Search has come a long way since its early beginnings. Altavista and AskJeeves are long gone, and most of us can’t imagine a world without Google these days. But search continues to change. It has always been a work in progress, and it will probably always be that way. And the search engines that we’re using today might not always reign supreme. So let’s talk about the direction that search is heading in and what Schema has to do with it.

The search engines they are a-changing

The year 2022 has already shaken search up quite a bit, with the revelation that almost 40% of Gen Z use TikTok instead of Google to search for information. Meanwhile, on more traditional search platforms we’ve seen a lot of changes too. Google and Bing have both been busy sprucing up their search results this year. With new arrivals like Google’s multisearch and Bing’s buying guides, it’s clear that search is doing anything but standing still.

Challenges in search and SEO

So, there’s been a lot going on. But there are still many challenges for search and for SEO (besides social media and Gen Z). Ambiguous phrases and names are difficult for search engines and users to differentiate. And they can make it really hard to optimize content for search.

On top of that, expertise, authority and trust are important factors too. There’s too much spam and misinformation out there. We need search to become more precise and deliver better-quality results.

How Schema can help

This is where we turn to structured data. Schema.org structured data, in particular. Its standardized framework enables search engines to move away from simple text-matching, allowing them to piece together the relationships between concepts. In this way, search can identify relevant phrases and content in a more semantic way.

Here’s an example. There’s more than one Joost de Valk in the world (we actually found 3 more besides the one we know). With a good Schema implementation, search engines can tell the difference between each of these people. In the future, Google could even look at your other searches to guesstimate which Joost you’re looking for. Neat, huh?

Where is search heading?

But that’s not where the story ends. Search is becoming much more experiential too. With things like knowledge graphs, Google Discover, and the Multitask United Model, search could become a lot more powerful. And a lot more personal. Whether it’s about showing your preferred sources first or offering tailored results for very specific multi-layered questions, there are huge developments in the works.

Besides making quality information more findable, what happens within search is set to change too. Google has been testing new shopping features in their search results on an almost-monthly basis in 2022. In the near future, you could be comparing and buying products directly from search, and then tracking your shipment there too.

Many of these new search features rely heavily on structured data. And in the distant future, Schema could pave the way for a much more entity-based search, with less focus on individual keywords. So don’t be hesitant about getting started with structured data — it’s probably only going to get more important as time goes on.

What does this all mean for SEO?

Whew! It’s a dizzying prospect to think about what this could mean for the future of SEO. First things first — as long as search exists, it should always be possible to optimize your content for it. Structured data is likely to play an increasingly important role in that.

If, and when, entities take a more central role in search, having content that refers to all the facts and entities related to your topic may be the way to go. It could be a case of optimizing with context more than optimizing with keywords. And of course, some things will never change. The need to create quality content is one of them — even if you’re making that content for TikTok.

Offering the best information and a seamless user experience is bound to pay off. At the very least, it’s going to help you rank in the short and long term. It could also earn you a fanbase that will be shown your content preferentially above other sources in the future. Invest in that content now, and keep an eye on the search landscape as it changes. That’s your best bet.

Want to stay up to date with all the latest news in SEO? Hear it from the experts in our monthly SEO news webinar!

The post SEO, Schema, and the future of search appeared first on Yoast.

At Yoast HQ, we’re doing our part to make your websites run like clockwork. One of the things we’re working on is optimizing our Yoast SEO plugin to use fewer resources. This helps make your site faster and more efficient. In Yoast SEO 19.11, we’re doing this by streamlining your database.

Improved SEO data optimization

We ask you to let Yoast SEO index your website data so we can get to work immediately. The data we index ends up in a special table in your database, which stores all the information we might need from an SEO perspective. We use this to understand your site and make our behind-the-scenes processes run faster.

In this release, we are improving the database and the underlying process determining how we fill the special table. In some cases, the table could contain things that shouldn’t end up in the database. This could cause the database to be more extensive than it should be, leading to slower server responses. We’ve now sped this up.

In Yoast SEO 19.11, we put a lot of effort into ensuring that only things that need to end up in the database will end up in the database. We’re also cleaning up the database and deleting stray additions.

To help you manage your database, we’ve added a WP-CLI command to clean up unused data from our custom database tables: wp yoast cleanup. Plus, we’ve added the wpseo_indexable_excluded_taxonomies filter to allow manually excluding taxonomies from being indexed.

Update now to Yoast SEO 19.11!

Yoast SEO 19.11 is ready for download. In this release, we’ve mainly worked on improving our database usage and finetuning how we handle the SEO data we index. Your database should now be leaner — making it faster and more efficient. Happy updating!

The post Yoast SEO 19.11: Upgrading your SEO data appeared first on Yoast.

In July 2022, Google launched a new video indexing report in Google Search Console. This report will allow you to see how many pages Google has found, crawled, and indexed a video on, and much more. It’s incredibly useful because it helps you understand the foundation of your video SEO performance. Plus, the report also identifies possible fixes for any videos that don’t seem to be appearing in the search results.

So where can you find the report? Easy! Under the index heading in the sidebar of Google Search Console.

At the top, it provides a snapshot of how many videos are indexed and how many pages have video data. If Google hasn’t located and indexed a video, it is marked as “No video indexed”.

Ideally, every video on your site will be indexed and included in the green tab. In reality, however, there may be issues on some pages that prevent indexation.

In this post, we’ll run through some of the major uses of this report for managing your video SEO.

1. Discover which pages have videos indexed

To find out which of your pages Google has indexed a video on, click on the “Video data about indexed video pages” link just below the main bar chart.

You’ll receive a table that lists the pages where a video has been found, and the URL of the video player or file which has been indexed and associated with that page (usually a link to a page on your video hosting platform). You’ll also see the date the video was last crawled. This is really handy because it’ll tell you how up-to-date the information in Google’s index is. 

2. Understand which data Google is using to inform display in Video Search

If you click on any of the results within the table, you can see a granular, page-level report that tells you which discovered URLs Googlebot believes are video files. The method used for each URL is indicated in the report. Usually, though, it’s determined through HTML tags, Open Graph data, or Schema.org markup.

You’ll also see the source of the thumbnail Google chose to associate with each video. This is typically through Open Graph or Schema.org data (labeled as “structured data”).

Lastly, the report indicates “Video Placement”. This can mean two things: Google considers the video to be the core page asset or supplementary content. But don’t worry too much about this identification. Unless you have a page with just an isolated video embed and a title, Google will typically consider your videos to be “supplementary content”.

In many cases, the report will show multiple video URLs for a single video. This can be due to fallbacks and multiple methods of video delivery. As long as each URL indicates the same video, this isn’t a problem, but if there are inconsistencies here, this can be an indicator of why a video is failing to consistently appear in search results.

3. Identify duplication in video indexation

If you export the data from the indexed videos report, you can quickly pull it into excel or Google sheets. You can then perform an analysis to identify any pages being indexed with the same video. It’s easiest to look at the “Video URL” column. Good to note: Video duplication across multiple pages is not necessarily a problem. There are many examples where the same video serves a good purpose in several locations. For example, in a blog post, on a product page, and also within a video gallery page.

However, keep in mind that you lose control of which page Google will decide to rank for any given query where the video is a relevant result. This might cause issues. For example, if you end up sending users to a video gallery page for a query where a product page would be more appropriate.

This investigative work can also illuminate canonical issues, for example with tracking parameters that Google fails to interpret as duplicated content.

4. Assess video indexation problems

Below the core report is a table titled “Why videos in pages aren’t indexed”. This table shows a list of issues Google has encountered while trying to index videos on your website. And it’s quite detailed too. You can find information on each of the pages where this issue was discovered.

Most common problems

Let’s look at the most common problems you can encounter, and how you can fix them.

Google could not determine the prominent video on the page

This is by far the most common issue you’re likely to run into with video indexation. Unfortunately, it covers a multitude of different scenarios rather than simply “prominence”.

Sometimes it can simply mean that Google found a video on the page, but assessed it was too far down. Or that the video was too insignificant in regards to the page to be included in the video search results. If this is the case, a simple fix is to change the position and size of the video to something more significant. For example, near the top of the page. If your video is already in a prime location but hidden on first paint with some CSS, then amending this may also be a sufficient fix.

In other instances, it can be a rendering problem. If the video requires JavaScript to load, then Googlebot will often determine the video insufficiently “prominent”. Why? Because on a basic page load, the crawler cannot find an embedded video player. This sort of issue frequently occurs when videos are included in carousels or other dynamic page elements.

Cannot determine video position and size

This typically occurs when using a lightbox or other “click to load” feature that rely on JavaScript. Sometimes plugins or tools decide to delay loading a video player until a user presses play. After all, this can save bandwidth and reduce page load times. Unfortunately, the side effect is that Google cannot find or render the videos.

If you’re concerned about site speed and video, the best solution is to load the video player asynchronously. Good news: You can easily do this with the Yoast Video SEO Plugin!

