How using Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress improves SEO? Yoast SEO is a plugin for WordPress and other platforms, that tries to simplify many aspects of SEO. When working in companies, with many users working on the same website, having detailed information about SEO factors while writing content is important. Yoast provides just that, dynamic information about keyword usage and readability that can help improve the user engagement of a webpage. When you add in the fact “there are meta title and meta description inputs on every webpage”, you start to see why this plugin is so popular for WordPress on page SEO.

Currently around 6.5 million websites on WordPress use their plugin for SEO. While this might seem like a sales pitch for Yoast, it’s really just a shout out to anyone NOT using Yoast. If you’re serious about SEO, Yoast is the plugin to use. The organization of SEO features and dedication to updates and new features makes even the free version of the plugin extremely valuable. There is a lot to optimize and configure for Yoast and knowledge of SEO will be needed, so make sure a professional SEO implements Yoast for your website to maximize SEO benefits.

Yoast Has A Free Version And A Paid Version

Yoast’s free and paid versions are very fair. You still get all the SEO features needed to rank a website with the free version, there is just more of a conscious effort needed, as nothing is automated. With the right skillset the free version can do just what search engines want.

Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress has two versions:

  • Free Version – This version is surprisingly not too different from the paid version. Of course nothing is automated, and no support information is provided other than the informative blog posts.
  • Paid Version – The paid version automates much of the important parts of SEO, like automatic 404 page error to 301 redirects and internal link suggestions. Also provides 24/7 support and no ads which is always desired. Export options are available as well for the paid version, allowing for ease of keyword tracking.

Yoast SEO Organizes SEO Features Together

Yoast SEO plugin provides the ability to control all those pesky WordPress pages from being indexed by search engines, only to be excluded later on. This will mess with indexing metrics and could cause unnecessary cause for alarm. Also if these extra sections are indexed, you could have keyword cannibalization issues. Even meta title and description catch all templates can be setup, so if a meta title or meta description is forgotten, the webpage will use the template to fill one in for you!

The ability to edit meta titles and meta descriptions in bulk in available for those SEOs who are a bit more savvy! Only 10 tags at a time, but it’s still better than waiting for each webpage to load to edit every single meta title. Search console can be linked up as well, to monitor 404s, and other crawl issues. And the training available for the paid version makes all these features and factors for SEO much more understandable for non SEOs.

Structured Data Is Connected Now In Update 11.0

Starting with version 11.0 of Yoast SEO plugin, structured data has been updated in a very exciting way! All structured data is now connected when using Yoast. Meaning when a website defines in yoast whether they are an organization or a person for schema and knowledge graph, all relating structured data will be linked up as a result. So if a person is selected, instead of having many schema markup tags that aren’t connected. Each markup is referencing the person’s social media accounts, and other variables that once was just in-conjunction with not apart of.

Are You Using Yoast SEO Plugin For WordPress Websites?

Contact SEOByMichael and schedule an SEO audit to figure out how Yoast SEO Plugin could help you. Already have Yoast? Great, let’s make sure it’s setup correctly!

Categories: WordPress SEO