Why is Squirrly SEO better than Wordpress SEO by Yoast?

People often ask us the following:

I have a very sensitive question to ask. I know this may sound brash, but I have decisions to make.

Can you tell me – without tons of super-salesman promotion – how your product is different from Yoast?

Here's how our users would answer that:

I did use Yoast, but I found a few features I just didn’t like all that much. Squirrly is much more user friendly and I love a good to-do list. This for me personally was a must when it comes to blogging tools for beginners. It was probably the first plugin I actually spent money on. My post on Valspar Chalky Paint gets lots of hits thanks to this plugin.

This knocks the socks off Yoast I’ve been a long term user of Yoast but I found out I could use Squirrly with Yoast so I decided to check it out. This is going to sound like a fake review but I’m absolutely blown away by the results and I may even be replacing yoast entirely I continue to see these kind of visitor numbers. Furthermore, yoast is slowing my editor down quite a bit, especially when there is heavy shortcode usage.

A Great Alternative to Yoast SEO. Overall, my experience with Squirrly has been great, once I got used to the sidebar and actually went through every suggestion to understand it, it made my article cleaner and better optimized for search engines

Squirrly SEO is a Yoast SEO alternative with more robust options for and improving your SEO strategy. It’s an advanced plugin best suited if you’re familiar with SEO and want to up your game when it comes to improving your site’s rank.

You can do so much with just this plugin! At first I was intimidated by all the options but turns out, it’s so easy to use. Switched all my client's site from Yoast to Squirrly!

I’ve been using the free version for a while, and eventually bought the premium to take advantage of its fantastic features! I think that having something similar to Yoast combined with a keyword research service in one product at such a price is gold!

Squirrly did it for me. Been using Yoast for the past 7 years but swapped to Squirrly a few weeks ago and BOY! What a fantastic plugin. Thanks

The hands-down best plugin for WP SEO ever on the market right now! I have used other plugins in the past, from more complex Yoast to The SEO Framework and nothing even compares with Squirrly. I am using the PRO version of the plugin and it is simply the best for my business. I can offer all my authors with this awesome tool and great assistant features that will help my website simply rank better with time.

In comparison to Yoast, Squirrly SEO provides a much more beginner friendly experience, with a number of features aimed at those completely new to SEO.

I used this plugin right alongside my paid Yoast plugin, and the free version is better than the paid version of Yoast. It’s simply one of the best SEO resources for any blog.

I have been a user and a fan of Yoast since I very first started using WordPress, then I discovered Squirrly. This is an SEO plugin that is just as easy to use as Yoast and offers even more features

Many WordPress people will say that Yoast is the top SEO plugin, but I honestly can say they Squirrly beats it hands down.

Our Answer (2019 Update)

When we talk about Squirrly vs Yoast, you need to keep in mind that Squirrly SEO is a full-featured software for search engine optimization. Yoast is just a plugin. (it may be good, but it is severely limited to what generic SEO plugins do; read here)

Basically, SEO is very complex and the unique Focus Pages concept can only be found in Squirrly SEO. It helps you impact over 54 ranking factors, directly. This helps you increase the chances of ranking for each page you have on WordPress. Systematically.

Squirrly is the only software on the market that takes an adaptive approach and helps you correlate data to make smart decisions about the way you rank each page.

NOT AVAILABLE in Yoast SEO Plugin (none of the following):

Focus Pages – the Assistant who maps the road to Better Rankings
Calculating chances of ranking
Determining current ranking drawbacks
Treating each page individually, and adapting to the specifics of each WordPress site it is installed on
14 Days Journey to Better Ranking
SERP Checker
Rank Tracking over multiple days
Keyword Research Tools
Keyword Research Assistant
Full and Easy Overview on everything related to visibility issues
Settings Assistant
SEO Live Assistant
SEO Audit
Blogging Audit
Traffic Audit
Links Audit
Authority Audit
Social Media Audit
Briefcase
Blogging Assistant
E-Commerce and Social Media Metrics
Bulk SEO Settings (with easy to follow and to customize UX)
SEO Automation at the level of sophistication of Squirrly SEO
Duplicate Removal

Of course, all of the items mentioned above are only available in Squirrly SEO.

All in One SEO, SEO Framework, etc. also do not have these tools which are mission-critical for proper search engine optimization.

Each of the tools included in your Squirrly SEO package is composed of tens of features, each. We’ve made the User Experience seamless, so you won’t be bothered by anything complicated. A lot of things go on in the background, while you simply have to work on turning red elements into green. Do that and you will win. Squirrly really is that easy to use.

You can see more written details if you need to learn more about Squirrly vs Yoast, but this table shows many more critical differences:

We’ll also briefly present each level that a good SEO Content Strategy should touch on, and how SEO plugins help with this.

