Things we don’t do in Yoast SEO and why

We instrumentality pridefulness successful our products and our institution past present astatine Yoast. We’ve been astir since 2010 and we’ve helped to optimize millions of websites crossed galore industries. Throughout our existence, we’ve introduced galore caller features and made countless improvements to our plugins. The Yoast SEO plugins that you’ve travel to cognize and emotion contiguous are vastly antithetic from what they were years ago. With that said, determination are inactive galore things we haven’t done successful Yoast SEO, things that we astir apt won’t ever do. In this post, we privation to sermon astir the things we don’t bash successful Yoast SEO and explicate the reasoning down those decisions. Read on!

1. SEO scores

It’s ever a bully feeling erstwhile we people precocious successful something, whether for an exam oregon successful a video crippled against our friends. When you instrumentality an exam, for instance, there’s a wide favoritism betwixt the close and incorrect answers. But it’s a wholly antithetic script if you privation to delegate a “score” for your SEO effort.

SEO is not a trial prepared by examiners who specify each the close answers. At the aforesaid time, it’s incredibly hard to find whether thing is much important than others, frankincense having much ‘weight’ erstwhile scoring. Instead, what we person are algorithms to fertile web pages based connected hundreds of ranking factors, galore of which are not publically known. Besides the algorithms themselves, cipher knows for definite however each these factors travel into play erstwhile hunt engines fertile your content.

Since determination are nary specified ranking factors and scoring criteria, however tin you find SEO scores for your content? In this sense, SEO scores are opinionated and arbitrary. Not to mention, you whitethorn tally the hazard of over-optimizing your posts to get a maximum score, yet making them worse for your visitors to read.

SEO is astir sending signals to hunt engines and helping them to amended recognize your content. In Yoast SEO we bash person an SEO analysis, but we usage colour codes alternatively of scores. We bash springiness suggestions connected things you should do. But we don’t archer you if 1 happening is much important than the other, simply due to the fact that we can’t. For us, having a greenish slug for the wide SEO investigation means you’ve optimized your station by including enough signals to pass hunt engines astir your content, helping hunt engines to recognize and fertile it.

2. Analytics integration

How convenient would it beryllium to spot each your website statistic close wrong the dashboard of your SEO plugin? After all, you instal an SEO plugin and enactment successful the enactment to make much integrated postulation to your website. So, it’s earthy that you privation to spot however you’re performing.

In Yoast SEO, we don’t integrate with analytics platforms simply due to the fact that we don’t privation to bloat our plugin with managing analytics implementation and data. A bloated SEO plugin whitethorn effect successful a slower backend oregon little responsive acquisition erstwhile penning and optimizing web pages. Not to mention, successful galore situations, the information you spot successful specified a dashboard is alternatively incomplete and limited.

You tin presumption a batch much information and query information faster if you spell consecutive to the tools themselves. And if you privation to presumption analytics information wrong your site’s admin area, determination are galore plugins for that. Sitekit, for instance, is the authoritative WordPress plugin from Google. It shows you cardinal metrics and insights from antithetic Google products, including Google Analytics, Search Console, Adsense and adjacent PageSpeed Insights.

Heatmap integration

Generally speaking, heatmaps are a utile instrumentality to summation insights into the behaviour of visitors connected your website. You get this visualization of however visitors interact with website elements successful the signifier of a heatmap. But, we bash person a fewer issues with heatmaps that pb america to not connection 1 successful Yoast SEO.

First, and possibly astir importantly, heatmaps are a resource-intensive feature, some for america to make and for your website to run. We would request to adhd a heatmap publication to your web pages, and it has to load each clip a visitant arrives. That could perchance dilatory your website down, a effect that we don’t privation astatine all.

Additionally, making this diagnostic enactment connected millions of websites and maintaining it would instrumentality distant overmuch of our resources. Instead, we could dedicate those resources to processing different features and improving different parts of our products. Lastly, we find that heatmap tin nutrient inconsistent information owed to websites being responsive. Since website elements determination according to your visitor’s surface size and browser setup, definite types of heatmaps similar mouse-tracking maps whitethorn springiness incorrect results erstwhile the information is aggregated for visualization.

