WordPress is turning 20 years old, and we can’t help but reminisce on all the years so far. Our favorite CMS has come a long way since its beginning, celebrating its 20th anniversary on May 27, 2023. A content management system (CMS) can help its users create a great website, and WordPress is the one we keep returning to. This blog post offers a brief history of WordPress and describes Yoast’s significant role in the WordPress project and community.

History of WordPress

Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little started and announced WordPress on May 27, 2003. In those days, it was a simple blogging platform built on the b2/cafelog software. Its popularity grew due to its user-friendly interface, customizability, and flexibility, letting users easily create custom themes and plugins. This made it a top choice for bloggers, freelancers, and small businesses. This was when competitors like Joomla and Drupal were doing pretty well.

WordPress 1.5 was launched in 2005. In this release, users could change the design of their blogs without needing to know HTML or CSS. Over time, WordPress further grew in versatility. The 2010 release of WordPress 3.0 added custom post types. Users created various content types beyond posts and pages thanks to custom post types. The feature enabled SEO experts to design custom landing pages and product pages. They could also optimize URLs for better search engine visibility. Additionally, WordPress 3.0 allowed site owners to create multiple sites using a single installation with its multi-site feature.

In 2018, the Gutenberg editor debuted with the release of WordPress 5.0. This new editor has improved the user experience by introducing drag-and-drop blocks. Thanks to these blocks, users create visually appealing and engaging content that gets more website traffic and engages visitors. Today, the block editor powers the full site editing feature slowly rolling out in WordPress.

The importance of open source

We can partly explain WordPress’s success due to its open-source license, which is core to its development philosophy. The license allows users, designers, and developers to access, modify, and improve WordPress’s source code. As a result, it created a vibrant and inclusive community that propels its growth and accessibility.

Thousands of developers worldwide contribute to WordPress, creating plugins and themes that enhance the platform’s functionality. This approach has made WordPress the preferred platform for businesses of all sizes. It also helped stimulate best practices among its users and developers.

The open-source model has become the foundation of WordPress’s success as a leading content management system. The community working together to create a powerful, easy-to-use, and adaptable platform for everyone has made it one of the most recognizable open-source projects in the world. The philosophy of openness and inclusivity will continue to drive WordPress’s growth and development into the future.

Key moments in the history of WordPress

Let’s take a closer look at some of the significant moments in the history of WordPress.

The initial launch of WordPress (2003)

WordPress launched in 2003, marking a pivotal moment in the history of the web. It also started a new era of sites. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little co-founded it as a fork of the b2/cafelog blogging system. They wanted to offer something more user-friendly and flexible than what was already out there.

Designed to be modular and adaptable, WordPress gained popularity as a CMS for bloggers of all skill levels. Developers were attracted to it to create custom themes and plugins. Its simplicity set it apart. The intuitive interface and basic features made publishing and managing content online easy, even for users lacking technical skills.

Although it had its initial issues, the efforts of Mullenweg and Little paid off. The WordPress community grew, improving the platform’s flexibility and refining updates to fix bugs. Developing plugins and themes further enhanced its capabilities and drove its popularity.

The launch of WordPress 1.5 (2005)

2005 saw the release of WordPress 1.5. This significant update introduced themes, revolutionizing how users could personalize their WordPress sites. Before themes, altering a site’s appearance required creating CSS stylesheets, a time-consuming and elaborate process only feasible for expert users.

Themes introduced an accessible and practical way for WordPress users to modify their sites’ designs without learning HTML or CSS. The update marked a turning point in WordPress’s history, further boosting its popularity and user-friendliness.

The update came with a default theme, Kubrick, by Michael Heilemann. This became the go-to choice for users due to its groundbreaking design and easy customization. Additionally, WordPress 1.5 had a new database structure that offered better performance and scalability. This allowed faster, more efficient handling of more extensive data storage.

With the introduction of static pages, users could create pages beyond the prior limit of posts in chronological order. Now, we see the addition of standard pages like About us, Contact us, and more. Themes empowered non-developers to personalize their sites, making WordPress 1.5 more accessible than ever.

Launch of the WordPress plugin repository (2005)

The concept of plugins was introduced in WordPress 1.2. The launch of the WordPress plugin repository in 2005 marked a turning point for the platform. The repository vastly expanded its capabilities and popularity. Before the repository, WordPress users were limited in customization options, relying on built-in functions alone.

The plugin repository changed everything. It enabled developers to create and share their plugins with the WordPress community. This opened up limitless possibilities for expanding and personalizing functionality. The library now offers users a broad range of plugins, from social media integration to eCommerce, to enhance their WordPress sites.

The plugin repository streamlined the installation process. It replaced the considerable effort of downloading files and transferring them through FTP with a single-click installation from the WordPress dashboard.

One plugin that greatly impacted site owners was WordPress SEO, later called Yoast SEO. After all these years, our plugin is still the most important tool for optimizing on-page content and doing SEO. This plugin provides features like content analysis, XML sitemaps, and social integration to enhance visibility and increase website traffic.

The plugin repository also fostered and strengthened the WordPress community by encouraging sharing, communication, and collaboration between enthusiasts. Today, it is a vital cornerstone of the WordPress ecosystem. It has a broad selection of over 60,000 plugins, continuing to enrich WordPress’s capabilities and development community.

The first ever WordCamp is held (2006)

The WordPress community is very active online but also loves to come together offline. Instrumental in this was the introduction of WordCamps, which are events that focus on everything related to WordPress. WordCamps are informal conferences that are organized all over the world, by people from the community. And this is still very much happening to this day.

During these events, WordPress enthusiasts come together to meet like-minded people, share ideas and work together on improving WordPress. And one of the reasons for its ongoing popularity is that everyone’s welcome, from developers to casual users. Every contribution is welcome and everyone can contribute!

WordPress 3.0 (2010)

WordPress 3.0 was a significant moment in the platform’s history. This release featured many new tools that gave users greater website control and flexibility. Custom post types were among the most critical introductions, removing the previous post and page limitations. This made creating product pages, event listings, and the like easier. It reduced the complexity or requirement of hacking the platform. 

Multi-site functionality was another significant update, allowing users to create multiple sites with a single WordPress installation. This made site management more accessible and more centralized for owners. Additionally, WordPress 3.0 offered an improved menu system. A more sophisticated site design is now possible, giving users greater control over arranging individual menus. The update enhanced performance and security, providing better caching, response time, and security features.

The WordPress Foundation was founded (2010)

In 2010, Matt Mullenweg founded the WordPress Foundation, a charitable organization to further WordPress’ mission. Which is to democratize publishing through open source. The goal was (and is) to keep ensuring free access to the software projects that WordPress supports. To create a stable platform for future generations and to make sure the source code doesn’t disappear when the current contributor base changes.

This means that the foundation is responsible for the protection of the WordPress and WordCamp trademark (and related trademarks). But it also focuses on educating the public on WordPress and the importance of open-source software.

Five for the Future is launched (2014)

The Five for the Future project is an initiative that promotes contributions to the WordPress platform. It encourages organizations to contribute five percent of their resources to WordPress development. Being the open-source project that it is, WordPress benefits from and relies on people all over the world contributing to it. Five for the Future helps make this happen, with participation more than quadrupling since its launch in 2014.

As is often (if not always) the case with WordPress, everyone can contribute. There is always a way to get involved, regardless of your experience level. This gives people the opportunity to learn alongside other, more experienced contributors who enjoy sharing their knowledge. It’s possible to contribute to Five for the Future as an individual or with your organization.

The Gutenberg/block editor (2018)

In 2018, WordPress 5.0 brought the revolutionary Gutenberg editor. Gutenberg introduced a block-based system to replace the traditional WYSIWYG editor, improving accessibility and democratizing website creation.

The block editor broke down content creation into blocks, allowing better template design and layout precision, separate from content styling. This enabled customization options like images, heading, and shortcode blocks to easily create complex content like charts, forms, and call-to-actions.

Initially, the rollout met some resistance due to significant change, but people slowly learned to accept it due to its superior user experience and versatility. It has since become a staple feature with the release of custom block-building capabilities. The block editor provides limitless design possibilities and improves website designs.

The platform has undergone further development with the release of reusable blocks, block patterns, and full-site editing, expanding customization options. Reusable blocks allowed the saving of frequently used blocks, while block patterns provided a selection of pre-designed blocks with customization options. Finally, full-site editing allowed users to create site designs using the block editor seamlessly.

The transformative addition of Gutenberg brought unprecedented ease, customization, and adaptability to WordPress, making it an essential tool for website creation and evolution. With its current state and potential for updates, Gutenberg will continue to play a crucial role in WordPress’s future growth and success.

All-women & nonbinary release squad (2020)

Every new release of WordPress comes with its own release squad. In 2020, the squad for the WordPress 5.6 release only consisted of people who identify as women or nonbinary. This was done to increase the number of women and nonbinary people who have experience on a release squad and also return as a contributor to WordPress. The WordPress 5.6 release, named “Simone”, was the first ever to have an all-women & nonbinary release squad and this was quite a success!

It’s also good to mention that right now, the community is preparing for the next women & nonbinary release squad. So if you’re interested, make sure to sign up!

Full site editing and the future of WordPress (2022 and beyond)

The main focus of the WordPress project is to build a full-site editing feature. With this, users create sites visually using the block editor. Full site editing debuted in WordPress 5.9. Users could choose visual options such as font combinations and image filters through the adaptive navigation block.

WordPress 6.0 followed and improved the user experience by introducing a block-locking UI and improved export theme functionality. Meanwhile, WordPress 6.1 brought improvements to the full-site editing functionalities. The latest release, WordPress 6.2, introduced a new Site Editor and additional functionality.

While ongoing concerns over stalling adoption rates, the legacy codebase, and UX issues, among others, exist, the WordPress project remains optimistic about the future. Performance has also become a new focus, making WordPress faster, with support from Google. Despite challenges, the WordPress community remains committed to enhancing the platform, cementing its position as a leading CMS.

Yoast and WordPress

Yoast and WordPress have a deep-rooted history, and their future is interdependent. Without WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin and Yoast, the company, may not have existed. Joost de Valk, Yoast’s founder and ex-CEO, created the SEO plugin for WordPress. He actively contributed to the WordPress project and community from early on. Today, Yoast has a team of dedicated WordPress developers who have been prolific contributors to WordPress, closely following Automattic’s contributions.

We do everything we can to improve WordPress. For instance, we formed the WordPress Performance team with a team from Google. The team identified and addressed common performance issues to put performance front and center. The goal is to keep WordPress from falling behind competitors in performance. Making WordPress faster benefits everyone, from website owners to visitors, leading to increased engagement and revenue opportunities.

Of course, Yoast played a critical role in WordPress’ success in the SEO industry. Today, our plugin has over 14 million active downloads. It provides technical improvements, on-page optimization, content analysis, XML sitemaps, social media integration, and much more, simplifying SEO processes and enhancing online visibility. By sponsoring numerous WordCamps and meetups, we demonstrate our commitment to the WordPress community.

WordPress’s open-source platform allows us to create user-friendly products that meet the community’s needs. The dependency on the WordPress project and Yoast continue to shape our futures, evident in our commitment to the ecosystem. Yoast and WordPress are intertwined in history and remain pivotal to each other’s future. Together, we’ll continue to drive innovation, and growth, and develop the community.

Thanks for 20 good years, WordPress, and here’s to the next 20!

WordPress has evolved incredibly since its inception. It’s now a dependable CMS that powers over 43% of the internet. Regular updates and new features continue to make it the best tool for publishing and optimizing content for search engines.

As WordPress celebrates its 20th birthday, we’d like to congratulate everyone who has participated in this success — whether as a contributor, a developer, or a user. At Yoast, we are particularly proud of our contributions to the success of WordPress and its community. WordPress has significantly impacted the internet by simplifying the process of developing, publishing, and promoting online content. We can only hope that the future is just as bright!

Read more: Yoast & WordPress »

The post WordPress at 20: The CMS that revolutionized the web! appeared first on Yoast.

SEO copywriting is a crucial component of any successful SEO strategy. Still, it can also present a significant challenge for anyone wanting to create high-quality content that ranks well in search engines. As search engines crawl web pages, the content of your website should be fine-tuned to the — ever-changing — algorithms of search engines. In addition to that, write clearly so that your audience both enjoys and understands your website. After all, we know that readability ranks.

This complete guide to SEO copywriting takes you through the process of keyword research and the different stages of the writing process. It will also help you write the readable and SEO-friendly articles your website needs! And last but not least, we’ll give you some insights into creating SEO content for international sites and the challenges that come with that.

This guide to writing SEO content covers the following:

SEO copywriting and holistic SEO

At Yoast, we practice what we call ‘holistic SEO’. Our primary goal should be to build and maintain THE BEST possible website. Ranking in Google will come easier if your website is exceptionally high quality and your content is unique and helpful. The reason for that: Google wants to serve its customers what they want. Their mission is: to index all the world’s information and make it universally accessible.

In addition to this, Google, of course, wants to make money, but they’ll have to show people the results they are looking for – otherwise, people will stop using Google. We can agree that Google wants to show people the best results. If your website is the best in your niche market, Google wants to rank it high in the results.

What is SEO copywriting?

SEO copywriting is one of the most powerful tools people use to get ahead of their competition. By creating high-quality content that’s carefully optimized for search engines and tailored to the needs and interests of their target audience, people can increase their visibility, drive more organic traffic to their website, and ultimately grow their revenue.

It’s like the perfect blend of art and science, where a little creative flair and strategic optimization techniques can work wonders for your online presence. Whether you’re a small business just starting or a larger enterprise looking to dominate your industry, SEO copywriting can help you succeed in the search result pages.

Holistic SEO

Holistic SEO is an interdisciplinary marketing strategy to make the best website in a niche market. To do so, the technical design of your website should be excellent, the UX of your website flawless, and all security aspects covered. Most important, however, is that the content of your website should be well-written, appropriately marketed, and targeted at the audience your website serves. This approach requires relatively advanced SEO writing skills.

Do you want to learn all about SEO copywriting? In our SEO copywriting training, which is part of Yoast SEO academy Premium, we’ll teach you how to write copy that ranks!

Write the best copy!

To ensure your website is the best in your sector, the text on your website should be easy to read. Without making any concessions to the quality of your SEO content, you should tweak and fine-tune your text to the specific demands of search engines. SEO copywriting is very much like the process of writing anything else, so it’s hard work, and inevitably, some of us have more writing talent than others. Unfortunately, we can’t all be Ernest Hemingway, but anyone can write better SEO copy with some training.

Read more: 5 tips to write readable blog posts! »

SEO copywriting in the age of generative AI

Generative AI is like a machine that can effortlessly create content for SEO purposes. It can be trained to analyze keywords and other factors to generate new and optimize existing content. However, we must remember that the human touch is still vital in ensuring that the generated content is of good quality, without factual errors, and relevant to a target audience.

Due to the design of its technology, you must also remember that generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard can not give you original writing yet — but it is very good at reusing stuff already out there. Still, it cannot come up with things itself.

Generative AI will be a handy tool for creating SEO content in the future. However, it’s essential to use it wisely and ensure the content meets brand guidelines and target audience needs. Please use generative AI responsibly. Use AI as a guide, not as a fully automated content factory.

Before writing: always start with keyword research

The very first step of SEO copywriting has little to do with writing. First, you need to decide what you’re going to write about. Which topics do you want to be found for? You’ll need to use the keywords you want to rank for in your copy, so keyword research is the first step of SEO copywriting. Keyword research is what you do to list the keywords and keyphrases for which you want to rank for.

Proper keyword research consists of these three steps:

1. Formulate a mission statement

Before starting the actual keyword research, think about your mission statement. This is what makes you stand out from the crowd. While formulating your mission statement, consider who you are and what your blog is about. What makes it unique? Take your time to develop and write down your mission statement. For more information on creating mission statements, read our post on how to write a mission statement for your website.

2. Make a list of relevant keywords

Once you have formulated a clear mission statement, you can start listing all the search terms (keywords) you want your website to be found for. If your mission is clear, you should be able to develop search terms that apply to your niche market and your unique selling points. These will be the keywords you’d like to be found for.

To come up with good terms, you have to get inside the heads of your audience. How are they most likely to find you? What would they search for on Google? At the end of your keyword research, you should have a list of all the relevant search terms people might use. Also, think of combinations and variations of these terms. You can also use tools to help you in the keyword research process. For example, Yoast SEO integrates with the Semrush related keywords research tool. After you’ve made a list, you may have trouble deciding which keyphrase to use. If so, read our post about choosing your perfect focus keyword.

