A complete Yoast AI review: Features, pricing, and limitations

Anyone who has worked with WordPress is likely familiar with Yoast. It has long been the default SEO plugin for over 13 million websites, with its green, orange, and red indicators guiding content optimization. Now, Yoast has entered the AI space by adding new features to its premium plugin to assist with content creation.

This review examines what Yoast AI can do, who it is for, and whether it is a worthwhile addition. We will cover everything from generating titles to refining your writing. It is important to note that Yoast AI functions more as an assistant for polishing existing content. It is not a full content generator like the eesel AI blog writer, which can produce a complete article from a keyword.

What is Yoast AI?

Yoast AI is not a standalone tool. It is a set of AI-powered features integrated into the Yoast SEO Premium and Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugins. These features are not available in the free version of Yoast, so access is limited to paid subscribers.

Its primary function is to assist with SEO tasks within WordPress, rather than writing entire blog posts. It is designed to be an editor that suggests improvements, not a writer creating the first draft. The tool is built to help you generate metadata and optimize the content you have already written.

Yoast uses the OpenAI API to power its features. The features are divided into two main categories:

• Yoast AI Generate: This is for creating elements like SEO titles, meta descriptions, and summaries from your existing text.
• Yoast AI Optimize: This feature provides specific suggestions to improve your writing based on Yoast’s established SEO checks.

It is focused on making the optimization process faster without requiring you to leave your WordPress dashboard.

Yoast AI features

Let's examine the specific tools included in the Yoast AI feature set. They are designed to simplify parts of the SEO workflow directly within WordPress, but they have some notable limits.

AI generation for titles and meta descriptions

After writing your post, you can use Yoast AI to read your content and suggest several SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions. You can then select your preferred option and edit it as needed.

This feature can save time, especially when crafting meta descriptions. It works for posts, pages, products, categories, and tags, which is useful for standardizing metadata across your site.

While it is helpful for brainstorming, experienced SEO professionals may find they can write more compelling metadata manually. The suggestions provide a solid starting point but may not always capture the unique angle or click-worthy hook a human writer can create.

Yoast AI Optimize

This feature is more hands-on. Yoast AI Optimize analyzes your text and provides AI-powered suggestions for improvement based on the standard Yoast SEO checks.

For example, it might suggest rephrasing your introduction to include your keyphrase earlier or offer edits to distribute your keyphrase more evenly. It also checks for readability factors like sentence and paragraph length.

However, there are some limitations to consider:

• It only works for texts up to approximately 1,000 words. This feature is not suitable for long-form content.
• It is currently available only for the WordPress Block editor and is limited to Paragraph, Heading, List, and Table blocks.
• Regarding keyphrase density, it only provides suggestions if your keyphrase is underused. It does not flag instances of overuse or potential keyword stuffing.
• A key consideration is that suggestions must be accepted or rejected as a whole. It is not possible to select individual suggestions, which may be a factor for users who prefer granular control over their text.

Yoast AI summarize block

This is a newer feature: a dedicated WordPress block that uses AI to create a "Key Takeaways" summary for your post, typically as a bulleted list.

The purpose is to make your content more scannable for readers and easier for search engines and AI systems to understand. With the rise of features like Google's AI Overviews, a concise summary can be beneficial by quickly conveying the main points of your article.

While it is a useful addition for user experience, it is more of a supplemental tool than a core SEO feature. It adds clarity but is unlikely to be the primary driver of search engine rankings.

Usability and workflow integration

A primary advantage of Yoast AI is how seamlessly it integrates into the existing workflow. All functions are accessible within the familiar WordPress editor. There is no need to switch tabs, copy and paste from another AI tool, or manage multiple applications to write a meta description. For busy content managers, this convenience can be a significant benefit.

Yoast AI is not intended to replace whatever you're happy and comfortable with if you're already using Claude or OpenAI externally and happy doing so. The 'specialness' is that it's embedded right there in the post creation workflow and you don't need to write a prompt, you just push the button and voila! I think it's more for people who don't want to have to deal with an external/second tool and transfer the output from that into WordPress, and probably also for people who aren't comfortable or confident writing their own prompts.

