Useful but guidance is hit & miss

I’ve been using this plugin for several years. It certainly helps blog creation with useful tips and a system which rates you post for SEO.

Some tips are just not right, however. The YOAST plugin tells you not to link using the keyphrase. But as I write tech reviews, of course I’m going to link to the product with an affiliate link using the keyphrase (ie: the name of the product). As well, it tells you not to use the same keyphrase more than once in your entire website – but as a reviewer, I’m going to need to write about the same product in more than one post and it’s not usually possible to use a different keyphrase. The message is using key phrases more than once is going to divide your traffic, but that’s not necessarily true, especially as Google is changing the way it recommends articles in a similar way to YouTube – so a person who shows an interest in a subject is going to be recommended posts on the same subject. In which case, you want to keep using that keyphrase.

Therefore this keyphrase tip seems somewhat dated as well as limited to a certain type of website.

Another thing it flags is using the same word at the start of 3 consecutive sentences. This might be useful for writing beautiful blogs, but for tech reviews and tutorials, sometimes I need to write a bullet list where each line starts with the same word. Again, this isn’t going to ruin your reader’s experience – rather the opposite.

Times when I’ve got the red light from YEOST and published anyway I haven’t noticed any discernible drop in traffic.

So I would say this plugin is fine but don’t take every tip too literally. Some types of post need their grammar (or readability) fixing more than others. But YEOST puts every post in the same basket.