SEO plugins: the good, the bad and the ugly

SEO plugins. Many of us use them. Some of us use them well.

But if you use them badly - and a lot of people do - these plugins can actually make your SEO worse rather than better.

Here's a rundown of the good, the bad and the downright ugly in these plugins. (Note - our clients all seem to use Yoast or Rank Math, so that's what I've talked about. Also, 'keyword' means 'keyphrase' or 'the term you optimise for' rather than strictly one word.)

The good

1. They make you think about keywords and SEO

Once you choose a keyword, you have to choose a topic. It's harder (but not impossible) to ramble on about anything and everything rather than focus.

2. They make it easy to add meta titles and meta descriptions

SEO plugins have fields to add this content, check it's a good length and preview the appearance. Yay! (Just beware point 9 below.)

3. They check that you’re using the keyword / keyphrase in the most important places

Titles and headings are designed to tell the reader what a page is about. Google places more importance on the words in titles and headings than those in the main text. SEO plugins check these areas specifically. Yay again.

4. They check that you have internal and external links

Links between pages are fundamental to the internet. Without them, your pages are like dead-end streets.

SEO plugins remind you about links every time!

The bad

5. They make you think about keywords and SEO

I know, that's Point 1 in reverse!

But too much thinking about SEO is bad. You need to write for people first and search engines second. If you find yourself writing awkward copy just to fit a keyword in, you’re thinking too much about SEO.

6. They (seriously!) suck at image optimisation

Site load speed matters to search engines and humans alike. Oversize images (pixels, or bytes, or both) slow your site down - most people won't wait more than a second or so.

SEO plugins don't even look at image size, let alone manage it!

7. Rank Math’s readability assessment is a mess

The reason I bang on and on about readability is because it matters! Around half the adult population has limited literacy. Others don’t want to put effort into reading anything difficult. Your writing needs to 'explain like I'm five'.

The most widely used readability standard is the Flesch-Kincaid system. Yoast includes it so you can easily see how your writing stacks up.

Rank Math, on the other hand, worries about a table of contents and whether you have images in your content. These have absolutely nothing to do with the readability of your copy.

SEO plugins: the ugly

8. They don't help you choose keywords / keyphrases

The 'keyword research' phase is completely missing in SEO plugins.

Look at this keyword data from Ahrefs. It shows the keyword difficulty (KD) and the monthly search volume in Australia for four potential keywords; family law, family lawyer, divorce lawyer, and divorce law.

With this information, you can decide the best keyword for your site. If you're a new firm, 'divorce lawyer' looks achievable, but 'family lawyer' will be a long hard slog.

So you might apply all your SEO plugin's advice to ompletely the wrong keywords. Without this information (which I had to get elsewhere) how would you know?

9. They assess keywords very narrowly

What do I mean by that? Here's an example.

Tom from SmoothAV provides audiovisual services for corporate events. What’s the best keyword for him?

• audiovisual services for events
• AV services for functions
• event audiovisual services
• events audiovisual service
• event AV service
• event AV services

For you, me or any other human reader, these terms are interchangeable. The natural thing to do when writing about event AV is to use several terms through the article.

Google knows this. It uses ‘latent semantic indexing’ to identify terms and phrases with related meanings. This means it recognises that

• ‘event’ and ‘events’ are singular and plural of the same word
• ‘AV’ and ‘audiovisual’ are the same
• 'function’ and ‘event’ are similar

So it doesn’t focus on one word or phrase alone – it looks at the total meaning of all the copy on your page.

SEO plugins work in a completely different way. Even if you enter multiple keywords (free in Rank Math, paid feature in Yoast), each keyword is assessed individually. You can’t measure how well your page in total is optimised for the concept behind your keyword.

That means the SEO plugins want you to put your exact target keyword in everywhere, whereas Google is fine with variety and people probably prefer variety.

That's a very different way of assessing the text on a page.

10. They can encourage over-optimisation

SEO plugins look at all kinds of factors which could improve your SEO, and score your content on each factor. The natural human reaction is to aim for a perfect score.

Unfortunately, optimising too much can have a negative effect. Google can see it as ‘gaming the system’ and writing for search bots rather than humans. Oops.

Getting the most out of SEO plugins

So, SEO plugins aren’t perfect, but they can be useful. Here are my top 5 tips.

1. Use something else to decide which keyword to target.

2. Use something else to resize and compress your images. ShortPixel is a great set-and-forget option for compressing images.

3. Avoid overoptimising.

If you use Rank Math, don’t aim for 100%. A score of low 70s or even high 60s can work, depending on your industry.

If you use Yoast, don’t try to make every detailed recommendation green. Just alook at the overall SEO and the overall readability. (You can find these towards the top right of the screen.)

4. Avoid a narrow focus on one exact keyword.

Use the plugin to your advantage. Set a keyword and use that exact keyword while drafting. Once you’re happy with the overall SEO score, go back and replace some of those exact keywords with synonyms or similar words. Your score on the SEO plugin will go down, but Google won’t care and your readers will thank you.

5. If you use Rank Math, use another tool to check readability. The Hemingway Editor is a great option.

Or...

Save yourself a lot of time and effort by getting someone else (hint ??) to write optimised copy for you.

Whatever you decide, don’t let the SEO plugins rule your life, or your copy. Remember, humans come first!