Yoast SEO ‑ Store optimization

Thank you for taking the time to describe your experience. We’re genuinely sorry for the disruption and the additional effort this situation required from you.

Our development team identified and resolved the issue affecting theme settings on the same day it was reported to us.

After the underlying issue had been resolved, our team asked for examples of the remaining front-end differences so we could determine what still needed attention within your store’s specific theme configuration. Shopify themes can contain settings, customizations, and integrations from multiple sources. The examples were requested to help us investigate the remaining differences accurately and avoid making unnecessary changes to your live theme. They were not intended to place responsibility on you to diagnose the technical cause.

The reason for requesting these examples should have been communicated more clearly.

We have reviewed the technical incident and strengthened our safeguards and internal processes to prevent a recurrence and provide clearer assistance if a theme-related issue is reported.

Your disappointment is understandable, and we sincerely regret that this experience fell short of the standard you expected from us.

Thank you for sharing your experience. We’re genuinely sorry for the disruption and frustration caused by this incident.

Our development team identified the issue affecting theme settings for some merchants and resolved it on the same day it was reported to us. We have since reviewed what happened and strengthened our safeguards to prevent it from recurring.

We take the concerns raised in your review seriously and recognize that this experience did not meet the standard you should expect from us. Please accept our sincere apologies.

Thank you for sharing your experience. We’re genuinely sorry for the disruption and frustration caused by the recent Yoast SEO for Shopify update.

You’re absolutely right to be disappointed. An update affecting your theme settings and, in turn, your business operations is serious. We also recognize that our communication and response time during the incident did not meet the standard you should expect from us. We’re especially sorry that you did not receive a clear notification once the issue had been resolved.

Our development team identified the issue and has since fixed it. However, we understand that resolving the technical problem does not undo the impact it had on your store, your time, or your business. We sincerely regret that we let you down.

We also noticed that you’ve been using Yoast SEO for Shopify since 2023, and we truly value the trust you’ve placed in us over that time. We’ve reached out to you directly by email so we can discuss what we can offer as compensation for the inconvenience and disruption you experienced.

We completely understand your decision to remove the app. If, at some point, you decide to reconsider and use Yoast SEO for Shopify again, we would be grateful for the opportunity to regain your trust and provide you with the experience you should have received from us.

Thank you again for bringing this to our attention, and please accept our sincere apologies.

UPDATE March 27th: For clarity to anyone reading along, we wanted to provide some additional context. We previously reached out with a detailed explanation and offered a call to fully address any concerns. We understand that scheduling a call may not always be convenient, and we're always happy to assist further if needed.

To reassure others reading, we’d like to clarify the following, which was shared in our original response:

- When you uninstall our app, the optimizations you've made will remain intact, except for features unique to our app (as there is no fallback to Shopify) or elements added solely through our app and not Shopify.

- Our app also includes an option to export SEO details, which can be imported into another app after making any necessary adjustments.

We hope this provides helpful context for anyone considering the app. Thank you for taking the time to read.

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Thank you for sharing your feedback with us. We’re sorry to hear about the experience you're having. We understand there may be some confusion regarding our app and how to retain your work after uninstalling it, so we’d like to clarify things.

When you uninstall our app, you can keep any optimizations you've made, except for details that are unique to our app (since for those there's no fallback to Shopify). In our previous communication, we provided instructions on how to preserve your work, but it seems those may not have been entirely clear. Therefore, our team will reach out to you via email to provide further clarification and guidance on retaining your optimizations.

Additionally, if you're considering switching to another app, our app offers an option to export SEO details as previously shared, which you can then import into another app after making any necessary adjustments. Our team will include additional clarifications in their email as well.

Lastly, we’d like to clarify that we did not respond sooner to your review, as Shopify reviews are typically visible within two days of being submitted.

We appreciate your understanding and are here to assist further.

Thank you for sharing your review. We take all feedback seriously and see it as an opportunity to both improve and clarify things.

