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Do you want to take your site’s SEO to the next level? Yoast SEO Premium can help you out! But there is also a free version of Yoast SEO. So, what exactly is the difference between the free version of Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Premium? How do these two compare? And is Yoast SEO Premium worth it? Let’s uncover the ten reasons why you should buy Yoast SEO Premium today!

Yoast SEO free vs premium: what is the difference?

Do you want to compare the main differences between Yoast SEO Free and Premium? This table will give you quick insights:

What are the benefits of Yoast SEO Premium?

For over fifteen years, Yoast SEO has provided small businesses, bloggers, marketers, and online and offline stores with almost everything they need to compete in the search results. Over the years, we made the plugin better and better — following feedback from users, through thorough research and insights from insiders at the search engines. Today, Yoast SEO is run by a team of passionate SEO experts and built by very talented developers.

While the free version of Yoast SEO gives you a lot of tools to help you do well in the search results, Yoast SEO Premium makes many tasks much easier. It saves precious time that you can invest in other ways. Yoast SEO Premium also gives you additional tools, like, for instance, Local SEO, AI features, internal linking suggestions, and the redirect manager. You can use all of these tools to build an impressive site structure. All of this helps make your site a great fit for users and search engines alike. As such, Yoast SEO Premium is a wise investment.

1: Yoast SEO Premium comes with amazing AI features

Yoast SEO Premium now offers AI-powered features that streamline your SEO tasks. With Yoast AI Generate, you can create engaging titles and meta descriptions effortlessly. Choose from multiple options or generate more until you find the perfect fit. Meanwhile, Yoast AI Optimize provides smart suggestions to enhance your existing content, ensuring SEO best practices are met with just a click. These tools integrate smoothly into your workflow, saving you time and effort while keeping your content search-engine friendly. Available for WordPress and Shopify, these features help you maintain control over your content’s final look and feel.

2: Yoast SEO Premium comes with all add-ons

Yoast SEO Premium now includes various separate add-ons, such as News, Video, and Local SEO, in one convenient package. This comprehensive suite enhances your optimization capabilities without needing additional purchases. However, the WooCommerce SEO add-on is not included and is available separately. Enjoy a streamlined experience to boost your site’s performance across different content types and media.

3: Yoast SEO Premium is a time-saver

One of the most important things you need to remember about SEO is that it is never done. There’s always more to do, better content to write, or fixes to make. Luckily, there’s a WordPress SEO plugin that’s glad to be of assistance. As you might know, Yoast SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of tool. You need to work with it, whether it’s improving your content or building your site structure. In the free version, you still need to do much of the work yourself. Yoast SEO Premium comes with a number of AI tools that can save you lots of time.

4: Use Yoast SEO in Google Docs

The Yoast SEO Google Docs add-on allows you to draft and optimize your SEO content directly within Google Docs. This tool is ideal for seamless collaboration with both internal teams and external partners. You can work on content, refine it, and ensure it aligns with SEO best practices, all without leaving your document. This efficiency streamlines your workflow and enhances team cooperation. Plus, Yoast SEO Premium includes one user seat for this add-on, typically valued at $5 per seat.

5: Makes doing site maintenance easier

If working on your site is turning into a day job, you might need some help! Premium makes site maintenance easier. For one, Premium comes with a stale cornerstone content finder that reminds you to update your most important content.

Another tool that helps you work on your pages is the redirect manager. Whenever you make changes to pages or URLs, this tool makes sure to add a redirect for you. All you have to do is say where the new URL needs to lead. With the redirect manager, you can also fix your 404 errors in no time. No developer necessary. It’s so helpful that 58% of Premium users praise the redirect manager as the best feature in Yoast SEO Premium!

6: Helpful tools to build a great site structure

Building a solid site structure is one of the quickest routes to success. Making your content easily accessible to users and search engines helps them both make sense of your site. Yoast SEO Premium comes with a number of tools that help you build relevant links that can build a solid foundation for your site structure. Our plugin comes with internal linking blocks, an orphaned content finder and a targeted internal linking suggestion tool.

With the internal linking suggestions, relevant content will automatically be suggested while you’re writing your new content. There’s no need to remember that all those posts are pages!

