Why Yoast Is Bad For Bloggers And SEO
I do have a smile on my face as I write this post because I know many, many people will be up in arms against me for bad-mouthing Yoast. The truth is you are a smart human, and you do not need a so-called miracle plugin to boost your SEO magically.
One of the main reasons the Yoast SEO plugin is damaging to website builders is because it makes your site slow, source. Additionally, Yoast will continuously prompt you to adjust your writing in specific ways like sentence/paragraph length, keyword density and writing style. Multiple writing styles work seamlessly and efficiently for SEO.
When writing for a website, you can write as you speak, or write informally. The important things to remember are there are few things to writing online, write original content, write over a thousand words per post, and write consistently. These are essential key points for SEO and the algorithm of Google. If you can accomplish these steps and make them part of your daily routine, then you are en route to success.
How misleading publicity for Yoast makes you think it is the best
Yes it does seem to be the best plugin for some sort of lazurus pit miracle, and many bloggers promote it. The truth however is quite different.
Firstly, the people who promote Yoast genuinely believe that it has an SEO revitalising elixir effect on your blog posts, and that is why they encourage it. I do not think that bloggers are consciously misleading their reader’s, because they too believe the plugin magic lie.
So when you are new to blogging, you read up on all number of topics and when the masses are all saying “get Yoast to help you write awesome content and simultaneously boost your SEO”.
At a time when you do not know what on earth SEO even means ( SEO is short for search engine optimisation ), I would get constant recommendations for it. A significant blogging majority are saying that it is the number one plugin. Yes, I installed this supposedly amazing plugin because I too thought “if everyone says it is so fantastic, well, it must be good”.
I soon realised that it was in fact all a lot of publicity for very little to almost no value.
What the big Yoast hype is about
These are the three main features that everyone raves about and Yoast is supposed to have them all figured out.
- Description Meta tag adjustment
- Writing alerts for sentence length, paragraph length, transitional words and different words for the first word of each sentence.
- Keyword density in your title, subheadings and your entire post.
For description Meta tags, which are the small descriptions that appear underneath your post title in every search on Google, you do not need a plugin. Because Google will nine times out of ten choose the most suitable description from the text of your blog and put it as the description for your blog.
For writing alerts all you really need is Grammarly to spell check your text, and any other grammar issues you might have missed.
If you want to know how to write better for your blogs, then break your paragraphs into smaller sections. It is always recommended for SEO because a significant majority of people search the web using their smartphones so that a big paragraph will look too bulky on a smaller screen.
Keyword density doesn’t matter to Google like it used to, this is because now the algorithm focuses on the value and quality of your content over all these minute issues. Thus the adage “content is king”.
How you can write perfectly wonderful posts without Yoast
If your writing is eligable, and broken into small paragraphs instead of lengthy paragraphs. With keywords here and there, but mainly in your title. Because that is where it will matter most.
Additionally, write like you are writing to a friend, be informative and friendly. Break-up your content with sub-headings to make it simple for readers to navigate through your post. I sometimes do a Google search to look for a small piece of information by surfing through the post’s sub-headings, and then I leave the post. Because oftentimes people want a quick answer to a particular question and then they leave your site.
Basically, you have to create a great user friendly experience, and if you have been reading blogs online for whatever reason notice how other bloggers are formatting their posts.
How Yoast is making your website load slower
The plugin itself has latched onto your website and that is slowing it down. It is a machine problem, and just like Yoast it is supposed to improve your SEO in different ways, but it is, in fact, making your site load slowly which is bad for SEO.
I have noticed on my own site that the addition of every single plugin will slow it down to a lesser or greater extent.
The truth is that every plugin is full of code that slows your site in some way.
Here is a screen shot of my site with Yoast compared to Rank Math.
Below is a screenshot with Rank Math installed and working on my site.
Here is a screenshot with Yoast installed on my site.
You may think that the scores are not very different but believe me I tried every speed optimization before taking the screenshot so that the ultimate result would be as unbiased as possible.
I did have to reinstall my site plugins because there was some sort of error which occurred after I had Yoast installed. My site was temporarily “experiencing problems” and with the help of support, it was cleared up.
Take a look at my posts in my WordPress back-end?!
Yeah I had a hard time reading it too.
When I uninstalled the plugin and installed Rank Math here is what my post page looked like.
I am using Rank Math until something better proves itself.
Yoast readability scores are inaccurate and false
I have tried it too and so have some few SEO experts that I trust, you can write a cruddy post with pictures and some hundred words, Yoast will tell you you are just right and spot on!
Alternatively, you can write a two thousand word post dripping with useful and helpful information. Still, if you write two sentences together with the same word at the beginning of the sentences or you make one paragraph too lengthy, then Yoast will show a little red sad face showing you how bad your post is for readability.
These rules are now ancient history because as time goes on, Google is getting better and better at weeding out the bad from the useful and valuable content. Moreover, the competition has increased and will increase every year with more and more people making their websites on the world wide web.
What are the alternatives for Yoast
You do not need a plugin for these common writing issues that can be easily remedied, but if you feel you need a little help in your early days, then I recommend a plugin called Rank Math. I only make this recommendation because it does not make your site slow, but do not fret too much about their scores either. You see your content is what is essential.
I use Rank Math for things like sitemap, Bing indexing and the Google analytics that it puts on my dashboard. From an SEO standpoint, I know it cannot make me rank higher in searches.
Always remember that no plugin can actually make your site search engine friendly. They do help a little in different ways, but they also hinder you.
An SEO plugin is great for beginners who want to be prompted to write more or not repeat the same word at the start of a sentence. But you can do all these optimisations without them.
I use them for everything except SEO, just like I use Ahrefs and Semrush for everything except keyword research.
Final thoughts
As long as you know what SEO is and how to make your website user, friendly then you do not need a plugin to tell you the obvious.
WordPress is secure, but the plugins are what makes it vulnerable to all sorts of nasty bugs. When you are a rookie, do not keep more than eight plugins active on your site. If your plugin is not frequently updated then get rid of it, and whenever you activate a plugin, make sure to check if it was updated recently.
If you really want a little help then you can use either Rank Math or Yoast but neither offer any solid help that will directly make your overall SEO better.
Update! I too believed the Yoast lie and wrote all about it but now I have to update my posts accordingly due to my personal experiences with Yoast.