Yoast SEO plugin features and benefits
Optimize for keywords, keyphrases and synonyms, related keywords and all word forms
In Yoast SEO you can enter the keyword or keyphrase you’d like your post or page to rank for in the search results. We then run a check on your content to check whether you’re using the keywords often enough – but not too often – and in the right spots. In Yoast SEO Premium, we take this one major step further. We will not only check for the keyword or keyphrase you enter, but we will analyze your text on all variations of that word or phrase.
If the keyphrase is “room decorating ideas” and the synonym is “apartment decorating ideas” all the possible word forms of each word are taken into account: ‘apartments’, ‘rooms’, ‘room’s’, ‘decorate’, ‘decorates’, ‘decorated’, ‘idea’, etc. This way, you are truly optimizing your text. With this addition in Yoast SEO Premium, we can guarantee that no other WordPress plugin comes closer to how Google will see your text*!
*Word forms are available in English, Dutch, German, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic and Indonesian. We are constantly working on perfecting this for all available languages!
Optimize for related keywords as well
– Premium only
In the free version, you can only set 1 focus keyword or keyphrase. That means you’ll have to choose what exactly to optimize for. In Yoast SEO Premium, you have the option to add more related keywords. This means, that when you want to optimize for pen, you can also optimize for paper in the same text. You will be able to reach a broader audience because of it. In both versions, Yoast SEO doesn’t only help you boost your ranking in the search results, but also your morale! 
Internal linking suggestions – Premium only
Internal linking is extremely important because it helps search engines to understand your site structure. But adding links by hand is slow, tedious and downright annoying. With the internal linking feature in Yoast SEO Premium, that’s a thing of the past. This feature analyzes your text and suggests links to related posts – as you write. Taking all the hassle out of internal linking. Yeah, we’re pretty happy about it too.
Internal linking blocks – Premium only
Having a clear site structure and proper internal links is crucial for your site’s usability, findability, and leads to a better understanding of your site by Google. The Yoast Internal Linking blocks make internal linking easy as ABC. By using the different smart Internal Linking blocks, you’ll be able to create a (hierarchical) structure in no time! Use the Subpages block to show the underlying pages of a page, the Siblings block to show the siblings of a page and the Related links block to add all the links Yoast SEO Premium suggests to your post.
Tell Google exactly what your page is about
By adding schema.org code to your pages in a new and innovative way, we are able to improve how Google, Pinterest and other platforms understand what your page is about. With Yoast SEO, you are now able to tell Google that your WebPage is an Article made by an Organization, and other combinations like that. This is the most convenient way for search engines to retrieve that information, and at this moment, Yoast is the only product or plugin offering this information this way! Others just tell Google it’s a webpage, an article, and that there’s a brand, without connecting it all together. This leaves a lot for Google to figure out itself. Only we tell the full story.
If your website is about yourself (a Person), we’ll tell Google all the details you want Google to know, and also add your social profiles and more via that same schema.org data. This will definitely enhance your personal Knowledge Panel in Google and show these social profiles there as well, increasing your click-through chances due to that complete profile. This unique way of adding schema to your website will also connect with the schema.org data in our Local, Video or WooCommerce plugins, to make it all stunningly effective!
Preview of your page in Google
Thanks to the snippet editor, you can see through the eyes of the Google user: what will your post or page look like in the search results? And on mobile screens? Would you click a link like that? In the free version, you can only preview your link in Google, not in Facebook or Twitter.
Preview of your page in social media – Premium only
Check what your page will look like if you share it on Facebook or Twitter. Do the title fit and the image match? Will it stand out? If you want people to click, your social media shares have to look the part. If you don’t want to think about that for every single post, just set a template. The Yoast SEO WordPress plugin allows you to set those for all types of pages. 
Readability check: increase the chances that people actually read your page
Online readers don’t read – they scan. Just like you are probably doing right now. So you should write short sentences, add subheadings and use connecting words. Do you think that’s a lot harder than it sounds? No worries. Yoast SEO will tell you exactly what to do, based on scientific research on readability, such as the Flesch Reading Ease score.
Full control over your breadcrumbs
Your breadcrumb can get messy because of several reasons. Some posts may be listed in several categories and appear with different breadcrumbs, for example. With Yoast SEO you can set a primary category for your post, and determine the taxonomy for every single page on your WordPress website.
No duplicate content: avoid confusing Google
Your website can show the same content on various URLs, which might confuse Google: this is called a duplicate content issue. Yoast SEO solves this by letting you indicate one URL as the original one – what techies like to call a canonical link. That way, Yoast SEO makes sure that your content is always found under the URL you want it to be found under. Simple.
Working in every WordPress editor
If you are an early-adapter of the Gutenberg editor, Yoast SEO will guide you in optimizing your posts. If you choose to use the classic editor, we’ll help you to improve your posts. No matter how you like to write your posts or pages in WordPress, we’ve got you covered.
Technical stuff in the background
Search engine robots crawl the web and create an index. And it doesn’t hurt to help them a bit. Yoast SEO rolls out the red carpet for the search bots, making it super easy to crawl your site and find everything. Basically, the WordPress plugin takes care of all the technical stuff for you. But hey, if technical tweaking is your thing – more power to you. With Yoast SEO, you can edit your robots.txt and .htaccess files, clean up your URLs and generate and update your sitemaps.
Content insights – Premium only
Our Insights functionality lists the 5 words or word combinations that appear most often on your page. That way, you can check if the topics and keywords you’d like to rank for in Google, Bing and Yahoo are in line with what you’re actually writing about. This is a Premium feature. In the free version, you’ll have to do your own content analysis, we’re afraid. Currently, this feature is only available in selected languages.
Redirect manager: your visitors don’t get stuck on a 404 Not Found page – Premium only
We all have to delete pages at some point, but when that old URL gets visitors, they bump into a 404 Not Found error. Aaaargh! To avoid this, you can redirect them to a new page with relevant information. It’s important to do this systematically to keep your website healthy. The Redirect manager allows you to do just that: after deleting a post or page, the plugin will ask you what to do with the old URL. You can also go to the menu ‘Redirects’ to see and update all your redirected pages. And you can even set ‘REGEX redirects’ to indicate that all URLs containing a certain word or expression should redirect to the same page.
Focus keyword export – Premium only
You no longer need to click around to find out what you should optimize next. In Yoast SEO Premium, you can download an overview of all the focus keywords you’ve used so far and of the pages that need more SEO care. You get to choose what data you’d like to see – keywords, URL, readability score and/or title – and download your overview as a CSV file. And yes, this works for content with multiple focus keywords as well.
Always updated for Google’s algorithm
You might have heard about Google Panda and Google Penguin – two major updates to Google’s search algorithm. Google also makes minor changes to its algorithm 500-600 times a year. We update the Yoast SEO plugin every 2 weeks. That way you’re sure that your website is optimized for Google’s most recent version of its algorithm. Updates and upgrades on our Premium plugin are only available with a valid subscription.
1 year of 24/7 support – Premium only
Upgrading to Yoast SEO Premium (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast Premium) gives you a full year access to our wonderful and knowledgeable support team. You can email them your questions about the use of the plugin or your problems in setting it up and they’ll assist you! You can always choose to renew your subscription to keep getting the 24/7 support. Every renewal gives you another year of free support. 
Ad-free – Premium only
As soon as you install Yoast SEO Premium, you will no longer see any ads in your WordPress plugin. Unless you love seeing the Yoast team in your right-hand column every day, of course. We can’t blame you!