SEO Plugin Performance Report for Q2 2022

JS Morisset Leave a comment Plugins, SEO

In June 2021, and then again in September 2021, we compared the performance of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. To continue what has become a bit of a tradition, we present the latest SEO performance report for April 2022.

We’ve classified the performance of each SEO plugin into one of three categories (best, average, and worst) and included a baseline chart for WordPress and the 2021 theme. This gives us a good baseline reference for the performance of each SEO plugin – as you will see, the best performing SEO plugins have almost no effect, while the slowest SEO plugin almost doubles the page load time and the number of database queries.

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Remove WordPress Action / Filter Hooks by Name

JS Morisset Leave a comment PHP, WordPress

The WordPress remove_action() and remove_filter() functions are useful, but they require the original hook priority and a function name, a class object and method name, or a class name and static method name.

Providing the class object in particular may be difficult or impossible, as plugin and theme classes may be extended and instantiated any number of ways. The following SucomUtilWP::remove_filter_hook_name() static method can be used to remove WordPress action and filter hooks using their class name instead of requiring a class object.

For example, if an action hook like this one has been added within a class object that was not saved, saved in a private/protected variable, or cannot be re-instantiated, then removing it might be impossible.

If you know the class (or extended class) name (‘Plugin_Namespace\Class_Name’ for this example), you can remove it using the following static method:

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Refresh a Metabox in the WordPress Block Editor

JS Morisset JavaScript, WordPress

The WordPress block editor shows registered metaboxes under the post / page content, but since it does not reload the webpage when saving content, metaboxes are not refreshed or reloaded when you save a draft or publish the post / page.

If your metabox needs to be refreshed, to show the new saved content (like the WPSSO Core or JSM’s Show Post Metadata plugins, for example), you need to add a change listener in javascript and refresh your metabox (using an ajax call) after the block editor has finished saving the metaboxes.

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New WPSSO Google Merchant Feed Add-on

JS Morisset Google Merchant Feed, WooCommerce, WPSSO GMF

Just released, the new WPSSO Google Merchant Feed add-on retrieves product information from WPSSO Core Premium and provides maintenance free XML feeds for each WordPress language (aka locale).

There are no add-on settings to configure — the WPSSO Google Merchant Feed add-on automatically retrieves all product information in the language (aka locale) requested.

A supported e-commerce plugin, like WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, is suggested but not required — the WPSSO Google Merchant Feed add-on can also retrieve custom product information entered in the WordPress editor Document SSO metabox. WooCommerce variations and additional WooCommerce product attributes are fully supported.

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SEO Plugin Performance Report for Q4 2021

JS Morisset Plugins, SEO

In June of 2021 an SEO plugin for WordPress boasted they were “one of the fastest SEO plugins” available, so using the Query Monitor plugin, we tested the performance of several SEO plugins to see if their claim was true (spoiler alert, it wasn’t).

In the months since that article, there has been a new version of WordPress and new versions of several SEO plugins, so we were curious to see if the SEO plugin performance results had changed for Q4 2021. The WPSSO Core plugin, for example, has integrated their Schema JSON-LD add-on into their Core plugin, so the features of WPSSO Core have increased significantly – would it also affect its performance?

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WPSSO Core Integrates the Schema JSON-LD Add-on

JS Morisset WPSSO Core, WPSSO JSON

Years ago, when support for Schema meta tags was added to the WPSSO Core plugin, an add-on was created to express more complex Schema markup using JSON-LD encoding. At the time, most WordPress themes still offered Schema markup using RDFa and Microdata in their templates, and in those cases, adding JSON-LD markup automatically in the webpage would only create duplicate and confusing markup. Google was also one of the few (if not the only) search engine capable of reading JSON-LD markup, and still promoted the use of meta tags, RDFa, and Microdata (read by most social sites and other search engines at the time).

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How Fast Are WordPress SEO Plugins in 2021?

JS Morisset Plugins, SEO, WPSSO Core, WPSSO JSON

An SEO plugin recently boasted in their change log that they are now “one of the fastest SEO plugins“, which made us wonder – did they really measure their plugin performance before stating this, or is it just wishful thinking on their part? :-)

To see where this SEO plugin’s performance stood in contrast to others, we imported the WP Test data and installed the Query Monitor plugin on a WordPress test site, then proceeded to check the performance of the most popular SEO plugins. The only plugins active were the SEO plugin being tested and the Query Monitor plugin. The “Tiled Gallery” post from the WP Test data was used for testing since it contains both text and images (a featured image was selected and a post excerpt was also entered). After reloading the webpage a few times to prime the PHP opcode cache, the following performance results were noted. Green denotes plugins with the best performance, yellow with average performance, and red with poor performance (relative to each other).

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Is WPSSO the Best Alternative to Yoast SEO for 2021?

JS Morisset Schema, SEO, WPSSO Core, Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO plugin is currently active on over 5 million sites, which means that its features are also limited by the most common and basic needs of those 5 million site owners — content creators and SEO experts often require more control and fine-tuning than Yoast SEO can deliver.

Before considering any Yoast SEO alternative or enhancement plugins, we should clarify what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is, how a plugin like Yoast SEO helps, and how an alternative plugin like WPSSO Core and its add-ons differ from Yoast SEO.

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