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Technology · Add-ons

Yoast SEO

yoast.com
Open source

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin for search engine optimization. The plugin is free to download, and Premium adds real-time guidance and built-in AI.[1][2]

Optimize your WordPress site for search engines with Yoast SEO, the industry-leading SEO plugin. This comprehensive tool offers advanced features for content analysis, keyword optimization, and metadata management. Improve your site's visibility, boost organic traffic, and climb search engine rankings with Yoast SEO's user-friendly interface and powerful optimization tools.

Yoast SEO belongs toSEOWordPress pluginscategories.

Starting price

$118.80 a year for Premium, billed annually[1][2]

Free plugin

The core plugin is free to download[1]

Extra seats

$5 a month for each extra team seat[1]

Support

24/7 expert support on Premium[1][2]

230websites

use it — 9% of the 2,555 websites we scanned in the last 12 months

#1of 109

tools in its category seen in our scans (we recognize 293)

96public pages

on UptimeCard — open any of them to see how that site is doing

In short: a free starting point with a paid upgrade for guided SEO and AI tools. Watch the yearly billing and the cost of extra team seats.[2][1]

10.93% of all websites we track run Yoast SEO▲ 0.01 points since 20 Sep

Should you use Yoast SEO?

The 10-second version, from the vendor’s own pages and what we see in our scans

Yoast SEO fits if…

  • Your site runs on WordPress and you want guided on-page SEO[2]Premium checks each post in the WordPress editor.
  • Your writers need the same SEO checks on every post[1]Freelancers can write drafts without access to the site.

Look elsewhere if…

  • Your site is not on WordPress[2]The plugins are built for WordPress.
  • You want SEO tools on a monthly plan[2]Premium is sold as a yearly subscription.
Premium is billed once a year, and each extra team seat costs extra[2][1]
Some Premium AI features are in beta[2]

Products and plans

Yoast sells a free plugin and several paid products under the same name

Yoast SEO

This page

The free plugin, with the base SEO tools[2]

Yoast SEO Premium

Real-time guidance and built-in AI on one yearly subscription[1]

from $118.80 / year

Yoast WooCommerce SEO

Premium plus tools for WooCommerce stores[4][2]

Yoast SEO for Shopify

SEO for Shopify stores, with AI insights[1]

Yoast SEO Academy

Practical SEO training, from beginner to advanced[1]

Plans of Yoast SEO· Yoast SEO Premium, billed yearly, in US dollars as listed for the United States[1]

Yoast SEO Premium

$118.80/ year

Everything in the free plugin, plus guided SEO and AI tools

  • Real-time content analysis in the WordPress editor
  • Redirect Manager for broken links
  • Internal Linking Tool

Yoast WooCommerce SEO includes everything in Premium, plus tools for online stores[2]

Support and help for Yoast SEO

How the vendor says you can reach it, and the public help community

Premium support

24/7 expert support for Premium customers[1][2]

Plugin help

Help articles for each WordPress plugin[1]

Stack Overflow

282 questions[6]

[yoast] questions

Yoast SEO versions

The newest release, the series that still gets fixes, and what changed

Latest release

28.7[5]

How Yoast SEO sites protect themselves

Share of the 230 sites we scanned that run each protection

HSTS51% · 117 sites

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) informs browsers that the site should only be accessed using HTTPS

reCAPTCHA27% · 61 sites

reCAPTCHA is a free service from Google that helps protect websites from spam and abuse

Cloudflare Bot Management15% · 34 sites

Cloudflare bot management solution identifies and mitigates automated traffic to protect websites from bad bots

Protections add up, they do not replace each other: a site can run all of them.

What sites use Yoast SEO for

An estimate from UptimeCard's technology map of 84 public sites

Runs the whole site74 sites

abeta.co.uk · acumatica.com · advapacs.com

Runs the marketing site7 sites

adeptcloud.net · boltrics.com · clearlyip.com

Runs a shop or catalog3 sites

linxcommerce.com.br · multivende.com · tiendanube.com

Rough guide, not a measurement: each description is written automatically from the site’s technology stack and the site has not confirmed it. A site is counted once, in the first group its description fits (shop, help and docs, blog, marketing site; otherwise the whole site). Descriptions that only guess (“likely”, “may”) are left out.

At a glance

UptimeCard's own scans and tests of 2,555 websites · refreshed weekly

How Yoast SEO sites scoreout of 100 · hover or tap a score for details

50PerformanceLowaverage site: 5088AccessibilityGoodaverage site: 8982Best practicesGoodaverage site: 9392SEOGoodaverage site: 92

Page load time

Loads about as fast as the average site

Yoast SEO sites
4.4 s
All sites
4.3 s

Most Yoast SEO sites load in 3.5–6.1 s. Home page weight: 3.6 MB vs 3.3 MB for all sites. 88 public sites measured.

Where are they hosted?

Mostly Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services

  • Cloudflare28%
  • Amazon Web Services20%
  • Fastly10%
  • Google Cloud6%
  • Other35%
United States 41%Canada 32%Germany 4%

Who uses it?

Educational Resources sites use Yoast SEO 1.7× more than average

Technology and Software64%
Business Services15%
Educational Resources1.7× avg8%
Software as a Service (SaaS)5%

Share of 96 classified public sites. “× average” compares with all 961 public sites.