Unknown Video Format

This error means there is a problem with the URL indicating the video file or player in your Schema.org or OpenGraph markup. A common example: OpenGraph sometimes creates a self-referencing URL marked as “video”. In doing so, they create a reference for a video file, which now points to the URL of the page rather than the media asset.

Video Not Found on Host Service

This issue is normally found with YouTube embeds where the video has been deleted or marked as private. If you see this error, the video you’re referencing has probably been removed. The fix? Update the embed to prevent users from receiving an error too.

In conclusion

The new video indexing report in Google Search Console is incredibly useful. You’ll be able to gain invaluable insights into your video SEO performance. Just be aware of some of the problems you can encounter. And have fun clicking through the new reports! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Read more: On-page video SEO: how to optimize your video pages »

The post How to use the new video indexing report in Google Search Console appeared first on Yoast.

These days, the way we do SEO is somewhat different from how things were done ca. 10 years ago. There’s one important reason for that: search engines have been continuously improving their algorithms to give searchers the best possible results. Over the last decade, Google, as the leading search engine, introduced several major updates, and each of them has had a major impact on best practices for SEO. Here’s a — by no means exhaustive — list of Google’s important algorithm updates so far, as well as some of their implications for search and SEO.

2011 – Panda

Obviously, Google was around long before 2011. We’re starting with the Panda update because it was the first major update in the ‘modern SEO’ era. Google’s Panda update tried to deal with websites that were purely created to rank in the search engines. It mostly focused on on-page factors. In other words, it determined whether a website genuinely offered information about the search term visitors used. 

Two types of sites were hit especially hard by the Panda update:

1. Affiliate sites (sites which mainly exist to link to other pages).
2. Sites with very thin content.

Google periodically re-ran the Panda algorithm after its first release, and included it in the core algorithm in 2016. The Panda update has permanently affected how we do SEO, as site owners could no longer get away with building a site full of low-quality pages.

2012 – Venice

Google’s algorithm update Venice was a noteworthy update, as it showed that Google understood that searchers are sometimes looking for results that are local to them. After Venice, Google’s search results included pages based on the location you set, or your IP address.

2012 – Penguin

Google’s Penguin update looked at the links websites got from other sites. It analyzed whether backlinks to a site were genuine, or if they’d been bought to trick the search engines. In the past, lots of people paid for links as a shortcut to boosting their rankings. Google’s Penguin update tried to discourage buying, exchanging or otherwise artificially creating links. If it found artificial links, Google assigned a negative value to the site concerned, rather than the positive link value it would have previously received. The Penguin update ran several times since it first appeared and Google added it to the core algorithm in 2016.

As you can imagine, it mostly hit websites with a lot of artificial links hard. They disappeared from the search results, as the low-quality links suddenly had a negative, rather than positive impact on their rankings. Penguin has permanently changed link building: it no longer suffices to get low-effort, paid backlinks. Instead, you have to work on building a successful link building strategy to get relevant links from valued sources.

2012 – Pirate

The Pirate update combatted the illegal spreading of copyrighted content. It considered (many) DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown requests for a website as a negative ranking factor for the first time.

2013 – Hummingbird

The Hummingbird update saw Google lay down the groundwork for voice-search, which was (and still is) becoming more and more important as more devices (Google Home, Alexa) use it. Hummingbird pays more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole search phrase is taken into account, rather than just particular words. Why? To understand a user’s query better and to be able to give them the answer, instead of just a list of results.

The impact of the Hummingbird update wasn’t immediately clear, as it wasn’t directly intended to punish bad practice. In the end, it mostly enforced the view that SEO copy should be readable, use natural language, and shouldn’t be over-optimized for the same few words, but use synonyms instead. 

2014 – Pigeon

Another bird-related Google update followed in 2014 with Google Pigeon, which focused on local SEO. The Pigeon update affected both the results pages and Google Maps. It led to more accurate localization, giving preference to results near the user’s location. It also aimed to make local results more relevant and higher quality, taking organic ranking factors into account. 

2014 – HTTPS/SSL

To underline the importance of security, Google decided to give a small ranking boost to sites that correctly implemented HTTPS to make the connection between website and user secure. At the time, HTTPS was introduced as a lightweight ranking signal. But Google had already hinted at the possibility of making encryption more important, once webmasters had had the time to implement it. 

2015 – Mobile Update

The SEO industry dubbed this Google update ‘​Mobilegeddon​’ as they thought it would totally shake up the search results. By 2015 more than 50% of Google’s search queries were already coming from mobile devices, which probably led to this update. The Mobile Update gave mobile-friendly sites a ranking advantage in Google’s mobile search results. In spite of its dramatic nickname, the mobile update didn’t instantly mess up most people’s rankings. Nevertheless, it was an important shift that heralded the ever-increasing importance of mobile.

2015 – RankBrain

RankBrain is a state-of-the-art Google algorithm, employing machine learning to handle queries. It can make guesses about words it doesn’t know, to find words with similar meanings and then offer relevant results. The RankBrain algorithm analyzed past searches, determining the best result, in order to improve. 

Its release marks another big step for Google to better decipher the meaning behind searches, and serve the best-matching results. In March 2016, Google revealed that RankBrain was one of the three most important of its ranking signals. Unlike other ranking factors, you can’t really optimize for RankBrain in the traditional sense, other than by writing quality content. Nevertheless, its impact on the results pages is undeniable.

2016 – Possum 

In September 2016 it was time for another local update. Google’s algorithm update ​Possum update​ applied several changes to Google’s local ranking filter to further improve local search. After Possum, local results became more varied, depending more on the physical location of the searcher and the phrasing of the query. Some businesses, not doing well in organic search, found it easier to rank locally after this update. This indicated that this update made local search more independent of the organic results.

Read more: Near me searches: Is that a Possum near me? »

2018 – (Mobile) Speed Update

Acknowledging users’ need for fast delivery of information, Google implemented this update that made page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches, as was already the case for desktop searches. The update mostly affected sites with a particularly slow mobile version.

2018 – Medic

This broad core algorithm update caused quite a stir for those affected, leading to some shifts in ranking. While a relatively high number of medical sites were hit with lower rankings, the update wasn’t solely aimed at them and it’s unclear what its exact purpose was. It may have been an attempt to better match results to searchers’ intent, or perhaps it aimed to protect users’ wellbeing from (what Google decided was) disreputable information.

Keep reading: Google’s Medic update »

2019 – BERT

Google’s BERT update was announced as the “biggest change of the last five years”, one that would “impact one in ten searches.”

It’s a machine learning algorithm, a neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP). The name BERT is short for: Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

BERT can figure out the full context of a word by looking at the words that come before and after it. In other words, it uses the context and relations of all the words in a sentence, rather than one-by-one in order. This means: a big improvement in interpreting a search query and the intent behind it.

Read on: Google BERT: A better understanding of complex queries »

2021 – Page Experience Update

With a gradual rollout through 2021, the Page Experience update introduces a new ranking signal which includes “metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.”

Page experience isn’t entirely new as a ranking signal. In this update, existing page experience signals will be combined with Core Web Vitals, a real-life measurement of key user experience factors. In general, the Page Experience update means that Google will take a more holistic perspective of on-page user experience into account.

Google states that these new Page Experience factors are still not as important as “having great, relevant content.” To help you monitor your Core Web Vitals and Page Experience and make actionable improvements, Google has added dedicated tools in Search Console.

Keep on reading: Page experience: a new Google ranking factor »

2021 – MUM (Multitask United Model)

Announced by Google at I/O 2021, the MUM update introduces big changes in search.

MUM is short for ‘Multitask United Model’, a name that hints at the power of this new algorithm: it can handle multiple tasks simultaneously. It can read, understand, and learn in over 75 languages using a variety of sources, including video and audio!

The idea is that MUM will combine information from many sources to deliver multi-layered answers to complex search queries. It has already been seen in action with COVID-19 vaccine searches, but that’s still just the beginning. Google’s MUM AI will be slowly introduced over the coming months and years, so don’t expect to see big changes happening overnight.

Read more: Google’s MUM understands what you need: 1000x more powerful than BERT »

2022 – Helpful Content

The helpful content update brought an increased focus on the quality of content appearing in the search results. It’s all about rewarding ‘people-first’ content — content that really answers users questions and provides a satisfying experience.

The early impact on search results has been subtle, but Google has made it clear that this isn’t a one-off. The helpful content update represents an ongoing effort to tidy up the SERPs, eliminating low-quality results to make way for more diverse voices. This update particularly affects sites with a lot of low-quality content, which may perform less well in search as a result.

Keep reading: Google to launch Helpful Content Update to diversify search results »

Expectations for future Google algorithm updates

As you can see, Google has become increasingly advanced since the early 2010s. Its early major updates in the decade focused on battling spammy results and sites trying to cheat the system. But as time progressed, updates contributed more and more to search results catered to giving desktop, mobile and local searchers exactly what they’re looking for. Obviously, the page experience ranking factor will fit in nicely there. While the algorithm was advanced to begin with, the additions over the years, including machine learning and NLP, make it absolutely state of the art. 

