[luckylion]

I can't recommend anything beyond ACF (and that I'm somewhat hesitant, it has a few annoyances) and maybe Autoptimize (feels stable, but haven't worked with a lot). I work with Yoast a lot because clients like it and editors know it, but I wouldn't recommend it. I hate all Permalink-Plugins I've ever seen. I don't do any caching in WP, I use varnish.

Otherwise I experienced exactly what you mentioned. Install a plugin, write code to dequeue its resources from all pages it's not running on. Of course, there are plugins that help you do that, but it's yet another plugin!

> I think part of the problem is WordPress plugins compete with each on features and need even more features on top to charge for the premium version, so page speed and robustness via simplicity get lost in the noise.

I agree, that looks like part of the reason for bloat, but most have also evolved over years. Most successful plugins have been around for a decade or so, and few people talked about web performance in 2010. That many authors initially just solved their own problem while learning php and shared their solution plays a part as well (not to mention that they often started writing them on php4).

[mpol]

With regards to Yoast SEO, I stepped away from that. Over the past few years there have been many instances where an admin_notice could not be removed. The last straw for me was last Black Friday sale, with a yellow flashing banner on all my admin pages. Not fun.

I use The SEO Framework now on most of my sites, and it is a good experience. It is made by someone who cares about his users instead of wanting to milk them.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/autodescription/

If you need to move data over from SEO plugin to SEO plugin, check out the Data Transporter plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-data-transporter/