Popular WordPress Plugins To Avoid For SEO Optimization

Many people recommend that new website owners should not have too many plugins active on your site at one time. Although plugins on WordPress websites improve the functionality of your site and are heaven-sent for non-techies, they are the root cause of many troubleshootings.

Elementor, Jetpack, and Yoast are some of the most popular WordPress plugins, and yet they are making your site slow. Moreover, many plugins will affect the security of your website. You must check when choosing a plugin for your site to make sure it has been recently updated. Plugins that are not up to date can have bugs that will inevitably break your site.

Many newbie webmasters think or are led to believe, that plugins can do some SEO magic on your website. Such is too often not the case, and contrary to popular belief, many popular plugins have adverse effects on your SEO. Let’s delve into the world of the most hyped plugins that are not all that fantastic.

Why you should worry about site loading time

When you visit a site that loads slowly, one of two things will happen. Either you will leave before the page has loaded or you will not come back to the site. Both of these outcomes are bad for your SEO! Your website should load fast, and one or more plugins are probably the cause.

On average, your page should load within two or three seconds. You can check your site speed at PageSpeed Insights. If your page takes too long to load, 80-90% of users will leave before the page has loaded.

Instead of keeping plugins for SEO optimisation, learn all you need about winning Meta titles, Meta descriptions, and how to format your blog posts. It is easy and straightforward.

In this way, you can rid yourself of plugins like Yoast. If you are new and you are unclear about formatting your blogs keep Yoast or Rank Math for a month or two. After you have an idea of how to format your posts, remove the plugins.

How you can improve your website loading time

By removing as many plugins as possible, your site speed will increase automatically! WordPress software itself is fast. The only thing that can slow down your website is your theme of choice and your plugins. I tested multiple themes, then settled for the Astra theme, because of good reviews and my experience with it has been excellent so far.

Some of the most popular free themes that are fast:

• Astra
• OceanWP
• Hestia
• Neve
• Business Owner
• X Theme ( popular but slow )

Update: We no longer suggest Astra as an optimal WordPress theme. Please visit this blog Best Free WP Theme, Kadence (better than Astra) and check out our new recommendation it is awesome.

Here are the two themes I have used and recommend to any beginner blogger:

• Kadence WP
• Astra

Once you have chosen a theme, it is essential to test different plugins according to how they affect your site. For beginners, a maximum of 8-10 plugins is recommended.

Here is a list of popular plugins that will make your site slow:

• Jetpack
• Elementor
• Yoast SEO
• Google XML Sitemap
• WeForms

Plugins that can make your site faster

Another reason your site could be loading slowly is because of the extra code in your posts. Popular plugins like Elementor Pro add all sorts of CSS code to your post pages.

Asset CleanUp is a popular plugin that you can use to remove extra code from each blog post page. Removing extra code will automatically make your website load faster.

The installation is easy and the plugin is free.

Another great plugin for speeding up your site is a caching plugin called W3 Total Cache. It is completely free and awesome for SEO.

I do have one word of caution and that is that this plugin has problems with Rank Math so install one at a time and not both simultaneously.

How outdated plugins can affect your site

An outdated plugin is hazardous for your site because it could have been dropped by the developer, which means that it will not be updated anymore. If plugins are not updated regularly, they can have bugs that may break your site.

To avoid faulty and outdated plugins always check to see if your plugin is compatible with the version of WordPress you currently have. When you are about to install a new plugin, always check to see if it was updated within the last two months.

Whether you directly install your plugins from wordpress.org or you install them from your WordPress dashboard, you will be able to find out when the plugin was last updated and whether it is compatible.

How to know when you should get rid of a plugin

In one single word ‘bugs!’ If you notice that a plugin is causing minor problems, please uninstall and remove it immediately!

A crashing plugin can seem harmless at first, but sometimes it can tear down six months of work in a few minutes; if you notice a glitch know that it is time to find another plugin for the same functionality.

Alternatively, you can deactivate your problematic plugin and write to the developers to find out if they will fix the problem. Often the developers will be kind and helpful. Nonetheless, be careful to wait a while before reinstalling the said plugin.

Why you should avoid page building plugins

The reason is simple you can do without most popular plugins. Just because half the online planet is telling you to use Elementor as your page builder does not mean you have to follow suit.

Choose a simple straight forward theme and always check how much functionality you have with the free version of your theme. The more jumbled up your home page is, the less appealing to an audience it will be. It is better to have a clean and clear home page with an empty sidebar for advertisements in the near future.

You will in most cases not need Elementor for page building, and most of its best features are in the premium plan. I always say Elementor is not worth the trouble!

Why you should avoid SEO plugins?

Yoast is my #1 worst choice for a plugin. Why? Because it makes my site slow! The value of this plugin is outweighed by the functionality issues it causes on my site. So I switched to Rank Math!

Hold on for just one second! Before you think Rank Math will rain down some sort of SEO magic let me tell you it will not! You see SEO (search engine optimisation) cannot be magically acquired via any plugin.

The reason is simple. Your site will not rank if you have generally copied content, low-quality keywords, high-quality keywords (that are already covered by authoritative) sites and if your site is devoid of some basic on-page SEO.

If you do not have the juice there is no plugin that will make you rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

So ask yourself why should you install an SEO plugin?

Here are a few reasons why and why not

What an SEO plugin will do for your site	What an SEO plugin will not do for your site
nag you about word count	make you rank higher in any search engine
nag you about keywords	improve your website’s overall SEO
nag you about feature image	improve your snippets or force them to show up in the SERPs

How to do SEO without any plugin, for free

All you have to do is understand SEO fully and completely. Okay it is time to take notes.

Your site should have:

• a mobile-friendly theme
• a site identity (a few descriptive words that showcase your business)
• logo
• a great contact page
• a great about page (tell people who you are, why you know what you write about, a few photos of yourself and if you have done a course on the topic put it on this page, you have to dive yourself in the topic even if you are a beginner)
• a homepage with a call to action
• a clear and clean layout

Your content should have/homepage:

• a clear reason to be online (what do you write about and what problems are you solving make it clear on your homepage)
• a clear answer to the question that will be in your blog title
• a snippet worthy short paragraph at the beginning of every post
  • should not be longer 310 words
  • should be written like a text from Wikipedia
  • should answer the question directly without “it depends” type theme
• original researched content (because most of the content online is rehashed content from other websites)
• quality content, is it true, is it something you can share stats on
• write informally or formally depending on your topic
• write short paragraphs but long detailed posts
• no fluff to make your content longer
• sub-headings that are clear and informative to break down your overall post

Final thoughts

For optimal site functionality always make weekly checks on your site speed. Test your site speed before and after you install new plugins. Of course, you will have to install and use the plugin before checking site speed. In this manner, you will develop a sense of which plugins are slowing you down. Then you can keep the ones you cannot do without, and trash the ones that are not necessary.

For people like myself who are non-techies plugins are the only solution to all kinds of problems we face every day. Still, I do suggest that you keep an eye on how each plugin is affecting your site regularly.

I hope this post was an eye opener to anyone who read it, and remember, try out things yourself. The majority may not always be right!