Item: Yoast
Rating: 10
Author: Ben Rubenstein

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Return on Investment

We've seen a steady rise in our organic search presence and ranking for key search terms - which is at least in part a result of optimization through Yoast - meaning for traffic and potential conversions.
I've been able to solve potential search engine issues without taking up time from our development team.

Alternatives Considered

I've looked at a few other SEO plugins, such as the Premium SEO Pack, WP Meta, and All in One SEO Pack, but I haven't found anything that has the same set of tools and simplified interface. The ease of use and out-of-the-box tools are what have me committed to using Yoast.

Support Rating

I haven't needed to use direct, one-on-one support, but the documentation/posts on the Yoast site have provided more than enough support for any issues I have come across so far. I have confidence that if I run into a problem or question, there will be an answer out there - if not from Yoast, then from one of the many other users of the plugin.

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?

Yes

Did implementation of Yoast go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Yoast again?

Yes

Other Software Used

WordStream Advisor, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Easy to use SEO tool for both novice and advanced users

Overall Satisfaction with Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins