Why I don't use the Yoast SEO tool anymore
Yoast. It’s great for beginners. It helps newer SEOs do their work in an easy, manageable way.
I used the free version for a couple of years. It’s pretty convenient.
One day, I learned about the power of schema markup, specifically JSON-LD. It helps with Google’s understanding of your website and the entities on it.
JSON-LD is basically machine readable code. It gives your website a huge ranking boost.
The free version of Yoast automatically places a layer of JSON-LD code on your site upon installation.
But they make it very difficult to control. And it wasn’t quite nearly enough control for me.
So I stopped using it. I wrote the code myself, and used a global function in Google tag manager to apply a custom layer of JSON-LD at scale on the websites I’m working with.
One thing I noticed is that when I made schema markup changes with Yoast, I generally saw next day results. My implementation was a month and a half ago and I am just starting to see results now.
I used YOAST SEO plugin 2 years ago, but since RankMath came, i find it much better than them (still my personal opinion).
What is RankMath and why do you find it better?
Rankmath is another SEO plugin for WordPress that's been gaining a lot of users. One could say it's the largest threat to Yoast's dominance in the SEO plugin space.
Not sure about all the differences in them, but the major once I've seen when I googled it up before switching to Rankmath, is that Yoast gives your SEO a grading in colour (red, yellow, green) which is great, but Rankmath gives the grading in numbers from 0-100 which gives a bit more of an idea how much something impacts the SEO and what grade you got.
The other big difference I've seen is that Rankmath got a lot of features offered for free like using multiple keywords etc. which in Yoast you would have to pay for.
Not been using Yoast for a while now so not sure if they also got this feature now but in Rankmath you can track your position in keywords. It pulls the data straight from google search console and you can see for example how many positions you jumped up or went down in each keyword you rank for during a set time. This you could do yourself by counting in search console or paying for a tool like semrush to do it but why pay when you can get the basics for free.
"Yoast. It’s great for beginners." -> Yoast is also fantastic for advanced/experts SEO.
They is a learning curve, but it's a great tool that can be easily editable.
If Yoast doesn't fit to your needs, maybe RankMath can ?!
Your right with all you said.but, How can we get your WordPress code? Can you share the code or WordPress library link??? It will be go and someone might also improve it more...
I would mostly agree with you on it's limitations. However, they are still a fantastic reference for how to link JSON-LD properly.
Check the linking out on their blog.
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoast.com%2Fjson-ld%2F
Compare this to just about any other site and you'll notice how clean it is. I've used this same format on my sites because it really leads to some excellent page readability by search engines.
I used the Structured Data Testing Tool when I worked as a software developer at a magazine. It was quite useful.
Looks like this tool is being shut down and replaced with https://search.google.com/test/rich-results?utm_campaign=sdtt&utm_medium=message.
Looks like they marked up everything they practically could on that page. So, agreed with everything you're saying about the excellent page readability. What sort of results have you seen?
With schema markup, you're talking about the FAQ and HOW-to content, I am assuming?
Was there any action on your end to have your own custom tag re-indexed?
Nope. I just uninstalled yoast and installed my code. Then sat and waited.
@Navinp - referring to your first question, im talking about any kind of schema markup you'd find on schema.org.
Ah okay, I thought they were only offering FAQ and HOW-TO schema, my bad.
I am not using their option for this (FAQ and HOW-to) but have tested and seen the results in Google.
I am using Gutenberg, so I don't this "solved" by Yoast.
Regarding the other question:
I believe we misunderstood each other. Yes that is what yoast offers from what I can remember.
What sorta results have you seen?
The results that you get in Google when using how-to and faq schema.org markup.
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What is your preferred way of learning? @Primer
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