Once a must have, now a must avoid

  • aThemes

    (@athemes)


    10 years, 5 months ago

    I used to love this plugin, and have used it for years. Since version 3.x, however, things have gone downhill. The UI is totally messed up. The ‘snippet editor’ is one of the worst innovations I’ve ever come across in a plugin. The old ‘meta description’ was simple to edit and easy to understand.

    The real-time analysis is a huge drain on resources, buggy (try using it on a long post – it will likely freeze your whole screen), and just unnecessary. A case of overengineering if there ever was one.

    There is also no free support. None. So if you have a problem and aren’t willing to upgrade to the expensive and frankly not worth it premium version, you’re stuck. Yoast is apparently a multimullion dollar company. You’re telling me then they can’t hire a couple of people to offer free support? Another questionable management decision.

    I am in the process of looking for an alternative to Yoast, one with less bloat and nags and a UI that makes sense. So far The SEO Framework looks like the best bet.

    It’s a shame, but after a decent run, it seems Yoast has lost its way.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Chriss333

    (@chriss333)

    10 years, 4 months ago

    Thanks athemes, interesting to hear your experience! And we will check out SEO Framework
    This is ours:

    WE have the basic Yoast SEO plugin on our 53 sites which all use a premium theme, Canvas by Woothemes. Yoast SEO used to be a great plugin which worked so well.It was easy to use, easy to add titles, site decryption and the page jump to the bottom function was outstanding!

    Now we are finding on every site Yoast cannot see the keyword in the first paragraph, does not see the keyword in alt images, incorrectly calculates % of keywords used although it reads the correct amount of keywords used.

    On many sites it’s impossible to add a title, no matter how often you click and try to edit/ add a title, and having to scroll down on long posts of 4,000 words is a pain on what used to be a user friendly plugin

    Even worse, the new version slows down our sites considerably!!!!It is impossible to add/ edit posts as we constantly get the “white screen of death” and have to wait up to 10 seconds, sometimes more for WP to work again.

    Sites which were fast loading are now in the “B” bracket in Google page speed checks.

    We use Firefox.

    How do we know Yoast is the issue? Deactivate Yoast and the site is fast, no “white screen of death” and we can instantly edit and update our sites without having to wait.

    This is very disappointing as the Michael Torbert All In One SEO is not as good, but we will be forced to delete Yoast SEO because the performance aspect is now so poor.

    Their “improvement” for us has been a disaster to date, and if they can’t get the basic plugin working smoothly, I have zero confidence in paying high dollars for the premium version.

    One has to ask what is their thinking going to ask us to pay the premium dollars for the premium plugin when the basic plugin doesn’t function well?

    I would very much appreciate a reply on why the updated performance is so poor…

    Thanks,
    Chriss & Mark Smith

    cyborg88

    (@cyborg88)

    10 years, 4 months ago

    No comment RE Yoast.

    I scoped out SEO Framework for weeks, read the support forum and posted a couple of questions myself.

    The plugin is author is apparently super human: he responds in a timely AND thorough manner.

    The plugin is largely straightforward, although for non-experts, it contains some advanced functionality I dont quite understand. The users who appear to understand more about the coding side of the plugin and how this affects a sites SEO are tripping over themselves to use this plugin. Even when an issue pops up, they are kind and understanding to the plugin author to such an extent it can’t just be his friends.

    Definitely worth experimenting with. I use it on one site and retain Yoast on another and thus far I have been happy. Some of the changes Yoast has made to the underlying structure in sitemaps has affected the one site in Google, where as the SEO Framework has performed as indicated.

    benvaassen

    (@benvaassen)

    9 years, 8 months ago

    Hi @athemes,

    Are you still using our plugin? If not, we’ve made a ton of changes to Yoast SEO and would like to invite you to give the plugin a new try. In fact, we’ve added functionality to disable entire parts of the plugin, to allow you to use only what you need. Notifications and tools can be toggled on and off to your liking.

    If you want to learn more about the plugin before installing it, we feel our knowledge base is the best place to start.

    Thanks!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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