Does not read custom field content for CPTs (custom post types)
If you use a pagebuilder,
And if you use custom fields to output your content via a custom post type (CPT), for case studies, services, service areas etc,
Then Squirrly SEO will NOT work for you.
The founder of Metabox estimates that ~60% of their userbase falls into the above category. Assuming the same for ACF, Jetengine etc, then that's millions of WordPress users who's content Squirrly SEO is ignoring.
Don't be fooled. It LOOKS like Squirrly is analysing your content, but it's only working on the template (and template preview while you work on it) rather than the actual custom post content.
As a result, not only does Squirrly SEO fail to analyse your content for your most important pages, it also encourages you to keep adding more and more of your SEO keyword, as it cannot see whether you've added it or not. AFAIK; repeatedly adding a the same keyword over and over again to a page is considered bad practice, and is penalised.
I have proven this to the Squirrly SEO team, and their answer is essentially that "nobody has complained about it yet, so it's not a problem".
So; an SEO plugin being unable to read content of millions of websites is "not a problem".
As I said before: Squirrly SEO LOOKS like it's working, because it's reading your template as you work on it. But it's NOT reading your custom post types and fields for content. Perhaps that's why they don't recieve support requests for it.
Squrrly SEO is great for people who only have 5 static pages, and don't output content via ACF/Metabox/Jetengine etc. It's almost completely useless for people who do though (~60% of CPT users)
Customer service has been responsive, but stubborn.
The software WOULD be great if it could read the content of your CPT site, but it can't, so it's not.
Try it yourself: check Squirrly's recommendations to add "X" keyword. Add that keyword to your CPT content that you output as content on the frontend. Check the recommendations again.
Has Squirrly seen your new content?
No.
Will it keep on advising you to add more of that keyword?
Yes.
Will you be penalised for keyword stuffing?
Possibly.
Have you wasted your time?
Definitely.
Florin_Squirrly
Nov 20, 2024Hi,
This is really not our focus, because we don't get requests for this. Also, we haven't seen people placing content without all the page builders we've integrated with.
However, you can check each page from the Cloud App of Squirrly SEO. Copy and paste all your content there, so it gets analyzed. This way you can check it exactly on the last output of your page.
This is only important when you insert big pieces of content from these other plugins, instead of building your pages in Elementor, Gutenberg, Divi, etc.
And even in this case, you can make the analysis I have suggested.