If your website is built with Wordpress, you’re in luck. This free content management system (CMS) provides users with thousands of different plugins to enhance your Wordpress experience. In this video by SEO Sydney, we will look compare two of the most popular SEO plugins, Yoast and Google Analytics, and tell you which one of those you should make sure you’re using.
What is Yoast for Wordpress?
Yoast for Wordpress is a plugin which to date has been downloaded by over 135 million users. The plugin helps Wordpress users optimise their site content for the best SEO results. You can download it from the Yoast website – the basic version of the plugin is free! You can read more about Yoast for Wordpress here, or check out our article which gives an overview of Yoast’s capabilities.
How easy to use is Yoast?
Yoast is easy to use and fairly intuitive, making optimising your content doable even if you’ve never done SEO before. It helps you optimise content as you go with many useful options, such as choosing the focus keyword, optimising titles and improving readability of the copy. There is a free version available, which has a lot of useful functions so even if your budget is tight, you’ll still be able to use the most important functions.
However, Yoast plugin for Wordpress can slow down your website which can impact your SEO negatively.
Moreover, the Content Analysing Tool that free version of Yoast provides can lead to keyword stuffing which is a very bad SEO practice. Trying to get Yoast to approve all of your content can mean your copy reads robotic and spammy. Sometimes it’s better not to use the tool at all. Your site will still be able to rank without using Yoast, as long as you provide users with what they’re searching for.
Now, let’s have a look at Google Analytics Wordpress plugin.
This free plugin is designed to help users track and analyse their audience data. The great thing about Google Analytics in Wordpress is that it makes tracking your website traffic easier than using Google Analytics on its own. This is because the Wordpress plugin is a simplified version of the otherwise quite sophisticated tool.
How easy to use is Google Analytics?
Even though Google Analytics plugin allows you to keep track of who your users are and how they interact with your site, the plugin has its cons. Even though simple, using the plugin has no instant effect on your site’s SEO. You need to have at least a bit of knowledge in order to be able to understand what the data is telling you. If you don’t know what to do with the data Google Analytics is gathering, there’s not much point tracking it. If you are not too confident in using Google Analytics contact a professional SEO Agency.
Wrap up:
Yoast and Google Analytics Wordpress plugins can be really useful. However, depending on your needs and knowledge, you might benefit more from one than the other. If you’re a total SEO beginner who wants to optimise their website’s content, Yoast will be a good place to start. If you’re a bit more knowledgeable and want to gather insights to implement more sophisticated strategies, using Google Analytics is a good step forward.
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