Few business owners and marketers are SEO experts. Even without the expertise, they can still leverage the available SEO tools to make their websites rank highly. Yoast SEO is one such tool. It provides business owners and online marketers with everything they need to compete favourably in search results. Let’s review Yoast SEO Premium vs Free.
Considered one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress, Yoast has two versions; the free version and the Premium version. Here’s the ultimate Yoast SEO Premium vs Free Yoast plugin comparison.
Why Choose Yoast SEO?
Yoast is a WordPress plugin with a broad range of features designed to help you manage your site’s SEO. These features range from keyword optimization and internal linking to content management and readability analysis, and they all contribute to the site’s optimization.
A notable advantage of the plugin is that it allows you to work at a page level, specify your keywords, and monitor whether the content you’ve published matches the keywords you need. Moreover, it can check whether your content is readable and whether images have alt tags. With Yoast SEO, you can choose the free or premium version.
Free Yoast Plugin
The free version of the Yoast SEO plugin provides notable SEO functionality that can get tailored to suit your website’s needs. Its standout feature is the content analysis tool that allows you to optimize your web pages and individual posts for ranking purposes. Breadcrumb Navigation gets offered with Free Yoast SEO. So, when site visitors read your content, they can tell where they are in the blog’s structure.
Paid add-on plugins such as News SEO, Local SEO, and Video SEO are available for niche websites with definite SEO needs. Furthermore, the Yoast free version features a traffic light system to help you gauge the suitability of your content after saving a draft of a post you want to publish. Green implies that your SEO is satisfactory, red implies it’s poor and needs changes, whereas orange means one or two things need some work.
Free Yoast SEO Plugin Pros
- You can use the snippet preview to see how your posts or pages will appear in search results.
- You can embed up to eight social networks onto your website so search engines can know they belong to the site. Social platforms will also understand what your content is about and display images, descriptions, and URLs correctly whenever you share content.
- Yoast SEO free version helps you to eliminate duplicate content from your website by excluding subpages of archives getting indexed.
- The plugin can analyze your website content for over 12 SEO best practices and inform you how you’re performing for each of them.
- You can use the Yoast free version to import or export settings from other SEO plugins and websites.
Free Yoast SEO Plugin Cons
- You won’t get support from the Yoast team if you opt for the plugin’s free version. That only comes with the Yoast SEO premium version.
- The free version doesn’t offer significant SEO benefits like internal linking suggestions and usage of multiple keywords.
Yoast SEO Premium
This Yoast SEO version comes with all the features you’ll get with the free version and advanced features to help you manage your website’s SEO structure. With the Yoast SEO Premium version, you can do what the free version can, but in spaded. For instance, the free version allows one focus keyword, whereas the Premium version allows you to have several.
The ability to use several focus keywords in your content means you can reach a broader audience. Moreover, the free Yoast SEO version allows you to see a preview of your posts on Google, while the Premium version goes a step further by allowing previews on social media platforms. Thus, the upgraded version amplifies the capabilities of the free Yoast SEO version.
A notable feature of the Yoast Premium version is that you can conveniently change your individual posts’ meta descriptions and SEO titles for the tag, category, and author archive pages. The upgraded version can verify Yahoo Site Explorer, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Google Webmaster Tools.
Yoast SEO Premium Pros
- The tool gets regularly updated and has an extensive user community where you can find suggestions, guides, and tips for improving your SEO.
- Yoast SEO premium integrates features from notable plugins like the RSS footer and Robots Meta.
- Email support gets provided to premium users.
- The automatic internal linking allows you to build your site’s credibility.
- Numerous premium modules are provided to increase your site’s SEO visibility even more,
Yoast SEO Premium Cons
- There’s no redirect feature if you change a link.
- Website speed may reduce when all features get activated at once.
Yoast SEO Premium vs. Free Yoast: Which is Best?
When looking to use Yoast SEO to boost your website’s ranking, one question that will run through your mind is whether to use the free or premium version of the plugin. Despite its limited features, the free Yoast plugin is still a useful tool that you can leverage to boost your SEO. Nonetheless, you may need to do much of the work yourself due to the relatively limited amount of automation. The lack of live customer support is also a drawback.
Conversely, Yoast Premium costs $99 annually for one site and does more than what the free version offers. Its premium features allow your readers to digest your content faster, and search engines to find and rank your content higher. Thanks to the advanced functionality of the premium Yoast SEO version, it can help you optimize your content faster and more conveniently.
SEO Tools and other alternatives to Yoast SEO
- All in One SEO Pack: This plugin provides many of the same SEO features that Yoast offers, but without the premium add-ons. It also has a good customer support system in place and is relatively easy to use.