With the ongoing focus on intent, it seems likely that Google Search will continue to focus its algorithm on perfecting its interpretation of search queries and styling the results pages accordingly. That seems to be their current focus working towards their mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But whatever direction it takes, being the best result and working on having an excellent site will always be the way to go!

Read on: Should I follow every change Google makes? »

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the different names and years? Don’t worry! We made a handy infographic that shows when each Google update happened and briefly describes what the purpose was.

The post A brief history of Google’s algorithm updates appeared first on Yoast.

At Yoast, we try to combat the notion that SEO is just a trick. While tricks might get you ranked quickly, they usually don’t work in the long run, and they might even backfire. Permanently ranking well in Google demands an extensive SEO strategy focused on every aspect of your website; the technical stuff, the user experience, the content on your website, and the security of your website all need to be in order. So, to keep ranking well in Google, you should develop a holistic approach to SEO. Let us explain what that is, here.

What is holistic SEO?

Holistic SEO (search engine optimization) refers to improving all important aspects of a website to make it rank higher in search engines. The ultimate goal is to make a website that fulfills its users’ needs on all levels. Not only by providing the right information at the right time but also by being easy and safe to use. To reach this goal, website owners should, at least, work on the following aspects of their site:

• good technical SEO;
• writing quality content and structuring it well;
• a great user experience;
• keeping a site secure.

We’ll also include resources to help you learn SEO and optimize various parts of your website at the end of this post. Do check them out!

Why a holistic SEO approach?

Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find what they are looking for, whether that’s the answer to “Where is Wijchen?”, a recipe for apple pie, or the best toaster. That’s why making your website and your marketing strategy fit this goal is the way to go.

Let’s use an analogy to explain the holistic approach to SEO. Think of working on your site’s SEO as similar to taking a ship to a ship-building competition, where the judges are Google and other search engines. Similar to a website, a ship is big and has lots of moving parts that need to be managed. Your design is the ship’s exterior, your content is the interior and services, and your technical setup is the engine. The goal here is to appeal to the judges so they rate you highly and recommend you to people.

This competition is packed, so to get a good ranking, you not only need a great-looking ship and a fast and reliable engine but also a good interior and high-quality onboard services. If you have a great-looking ship on the outside (an eye-catching design) but the interior (content) is lacking, people are less likely to want to be on that ship. On the other hand, if you have an amazing interior and onboard services, but your ship is slow and your engine is prone to issues (technical setup), people will look for other alternatives.

As you can imagine, the judges (search engines) would give high ranking and recommend ships (websites) that meet and exceed the standards mentioned above. Their mission and reputation depend on giving good recommendations, so they take this very seriously. That’s why using “tricks” to make it seem like you’ve improved your ship won’t work, because you haven’t actually improved it.

By working on improving every part of the ship, over time, your ship will become better across the board. At the same time, you’re not the only ship trying to be better, others are doing the same. In a competition so fierce and packed, every small gain and improvement will add up to be significant. With that, you may get a higher ranking in the competition and become a recommendation.

SEO tricks are of the past, holistic SEO is the way forward

Back in the early days of SEO, people could get away with doing tricks. They used to stuff keywords and internal links on pages, wrote thin and irrelevant content, or scraped content from other sites and ranked with that content. These are things of the past. Since then, Google and other search engines have been improving their algorithms by the day. No longer do they fall for such tricks (for the most part).

While Google has changed its algorithm numerous times, most of our advice has remained the same ever since we started. This advice is simple (which doesn’t mean it’s easy though!): you have to ensure your site is exceptionally good. Having a website with high-quality content, offering a great user experience and up-to-date security will not instantly improve your ranking. In the long run, though, it will definitely have a positive effect on your SEO!

In addition, great websites tend to get more backlinks from other websites and will also receive more social media attention. Remember the analogy about the ship earlier? This is similar to getting recommendations from other ships (websites) in and outside of that competition, which is a strong signal to search engines that your website is amazing.

On top of that, people behave differently on a website that they like, compared to a website they don’t understand. Google uses these kinds of user signals to find out how people experience your site. Awesome websites will also result in higher conversions. If your audience likes and understands your website, the chance of them buying your products or returning to your website is, of course, much higher.

Read more: Everyday website optimization: 6 tasks for your daily SEO routine »

SEO takes time

Understanding that SEO takes time to bear fruit is a key point in the holistic SEO approach. You only have so much time and resources to work on improving your site. So, you need to identify what you want to improve, come up with a plan of attack, execute your planning, and see the results of those changes after some time. Sometimes you make big changes, other times you make smaller ones that don’t feel so important. But over time, they will add up, which gradually turns your site into a better one.

In addition, whenever you implement a change or improvement, it takes some time for Google to notice that change as it comes around and crawls your pages. Then, Google needs to take these changes into account in its complex ranking algorithm. So don’t worry too much if you don’t see the results that you expect after a few weeks or even months. Just remember that it takes time, and keep on working on improving every aspect of your website to the best of your capability!

Learn SEO, the holistic way

Sure, you say, but where to start? We understand you might feel overwhelmed by this advice. Fortunately, there are many ways to improve your knowledge about the above-mentioned topics.

For starters, we offer a free SEO for beginners course, a great starting point to learn how SEO works. If you really want to put this knowledge into practice, consider trying our All-around SEO training, you’ll get lots of hands-on tips to start improving many aspects of your own site.

Go Premium and get access to all of our SEO courses

Unlock all the premium features and learn holistic SEO with our experts today!

Get Yoast SEO Premium »Only $99 USD / year (ex VAT)

Just want to read? These beginner guides are great starting points! If you’re a bit more knowledgeable and are looking for resources to optimize various aspects of your website, we recommend checking these articles out:

• WordPress SEO: the definitive guide – This is the original WordPress SEO article since 2008, fully updated for 2022. It demonstrates our holistic SEO approach by giving you an overview of the various aspects that affect your SEO.
• Link building from a holistic SEO perspective
• Image SEO: Optimizing images for search engines
• Structured data with Schema.org: the ultimate guide
• What is page speed, and how does it influence SEO?
• Mobile SEO: The ultimate guide
• 5 ways to improve your Core Web Vitals
• The ultimate guide to content SEO
• What is quality content and how do you create it?

The post Holistic SEO: Improve every aspect of your website appeared first on Yoast.

With more than 15 years of experience in the industry, Hannah Smith has worked with a range of well-known companies, and her creative work has won multiple awards. She knows her stuff when it comes to creative content. That’s why we decided to pick her brain and ask her a few questions about content strategy and how to create content that helps you achieve your goals.

The SEO industry agrees that having a good “content strategy” is critical. But what does that mean? What does that look like?

I think that part of the challenge here is the term “content strategy” itself. It’s a term that means different things to different people, right? There are a bunch of definitions out there, but the one Adria Saracino and I came up with when we were at Distilled (c. 2014) is still the one I use today:

“A content strategy is the high-level vision that guides future content development to deliver against a specific business objective.”

I like this definition because I believe all content should be goal-driven: i.e., what you create depends on what you want to achieve. As such, the first question you must answer when formulating your strategy is: what is your core objective for this content?

For example, if you want to increase your revenue, one way to do that might be to rank better in organic search for terms relating to your business. If that’s the direction you want to go in, then you’ll need to figure out what you think you’ll need to do to achieve that. 

You may need to update and improve existing pages and/or create new pages. Plus, page content aside, you’ll also need to think about how you will help those pages rank. So you’ll need to think about internal links; and potentially external links too.

I like thinking about content strategy this way because it forces you to plan out your activity sensibly and think about measurement from the outset.

But back to your question – of what a “good” content strategy should look like – to my mind, a content strategy should have the following:

How do you close the gap between “writing blog posts and articles” to producing creative stuff that’s more impactful, successful, etc.? 

I get the sense that you’re talking about creating content designed to get coverage externally – e.g., from journalists and/or other high-authority sites in your niche.

First and foremost, I’d encourage people to think hard about their objectives before embarking on anything like this. Do you need to get coverage from journalists to achieve your objectives? Or might there be a different way to go about this?

Let’s assume that you’ve done your research and need linked coverage from journalists. Where do you begin? I suggest starting with 5-10 publications on which you’d like coverage. Look closely at the articles journalists are writing – which topics appear repeatedly? What sorts of emotions are those articles provoking? Why do you think journalists are writing those articles? 

Then, based on this research, I’d encourage people to think about what sorts of things they might be able to create that could add to the articles that those journalists are writing.

What are the challenges and risks of this type of activity?

The main thing to note is that this type of activity fails at a pretty high rate. I recently benchmarked the performance of more than 2,000 digital PR pieces created by eleven agencies and in-house teams.

To give some context, asset-led digital PR pieces are those where there is something live on the client’s site that a journalist could link to, ranging from a blog post to a fully-interactive page. Only a press release is created for a digital PR piece without assets; there is no asset live on the client’s site for the journalist to link to:

If you’re new to this, I’d expect your failure rates to be higher than this. As such, you might consider using a freelancer or agency to do this work for you.

