Yoast is the most popular WordPress search engine optimization plugin. It has many features and several ads. The latest version of Yoast displays a button to buy the premium version of the plugin each time you create a post. It also displays links to the Yoast website pages in the content analysis interface displayed below the post editor.
The plugin shows a popup box when you click the “add synonym” or “add related keyphrase” link. See the below screenshot:
In addition to the advertisements, if you’re interested in one of the features of the premium version of Yoast, which costs $89/year and you found a new plugin that offers the same features free of cost or for half the price, you may use another plugin. Here are the top alternatives to the Yoast SEO plugin:
Best Yoast alternative SEO plugins for WordPress
Rank Math
RankMath has been built by MyThemeShop. It provides many features and doesn’t have annoying advertisements like Yoast. Rank Math shows keyword suggestions when you enter focus keywords. To use this feature, you must connect the plugin with your RankMath website account. The plugin can display the Google Search Console data in the WordPress dashboard and the number of internal/external links in a post on the post list page. It can automatically nofollow all external links and image file links on the website.
RankMath can calculate SEO scores for each post on your WordPress website and display the same. It can open all external links in a new tab of the browser. The plugin allows you to set up redirects. It can automatically set ALT Tags for images. The Rank Math plugin lets users deactivate the features they don’t want to use.
SEOPress
SEOPress is one one the best alternatives to Yoast, Rank Math, and other search engine optimization plugins you’ll find in the WordPress repository or elsewhere on the internet. It can find broken links on your website. It supports HTML sitemaps and has the option to add breadcrumbs to the pages/posts of a website. The plugin can remove useless embeds from the WordPress header. It supports multiple focus keywords. It can analyze the content of a page/post and display SEO issues in the content analysis interface below the pages/posts. This interface displays the outbound links, the number of words, images without alt tags, nofollow links in your post, etc.
SEOPress shows how your post will appear in the Google search index. It enables users to add the Google Analytics tracking code to their site and can display the analytics data in the WP dashboard. The SEOPress plugin can automatically set the ALT text for images. Its premium version, which costs just $39 for a year, lets users add schemas to the blog posts and WooCommerce pages. It also displays keyword suggestions when you’re creating a post. The plugin enables you to create and manage redirects.
All In One SEO Pack
AIO SEO is a good alternative to Yoast. In the late 2000s, it was the most popular SEO plugin. Ever since the Yoast plugin was published in the WordPress plugin repository, a lot of users of AIO SEO switched to Yoast. Since 2007, over 6 million people have installed and used this plugin. Right now, the plugin is active on around 2 million websites.
All In One SEO Pack has basic options. In addition to the basic features, AIO SEO Pack lets you:
- Increase the memory the WordPress CMS must use.
- Raise the PHP code execution time.
All In One SEO also allows you to create robots txt file. AIOSEO was acquired by the team behind OptinMonster. Its UI was revamped and advertisements to upgrade to the Pro/Premium version of the plugin were introduced.
The SEO Framework
The design of SEO Framework is similar to All In One SEO Pack but it has more options. Like AIOSP, it displays all important options on a single page. The SEO Framework plugin can add the <lastmod>, <priority> to the XML sitemap files. The plugin lets you customize the appearance of the sitemap and it can automatically ping Google or Bing whenever the sitemap has been updated or changed. It can add rel next/prev links to the site’s header. Although the SEO Framework plugin is easy to use, it has some drawbacks. For example, the focus keyword is a premium feature of this plugin. You cannot see the density of keywords. TSF is one of the simplest search engine optimization plugins.
Yoast alternatives: Common features:-
Autogenerate descriptions: The above plugins can automatically generate the meta description for the posts and pages. They create a description from the 1st paragraph of the article.
Noindex option: You can configure the above Yoast alternative SEO plugins to add meta robots noindex tag to the archive, author, search, tag, category, date pages of your website.
Separators: The plugins can add a separator followed by the website name to the title of the page/post.
Sitemap: Rank Math, TSF, All in one SP, and SEOPress can generate XML format sitemap.
Canonical links: The plugins can automatically insert a canonical link in the site header thereby preventing duplicate post/pages issues.
Open graph tags: If your site gets good traffic from social media sites, the open graph meta tags is an important feature for you. The tags make the social networking sites display the featured image and description of the post that the user has shared. The plugins I’ve shared in this article will add open graph tags to the pages of a website.
Final thoughts: If you’re unhappy with Yoast features or you’re annoyed with the ads displayed by the plugin, use one of the 4 SEO plugins I’ve shared above. Some of the search engine optimization plugins have more features than Yoast. Others have similar options and minimal ads.