Create an overview

Eventually, you should have a helpful overview, which will significantly help your SEO copywriting process. It helps to create a table of your keywords to summarize the information. Try to devise combinations of keywords, then order the keywords by some priority. Which keywords are essential to rank for and closest to your mission statement, and which are less so? When choosing which keywords to tackle, you should also consider how likely your pages will rank for that specific keyword. Focusing on less popular and less competitive keywords can be a good strategy at first. Please read our posts about why you should focus on long-tail keywords if you’d like to know more about the importance of less competitive keywords.

3. Look at search intent

Nowadays, SEO strategies should largely revolve around answering people’s questions. Whenever someone enters a search query into a search engine, they are on a quest for something. There are four kinds of intent searchers can have:

• Informational intent: to find information on a specific topic.
• Navigational intent: to access a specific website by entering the term in a search engine.
• Commercial intent: to buy something sometime soon and research before purchasing.
• Transactional intent: to buy something after doing their commercial intent searches.

In your keyword research, you need to find out which kinds of intent apply to your keywords and try to match these search intents. You can use the search results to determine which intent applies to your keywords and create great content matching this intent. Which intent you’re targetting should also affect your writing style; we’ll go into that later in this guide.

4. Create landing pages for searchers

The final step of keyword research is to create awesome posts or pages for the keywords you want to be found for. The SEO content should be tailored to attract visitors who found your blog through a specific keyword. This could be a dedicated page or a blog post optimized for a specific keyword. Ensure visitors can navigate your blog through the menu or internal links. And make sure you have a page for every relevant keyword you come up with.

If you’ve found an excellent format for these kinds of posts or pages, you can use Yoast Duplicate Post to use that format for similar pages. With it, you can clone a post and easily fill it with the content your page will be about.

Your keyword research will give you a good idea of what to blog about. Then, you’ll have to unlock content around a specific word. A word is not a topic, though. Next to a keyword (or keyphrase), you will need an angle, a specific story around that keyword. Read our tips on coming up with ideas for your blog if you want to know more.

Three phases of writing an article

Once you’ve decided upon a topic or a story you want to write, SEO copywriting begins! The SEO writing process consists of three stages: preparing, writing, and correcting (or editing).

Phase 1 of the writing process: Preparing your text

The first phase of the actual SEO copywriting process is planning your piece. Before you put pen to paper (or fingers on the keyboard), take some time and think about what you will write. You’ll have a topic in mind by now, but before you start writing, you should have clear answers to the following questions as well:

1. What’s the purpose of your article? Why are you writing? What do you want to achieve?
2. What will be the main message of your post? What’s the key question you want to answer?
3. Who is your audience? What are they looking for?
4. What information do you need to write your piece?
5. In what order will you present your information? What will be the structure of your article?

In our post about preparing a blog post, you can read all about how to come up with proper and clear answers to these questions.

The purpose of your text and search intent

The first question in the list is: what’s the purpose of your article. Thinking about that beforehand is essential because it affects how you should write your article. Do you want to inform users? Amuse them? Or persuade them to do something on your site? The preparation step is also when you should consider your visitor’s intent. If your keyword research shows that the intent behind a particular query is informational, you would like to write a persuasive, sales-focused page for that keyword. In that case, that could be a better match. Of course, this will be fine if you’ve thought about your keyword strategy.

In any case, you need to think about your user’s intent before you start writing, simply because an informative text differs from a persuasive text. The language you’ll use when writing an informative text should be clear and focused, whereas persuasive language will usually be very positive, focusing more on the reader. And amusing texts use more informal language, wordplay, or exaggerations.

Keep reading: Why the purpose of your text is important for SEO »

Text structure

An important element of planning your article is setting up its structure. The structure of the text on your site is vital for SEO copywriting. If your content has a clear structure, you have a better chance of ranking well on Google. You can use mind-mapping techniques to help grasp topics and find connections between the different parts of your subject.

It pays off to think about the structure of your piece before you begin. Because the structure is the skeleton of your text, it will help the reader grasp the article’s main points.

Posts and pages with a clear structure will also increase conversions on your website. You have a better chance that your visitors will buy your products or return to your website if they understand your message correctly. For practical tips on how to set up the structure of a piece of writing, you should read our post on how to create a clear blog post structure.

Generative AI can help you structure content and describe topics

You shouldn’t use generative AI like ChatGPT to automatically generated full articles for you. You can use them to get a better grasp of a topic, to get more context, and to be inspired. Generative AI can also help with structuring text, like:

1. Automating content outlines: Generative AI can suggest content outlines based on the identified topic or keywords. This can help you create articles, posts, and other types of content by providing you with a text structure and writing guidance.
2. Identifying key phrases and topics: Generative AI can access large amounts of data to identify key phrases or topics that recur in a particular field. This can help you include important information in your content and structure it to follow a cohesive narrative or theme.
3. Providing content recommendations: Generative AI can suggest related content that you can use to structure your writing. It can analyze the content available and identify related information that would be relevant to the topic at hand.
4. Offering writing assistance: Generative AI can suggest sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation to help produce well-structured content. This can help you create high-quality, readable content that is easier for audiences to engage with.
5. Formatting and layout suggestions: This feature can help your content planning and optimize it for user engagement, providing the most effective structure based on the type of content that needs to be created.

These helpful features enable you to create high-quality, optimized content that drives more traffic and engagement, but be critical and remember the human touch.

Phase 2 of the writing process: Writing your text

Now you can start the actual SEO writing process! This only takes about 20% of your time on your article.

Just write!

The most important tip for this phase of SEO copywriting is to just write. People often have trouble formulating the first sentence (or the first paragraph). But, at this stage, you can skip writing that first paragraph altogether. Just write a few words referring to the content your first paragraph should contain and start writing the second paragraph. Beginnings and endings are easier to write once you’ve fleshed out the main body of your post.

If a sentence isn’t grammatically correct or sounds awkward, keep going, and don’t worry. You can rewrite these things in the next phase, which is editing. In the writing phase, staying in the flow of writing is crucial.

Stick to the structure of your text

While writing, use the structure you created in the preparation phase as an outline and write the paragraphs according to that plan. Make sure you write clear paragraphs. Start each paragraph with the most important sentence, then explain or elaborate. Your readers will be able to grasp the most important content from your article by just reading the first sentences of your paragraphs.

Make sure your text is readable

Reading from a screen is hard, so if you want your readers to read your entire blog post, you must make it easy to read. Posts that are easily read will result in more returning visitors and a higher conversion rate. Most importantly, make sure your text is pitched right for the audience you’re writing for.

To read more tips on writing readable texts, read our post with tips on how to make blog posts more readable and our post with tips on how to improve your blog’s typography. These tips will help you fine-tune your SEO copywriting process.

A few ways to improve your writing style

Some people are natural writers and don’t need any tips for their SEO copywriting – they can write an attractive, fun, readable article in a few minutes. Others lack that skill. But while attractive writing is a matter of talent, practice surely helps! Let’s look at some tips to improve your writing style and two writing styles to experiment with.

Tip: Read a lot!

If you want to develop an attractive writing style, it helps to read a lot. Reading (novels, blogs, magazines, whatever) will inspire you to write excellent articles. It will teach you how other people form their sentences and build their paragraphs. It teaches you how to use humor and how to play with language. Plus, it allows you to develop a gut feeling about what makes a nicely readable article. If you want more tips on developing your writing style, read our blog post about achieving an attractive style.

The inverted pyramid style

A well-known writing style in journalism, the inverted pyramid means you put your most important information upfront. You don’t bury your key point halfway down the third paragraph but tell the complete story in the first paragraph. Of course, you can elaborate in the following paragraphs. But you get your main message across right away. This writing style holds up pretty well for some types of articles. It especially comes in handy now that web content is increasingly used to answer every question a searcher might have.

Read on: Writing content with the inverted pyramid style »

Storytelling

Everyone loves a good story, and most people can also tell a good story – especially from personal experience. Great news: you can use the power of stories in your SEO copy! Whether in blog posts or product pages, including a (relevant) story will go a long way in catching your reader’s interest. Stories can provide more clarity and help your readers remember you more easily.

Keep on reading: What is storytelling and why should you use it? »

Take a break now and then

SEO copywriting can be a fairly intense process. If you write for long periods, you’ll find that concentrating becomes harder. The exact time, however, will be different for every individual. If your mind has started to wander, that’ll be the time to take a break.

Many people find writing hard for more than twenty minutes at a time — attention spans can be quite short! At that point, people should step away from the computer to do something else. Even a minute-long break can be enough to return to your writing with fresh and renewed concentration and creativity.

Phase 3 of the SEO copywriting process: Editing your text

Once you’ve finished writing your piece, you’ll have the first draft of your article. You will improve upon this first draft in the final phase of writing. The last step will still take quite a lot of time.

The editing phase is the phase of the SEO copywriting process in which you should ‘kill your darlings’. Don’t be afraid to throw stuff out. You should read and re-read and re-re-read your post and correct any awkward sentences, unclear phrasing, and jumbled paragraph structures. Make your content marketing stand out.

Here are five steps to take to edit your article thoroughly.

Step 1: Read slowly (and out loud)

You can start this phase by reading your piece slowly (and even out loud, this can help). Each sentence should be grammatically correct, and the spelling must be flawless. You need to be very critical of your work. You can have your computer read the text out loud for you — make sure it doesn’t stumble.

Step 2: Focus on sentences

Start by making sure every sentence is correct. Focus on the spelling of words and rephrase awkward formulations. Ensure sentences are grammatically correct and check for readability: ensure your sentences aren’t too long.

Step 3: Focus on paragraphs

If all sentences in one paragraph are approved, look at the structure within a paragraph, focusing on that first sentence. Does that first core sentence capture what you wanted to say in that paragraph? Are the sentences within a paragraph presented in a logical order? Do you use transition words to make the connection between sentences clear?

Step 4: Check the text structure

Check whether the structure between paragraphs is clear. Are your article’s topics presented logically, or do you need to make changes?

You should also check your headings and subheadings. Make sure your focus keyword is in one of those headings and subheadings. But equally important, ensure the headings help your readers grasp your text’s structure. In the article on how to use headings on your site, we explain how to use them.

Step 5: Ask for feedback

The final step in your SEO copywriting process is getting feedback. After editing your text, you should ask people for feedback. At Yoast, all the posts we write are read by at least two of our colleagues before we publish them. Feedback allows for the perspective of someone other than the writer and almost always leads to vast improvements in the post.

It would also be useful to let someone from your audience proofread your post to test whether the message is communicated properly. Also, feedback from someone with professional writing and grammar skills, such as an editor, will help you improve your blog post even further.

Use Yoast SEO

While editing your text, you will find our Yoast SEO plugin useful for SEO copywriting because it helps to optimize your text for search engines and to make your text more readable. For a detailed overview of how to use Yoast SEO when optimizing your content, you should read our post about the content analysis feature in Yoast SEO. The plugin analyzes content in various languages, so you can benefit from using the plugin even if you are not writing in English!

Read more: 10 copywriting tips – from experts to experts »

SEO copywriting for international sites

Writing well is hard; writing your content marketing efforts in multiple languages is even more challenging! This is true if you own websites for multiple regions and languages. Translating content can be a tricky business because of the phenomenon of false friends in different languages. False friends refer to words that look alike in two languages but mean something different.

Creating content for your multilingual sites is not easy. It’s doable, though, and we think there are three ways to go about this:

• translate the content;
• create new content for that market;
• transcreate content: a combination of both.

Getting translations probably is the easiest. But it’s also the most tricky one. Are you sure your translation sends the same message and has the same tone of voice as your original article? That’s hard to judge if you’re not a native speaker. Therefore: always have a native speaker check the copy. At least.

Creating new content by your local team is the safest choice, with probably the highest quality result. However, it is very time-consuming, and you’re not taking full advantage of the available content.

Therefore we’d advise to “transcreate”: take what you already have as a basis, but rework it to fit the local target group. Make sure native speakers that know the local market create this content. If you’d like to know more about this, read our article on creating great copy in multiple languages.

Conclusion: SEO copywriting is a process

SEO copywriting works best when you follow a defined process and ensure your text is as good as possible. While not everyone is a natural writer, SEO writing is something everyone can get better at with practice. Don’t forget to maintain your content over time to avoid it getting outdated and stale!

Keep reading: The ultimate guide to content SEO »

The post SEO copywriting: the ultimate guide appeared first on Yoast.

Here’s another release of our SEO plugin, Yoast SEO 20.8. We’ve improved our SEO analysis in this release and fixed several issues. In Yoast SEO Premium, we’ve added a new column in the post overview to quickly see your posts’ inclusive language scores.

Improved language analysis

Content is vital for successful SEO. Yoast SEO’s language tools assist in creating quality articles. The update to the SEO analysis improves the keyphrase density assessment feedback. The feedback used to be specific to the focus keyphrase, but it now refers to the keyphrase in general, making the feedback more comprehensive and valuable.

Additionally, this update improves the accuracy of content analysis by excluding texts within textarea tags from the analysis. This exclusion ensures that the analysis is based solely on relevant text and produces more accurate results.

Monitoring your inclusive language scores

Not long ago, we introduced the inclusive language analysis. The inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO works similarly to our readability and SEO analyses. It uses red, orange, and green lights to guide you. You can write any post or page as usual, and the inclusive language feature will assess your content.

The feature provides feedback divided into categories such as age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status. This valuable feedback helps you improve your content, making it appealing to a broader audience. You can create more relevant and inclusive content that resonates better with your readers or viewers through the inclusive language feature.

With the latest version of Yoast SEO Premium, we have introduced a new feature that simplifies finding and improving your content in WordPress. You’ll now notice an additional column in the post overview, represented by a heart in a speech bubble icon. Different colors signal if a post needs work on the inclusive language part. Green, of course, is good. You can filter your posts list by clicking the icon, making the entire process even more straightforward. This feature aims to simplify your workflow and streamline your content management experience.

Bugfixes in Yoast SEO 20.8

This Yoast SEO update resolves several issues. First, it fixes several bugs in our indexable database system. These fixes make the system more robust. We’ve also fixed a bug where the SEO and Readability score icon would not show a sad emoji when the post was empty or there was no set keyphrase. These issues have been addressed, and Yoast SEO offers a better user experience.

Security fix in Local SEO 15.0

We’ve improved the security of our Local SEO plugin. This update addresses a security vulnerability that the WordPress security service Patchstack and our security/development team identified and reported. With this update, we have addressed and fixed this issue. We recommend that all users update their Local SEO plugins to this latest version to stay protected from potential security threats.

Update now to Yoast SEO 20.8

Yoast 20.8 is out today, ready for you to download. In this release, we fixed several bugs, added some enhancements, and brought a new feature to Yoast SEO Premium, bringing inclusive language insights into the post overview of your WordPress site.

The post Yoast SEO 20.8: Fixes, enhancements, and a new Premium feature appeared first on Yoast.

Just like that, YoastCon 2023 has come and gone. But what fun we had! Months of preparation went into providing visitors, speakers, and sponsors with the best single conference day of the year. YoastCon was a resounding success, with many in-person attendees and more joining our free live stream. In this post, we’ll take a quick look back at some of the highlights of our SEO conference.

YoastCon 2023 was a success!

YoastCon is an epic SEO conference we put together semi-regularly. At YoastCon, you get to learn all sorts of stuff about SEO, internet marketing, and content creation from the experts. It’s an excellent opportunity to connect with other people who are into digital marketing and upgrade your skills and knowledge.

One of the best parts of YoastCon is getting to hear from all these intelligent people who know a ton about SEO. They give talks, run workshops, and share tips and tricks for improving your website’s search engine rankings, creating excellent content, and which future developments to watch.

YoastCon is also a fun place to hang out, meet new people, and build relationships with other pros in the industry. So if you’re into digital marketing and want to keep up with the latest trends and strategies, YoastCon is an event you should check out. If you missed it this year, make sure to rewatch the videos!

Wondering what you missed?

YoastCon 2023 was indeed the event to attend if you’re seeking to boost your expertise in SEO and attain your business objectives. You got essential insights from the world’s leading SEO professionals, featuring the top two ranked SEO experts, Jes Scholz and Jono Alderson, who provided tons of wisdom and tactics on our main stage. Furthermore, we got to ask Google’s Thierry Muller questions during an interactive fireside chat. The topics discussed at YoastCon 2023 were comprehensive, ranging from news SEO to conversion copywriting and GA4 to user research.

