IMWZ works with both Yoast SEO and the SEO Framework. Both WordPress SEO Plugins are solid. But let’s do a Yoast SEO vs SEO Framework post here and show you what plugin does what best and worst according to us shall we?

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO or WordPress SEO seems to be the most famous WordPress SEO plugin out there and it has 5+ million active installations. It was the first SEO plugin IMWZ has used and we still use it for multiple client sites as well as this website though we are considering a migration to the SEO Framework for ours.

Readability and Yoast

Yoast SEO checks your content for markers that indicate solid content. This does not mean it will help you patch your crappy writing skills but it will tell you some of the key indicators whether you are on the right track or not.

It basically checks for the following:

• Passive voice – never good to use and better to use the active voice to entice readers
• Repetition – whether you start sentences the same way too often or not.
• Flesch Reading Ease – Whether your text is easy to read based on the Flesch Reading Ease formula
• Paragraph length – whether paragraphs are too long or not – not clear what too long is though really..
• Sentence Length – whether too many sentences have more than 20 words which worsen the reading of them

Keywords and Yoast SEO

Based on the keyword(s) or longtail keyword you enter Yoast will calculate your SEO.

It will check:

• keyword density in your content
• the meta description for keywords,
• internal linking
• SEO title lenght
• outbound links – some to authoritative sites is good
• minimum 300 words – though we would dispute this
• duplicate usage of keywords chosen which would not be good
• images presence – some are recommended

Yoast SEO & Social Media

When you want to setup your display for Facebook or Twitter differently using a different:

• title
• body content
• image

Yoast’s got your back. You can do this using the sharing tab. And with premium you even have previews and Pinterest. Not that we care much about Pinterest down here..

To be honest we don’t use this tab much and neither do we use changes using the SEO Framework tab. That is because we use other tools for Social Media management such as Buffer.

Advantages of Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the ideal SEO plugin for beginners although intermediate and advanced users can benefit from it. Why do we say this? Well because it gives a wonderful presentation of what is OK with your content and not. It also tells you how your keyword(s) are represented in your article. You even get a score for readability and SEO. It feels like you are being guided along to solid content and good seo practices. We really enjoyed that in the beginning as we started out our SEO and WordPress journey.

Disadvantages of Yoast SEO

There were a few things we did notice after a while. A lot of the suggestions are just guidelines and are not always correct. If you follow them to strictly sometimes you butcher beautiful content. Three hundred or more words might work most of the time, but sometimes a short and sweet post will do wonders. Sometimes content is difficult to read… because the topic is hard.

The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework has become more and more our to go to WordPress SEO plugin for reasons we will tell you down the line. Now, how does the SEO Framework work? Well you install it and activate it like any other plugin of course. Duh! Now as soon as this is done the magic starts.

SEO Framework & Automatic Generation SEO Data

The SEO Framework will generate the description and SEO title for you. No need to do that.

It also allows for a custom social image when need be. In general the featured images should do just fine though. For this see the social tab under Post SEO Settings:

SEO Framework & Post & Page Key SEO Indicators

Also, on the post or page listing it will show you whether the following are correct:

• title length
• description length
• indexed properly
• page links followed
• archiving allowed by search engines
• post is not redirecting

A nice bird’s eye view of things isn’t it?

Advantages of The SEO Framework

The SEO Framework is a WordPress SEO plugin that warns you from the beginning that it is you who should write solid content and that there is no magical kind of plugin that will do things for you. And at IMWZ we agree. At the end of the day it is all about you writing solid content and preferably content no one ever wrote about before.

It is also amazing that this plugin helps you generate the SEO Title and SEO Description out of the box and let’s you know whether they work or not. That is amazing. And in general when you know your SEO stuff better, do a proper initial paragraph and a solid title / slug that seems to do the trick just fine. Lastly it has a nice listing overview of SEO segments on page listing and post listing as mentioned and the framework is lightweight and easily extensible.

Disadvantages of The SEO Framework

As it does not hold your hand so much you will need a lot of knowledge on good content writing. You also need to know what keyword density will work and not. Just a good SEO title and description is not all there is of course. That is why I would recommend it to more intermediate and advanced users.

So what SEO Plugin to pick?

Well, we go for The SEO Framework. It is lightweight, does not distract you from writing solid content. It just stays in the background and does its thing doing basic automation and warning you on a few core key indicators. It let’s you work on your article, creating great content displayed well in nice chunks with enough imagery and headers to make it easy for people to go through. Something a more experienced writer should have no issues with. Something he or she should enjoy. Idem ditto for SEO writers!