Nowadays, nearly 90 percent of blogs are managed via WordPress. The main advantage of WordPress is its ability to adapt to any niche. Moreover, you can modify the look and feel of the blog using a wide range of free and paid themes. You can extend the blog with the help of several plugins directly from the dashboard. If you would like to gain maximum visibility, you need to pay special attention to Search Engine Optimization aka SEO. If you are a beginner, you should learn all the tips and techniques associated with SEO. However, you can easily apply SEO techniques on your WordPress SEO with the help of specialized plugins such as Yoast SEO. In this article, we will compare the features included with free and paid versions of Yoast SEO plugin.
Attract Visitors
The Yoast SEO is considered as the number one WordPress SEO plugin, which gives you more visitors from Google and Bing. Moreover, the plugin attracts more visitors from social media with a sharp increase in the reader’s engagement. You can optimize keywords, keyphrases, and synonyms with related keywords. With the help of Yoast SEO, you can provide the keyword you would like your post to rank for in the search results.
The plugin then performs a check on your content as to whether you are using the keywords appropriately. The concept is that you should make use of the keywords in the correct spots in an optimum way. You should not overuse the keyword several times. The Yoast SEO includes indicators to suggest the status. If the glow is Green, then your content is good.
While the Orange indicates less number of keywords on the content, the Red indicator infers that you have used excess keywords. The Yoast SEO Premium not only check for the keyword but also analyze the text on all variations of that word or phrase. The free version checks only for one keyword on the content and you can check out the complete review of yoast seo.
The paid version automatically optimizes keywords, keyphrases, synonyms including all word forms. The paid version enables you to add scheme.org data to make sure that Google, Pinterest, and other platforms know about what the page is above. You will be able to perform faster indexing coupled with rich results. The Yoast SEO 14.0 provides a revolutionary way of gathering data in WordPress, which enables you to enjoy faster, safer, and better experience.
The plugin automatically scans all the content on your blog and will issue warnings and alerts in case if they are not updated for 6 months. The purpose of this feature is to avoid outdated content on your blog. If you are working with the free version, you have to check the posts and pages manually. Moreover, you can add multiple keywords in the Premium version.
While the Yoast SEO paid version displays previews of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the free version only includes Google preview. The plugin automatically analyze the readability of the content and calculate the Flesch Reading Ease Score. You can configure a primary category for your post and identify the taxonomy for every single page on your blog.
You can eliminate duplicate content from the eyes of Google by configuring canonical URLs. The Yoast SEO is designed to work not only with the classic editor but also the block editor. The plugin properly configures the technical configurations even if you don’t have any knowledge about robots.txt, .htaccess files, and sitemaps. The company promptly issues updates to comply with the changing Google algorithm.
Intelligent Suggestions
The Yoast SEO Premium provides automated suggestions for links to other posts/pages as you compose the content. In case if you are working with the free version, you have to manually set the links. The premium version ships with content insights functionality with which the plugin fetches 5 words or phrases from the content and matches them with the chosen keyword. You can easily redirect old URLs to new URL to avoid 404 Not Found error.
You can export the focus keywords and SEO scores in CSV file format, which is not available with the free version. If you purchase the Yoast SEO Premium, you will receive one year access to 24/7 support directly from the product team. However, if you work with the free version, you can refer to the comprehensive documentation in the form of FAQs and knowledge base. As the name indicates, the Yoast SEO premium is ad-free. The free version will display ads related to the other products and services developed by the company.
The Yoast SEO premium is priced at $89 for one site with free updates and support for 12 months from the date of purchase. The free version is available directly from the WordPress plugin downloads dashboard. You can directly install and activate the plugin from within your WordPress dashboard.
Conclusion – Free or Paid?
If you are a beginner, you can test drive the Yoast SEO free bundle to experience the features and capabilities. You can Buy Now the Yoast SEO Premium version after you become familiar with the usage. The premium version will be useful if you are running a high traffic blog since it automates the work to a large extent with several features not available with the free version. The choice is yours. You have both free and paid version at your disposal. If you like the free version, then you will also love the features included with the Yoast SEO premium bundle. We highly recommend Yoast SEO if you would like to take your blog to the next level.