Ten key takeaways from our speakers

You might have missed a talk because you were doing a workshop at YoastCon. Or maybe you were visiting the sponsor booths or simply mingling and networking. Or, perhaps you didn’t attend the SEO conference and want a recap. Whatever the reason, we’ve got you covered! Here are the ten most important takeaways for your SEO and online marketing:

1. Stop seeing Google as a search engine

Jes Scholz, Group Chief Marketing Officer at Swiss media giant Ringier, gave an epic overview of Google’s modern-day ecosystem and how every service it offers is connected. She conveyed that we are no longer in the website optimization business. When you zoom out, you’ll discover that Google isn’t just a search engine anymore. It’s become a colossal ecosystem that includes queryless search experiences like Discover, conversion-oriented ecommerce features, leisure activities on YouTube shorts, and much more.

This change from answering questions to providing journeys presents new ways to reach the right audience. Additionally, it’s radically transforming the user interface of Google SERPs. As a result, ranking at “position one” is no longer as significant. According to Jes, we need to shift our focus from competing for top search rankings to a larger, more holistic perspective and build your brand — as a brandfluencer! — into a trusted Google partner.

2. Yoast SEO does more than you know

The head of SEO at Yoast, Jono Alderson, offered us an incredibly in-depth, high-speed session on what happens behind the scenes of Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO is among the world’s most sophisticated technical SEO tools. Still, its full potential is primarily hidden — only a few ventures beneath the surface to uncover what’s happening and exploit our powerful instruments.

Jono uncovered everything you didn’t know about Yoast SEO and much more! He paid particular attention to the metadata Yoast SEO adds, including the Schema graph it generates for your site. Not only does Yoast SEO do a ton of work for your site, but we’ve also thoroughly documented what it does to help you extend our offering to finetune it for your needs.

3. User research can lead to incredible insights — if done well

Els Aerts co-founded AGConsult, a Belgium-based conversion optimization and customer experience company. During her talk, she dove into the good, the bad, and the ugly of user research. We all know that we need good data to make better decisions. However, poorly developed or conducted user research often results in irrelevant data, leading to poor choices that can harm your bottom line.

Els identifies the pitfalls to keep in mind while performing user research. Among other things, define correctly what you want to achieve, identify the right audience to ask your questions, and, of course, how to ask the right questions without bias. She emphasizes the significance of avoiding these pitfalls to ensure that the data collected is relevant and valuable, leading to informed decisions.

4. Working with an SEO agency is all about communication

Having a successful relationship with your SEO agency is all about communication. Hannah Thorpe, Managing Director of London-based SEO agency Verkeer, shared her insights and strategies on structuring and growing an agency. She talked through what to do – and what not to do – while setting up your SEO team and how to tackle those common problems.

Hannah talked a lot about aligning your business correctly using the business framework VMOST. This helps align between different levels of the organization and helps achieve its goals. VMOST stands for:

• Vision: the overarching goals and aspirations of the company
• Mission: the company’s purpose and reason for being
• Objectives: specific, measurable goals that need to be achieved to make the vision a reality
• Strategies: broad approaches or methods the company will use to achieve its objectives
• Tactics: specific actions or initiatives the company will implement to support the strategies and achieve the objectives.

By following this framework, companies can create a clear roadmap that ensures that each level of operations works together and focuses on the end goals.

5. Batman knows a thing or two about local SEO

Local SEO is different, but many of the same optimizations and practices have worked for years. Google uses a different algorithm to display localized search results, but some marketers and business owners still cling to traditional SEO tactics. In his fast-paced session full of movie imagery and F-bombs, local SEO legend Greg Gifford explained how local SEO differs from traditional SEO, outlining which signals influenced local search visibility and how to optimize each signal.

We learned about local-oriented content, local link building, getting and managing customer reviews, and improving your all-important Google Business Profile. Not only did attendees leave with a detailed list of proven strategies and tactics to help them dominate local search results, but they also got a massive list of movies to watch.

6. The future of WordPress is in doubt

WordPress powers over 40% of the web, making it the most popular choice in CMSs. Endless growth solidified its position. However, there appear to be cracks in the surface. Growth is no guarantee for a bright future, and WordPress needs an innovative edge to retain its position as the leading CMS.

Miriam Schwab, Head of WordPress Relations at Elementor, shows key points the WordPress project needs to solve to keep WordPress the leading CMS for many years. Two of the stand-out points consist of acronyms with an X in them: UX and DX. WordPress needs a better user experience (UX) and a better way of guiding users to become avid, recurring users. But WordPress also needs to improve the developer experience (DX) to help keep them around so they can keep suggesting WordPress as the go-to platform to build stuff on for their clients.

7. People love to buy stuff — get them to buy in your business

So much work goes into helping users through their buying journey that at the end of the journey, writers often forget to give potential customers that final push to get them to buy. Because most writers dislike selling stuff, conversion copywriter Kate Toon showed us that people love to buy things. And it’s okay to talk about something people need or solve a problem for them.

Kate’s talk was full of acronyms describing how to strategically think about selling your stuff. She explained how a well-written sales page, email series, chatbot, or video could sell products and services, making you much money without feeling bad.

8. Whether you like it or not, get ready for GA4

Google Analytics 4 is coming, and the world is not ready. But regardless of your feelings about GA4, for many, it will be the new home for their data reporting. Ecommerce SEO expert Luke Carthy showed us how GA4 could be used to collect custom and super-powerful data to boost conversion and grow sales — it just takes a bit (or actually a lot) more work. And leave your dashboard report to Google Looker Studio.

Hot tip: If looking for alternatives, keep GA4 collecting your data in the background. Should your alternative solution go out of business, you’ll still have a solid data set in your Analytics account.

9. Videos could be precious for your website

Video is enormous today, just look at the popularity of platforms like YouTube and TikTok. But the big challenge is where to start. That’s where video expert Phil Nottingham comes in. Phil is a freelance video SEO consultant who also advises — and writes about video SEO — for Yoast.

In his talk, Phil discussed the importance of video in improving website conversion rates and brand sentiment. He addressed the challenge of what to create, where to put it, and how to measure performance. Phil provided insights on the top five video types every business should create, how to use video to drive more traffic, and benchmarks for success that companies should keep an eye on.

10. Google needs a little help understanding your site

News SEO expert Barry Adams from Polemic Digital showed us how Google discovers, indexes, and ranks news content. News plays a significant role in Google’s ecosystem, as users expect to see the most up-to-date and relevant articles. To deliver this, Google must quickly crawl and index new articles, assess the quality and authority of news publishers, and reveal the appropriate stories in search results. By focusing on news SEO, we gain in-depth insights into Google’s crawling and indexing framework and the signals it employs to assess authority and expertise.

From these learnings, we can distill that you need to help Google’s understanding of your content. Make sure that you nail search intent for your content, optimize your entities, and build your knowledge graph. Using Schema structured data helps greatly, while proper internal linking is invaluable to boosting Google’s understanding of your site.

Google: We must keep working on performance

Google also made an appearance at YoastCon. Software Engineering Manager Thierry Muller from the Switzerland office dropped by for a fireside chat with the Yoast head of SEO, Jono Alderson. Muller has a WordPress and web performance background, so their conversation was big on these two topics. Muller helped form Google’s focus on WordPress.

Google is focused on improving the experience of people online, and one way of doing that is to make CMSes perform better. As WordPress is the most used CMS today, a lot of their time is spent helping bring performance to WordPress. One of the things that came from this was the WordPress Performance team that Google and Yoast started.

But Google is looking into other ways to improve CMSes and think much broader about performance improvements. One idea that Google toyed with was the ability to have Chrome recognize which CMS a site runs, so it can pro-actively optimize rendering based on its knowledge of that CMS. Google also works on things like Project Baseline, which helps developers pick what feature or API is safe to use in your site or web applications.

We all know the other controversial performance improver: AMP. While adoption has stagnated and the project seemed to die slowly, Muller assured us that it is anything but. There will be developments on this front, but we must stay tuned.

Watch the YoastCon stream for a recap

You can rewatch all the YoastCon talks right here, right now! Be sure to relive the inspiring keynote presentations from the comfort of your own home or office. This is a great opportunity when you’ve missed a talk or want to revisit and absorb all the information shared during the conference. Happy watching!

That’s it for YoastCon 2023!

Those were some of the important takeaways for this year’s YoastCon! We want to thank everyone who visited, in person and virtually. Hosting many guests, speakers, and thought leaders at our event was a privilege. We hope everyone learned something valuable, made new connections, and left inspired and motivated.

Don’t forget to share the video on YouTube with colleagues, and share your thoughts and feedback on social media using our conference hashtag #YoastCon2023. Or below this blog post! We’d love to hear your thoughts.

The post YoastCon 2023: 10 takeaways from the SEO conference appeared first on Yoast.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage right now. Some say it’s started a technological revolution, and that AI will change our lives for the better. But generative AI tools are only as good as the data they’re fed. And have we truly considered the implications of a world where people generate content instead of creating it themselves?

What is generative AI?

To put it simply, generative AI creates content. Whether that’s text, images, or audio. But how does it do that? By using deep learning techniques and technologies in a machine-learning framework. This framework is a system that makes predictions based on data that it’s trained on. For example, if you give ChaptGPT a prompt, it’s able to produce content based on your input.

Some well-known examples of generative AI tools are the ChatGPT chatbot, the Midjourney image generator, and the Bard tool from Google.

What this means for how content creators work

Using generative AI tools for work can greatly improve your productivity because they can quickly generate content. They’re also fast and inexpensive. If you own a small business, AI tools can save you tons of money because you may not need to hire a content creator. Plus, since AI tools continue to learn, they’ll also be able to give you better results over time. 

Why this could cause problems

As is the case with most automated devices out there, generated AI content is not entirely fool-proof. And it also begs the question if it’s ethical to use AI, when these tools are trained on data provided by other people. Sometimes, without their permission. So let’s dive deeper into why AI tools might cause problems.

A cost-effective alternative isn’t necessarily better

One of the big benefits of using AI tools is their efficiency. They’re cheap and quick, meaning you don’t need to hire an entire marketing team. Which is precisely why AI tools might be a problem. They threaten to make certain jobs obsolete. And you have to wonder if it’s reasonable that AI will take over the arts, which one might consider the most human of all jobs. 

Bad data

Another problem is the data that generative AI tools are trained with. They need large volumes to learn, and some systems, such as ChatGPT, use a lot of the data on the internet to train itself. And that’s undoubtedly what might cause problems. Not all data is ‘good’ data. Most of it is biased because humans are biased. Sexist, racist, or homophobic ideas are littered throughout the content we create, so if an AI tool uses that data, it’ll become a biased tool. The result? Offensive content that can’t be used. Or worse, offensive content that people will accept as truth and therefore post online, strengthening a message that shouldn’t be spread across the globe.

Misuse of AI tools

Furthermore, the data AI tools are using to train themselves could belong to people who didn’t know their content would be used to teach an AI. It has raised numerous questions: When you put something online, is it still yours? And when you’ve generated content that uses other people’s illustrations, is it actually your art piece? Unfortunately, there are no definitive answers to these questions. 

You might think that it’s not relevant whether a piece has been drawn by an artist or generated by someone else. But what if the art piece won a big prize? Is that fair compared to the other contestants who actually put in the time and effort? And let’s look at the world of academia. If an academic paper was generated by AI, it might be based on human thought, but it doesn’t actually contain any human input. Is that okay? Do we want the place where people learn to develop their minds become a place where people learn how to craft great prompts, instead of learning how to think for themselves?

It’s not all bad

Luckily, there’s still hope. AI tools might be impressively smart, but they’re still ‘just’ tools. To generate content, they need content that was produced by people. And if we find a way to ethically give AI tools good data, we’re one step closer to creating a powerful tool that can help small businesses grow, so they can actually afford to hire a marketing team.

How to use AI to enhance your writing

Since AI tools are not completely ethical yet, should you refrain from using them all together? No, there’s no denying that AI tools can be a huge help. However, we suggest that you use them as guidelines, inspiration, and a way to boost your productivity on a day you might not feel like writing. 

Use it as an inspiration to start writing

Do you regularly write content for your website or blog? Then you probably know the feeling of staring at a blank document because you don’t know where to start. AI tools can resolve this issue. You simply prompt an AI tool to write an outline, specifying which topics you want to discuss. Or maybe you need the AI tool to write the first paragraph, just so there’s something on the page. While reading your generated paragraph, chances are ideas will start flowing. You’ll be writing in no-time!

Be critical!

Still, when you use AI tools to generate actual posts or texts, it’s good to be critical. Like we mentioned, AI tools can be biased. And they might be incorrect in their information. You should always read your generated piece, and fact-check any claims the text makes. In addition, you want to ensure the content meets your brand values by paying attention to what language is used, since it might not be inclusive. Luckily, if you use the Yoast SEO plugin, you’ll be able to use the inclusive language feature to double-check your content. 

Give it a proper rewrite to make it yours

As mentioned before, AI tools can only imitate actual human thoughts and ideas. They generate based on existing ones. And while you might argue that that’s also how humans generate ideas and originality doesn’t exist anyway, you shouldn’t underestimate your personal opinion. It gives a unique flavor to your content. That’s why you should always rewrite (parts of) a generated piece of content.

Conclusion

Generative AI tools can be very useful for small businesses. But, like any technology, it has its drawbacks. It can be biased, or wildly incorrect. That’s why you should use AI as an inspiration to kickstart your creative process, and always read and rewrite your generated content. In our opinion, AI should augment, and not replace humans. 

The post Are we digging our own hole with generative AI? appeared first on Yoast.

On May 1st, Kimberley Cole was appointed as General Manager of Newfold Digital, with a key focus of her role on leading Yoast. Since our former CEO Thijs de Valk stepped down, Yoast has been searching for a new business leader. In Kimberley, we found a fantastic person to take on this role. Kimberley joins us following a long and global career, and we’re super happy to have her on board.

The new General Manager: Kimberley Cole

Kimberley is Australian but considers herself more of a citizen of the world. She is a seasoned global executive with extensive experience in financial services and technology. With over 20 years of experience as a strategic go-to-market leader, she has helped customers across different regions identify solutions to succeed in a constantly disrupted world.

Kimberley has worked with big names such as Reuters and Thomson Reuters in various roles, from product management to sales and marketing. Most recently, she served as Chief Commercial Officer at Lynk, a successful knowledge as a service series B scale-up. In addition to her impressive professional background, Kimberley also founded Risky Women, a community aimed at inspiring and connecting women to be bold, extend themselves, and take risks. She’s incredibly passionate about empowering women from all walks of life.

Kimberley looks forward to guiding Yoast into this new chapter: “I am excited to be on board and about the journey we have ahead. Joost and Marieke built a fantastic company and we will continue to build on their incredible foundation. It is the start of a new chapter for Yoast, and with our talented team, I look forward to innovating and enhancing our products and service to continue as a market leader of SEO”.

Will there be any significant changes?

“As I’m new to the WordPress world, I will first be listening to and learning from the amazing Yoast team, our customers, and the community. My main focus will be to understand our customers’ needs, see how we can better serve them, and continue anticipating what will benefit the community, including some of our wonderful partners. It is definitely a new chapter for Yoast, which I will write with the team. Of course, our mission remains ‘SEO for everyone’ at the core but bringing the power of Newfold to provide even more to our customers, partners, and the community.”

The post Meet Yoast’s new leader: Kimberley Cole appeared first on Yoast.

Dear WordPress. Time flies when we’re having fun, don’t you agree? You are turning 20 years old and this feels like the perfect occasion to reflect on our relationship. But to be honest, it’s quite hard to put into words how much you mean to us. You have been a constant source of joy and inspiration in our lives, and you’re always there when we need you. We’re grateful for every moment we’ve shared together, and look forward to many more.

From the moment we met, it was obvious there was something special about you. Your elegant design, user-friendly interface, and endless customization options drew us in and captured our hearts. We were all impressed by how easy it was to create a website with you, even as a complete beginner. You made it possible for people to express themselves, to share their passions and ideas with the world. You inspire us to be our best selves, to constantly strive for excellence. It felt like a perfect match right away!

But as we got to know you better, we realized that there was so much more to you than just your looks. You are endlessly versatile, allowing your users to create anything from a simple blog to a complex e-commerce site. You are always evolving, and constantly improving with every update and upgrade. You are reliable, secure, and trusted by millions of users around the world.

More than that, though, you have become a lifelong friend. You have brought us into a community of like-minded individuals with shared passions and interests. You have given us the tools to build meaningful relationships, reach out to others and make a real difference. You have supported me through thick and thin, always there to lend a helping hand or a listening ear.

WordPress, we love you. We love the way you challenge us to be our best selves, to push beyond limits, and to explore new horizons. We love the way you inspire us to grow, to stay curious and open-minded. We love the way you encourage us to connect with others who share our passions. You’ve introduced me to so many awesome people, and we’re forever grateful for the friendships and collaborations that came out of that.