We can definitely imagine how it feels when your efforts do not bring the expected results. However, we want to address a fundamental misunderstanding:
while the Yoast SEO for Shopify app is a tool that can help optimize your store for several SEO factors, it's important to remember that a green SEO score doesn't always guarantee top rankings or increased traffic. Even if everything is perfectly optimized, if that has been done for not the proper focus keywords or too competitive ones, the results can be underwhelming, and that is not related to our app's efficiency.

In addition, there are several ranking factors, both on and off your website, that can impact your store's visibility and performance in search results, especially in a very competitive industry like the one you are in.

A couple of these factors that are not related or affected by our app, is mobile performance and accessibility, where we noticed your store has significant room for improvement. When these factors are not optimized with related tools, then ranking and traffic can be affected, as best SEO results require a holistic approach.

We have an article that dives deeper into this subject, but there are many other resources on SEO you may also refer: https://yoast.com/reasons-optimized-content-doesnt-rank/#utm_source=helpscout&utm_medium=email&utm_term=&utm_content=hs-l1&utm_campaign=support

Regarding the results you are getting on a different platform using a free product, also in those cases there are more factors that play role, for example, the longevity (e.g. experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness) of that site and accumulated SEO value during its existence: https://yoast.com/what-is-e-e-a-t/

In all cases, our team will reach out to you via email and see how they can offer help and clarifications on your concerns, even on subjects that are not related to our app.

Lastly, we'd like to clarify that we did not respond earlier to your review, as systemically, Shopify reviews are visible within two days after being submitted.

Thank you for sharing your review. We take all feedback seriously and see it as an opportunity to both improve and clarify things.

First, we want to address a fundamental misunderstanding:
Though our app offers some improvements out of the box and without needing to take manual actions on these, the most important parameters for improving your SEO are by optimizing content on a regular basis and performing careful keyword research. Without perseverance in SEO efforts and proper optimizations, it is not likely to achieve substantial SEO results.

Regarding installation and charges, we'd like to make absolutely clear that an app installation through the Shopify app store cannot take place without the merchant's permission or specific code authorization. This is how the Shopify system works:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/apps/installing-apps#install-through-the-shopify-app-store

When an app is installed, and as long it remains installed, Shopify's billing system will generate charges for it until the app is uninstalled:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/manage-billing/your-invoice/apps#subscriptions

This applies to all subscription-based apps available in the Shopify App Store, as Shopify determines its billing system at its own discretion. More information about Shopify app charges can also be found in this Shopify help article:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/manage-billing/your-invoice/apps

In addition, the reference to other reviews about charges, also have to do with the way the Shopify billing system works and how app charges are generated by the Shopify system, as clarified in the responses we provided in those reviews, and the Shopify resource shared above.

In conclusion, there is nothing suspicious about the installation or charges, as our app abides by Shopify's system. If you are concerned about an installation that was not performed by you, please, reach out to Shopify's support for clarifications about your store's activity logs.

Lastly, we'd like to clarify that we did not respond earlier to your review, as systemically, Shopify reviews are visible within two days after being submitted.

Thank you for sharing your review. We sincerely appreciate your feedback, though we are sorry to hear that our app does not meet all your expectations.

While we understand you would like to have more options available in our app, we'd also like to address the points you raised specifically:

1. When it comes to the features available in our Shopify app and those in our WordPress plugins, we want to clarify that is it not a matter of platform focus. As WordPress is an open platform and Shopify is a closed one, there are certain restrictions/limitations when developing features, as we can work with what is offered by Shopify's API. We do understand editing alt text in bulk (besides the bulk edit options we currently offer) would be a useful option, which is why we have a feature request for this to be developed as a feature or an integration.