- SEOPress: This alternative to Yoast was created by a team of French developers, and it caters mainly to WordPress users. It allows you
- Moz Pro: One of the more popular SEO tools for WordPress, Moz Pro is designed to help you optimize your content quickly and easily. It provides keyword research, link building and other features to help you rank higher.
- SEOquake: A great alternative for those who want a comprehensive SEO toolkit in one place. It allows you to analyze any keyword or
- Rank Math SEO: A newcomer to the SEO game, Rank Math is quickly becoming a popular choice for WordPress users. It provides many of the same features as Yoast and other top-tier SEO plugins, with an easy-to-use interface.
- JetPack by WordPress.com: It provides an all-in-one security, analytics, optimization, and more solution.
- Ubersuggest: One of the most popular keyword research tools available, Ubersuggest allows you to identify profitable keywords to target in your content quickly.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool: An essential tool for any SEO professional, the Screaming Frog Spider Tool allows you to crawl entire websites and collect valuable data on site performance.
- Google Search Console: This free service from Google provides powerful insights into your website’s organic search traffic and performance.
- Ahrefs: A respected name in SEO, Ahrefs is a comprehensive suite of tools that offers everything from keyword research and link analysis to competitor comparisons and content optimization.
- SERPstat: This comprehensive SEO tool offers everything from keyword research to competitor analysis.
- SEMrush: This is an advanced SEO suite that combines powerful keyword research, competitive analysis and website optimization.
- Google Trends: Google Trends is a great way to identify trending topics and keywords that can help you create more engaging content.
Why using an SEO plugin is highly beneficial to your WordPress Website
SEO plugins offer a whole host of advantages to WordPress Website owners. These advantages include:
- Enhances the visibility of your website by enabling you to optimize titles, descriptions and tags for each page and post
- Automates many SEO processes such as creating an XML sitemap, optimizing images, and more
- Enables you to create XML sitemaps quickly and easily
- Provides valuable insights into the performance of your website on search engines
- Helps you monitor internal and external link status
- Allows you to track keyword rankings, page views, and other important metrics
Key Takeaways
It’s a no-brainer that you’ll only reach the target audience if your website is optimized. Nonetheless, investing in Yoast SEO and other tools can only do so much. You need a well-designed, visually stunning, and engaging website that creates a good first impression with your clients.
The WordPress website designers at Pixel Fish can help when you need such a website. We create websites that allow you to connect with your online audience and convert site visitors into loyal customers. We look forward to helping you create a customized website that suit’s your organization’s functionality needs. Contact us to get started with a new Pixel Fish website.
Other helpful SEO Tips and Advice
Best ways to use the Yoast SEO to optimise on-page content
- Optimising your website for voice search and getting ahead of the competition
- Making sure the content on your website matches what people are searching for
- Understanding how to effectively use keywords in page titles, meta descriptions, content body, and other areas of a website
- Creating effective internal links and making sure they don’t lead to 404s
Does Yoast SEO integrate with any other platforms?
Yes, Yoast SEO plugin integrates with Google Search Console, Google Ads, Facebook, Bing Webmaster Tools and several other platforms.
Can you start with the Free version of the Yoast plugin and then upgrade later?
Absolutely, you can start with the free version and upgrade whenever you need additional features. The Pro Version of Yoast SEO adds support for multiple keyword optimization, redirect manager, premium support, advanced XML Sitemaps and more.
Can I use Yoast to optimise my website for local search?
Yes, with the help of the Yoast SEO plugin, you can easily optimise your website for local searches. You can use it to create a geo-targeted XML sitemap, add location specific meta tags and keywords, set up structured data markup and more. This will help you get higher visibility in local search results.
Does Yoast have an easy-to-use interface?
Yes, Yoast has a very user-friendly interface that makes it easy to optimize your website for search engines. It provides suggestions and recommendations so you can quickly update your content and ensure the best possible optimization. Plus, the plugin is regularly updated with new features and bug fixes to help keep up with the ever-changing local search engine algorithms.
Can I use Yoast to improve my ranking?
Yes, by optimizing your website for local searches with the help of Yoast you can improve your rankings on the SERPs (search engine result pages). The plugin helps you create content that targets specific locations and gives you useful insights into how well your content is performing.
Do you need the pro version of use to use a secondary phrase?
Yes, with the pro version of Yoast you can use a second focus keyphrase to optimize your content for two phrases in one. This helps increase your chances of appearing higher in SERPs and improving your website’s visibility. The pro version also offers a premium support package that gives you priority access to technical support.
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