Yoast SEO ‑ Store optimization

Unfortunately, our experience with Yoast SEO for Shopify has been extremely disappointing, and I would strongly advise other Shopify merchants to be very careful before allowing the app to make any changes to their themes.

In our case, the Yoast app injected/modified code in our Shopify themes, and the result was actual front-end changes affecting what our customers see.

Mistakes can happen with any app. What I find completely unacceptable is what happened afterwards.

Despite Yoast being responsible for the changes, they were unable to properly restore our theme to the state it was in before their app modified it. Even more surprisingly, we were eventually asked to provide examples of what was still wrong.

That left us in the absurd situation of having to identify the damage ourselves and help troubleshoot a problem caused by their app.

When an app is allowed access to modify a live e-commerce theme, there is a significant responsibility attached to that access. If an update or code change causes problems, I expect the company behind the app to have the technical ability to identify exactly what their software changed and, most importantly, to restore those changes properly.

That was not our experience with Yoast.

I ultimately had to stop relying on their support, restore what I could myself, and involve our own developer to get the remaining issues resolved.

So my warning to other Shopify store owners is simple: make a complete backup of your theme before allowing Yoast to update or modify anything. Do not assume that they will be able to restore your theme if something goes wrong.

For an app that can make changes directly to a live Shopify storefront, I expected a much higher level of technical responsibility and support.

The app itself is fine. However, a bug in their latest version completely wiped our theme settings, which broke our site. This resulted in a revenue loss of over €5,000, and destabilized our Meta and Google Ads, which will lead to even further losses. Support just said they're sorry but can't do anything about it.

The app itself is fine. However, a bug in their latest version completely wiped our theme settings, which broke our site. This resulted in a revenue loss of over €5,000, and destabilized our Meta and Google Ads, which will lead to even further losses. Support just said they're sorry but can't do anything about it.