What about small businesses in particular? How can they stand out, get cut-through, and get coverage?

A digital PR tactic like offering expert commentary to journalists can be an excellent option for small businesses that want coverage but don’t have the budget or resources to create bespoke content. 

You’ll likely have noticed #journorequest on Twitter, plus there are services like HARO (help a reporter out), to help you filter and keep track of requests like this. I’d strongly recommend taking a look at Surena Chande’s BrightonSEO talk. In her talk, she covers what journalists are looking for and how best to respond to requests like these.

Here’s a quick and dirty version. Resist the urge to sell or promote yourself or your products, and instead try to:

All that said, I think it bears repeating that not all small businesses need to get coverage. I run a small business myself and don’t do any digital PR for my own company. Honestly, I don’t think it would make sense to me. Coverage is unlikely to get me the clients I want, which is my core objective. Instead, I focus on speaking at industry events, appearing on podcasts, writing for industry sites like this one, and my newsletter.

How can folks learn to be more creative? Are there tools, processes, resources, or shortcuts they can take? 

Creativity is a skill, not a talent: it’s something you can learn :)

Here’s my process:

• Inspiration
  • You can’t come up with ideas in a vacuum, so I spend a lot of time seeking inspiration. I review the most shared articles on the client’s target publications to identify resonant topics, seek data sources, talk to humans, read books, etc.
• Generation
  • I do this bit quickly. Only one in twenty ideas I come up with is likely worth making, so if I’m trying to come up with four ideas for a client, I need to generate 80. The stuff I generate aren’t ideas yet; that stuff happens in the final stage.
• Development & validation
  • Turning the seed of an idea I’ve generated into something which can be made.

An example of this in practice

I’m aware that in the abstract, this doesn’t make a heap of sense, so here’s an example of how “Grilled Cheese-us” (a phrase I wrote down during the generation process) eventually became Making Faces, a piece we created for one of our clients when I was at Verve Search.

What do I mean by “Grilled Cheese-us”? Our propensity to see faces in inanimate objects – e.g., when people see Jesus in a slice of cheese on toast. I wondered whether or not this was something that had been studied previously, and after a little googling, I found this BBC article. It was there that I discovered that there was a proper name for this propensity (it’s called pareidolia); plus, I learned tonnes more about it:

• There could be evolutionary reasons why we are especially prone to seeing faces. Human survival depends so heavily on others – whether we need their help or fear their violence – that we must react quickly and understand their motives. So the brain may be wired to detect others whenever it can quickly. If we occasionally make a mistake and see a face in tree bark, that’s less serious than failing to spot someone hiding in the bushes.
• According to other researchers, a more speculative view is that a similar mechanism could explain human spirituality. The idea is that the brain, being hard-wired to understand people and their motivations, tries to look for human-like intentions in everything around us – a thunderstorm, a plague, or a terrifying and abstract concept like death. To make sense of our fears, we begin to personify them, filling the world with gods and demons. Intriguingly, Tapani Riekki at the University of Helsinki in Finland and colleagues have found that religious people are likelier to see faces in ambiguous photos than atheists.
• Interesting about cars:  in 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that “cuter” cars, like the iconic Volkswagen Beetle, were experiencing falling sales – perhaps because their owners felt intimidated by the growing number of large SUVs. So designers decided to create cars with more dominant expressions. The Dodge Charger, for instance, was designed with thin, sloping headlights to give it a menacing look that could outstare the other cars. “The headlights seem to make eye contact the same way people do on the street,” said Chrysler designer Ralph Gilles. “A mean face is what we’re going for.” 
• Stuff about honesty: Various studies have shown a simple picture of a pair of eyes can lead people to act more honestly – a “nudge” technique that has been shown to reduce bicycle theft by more than 60% in certain areas. 

Finding out all of this stuff (in a very roundabout way) led me to propose that we:

• Create our own thing, allowing people to discover whether they’re more or less likely to see faces in inanimate objects than the Great British public.
  • To do this, we took photos and then ran 2,000 survey respondents through the piece (we asked them a bunch of questions, plus for each image, we asked – “can you see a face here?”)

Are brainstorms evil?

Ha! I’m not a fan of brainstorms. I’m an introvert, and I do my best work alone. That’s not true for everyone, of course. But I think brainstorming without prior research into the publications you’re seeking to target is often a waste of time. 

How do you think the relationships between content, strategy, campaigns, creativity, and link-building have changed over time? And what’s next?

I’m not sure it has! People are still buying links, and PR isn’t new.

I’d hope that digital PR becomes less siloed in the future. Many of us are doing stuff for links because that’s what our clients want us to do, but it’s often very disconnected from other types of SEO, content, and marketing activity. I’d love for that to change.

I’d also love to see more long-term thinking and investment. Most clients want an ‘x’ number of campaigns per quarter, and they want them all to be shiny new things. My concern is that there’s not much appetite to build stuff that lasts. I’m thinking something like the Michelin Guide (which was started in 1900!).

Hannah Smith bio

Hannah Smith is the founder of Worderist.com. She offers creative content consultancy, coaching, and training to agencies and in-house marketing teams. Her creative work for clients has won multiple awards, and she’s worked with various companies, including the BBC, Dyson, Expedia, GoCompare, MailChimp, Salesforce, and Zoopla. She has spoken at numerous conferences across Europe and the US, interviewed Google’s John Mueller live on stage in front of an audience of 3,000, and acted as a guest lecturer at the University of Greenwich. 

If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read here, you might like to subscribe to Hannah’s fortnightly newsletter, Manufacturing Serendipity.

Enjoyed reading this interview and want to hear more of what Hannah has to say? You’re in luck! We recently hosted a news webinar where she and Jono Alderson discussed the SEO news in October. 

The post How to get creative with content: An interview with Hannah Smith appeared first on Yoast.

Do you have a website? And do you want more traffic? If yes, then there’s no doubt about it: SEO should be part of your marketing efforts. It’s a great way to get and keep people on your website. But what does it actually entail? In this post, we’ll explain what SEO is and how you can get started!

What is SEO?

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’. It’s the practice of optimizing your web pages to make them reach a high position in the search results of Google and other search engines. In other words: People will be more likely to encounter your website when searching online. SEO focuses on improving the rankings in the organic – aka non-paid – search results.

In the image above, we see the first few results when someone searches for the keyphrase ‘Neptune planet’. In this case, Wikipedia is the first result and this means that their page on Neptune ranks #1 on this search term. The idea behind SEO is that when you optimize your page to become the best result, you can climb those rankings and become one of the first results that people see. Which will get you more clicks and traffic to your site!

Although this example only shows us organic results, that isn’t always the case. Depending on the search term someone uses, there can also be ads or a rich result at the top, or a few products by Google Shopping. There are a lot of different possibilities. What Google shows can also depend on what it knows about the searcher (the country they live in, for example).

Why is SEO important?

You’ve created a website because you want people to buy your product, subscribe to your service, or read your content. Whatever your goal, you want people to visit your website. If you own a donut shop in Amsterdam, for example, you want your website to be number 1 when people Google: “donuts Amsterdam”. Because the chances of people clicking on your website are much higher when it’s the top result!

But how do you make this happen? One word: Search Engine Optimization! SEO is a great way to get people to your website for free. Which is especially useful if you’re a small business owner who doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising.

What determines how high you rank?

How high each result ranks is determined by Google’s algorithm. And although parts of Google’s algorithm remain secret, years of experience in SEO have given us insight into the most important ranking factors. These ranking factors can be divided into two categories:

On-page SEO factors

The ranking of your pages is partly determined by on-page factors. On-page factors are all the things on your website that you have a direct influence on. These factors include technical aspects (e.g. the quality of your code and site speed) and content-related aspects, like the structure of your website or the quality of the copy on your website. These are all crucial on-page SEO factors that you can work on.

Off-page SEO factors

In addition to on-page SEO factors, your rankings are also determined by a few off-page SEO factors. These factors include links from other websites, social media attention, and other marketing activities that happen off of your own website. Although not impossible, these off-page SEO factors can be more difficult to influence. The most important of these off-page factors is the number and quality of links pointing towards your site. The more quality, relevant sites that link to your website, the higher your position in Google will be.

Another off-page factor that plays a role in SEO is your competition relating to the niche of your particular business. In some niches, it is much harder to rank than in others. The competitiveness of your market therefore also has a major influence on your chances of ranking.

Holistic SEO: A long-term strategy

At Yoast, we practice ‘holistic SEO‘. With holistic SEO, your primary goal is to build and maintain the best possible website. You don’t try to fool Google; Instead, you invest your time and effort in a sustainable long-term strategy. If you work on improving your pages and having a high-quality website, then your chances of ranking will improve too. After all, Google wants to offer its users the best results to their search query, and the best results often have great content and are user-friendly, fast, and easily accessible.

Ranking well in search engines like Google asks for an extensive SEO strategy focused on every aspect of your website and its marketing. The technical side, the user experience (UX), the content on your website: all need to be top-notch. To keep ranking well in Google, you should develop – what we call – a holistic SEO approach.

