06 Dec Pros and Cons of using the Yoast SEO plugin

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular plugins on the market. It’s intuitive and packed with features that can help any site owner wrangle the complexities of SEO and start ranking their website. Of course, no plugin is perfect, so before you jump on the Yoast bandwagon, it’s a good idea to understand what it does really well and its weak points where you may need to supplement it.

The Pros of Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is stacked full of pros thanks to years in development and hundreds upon thousands of active downloads. These pros include the following.

Accessible and User-Friendly

Download and set it up in a matter of minutes, with a guided user interface that helps you get to where you need to be in no time. Extensive documentation is also around in case you have questions down the road, but you likely won’t have any issues finding things since it’s so well laid out. 

Easy Keyword Optimization

Yoast allows you to set the primary and secondary keywords for every piece and then the tool goes through your content for you, telling you when/if they appear, how many times, whether or not they’re in subheadings, and so on. Turning all the marks to “green” means you’ve properly used (and not underused or overused) your target keywords. 

Readability Analysis & Other Tool

Long, complex sentences can throw readers off and passive voice can further impact your content’s SEO. Yoast SEO will tell you about all of these aspects, highlighting long passages, grammar errors, and giving your writing an overall readability score. 

Built-In Proofreading

While this tool certainly won’t replace thorough editing with your own two eyes, it can help you identify some errors in your writing that might otherwise slip by. Since error-free writing is highly valued by readers, and directly reflects your value and trustworthiness as a brand, this is a helpfully added perk. 

The Cons of Yoast SEO

Like every plugin, Yoast SEO has some issues. These cons may warrant another plugin to fill in the gaps or just more due diligence on your end.

It Doesn’t Understand Intent or Context

Like every writing or SEO plugin these days, you have to remember one thing. This software isn’t capable of “reading” or even understanding your content as a human does. This could mean that Yoast says you’re underusing a keyword when, in reality, you’re using a few variations of it. That’s totally okay, especially if it’s required for proper grammar.

Grammar Errors Aren’t Always Errors

Just like all proofreading plugins, Yoast has a hard set of rules programmed in that it will tell users to follow, but in English, we often break rules for readability. Yoast doesn’t know when or how those rules should be broken, so it will always highlight it as an error. 

As such, you should double-check any grammar or readability errors it picks up. Read it from a subject mindset and think about whether it’s unclear or needs to be rephrased before you just go with what the plugin says. 

Getting More Out of Yoast

All of this in mind, there’s a reason why Yoast SEO reigns on as one of the best plugins for WordPress. So, consider the pros and cons, think about where you may need to fill in the gaps and make sure you read the documentation and follow the tutorials to make the most of this powerful tool.