Yoast and Semrush are two of the most popular SEO tools available. They’re both easy to use, packed with features, and designed to help you improve your SEO performance.
But which one is right for you?
In this article, I’ll compare Yoast vs Semrush in 2022 and help you decide which tool is best for your needs. Let’s get started!
Yoast SEO 0verview and features
Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin for SEO that helps you optimize your content for search engines.
These are the key features of Yoast SEO:
- Monitors all aspects of your website’s on-page SEO—from meta tags to keyword density—and provides feedback on how to improve each one.
- Generates an XML sitemap that makes it easier for Google and other search engines to find and index your pages.
- Lets you create custom titles, descriptions, and URLs so that they are optimized for search engines as well.
- Offers readability analysis tools that let you know if your posts are easy enough to understand or if they need some work.
Semrush overview and features
Semrush is an all-in-one digital marketing tool with a comprehensive collection of SEO & marketing features that helps you analyze your website and competitor data and identify opportunities for growth.
It offers SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and content marketing capabilities, making it a great choice for anyone looking to increase their website’s visibility.
These are the key features of Semrush:
- Find the right keywords to target for your SEO and PPC campaigns
- Conduct detailed analyses of website performances, including search engine rankings, backlinks, traffic sources, and more.
- Track competitor activity and identify areas in which your competitors are outperforming you so you can adjust accordingly
- Check your website for technical errors and potential issues that could be holding back your traffic
- Get ecommerce-focused analytics & reporting or local SEO tools
- Plan, create, and measure the performance of your content marketing campaigns.
Yoast vs Semrush Summary
A quick summary of Yoast vs Semrush is that while Yoast only helps to optimize your content and on-page SEO, Semrush is a full-scale digital marketing tool that offers plenty of more features.
Yoast is a plugin for WordPress, while Semrush is a standalone cloud-based tool.
Some of the key tools that Semrush provides but are not available on Yoast are:
- Keyword research.
- Competitor analysis
- Site audit
- Content marketing
- Backlink analysis
Yoast vs Semrush SEO Writing Assistant
The closest we can come to comparing Yoast vs Semrush side-by-side is comparing Yoast to the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant, which is also available as a WordPress plugin.
The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is an online tool and part of the Semrush Content Marketing Toolkit that helps you optimize your web content for search engines.
It provides real-time feedback on how well your content matches up with best practices for SEO.
You can access the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant with the Guru plan of Semrush.
All you need to do is enter your text and your keywords into the assistant and it will analyze it and provide feedback on how well it meets the criteria for key elements of SEO writing.
You can use the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant in three content editors:
- Google Docs
- WordPress Editor
- Semrush account
In this post, we will mainly focus on using the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant as a WordPress plugin, to compare it with Yoast SEO.
To get started with these plugins, you simply need to install and activate them from your WordPress dashboard.
If you don’t have a Semrush account yet, you can use my Semrush free trial offers to get 30-day free trials with my exclusive affiliate links.
If you want to buy Semrush, use my Semrush promo codes or the Semrush lifetime deal to get the best discounts on Semrush.
Yoast vs Semrush SEO Writing Assistant – TLDR Summary
The biggest difference between Yoast and the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is that Yoast helps you improve mostly the on-page SEO of your content whereas the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant helps you optimize your actual content, based on your target keywords.
Yoast SEO metrics
You will find the Yoast SEO options at the bottom of your WordPress post/ page editor.
Yoast provides four different metrics to improve your SEO:
- SEO
- Readability
- Schema
- Social
1. SEO
The SEO section of Yoast provides tips to improve your on-page SEO based on a focus keyword, and a preview of how your post will appear in Google SERP.
The SEO section of Yoast will show you:
- Mobile/ Desktop preview
- Title tag and meta description editor and preview
- Tips on where to include your focus keyword
- Reminder to include internal links and alt text to images
- Indexation options of a page
If you have the premium version of Yoast, you can also add more related keyphrases to optimize your titles and content further and track your SEO performance.
2. Readability
The Readability section of Yoast shows you how easy or difficult your content is to read, and provides a few recommendations to improve it.
It gives you a Flesch reading score for your content and provides tips about the length of sentences and paragraphs.
3. Schema
Getting high search engine rankings becomes more challenging every day, and adding schema markups to your post can add a significant boost to your SEO.
One of the biggest advantages of Yoast is that you can add Schema to your post directly as you write it, in a few clicks.
