Should You Switch To Yoast? - Website Redesign Step 1.5

bykevinzshan

647 followers

Updated 4 years ago

Whoa, step 1.5? If you have read my post, "A Full Website Redesign Incoming - Slow Website?", you will know that I have laid out a 5-step plan focused on improving my website speed, engagement, and in the process, drive more traffic as well.

One of the first steps was to speed up my site primarily for mobile significantly, which I did and you can see it in this post: HUGE Website Speed Up And Improvement For Mobile!

But before moving directly onto step 2, which was to improve my current content, I made a slight detour. After being recommended to switch to the Yoast SEO plugin by Andrew (@android6706, Thank you by the way) and doing some research on the plugin, I made the switch and saw lots of benefits that helped my site out.

In this post, I would like to share some of those benefits and hopefully, inform you on whether you should switch or not.

Benefit #1: Going Even Faster

My website speed isn't perfect yet, and it could still continue to get better. After switching from the All-In-One SEO Plugin to Yoast, I saw minor speed improvements across the board.

Before:

After:

As you can see, there have been minor improvements made to most of the posts. Some did not change at all, but it is nice to see these improvements.

Of course, switching from AIO SEO to Yoast wouldn't fix all your speed problems immediately, so let's look at a few other benefits I got.

Benefit #2: SEO And Readibility Feedback

One of the features that people love from Yoast is that it gives you SEO and readibility feedback for your posts.

Although I haven't tested it out enough over a longer period of time, having Yoast certainly preps me up for step 2 of my redesign plan.

Now I can go through each post and look at some of Yoast's feedback as guidelines to what I should add or change in my posts.

If you are a beginner, however, do be careful when Yoast tells you to add more keywords. Do not keyword stuff! Try to add it in organically if you can.

I actually like the readability feedback more than the SEO feedback that Yoast gives.

It definitely helped me see a lot more places where I could improve my writing and make my posts easier to read.

Should You Switch To Yoast?

The All-In-One SEO plugin is definitely good, and honestly, you could just stick with it. In fact, I did some research and looked at multiple comparisons between these plugins to learn more.

The general consensus was that the All-In-One SEO plugin is great for professionals and has remained more stable for a longer period of time, while the Yoast plugin has more features and is more beginner friendly.

I myself will have to do some more long-term testing and see what works out better for me. That's why I purposely have one website installed with All-In-One and the other with Yoast.

In the end, you will have to test and see what you like. Every SEO plugin has its upsides and downsides and adhere better to certain people's needs.

So far, my experience with Yoast has been pretty good. Have you had any experience with Yoast? What are your thoughts?