Thank you for everything you do, WordPress. We cannot and will not imagine a world without you in it. Thank you for being a companion, mentor, and friend. Thank you for every line of code and every update. We solemnly promise to cherish you, honor your legacy, and build on your strengths for as long as we live.

Forever yours,
Yoast

The post How WordPress stole our hearts: A love letter appeared first on Yoast.

Every two weeks, we bring you a new release of Yoast SEO. Today is no different! In Yoast SEO 20.7, we bring you a round of fixes and enhancements. In this week’s Yoast SEO Premium release, we’ve added a new feature to help you discover your all-important cornerstone content articles in the WordPress post overview.

Yoast SEO Premium: Find your cornerstone content quickly

As you know, cornerstone content is the most critical content on your website. They are typically lengthy, informative pages that cover a topic from all angles. Cornerstone content helps to establish your website’s authority and expertise in your field, and it usually attracts a lot of traffic over time.

However, creating and managing high-quality cornerstone content can be daunting, and that’s where Yoast SEO comes in. Yoast SEO helps you optimize your cornerstone content for search engines, ensuring that it ranks well in the search results and attracts the right traffic. By leveraging Yoast SEO’s guidance and best practices, you can create compelling content that drives traffic and builds authority and reputation.

In Yoast SEO Premium 20.7, we’ve made it easier to find your cornerstone in the post overview of WordPress. An additional column, identified by the pyramid icon, highlights which posts you marked as cornerstones in Yoast SEO. Of course, you can filter the list by clicking on the pyramid icon.

In the screenshot, you’ll also notice the numbers and the icons with arrows pointing in and out of a document. This link counter tracks how many internal links point to a post and how many internal links point away from the post to other articles on your site.

Zapier integration ends today

In Yoast SEO 20.6, we gave you a heads-up about the upcoming end of the Zapier integration. With today’s release of Yoast SEO 20.7, we are formally ending support for our Zapier integration. This will impact you if you rely on the integration, as existing Zaps using the Yoast SEO integration will stop working for you if you update to version 20.7 or higher.

To continue using Yoast SEO and Zapier, you can transition to Webhooks by Zapier. Yoast SEO’s API documentation helps you with the configuration process. Also, on Zapier’s site, you can check which Zaps use Yoast SEO.

Learn SEO with Yoast SEO academy

Yoast SEO academy is an excellent resource if you want to learn how to optimize your site for search engines and to drive more traffic to it. And the best part is that you get free access to all the courses when you sign up for Yoast SEO Premium!

With Yoast SEO academy, you can access a comprehensive library of SEO courses and training materials. These resources cover keyword research, site structure, content creation, and more. You’ll learn the theory and practical application of SEO strategies essential for higher search engine rankings.

In Yoast SEO 20.7, we’ve made accessing and discovering all these excellent educational materials easier. You can find all your SEO courses in the new academy section in one spot. And with access included in Yoast SEO Premium, there’s no reason not to take advantage of this valuable resource!

Yoast SEO 20.7 is out now

Yoast SEO 20.7 is available for download as of now, so go get it! In this release, you can find several fixes and enhancements. In Yoast SEO Premium, we’ve added a new column to the post overview in WordPress to help you find your cornerstone content easily.

The post Yoast SEO 20.7: Keep track of cornerstones in Premium appeared first on Yoast.

Your site needs to have a defined structure because, without it, it’ll just be a random collection of pages and blog posts. Your users need this structure to navigate on your site, to click from one page to another. Google also uses the structure of your site to determine what content is important and what is less relevant. This guide tells you everything you need to know about site structure.

Table of contents

• Importance for usability
• Importance of your site structure for SEO
• How to set up the structure of your site
• Contextual internal linking
• Landing pages
• Maintaining your site structure
• Internal linking with Yoast SEO
• The importance of site structure

What is site structure, and why is it important?

Site structure refers to organizing and arranging a website’s pages and content. It defines the information hierarchy within the site and serves as a roadmap for search engine crawlers. A well-structured site facilitates easy navigation, enhances user experience, and helps search engines like Google understand and effectively index the site’s content. This, in turn, can improve the site’s performance by making it easier for users to find and engage with the content. Ultimately, an optimized site structure helps achieve higher rankings, more traffic, and better conversion rates.

Importance for usability

The structure of your website significantly impacts the experience for your visitors (UX). If visitors can’t find the products and information they’re looking for, they’ll not likely become regular visitors or customers. In other words, you should help them navigate your site. A good site structure will help with this.

Navigating should be easy. You need to categorize and link your posts and products so they are easy to find. New visitors should be able to grasp what you’re writing about or selling instantly.

Importance of your site structure for SEO

A solid site structure vastly improves your chances of ranking in search engines. There are three main reasons for this:

a. It helps Google ‘understand’ your site

The way you structure your site will give Google vital clues about where to find the most valuable content on your site. It helps search engines understand what your site is mainly about or what you’re selling. A decent site structure also enables search engines to find and index content quickly. A good structure should, therefore, lead to a higher ranking in Google.

b. It prevents you from competing with yourself

On your site, you might have blog posts that are quite similar. If, for example, you write a lot about SEO, you could have multiple blog posts about site structure, each covering a different aspect. Consequently, Google won’t be able to tell which of these pages is the most important, so you’ll be competing with your content for high rankings. You should let Google know which page you think is most important. You need a good internal linking and taxonomy structure to do this, so all those pages can work for you instead of against you.

c. It deals with changes on your website

The products you sell in your shop will likely evolve. So does the content you’re writing. You probably add new product lines as old stock sells out. Or you write new articles that make old ones redundant. You don’t want Google to show outdated products or deleted blog posts, so you need to deal with these kinds of changes in the structure of your site.

Are you struggling with setting up your site’s structure? Don’t know the best strategy to link from one post to another? Check out our Site structure training, part of the Yoast SEO academy. Access to Yoast SEO academy is included in the price of Yoast SEO Premium. Before you know it, you’ll be able to improve your rankings by creating the best structure for your site!

How to set up the structure of your site

So, how do you construct a solid site structure? First, we’ll look at an ideal site structure and then explain how to achieve this for your site.

What’s an ideal site structure?

Let’s start by looking at an ideal situation: How should you organize your site if you’re starting from scratch? We think a well-organized website looks like a pyramid with several levels:

1. Homepage
2. Categories (or sections)
3. Subcategories (only for larger sites)
4. Individual pages and posts

The homepage should be at the top. Then, you have some sections or category pages beneath it. You should be able to file your content under one of these categories. You can divide these sections or categories into subcategories if your site is larger. Beneath your categories or subcategories are your pages and posts.

Your homepage

On top of the pyramid is the homepage. Your homepage should act as a navigation hub for your visitors. This means, amongst others, that you should link to your most important pages from your homepage. By doing this:

1. Your visitors are more likely to end up on the pages you want them to end up on;
2. You show Google that these pages are important.

Further down this article, we’ll help you determine which pages are essential to your business.

Beware not to link too many pages from your homepage, which will cause clutter. And a cluttered homepage doesn’t guide your visitors anywhere. If you want to optimize your homepage further, you can do many other things. Read our article on homepage SEO to find out what.

Navigation

In addition to having a well-structured homepage, it’s also important to create a clear navigation path on your site. Your site-wide navigation consists of two main elements: the menu and the breadcrumbs.

The menu

First, let’s take a look at the menu. The website menu is the most common aid for navigation on your website, and you want to make the best possible use of it. Visitors use your menu to find things on your website. It helps them understand the structure of your website. That’s why the main categories on your site should all have a place in the menu on your homepage.

Furthermore, putting everything in just one menu is not always necessary. If you have a big site with lots of categories, this may clutter your website and makes your main menu a poor reflection of the rest of your site. Where it makes sense, creating a second menu is perfectly fine.

For instance, eBay has one menu at the top of the page – also called the top bar menu – and, in addition to that, a main menu. This top bar menu links to important pages that aren’t categories in the shop, like pages that relate to the visitor’s account on the site. The main menu reflects the most important product categories on eBay.

Finally, just like on your homepage, you shouldn’t add too many links to your menu. They will become less valuable for your users and search engines if you do.

Read about optimizing your website’s menu here, or enroll in our site structure training that includes many examples!

Breadcrumb trail

Adding breadcrumbs to your pages can make your site’s structure even clearer. Breadcrumbs are clickable links, usually at the top of a page or post. Breadcrumbs reflect the structure of your site. They help visitors determine where they are on your site. They improve your site’s user experience and SEO, as you can read in our guide on breadcrumbs.

You can use one of the many breadcrumb plugins for your WordPress site. You can also use our Yoast SEO plugin, as we’ve implemented a breadcrumb functionality in our plugin as well.

Taxonomies

WordPress uses so-called taxonomies to group content; other CMSs have similar systems. The word ‘taxonomy’ is a fancy term for a group of things — website pages, in this case — that have something in common. This is convenient because people looking for more information on the same topic can find similar articles more easily. You can group content in different ways. The default taxonomies in WordPress are categories and tags.

Categories

You should divide your site’s blog posts or products into several categories. If these categories grow too big, you should divide these categories into subcategories to clear things up again. For example, if you have a clothing store and sell shoes, you can divide this category into subcategories: ‘boots’, ‘heels’, and ‘flats’. These subcategories contain products, in this case, shoes, of that specific type.

Adding this hierarchy and categorizing your pages helps your user and Google make sense of every page you write. Add your main categories to your site’s menu when implementing your category structure.

Read more: Using category and tag pages for SEO »

Tags

Your site’s structure will also benefit from adding tags. The difference between a category and a tag mostly concerns structure. Categories are hierarchical: you can have subcategories and even sub-subcategories. Tags, however, don’t have that hierarchy. Tags say: “Hey, this article or product has a certain property that might interest a visitor.” Think of it like this: categories are the table of contents of your website, and tags are the index. A tag for the online clothing store mentioned above could be a brand, for instance, Timberlands.

Keep reading: What is the difference between tags and categories? »

Try not to create too many tags. You’re not structuring anything if you add a new unique tag to every post or article. Ensure each tag is used at least twice, and your tags group articles that genuinely belong together.

Some WordPress themes display tags with each post, but some don’t. Ensure your tags are available to visitors somewhere, preferably at the bottom of your article or in the sidebar. Google isn’t the only one that likes tags: they are useful for visitors wanting to read more about the same topic.

Read on: Tagging post properly for users and SEO »

Contextual internal linking

Site structure is all about grouping and linking the content on your site. Until now, we mostly discussed so-called classifying links: links on your homepage, navigation, and taxonomies. On the other hand, contextual links are internal links within the copy on your pages that refer to other pages within your site. For a link to be contextual, the page you link to should be relevant for someone reading the current page. If you look at the previous paragraph, for instance, we link to a post about tagging, so people can learn more about it if they’re interested.

Your most important pages are often very relevant to mention on several pages across your site, so you’ll link to them most often. Just remember that not only the page you’re linking to is relevant, the context of the link is important as well.

Google uses the context of your links to gather information about the page you’re linking to. It always uses the anchor text (or link text) to understand what the page you’re linking to is about. But the anchor text isn’t the only thing Google looks at. Nowadays, it also considers the content around the link to gather extra information. Google is becoming better at recognizing related words and concepts. Adding links from a meaningful context allows Google to value and rank your pages properly. Yoast SEO Premium makes internal linking a breeze by automatically suggesting relevant content from your site to link to.

Contextual linking for blogs

For blogs, you should write extensively on the topics you want to rank for. You should write some main articles — your cornerstone articles — and write various posts about subtopics of that topic. Then link from these related posts to your cornerstone articles and from the cornerstone articles back to related posts. In this way, you’ll ensure that your most important pages have both the most and most relevant links.

The following metaphor might help you understand this principle:

Imagine you’re looking at a map of a state or country. You’ll probably see many small towns and some bigger cities. All towns and cities will be interconnected somehow. You’ll notice that small towns often have roads leading to the big cities. Those cities are your cornerstones, receiving the most links. The small towns are your posts on more specific topics. Some roads (links) lead to these smaller towns, but not as much as the big cities.

Keep on reading: Internal linking why and how »

Contextual linking opportunities for online shops

Contextual internal linking works differently on an online store with very few to no pages that are exclusively meant to inform. You don’t explore a specific topic on your product pages: you’re selling a product. Therefore, on product pages, you mostly want to keep people on a page and convince them to buy the product. Consequently, contextual linking is far less prominent in this context. You generally shouldn’t add contextual links to your product descriptions because it could lead to people clicking away from the page.

There are just a couple of meaningful ways of adding contextual links to the product pages for your ecommerce SEO:

1. link from a product bundle page to the individual products
2. a ‘related items’ or ‘compare with similar items’ section
3. a ‘customers also bought’ section
4. a ‘product bundles’ or ‘frequently bought together’ section.

Learn all about setting up a great (internal linking) structure for your online store with our Site structure training, part of our Yoast SEO academy training subscription. We’ve included lots of examples from real websites!

Landing pages

Landing pages are the pages you want your audience to find when they search for specific keywords you’ve optimized for. For instance, we want people who search for ‘free SEO training’ to end up on the page about our free training called ‘SEO for beginners’. You need to approach the content of your most important landing pages differently than your regular pages.

Here, we’ll discuss two types of landing pages: cornerstone pages and product landing pages. They’re both pages you’d like people to land on from the search engines, but they require quite a different approach. But first, we’ll shortly go into search intent because you have to know what your audience is really looking for.

Search intent

When setting up your site structure, you must consider search intent. It’s about what you think people are looking for when they enter a query into a search engine. What do people want to find? And: what do they expect to find?

Consider different possibilities in search intent, as you might want to cater to different types on your site. Are people just looking for an answer to a question or a definition? Are they comparing products before purchase? Or are they intending to buy something right away? This is often reflected in the type of query they make. You can also use Google’s search results to create great content that fits someone’s needs.

When you have an idea of the search intent, ensuring your landing page fits your audience’s search intent is essential. Pages can answer multiple search intents, but you need a clear view of at least your most important pages.

Read all about search intent and why it’s important for SEO.

Cornerstone content pages

Cornerstone articles are the most important informational articles on your website. Their focus is to provide the best and most complete information on a particular topic; their main goal is not to sell products.

Because of this focus, we usually think of blogs when discussing cornerstone content. Of course, that doesn’t mean it can only be a blog post. All different kinds of websites have cornerstone articles! Rule of thumb: if an article brings everything you know about a broad topic together, it’s a cornerstone content article.

This article explains what cornerstone content is and how to create it. Want to set up your cornerstone content strategy? Our Internal linking SEO workout makes the cornerstone content approach easy to implement!

Product landing pages

Product landing pages significantly differ from cornerstone articles. The latter are lengthy, whereas product landing pages shouldn’t be that long. Rather than complete articles, they should be focused. These pages only need to show what your visitors need to know to be convinced. They don’t need to hold all the information.

You want to rank with these pages, meaning they need content. Enough content for Google to understand what the page is about and what keyword it should rank for. Where cornerstone articles could be made up of thousands of words, a couple of hundred could be enough for product landing pages. The main focus of the content should be on your products.

Michiel listed all the essentials of your product landing page here.

Maintaining your site structure

Structuring or restructuring your content doesn’t always have high priority in everything you have to do. Especially when you blog a lot or add other content regularly, it might feel like a chore. Although it isn’t always fun, you must do it, or your website might become messy. To prevent that from happening, you need to fix your site structure and keep an eye on it while adding new content. Site structure should be part of your long-term SEO strategy.

Evaluate your menu

When your business goal or website changes, your menu must also change. Planning things visually will pay off when you start thinking about restructuring your site. Make a flowchart.

Start with your new menu one or two levels deep and see if you can fit in more pages you have created over the years. You’ll find that some pages are still valid but don’t seem relevant to your menu anymore. No problem, just be sure to link to them on related pages and in your sitemaps so that Google and your visitors can still find these pages. The flowchart will also show you any gaps in the site structure.

Read more: Optimizing your website menu »

Rethink your taxonomy

Creating an overview of your categories, subcategories, and products or posts will also help you to rethink your site’s taxonomy. This could be a simple spreadsheet, but you can use more visual tools like LucidChart or MindNode.

Do your product categories and subcategories provide a logical overview of your product range or your posts and pages? Perhaps you’ve noticed somewhere down the line that one category has been far more successful than others, or you wrote many blog posts on one subject and very few on others.

If one category grows much larger than others, your site’s pyramid could be thrown off balance. Think about splitting this category into different categories. But, if some product lines end up much smaller than others, you might want to merge them. Don’t forget to redirect the ones you delete.