But don’t just take our word for it, here’s what Andrew Evans from Intellifluence says about the internal linking tool:

7: An advanced language analysis that makes writing more natural

Yoast SEO is famous for its SEO and readability analyses — a.k.a. the colored traffic lights. The feedback these analyses give you helps you produce a great piece of content that adheres to a range of SEO best practices. This works splendidly, but Premium makes this process a lot more natural and flexible.

Premium has a very smart feature called word forms support. This innovative language analysis looks not only at the exact match of the focus keyphrase you enter but also at all the grammatical forms of that word. If you use, for instance, “decoration”, we will find word forms like “decorated” and “decorates” in your text as well, just like Google does. The words don’t even have to be in the same order when your focus keyphrase consists of more than one word.

8: Use synonyms and related keyphrases in your text to make it richer

Search engines get smarter every day, and context is key in SEO. They use the context in which a keyword appears to determine what a text is about. Synonyms and related terms, therefore, are more important than ever. In the free version of Yoast SEO, you can only add a single focus keyphrase. The plugin uses this to help you optimize your post. Yoast SEO Premium has more tricks up its sleeve, making it a much smarter solution. What is that?

Well, you can add a number of synonyms and related keyphrases to your post. By using these, you can make your content come alive. The Premium analysis makes sure that you use these synonyms and related keyphrases correctly in your post. Awesome, right? You can even use the Semrush integration to gather data and trends about your related keyphrases. Premium users can add the related keyphrases Semrush uncovers for you to their post with a single mouse click.

9: Boost AI visibility while maintaining control

Yoast SEO introduces AI-focused features such as llms.txt and AI bot blockers to protect your site’s content and maintain data privacy. The llms.txt file helps AI tools understand your site’s structure and important content. Meanwhile, the AI bot blocker feature lets you safeguard your intellectual property with a simple toggle, preventing AI bots from scraping your content for training purposes. This ensures that your valuable information remains secure and under your control.

10: 24/7 access to our world-class support team

What if you run into issues with the plugin? It would be good if you could contact a real person to help you figure out what the problem is. Luckily, if you sign up for Yoast SEO Premium, you get just that: Premium support. Our helpful support staff is available around the clock to get you up and running in no time.

An incredible bonus: free access to Yoast SEO Academy

Every Yoast SEO Premium subscription comes with complimentary access to Yoast SEO Academy. This is a big deal. We don’t just provide you with the number one WordPress SEO plugin to help you do well in search engines — we also supply many hours of instructional material. We offer several of our courses free of charge to get you started with the basics. But when you sign up for Yoast SEO Premium, you get access to all our SEO courses! Learn about Yoast SEO, SEO copywriting, keyword research, structured data, ecommerce SEO, and many other topics related to SEO!

Invest in Yoast SEO Premium: it pays off!

You see, there are many good reasons to get a Yoast SEO Premium subscription today. A Premium subscription can save you lots of time and gives you access to incredible tools that make working on your site easier and more fun. Plus, you’ll get unrestricted access to Yoast SEO Academy for hundreds of hours of SEO training. And, of course, you get to contact our support team if you should ever run into a problem.

How much does Yoast SEO Premium cost?

You can buy Yoast SEO Premium for $118.80 excluding VAT per year, or €118.80/£118.80 per year, depending on where you are in the world. For this, you not only get Yoast SEO Premium, all the additional plugins like Local SEO and Video SEO, and its awesome tools, but you also get a year of support, updates, and access to all our Yoast SEO Academy courses. Check out all of our products here.

Get Yoast SEO Premium now!

Convinced? Make sure to grab your copy!

The post Yoast SEO free vs Premium: why upgrading is worth it appeared first on Yoast.

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Having great product pages is important for your sales. After all, it’s where people decide to click that buy button. Besides optimizing your product pages for user experience, you also want to make sure these pages work for your SEO. You might think this is obvious. That’s why we’ll show you a few less obvious elements of product page SEO in this post. And we’ll explain why it’s so important to take these things into account. Let’s go!

1. The basics of product page SEO

First things first: a product page on an online store is a page too. This means that all the SEO things that matter for your content pages matter for your product pages as well. Of course, there’s a lot more to product page SEO. But for now, this will be your basic optimization. Tip: If you offer not-so-exciting products on your site, you may want to read our post on SEO for boring products.

Let’s start with the basics.

A great title

Try to focus on the product name and include the manufacturer’s name, if applicable. In addition, if your product is a small part of a larger machine (screw, tube), for example, you should include the SKU as well. People might search for that specifically.