A holistic SEO approach isn’t just better for your rankings — it also helps users find what they need more quickly. And that’s better for environmental sustainability too!

How can we help you get started?

At Yoast, our mission is to make SEO accessible for everyone. That’s why we have a few plugins that can help you with that, like our popular Yoast SEO plugin. We have a free and premium version of this plugin. One of the main advantages is that it helps you create high-ranking content. Our free SEO and readability analysis gives you detailed suggestions to create copy humans and search engines enjoy!

The premium version of our plugin will help you get to that next level and optimize your content for synonyms and related keywords and boost your site structure with our internal linking suggestions. You’ll also get access to all of our SEO courses, where you can learn vital SEO skills that you will be able to apply immediately!

Go Premium and get access to all our features!

Premium comes with lots of features and free access to our SEO courses!

Get Yoast SEO Premium »Only $99 USD / year (ex VAT)

Conclusion

SEO is the practice of optimizing websites to make them reach a high position in Google’s – or another search engine’s – search results. At Yoast, we believe that holistic SEO is the best way to rank your pages because you focus on optimizing every aspect of your site.

Don’t use any black-hat tricks, because eventually, this will have negative consequences for your rankings. Instead, practice sustainable SEO with your user in mind, and you will benefit in the long run. Read more on how to rank high in Google or if you use WordPress, make sure to check out our ultimate guide on SEO in WordPress:

Read more: The ultimate guide to WordPress SEO »

The post What is SEO? An explanation for beginners appeared first on Yoast.

A blog can be a great marketing tool for your ecommerce site. It gives you the possibility to tell readers all about your brand, products, and company. Plus, by blogging on a regular basis you’ll increase the chances of your site ranking in the search results. That being said, coming up with new ideas can be difficult. In this post, I’ll discuss 5 topic ideas that will help you maintain an awesome blog on your ecommerce site!

Why should you blog?

It might seem like a lot of work, but maintaining a blog on your ecommerce site is definitely worth your time. A blog allows your audience to learn more about your brand and products. You’ll be able to tell the story of your brand and products from your own perspective, and inform your audience about new ideas or plans you might have. This builds trust between you and your audience and increases their engagement.

But that’s not all! Maintaining a blog contributes to SEO as well. Every time you publish a new blog post to your ecommerce site, you’re adding fresh content. Which Google loves. You can use these blog posts to answer questions your potential customers have (and for which your products offer a solution). Or use them to show your expertise on topics that are related to your business. By blogging regularly and using the right keywords, your blog will help increase the overall rankings of your ecommerce site. Including your product pages.

Read more: The ultimate guide to blogging »

5 blog ideas for ecommerce sites

A blog can help your audience to find you online. But maintaining it can be hard. You’ll have to continuously come up with new and unique ideas for your ecommerce blog. On top of that, you’ll want to create awesome content to make sure your audience keeps returning to your site. So, let’s start with a first and quite essential step in creating and maintaining your ecommerce blog: keyword research.

1. Input from keyword research

You can write about whatever you want on your blog, but before you start, it’s important to do proper keyword research. Keyword research will help you understand which search terms your audience uses, and therefore which search terms you want to be found on. You might have an idea of the search terms you want your site or products to be found on, but make sure to research them to make sure you’re using the right ones. Who knows, your audience might use a totally different word for a product you offer, which means you’re missing out on potential customers by focusing on the wrong search term!

You can Google the keyword you came up with to check the searches Google suggests (while you’re typing). Or use tools such as Google Trends to research how often your search term is used compared to similar terms. But keyword research is so much more. And if you spend the time to do it properly, this will pay off by providing you with a list of focus keywords that will help you rank for the right search terms.

Keep reading: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

2. Current events and news

A great way to come up with new topic ideas for your ecommerce blog is by following current events and writing about them. Keep an eye on different news sites and write posts in which you give your view or expertise on news in your niche. To make sure you don’t miss anything, you can even set up alerts for specific topics. And if a holiday or event is coming up, write a post about how your products could be used during that holiday or event.

The fun part? You’re writing about something people are interested in at that moment. Because it’s happening now. And if it’s an important event in your niche (or in general), that means that your audience will be probably want to read more about this topic.

To give an example of how we do this at Yoast, a while ago Google announced Web Vitals – a new set of metrics to measure speed and user experience of websites. Because we know our readers will want to know more about this, as they are often concerned with optimizing their site, we wrote different blog posts explaining what these Web Vitals are and what impact they can have on sites.

3. Audience questions or comments

It might seem a bit scary at first, but giving readers the possibility to leave comments on your blog is a great way to get input for new posts. Inviting people to leave comments on your blog means you will probably receive feedback and questions. Which you can then use to determine what subjects your audience wants to know more about and what you can write a new blog post on.

Also, this interaction is a great way to connect to people and make sure they’ll come back to your site. If you’re still a bit hesitant about allowing comments on your blog, we have a post that will help you handle comments on your blog.

4. Blogs with a personal touch

Writing blog posts allows you to add a personal touch to your site, and with it your brand and company. Even a large company or brand can really benefit from a blog that appeals to people on a personal level. One way to do this is by showing the authors of your blog. Let your readers get to know the people who write your blog posts and their expertise. And, if possible, let your CEO (or experts in your team) write about their own view on the market or the ways they use the products your company sells. By giving your blogs a personal touch, you’re giving the company and your brand a face that people can relate to. That helps people connect to your company and might even convince them to return to your online shop.

If you’re having trouble standing out in a sea of similar ecommerce blogs, this article about staying unique in a competitive niche might help you find your tone of voice. Which will make it much easier to add a personal touch to your blog posts and connect with your audience.

5. Stories about your products

Your product page is the perfect place to describe your product. Your blog, however, is a perfect place to share stories about your product. If you sell cleaning supplies, write blogs about which stains are best removed with your products. If you sell kids clothes, write blog posts about children playing while wearing your clothes. And don’t underestimate the importance of photos, so make sure to add lots of them! If you don’t have any, try to add images that are related to your business or brand to liven up your posts.

Tell stories about the different ways people use your products and make these stories informative and entertaining. Don’t make these blogs too salesy. Show people why they should buy your stuff instead of telling them they should buy it.

Tip: Want to make sure your product pages perform well in the search results? With our Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin, you can take advantage of Yoast SEO’s excellent structured data to get rich product results. Plus, you can preview what your products look like in the search results! And if you run a Shopify store, that’s no problem either. Yoast SEO for Shopify will help you boost your traffic and optimize your content.

Customer stories

Another great way to do this is by asking your customers to share their stories. Ask them about their experiences with your products and if they have photos you’re allowed to share on your site. With the permission of these customers, you can write beautiful blog posts based on their experiences. Or you could ask your clients if they would want to write a guest blog.

Read on: How to use storytelling in a blog post »

Let’s get blogging!

As I said before, a blog can be a great marketing tool for any ecommerce site. Which is why it should, in my opinion, be part of your ecommerce SEO strategy. It will allow you to get more people to your site, increase their engagement, and present your brand and company the way you want to be seen. I hope these 5 blog ideas for ecommerce sites will provide you with enough input to start and maintain an awesome blog!

If you want to learn more about writing content that’s optimized for search engines, then you might be interested in our SEO copywriting training. Among other things, you’ll learn which steps you need to take to create a ready-to-publish text for your website. Plus, how to come up with a list of relevant keywords for your website. Useful, right?

Keep on reading: 5 tips to write readable blog posts »

The post 5 blog topic ideas for your ecommerce site appeared first on Yoast.

If you have a local business selling products or services, you have to think about the local ranking of your website. Local SEO will help you surface for related search queries in your area. As Google shows local results first in many cases, you need to make sure Google understands where your location is. In this article, we’ll go over all the things you can do to improve Google’s understanding of your location, which improves your chances to rank locally.

What are ranking factors?

Ranking factors are elements that Google considers when determining the position of a URL in the search results. There are many ranking factors, most of which are characteristics of the URL and your website, but they can further extend to your online presence. An example of a ranking factor is page speed: a fast-loading page that delivers a good user experience is likely to rank higher than a slow page when other characteristics are comparable.

Local SEO ranking factors

In this post, we’ll focus on the factors that influence the ranking of your website’s pages in local searches. As you can read here, Google itself talks about local ranking factors in terms of:

• Relevance: are you the relevant result for the user? Does your website match what the user is looking for?
• Distance: how far away are you located? If you are relevant and near, chances are you’ll get a good ranking.
• Prominence: this is about how well your business is known. More on that at the end of this article.

So you have to show you’re relevant, you’re close by, and you’re well-known. Let’s see how you can work on these factors with some concrete actions!

Be relevant

Being relevant means that you offer the service or products the searcher is looking for. While this might seem pretty straightforward, sometimes, people can get too cryptic on their website. Make sure that you clearly mention what your business or profession is, what kind of products and services you offer, and make sure to do this in the wording your audiences use. To find out if you indeed communicate using the language your audiences use, please conduct some keyword research and speak with your customers to find out which terms they use when looking for a service like yours.

