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How to install the Yoast SEO Premium plugin?

Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for optimizing your site for search engines. The free version from the WordPress repository has over 5 million active installs. The premium version offers additional features to improve your SEO performance. If you are using the free version and want to upgrade to the premium version, here is how you can install the premium Yoast SEO plugin.

WordPress SEO: Optimize your WordPress website with the free SEO guide for WordPress.



Features of the Yoast SEO Premium Plugin

Many argue that the premium version of Yoast SEO is not worth the money. However, you must think legally. The developer offers the most important features for free. You can upgrade to the premium version for a few extra features and as a thank you. We have been using the free version for more than six years and decided to buy the premium version only as a token of gratitude to the developer. Here are some of the features you get with Yoast SEO premium.

  • Access to Yoast SEO Academy
  • Internal link suggestion tool
  • Table of contents and blocks of related articles
  • Multiple keyword analysis with synonyms
  • Previewing posts on Twitter and Facebook
  • Find lost articles that don’t have internal links
  • Redirect Manager
  • Integration with Zapier

It will cost you $89 and you can get 20% to 30% off on special occasions like Black Friday. You’ll get one year and support with the premium version and get a 25% discount on renewals.

Installing the Yoast SEO Premium Plugin

The installation process for the premium version is somewhat different from other plugins.

  1. Buy plugin
  2. Login to your Yoast account
  3. Add your site
  4. Activate your subscription
  5. Download premium version
  6. Change free version to premium
  7. Check your settings

Step #1 – Buying a Premium Plugin

If you decide to purchase, go to the Yoast website and go to their store section. Find the plugin and click the “Get Yoast SEO Premium” button. Remember that they have different premium versions for news, WooCommerce, news, videos, etc. Make sure you buy a generic SEO plugin.

Buy Yoast SEO Premium

Follow the checkout instructions to complete your purchase. After successful payment, you will see the checklist as shown below. Write down or copy a checklist that you should follow next.

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Installation Checklist
Installation Checklist

Step #2 – Log in to your Yoast account

You will receive an email from Yoast to activate your MyYoast account. Click the link in the email to set a password for your account.

enter password
enter password

After changing the password, you will see a success message as shown below.

Change your password
Change your password

Now that you have your email address and password to login to the Yoast website.


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Step #3 – Add Your Website to Your Yoast Account

The next step is to add your site to your Yoast account and activate your subscription. Remember, you usually activate your subscription by entering your license key in the WordPress admin panel. However, with Yoast, you must first activate a subscription in order to download the premium plugin.

  • Sign in to your Yoast account.
  • Go to the Home tab and click the Add Site button. Or go to the Sites tab and click the Add Site button.
MyYoast account
MyYoast account
  • Enter the full and correct URL of your website and select WordPress as the platform.
Add site
Add site
  • Click the “Add” button to add your site to your Yoast account.

If you want to change the site after a while, just go to your MyYoast account and delete the old site. add your new site and activate the subscription for the remaining period.

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Step #4 – Activate your subscription

After adding your site, go to the “Sites” tab to view the added site and click on it. Here you will see the purchased plugin subscription and available activation.

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Check available premium plugins
Check available premium plugins

Enable “Yoast SEO for WordPress Premium” to activate the subscription on your site. This will activate the “Download” and “Manage” buttons opposite the plugin.

Activate subscription
Activate subscription

Click the “Manage” button to view subscription details such as start/end dates, products, and the ability to download an invoice. Surprisingly, clicking on the download button does not start the download. You will see a pop-up window with a link to the installation guide on the Yoast website.

Download button popup
Download button popup

Step #5 – Download the Premium Version

Now go back to the control panel and go to the “Downloads” section. Here you will see the actual download button for the Yoast SEO Premium and Premium + Academy options. Click on the version you want and download the premium version of the Yoast SEO plugin on your computer.

Download Yoast SEO Premium Plugin
Download Yoast SEO Premium Plugin

Download the ZIP file like any other plugin. In some cases, your computer may decompress the downloaded ZIP file into a folder.

Step #6 – Install the Yoast SEO Premium Plugin

If you’re not using the free version of Yoast, download the ZIP file via the Plugins > Add New section of your admin panel. Alternatively, you can upload the extracted plugin folder to the “/wp-content/plugins/” directory using FTP or the File Manager app. However, if you’re already using the free version, be sure to migrate any existing metadata to the premium version.

  • Go to your WordPress admin panel and navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins.
  • Make sure your free version of the plugin is the same as the premium version you downloaded from your Yoast account. If not, first update the free version to the latest version and download the latest version from your Yoast account.
  • After making sure you have the correct version of the plugin, disable the free plugin.
  • Now click the Add button and download the premium ZIP file you downloaded in the previous step.
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Download the Yoast Premium ZIP File
Download the Yoast Premium ZIP File
  • Click “Install Now” and WordPress will start extracting the plugin from the ZIP file.
Activate Yoast Premium
Activate Yoast Premium
  • After you see the line “Plugin successfully installed”, click the “Activate plugin” button.
  • You should now see the premium version active and the free version inactive.
Remove Free Yoast Plugin
Remove Free Yoast Plugin
  • Click the Remove link and remove the free version from your site.

This process will automatically transfer all data from the old free plugin to the new premium plugin.

Note. The Yoast plugin affects the visibility of your site in search engines. Hence, we recommend that you backup your site before installing the premium version. This will help you recover in case of any problems at another moment.

Step #7 – Check Your Website

To make sure everything is working fine, go to the “SEO” menu and check the settings. You should see that all your previous plugin settings are exactly there. You can also open the site in a browser and check that the source code contains your meta description and SEO titles. The source code will also mention that the site uses the premium version of Yoast SEO.

Now that you have successfully installed the premium version of Yoast SEO and uninstalled the free version. Before you explore the premium features, you need to go to SEO > Tools and optimize your data. This will help the plugin correctly suggest internal and other link-related suggestions.

Data optimization in progress
Data optimization in progress

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