#1. Best For Optimizing Search Friendly Content

Your website includes the Yoast SEO plugin which is one of the best plugins when it comes to content analysis tools for search engine optimization. You can find Yoast’s content analyzer in a meta box on every page directly below the WordPres text editor.


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The Snippet Editor allows you to edit and preview how your content appears in the SERPs. It gives you the opportunity to customize your SEO title and rewrite your meta description which plays a significant role in boosting CTR.


To use the content analysis tool, input your focus keyword. Your website only includes the free version of the plugin so you can just input one keyword. If you'd like to add more, you can click add a keyword, and it will prompt you to upgrade


Once you specify your keyword, Yoast SEO will analyze your content against 12 SEO ‘best practices. For example, keyword density, readability and number of outbound links. It also looks at whether your keyword is in the SEO title, meta description, and first paragraph of your content.


Using a helpful ‘traffic light’ scoring system, it analyses everything to help you quickly identify the areas you can improve. Yoast SEO also displays an overall content score using the same traffic light system where the aim is green. This functionality guarantees your content won’t sink in the SERPs.


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#2.  The Ability To Use XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap makes it easier for Google to discover the pages on your site. If the search engines do not index your content, then whatever the SEO strategies you use, it won’t help you.


Yoast SEO offers built-in XML Sitemap functionality. It enables users to generate a sitemap which is automatically updated any time you publish a new post or page. Most of the time the XML Sitemaps feature will already be enabled but you can double check by navigating to "SEO", clicking on "features," then make sure “XML Sitemap” is set to "on". 


Once the Sitemap functionality is activated, Yoast SEO notifies the search engines every time you publish new content. So that your content, your images are also get indexed which means you can show up in Google Image searches.


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#3.  Yoast Is Built-In With Social Media

With Yoast SEO, you can tell Google the URLs of eight popular social networks by navigating to SEO  and then click on “Social”. You can integrate your website with two favorite social media tools namely Facebook Open Graph and Twitter Cards.


You can find social media features in the content analysis meta box also. Under “Social” tab, you can tailor the way your content appears on the social channels. You can edit the title, write a meta description and also upload a custom image.


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Free Yoast SEO Plugin Features

  • It provides all-around SEO functionality that you can tailor to your website’s needs.
  • It comes with a robust content analysis tool that helps you optimize every single post or page on your website.
  • It also offers Breadcrumb Navigation, open graph meta tags, built-in robots.txt, .htaccess editor. Breadcrumbs feature permits you to show readers exactly where they are in the structure of your blog.
  • Yoast SEO also offers some paid addon plugins available for niche sites with specific SEO needs. These addon plugins are Video SEO, Local SEO, News SEO.
  • Yoast SEO offers a traffic light system once you have saved a draft of your post. Green means that your SEO is excellent. Red means it is poor and changes are required, while orange means that you have one or two factors that still need some work.


Pros of Free Yoast SEO Plugin

  • Using the snippet preview, you can see how your post or page will look like in the search results, whether your title is too long or too short and whether your meta description makes sense in the context of a search result.
  • Yoast SEO eliminates a lot of duplicate content by excluding subpages of archives from being indexed.
  • You can add up to eight different social networks, so Google knows they belong to your site. Social platforms will understand what your content is about and which is the title, image, URL, description and more so they can display everything correctly when it is shared.
  • Yoast SEO will analyze your content for more than a dozen SEO best practices and tell you how you are doing for each of them with an easy-to-understand traffic light scoring system.
  • Yoast SEO can import settings from other websites and even other SEO plugins if you are making the switch. Of course, it can export them, too.


Cons of Free Yoast SEO Plugin

  • The basic Yoast SEO plugin comes with no support. You are not guaranteed an official response from Yoast team. For professional support, you will need to buy Yoast SEO premium.
  • The free version doesn’t offer much SEO benefits (such as usage of multiple keywords, internal link suggestions, etc. which are quite helpful for you to boost your SEO).