Yoast SEO WordPress plugin is an easy-to-use SEO tool that a user-friendly interface and many beneficial features.
It has both a free version and a premium version. Although the premium Yoast SEO WordPress plugin comes with advanced features, the free one helps you if you don’t have a budget at the moment.
I’d strongly suggest giving Yoast SEO a try first with the free version to feel confident about making the purchase for the free one.
If you have a WordPress blog, Yoast is easily one of the must-have plugins. It makes it simpler to edit meta descriptions, set targeted keywords, manage sitemaps and more. You
In the premium plugin, you can customize what your page will look like on Facebook and Twitter. It gives you suggestions on internal linking as well. Let’s take a closer look at the features you get with the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.
Also Read: Check Backlinks in 2020 Using These Free/Paid Tools
Table Of Contents
Features of Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin
Free version
Get Readability and SEO analysis done for your targeted keyword
For each or post you publish on your blog, you can set a target keyword. Carry out thorough keyword research before choosing the target keyword. This is the keyword for which you want your post to rank in search results.
The Yoast SEO plugin will simultaneously work with you as you’re drafting the content.
Readability analysis and SEO analysis are the two major features you get in the free Yoast SEO plugin.
The colours of the smiley emoji vary from red to green. Red is the least good and green indicates the best score.
As you can see in the picture above, my targeted keyword is set to Yoast SEO WordPress. The readability analysis has a red sad emoji which shows that the readability score is not up to the mark.
Similarly, happy green emoji for SEO says that it has a very good score.
Readability is important not just because it helps people read and understand your content easily, but also because it affects your SEO.
When you click on the arrows placed in front of these, you will see a list of suggestions to improve your respective score.
Also Read: Keyword Research – Short, Medium and Long Tail Keywords In Simple Words
Premium Version
Additional optimization for related phrases
In the free Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, you can only set one targeted keyword. Whereas in the premium plugin, you can add related keywords too.
Optimizing for related keywords and phrases ensures that your content will reach a bigger audience. It improves your ranking in the related phrases in addition to the main keyword.
See the preview of your page in social media
You can see how your post will look like when you share it on Facebook or Twitter.
Check if the featured image is good enough to catch the viewer’s attention. If you don’t want to edit the social media preview for each post, you can create templates to shorten the process.
Get internal linking suggestions
When you do internal linking, it reduces the bounce rate because the reader moves from one post to another. Stays on your site for a longer time.
Internal linking also helps the search engines to understand the structure of your site. Internal links to related posts always help as if a reader is interested in reading the current post, chances are they’d be interested in having a look at the related posts too.
It helps pass the link juice. For instance, you have a page that ranks high in search results. So if you have internally linked other pages of your site in it, those pages will have a better chance at ranking higher as well.
Content insights
The content insights feature lists the five words or word combination that appear most frequently in your post.
This way you can check if the topic is clear enough throughout the content. The words which are occurring the most often should clearly highlight the subject of your page.
Also Read: 10 SEO Benefits of Internal Linking
Manage redirecting in a better way
We all sometimes delete a few pages. When people come back to this old URL usually they would see a 404 not found error displayed.
But with the redirect manager of the Yoast SEO plugin, you can redirect your readers to a new page that has information on the same topic. It is definitely better than the error message because at least they’re looking at something they might be interested in.
Every time that you delete a page or a post, the redirect manager will ask you what you want to do with it.
You can either make it point to another page that talks about the same topic or you can set it as REGEX redirects.
This means that a list of all the posts containing a specific term (which is set by you) will be displayed.
Also Read: How to Create & Edit Reusable Blocks in WordPress
1 year of 24/7 support
With the premium subscription you get a complete year with 24/7 support. You get this with every renewal.
Email them your queries and have them sorted by a team of professionals in no time.
How to install Yoast SEO on your WordPress Blog
In your WordPress Dashboard, go to plugins > add new.
Search for Yoast SEO and install the plugin on your WordPress blog.
When the installation is complete, activate the plugin. When it gets activated you will see a new SEO option appear on the menu at the left in your dashboard.
And that was it! The installation is complete. That was quite easy, right? Now heading on to setting it up.
If you have been using any other SEO plugin previously, you can import the settings of it to Yoast. Go to SEO> Tools> Import and Export. Click on Import from other SEO plugins option.
Simply tick on the box and hit import. On the other hand, if you were using older Yoast plugins such as RSS Footer, you should select the option Import from other plugins.
Read the complete review of Yoast SEO