If you have built your HTML sitemap manually, update that sitemap after changing your site structure. In the far more likely event you have an XML sitemap, re-submit it to Google Search Console.

Keep reading: The structure of a growing blog »

Clean up outdated content

You might be able to update and republish some outdated articles to make them relevant again. If an article is outdated, but no one reads it anyway, you might delete it. This could clean up your site nicely.

What you should know, in that case, is that you should never delete a page or article without thinking. If Google cannot find the page, it serves your user a 404 error page. Both the search engine and your visitor will see this error message saying the page doesn’t exist, and that is a bad experience and, thus, bad for your SEO.

Be smart about this! You need to redirect the URL of the page you’re deleting properly so your user (and Google) lands on a different page that is relevant to them. That could even improve your SEO!

Got some old content to clean up on your site? Sort out hidden pages and dead ends in four easy steps with our orphaned content SEO workout, available in Yoast SEO Premium.

Avoid keyword cannibalization

Your website is about a specific topic, which could be quite broad or rather specific. While adding content, you should be aware of keyword cannibalization. If you optimize your articles for keywords that are all too similar, you’ll be devouring your chances of ranking in Google. If you optimize different articles for similar key terms, you’ll be competing with yourself, making both pages rank lower.

You’ll have some work to do if you suffer from keyword cannibalization. In short, you should research the performance of your content and probably merge and redirect some of it. When merging posts, we recommend creating a new draft by cloning one of the original posts with the free Yoast Duplicate Post plugin. This allows you to work on your merged post without making these changes to a live post. Read the guide by Joost to learn more about keyword cannibalization and how to fix it.

Internal linking with Yoast SEO

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all this advice? Yoast SEO has some handy tools to make internal linking so much easier.

Yoast SEO’s text link counter visualizes your links so you can optimize them. It shows the internal links in a post and the internal links to a post. This tool can enhance your site structure by improving the links between your related posts. Make sure your cornerstones get the most (relevant) links! You can identify your cornerstones by finding them in the column with the pyramid icon.

Yoast SEO Premium helps you with your internal linking as well. Our internal linking suggestions tool will show you which articles are related to the one you’re writing, so you can easily link to them: just by dragging the link into your editor!

Moreover, our tool allows you to indicate which articles you consider cornerstone content on your site. Those articles will be shown at the top of the internal linking suggestions. You’ll never forget to link to them again.

Read on: How to use Yoast SEO for your cornerstone content strategy »

The importance of site structure

As we have seen, there are several reasons why site structure is important. A good site structure helps both your visitors and Google navigate your site. It makes it easier to implement changes and prevents competing with your content. So use the tips and pointers in this guide to check and improve your site structure. That way, you’ll stay on top and keep your website from growing out of control!

Want to improve your site structure but don’t know where to start? Get Yoast SEO Premium and get loads of helpful tools and guidance, including free access to Yoast SEO Academy, our Site structure training, and our SEO workouts!

Keep on reading: WordPress SEO: The definitive guide to higher rankings for WordPress sites »

The post Site structure: the ultimate guide appeared first on Yoast.

Content SEO is a key part of any SEO strategy. Without content, it’s impossible for your site to rank in search engines. It’s, therefore, crucial to write and structure quality content! This ultimate guide covers the most important areas of content SEO. Read on if you want to learn how to create content that ranks.

Quality content matters now more than ever!

Have you heard about Google’s helpful content update? From now on, the quality of your content could have an even bigger impact on your rankings.

 

We know that creating high-quality content isn’t easy. But our Premium SEO analysis can help! It’s just as smart as Google, helping you create rich and helpful content in a natural way and improving your rankings!

 

Improve your content with Yoast SEO Premium

What is content SEO?

Content SEO refers to creating content that helps your web pages to rank high in the search engines. It includes everything, from writing to structuring the content on your website. There are three major elements you need to consider that will make your website rank well: keyword strategy, site structure and copywriting.

Why is content SEO important in the first place? Because search engines like Google read your website, so the words you use determine whether or not your site will rank in their results pages. Of course, your website should be well-designed, with a great user interface, and all the technical stuff that makes your site rank in Google should also be covered. But without quality content your site doesn’t stand a chance in the search engines.

1. Keyword research

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is basically the steps you take to create an extensive list of keywords you would like to rank for. Every content SEO strategy should begin with keyword research, because you have to know what your audience is searching for if you want to generate traffic. Keyword research helps you to discover the terms you should be aiming to rank for.

Keyword research has four steps:

• Write down the mission of your business;
• Make a list of all the keywords you want to be found for;
• Look at search intent;
• Create landing pages for these keywords.

If you do your keyword research right, you should have a clear overview of the terms people use and the terms for which you want the pages on your site to be found. This overview will serve as a guide for writing content on your website.

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

Why is keyword research so important for SEO content?

Proper keyword research will make clear which search terms your audience uses. This is crucial. At Yoast, we regularly encounter clients who use particular words when talking about their products, while their customers use entirely different words. Writing and optimizing SEO content for words that people don’t use doesn’t make any sense. Doing proper keyword research makes sure that you are using the same words as your target audience, therefore making the effort of optimizing your website worthwhile.

Terms we use in keyword research

Keywords and keyphrases

We tend to use the word ‘keyword‘ all the time. However, it doesn’t have to be just one word. After all, ‘WordPress SEO’ is a keyword, as is ‘Google Analytics plugin.’ So you can have keywords containing multiple words!

Long-tail keywords

The longer (and more specific) a search term is, the easier it will be to rank for that term. Keywords that are more specific (and usually longer) are usually referred to as long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and focus more on a niche.

How many keywords?

It is very hard to give an exact number of keywords you should focus on. You just need to have a lot – as many as you can come up with. More than 1,000 keywords is probably too many though!

Even if you’re a reasonably small business, you’ll probably end up with a couple of hundred keywords. But you don’t have to create pages for all of these immediately. The great thing about having a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress is that you can gradually add content. Think about what keywords you would like to rank for right away, and which ones aren’t immediately important. Determine what your priorities are and plan the creation of your content.

Head or tail?

Classifying your keywords is essential. Some keywords are very common and competitive (head), while others are long-tail. Decide which are your most critical, high-level keywords – the ones that generate sufficient traffic for your website and best fit your business. You’ll probably only have a few of these general keywords for your business, the rest will be more down the tail. In the next section, we’ll give more in-depth information on long-tail keywords (and the importance of these keywords).

Tip: Make sure your homepage and the pages one level beneath that are optimized for the most common keywords! Content that’s focused on long-tail keywords (and therefore more niche) should be on the tail end of your site.

Keyword intent and search intent

As you’re doing keyword research, it really pays off to think about the search intent of users. Are they looking for information, or do they want to buy something? What is their goal when they enter your keyword as a search term? This goal is otherwise known as keyword intent. For some keywords, it’s pretty clear, like [buy leather sofa], or [how to train your puppy]. But it’s not always that simple.

Four types of intent

There are four types of intent:

• Navigational intent: People want to visit a specific website, but rather than entering the URL, they’re entering a term into a search engine.
• Informational intent: People are trying to find an answer to a particular question or information on a specific topic.
• Commercial intent: People want to buy something in the near future and are doing research before making a purchase.
• Transactional intent: People are looking to buy something after doing their commercial intent searches.

Search engines are always trying to answer the exact needs people have, and they’re getting better at it too. So, put simply, if 95% of the people searching for [change car tire] have informational intent, and you’re optimizing for transactional intent to sell tires, you’re probably not going to rank.

Check the SERPs

You can get a wealth of information from the results pages when you’re doing keyword research. If you want to find out what the intent is of people using your keywords, simply google those keywords and take a good look at the search results. Then, try to create content that answers the specific need that you distill from the results for each keyword. Tip: Read more about how to use the search results to create content for the right intent here.

Keep reading: What is search intent? »

Keyword research tools you can use

There are multiple free and premium tools available to help you with your keyword research. Yoast SEO comes with a Semrush integration that gives suggestions for related keyphrases, including search volume trends. Of course, this is not a full keyword research tool. But it can help you gain valuable insights, and find high-performing keywords! For other tools, please check out our article about keyword research tools.

Adapting your keyword strategy

Your keyword strategy shouldn’t be static. It should change and evolve alongside your company and website. It should evolve and grow with you. If it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong.

Stay on top of the changes in your company, and adapt your strategy simultaneously. If your online shop starts selling new products, extend your list with more keywords. If you’re aiming for new markets, it’s vital that your keywords are aimed at these new markets as well.

There are several keyword strategies to adopt. One of them is to try and rank for long-tail keywords first, then aim at more general keywords. But you could also start by focusing on general keywords before aiming for more long-tail ones. You can zoom in and pursue more niche activities, broaden your approach, adding more content on different things, or you can do both simultaneously.

2. Site structure

The second important aspect of content SEO is the structure of your site. First, I’ll explain why site structure is critical, then I’ll show you what an ideal site structure looks like. I will also give you tips on how to (quickly) improve your site structure without completely disrupting the core of your website.

Why is site structure important for content SEO?

There are two main reasons why site structure is an important ranking factor and therefore imperative for building SEO content:

a. A good structure helps Google ‘understand’ your site

The way your site is structured gives Google significant clues about where to find the most important content. Your site’s structure determines whether a search engine understands what your site is about, and how easily it will find and index content relevant to your site’s purpose and intent. A good site structure will, therefore, lead to a higher ranking in Google.

By creating such a structure, you can use existing content that has attracted links from others to help your other pages rank too. Your site’s structure will help spread some of that link juice to the other pages on your site. On a commercial site, this means you can use high-quality content you’ve written to boost the search engine rankings of your sales pages too.

b. A good structure makes sure you aren’t competing with your own SEO content

You will probably have multiple articles about similar topics on your site. At Yoast, for example, we write about SEO. If we wrote eight articles about SEO, Google wouldn’t know which one is the most important. That’s why we used our site structure to clarify this. If we hadn’t, we’d be competing with our own articles for Google’s top spot. So if you solve problems like this by using a sound internal linking structure, the result will be higher rankings overall.

The ideal site structure

Ideally, you should structure your site like a pyramid. At the top is your homepage. On your homepage, you link to some other pages (such as category pages). These pages, in turn, link to even more pages.

In an effective content SEO strategy, your keyword strategy and the way you structure your site work together. In a proper keyword strategy, you’ll have thought about common, competitive keywords as well as long-tail (and niche) search terms. You should make a similar dichotomy in your site structure. Pages that focus on common search terms should appear high in your pyramid, while pages that are optimized for long-tail keywords should appear in a lower part of your structure. And don’t forget to let the long-tail pages at the bottom link to the pages higher in the pyramid!

Read on: The ultimate guide to site structure »

Practical tips on improving your site structure

If you’re serious about content SEO, you’ll most likely already have a live website. So it may be a bit late to set up your site’s structure in an ideal pyramid-like way. Don’t despair – there are still plenty of things you can do to improve your site’s structure and your SEO content.

Decide upon cornerstone content

You should focus your efforts on cornerstone articles. These are the articles that you’re most proud of, and that fit the mission of your website best. You want to rank for these articles the most. Fun fact: This ultimate guide is one of our cornerstones!

If you haven’t decided which of your articles are the most important yet, start thinking about that now. Make these articles the best ones on your site. Give them extra TLC and update them regularly.

Keep on reading: What is cornerstone content »

Link from tail to head

Once you’ve decided upon your precious cornerstones, make sure you link from all your ‘tail’ articles to those cornerstones. That way, Google will know which articles to rank highest. You can read all about this in our article about incorporating cornerstones into your site structure. Good to know: Yoast SEO Premium has an advanced internal linking tool that automatically suggests relevant articles to link from.

Pro tip: You can use our cornerstone content SEO workout in Yoast SEO Premium to check on all your cornerstone content pages, see how many internal links they’re getting, and quickly add more if necessary.

Use tags (but not too many)

Your site will also benefit from adding tags. Tags and taxonomies will give your site more structure – at least, Google will understand it better. They group your articles about similar topics. Don’t overdo it, though. Some people have more tags than articles. Using too many tags will lead to a confusing and poorly-structured site.

Avoid duplicate content

The same SEO content can turn up at multiple places on your site. As a reader, you don’t mind: you still get the content you came for. But a search engine has to choose something to show in the search results, as it doesn’t want to show the same content twice. And what about other sites that want to link to your product? Chances are that some of them will link to the first URL, while others will link to the second.

However, if you make sure that all these duplicate posts link to the same URL, your chances of ranking top 10 for the relevant keyword would be much higher. In other words: Canonicalization is the solution to duplicate content. You can configure the canonical URL in the advanced tab of Yoast SEO.

Remove old SEO content

Should you keep old content? That depends. You have three options: update, redirect, or merge. If the content on a page is outdated, remove it! But what about the valuable links to that page? After all, you want to make sure that you still benefit from these links, even though the page doesn’t exist anymore. That’s where the second option comes in: redirect.

Redirecting pages is easy if you have our Yoast SEO Premium plugin, which can help you take care of redirects. Preferably, you redirect the old URL (301) to the new and updated page or product. You can also redirect to a related page if there is no replacement. For example, the category page of the specific product, or, as a very last resort, your homepage. This way, the (outdated) page won’t interfere with your site structure anymore.

Deal with orphaned content

The term ‘orphaned content’ refers to articles that don’t have any links from your other articles or posts. Because of that, these articles are hard to find, both by Google and by your users. What’s more, Google will consider this type of content to be less important! So if an article is important to you, you should make it clear to Google (and your visitors) by linking to that particular article from other (related) content. Read more about solving the problem of orphaned articles in our article about orphaned content.

Pro tip: Use our orphaned content SEO workout in Yoast SEO Premium to quickly find and fix pages with no incoming internal links.

Deal with content cannibalization

Once you’ve been writing content for a while, you might have dozens of articles on any given topic. If these articles are kind of saying the same thing, search engines and users might get confused. Not to mention the fact that your content might compete against itself in the search engines. This is called keyword cannibalization. It’s not inherently bad, but it’s something you need to take a look at. Are your articles performing as well as they should, or is the competition hurting the chances at a higher ranking? Luckily, it’s not hard to find and fix keyword cannibalization.

3. Copywriting for content SEO

The third and final aspect of a successful content SEO strategy is copywriting. Two very important things to remember: Write articles that are attractive to read, and that will make your audience want to stay on your site. However, you shouldn’t forget to make your SEO content attractive for Google. Just don’t go too far by optimizing your content so overtly that it becomes terrible to read. At Yoast, we suggest optimizing your text for search without adversely affecting the originality of your idea or the readability of your text.

Read more: The ultimate guide to SEO copywriting »

Start with an original idea

The first requirement for high-quality copywriting is to write original content. Your post or article should be ‘fresh,’ new, and original. It has to be different from all the other posts and articles that are already on the internet. Plus, it should be content that people want to read.

If you did your keyword research well, you now have a long list of terms that you want to be found for. This list can be a guide for you to choose from. A keyword isn’t necessarily a topic, though. You should make sure to come up with an original idea for your blog post – an idea in which the desired focus keyword has a prominent place.

But don’t worry! Original SEO content doesn’t mean brand new content. Giving your (professional) opinion on a particular topic also counts as original content. Because your personal angle to a story will make your content unique and original. Of course, if your story is completely new, that automatically means it’s original.

Think about your audience

If you want to write original content, you should think about your audience and who they are. Also, ask yourself:

• What do you want to tell your audience?
• What will be the main message of your article?
• Can you tell the purpose of your article?
• What do you want your audience to do after they’ve read your article? (Do you want them to engage, buy your products/service, or read more posts?)

Thinking about these questions will help you to come up with an original idea for your post or article.

Content design and content SEO

Content design is a process that helps you produce content based on actual user needs. It doesn’t just help you figure out what your user wants, but it also focuses on what the user actually needs. Thinking about your content in this way will help you create content in the language and format that your user needs.

However, content design isn’t just a technique to help you produce better content – it’s a new way of thinking about content. If you want to know more about content design, read our post on content design: a great way to make user-centered content.

Copywriting requires readable SEO content

A key requirement for writing high-quality content is to write content that’s easy to read. Readability is important both for your audience and for Google. After all, not only people read your articles but Google does too.

If your text is well structured and clearly written, readers will be able to clearly understand your message. And so will Google! If your main message is clear to Google, your post is far more likely to rank well in the search engines.

Readability is about many factors, such as text structure, sentence length and writing clear paragraphs. You can read all about the importance of readability in this post. For more tips on readability, you can read our post on how to make an article more readable.

