The Contract Shop® review for BOOSTER SEO & IMAGE OPTIMIZER
May 25, 2023
I used Booster SEO over the last few months, before ultimately deciding to stop using it over the last few weeks as I transitioned to doing technical SEO work more manually. The app is easy to install and automatically works on technical SEO work for you, which is nice. However, the main issue with this app is that it is quite vindictive if you ever stop using it and try to uninstall it. Using Ahrefs Site Audit as a reference, before installing Booster SEO and working on technical SEO my site audit score was an 89. Partly with Booster's help, as well as with manual technical SEO work (fixing broken links, adding manual 301 redirects, removing unnecessary webpages, etc.) that I did with my internal team we got this score up to a 99. However, after removing Booster SEO the score dropped to a 66 since Booster SEO removed my title tags on the way out, as well as undid the fixes that they made. They are transparent on undoing changes they made if you uninstall, but it looks like they will go even further than that and change things that they did not fix in the first place. So I would think long and hard about starting to use this app, and would recommend taking the time and effort to work on technical SEO manually which I think will pay off in the long run. The other issue with Booster is that the 301 redirects for broken links that Booster sets up are not very smart. All 301 redirects that Booster sets up automatically go to the homepage, which is not a great experience both from a user experience as well as apparently (according to my SEO agency) in Google's eyes. It would be a lot more valuable if Booster tried to guess what the most relevant page was to redirect to, and then the user could approve/disapprove these proposed 301 redirects.
Hi Kevin, Pat here from Booster Apps Support. We apologize for any inconvenience caused during the uninstallation process. When uninstalling Booster SEO, only the app's meta tags are removed, while the default meta tags from your theme remain intact. It is common for SEO apps to leave the theme's page title and meta description commented out for technical reasons. Additionally, our app creates a backup copy of your theme.liquid folder, allowing you to revert your theme back to its original state. Regarding the redirection of broken links, our Autopilot feature enables bulk editing of redirect destinations. This gives you the ability to specify the desired destination URL for each broken link, directing visitors to the most relevant pages on your website instead of the homepage. However, we'd be happy to look further into this for you. I have followed up with an email to you personally, in which we would be happy to hear from you and get to turn around your all-over experience using our app. Again, we sincerely apologize for this inconvenience. Regards, Pat
Booster SEO – All-in-one SEO & Image Optimizer Shopify App