A proper and unique product description

While it might be tempting to use the same description as the product’s manufacturer, you really shouldn’t. That description might be found on hundreds of websites, which means it’s duplicate content and a sign of low quality for your website (to Google). Remember, you want to prevent duplicate content at all times!

Now, you might think: “But all my other content (content pages, category pages, blog) is unique!” However, if the content on hundreds of product pages isn’t unique, then the majority of your website’s content still won’t be up to par. So make time to create unique content! And if you need help, the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin comes with product-specific content and SEO analysis that helps you produce great product descriptions.

An inviting meta description

A product page usually contains a lot of general information, like the product’s dimensions or your company’s terms of service. To avoid Google using that unrelated text in a meta description, you want to add a meta description to your product pages. It’s arguably even more important than adding one to your content pages!

Next, try to come up with unique meta descriptions. This can be difficult sometimes. You might come up with a sort of template, where you only change the product name per product. That’s okay to start with. But ideally, all your meta descriptions should be unique. Yoast SEO has various AI features that will help you with this.

Pick a great and easy-to-remember URL

We recommend using the product name in the URL. However, keep it short and simple so that it is still readable for site visitors.

Add high-quality and well-optimized images with proper ALT text

Include the product name in at least the main product image. This will help you do better in visual search. Also, don’t forget video — if applicable.

Focus on your product page UX

Last but not least: UX, or user experience. This is an important step because it’s all about making your product pages as user-friendly as possible. Plus, it’s an important part of holistic SEO. There are many parts to UX, which is why we wrote a post with product page UX examples. Give it a read!

Read more: Write great product descriptions with WooCommerce SEO »

2. Add structured data for your products and get rich results

Structured data is an essential part of a modern SEO strategy. You simply can’t do without structured data for your product pages anymore, because they help your product page stand out. For example, there is a specific Product schema that helps you get highlighted search results, so-called rich results. These are great for your site’s visibility, and they can also increase your click-through rate! And if you mark up customers’ reviews with Review structured data, they will show up in the search results. Seeing those beautiful stars underneath a product page will convince people they should check out your site!

Another reason to add it is to manage customers’ expectations. Your visitors will know your price up front and that the product is still in stock. How’s that for user experience?

Search engines and AI/LLMs will understand your page better

Structured data is also important for your product page SEO because the major search engines came up with this markup, not the W3C consortium. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex agreed upon this markup, so they could identify product pages and all the product elements and characteristics more easily. Why? So they could a) understand these pages a lot better and b) show you rich snippets like this:

The Product schema tells the search engine more about the product. It could include characteristics like product description, manufacturer, brand, name, dimensions, and color, but also the SKU we mentioned earlier. The Offer schema includes more information on price and availability, like currency and stock. It can even include something called priceValidUntil to let search engines know that the price offer is for a limited time only.

Options to add structured data for product page SEO

Schema.org has a lot of options, but only a limited set of properties are supported by search engines. For instance, look at Google’s page on product page structured data to see what search engines expect in your code and what they can do with it.

This is why you want to add Schema.org data for product page SEO: It’s easier to recognize for Google, and it makes sure to include important extras in Google already. If you have a WooCommerce shop, our WooCommerce SEO plugin takes care of a lot of this stuff behind the scenes.

Keep reading: Rich results, structured data and Schema: a visual guide to help you understand »

3. Add real reviews

Reviews are important. In fact, 74% of consumers say that they check reviews on at least two sites before buying anything online or locally. Although not everyone trusts online reviews, many do, so they can be very helpful.

If you are a local company, online reviews are even more important. Most reviews tend to be extremely positive, but it might just be the negative reviews that give a better sense of what is going on with a company or product. In addition, getting awesome testimonials is another way of showing your business means business.

Try to get your customers to leave reviews, then show the reviews on your product page. Do you get a negative review? Contact the writer, find out what’s wrong, and try to mitigate the situation. Maybe they can turn their negative review into a positive one. Plus: You’ve gained new insights into your work.

If you’re not sure how to get those ratings and reviews, check out our blog post: how to get ratings and reviews for your business. And don’t forget to mark up your reviews and ratings with Review and Rating schema so search engines can pick them up and show rich results on the search results pages.