Check out this local content strategy guide for more inspiration to write relevant content for your local business site.

Google Business Profile

For your local ranking in Google, you can’t do without a proper Google Business Profile listing. Google Business Profile is especially helpful if you want to show up properly in the local pack – i.e., the big panel with the map. You need to sign up, pick the right primary categories for your business, add all your locations, verify these and share some photos. You’ll also need to actively manage your profile and build it up over time.

Google Business Profile allows for customer reviews, and you should aim to get some of those for your listing. Every year, the importance of online reviews for local SEO grows. Positive reviews (and negative ones) help Google and its users judge your business. This is pretty much like your local market. If people talk positively about your groceries, more people will be inclined to come to your grocery stand.

Getting reviews is one, but you can keep the conversation going by responding to these reviews. But, as Google puts it, be a friend, not a salesperson.

LocalBusiness schema structured data

If you have a local business and serve primarily local customers, of course, you’ll add your address to your website. To help Google and other search engines understand the primary address, you can best serve it in a specific format readable for machines. Use localBusiness schema for that. Our Local SEO plugin makes adding that LocalBusiness schema to your pages a breeze!

This is very much about what Google calls distance. If you are the closest result for the user, your business will surface sooner.

Make sure you have one main NAP!

Even if your business has multiple locations, make sure to match the main NAP (name, address, phone number) on your website with the Google Business Profile NAP. That is the only way to make sure Google makes the proper connection between the two. Add the primary address on every page (you are a local business, so your should mention your address on every page). For all the other locations, set up a page and list all the addresses of your branches.

Facebook listing and reviews

What goes for Google Business Profile goes for Facebook as well. Add your company as a page for a local business to Facebook here. People search a lot on Facebook as well, so you’d better make sure your listing on Facebook is in order. Facebook also allows for reviews, which could help your business too. Keep an eye on those reviews! If your reviews aren’t that great, make sure to fix that by providing better products or services, or at least show in your replies you take the feedback you get seriously.

Location and keywords in title

The obvious one: for ranking locally, adding city and (in the US) state to your <title> helps. Add your main keywords as well and make the title attractive. Please keep in mind that the effect of adding the name of your town to your titles might be a lot less effective for local ranking than adding your business details to your Google Business Profile. But it won’t hurt for sure. For more local content tips, do check out this guide.

Local directories help your local ranking

In addition to your Google Business Profile listing, Google uses the local Yelp and other local directories to determine just how important and local you are. While we usually recommend against putting your link on a page with a gazillion unrelated links, the common ground for a local listings page is, indeed, the location. And, these links do help your local rankings.

So get your web team to work, find the most important local directory pages and get your details up there. We’re explicitly writing details and not just links. Citations work in confirming the address to both Google and visitors. If a local, relevant website lists addresses, do consider getting yours up there as well. And while you are at it, get some positive reviews on sites like Yelp as well!

Get relelated, high-quality links

Following how directories help your local ranking – especially in the organic local search results, exchanging links with related local businesses also pays off. If you work together in the same supply chain or sell related products, feel free to exchange links. Don’t just exchange links with any business you know. In most cases, these will be low-quality links for your website (because they’re usually unrelated). Also, try to build high-quality content that attracts relevant links. And, don’t forget to get those local keywords in the anchor text of those inbound links.

Social mentions from local folks

Again, there’s a local marketplace online as well. People talk about business, new developments, or new products on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and more. All these social mentions find their way to Google’s sensors as well. The search engine will pick up on positive or negative vibes and use these to help them rank your local business. If many people talk about your business and link to your website, you must be relevant. Monitor these mentions and engage.

Some say links from other websites, directories, and social media are critical for local rankings. As always, we believe it’s the sum of all efforts that makes you stand out from the crowd, not just optimizing one aspect. Take your time and make sure your Google Business Profile is correct, local business structured data is active on your site, and you have proper links to your site and the right people talking about you on other platforms like Twitter. And please don’t forget to do proper keyword research and make sure the right content is on your website.

Optimize your content for better local rankings

Google won’t rank your site for a keyword if that keyword isn’t on your website. It’s as simple as that. If your business is in city X, you probably have a reason why you are located there. Write about that reason. And note that these may vary:

• You are born there or just love the locals and local habits
• There is a river which is needed for transport
• Your local network makes sure you can deliver just-in-time or provide extra services
• The city has a regional function and your business thrives by that
• There are six other businesses like yours, you’re obviously the best, and you all serve a certain percentage of people, so your business fits perfectly in that area.

These are just random reasons to help you write about your business in relation to your location. They differ (a lot) per company. Make sure your location/city/area is clearly mentioned on your website and not just in your footer at your address details! If you have multiple locations, set up and write pages for each one and include the proper business details.

Read more: Tips for your local content strategy »

One more thing: what about prominence?

Prominence means that when Google can serve a result first from a well-known brand or business, they actually will. Despite all your efforts to improve your local ranking, this might get in the way of that number one position. But, it just means you have to step up your game, keep on doing the great work you do, work on your branding, and trust that eventually, Google will notice this as well. As a result, Google might allow you to rank on that number one position for that local keyword!

Another thing to note is that prominence is also based on the information that Google knows about a business. All this information is derived from links, articles, and directories across the web. The more positive reviews and ratings your business has, the more likely Google will place it in a high position for local search queries. Not to mention, your position on the “normal” search results page (web results) is also a ranking signal. So, invest some time and resources into SEO if possible, and ask your satisfied customers to leave a good review on Google and other platforms such as Yelp or Facebook.

Keep reading: The ultimate guide to small business SEO »

The post Local ranking factors that help your small business’ SEO appeared first on Yoast.

Today, we’re releasing updates for four plugins and add-ons: Yoast SEO 19.10, Yoast SEO Premium 19.5, Local SEO 14.7, and WooCommerce SEO 15.3. The updates mainly consist of enhancements and fixes, plus support for material structured data in WooCommerce SEO. Find out what else is new!

Yoast SEO 19.10 and Premium 19.5

The overarching theme of these releases is to get ready for the upcoming High Performance Order Storage feature in WooCommerce 7.1+. This feature is more commonly known as custom order tables. This long-awaited improvement promises significant performance gains for ecommerce sites. With today’s update, all of our WordPress plugins support this.

Besides that, we improved some small things in Yoast SEO, like giving you better feedback in the Flesch Reading Ease insights when we see that text is fairly difficult. Plus, we’ve fixed two bugs related to our integration with Elementor.

WooCommerce SEO: material structured data

When working on your ecommerce store, you need help from the WooCommerce SEO add-on for Yoast SEO. This helps you finetune your online store and improves the product structured data that Google needs to present your products in the search results.

Besides updating it for the above-mentioned new feature in WooCommerce, we’ve added two enhancements that make WooCommerce SEO even better. Recently, Google added support for material in the product structured data, which lets you specify what material your product is made of. This gives Google more details about your product; we all know the more information you provide, the better.

Simply follow these steps to try it out:

Here’s what that looks like in the Schema Validator:

Local SEO for Yoast SEO

Local SEO is the add-on you need if you focus on getting your business noticed locally. The Local SEO plugin helps you get all your business details in order — like opening hours and maps — and translates those details into structured data that Google can use to highlight in the search results. In this release, we’ve fixed several minor issues to keep Local SEO in top shape.

Update now to Yoast SEO 19.10 and the others

Today, we’re releasing updates to most of our plugins. These updates come with loads of fixes and enhancements to help you make the most of your work! Update now to get the latest and greatest.

The post Yoast SEO, Local SEO, and WooCommerce SEO updates appeared first on Yoast.

WordPress 6.1 – the last major release of 2022 – is finally here! This release is a step in the right direction for full-site editing, bringing various customization options and improvements to the content creation and site creation experience. We’ve covered some notable changes in this update, which you can check out here. This post is dedicated to exploring the performance enhancements coming to our favorite open-source platform.

WordPress 6.1 is the collective effort of a massive team of developers and contributors. Jean Baptiste Audras – the Triage team lead – shared some amazing statistics about the contributions to this release. An impressive 800 people from at least 60 countries and 180 identified companies contributed to WordPress 6.1.

At Yoast, we’re proud of the work we’ve put into making this release possible. Out of all companies that contributed to 6.1, Yoast takes the number 2 spot with 740 contributions made by 16 contributors. Sergey Biryukov – a member of our dedicated team of WordPress contributors – tops the list with a whopping 584 contributions! Not to mention Bluehost – a fellow company in Newfold Digital – also contributed greatly to this release with 150 contributions.

The WordPress Core Performance Team has done some incredible work to make the platform faster in the 6.1 release. This team, comprising members from Google, 10up, XWP, and Yoast, was formed in 2021 to monitor, enhance, and promote performance in WordPress core and its surrounding ecosystem. Without them, these improvements wouldn’t be possible.