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Practical Things You’ll Learn by Reading all the Way Through:

How to Get Started with Creating a Keyword Portfolio
How to Do Research for an Article in Your WP Dashboard
How to Gain Access to Top SEO Education

But before we move any further, you’re probably curious to know the FULL answer to the question above.

First, here’s the FULL answer to the question:

The main difference is that Squirrly offers 200 features as opposed to just 15 for SEO. Yoast is a very basic plugin, even though it is indeed a good one.

Even if you have the free version of Squirrly, you still get a lot more for SEO than if you were to use other plugins.

Squirrly now lets you optimize every single URL of your site. Something you can’t do in any other plugin.

You now have full control over how Google displays your pages and over how people see your pages in social media feeds, on platforms such as:

Facebook,
Twitter,
LinkedIn.

Yes, this feature from Squirrly SEO which gives you full control is free of charge.

Squirrly’s PRO features are things that would cost over $600 / month to get from other SEO Software:

Exact Google rankings for pages,
Advanced SEO keyword research,
SEO Audits,
Blog Audits,
Social Media Audits,
Blogging Assistant,
SEO Strategy Manager,
Copyright-free images right in your WordPress dashboard.

Yoast nor any other classic SEO plugin offer any of these functions.

People keep recommending Yoast because it has been around for many years and they’ve got used to it.

Many people recommend it because that’s what people typically recommend, and they want to simply go with the flow and “say what people are saying”. Picking Yoast has become the obvious choice. But an obvious choice is not necessarily the smartest choice.

However, many people use Yoast, which is why we’ve made Squirrly SEO compatible with it.

You can use Squirrly SEO alongside Yoast, and it will work great.

We think the features Yoast offers are basic anyway, and the PRO features we offer are what really make the difference when it comes to an SEO strategy.

So, if you want to use Yoast for the technical side and Squirrly to make sure you actually have an SEO strategy, you can do that.

For example, you can tell Squirrly to NOT create the codes for METAs, for JSON-LD, for Open Graph, for Twitter Cards, In this case, your WordPress site will get the Settings from Yoast, and Squirrly won’t interfere.

But you’ll still be able to benefit from other Squirrly features, like the SERP Checker which shows you your true position on Google, the SEO Audit, the Keyword Research, the Live Assistant for when you optimize content, and more.

You can run both plugins at the same time without any problems, as Squirrly SEO and Yoast don’t conflict with each other. We have several users for whom this approach turned out to be the winning one.

Or, you can make the switch without a hitch.

We’ve also made sure that people who do want to switch from Yoast to Squirrly SEO can do so seamlessly.

When you install the Squirrly SEO plugin, it tells you to Import Settings, so that you don’t lose any of your work. Everything that you’ve optimized in Yoast is going to be available by default in Squirrly SEO.

So, once you make the switch and deactivate Yoast, you’ll have everything that you used to have still in place. You’re not losing anything over the switch.

Squirrly SEO vs Yoast Infographic

Building an SEO Powerhouse takes a lot of time. Most of our time goes into helping you, the Non-SEO expert, to become an SEO Superstar.

Squirrly SEO is the most complete WordPress plugin because it does so MUCH more for you than the classic plugins. To better depict everything, we took into account all that you need to build a powerful Content Marketing Strategy.

The result is the SEO Content Tree, where you can see Squirrly SEO software offers help for each of the 6 levels of the Content Tree.

Yoast helps with just one of the six levels.

If you’ve been using the Squirrly plugin, you’ve seen that in the plugin Dashboard there’s always a possibility to solve an SEO problem right way.

That’s the “Check for SEO Errors” feature in our SEO Settings Assistant. We created this feature because we want Squirrly to work well with other plugins, like Yoast and All In One SEO for WordPress.

I will continue to talk about all the levels from the Squirrly plugin in a bit, but first I want you to remember what I consider the best part about our tool.

Squirrly SEO Offers Real Customer Service – even with the Free Version

WordPress environments are sometimes unpredictable due to many plugins and themes. That’s why we’ve opened many Different Customer Service Channels for You.

We want you to contact us and get help exactly the way you want. Get more details about how you can reach us here.

Yoast makes you pay a certain amount for each of your sites. At Squirrly, Excellent Customer Service is a core value. That means we try to help any user as fast and best we can.

Now, let’s move the conversation forward.

Squirrly SEO Vs Yoast is at the ground level. All the rest is handled solely by Squirrly SEO. The infographic above showed you why it can make sense to use them both.

Level 0: The WP Site Structure and Squirrly SEO vs Yoast

The only real talk about Squirrly SEO Vs Yoast is at level 0: The WordPress Site Structure.

