Many WordPress sites are using SEO related plugins, or at least have some SEO features in the Theme. A good example would be Yoast SEO plugin, which is a very powerful plugin that gives you the ability to control SEO across your site. This article explains the main differences between Yoast SEO and Schema plugins.
So, if you are already using Yoast SEO to improve your site, this doesn’t means you have to quit using it in favor of Schema. You can actually use both plugins on the same site since each one is designed to do a different job, this should add even more improvements your site.
Keep ready to discover more…
What’s the main difference between Schema and Yoast SEO?
The main differences between the plugins, as I sees it:
Yoast SEO
From the plugin’s page:
The Yoast SEO plugins Page Analysis functionality checks simple things you’re bound to forget. It checks, for instance, if you have images in your post and whether they have an alt tag containing the focus keyword for that post. It also checks whether your posts are long enough, whether you’ve written a meta description and if that meta description contains your focus keyword, if you’ve used any subheadings within your post, etc. etc.
The plugin also allows you to write meta titles and descriptions for all your category, tag and custom taxonomy archives, giving you the option to further optimize those pages.
Combined, this plugin makes sure that your content is the type of content search engines will love!
Schema
The Schema plugin does a very focused job since the first day of its creation, this won’t change in the future. The job of Schema is to implement schema.org markup for a basic WordPress and website setup.
The Schema plugin makes sure that your content is the type of content search engines will understand!
What do you mean by basic WordPress setup?
The basic setup -out of the box setup- is the default setup of WordPress site. It’s what you get when you install a fresh copy of WordPress site, this site will have a specific structure, example:
- Two main sections for pages and posts.
- Categories and tags.
- Media library and attachments.
- User archive pages.
- And, more…
What do you mean by basic website setup?
A basic website would have sort of standard structure. A website can be simple as one-page site, or have multiple pages, sections, online store, …etc. An example of what a basic or standard website structure would have:
- Home page
- About page
- Contact page
- Breadcrumbs
- … etc.
Why Not Improve More?
Schema plugin covers a good set of these features that improves your site, it can improve your site performance and enhance the way it looks in search results. However it’s still not complete, yet! We hope to cover every single piece of the buzzell through core updates, and plugin extensions.
That’s how -and why- you can -and should- have both plugins installed on your website. There are several different features that is NOT common in both plugins, means both plugins does something different. You can use them both on the same website.
The good thing is; Schema plugin has some compatibility with Yoast SEO, this to save you the hassle of trying to figure it out yourself. So, the common feature between both plugins shouldn’t cause an issue, you got to choose which plugin does what.
Schema plugin will detect Yoast SEO and tries override its output, this mainly happens on the front page and breadcrumbs of your site, this means most of schema.org that is in JSON-LD format should be covered by Schema plugin, for example:
However, Schema settings gives you control over which plugin should do it!
Final thoughts
Both Schema and Yoast SEO are designed to cover specific SEO features, but in a different way. There is however some common features between both plugins.
Schema plugin is smart though! It can detect the other plugin, it also listens to you. So, you got to choose what feature to enable.
Yoast SEO plugin does a collection of useful SEO, They call it “The most Complete WordPress SEO plugin“, it can improve you site, and we do agree on that.
But, it’s know in the SEO world; there is no complete software or plugin; SEO is rapidly changing and developing, this is the case in any giving time.
That’s why Schema plugin was created, it does a different task than traditional SEO. It actually does that one part of implementing a valid schema.org markup in WordPress. More specifically; Schema plugin implements schema.org markup in JSON-LD format. This can improve you site rapidly since it help search engines to understand the structure and content of your website.
So, why not improve more?!
thanks for your great plugin. I have a question in relation to Yoast. How can I get the Schema Description to pull in the Meta Description from Yoast?
Many thanks
Gary
Hi Gary, glad you like the plugin!
It’s pretty easy, I’ve put together a tutorial to explain how to pull Title and Description from Yoast SEO in Schema output.
I hope this helps.
The plugin looks great, easy-to-use and removes the complexity of Schema from us non-developers, so thank you!
Quick question on sameAs, is this used in the plugin and if so, for which Scheme types?
Hi Marki, thanks for your feedback!
The sameAs property is part of most of the schema types, so that’s why it will be available by default on all enabled types.
Also it’s used in some other parts of WordPress, for example social profiles urls for users will be defined as sameAs.
In addition to that, I’ve added support for sameAs for Categories and Tags (you will find a new field to add a sameAs url when you edit a Category or a Tag as part of next update.
So based on this article, are you saying that we should not use Yoast SEO markup?
I didn’t mean that!
What I am saying is that the Schema plugin will take over the Organization and some other schema markup, but it allow you to keep using Yoast SEO plugin for the Organization schema output if you want to do so.
So, it’s really up to you to decide which plugin should do the job.