Hurt my SEO!

I rarely write negative reviews, but this plugin is terrible and actually harmed my SEO instead of improving it.

I have been running a growing blog for years but never used an SEO plugin and finally decided to give it a try in July and purchased Yoast SEO Premium. I followed all the instructions and guides and after a couple weeks noticed my search console performance was dropping down. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and figured it might take some time to adjust so waited a month, but it had dropped even more.

I then reached out to Yoast support who was not helpful at all. They kept sending me their guides to follow which I had already done and kept telling me that “many factors affect search performance”. I had changed nothing else on my site and have never seen a drop like that before. However they kept saying that I needed to follow their guides so I again went through and did everything recommended. They also refused to refund my premium payment.

At this point the numbers stopped dropping but never went back up. I again waited to see an improvement and after a few months of trying to use Yoast SEO decided it was doing way more harm than good and nothing seemed to be recovering. I deactivated Yoast SEO and guess what? My performance numbers started going back up right after.

Huge waste of money, time, and work, plus lost a lot of traffic. Don’t get this plugin! Definitely don’t waste your money on premium!