• Here’s my story with Yoast (Free Version): I was in love with this plugin up until version 2.3.5. I updated to 3.0.4 about a month ago, and it immediately caused several problems with my posts. Thankfully, I was able to roll back to version 2.3.5 and I can presently post without issue.

    Question: What does the future hold for this plugin? I check this forum once a week, and I continue to see users reporting problems. And I don’t see ANY tech support/developers responding in the forum with any reassuring solutions/suggestions/game plan. Leadership and vision within the company seem to be severely lacking. It seems as if the developers/tech support have decided that silence is the way to go in regard to forum posts that relate to the current problematic status of the program.

    Have any of the developers suggested to the users that they’re working to get this plugin back to its reliable & effective status? I’ve not seen any indication of this. I realize that there have been several recent updates that have supposedly address the problems that people are having. But these updates don’t seem to be helping as the majority of forum posts that I read indicate that there’s still lots of unhappy users.

    Has this plugin seen its better days? Is it time to move on to an alternative? I can accept this if that’s the case. But I need to know! And I need to know now! Hey Yoast Developers: Let us know where this plugin stands! Spell out a clear vision on what the company plans to do with future releases/updates/versions so we can all either stick with the plugin or find an alternative.

    BTW – What are some alternatives to Yoast. Anyone know of any? I’d love to check ’em out!

    Thanks!

    -Mike

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 35 total)
  • Mike,

    I totally agree. I was a Yoast SEO fan too, but they’ve lost a lot of credit. Others may say they’ve lost their mind…

    Getting support or even a reaction from the Yoast team here? The sticky post on top of this forum says: “The chance that you’ll get an answer from anyone from the Yoast team is relatively small.” In other words they ignore you until you use the paid version.

    In the past they answered to some of my tweets, but since 3.x they ignore these too.

    Yoast SEO 3 is not mature yet. I’m currently able to use it again since my provider increased my memory from 128 to 256 MB, but it’s still not good.

    Rolling back to 2.3.5 is indeed an option, but is it safe? I’m not sure.

    The All In One SEO pack maybe an alternative. Yoast has/had(?) an option to import from AIOSEO but as far as I know there’s no AIOSEO option to import from Yoast.

    Regards,

    Han

    Hello,
    Same thing for me… i agree.

    Alternative:
    Apart from All In One SEO pack, there is also a young but efficient plugin: The SEO Framework. The author has a very nice philosophy and support is free and quiet reactive.

    @han Balk
    to import/export SEO data from any SEO plugin to another SEO plugin, there is this plugin:
    SEO Data Transporter

    Regards,

    Louis

    I still am a fan. Especially because I love Joost’ philosophy and he certainly knows what he is talking about in SEO. But I agree they have to find a solution for the bad performance of the plugin. They will lose a lot of users otherwise.

    I am the same, rolled back to 2.3.5 to continue using Yoast but how long can I give the Yoast team to get the plugin sorted out and back to its previous standard? Not much longer is the answer, I am actively looking for and investigating alternatives. It is a shame as Yoast used to be the automatic go to SEO plugin. I can only imagine it is haemorrhaging active users daily.

    I can appreciate that the free version of the plugin would not normally get the same level of developer support but after such a major mess up of a new version surely it is incumbent upon the developer to assist those who have been affected to put things right!

    We have heard all the right things being said by the developer in an interview before Christmas but no sign of any practical implementation. As has been said by others above, I am prepared to stay on 2.3.5 and wait for corrective updates but with nothing, not even any indication of when things can be expected or what the future holds and little hope that this plea will even be read by the developers who are just not interested, leads me to go elsewhere.

    I realise, of course, that free versions of plugins are often merely intended to attract users to the paid for version but I can’t imagine anyone making that step with the condition of the free version at this time.

    I would be interested if anyone has any other suggestions for alternative SEO plug in.

    Louis, thanks so much for the The Seo Framework recommendation. I am impressed by not only the plug-in, but also the author’s responses and attention to users. I will be leaving Yoast for good and switching to SEO Framework.

    @plantpantry

    Yes the author is so nice, isn’t it…
    He told me he is planing, later on, to improve his plugin with a kind of focus key sentence (a better focus key word like). He said also that it was a big work to implement that in a correct way…

    Regards

    @lomars

    Louis, Thanks for recommending The SEO Framework and the SEO Data Transporter. Although The SEO Framework is new plugin, it seems already to be a serious competitor.

    @lomars

    Thanks for the recommendation of The SEO Framewook and The SEO Transporter.

    Does The SEO Transporter work with either Yoast SEO or The SEO Framework? In my initial examination it would appear not.

    The SEO Framework does look very good and I am planning the switch which is why I am interested in the Transporter.

    @NatCornAdmin

    The SEO Data Transporter plugin work with any SEO plugin. If you want to use it forSEO Framework plugin, you have to chose “WordPress SEO” in the first drop down menu and “Genesis” in the second drop down menu…
    You can even revert process interchanging items in drop down menu.

    @Han Balk
    Yes you are right 🙂

    Regards

    @lomars

    Thank you very much for your help and clarification of the drop down settings.

    I think I’ll make the change.

    Thanks again

    Great thread. Hopefully the author will read it? Hm…

    *me too on multiple issues like “A meta description has been specified, but it does not contain the focus keyword.” (totally false) and every other content analysis relating to focus keyword.

    …and yes, I cleared cache.

    @MechaWear
    The author is a ghost for non commercial users. The only way could be to report bug on github > wordpress-seo.

    @lomars

    Just migrated with SEO Data Transporter from Yoast to The SEO Framework. Very easy and so far everything looks okay. I only had to upload my new sitemap.xml in Google webmastertools.

    Highly recommended indeed!

    Thanks again,

    Han

    @Han Balk

    You are welcome 🙂

    I see this plugin going down to a trench, but what about its paid version? Is it also that bad? Anyone knows about it? I read some review here also stating that paid version is also bad, but I’d like to hear more review about it.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 35 total)
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