Performance improvements are always welcomed by the community. We all know the importance of good website performance for SEO – a fast site is more favorable to rank high in the SERP. That’s due to Google and other search engines rewarding sites that deliver a fast and smooth user experience. Of course, you need good content to rank. But among many quality results, any small performance improvements may prove to be significant.

Let’s dive into some of the notable performance enhancements in WordPress 6.1!

Huge improvements to WP_Query with caching additions

The addition of caching to WP_Query is one of the most significant performance improvements in WordPress 6.1. Basically, every time a visitor requests a web page, their browser has to make a request to the web server asking for information. The server needs to respond to this request and retrieve data from a database (or multiple ones) to send back. By implementing caching to WP_Query, the next time another visitor requests that same page, the page’s data would be retrieved from the website’s cache instead of retrieving data directly from the database.

These changes aim to reduce the number of database queries and make sites faster, especially when using persistent object caching like Redis or Memcached, as the database query will not run again until caches are invalidated. With fewer database queries, your pages will load faster, thus providing a better user experience for visitors.

This is a much anticipated and welcomed improvement for many, especially developers. Jonny Harris – the contributor who worked on this improvement shared his excitement in a recent Tweet.

Improvements to the REST API

Another significant performance boost comes with improvements to the REST API. In short, these updates decrease the number of database queries that run on each REST API request, allowing your pages to load faster.

For instance, WordPress introduces an improvement of the post controller in the REST API. When returning a post in a REST API response, the post controller would request linked data such as author, featured image, and text. Since these linked items are not primed (ready for use) in caches, it might mean that for each post in the REST API response, there would be data queries from separate databases: one for the author, one for the featured image, and another for the text.

Instead, in WordPress 6.1, all the caches are primed in a single database query. That means that the post controller in the REST API can grab data from that single database query instead of requesting data from separate databases, resulting in fewer queries.

Improvements to the Cache API

The Cache API gets various improvements in this release. Most notably, several private cache priming functions are available for public use in this release. WordPress encourages plugin and theme authors to use these functions to improve the performance of their code by reducing the number of database queries, which improves the website’s load speed.

Media improvements

WordPress 6.1 will automatically add decoding="async" to image attributes. In simple terms, this function tells your visitor’s browser that it’s okay to load images a bit later in favor of other information and data. This results in the page loading the content much faster and also reduces page render time. This is a huge performance booster for any web page containing a lot of images. It’s also good to know that you can remove this function.

Site health improvements

WordPress 6.1 introduces two new Site Health checks for Persistent Object Cache and Page Cache.

• Persistent Object Cache – This new check determines whether the site uses a persistent object cache or not and recommends it if it makes sense for the site. It also links to a support resource created for the check. A few filters have been included for hosting providers to provide more specific steps regarding their environment.
• Full Page Cache – This new check determines whether the site is using a full page cache solution and if the response time is acceptable. It also adds a couple of filters for hosting companies to customize the response threshold and add their own cache headers to be detected.

Improved compatibility with PHP 8x

WordPress 6.1 receives important compatibility improvements with PHP 8.0 and 8.1. All of this is possible thanks to the incredible work of many developers, especially Juliette Reinders Folmer. A few of us Yoasters also contributed to this effort, namely Sergey Biryukov, Carolina, and Ari Stathopoulos!

The 6.1 release has continued the code modernization efforts on updating WordPress core and unit test suite for PHP 8.0 and 8.1, as well as preparing for PHP 8.2. Version 8.2 of PHP is expected to be released on November 24, 2022. We can expect some significant changes coming in PHP 8.2, which could impact many themes and plugins.

The big step forward in this release is that WordPress core unit tests now pass on PHP 8.1 and 8.2. While full compatibility with PHP 8.1 and 8.2 is still a work in progress, this should prevent new PHP issues from being introduced in WordPress core. All remaining known issues are deprecation notices.

It’s good to note that a deprecation notice is not an error, but rather an indicator of where additional work is needed for compatibility before PHP 9 (i.e. when the notices become fatal errors). With a deprecation notice, the PHP code will continue to work and nothing is broken.

Changes to the loading routine

As of WordPress 6.1, the send_headers hook has been moved to slightly later in the WordPress loading routine. This is a ticket that our Sergey Biryukov worked on!

When you request a page, the web server needs to send back some headers that contain technical information about the page like response status. This lacks flexibility because some functions wouldn’t work when headers are being sent. By moving send_headers to after WordPress parses the query, those functions now work properly. This change may affect plugin developers, making it easier for them to manage header.

Performance enhancements in the editor

Some optimizations were made to the block editor to avoid repetitive calls to filesystem and processing of block.json files. These changes should improve loading performance and benefit all WordPress sites. Ari Stathopoulos – another member of our WordPress core contributor team – was responsible for making this happen!

Want to try out more performance improvements?

The WordPress Core Performance team has created the Performance Lab plugin to give users early access to new performance modules they’re working on. Install it and you’ll be able to try out their latest developments yourself, see how they impact your site’s performance and share any feedback you have. If you’d like to be even more involved, you can also help out as a contributor! And if you’re interested in finding out more about the performance improvements in 6.1, don’t forget to check out this Performance Field Guide thread. It contains loads of useful information for developers!

The post Performance improvements in WordPress 6.1 appeared first on Yoast.

In this day and age, page speed is everything. Not a day goes by without a new article, Google representative, or SEO expert telling us that optimizing for speed is among the most important things you should do for your website. And they’re right, of course! Page speed influences SEO in many ways. Here’s an overview of how page speed and SEO go together.

What is page speed?

“Page speed” refers to how fast the content on your page loads. It sounds simple; the faster your content loads, the quicker your page speed is. However, it’s good to understand that page speed is somewhat of an umbrella concept because there’s not a single metric that can define how fast your web page loads.

When discussing page speed in website performance, we should not consider it similar to how fast a car can go. A car can go 100km/h, and you can say that’s the car’s speed. But when talking about page speed, there is much more going on than just “this page loads in 4 seconds”. It’s much better to think of page speed as part of the user experience that your visitors will get when interacting with your website.

How to think about page speed

In an ideal world, you’d click a link in the search results, and the corresponding page would appear instantly. But we all know that’s a pipe dream. Over the years, pages have only increased in size, and the popularity of JavaScript made them even more complex and harder to load. Loading a web page can still be a drag, even with lightning-fast internet connections and potent devices.

Think about when you visit a web page. Do you wait for the page to load fully before interacting with it? Or do you start scrolling around and checking things right when you see content starts appearing? And if you start interacting with the page right away when there’s content, do you find missing elements (text, images, videos, buttons) when you scroll deeper on the page?

Here’s another question for you. Let’s say we have two pages. The first page quickly displays the first bits of content on your screen, but it takes longer before you can interact with things. The second page shows content a tad bit slower, but elements on the page, such as images and buttons, work properly. Between the two, which one would you say has better “page speed”? 

As you can see, “page speed” is not necessarily about how fast a web page can load but more about how quickly it can provide a good user experience. Even if the page’s main content is quick to load, but other elements take longer to appear, you’ll still feel like the page is slow because you have to wait before you can interact with it.

There’s no single metric to define page speed

By now, you may understand that it’s tricky to define the “speed” of a web page or how “fast” a page is. Page speed is a multifaceted concept that can’t be determined using a single metric. Not to mention, many things affect the loading speed of a website, which we will get to later in this article.

When you click on a link to visit a web page, your browser has to make a request to the server of the website asking for content and other information. That content has to be loaded fully or partially on the browser before the user can interact with the page. At the same time, many things happen when a page gets loaded. You see things start appearing and popping up on your screen. After a brief moment, you can begin to interact with the page. 

But when you take a step back and think about how we browse the web, we tend to interact with a page almost simultaneously when content appears on our screen. We tend not to wait for the page to load before we start exploring fully. At the same time, we don’t like it when we start scrolling, but things only pop up a bit later.

So to gauge the “speed” of a web page, we need to use several metrics in combination with each other to determine how fast and smooth the user experience on that page is. For that reason, Google introduced Web Vitals in 2020 – a set of metrics to measure websites’ speed and user experience. These metrics made their way into the Google core algorithm update in 2021, becoming the Core Web Vitals we know today.

Core Web Vitals give insights into your page speed

Core Web Vitals look at three aspects of a web page: loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. From those three aspects, Google defined the following metrics:

• Loading – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures how long it takes for the most significant piece of content to appear on the screen. 
• Interactivity – First Input Delay (FID): This metric measures how fast the page can respond to the first user interaction.
• Visual Stability – Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This metric measures the stability of visual elements on your page. In other words, does stuff move around on the screen while loading?

Google also set the standard measurements for each of these metrics and split them into three categories: good, need improvement, and poor. For instance, a page with a First Input Delay (FID) of below 300ms is considered poor, while above 100ms is considered good.

It’s worth noting that you have to meet or surpass the target performance in the “good” categories for 75% of your real-world visitors, in a 28-day period to pass Core Web Vitals. Generally speaking, that means three out of four visitors must experience the target level of performance or better.