We know that the classic plugins can offer more in-depth help with the site structure. The reason we don’t go deeper is that we focus on the above-ground levels.

Also, we do this because we need to ensure a stable plugin, and sometimes those settings which are too in-depth will start causing problems for you, and we don’t want Squirrly to be a source of such problems.

Moving to the other levels, you will see that Squirrly SEO is the ONLY plugin for WordPress which offers you help.

To get assistance with all the other levels would cost you $640 / month for your WordPress site. (the page linked here offers information as to why this is so).

Level 1: Researching the Best SEO Keywords and Social Media Keywords

This is an important part of every content marketing strategy.

If you will stick around with our training program, you’ll get to see how this is the next thing you need to do with your WordPress site after you fix the site structure.

Neil Patel was impressed by our Keyword Research tool and said that only a few bloggers have access to such information. Which is 100% true. The Google Planner Tool will show you keyword opportunities for Advertising. NOT for SEO.

Find out why the keyword research from Squirrly is the best alternative to Google Keyword Planner.

Squirrly SEO shows you the keywords you should use, by taking many different data points into account.

But keep in mind there’s still work to be done on your end as well.

Squirrly will, however, guide you along the way. After each keyword research that you perform, you can either use that keyword and start writing a page right away or save it in your Briefcase.

“What’s that?” you might ask. The Briefcase is basically your Keyword Portfolio – a way to know what terms your site is targeting. You can manage your keywords there with the use of labels.

For example, if you want to create different pages for each stage your site visitors are in on their Customer journey, then you can reflect that in your keyword portfolio. You can go to the Squirrly Briefcase and create the following labels:

“awareness”
“consideration”
“purchase”
“post-sale”
or whatever your customer journey steps are called.

You can assign a different color to each label and then simply add the labels that make sense to each keyword.

When creating new articles for the blog, you can choose the keyword from your Briefcase in order to stay focused on your SEO strategy.

We can’t talk about proper research without talking about the Blogging Assistant.

The Blogging Assistant helps you save time on the research you do for each article. It helps you find:

copyright-free images,
news sources,
awesome tweets by influential people.

You can use these to validate the points you are making in your blog posts.

Level 2: Scaling Content with Proper SEO and Human-Friendly Optimization

When you get to this stage, you most probably have a good site structure (Level 0) and you know which keywords/topics you will be writing about (Level 1).

To go forward with your plans and create more content which will either bring Search Engine Traffic or Social Media Traffic, you can use the Squirrly SEO Live Assistant.

When you turn all those lights green in your “Edit Post” interface, you’ll be able to hit publish knowing that your content is 100% optimized: for both search bots and actual human beings.

What we also do is help you stage your content – before you publish – with the help of the Squirrly Snippet. See how you can get better Google SERP listings.

Level 3: Making Sure the Tree Grows Strong

Yes, it sounds very zen. It is, however, true. You need to make sure that you can check your content marketing strategy and measure if you start getting more inbound links, more authority, more shares, etc.

Just having an optimized WordPress site won’t do you any good.

You need to gain authority on the web. The perfect combination for SEO is this:

Optimized Content + SEO Site Structure + High-Quality Backlinks + Social Signals

Check the SEO Audit from Squirrly every week. Making sure you get a score of 80 or above will help you reach the right combination.

Level 4: Grab the Rewards

You’re working to grow this content tree because, in the end, you want to see the results. The question is: How do you see the rewards?

Easy!

Squirrly SEO gives you the ability to check your ranking on Google for various countries (so you get GEO rank, not just your rank for the general google.com).

You also get to see other “fruits”, other rewards. It will show you the top social media channel for every blog post you publish by taking into account the social media platforms that brought you the most engagement.

Other SEO stats include:

the level of optimization you achieved,
the number of inbound links you have for each page on your site,
the Website Authority,
the authority of each page.

Level 5: Education Cloud. Learning Is Growing

We realize that it takes a while to get familiarized with all these concepts.

That’s why on top of the current coaching session that you receive upon joining Squirrly SEO, you also get free access to our Education Cloud.

Education Cloud is our Membership Site, where you get access to training programs from which you’ll learn how to get better SEO and better rankings.

Squirrly is designed to be there to assist you with implementing a great SEO or Content Marketing strategy. It’s going to be ready to suggest the steps that you need to take to improve your site. But you’ll have to put in the work for that.

You can always join one of our Webinars and see the Live Streams. We stream videos about how to use Squirrly SEO to get the best results out there.

And now, here is a general table comparison of the two plugins presenting the main features you’ll need in order to implement an SEO strategy that goes through all the levels.