Content, context and search intent

As Google is getting smarter, it starts to understand content on sites better — thanks to a lot of developments in the natural language processing sphere, like BERT. It’s no longer just about the number of times a keyword pops on a page. It also takes into account the context of those keywords, like co-occurring terms and phrases, related words and synonyms. On top of that, as mentioned before, Google is able to understand queries of users better: it tries to determine what the search intent of the user is. Are they looking for a product or just information? Which pages fit that intent best?

All these developments mean that you should focus on more than just using your keyword often enough. It means you should also think about the words you use around it: do they make clear what topic you’re discussing? And, do you have the purpose in mind of the post or page you’re creating? Does it just provide information or are you trying to sell something, and does that align with what your users are actually looking for? Yoast SEO Premium lets you optimize your SEO content with synonyms and related keyphrases, making it even easier to add context to your articles.

Keep reading: Blog or vlog, which one is better? »

Optimize content for search engines and readers

The final requirement for writing high-quality content is to make sure the content is optimized for search engines. You want your SEO content to be easily found. Findability has to do with increasing the likelihood Google will pick up your content for the result pages. It’s important that you take this final step after you’ve written an original and readable post.

Yoast SEO helps you tweak your text just a little bit more. If you’ve written your article, focused on that original idea, and optimized the readability of your post, you should take a look at the SEO analysis in Yoast SEO. Red and orange bullets indicate which aspects of your findability need a little bit more attention. You don’t need a green bullet for every aspect though, as long as your overall score is good.

Yoast SEO will help you to optimize your snippet preview as well. These tweaks can vastly improve your chances to be picked up by the search engines. Read more about optimizing your post in our article on how to use the content and SEO analysis.

Conclusion on content SEO

Content SEO is such a huge part of SEO. It encompasses every aspect of writing and structuring content on your website. Content SEO is essential. No one will read your content if it’s crappy. Like visitors, Google reads and scans your website text. Google’s algorithm decides the ranking of your site largely based on the content you publish. And we all know content is king. So, you need to write awesome SEO content, focus on the right keywords and structure your website in such a way Google understands it. It’s a lot of work, but it will pay off in the long run.

Read on: Blogging: the ultimate guide »

Find out how SEO fit your content is!

As you’ve learned from this guide, there’s a lot you need to do to keep your site’s content SEO fit. Take this short test and find out if there are some aspects of content SEO you may need to improve!

The post The ultimate guide to content SEO appeared first on Yoast.

Get ready for another release of Yoast SEO! Our team has been working hard to bring you new features, enhancements, and bug fixes that help improve Yoast SEO. In Yoast SEO 20.6, we’re introducing a readability assessment that helps you avoid using center-aligned text in your content. Plus, we have other upgrades that enhance your favorite SEO plugin. Update now!

A new readability assessment: don’t center-align text

To provide the best reading experience to users, we have added a new readability assessment. This warning reminds you not to use center-aligned text in your content, as this can make your content harder to read.

Text aligned to the center can create readability, usability, and user experience problems. This is due to the uneven spacing between words, making it difficult for readers to stay engaged with the text flow. As a result, it is hard to identify the start and end of each line when the text is centered. Thus, making it challenging for people to keep track of their reading.

Yoast SEO recommends avoiding center-aligned text in your content. This way, reading your content is much easier, and your page layout has the best user experience.

A heads-up: we’re deprecating the Zapier integration

Yoast SEO users depending on the Zapier integration, should take note of the upcoming changes. Here’s a short timeline of what’s happening:

• Starting May 2, 2023, the Yoast SEO integration with Zapier will be soft-deprecated. Existing Zaps using the Yoast SEO integration will only work for users who haven’t updated to version 20.7 of Yoast SEO. If you have updated to version 20.7 or higher, your Zaps using the Yoast SEO integration will stop working.
• On May 9th, 2023, support for the integration with Zapier will end with Yoast SEO 20.7.

To continue using Yoast SEO with Zapier, it’s recommended to check your Zaps and identify which ones will be affected by the end of support. By configuring your API calls using Webhooks by Zapier, you can continue to use Yoast SEO’s features in your Zaps. Please check out our help documentation for guidance if you have any questions.

WooCommerce SEO 15.7: Product identifiers now for grouped products

In WooCommerce, a grouped product is a type of product that allows you to group multiple simple products and sell them as a single item. To help you improve the metadata of your grouped products, we now support these in the SKU and product identifiers assessment in WooCommerce SEO 15.7.

In the WooCommerce SEO analyses, we’ll check if your (grouped) products come with SKUs or product identifiers. Adding these makes it easier for search engines to understand your products as this information is passed via Product structured data for them to use.

Yoast SEO 20.6 is out today!

We hope you’re excited about the new version of Yoast SEO! With all the recent bug fixes, enhancements, and the new readability assessment, this release will help you take your website’s SEO and user experience to the next level.

Thanks for using Yoast SEO, and happy optimizing!

The post Yoast SEO 20.6: Introducing a new readability assessment appeared first on Yoast.

YoastCon 2023 is right around the corner and we can’t wait for you to hear from our fantastic lineup of speakers. They will be sharing their expertise on a range of topics to help take your digital marketing to the next level. Will you join the greatest experts in the world of SEO on Thursday, May 11th, in Nijmegen? Here’s a quick rundown of some of the speakers and their presentations.

The absolute top of the SEO industry

If you looking to take your SEO knowledge to the next level and achieve your business goals, YoastCon 2023 is the perfect opportunity to do so! You’ll learn from the best SEO experts in the world, including the current #1 and #2 in SEO, who will share their expert insights and strategies on our main stage. Plus, a representative from Google will be joining us for an interactive fireside chat. Don’t miss this awesome opportunity!

The world champions in SEO

One of our speakers is Jes Scholz, currently ranked #1 in the world championship SEO. She will talk about “Google’s glow up: Why you need to optimize beyond search.” As the Head of SEO at Ringier, Jes has a deep understanding of Google’s ecosystem and will share her insights on why it’s important to optimize beyond search. She will convince you why you need to stop running in the rat race for rankings and focus optimizations on the bigger picture.

Our own Jono Alderson, currently ranked #2 in the world championship SEO, will provide a behind-the-scenes look at Yoast SEO. As head of SEO at Yoast, Jono has unique insights into how Yoast SEO works. And how to get the most out of it. He has tons of tips on how to fix websites, implement growth strategies, prepare for the future and win markets!

The future of search

The web, and in fact, humanity, is at a crossroads. We’re struggling to keep our planet healthy. We, as creators of the web, have a responsibility to be conscious about what we do. The recent developments in AI, for example, make creating content and in fact, websites and code, easier and easier. But with every new develoipment, we have to keep asking ourselves one simple question: Does this make the web better?

In their talk, Joost de Valk (Founder of Yoast & partner at Emilia Capital) and Marieke van de Rakt (Chief Growth Officer at Yoast and partner at Emilia Capital) will dive in and ask the questions that need to be answered by content creators and web developers.

Get as close to the source as possible and join the fireside chat with Googler Thierry Muller

Thierry Muller is part of the Web Platform team at Google. During a fireside chat, we’ll talk to him about the state of performance on the web, user experience, and whether WordPress should worry as it is falling behind on performance. He’ll also share a few first thoughts on how AI could make its way into web development and performance. Don’t miss out and learn more about what Google is doing to help site owners make the right decisions.

YoastCon for everyone!

From copywriting & local SEO…

A well-written sales page, email series, chatbot, or video can sell your products and services while you sleep. Let Kate Toon tell you all about conversion copywriting tactics! Or learn all about local SEO during Greg Gifford’s talk and leave with a detailed playbook that outlines specific strategies and tactics that will help you dominate local search results for 2023 and beyond.

… to news SEO & GA4

News takes a special place in Google’s ecosystem. Users expect Google to show the latest and best articles on any given topic. This provides us with detailed insights into Google’s crawling and indexing ecosystem and the signals it uses to determine authority and expertise. Let Barry Adams share (almost) all he has learned about Google’s inner workings.

Want to learn how to catch huge opportunities in the world of ecommerce? Luke Carthy tells you exactly how you can use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to collect custom and super-powerful data to boost conversion and grow sales.

User research, WordPress and SEO agency landscape

User research expert Els Aerts tells you all about ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of user research’. In this talk, she highlights the most important pitfalls to be aware of when doing research.

And in Miriam Schwab’s talk, she’ll examine five trends that keep WordPress relevant and exciting to a wide range of users. Trends that can play a role in keeping WordPress the leading CMS for many years to come.

If you want to dive deeper into the SEO agency landscape, Hannah Thorpe will talk about what to do – and what not to do – whilst setting up your SEO team and how to tackle those common problems. This actionable talk is great if you’re looking for inspiration on what makes an agency successful.

YoastCon workshops: put theory into practice straight away

Want to sharpen your keyword research skills or enhance your SEO copywriting? Attending the YoastCon workshops is your chance to learn from the best in the industry. Seats for these workshops are filling up quickly, so make sure to get your hands on your YoastCon ticket and register for the workshop of your choice!

Don’t miss out on all these top-notch talks

Are you ready to be blown away by the amazing talks at YoastCon? With such a fantastic lineup of topics, we’re curious – what are you most excited about? Get your thinking cap on and take in this unforgettable experience at YoastCon 2023 in Nijmegen! And, don’t forget, you can get 30% off every second ticket to bring a friend and share your YoastCon experience!

The post Don’t miss these amazing speakers at YoastCon 2023! appeared first on Yoast.

A few weeks back, CloudFest organized its yearly Hackathon and Yoast was proud to be a partner and sponsor for this edition. During this event, developers and other web professionals from around the globe came together to solve some real-world problems. While having lots of fun! Of course, we couldn’t sit back and just enjoy the show from afar. A few of us Yoasters also joined the event and participated in the eco-mode project, a project with the goal to have an impact on global internet energy consumption. And it was quite a success!

What is the CloudFest Hackathon?

CloudFest, the world’s top cloud computing conference, has returned to Germany in March 2023, and Yoast was thrilled to be part of the hackathon this year. The three-day event brought together 11 open-source projects and 120 attendees with the aim of creating innovative solutions to intriguing tech challenges in the OSS community.

As a returning sponsor from last year, sadly not having been able to attend in person in 2022, we definitely wanted to get more involved in the event this time around. We sent not just one, but three representatives to join in on the fun and experience firsthand the positive vibes we had heard so much about from previous year’s attendees. Not only did we send Yoasters to attend the hackathon, but our very own Diede Exterkate and I (Leonidas Milosis) co-led one of the hackathon projects, the Eco-mode project. And let me tell you, it was an experience we won’t forget anytime soon!

The Eco-mode project

As the project’s description on the hackathon website states:

Recurring outgoing HTTP requests in WordPress can be a source of needless energy and bandwidth usage that can be recalibrated and optimized.

The Eco-mode project was born, prior to the hackathon, out of the intention to lower the total energy consumption of WordPress websites, by reducing the outgoing HTTP requests a website performs. The basic idea was that we wanted to investigate whether there are outgoing requests that WordPress sites perform that can be throttled without any functionality breaking.

The long-term goal of all that would be to create a plugin that performs those recalibrations and if that got widely adopted (perhaps by turning into a canonical plugin), it would translate in a big number of prevented external requests, thus making a dent in the total energy consumption of the internet! Needless to say, as the days of the hackathon were getting closer, I was starting to get more and more excited, realizing that the project could actually make a difference. The responsibility of the task at hand started to get real, which brings us to the event.

Timeline of the hackathon

Day 1: Inspiring chaos

The whole thing started with the lead of each project making a quick pitch, trying to persuade people to join their project. Our approach for the Eco-mode pitch was simple: We were looking for developers that cared about optimizing the performance of WordPress sites while also reducing their energy consumption. That’s an easy sell, right?

Turns out, it was. We managed to assemble a great team, featuring Thierry Muller, Moritz Bappert, Zsolt Revay, Christoph Daum and Yoast’s Petar Ratkovic. Once the team gathered at the project’s table and we explained the task at hand, it was time to brainstorm. I would describe this first day as chaotic but in an inspiring way. At the end of the day, minimal code had been written but we had shared a couple of ideas and some routes each subgroup could try and follow the next day.

Day 2: Time to get serious

This was the time to see if we had any ideas that were actually worth pursuing. I’m not going to lie, at some point I had this nerve-wracking feeling that we were heading toward a dead-end. Every idea shared was proving to be either not doable or not impactful. But then, something weird happened. While we were about to abandon yet another idea for being too disruptive to WordPress’s normal flow, our collective brainstorming created a slight modification of that idea with a bit more sophisticated logic behind it. And that seemed to unlock us because, within an hour, we had 3 different subgroups working on different things with promising potentials.

After checking with the event’s mentors that our ideas were viable, we now had a clear goal in sight. Each subgroup had tasks and things were finally clicking. The only problem now was time running out. Luckily, in a hackathon setting, you mostly try to build something that proves an idea can work. You know how as a developer you always try to have pristine code, adhering to all sorts of best practices and conventions? Well, you can throw most of those requirements out of the window during a hackathon: “Build now, improve later” as they say. By the end of the day, we had most things ready, with only a couple of loose ends remaining.

Day 3: The last day

We had two hours to finish everything and prepare a presentation, which we did – although we did hand in our slides literally at the last minute. We were happy with our progress and decided to have the whole team on stage for the presentation. It was a proper team effort, after all! Once all projects presented their work, it was time for the award ceremony. To create friendly competition, Cloudfest had 6 awards including the #CFHack2023 Champion Award, the ultimate prize. Our experience in the hackathon would have been awesome even without winning anything, so our team wasn’t that stressed about the results. But to make things even better, our Eco-mode project won 3 awards! 

• The Visionary Catalyst award
• The Future of The Web award
• The #CFHack2023 Champion award

Project’s progress and next steps

To sum it up, in one weekend we managed to create a plugin that implements:

• A couple of ways to automatically reduce a WordPress site’s external requests, thus decreasing its carbon footprint.
• An API that website owners can use to reduce the site’s external requests even further, depending on each site’s needs and functionalities.
• A draft of a dashboard where a user could later see estimations of saved requests and user controls for manual optimization.

Although those implementations should and will be improved in order for the plugin to be considered production-level, this has been a great start to a project that can, if widely adopted, potentially affect global internet energy consumption considerably.

So, what’s next?

As for its next steps, a repo has been set up in GitHub, where a bunch of issues have been created to iterate on the plugin. Getting into technical details, on top of the existing tasks in the repo, we have to think about scalability issues and how best to solve them so the plugin can be installed on the high-traffic sites, where it matters most. Furthermore, we want to explore ways of both estimating and measuring the real impact and feed those results back into the optimization process to provide smarter heuristics.

In general, if the project can properly communicate and sell the vision of a “carbon-aware” WordPress that saves on both carbon and bandwidth costs at the same time, this would be a major win for all of us. The plugin can be the first glimpse of those possibilities, but also even act as the discussion starter for getting both WordPress Core and the plugin ecosystem to be more conscious in their use of resources and improve their code to be more ecological even without the eco-mode plugin. 

Our commitment to sustainability

We, here at Yoast, care deeply about the environment and so, the project’s objectives deeply align with our values. That’s why we already included the project in the latest Yoast Contributor Day we organized, where the plugin got even further contributions and we hope to do the same in the future as well.

But our commitment to sustainability runs deeper. We’re working towards a greener world, with our company culture and the products we offer. That’s why we’ve recently introduced a new feature in Yoast SEO that helps our users reduce their website’s carbon footprint. By using the crawl optimization settings you can prevent unnecessary crawling. This makes your site easier to crawl, costing less energy and increasing the chance that Google will crawl the right URLs. Less crawling reduces the strain on your website and the environment as a whole.

Final thoughts

All in all, this has been an absolutely thrilling experience, to say the least. Being able to meet interesting people from your line of work, while also working on a project that has the potential to make a dent in the environmental effects of WordPress, was truly unique. We hope this project will help WordPress users and eventually contribute to a greener web!

Read more: Why you should care how green your website is »

The post The Eco-mode project: reducing the energy consumption of WordPress websites appeared first on Yoast.

It is with mixed emotions that we say goodbye to Marieke van de Rakt, who has decided to leave Yoast. Everyone at Newfold Digital and Yoast will miss her dearly, and we want to thank her for all the wonderful things she has done over the years. She’s played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s vision, growth and success.

Now, she has ambitious plans to help other organizations, to champion diversity and sustainability, and to continue to change the world for the better. So, let’s take a look at just a few of the things she’s accomplished in her time here.

Marieke’s life at Yoast

As you may know, Marieke has been a core part of Yoast since the beginning. She’s been instrumental in so many different areas of the company, and across so many roles, that it’s hard to summarize without leaving things out!

She founded the Yoast SEO academy, championed a positive and inclusive company culture, driven our marketing and branding efforts, and led the company as CEO. We can’t understate how much of an impact she’s had on the company and the brand, and how much of a lasting effect that will continue to have.

