In version 7.4 of the WPBakery plugin they introduced what they call their “SEO Toolkit” which is basically just extra settings you can use to modify your on page title and meta description tags and a little SEO analysis of your page content. While in theory the feature sounds like a good idea I highly recommend against using it.
Issue 1: Lack of Features
The SEO Toolkit in WPBakery only provides you with the ability to set your on page title and description meta tags. These settings are important for SEO but they are a VERY small portion of what is actually needed for your site SEO. You will still need to install an SEO plugin on your site (I recommend Yoast SEO free).
Since you are still going to need an SEO plugin on your site the WPBakery settings basically are just added bloat.
Issue 2: No 3rd Party Integration
Continuing from the first issue, the WPBakery SEO settings do not integrate with popular SEO plugins. This means if you are using another SEO plugin (which I already explained you need to do) the WPBakery settings will not pull the data from your SEO plugin so you can’t make use of their analysis tool.
Not to mention that your SEO plugin will already have an analysis tool….so the WPBakery settings are just useless bloat that won’t serve any added benefit.
Issue 3: The “Lock” in affect
The biggest issue with the SEO settings in WPBakery is that if you ever use them you will need to use them forever. You are stuck using WPBakery for every page/post of your site. Which by the way, I would NEVER recommend using any page builder (besides Gutenberg) for standard post content. Custom page builders should only be used for complex layouts such as custom pages and dynamic templates.
So not only will you be forced to use WPBakery for every page and post on your site (even if you don’t need it) and if you ever wish to switch to another builder like Elementor or Gutenberg you will need to manually update every page and post on your site to fix your on page SEO using the proper method, aka an SEO plugin.
How to Disable the WPBakery SEO Settings
Luckily WPBakery released an update with a new Modules panel that makes it easy to disable certain features including their SEO toolkit. To disable simply go to WPBakery > Module Manager and click on the SEO option to disable the Toggle. For the most part you will probably want to disable most settings.