2. In regards to what our app offers to merchants as well as automated improvements, we understand our app may not match all merchant profiles and needs, so we want to clarify some of the main features our app offers.
- Our app lets you optimize your content for your desired keywords (Focus keyphrase field).
- The app will output product-specific structured data in the source code of your product pages. This helps your products get rich results in search engines, improving your clickthrough rate (stitched automated schema output).
- The app automatically takes care of the technical SEO details (according to best holistic and content SEO practices and search engine guidelines in order to be less vulnerable to core search engine updates).
- You can control and optimize how your search results look by letting you set your titles and meta descriptions and influence the search engine results.
- You can also control how your products will look on social media when they are shared (Social appearance control).
- Access to Yoast Academy premium online courses for you or your staff.

Rest assured our team is doing everything possible in order to provide more features (including certain A.I. automations) and value in the near future, so you can get the most out of your existing subscription.

Thank you again for sharing your feedback. We appreciate it greatly, as it will help us improve our app and better serve all our app users.

April 4 update: we are adding this update in a last attempt to notify you of our follow-ups, through the Shopify review system and for visibility purposes.

If you need any further assistance or can share more details, kindly let us know via email. Our support team remains at your disposal and would be happy to help in any way possible.

March 31 update: Thank you for your update review though we're sorry to hear that you still have an unpleasant experience. We can understand how this can be troublesome so we would like to see how we can clarify things and assist you.

Firstly, we would like to clarify Yoast SEO is in constant and direct communication with all search engines in order for our app to be always up to date and follow the best SEO practices and standards.

However, we do take your update into heart and we look forward to your detailed feedback in our email so we can see how we can potentially make improvements.

Regarding the code, we can see that there is no longer output coming from our app in your store's source code, but if you followed our process and you still see leftover code in your theme files, this may be due to an interruption of the process by another app possibly or theme structure.

In all cases, we will soon reach out to you with an additional follow-up email and provide additional assistance. As soon as we receive a response and store access from you, we can have a direct look at your setup and fix any related issues.

We're looking forward to your response and helping you as soon as possible.

March 28 reply: Thank you for sharing your review, though we are sorry to hear about the experience you had.

Based on your feedback, we would like to know more about what exactly happened with your site and why, so our team will soon reach out to you via email and address your concerns directly.

Lastly, we'd like to clarify that we have not responded earlier to your review, as systemically, Shopify reviews are visible two days after being submitted.

We're looking forward to hearing from you and helping as best we can.

March 28 update: we are adding this update in an attempt to be notified through the Shopify review system and for visibility purposes.

Based on our logs, we noticed that you followed the suggested uninstallation instructions on March 14, and your source code no longer has Yoast SEO output. We also checked your meta description and SEO title, and there is no reference to American Express, so the issue no longer occurs after the right uninstallation steps were taken.

Please do provide your confirmation that this issue has been resolved or if you need any further assistance. Our support team remains at your disposal.

March 14 reply: Thank you for sharing your feedback with us, though we're sorry to read about the experience you had. We understand how troublesome this must have been, so please allow us to address your points and concerns.

Based on the details you shared here, we understand that there is/was leftover code in your theme files after removing our app. This usually happens if the app is deleted without completing the two-step process (https://yoast.com/help/remove-yoast-code-from-theme-in-shopify/), which requires first deactivation of the app to remove our code from the theme and then deletion of the app from the Shopify admin. Or if another (usually SEO-related) app interfered with the removal process (we also noticed leftover code from another SEO app).

Fortunately, there is no need for time-consuming manual code removal or additional (which we can do for you if requested) in this case, as this can be easily fixed with a simple reinstallation and uninstallation process.

Here are the next troubleshooting steps to take:
1. Re-install the Yoast SEO app on your site.
2. Instead of "Get a subscription," click on "Remove theme modifications.". Please wait until the process is finished.
3. Click on Go back to Apps and then remove the app again.

Once this is done, the Yoast SEO code should be completely removed from your theme files, and the metadata output will be restored to what you had before. But you can always contact us for any clarifications or further assistance if needed.

In all cases, we would like to see how we can help further on this matter, so our team will soon reach out via email.

Lastly, we'd like to clarify that we have not responded earlier to your review, as systemically, Shopify reviews are visible two days after being submitted.