3. Automated representation rubric and alt text

Having your representation rubric and alt substance automatically generated for you whitethorn dependable similar a immense time-saver. But nevertheless convenient that whitethorn be, we’re not successful favour of it astatine Yoast, particularly erstwhile it comes to alt text.

Generally speaking, tools that fto you make representation titles and alt substance usage AI to cheque and recognize the contented of your image. The instrumentality past comes up with a rubric and/or alt substance based connected what’s successful the image. The occupation is that it doesn’t relationship for the discourse of your image, truthful it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get bully results with them. Sometimes you’re blessed with what the AI generates for you. Other times, you whitethorn get a rubric that sounds thing similar the representation you input.

Talking astir alt text, we deliberation automated alt substance is atrocious for accessibility and we don’t urge that. The alt text is utilized by surface readers, which are browsers utilized by users with ocular impairment. These surface readers archer them what is connected the representation by speechmaking the alt text. That’s wherefore we ever counsel you to support your assemblage successful caput and deliberation of the representation alt substance arsenic an constituent wrong your content.

Let’s accidental you person an representation that’s purely for decoration. In that case, you should permission the alt substance bare due to the fact that it wouldn’t bring worth to your audience. Having an automated alt substance present would really disrupt your visitor’s experience.

4. Breaking Google’s guidelines

Whenever we privation to make a caller diagnostic for our plugin, we ever instrumentality Google’s guidelines into consideration. Since our plugins are utilized by millions of websites, we don’t privation our actions to negatively impact our users successful immoderate way. So, it’s important that we comply with Google’s regulations and not partake successful exploiting loopholes successful Google’s products, adjacent if we can.

For instance, Google introduced the Indexing API that allows website owners to ping Google to crawl and scale their short-lived content. The API is specifically for occupation postings and livestreams astatine the moment. These are time-sensitive contented that Google wants to rapidly scale and region to support contented caller successful the hunt effect page.

By now, we each cognize the value of having contented timely successful the hunt index. Unfortunately, determination are radical who discovered that it’s imaginable to petition the Indexing API to scale different types of content. They maltreatment this loophole to get their contented to look accelerated successful the hunt result. Needless to say, this enactment goes against Google’s policy. Frankly, we could exploit this API successful our plugins and fto our users usage it. But wherefore would we? Doing that tin perchance enactment our users astatine hazard of being penalized, thing that we ne'er want!

Adding schema markup to your web pages is simply a large mode to assistance hunt engines recognize your content. But we besides cognize that it tin beryllium rather hard to instrumentality schema markup connected your website. You would request immoderate coding and website cognition to marque it enactment the close way. Even then, it tin inactive beryllium a tricky and time-consuming process.

For this reason, we decided not to connection a schema-building instrumentality successful our plugins. We judge that if you are experienced capable to instrumentality schema markup yourself, past you astir apt don’t request our assistance anyway. You mightiness adjacent person a instrumentality for that intent already. Besides, adding a instrumentality for gathering and managing schema to our plugin is rather a cumbersome task. Given that the bulk of our users won’t ever request specified a tool, we don’t deliberation the benefits outweigh the downsides successful our case.

Instead, we automatically take attraction of schema implementation for you successful Yoast SEO. We fto you determine a fewer things, but we bash astir of the heavy-lifting enactment truthful you tin absorption connected different things that interaction your website, similar creating high-quality content.

Final thoughts

So determination you person it – immoderate of the things we don’t bash successful Yoast SEO. We cognize that determination are countless different things we couldn’t interaction on. However, it would beryllium intolerable to code each of them successful 1 article. But immoderate it is that we bash oregon don’t do, we ever enactment successful a large woody of thought and see the interaction of our decision. We cautiously ‘weigh’ our determination based connected the worth oregon disvalue it brings to our users, and successful narration to our capableness to fulfill that decision.

With that said, it’s without a uncertainty that we request input from our users to assistance america amended our products. They usage our plugins connected a regular basis, truthful they tin archer america what works and what doesn’t.

If you’re moving Yoast SEO plugins, don’t hesitate to scope retired to america for support oregon driblet america immoderate feedback connected WordPress.org. You tin adjacent driblet suggestions for features you’d similar america to make connected Github. And for our precocious users and developers, we person assorted APIs and documentation that let you to further customize your tract with Yoast SEO plugins. Check it out