It is strange – but seems to be about my luck LOL!  Thanks for suggesting reaching out to them – I just asked the question in the forum.

Happy New Year to you, too!

You bet – happy to help.

It’s strange that Yoast isn’t recognizing the AIO meta stuff… You might want to send Yoast support an email about that. Then again, if it’s not too many posts to copy over, it may just be faster to crank through and update them by hand. 😉

Happy new year!

Thanks Andrew!

Thank you so much for your thoughts on my issue.  I really do like Yoast, so with your explanation I think I will stick with it.  Hopefully, I can overcome my OCD with the red dots and just ignore them 😂 it will be a good test for me!

Thanks also for adding in the link to import the AIOSEO data to Yoast – I actually did that when I set up Yoast, but for whatever reason it didn’t work – I’m sure it was something I did or didn’t do.  I just confirmed that the info is still in AIO, so I will probably reactivate AIO and just copy and paste the info one-by-one.  I get errors saying I shouldn’t activate both at the same time, but hopefully for short periods I can get it done.

Thanks again for your advice – I value it more than you know!
Jen

> What is the benefit of staying with Yoast when it is providing inaccurate information?

Forgot to respond to this question… Yoast does a lot of things to help Google find and index your content. It also integrates well with other tools, like WP Recipe Maker (especially regarding Schema markup).  So even if you’re not “actively” using some of the Yoast features, simply having it installed and configured properly gives you an SEO benefit.

To be fair, AIO (and others) could probably do about as good a job for your site, but considering the popularity (especially in the food blogging space) and track-record of Yoast, long-term you’re likely better off just sticking with Yoast.

It’s best to view that Yoast SEO Analysis as a helpful guide, and not the be-all end-all. If you try to get all green dots you’ll end up over-optimizing your content and it will hurt you more than help you. (Especially when it comes to things like repeating your keyphrase as often as they tell you to.)

You can also disable the SEO Analysis feature in Yoast > Settings > Site Features.

Yoast should also be able to import the meta descriptions and keyword phrases!  If you go to Yoast > Tools > Import/Export, there should be an tab/option to import from other SEO plugins.

https://yoast.com/help/migrate-from-all-in-one-seo-to-yoast-seo/

Hello!

After watching a few FBP courses and getting some very helpful feedback on my website from an FBP Expert, I switched my SEO plugin from All In One SEO to Yoast.

In the switch, I lost all of my meta descriptions and focus keyphrases but I can build that back one-by-one.  However, the Yoast feedback for improvement on each page is inaccurate because it doesn’t read my page builder (wp bakery).  I have done some research and found that this can be common.

Should I just go back to AIOSEO or should ignore the false feedback with Yoast?  My personality doesn’t like getting the Yoast “red frowny-face” and does cause me a little frustration.  What is the benefit of staying with Yoast when it is providing inaccurate information?

Here is an example of what I am specifically talking about:

• This page: https://organizingaplantbasedlife.com/chunky-chickpea-noodle-soup/
• Yoast “SEO” says I have no: image, no internal link, and that the keyphrase is not listed in the introduction.  However, I have all three.
• Additionally the “Readability” is flagging both paragraph length and sentence length – both of which I think are also not accurate.

Any insight to help me work through this is much appreciated!  Thanks!

Hi Priscilla!

Site structure stuff can be so confusing! I would not put much/any energy into tags. More here.

This takeaway from a recent TopHatRank webinar (also worth watching re: categories) sums tags up well:

Does that answer your questions? Or did I confuse you further?! 🤪

Hi, sometimes I am in doubt how to properly use categories/tags/secondary keywords in a blog post.

• Should secondary keywords and tags be completely different? Or do they sometimes repeat?
• Should Tag and category be completely different? For example, if I have a category for “vegetarian recipes”, then I should NOT have a tag “vegetarian recipes”? (because I already have a category for it?). Or they sometimes repeat?
• Should the tags be broader like “vegetarian” or more specific like “vegetarian lasagna” (just examples). Should the tags be about the recipe itself (“lasagna”), the diet (“vegetarian”) or how it is made (“baked”)? Or all together (very long tail) “baked vegetarian lasagna”.
• Does keyword search for tags should also be low in difficulty or just the keyphrase needs to be low difficulty?
• Apparently tags should be 10 or less in a post, is there also a limit for categories/secondary keywords?

Thanks in advance!

Hey Ann,

First, it’s always a good idea to update posts with better titles, META Descriptions, clear headings, process shots, labeled photos of the ingredients, all of that.

The higher the quality of the post, the better.

However, what we never do is CHANGE THE SLUG OR URL! You leave it as it is. As you said, all you would do is “break” the post, create needless redirects, and wipe-out all earned authority and social signals on the post.

Google is also clear about this, changing URLS should be avoided when replacing new content with old content. Citation here:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-url-change-old-new-content-25675.html

So to reiterate, every post should have a “unique title” but you should not be worrying about changing slugs. That provides more harm than good.

Good luck with your blog.

Hey Priscila!

That is a great question — I’m going to tap our SEO expert Casey Markee here to provide some more insights on this. Stay tuned for more info!