traffic light system to provide tips on what aspects need improving to be SEO-focussed.
Redirect tool - easy, automated detection and setup.

Internal link counter - tool failed with other plugin capability and the "help" desk haven't actually helped...
Customer service/support - only offered for those who pay for a subscription but even when you have one they aren't exactly helpful (in my experience).
SEO notifications - it would be great to be able to specify which pages you want these for as currently, we get hundreds for irrelevant pages.

Return on Investment

Unable to answer this question.

Alternatives Considered

Ahrefs Site Explorer and Majestic SEO

An affordable (free if you don't want or need the premium version) alternative to some of the other options! If you're running a simple site with minimal plugins that may cause conflict, then I feel Yoast SEO plugins are very beneficial. Their website has a lot of good articles covering SEO best practice tips etc too. I'd recommend sticking with the free overpaying for the premium as I have found little to no added benefit.

Support Rating

There are plenty of amazing articles published on their site, however, I don't rate their actual support team as being particularly helpful. I made multiple points of contact regarding the internal link counter not working and even though they began troubleshooting I think when it became too hard it was just forgotten about and so is still unresolved.

Key Insights

Do you think Yoast delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Yoast's feature set?

Yes

Did Yoast live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Yoast go as expected?

Would you buy Yoast again?

Other Software Used

MarketMuse, Agile CRM

Likelihood to Recommend

When the Internal link counter was working it was brilliant! Perhaps one of the features I utilized the most. It was a simple way to find orphaned posts and resolve that. However, the tool subsequently failed when the plugin was updated and I was told the problem was with other plugin capability and the "help" desk hasn't actually helped solve the issue. So - useful if it works!

A great, free SEO plugin option but no need to pay for premium

Overall Satisfaction with Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins