Yoast Is Toasting Your Intellect

I recently installed the Yoast plugin on my WordPress blog. And I have to say, overall, I’m impressed.

If you don’t know, Yoast guides your SEO efforts online. It is one of the most sought-after plugins on the market today. With over five million active installations, the plugin is undoubtedly credible.

But is it making us dumb?

I admit that I am a fledgling freelancer. I’ve been in the business for less than a month. But, I’ve been writing for years, mostly at an academic level.

Making the switch from jargon to jukebox has been jarring to say the least. I’m used to appealing to competent researchers who thrive in sentences that take up half a paragraph.

It feels counterintuitive to use simpler language.

Yoast is ensuring that the struggle to debase my diction is as smooth as possible. I hardly think.

The plugin monitors variables like the complexity of vocabulary, sentence length, and paragraph length. At first glance, nothing seems inherently wrong with this set-up. Little stop-lights change color to indicate your progress, calling attention to areas that the plugin feels are inept. If 25% of your sentences contain more than 20 words, the light flicks to red.

Neat, right?

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel insulted that Yoast finds fault in complex thoughts.

Of course, I’m aware that most users of the Internet are not brilliant. Far from it. As content creators, there’s an impetus for us to appeal to the masses if we hope to drive traffic to our blogs.

Traffic is our holy grail. But what price are we willing to pay for that traffic?

Having an educated discussion about any major issue of today requires complex thought. There’s difficulty in expressing an informed opinion when Yoast urges us to refrain from chaining successive statements, linking related postulates, and presenting conclusions that derive strength from elaboration.

I doubt many astronomers could discuss the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit without exploring the theory of Plank energy, which (and I’m not an astronomer by any means) probably requires sentences longer than twenty words.

Look at any great writer — Joyce, Wilde, Vonnegut — and you will find thoughts expressed in long, rich sentences that describe, inform, and allude to symbols accessible to analytic discourse, not bite-size tweets.

Sure, they vary things ups. They achieve impact from writing that ebbs from short summaries and flows into flowery descriptions.

My biggest complaint with using Yoast is that it promotes short-circuit thinking.

As writers, is it not our duty to super-charge the thinking of others? Is it too much to ask for an Internet rich with intelligence, one in which online discourse is stimulating and inspiring?

I’m annoyed with Yoast.

Sometimes, I want to publish a thought that is under 250 words. I don’t need a pixelated stop-light to frown on my creativity.

Sometimes, my signal words are understood in relation to the main idea.

Why is this plugin encouraging me to spell it out for readers using ugly enumerative words like “furthermore,” nasty emphatic phrases like “most noteworthy,” and obvious transitions like “in conclusion”?

Don’t get me wrong: Yoast is an invaluable tool.

For technophobes who want to write online, Yoast makes mark-up tasks effortless. The plugin reminds bloggers to add meta-descriptions, which are the topic sentences of HTML. The plugin keeps track of which keywords you use, helping you explore new branches of your niche.

Yoast even helps you avoid writing in passive voice, which is always a win.

Yes, I recommend that you use the plugin if you blog. Few competitors can match its robust features.

But, don’t let the red-light-green-light structure prevent you for writing well.

How was that? Let me know with a response! Follow me if you found this article helpful.

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