​Yoast SEO academy

In 2015, Marieke had a vision to empower others through knowledge, leading to her founding the Yoast SEO academy; a free source of accessible and reliable SEO education. Now, hundreds of thousands of people all around the world have completed courses, improved their SEO skills, and grown their audiences as a result.

Championing a positive company culture

Marieke always felt that it’s important for employees to enjoy their work, feel appreciated, and contribute meaningfully. Our core company values still reflect that, even as Yoast has grown and become a larger and more complex organization. She was often the person driving us forward and thinking ahead when it came to our culture, and has always been a strong advocate for a positive and inclusive company culture. She’s closed gender pay gaps, increased our diversity, and championed our people.

The brand

Yoast is one of the most well-known and loved brands in the industry, and Marieke’s influence can be felt here, too. She’s played a key part in defining and championing our look and feel, messaging, communication, and brand vision. That Yoast employees are universally recognized, respected, and influential all around the world is a level of status that she played a huge part in us creating and maintaining.

Life as a CEO

As the CEO, Marieke was responsible for the overall strategic direction, day-to-day management, and operational success of the company. With her vast understanding of the market, industry trends, users and community, she enabled Yoast to remain at the forefront of the competitive SEO landscape. Yoast’s successful acquisition by Newfold Digital in 2021 was completed under her purview.

Marieke really has done a lot for Yoast over the years, and I would encourage you to have a look at our history of Yoast page to see the full extent of the legacy she is leaving behind. 

Future for Marieke

If you know Marieke, then you know that she will not be sitting still! She has many projects that she is looking forward to spending more time on. She’ll be investing in open source, sustainable and female-led companies through Emilia Capital, and helping organizations to address gender imbalances and workplace inequality with her Empowerwoment Project.

We wish her the best of luck with these undertakings and will be cheering her on from the sidelines.

The future of Yoast

Yoast is still in an incredibly strong position, with a strong leadership team, product, and roadmap. Whilst we’ll be sad to see Marieke leaving, it’s a positive reflection on the stability of the company and brand that she’s able to do so safely and happily. Marieke has spent the last few months working with our teams, ensuring that her wisdom and vision is passed on successfully. She’ll be leaving her legacy and responsibilities in capable hands.

We also have the full support of our parent organization, Newfold Digital, who’ll be helping us as we move into a new chapter at Yoast.

The post Saying goodbye to Marieke appeared first on Yoast.

Google’s Search Quality Raters evaluate whether its search ranking systems provide helpful, relevant information. They evaluate the quality and relevance of search results produced by Google to help improve the algorithms and user experience. To do so, Google uses the E-E-A-T system, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The E for experience is relatively new and helps assess content quality. This article will discuss the Experience factor and how it fits into the updated search quality rater guidelines.

Reminder: What is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T is an acronym for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s a concept that Google introduced through its Search Quality Raters Guidelines (pdf file) to help evaluate the quality of websites and web pages and to judge how these should be ranked in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Read our guide on what is E-E-A-T to get the lowdown, but here’s a quick breakdown of what each term means:

• Experience: When evaluating the content, Google considers the writer’s first-hand or (life) experience relating to the topic.
• Expertise: Refers to the level of knowledge and skill a content creator or website has in a particular area or subject matter.
• Authoritativeness: Refers to how reputable and respected the content creator or website is within its niche or industry.
• Trustworthiness: Refers to the overall reliability and integrity of the content creator or website. This includes aspects such as transparency, accuracy, and ethical behavior.

Google considers E-E-A-T a critical factor in their ranking systems, especially for search queries related to health, finance, and other areas where the accuracy and trustworthiness of information are crucial — the so-called YMYL sites. This system is used to evaluate the content quality and who’s behind the content. Websites with high experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are more likely to rank well in Google’s search results for these particular searches.

What does Experience mean in E-E-A-T?

Experience is now a part of Google’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness system for rating the quality and relevance of content on search engine results pages (SERPs). This move was announced in the latest version of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG), released on December 15, 2022.

Experience refers to knowledge or skill gained through exposure to a particular activity or event. It is the practical application of knowledge or skills gained over time. Experience can be gained through personal involvement or positive or negative observation. For example, someone who has worked in a particular field for many years has much experience.

Google added Experience to assess results better, believing people want to read first-hand experiences when making important decisions. Pages related to Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics are most impacted by Experience. It is crucial to know when sharing experiences or leaving the information to experts is appropriate.

What’s the difference between experience and expertise?

Experience and expertise are terms often used interchangeably but have distinct meanings. Let’s take a closer look at the two.

In Google’s words:

“Experience: Consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic. Many types of pages are trustworthy and achieve their purpose well when created by people with a wealth of personal experience. For example, which would you trust: a product review from someone who has personally used the product or a “review” by someone who has not?”

Conversely, expertise refers to a high level of skill or knowledge in a particular subject or field. It results from a combination of education, training, and experience. Expertise is typically associated with a deep understanding of a particular subject or field that allows for the ability to make judgments, solve problems, and give advice.

Again, in Google’s words:

“Expertise: Consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary knowledge or skill for the topic. Different topics require different levels and types of expertise to be trustworthy. For example, which would you trust: home electrical rewiring advice from a skilled electrician or from an antique homes enthusiast who has no knowledge of electrical wiring?”

In summary, experience is knowledge or skill gained through exposure to a particular activity or event. At the same time, expertise is a high level of skill or knowledge in a particular subject or field.

An example of experience vs. expertise in E-E-A-T

Here’s an example, consider the case of a cancer survivor. As someone who lived with cancer, this person is well-equipped to offer advice on coping strategies and share insights that may benefit others facing similar challenges.

However, it’s important to recognize that this person does not necessarily possess formal medical expertise in cancer treatment. While both a cancer survivor and a trained doctor may be capable of producing valuable content on the topic, the two will likely be evaluated differently based on their respective levels of experience and expertise.

Experience and expertise are two concepts, but they can complement each other. Experience can lead to the development of expertise over time, but expertise requires more than just experience. Becoming an expert in a particular subject or field requires education, training, and experience. But remember that you don’t always need formal qualifications to showcase your industry-relevant experience in your content.

Experience, expertise, and authoritativeness can have some overlap for certain types of web pages and topics. Depending on the purpose and topic of the page, different combinations of E-E-A may be more relevant, so it’s important to consider what would make the content creator reliable for that particular context.

Who, how, and why?

To ensure your content is aligned with what search engines reward, consider evaluating it based on the “Who, How, and Why” factors. “Who” refers to the creator of the content, and it’s crucial to make it clear to visitors who authored it. Adding bylines and providing background information about the author can help with this. “How” refers to how the content was produced, and sharing details about the production process, such as the number of products tested in a review, can build trust with readers. Finally, “Why” refers to the purpose of creating the content, which should primarily be to help people. If the primary purpose is to manipulate search rankings, this violates Google’s spam policies.

Generative AI makes it harder to evaluate content

With the rise of generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT, GPT-4, Bing Chat, and Google Bard, content creation has become more accessible. These technologies can generate human-like content with remarkable accuracy, making it challenging to distinguish generative AI content from content created by real people.

However, while AI-generated content tools are faster and more efficient than people, they lack the experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness people can provide. These technologies do not possess the same empathy and personal connection that genuine authors can create within their content.

Additionally, AI-generated content is less authentic, lacks originality, may contain errors or inconsistencies, and may lack inclusivity. This can negatively affect website owners, leading to a loss of credibility, and decreased organic traffic and sales.

In February 2023, Google published a post to guide content creators on how it thinks about AI-generated content for Search. In it is this piece:

“Our advice for creators considering AI-generation. As explained, however content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T.

Evaluating your content in this way, whether you’re using AI-generated content or not, will help you stay on course with what our systems seek to reward.

Generative AI lacks these qualities — it isn’t an expert on a topic and doesn’t have (life) experience. You do! So please make the most of it and get or prove those E-E-A-T factors.

More on this in Google’s guide to creating helpful content for readers.

How to demonstrate experience in E-E-A-T

In today’s content-driven world, demonstrating your experience is increasingly crucial. However, displaying it in a unique, compelling way can be challenging. Here are some tips to get you started.

To effectively optimize for experience, you need to distinguish between expertise and experience in E-E-A-T, knowing when to showcase each. While expertise relates to your knowledge, experience is closely linked to your direct involvement with a particular subject. For example, if you’re seeking information on vascular surgery, you’ll turn to an authoritative source, such as a vascular surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. Conversely, if you’re struggling with weight issues, you might find reading about other people’s experiences helpful.

Another way to optimize for experience is by sharing evidence of it. For example, describe your experience reviewing an ultralight-weight sleeping pad for multi-day mountain hikes. This could include details on how well the pad insulated against the cold, if it made crinkly sounds that woke up your partner in the tent, and how small it packed away in your backpack. Be transparent about how you or your writer have garnered your experience. You can describe your direct encounters with a product or service. You can create unique and helpful content that separates you by leveraging your expertise.

Featuring insights from industry experts can also be an effective way to optimize for experience. This involves contacting other content creators or influencers for their input, adding credibility to your blog, and spotlighting your commentary.

Finally, be honest about the experience and authoritativeness of your authors. Don’t forget to include author bios for yourself and other contributors. This demonstrates that you all have the experience and expertise to provide advice and optimize your content for experience, making it more appealing to readers and search engines.

Build up your About Us and Author pages

Your About Us and Author pages are some of the most important pages on your site. It’s where people expect to find information about who is behind this website. It’s a great place to share all those details in one easy-to-find location to show off your experience for E-E-A-T. Here are some things you can add to your About Us and Author pages to get you started.

6 tips for authors and companies

1. Highlight the knowledge and expertise of your team by sharing their qualifications, credentials, and experience, including resumes, bios and certifications, to showcase your site’s authority in your field. Display any industry memberships, awards, or other types of recognition to demonstrate credibility further.
2. Showcase examples of past success and influence to build authority, including case studies, testimonials, publications, public speaking events, and conferences. Linking to high-quality external sites on relevant subjects and media mentions can boost your site’s credibility.
3. Build trust with potential clients or customers by sharing your company’s story, values, and mission. Being transparent about your process and policies can also help visitors trust you more.
4. Provide in-depth descriptions of your team members, services, and products to establish your site as a trustworthy source of information in your industry. Use testimonials and samples to showcase your unique selling proposition and differentiate your business from competitors.
5. Keep your About Us page updated regularly to reflect any changes in your team, services, or company. Display your mission statement prominently on the page and share current news and updates to show that you are an active and engaged participant in your industry. Make sure this information is easily accessible and presented.

6. Add structured data! Schema.org is a structured data markup vocabulary that helps you add extra information to your pages, helping search engines understand them. Adding structured data to your About Us page lets you communicate details about your business, its products and services, and your team. Yoast SEO automatically adds structured data. Yoast SEO Premium even has extended support for building up your author profiles. Structured data is a valuable tool to improve your About Us page content quality and help Google comprehend it better.

Share your experience for better E-E-A-T

This article introduces the Experience part of E-E-A-T, while also describing the differences and similarities with Expertise. Both play a big role in determining if you are the right person to publish this content. Do you have what it takes to help people along their journey — especially in YMYL topics?

E-E-A-T is an abstract concept with no score attached to it that you can improve for. You can do a lot to improve the quality of your content and your content producers, but there is no single thing to pinpoint as essential. Everything is important, and every bit helps.

Read more: What is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)? »

The post The first E in E-E-A-T, or the importance of Experience appeared first on Yoast.

Breadcrumbs are an essential part of almost every good website. These little navigational aids don’t just tell people where they are on your site, but they also help Google work out how your site is structured. That’s why adding these helpful little pointers makes a lot of sense. Let’s take a look at how breadcrumb navigation works.

What are breadcrumbs?

A breadcrumb is a small text path, often located at the top of a page, indicating where the user is on the site. On yoast.com, the path to our Keyword research guide is Home > SEO blog > Content SEO > Keyword Research > Keyword research for SEO: the ultimate guide. This trail immediately shows you where you are. Every step of that path is clickable, returning to the homepage.

But why is this navigational help called a breadcrumb? When Hansel and Gretel went into the woods, Hansel dropped pieces of bread onto the ground so they could find their way home if they got lost. These crumbs eventually became the model for the ones we see on websites.

They also appear in Google search results, and you can take advantage of this if you use Yoast SEO or add the correct form of structured data to your site. Breadcrumbs in search results give users an easy-to-understand overview of where the page sits on your site.

Yoast SEO automatically adds the necessary structured data — a BreadcrumbList — in JSON-LD format. Just flip the switch in the settings, and you’ll see the relevant lines appear in your source code — although, depending on your theme, you may need to add a small piece of code to your theme. Find out more about our breadcrumb structured data in our documentation. You can use the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block to add them to individual posts or pages quickly.

Remember that Google uses the structured data on your site to understand its structure and contents fully. So Google uses breadcrumbs both for crawling and rich results.

Different types of breadcrumbs

You may have noticed that there are different types of breadcrumbs. These are the three most common ones:

Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs

These are the most common, and it’s how we use them on our site. They tell you where you are in a site structure and how many steps it takes to return to the homepage. Something like Home > Blog > Category > Post name.

Attribute-based breadcrumbs

Attribute-based breadcrumbs are seen most commonly when a user has searched on an e-commerce site. The trail comprises product attributes – for example, Home > Product category > Gender > Size > Color.

History-based breadcrumbs

History-based breadcrumbs do precisely what they say on the tin; they are ordered according to what you have done on the site. Think of these as an alternative to your internet history bar, so you get something like this: Home > Previous page > Previous page > Previous page > Current page. It’s also possible to combine these as Macy’s does in the screenshot below.

Advantages of using breadcrumbs

There are several advantages to using these helpful little pointers on your site. Let’s take a quick look at them:

1. Google loves them

Your visitors like breadcrumbs, but Google does too. They give Google another way of figuring out what your website is about and how it’s structured. Google uses them as a way to crawl your content. But, as covered earlier, Google may also use them in the search results, making your results much more enticing to users. To increase the chances of your them appearing in Google, you need to add structured data like Yoast SEO. Google Search categorizes information from a web page in search results using proper markup within the page’s body.

2. They enhance the user experience

People hate being lost. When confronted with a new location, people often search for recognizable objects or landmarks – the same is true of websites. You need to keep visitors happy and reduce friction as much as possible. Breadcrumbs can help your user experience since they are a common interface element that instantly shows people a way out. You don’t need to click the back button!

3. They lower bounce rates

Hardly anyone enters a site via the homepage — It’s all about organic search. That means any part of your site could be an entry point. You must develop a way to guide these visitors to other parts of your site if the selected page doesn’t meet their needs. Breadcrumbs can lower bounce rates because you offer visitors an alternative way to browse your site. Don’t you think sending visitors to your homepage is better than returning to Google?

How to add breadcrumbs

There are several ways of adding breadcrumbs to your site. Firstly, if you use WordPress, you can use one of the many plugins or Yoast SEO. If you use a different CMS, the process will be different. It is also possible to add them to your code by hand. If you also want them to appear in Google results, you need to use structured data in a way that Google understands. You can find more information on this in Google’s developer documentation. For SEO, Google doesn’t care where you add them — as long as you add them if that makes sense. Visitors will prefer them in a logical spot, though.

Yoast SEO has breadcrumb support built-in

Yoast SEO offers an easy way to add breadcrumbs to your WordPress site. It will add everything necessary to prepare them for your site, not just for Google. Some themes come with support for Yoast SEO breadcrumbs baked in. In that case, you only have to activate them and set them up how you like. In case your theme doesn’t support our breadcrumbs yet, you need to add the following piece of code to your theme where you want them to appear:

<?php
if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {
  yoast_breadcrumb( '</p><p id="breadcrumbs">','</p><p>' );
}
?>

This code can often be placed inside the single.php or page.php files just above the page’s title. Some themes want it at the end of the header.php file. It’s not a good idea to add it to functions.php since this could cause problems.

After adding the code, you can go to the advanced settings of Yoast SEO and switch on breadcrumb support. You can also control how their structure will look and what prefixes will be used. Find out more in our document on implementing breadcrumbs with Yoast SEO.

Breadcrumbs with a WordPress block

You can use the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block to add breadcrumbs to individual posts and pages using the block editor. This is helpful if you don’t want to touch code or if you only want to add to a specific page. Adding them is incredibly easy — hit the big + icon to add a block. Then, find the Yoast SEO breadcrumbs block by entering the name in the search bar or scrolling down to the Yoast section. Alternatively, you can type /yoast breadcrumbs in an empty paragraph.