4. Make your product page lightning fast

Nobody enjoys waiting, especially when browsing on a mobile device. Many shoppers are now using their phones to make purchases, so speed on your product pages is crucial. Visitors expect instant access to content, and search engines reward that expectation. Compress images, implement responsive design, and streamline scripts to enhance load times. Regularly test your mobile layout to identify and fix problems before they impact your users. Prioritizing mobile performance not only satisfies your customers but also aligns with search engine preferences, potentially boosting your SEO rankings and increasing traffic.

Remember, a fast, mobile-friendly site is a win-win for everyone involved. To get you started, here’s a post about how to improve your Core Web Vital scores.

5. User test your product page

Looking at numbers in Google Analytics, Search Console, or other analytical tools can give you insight into how people find and interact with your page. These insights can help you improve the performance of a page even more. But there’s another way to ensure that your product page is as awesome as it can be: user testing. There are also many ways to get more value from site visitors with A/B testing.

How user testing can help you

Testers can find loads of issues for you, such as terrible use of images (including non-functioning galleries), bad handling of out-of-stock products, or inaccurate shipping and return information, which can lead to trust issues. Now, you might be thinking: Surely, my website doesn’t have those issues! But you’d be surprised.

In their Product Page UX research project, the Baymard Institute found that:

“The high-level benchmark results show that only 49% of e-commerce sites have an overall ‘decent’ or ‘good’ UX performance for their product pages, while 51% of sites have ‘mediocre’ or worse product page implementations. On the extreme ends of performance, only a couple of sites had a very ‘poor’ Product Page UX performance that failed to align with commonly observed user behavior in our large-scale PDP testing. This is a fortunate shift upward from 2021, which previously had 4% of sites with below ‘poor’ performances. At the other end of the scale, there aren’t any sites with an overall ‘Perfect’ or ‘“’State of the Art’ product page implementation (unchanged since 2021).

You can read this fascinating study on their Product Page UX site.

While you compare your product pages to external user research, don’t forget to do your own user testing! Doing proper research will give you eye-opening results that you probably wouldn’t have found yourself.

Bonus: Build trust and show people your authenticity

Getting a stranger to buy something on your site involves a lot of trust. Someone needs to know you are authentic before handing you their hard-earned money, right? Google puts a lot of emphasis on the element of trust — It’s all over their famous Search Quality Raters Guidelines. The search engine tries to evaluate trust and expertise by looking at online reviews, the accolades a site or its authors receive, and much more.

Brand perception in AI and LLMs

AI search engines and LLMs also assess these trust factors to shape how your brand is presented. They analyze reviews, schema, and overall credibility to produce an accurate portrayal. A trustworthy online presence can positively influence how these systems perceive and convey your brand to users.

This is why it’s so important that your About Us and Customer Service pages are in order. Make sure people can easily find your contact information, information about returns and shipping, payment, privacy, etc. This will build trust with your customers. So, don’t forget!

Social proof is another way to build trust with your customers. Adding social proof to your product pages can significantly influence buying decisions. Display customer reviews, testimonials, and ratings to build trust and demonstrate real-life experiences. Include trust badges, like security symbols or industry awards, to boost credibility. Encourage happy customers to share photos or videos of your products and showcase this content on your website. These elements help assure visitors that your products are both credible and valued by others.

Conclusion: Be serious about your product page SEO

If you’re serious about optimizing your product page, you shouldn’t focus on regular SEO and user experience alone. You’ll have to dig deeper into other aspects of your product pages. For instance, you could add the Product and Offer Schema, so Google can easily index all the details about your product and show these as rich results in the search results. In addition, you should make your product pages fast, add user reviews, and try to enhance your website’s trustworthiness. And don’t forget to test everything you do!

Need a helping hand? Be sure to check out our ecommerce SEO training course. Learn what ecommerce SEO entails, how to optimize your site, and boost your online presence. Want to get your products ranking in the shopping search results? We’ll tell you how. Start your free trial lesson today! Full access to Yoast SEO Academy is included in Yoast SEO Premium, which also includes all other plugins — including Local SEO for optimizing your performance in local search.

Check out our overview of product page must-haves

To help you stay on top of your product pages, we created a PDF that you can use to optimize your product pages. Most of what’s discussed in this blog post can be found in the PDF, plus more tips! Just click on the image to go to the PDF and download it.

Read on: 7 ways to improve product descriptions in your online store »

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