Browser-security check

35% of graded sites pass

8of 23 score B or better

Rates each site’s own security settings, not Yoast SEO. 23 public sites graded so far.

How Yoast SEO sites are built

Closest partners. The number says how many times more often the tool runs on Yoast SEO sites than on an average website. Hover a partner for its share of sites.

Yoast SEO Premium11×Contact Form 77×Site Kit7×Twitter Emoji (Twemoji)6×WP Rocket6×Elementor5×jQuery UI3×Font Awesome3×Swiper3×

Stacks we see most. Tools that tend to run together with Yoast SEO on the same websites. The percentage is the share of all 230 Yoast SEO sites that run the whole stack.

18 stacks · swipe, drag or use the arrows
#1

Yoast SEO + Varnish + WordPress Block Editor + Fastly

3.9%9 of 230 sites
#2

Yoast SEO + Bootstrap + Contact Form 7 + cdnjs

3.5%8 of 230 sites
#3

Yoast SEO + Site Kit + YouTube

4.3%10 of 230 sites
#4

Yoast SEO + WordPress Block Editor + Max Mega Menu

3.9%9 of 230 sites
#5

Yoast SEO + Bootstrap + WP Rocket

3.5%8 of 230 sites
#6

Yoast SEO + Contact Form 7 + WP Rocket

3%7 of 230 sites
#7

Yoast SEO + Bootstrap + WordPress Block Editor

3%7 of 230 sites
#8

Yoast SEO + Contact Form 7 + YouTube

3%7 of 230 sites
#9

Yoast SEO + Bootstrap + GSAP

3%7 of 230 sites
#10

Yoast SEO + Site Kit + Google Maps

3%7 of 230 sites
#11

Yoast SEO + Elementor + HubSpot WordPress plugin

3%7 of 230 sites
#12

Yoast SEO + Contact Form 7 + wpBakery

3%7 of 230 sites
#13

Yoast SEO + WP Rocket + Popup Maker

3%7 of 230 sites
#14

Yoast SEO + Elementor + WP Rocket + Hello Elementor

2.2%5 of 230 sites
#15

Yoast SEO + Elementor + WPML

2.6%6 of 230 sites
#16

Yoast SEO + Elementor + GSAP

2.6%6 of 230 sites
#17

Yoast SEO + Site Kit + GSAP

2.6%6 of 230 sites
#18

Yoast SEO + GSAP + Slider Revolution

2.6%6 of 230 sites

Usually installed alongside

The bigger the bubble, the more of the 230 Yoast SEO sites also run the tool. Colour shows what the tool does. Hover or tap a bubble for details.

Google Tag Manager79%Google Analytics79%Linkedin Insight Tag29%Facebook Pixel20%Yoast SEO Premium32%Elementor23%Contact Form 720%WP Rocket19%HubSpot19%DoubleClick Floodlight18%Linkedin Ads15%OneTrust16%
Tag managerAnalyticsSearch visibilityPage builderFormsSpeed and cachingMarketingAdvertisingCookie consent

Similar tools in its category

SEO: 293 tools known, 109 seen in our scans

RankMath SEO61 sitesAlternativeAhrefs22 sitesAlternativeSEOmatic13 sitesAlternativeElementor116 sitesUsed togetherWP Rocket81 sitesUsed togetherYoast SEO Premium73 sitesUsed togetherContact Form 770 sitesUsed together

How websites combine Yoast SEO with other tools

Relationships found on the websites that use it, from the same map status pages show.

Needs another tool 59Integrates with another 42Built on a platform 12Overlaps with another 11Complements another tool 8

Who is behind Yoast SEO

From its own pages and public records, with sources

Trademark held by

Yoast BV[4]

Based in Wijchen, The Netherlands · Yoast SEO since 2010[7][7]

Its story

  1. 2010

    In October 2010 the founder combined his separate SEO plugins into one WordPress plugin, WordPress SEO. It is the plugin now called Yoast SEO.[8]

  2. 2012

    In 2012 Yoast started earning money from its WordPress plugins and launched Video SEO. Until then the plugin had many users but no paying customers.[8]

  3. 2015

    Yoast SEO Academy launched in 2015 with its first online SEO course. It marked a shift from a one-person plugin brand toward training and a wider product line.[8]

  4. 2021

    Newfold Digital acquired Yoast in August 2021. The team, brand, headquarters and plugin stayed in place under a larger web-presence company.[8][9]

  5. 2025

    Premium now includes the former Local, Video and News SEO plugins[2]

Questions about Yoast SEO

Is Yoast SEO free?
The plugin is free to download. Premium is an optional yearly subscription with more tools.[1][2]
How is Premium billed?
Premium is billed once a year, and the prices on the pricing page exclude VAT.[2]
How many websites use Yoast SEO?
We found Yoast SEO on 230 of the 2,555 websites we scanned in the last 12 months (9%). 96 of them have a public status page.
What is Yoast SEO often used with?
Among the websites we scan, Yoast SEO is often found alongside Google Tag Manager (79.1% of its sites), Google Analytics (78.7% of its sites), Nginx (34.8% of its sites).
What are the alternatives to Yoast SEO?
Other seo tools we recognize include Elementor, WP Rocket, Yoast SEO Premium, Contact Form 7.

Is your website built with Yoast SEO?

UptimeCard checks it around the clock, tells you the minute it stops answering, and gives your visitors a status page.

Monitor my site freeCreate a status page