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However, this integrated setup may feel limited to users accustomed to other AI tools and writing detailed prompts. Yoast AI's built-in functions offer less control over the output compared to a dedicated AI writing platform.

Yoast AI appears to be designed for beginners or teams who prioritize convenience. It is for those who want a simple, integrated solution and are comfortable with less advanced control in exchange for a smoother process.

Yoast AI pricing and plans

The Yoast AI features are not included in the free version of the Yoast SEO plugin. To access them, you must purchase a premium subscription.

Here is a breakdown of the pricing:

• Access to Yoast AI requires a Yoast SEO Premium subscription, which costs $118.80 per year for a single site.
• For e-commerce sites wanting AI features for product pages, the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin is also required. This brings the total annual cost to $178.80 per year.

Yoast uses a credit system called "sparks" for its AI features. Each time you generate a title or optimize a paragraph, you use sparks. According to Yoast, premium users currently have no hard limit on sparks. However, the existence of a counter suggests a more limited credit system could be introduced in the future, which makes long-term budgeting less predictable.

For the price, you are getting an optimization add-on, not a full content creation tool.

I use the free version just because it's handy to have the checklist of reminders, did I do this or that thing. Also great for clients whom I've given a very rudimentary SEO consultation to. It also does a lot of little things, like generating a sitemap. Never felt a need to get the premium version, but I'm also very thrifty.

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An alternative for full content generation: eesel AI blog writer

Yoast AI is a capable assistant for polishing existing content. But for those starting with a blank page, a different type of tool may be more suitable.

The eesel AI blog writer is an AI content generation platform designed to create complete, ready-to-publish blog posts from a single keyword. Its focus is on generating entire articles, not just making small edits.

Here are a few key differences:

• Full-Scale Content Creation: While Yoast AI generates titles and metas, the eesel AI blog writer creates the entire article, including an introduction, a structured body, a conclusion, and an FAQ section.
• Automatic Assets: It automatically generates and adds relevant visuals like images, infographics, and tables directly into the blog post. Yoast AI does not create visual content.
• Rich Media Integration: To enhance content engagement and credibility, eesel AI can embed relevant YouTube videos and pull real quotes from Reddit, adding a layer of authenticity.
• Proven SEO Results: The eesel AI blog writer was developed and used to achieve significant growth. At eesel AI, we used our tool to increase impressions from 700 to 750,000 per day in three months by publishing over 1,000 optimized articles.

In short, while Yoast AI helps you tweak, the eesel AI blog writer helps you scale. If your goal is to increase content output and drive organic traffic, a dedicated generator is a useful tool. The platform is available to try for free, allowing you to evaluate its quality firsthand.

Is Yoast AI worth it?

Yoast AI is a convenient and well-integrated set of tools for those already invested in the Yoast Premium ecosystem. It is effective for getting quick assistance with metadata and making minor on-page edits without leaving WordPress.

It is most suitable for beginners, solo bloggers, or content managers who prefer an all-in-one solution and do not require a separate suite of AI tools.

However, its limitations are apparent. It is not a content writer, its optimization suggestions may seem basic to experienced SEO professionals, and the AI Optimize feature is capped at 1,000 words. All of this is tied to an annual subscription.

For a more detailed look at whether the premium features justify the cost, the video below offers a comprehensive analysis.

A comprehensive analysis of whether the premium features in this Yoast AI review justify the cost.

Here are our final thoughts:

• For simple optimization help inside WordPress: If you are a Yoast Premium user who primarily writes shorter content, Yoast AI is a solid and convenient option.
• For scaling content with SEO-optimized, publish-ready articles: If growth is the primary objective, a dedicated tool like the eesel AI blog writer is a more powerful solution designed for producing complete articles at scale.

For those looking to generate complete blog posts, a dedicated tool like the eesel AI blog writer is an option to consider. You can try it for free here.