Yoast SEO – who doesn’t know this plugin? Everyone who uses WordPress has heard about it, and I estimate that 9 out of 10 people also use this plugin. It is often at the top of the list of most used plugins or THE plugins you have to have, so is my blog article 30 plugins to increase productivity and enjoyment in blogging. However, I switched to another SEO plugin a few weeks ago and don’t see myself going back to Yoast. Why?
Not satisfied with the direction Yoast is taking
Since the last few updates, I noticed a significant difference in the plugin’s performance, I was not at all satisfied with the user experience AND I started to get irritated by certain notifications. To recap:
- That you get a message that you have to update the plugin, then do so and that you get another message at the top saying that you have updated and what has changed. You also have to click this notification away otherwise it just stays on all the time. I think user experience is important, extra (distracting) notifications are hugely annoying to me then and I want to keep my Dashboard as “clean” as possible without having to click everything away first. I can’t stand that plugins affect your dashboard so much through silly notifications, but it does distract me from what I want to do.
- That you then get notifications and they are displayed in an orange circle which makes me think it’s an important notification, but no, it’s just pure nonsense. Hugely disturbing when I see an orange circle though because it is associated with updates.
- The user experience sucks. I can’t put it any other way. I find the way you have to enter the SEO data enormously cumbersome (although this was slightly better with the last update) but still I did not like the way it works. In addition, the bullet points did not always work well, the “readability” was not optimal for Dutch websites and there were a number of features about which I had my doubts whether they really did anything.
- Yoast’s branding, like the illustrations, really shows on EVERY page. I understand wanting to push it through but it was very extreme now. I like plugins without too much fuss, that just do their job and don’t add all sorts of frills that are just distracting. Less is more, people.
- The ads. I get that the plugin is free and that they need to recoup the cost somewhat, but the fact that plugins now exist to hide the ads really says it all.
- I used maybe 10% of the plugin, the other features were not for me.
In short, I wasn’t satisfied with how the plugin worked but since I didn’t feel like changing I kept using Yoast anyway. Until I had really had enough.
Maybe my reasons are childish, but if something starts to irritate you then it is better to look for a solution. Additionally, I strongly suspect that they want to tout the premium version and therefore “ruin” the free version so that people are more likely to purchase it. And that’s just something I don’t like at all.
Don’t focus on the green dots
Speaking of Yoast and the famous bullets that should turn green for optimal SEO application – Yoast is a tool. Just because all the dots turn green doesn’t necessarily mean your site ranks high in search engines, and it especially doesn’t mean you’re good at SEO. Your content is always even more important than turning all the bullets green. You can still have everything green with a blog that contains a lot of nonsense. That everything is green means you have mastered Yoast’s techniques well.
SEO goes so much further than this and it’s unfortunate that Yoast promotes the plugin in such a way that if everything turns green, you are doing a good job without actually knowing what you are doing ánd why you are doing it. If you keep asking these two questions continuously (what and why) you will learn so much more about SEO than getting green bullets. I can guarantee you that if you take away this plugin from many bloggers they don’t know the SEO practices (well) anymore. Do not depend on such a plugin, always see it as a tool and try to educate yourself on why the plugin expects certain points from you.
And that’s especially my issue with Yoast – he started thinking before me. The plugin got unnecessary features I didn’t want to use and he started dictating how I should(s)do my job. And I want to be in control of that anyway.
Because of all the extra additions, I was no longer Yoast’s target audience:
- I like simplicity.
- I want a plugin that handles the technical SEO settings but entrusts control of the content to me.
- I want a plugin that is present in the background, does not display notifications and does not constantly distract me.
- I want a plugin that doesn’t think for me.
SEO Framework has become my SEO plugin
I have been using SEO Framework for several weeks now and I am really very satisfied with it. Simple to use, all settings are neatly and clearly displayed on 1 page, there is a clear interface, no annoying notifications, pleasant support and I score as well in the search engines. Maybe even better but that is hard to judge after a few weeks. And for those who like to see in colors whether you have applied the right SEO techniques, yes there are.
Following this article on Roots, I switched and I can say that I am very satisfied. So I don’t see myself going back to using Yoast.
How do I switch to SEO Framework?
- Install and activate SEO Framework.
- Install and activate SEO Data Transporter plugin.
- Go to SEO Data Transporter settings and choose these settings:
- WP SEO -> Genesis (so you go from WP SEO, which is Yoast’s old name, to Genesis). Genesis uses the same techniques as SEO Framework.
- Remove Yoast SEO.
- Want additional control over your XLM sitemaps? That’s the file indexed by Google. Install and activate Google XLM Sitemaps.
- Go to SEO in the right sidebar and check your preferences and settings there.
Other plugins that are also good: All in one SEO. You can switch using the SEO Data Transporter plugin.