The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant does not provide this feature.
3. Social
Another advantage of Yoast is that you can customize the preview of how your post URL appears on social media (Facebook and Twitter). You can even select a separate image to add to your social media posts.
This feature is also not available on Semrush.
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant features
You will find the Semrush SEO Writing Assistant tool at the bottom of your WordPress post/ page editor as well.
Just enter the keywords you want to optimize the content for (you can also extract it from the text), and get recommendations.
The SEO Writing Assistant will provide you with four kinds of metrics as well.
- SEO
- Readability
- Originality
- Tone of Voice
1. SEO
The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant provides some SEO tips similar to Yoast, like alt attribute issues and link issues.
However, there are still quite a few differences in the SEO metrics as well:
- Insights provided by both tools are quite relevant, but also usually quite different, even for alt and link issues
- Unlike Yoast, it does not provide ideas on where to add your focus keywords, but instead, offers recommendations on keywords to include in your content, based on the 22 billion+ keyword database of Semrush.
If you have Yoast SEO Premium, you can also add related keyphrases to further optimize your content.
2. Readability
The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant provides metrics on the readability and target text length, and this is the closest similarity between Semrush and Yoast.
3. Originality
You can check your content for plagiarism which is included in the SEO Writing Assistant. Know more details about this feature in my full post on the Semrush Plagiarism Checker.
This feature is not available in Yoast.
4. Tone of voice
The tone of voice feature helps you set the tone of your content, and warns you when it’s becoming too formal or informal, or even when there are some inconsistencies and gaps.
You can then edit the text and the tone of voice feedback will immediately update accordingly.
Yoast vs Semrush SEO Writing Assistant metrics
To summarize Yoast vs Semrush SEO Writing Assistant in terms of the metrics and recommendations it provides, we can say that the only common optimization metric they provide recommendations on are the readability scores.
Though both tools help you optimize your SEO content, the aspects of SEO insights that they provide ideas on are different.
Besides, Yoast helps you add schema and customize your URL for social media, which Semrush does not do. On the other hand, Semrush helps you improve your tone of voice and check for plagiarism which Yoast does not do.
Optimization Features |  |  |
Readability | Reading ease and text length | Reading ease, paragraph and sentence length |
SEO | Related keywords, alt issues, link issues | On-page SEO, device preview, page indexation |
Add schema | ||
Customize social preview | ||
Check for plagiarism | ||
Improve tone of voice |
Yoast and Semrush Integration
The good thing about using Yoast and Semrush is that it’s not so much a question of Yoast VS Semrush, but more of Yoast AND Semrush.
You can connect your Semrush account to Yoast, and use the combined features from both to optimize your content!
Here’s how it works.
1. Do your keyword research on Semrush
Get a list of keywords you want to optimize your content for. The Semrush Keyword Magic Tool is fantastic for that. Check out my full Semrush review to know more.! Learn how to use it in my full Semrush guide.
If you don’t have a Semrush account yet, you can get a Semrush Guru trial for 30 days to get full access to and try out all the Guru features (including the SEO Writing Assistant) for one month.
2. Optimize your WordPress content
In the SEO section of Yoast, enter your focus keyword, and then ‘Get related phrases’, to add your selected keywords from Semrush.
Yoast will now provide suggestions for your on-page SEO based on not just the focus keyword, but also the related keywords.
3. Run a site audit and on-page audit on Semrush
Once you have used the Semrush keywords to optimize your on-page SEO for each of your website pages on Yoast, use Semrush to check for errors.
The site audit and On-Page SEO Checker of Semrush are excellent in finding any SEO errors or optimization opportunities on your site.
Use these recommendations to further optimize your content and website!
Yoast vs Semrush – Conclusion
We can conclude this comparison of Yoast vs Semrush by saying that Yoast and Semrush do not compare directly. Semrush is a mega digital marketing tool while Yoast is just a plugin to improve your WordPress SEO.
In terms of content and on-page optimization as well, they both offer important metrics that are not substitutes, but complement each other.
That’s why, should, in fact, combine Yoast and Semrush to optimize each aspect of your content, and add a big boost to your SEO.
However, it does not mean you have to pay for both. You can easily use the free version of SEO and combine it with a paid Semrush account or Semrush trial.
I would recommend this way and not the other way around because Semrush offers the features of Yoast Premium but not vice versa.
Have you used Yoast with Semrush or either one of the tools? What do you think about their comparison? Leave a comment!
