While WordPress is already a platform that’s relatively SEO-friendly on its own, adding a solid plugin can make your life so much easier and boost your SEO skills to the next level. With so many plugins available, it’s important to select the best SEO plugin for your website.
Yoast, the #1 WordPress SEO plugin, allows you to select a target keyword or keyphrase and optimize each page and post on your website for that keyword.
Once it’s installed, Yoast checks to see that you’ve used your selected keyword both enough times throughout your writing and in the correct and most important spots.
Yoast is the best SEO plugin available because it’s the most comprehensive — and even with all of those benefits, it’s free to use!
There is an (optional) premium version with extra benefits, but the core important features are all included in the free version. Yoast helps you to optimize your writing, titles, meta descriptions, and more. Let’s get into the details of why Yoast is the best SEO plugin you can add to your WordPress site.
Yoast is by far the most popular SEO plugin on WordPress, and for good reason. With around 2,000 reviews (with an average 4-out-of-5 star rating overall), Yoast is a consumer favorite for WordPress users.
Although there are literally hundreds of WordPress SEO plugins available for you to choose from, Yoast is the best SEO plugin because it is user-friendly. After selecting your keywords right in the WordPress and Yoast framework, you’re able to optimize your content with clear directions outlining what you should work to improve.
If you want to improve your SEO on your WordPress website, Yoast is the best SEO plugin that will allow you to create better, more cohesive content and optimize your site as a whole.
Related: 5 SEO Benefits (And Why You Want To Start NOW!)
The Yoast SEO plugin has a ton of vital and helpful features built into the free version, all designed to optimize your content. Two of the most distinctive features of the Yoast plugin are the page analysis tool and the XML Sitemaps functionality.
Here are some of the details about these two amazing features and how they will help revitalize SEO across your website.
In order to have a successful and optimized WordPress website, you have to know how to do page analysis. With the Yoast plugin, you’ll always be able to do page analysis with ease and be on the right track.
The first step in the page analysis tool is to set your focus keyword under the “General” tab, and then save or update your draft before moving on to the “Page Analysis” tab.
Once you’re there, Yoast is going to provide you with specific feedback about the ways in which your page is search engine friendly and what can be improved.
The plugin uses information like how frequently you’ve used your target keyword, whether you have added images or external links, the length of your content, and whether you’ve used that keyword before, to name a few.
Yoast is the best SEO plugin for the page analysis feature because it’s so clear and easy to see what you’ve done well and what you need to fix before hitting publish. There are red and green marks next to each feedback indicator along with specific feedback on what’s happening within the content. This makes it easy to optimize your content before publishing.
One of Yoast’s best features is how easy it makes sitemap management.
Once you enable XML sitemap functionality within the plugin, Yoast automatically generates a sitemap for you, updates as you create new content, and then pings to search engines each time the sitemap updates.
This makes Yoast an all-in-one sitemap management plugin, even just on the free version!
Within the XML sitemap section of the plugin, you can navigate through various tabs and make decisions about how specific you want your sitemap to be.
For example, you can toggle whether specific types of posts or post categories are included or not. All you have to do is check off the box next to what you don’t want to include, and then you’re ready to go with an automatic, easy-to-update sitemap. Another way to exclude specific posts is to just add post ID numbers within the “Excluded Posts” tab.
This functionality and user-friendly layout make Yoast the best SEO plugin for WordPress by far.
Although setting up an SEO plugin might sound overwhelming if you’re new to the world of SEO, Yoast has done a great job of making the plugin’s setup pretty easy.
Once you’ve installed the plugin on your site, all you have to do is open up the Configuration Wizard in the “General” tab, and the plugin will walk you through the process using clear step-by-step instructions!
When SEO plugins are difficult to install, it doesn’t bode well for the overall user experience or plugin functionality, especially if you’re a beginner.
Beyond the setup, Yoast has simplified the optimization steps for each page or post on your site. You’ll love the clear feedback and tips that Yoast provides for your WordPress site.
Yoast has become the best SEO plugin by creating a streamlined user experience and making SEO manageable for people of different experience levels.
When you want to optimize your content and really boost your SEO abilities, Yoast adds so much value to your WordPress site while being easy to understand.
Whether you’re new to the world of SEO or you’re looking to improve your sitemaps and simplify your process, Yoast makes optimized content feel attainable and gives you actionable steps you’ll be able to implement right away.
Welcome! My name is Glenneth and I live in beautiful East Tennessee. I wear many hats: CEO of The Visibility Method, SEO & Google Ads Expert, content creator, and more. I love technology, social media, and weight lifting. My favorite place to hang out is the hammock in my backyard. My favorite colors are pink and orange. My favorite team is the Vols. And I LOVE to get email so please drop me a note and say hi!