Conclusion

Despite using breadcrumbs, Hansel and Gretel still got lost in the woods. Don’t let that happen to your visitors! Breadcrumbs provide an easy-to-grasp way for visitors to navigate your site, and they instantly understand how your site structure works. Google loves them for the same reason. So use Yoast SEO to add them to your site easily.

Read more: Site structure: the ultimate guide »

The post What are breadcrumbs? Why are they important for SEO? appeared first on Yoast.

Embedded videos are an increasingly important part of websites. And it’s easy to see why. They add an engaging and interactive layer to all manner of page types. But there is one problem: video files are big. Particularly on lower bandwidth mobile connections, they can be very slow to load.

This can be a problem from a user-experience standpoint, especially if the video is critical for the display of the page (such as with an auto-playing background video). But it can also be a challenge for SEO. Having too many big videos on a page can negatively impact your Core Web Vitals, particularly Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) & Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Let’s dive deeper into these two topics, and what you can do to fix it.

Largest Contentful Paint

If your page includes an inline embedded video, then that video is part of the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). What does that mean? It means the video is a critical part of the page experience, both from an algorithmic and user standpoint. If your LCP time is too slow (for example, when it depends on the execution of a large amount of JavaScript), then you might receive a failed Core Web Vitals assessment in Google Search Console. Which looks like this:

Google likes to see pages load up within 2.5 seconds on a mobile 3g connection. That’s definitely a challenge if HD video files are critical to your page experience.

Cumulative Layout Shift

If videos are the last to load on your page, they can cause issues with Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). How? By forcing blocks of text or images to move around on the page as the video is loaded.

To mitigate this, you either need to ensure your videos load with the HTML – but this may block rendering elsewhere – or ensure the frame in which the video will appear loads even before the file asset itself.

Fix with placeholders

The way to fix these issues isn’t to remove videos from your website! Instead, you should be smart about how JavaScript and media files are loaded. With video, this means using thumbnail image placeholders – small image files that load in advance. They can act as a trigger for the video to be played when clicked.

If you use these thumbnails, then the Largest Contentful Paint is complete. Even without executing the JavaScript associated with video players! In addition, you have solved the Cumulative Layout Shift almost instantly.

The solution: Yoast Video SEO plugin

The Yoast Video SEO plugin has a number of benefits for improving your site speed and health. For example, loading thumbnail placeholders! Rather than loading each video file as soon as a page request is made, the Yoast Video SEO Plugin loads up a placeholder image in advance of the videos. While the user views the page, the plugin loads the videos in the background. The result? When a visitor clicks on the play button, your videos are ready.

The placeholder images are also small and quick to load, which means the Largest Contentful Paint can be built out very swiftly. Plus, there’s no danger of a late Cumulative Layout Shift occurring due to a slow-loading video file. In other words: the Yoast Video SEO for WordPress plugin is an easy way to ensure your videos don’t negatively impact your Core Web Vitals!

The post How to stop videos negatively impacting Core Web Vitals appeared first on Yoast.

We just released Yoast SEO 20.5, which has many enhancements and (security) fixes! Our team has been working hard to implement these changes to enhance your experience and help make your SEO journey smoother. In this post, we’ll tell you all about the latest release.

Improvements in Yoast SEO 20.5

One of the main enhancements in this release is the updated Google SERP preview. We’ve updated our mobile and desktop snippet previews to align with Google’s current styling. This is important because you can now check how enticing your snippets look. It also helps you to see if you’ve optimized them properly for the current Google search results pages.

We’ve updated our database indexing system. This could contain orphaned items due to posts, terms, or users being deleted while Yoast SEO was deactivated. Every time a plugin is activated, we run a cleanup action. This helps to ensure the database table is as clean and efficient as possible.

We’ve also improved the recognition of keyphrases starting with a period, such as “.net developer,” in the keyphrase in title assessment. This ensures that Yoast SEO can accurately read and assess your content, even when punctuation marks are involved.

We’ve addressed several bugs in this release. One of those led to a fatal error when upgrading Yoast SEO while also having Local SEO active. We’ve also improved how we tidy up our database records when users are deleted. We’ve also dropped compatibility with outdated PHP versions, ensuring you use the most up-to-date and secure software for your website.

Finally, we’ve made some modifications to the first-time configuration to highlight the availability of a free webinar to get the most out of Yoast SEO. This webinar is there to help new Yoast SEO users find their way around the plugin and get started on their SEO journey. They’ll have the chance to watch a dedicated walk through video and have a live Q&A session with some of our experts!

Security fixes

In Yoast SEO 20.5, we’ve also improved the security of our plugins. This update addresses several security vulnerabilities identified and reported by the WordPress security service Patchstack and our security/development team. We take security very seriously and are committed to ensuring our products are secure for all users.

With this update, we have addressed and fixed these issues. We recommend that all users update their plugins to this latest version as soon as possible to stay protected from any potential security threats.

Big thanks to Patchstack for promptly identifying and reporting this issue. We also thank our senior developers, Paolo Scala, Leonidas Milosis, and Enrico Battocchi, for finding and resolving these issues. Our users’ security is our top priority, and we will continue working tirelessly to ensure our product remains safe and secure.

We strive to be comprehensive in our security measures, and we acknowledge that we sometimes might miss some issues. This is where we rely on you, our users and the security community to assist us by reporting any security concerns found to us directly. We have a security program with guidelines for submission and rewards for cooperation. We encourage everyone to help us uphold the integrity of our products and keep our community secure.

Yoast SEO 20.5: Update now!

Yoast SEO 20.5 is available today. In this release, we made several improvements and brought our Google to the latest UX changes from the SERPs. We’ve also fixed some security-related issues to make the plugin more secure.

That’s it for this release. Happy updating!

The post Yoast SEO 20.5: Improvements and security fixes appeared first on Yoast.

If you own a website or are thinking of creating one, you should be mindful about your ecological footprint. Because the tech industry plays a big role in the current climate crisis. With its data centers, large manufacturing operations, and huge amounts of e-waste, it’s accountable for nearly 4% of global CO2 emissions. Which, shockingly enough, is similar to the travel industry. And this number is only growing! So, what can you do to make your website greener?

The tech industry’s bad environmental footprint

Nowadays, everyone owns at least one digital device. Most of us own many. And the number continues to rise. According to Cisco’s Annual Internet Report, we will own 29.3 billion networked devices in 2023, which is a ridiculous amount of products that need to be manufactured.

And the factories needed to produce our devices don’t just negatively impact the environment because of their gas emissions. Factors such as land degradation, biodiversity loss, and water consumption also play a role. For example, the industry uses 12,760 liters of water (which is 3,190 gallons) to produce just one smartphone.

The rise of data centers

The story only gets bleaker when we look at data centers. Because the more digital devices we use, the higher our global data traffic will be. In order to keep up with this traffic, new data centers are being built and expanded every year. And though they currently only consume 1% of the world’s electricity, it’s expected that data centers will consume about 20% in 2025. Which isn’t all that strange, if you consider that there are currently 8000 data centers in the world.

It’s time to take action

Climate change is a serious threat. If we don’t want our world to become uninhabitable in a few years, we should take action. Luckily, there are multiple things you can do to improve your website’s carbon footprint. Before you get started, it’s good to check how green your website is now. You can use an online carbon footprint calculator, like Website Carbon Calculator. 

Save energy by blocking bad bots

This is a big one. As we mentioned before, bots also spend energy as they crawl your site. And they crawl your site many times a day, and often when there is no need. So many, in fact, that bots make up around 30% of the daily internet traffic!

That’s why you should identify unnecessary bots and block them from your site, so when they request your server, your server won’t answer. You’ll be saving energy. You can block bad bots by blocking the individual or entire range of IPs where the unusual traffic comes from. Or you can use a bot management solution like Cloudflare. 

Reduce bot traffic

What about the bots you don’t want to block? It is still useful to reduce their traffic. For example, on any given day, Google crawlers can visit the Yoast website 10,000 times. During these visits, they only crawl 4,500 unique URLs, meaning that a lot of energy gets wasted on crawling duplicate URLs. 

And it’s not just Google bots that are visiting us. There are bots from other search engines, digital services, commercial bots, etc. And we don’t want to waste that much energy! That’s why we created the crawl optimization feature, which removes unnecessary URLs, feeds, and assets from your WordPress site. This helps bots crawl your site more efficiently and reduce their visits. In other words: You’re saving energy! 

Green host, green website

You can also take control over your website’s carbon footprint by choosing the right hosting provider. Because 48% of the total energy that’s used by the internet (and your website) is used in a data center. So if you choose a hosting provider that actively purchases renewable energy for their data centers, you’ll have far lower carbon emissions. 

Don’t be like GameSpot

With all these steps to make your website greener, it’s a surprise that many large companies still have ‘dirty’ sites. Take GameSpot for example, which is a news site about video games. GameSpot produced the most CO2 per visit last year. They also ranked second-to-last for the energy they produce per year, which is more than 550,000 grams of CO2. Meaning: It would take 26 trees an entire year to compensate for the carbon emitted by the GameSpot website. 

Example of a green site

Now that we’ve discussed the ‘dirtiest’ site, let’s look at the cleanest and greenest: Google. They only produce 5,480 grams per year. Which isn’t surprising when you consider their net-zero target in 2030. Google’s sustainability efforts range from machine learning to help cool data centers to smart thermostats that conserve home energy. And with their eco-routing in Google Maps, which gives users the route with the lowest carbon footprint, Google has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 500,000 metric tons. Which is the equivalent of getting 100,000 fuel-burning cars off the road.  

Final thoughts: Start now!

Our advice? Start now. Because the longer it takes to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, the more damage we’re doing to our environment. That’s why Yoast introduced the crawl optimization feature. Because we also want to contribute to Google’s net-zero goal. So use our plugin to make your website greener, and do whatever else you can, no matter how small. Because small actions can have a big impact.

The post Why you should care how green your website is appeared first on Yoast.

It’s here, WordPress 6.2 has been released and with this update comes loads of stuff for you to enjoy! Staying true to the format, this release is named after jazz musician Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” comes with an updated site editor that gives you more control over what your website and pages look like. But there’s also a focus on performance, with this being the first WordPress release that had a performance lead! And lots of other enhancements, like fixes for accessibility issues, PHP8 compatibility and more. Read all about it, right here!

The site editor

WordPress 6.2 comes with lots of new features and improvements to the block editor. Updates to the interface, a better overview of the possibilities and improved blocks. It’s all there for you to discover and take the next step in website editing. And a fun fact, with this WordPress release, the site editor is now officially out of beta! Meaning that the site editor is now more stable than ever.

A new interface for the site editor

The site editor has an updated interface which gives you more control over your site editing experience. It allows you to navigate through your templates and template parts and edit parts of your site in one place. It’s also possible to add a new template or template part by clicking the plus icon next to Templates. This new interface gives you an overview of the templates (for example your 404-page, search results page and archive pages) and template parts (for example your footer or header) to edit.

You can find the site editor by going to Appearance in the sidebar and clicking on Editor below that. It’s good to know that the site editor is only available on websites that use a block theme. So if you don’t see the option Editor, you might be using a theme that doesn’t support the site editor.

A smoother experience for the block inserter

WordPress 6.2 comes with a renewed block inserter, which you can access by clicking the blue plus icon at the top of any page or post you’re editing. The new look feels simpler and we mean that in a good way. You can now use the block inserter to add blocks, patterns and media directly to your content. You can just drag and drop the image of your choice into the page. The block inserter also gives you a preview of the blocks, patterns, or images while keeping the categories in your view. This makes it easier to weigh your options and access the content that you’re looking for.

Another new feature that’s part of the renewed block inserter is the option to add media from OpenVerse. OpenVerse is an extensive media library with over 600 million free, openly licensed images and audio. This can help you find a suitable image (or audio fragment) and import it directly into the page.

WordPress 6.2 comes with a Style Book

This new version of WordPress comes with a Style Book, which gives you a complete overview of how every block in your site’s library looks. Just click on the Styles icon at the top of your page (next to your Publish/Update button and the Settings icon) and select the style book icon which will show up below that. This makes it easy to change the appearance of the blocks you’re using on your page, for example, the styling of your headings or paragraphs. Having all of this in one place makes it easier to edit all these elements and keep your styling consistent.

Add a sticky block to your page

It’s now possible to keep a block fixed to the top of the page as a site visitor scrolls down your page. Right now, this only works for top-level group blocks. To try it out, simply add a group block to your page or post and you should be able to see the Position tab in the block settings. Select ‘Sticky’ instead of default and this block will become sticky and will stay at the top of the viewport at all times. Kind of cool, right?

An improved navigation block

The navigation block was already available in the block editor but has become a bit easier to use with this latest release. It allows you to add, remove and edit the separate items in your menu in the block settings of your navigation block. You can also drag and drop the menu items to change the order in which they’re shown. You can choose to show an existing menu or create a new one right there (select the menu of your choice by clicking the three dots in the block settings). What’s also cool is that it’s possible to add ‘Search’ to your menu, which adds a search function to your navigation block. There are also other elements you can add, just click the plus icon in the block settings and give it a try!

The introduction of Block Settings and Styles tabs

The options that are being added to Block Settings sidebar keep growing and growing. Which is great, as it gives us more control over the blocks we use on a page. But it was becoming a bit crowded. That’s why WordPress 6.2 is introducing Block Settings and Styles tabs. When a block is selected, the sidebar will show you two tabs, one for the more general settings and one for styles. The latter will show you all the options you have to change the appearance of your block. This will help keep the sidebar more organized and help users understand where they need to be to make changes to the block.

Distraction free mode

The name says it all, this feature helps you work on your page or post with no distractions around. Or at least, any distraction that WordPress can remove for you. Click on the three dots at the top right corner of your page (next to Publish/Update and settings) and select Distraction free to give it a try. This hides all the toolbars that you normally see when you’re working on a page in WordPress. Bringing you some more peace and quiet to focus on your content. If you want to exit the distraction-free mode, just move your mouse to the top of your page and the three dots will appear again (together with your Publish/Update and settings button). This allows you to disable this mode by clicking Distraction free again.

Pro-tip: we also recommend activating Fullscreen mode (which hides your admin UI) for an even cleaner and less distracting screen.

Performance improvements

The performance of your website is essential nowadays. That’s why this update also comes with many performance improvements, visible in the benchmarks for both Web Vitals and Server Timing metrics. The WordPress 6.2 field guide also tells us that performance is further improved for block themes with around 20% faster TTFB (time to first byte, a metric for determining the responsiveness of a web server) and around 14% faster LCP (how long it takes for the largest piece of content to appear on the screen). On pages with hero images, the LCP improvements are even greater at around 19%.

Also good to know: This was the very first WordPress release with a performance lead appointed! The performance lead with this release was Felix Arntz. With a performance lead joining the release team, we can safely assume that performance will continue to be an important part of future WordPress releases.

Under the hood

In addition to performance improvements, there’s a lot of other stuff that’s been worked on which is a little less visible. Let’s dive into a few highlights and show you what’s going on under the hood of WordPress 6.2.

Improved PHP8 compatibility

WordPress aims to support new versions of PHP as much as possible. This means that WordPress Core contributors try to identify any potential compatibility issues and work to prevent these as much as they can. This release isn’t any different. Significant effort has been put toward making WordPress compatible with PHP8 and reducing the risk of WordPress users running into any problems.

Accessibility improvements

We also want to mention that this release of WordPress also comes with a lot of fixes for accessibility bugs and regressions. To give an example, one of the improvements that are part of this release is the realization of more consistent accessibility behavior across different browsers. It might seem like small stuff, but every improvement we make in regard to accessibility is another step towards a web that is accessible for everyone. With no exceptions.

Google fonts in default themes

Default WordPress themes will offer better privacy with Google Fonts now locally included. Beforehand, these fonts were loaded from a remote source (Google Fonts). The themes Twenty Twelve through to Twenty Seventeen now include font files in the theme folder. This update ensures that the themes follow current recommendations for fonts from a privacy perspective, making them GDPR-compliant.

Faster plugin & theme updates

A long, long time ago, WordPress 2.5 introduced copy_dir() for copying a directory from one location to another. However, this method took up a lot of memory, disk space, time and file operations. Which is not ideal at all. Thanks to the introduction of a move_dir function in this release, you will now be able to save time and disk space.

Update to WordPress 6.2

Those were the most important features in the latest release of WordPress, but that doesn’t mean we covered everything. We would recommend updating to this latest version of WordPress and trying it out for yourself! Let us know what you think about all the changes to the block editor in the comments below. We can’t wait to hear about your experiences!

Read more: The WordPress block editor: Why you should be using it »

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