If you’re looking to improve your page speed, it’s essential to know and understand these metrics. And with page speed improvement, you may also enhance your ranking on Google.

Differences between page speed and site speed

Some people use the term “page speed,” while others use “site speed” when discussing website performance. They are similar but surely not the same. Page speed only refers to the performance of a single web page, while site speed refers to the overall performance of a whole website. 

It’s easier to measure the performance of a single web page as we have metrics in Core Web Vitals to work with. On the other hand, measuring the performance of a whole website is very tricky as a site can contain hundreds, even up to millions of pages. In addition, each of those pages behaves differently as they have different content and purposes. 

Similar to “page speed,” you can’t define the speed of a website with a single metric. However, a website is just a combination of a bunch of web pages put together in a structured way. So let’s say most of your pages pass Core Web Vitals, then you can consider your site “fast.” If the opposite is true, you have slow “site speed.”

How important is page speed for SEO?

It’s a no-brainer that you want your website to be fast. A fast site means your pages load quickly. Of course, people come to your website for your content and your offers. However, that awesome and unique content must be accompanied by a good user experience.

Fast-loading sites have higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates

Attention spans are notoriously short. As the internet gets faster, they’re getting shorter still. Numerous studies have found a clear link between the amount of time a page takes to load and the percentage of visitors who will get bored of waiting. For instance, Google found out in their research that:

• The probability of a visitor leaving a page without interacting increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds (thinkwithgoogle)
• The probability of a visitor leaving a page without interacting increases to 90% as page load time goes from 1 second to 5 (thinkwithgoogle)

Your goal should be to be the fastest site in your niche. Be faster than your competitors. Having a site or an e-commerce platform that takes forever to load won’t do you any good. People hit that back button in a split second, never to return. With each bounced visitor, you are losing money and brand loyalty. Speed and efficiency are everything these days, so people won’t sit around waiting for your page when there are other alternatives. 

By offering a fast site, you encourage your visitors to stay longer. Not to mention, you’re helping them get through their checkout journey faster. That helps improve your conversion rate and build trust and brand loyalty. Think of all the times you’ve been cursing the screen because you had to wait for a page to load or be running in circles because the user experience was atrocious. It happens so often — don’t be that site.

A fast page improves user experience

Google understands that the time it takes for a page to load is vital to the overall user experience. Waiting for content to appear, the inability to interact with a page, and even noticing delays create friction.

That friction costs time, money, and your visitor’s experience. Research shows that the level of stress from waiting for slow mobile results can be more stressful than watching a horror movie. Surely not, you say? That’s what the fine folks at Ericsson Research found a few years back.

Ericsson Mobility Report MWC Edition, February 2016

Improving your site speed across the board means making people happy. They’ll enjoy using your site, buy more and come back more often. This means that Google will see your site as a great search result because you are delivering the goods regarding site quality. Eventually, you might get a nice ranking boost.

Frustration hurts your users and hurts your rankings

It’s not just Google – research from every corner of the web on all aspects of consumer behavior shows that speed significantly impacts outcomes.

These costs and site abandonment happen because users dislike being frustrated. Poor experiences mean they go elsewhere, visit other websites, and convert to competitors. Google easily tracks those behaviors (through bounces back to search engine results pages, short visits, and other signals) and is a strong signal that the page shouldn’t be ranking where it was.

Google needs fast sites

Speed isn’t only good for users – it’s good for Google, too. Slow websites are often slow because they’re inefficient. They may load too many large files, haven’t optimized their media, or don’t make use of modern technologies to serve their page. That means that Google has to consume more bandwidth, allocate more resources, and spend more money.

Across the whole web, every millisecond they can save, and every byte they don’t have to process, adds up quickly. And quite often, simple changes to configuration, processes, or code can make websites much faster with no drawbacks. That may be why Google is so vocal about its education on performance.

A faster web is better for users and significantly reduces Google’s operating costs. Either way that means that they’re going to continue rewarding fast(er) sites.

Improve page speed helps to improve crawling for search engines

Modern sites are incredibly wieldy, and untangling that mess can make a big difference. The bigger your site is, the more impact page speed optimizations will have. That not only impacts user experience and conversion rates but also affects crawl budget and crawl rate. 

When a Googlebot comes around and crawls your webpage, it crawls the HTML file. Any resources referenced in the file, like images, CSS, and JavaScript, will be fetched separately. The more files you have and the heavier they are, the longer it will take for the Googlebot to go through them. 

On the flip side, the more time Google spends on crawling a page and its files, the less time and resources Google has to dedicate to other pages. And that means that Google may miss out on other important pages and content on your site.

Optimizing your website and content for speed will provide a good user experience for your visitors and help Googlebots better crawl your site. They can come around more often and get more done.

Page speed is a ranking factor

Google has repeatedly said that a fast site helps you rank better. So it’s no surprise that Google has been measuring the speed of your site and using that in their ranking algorithms since 2010.

In 2018, Google launched the so-called ‘Speed Update,’ making page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches. Google stressed it would only affect the slowest sites and that fast sites getting faster won’t get a boost, but they are looking at website performance across the board. 

In 2021, Google announced the page experience algorithm update, demonstrating that page speed and user experience are intertwined. Core Web Vitals clearly state that speed is an essential ranking factor. The update also gave site owners metrics and standards to work with.

Of course, Google still wants to serve searchers the most relevant information even if the page experience is somewhat lacking. Creating high-quality content is still the best way to rank. However, Google also states that page experience signals become more important when many pages with relevant content compete for visibility in the search result.

Google mobile-first index

Another significance of page speed for ranking is Google’s mobile-first approach to indexing content. That means Google uses the mobile version of your pages for indexing and ranking. This approach makes sense as we increasingly rely on mobile devices to go online. In recent research, Semrush found out that 66% of all website visits come from mobile devices 

To compete for a spot in the search results, your mobile page needs to meet Core Web Vitals standards and other page experience signals. And this is not easy at all. Pages on mobile take longer to load compared to their desktop counterparts, while attention span stays the same. People might be more patient on mobile devices, but not a lot more. Take a look at some statistics:

All the more reasons to optimize your website and content if your goal is to win a spot in the SERP.

Factors that affect your page speed

Many factors affect a page’s loading speed, but we think you might know this already. Though there’s one thing you can’t control: the connection quality of your end user. Other than that, factors that influence your page speed include:

Your hosting service

Hosting services play a crucial role in the performance of your website because they provide the server where your site lives. So their server performance directly affects how your website performs. Factors influencing your host’s performance range from their server configurations, facilities, uptime, and specifications of machines running the servers. By choosing a good and reliable hosting, you ensure that your web server can process requests fast enough to accommodate all activities on your site. In addition, you’re eliminating one factor from the speed optimization equation.

Your website theme

Themes control the design of your website, from layouts and font to color scheme. But not all themes are created equally. Some themes are much cleaner and more optimized than others. They have a smaller file size, making them easier to load. That also means they have fewer bells and whistles (think of animation or specialized design patterns) compared to others that are a bit extra. But that’s a good trade-off if you want better loading performance.

Large file size

We’re talking about many types of files here, from your HTML file to CSS, and primarily JavaScript. Any bytes and kilobytes you can shave off these files will impact your page’s performance. In addition, modern sites use a lot of JavaScript to make the site dynamic. It’s what makes those flashy, cool animations and transitions you see on websites nowadays possible.

But JavaScript is also heavy, and overusing it makes a page clunky and difficult to load. You may have a low FID score in Core Web Vitals because processing these JavaScript files takes longer, especially on mobile devices, since their processing power isn’t as great as desktop computers.

Badly written code

Bad code can lead to many issues, from JavaScript errors to invalid HTML markups. Poorly-optimized code can cause significant dips in performance. Clean up your code, remove any errors, and eliminate any extra lines that do not add meaningful value.

Images and videos

Heavy images are the culprit of a slow-loading page. They take up a considerable chunk of your page’s weight (in kilobytes or megabytes). If your page has a large and unoptimized header image, you might have a low LCP score in Core Web Vitals. That’s because LCP measures how long it takes for the largest piece of content to appear on the screen, and your large image will surely take time to load. Image SEO plays a huge role in upping your site speed.

Too many plugins and widgets

If you’re running your site on WordPress, you’re undoubtedly using plugins and widgets to add functionalities to your site. Plugins are what makes WordPress such a powerful platform. But using too many plugins is counterintuitive because they slow your website down. Every plugin you install adds a bit of code to your page, making it heavier than it should be. Unoptimized plugins can also play a significant role in slowing down a website.

Absence of a CDN

CDN stands for content delivery network. It is an interconnected network of servers and their data centers distributed in various geographical locations. They can help with page loading performance, especially if you have an international audience.

A CDN saves your website’s static content, like CSS and image files, across various servers in the network. It does this so it can quickly serve these files to people who live close to one of the servers in the network. Let’s say your server is based in Australia, but you have many visitors from India. Instead of sending files directly from Australia, the CDN can send files from a server in India, making this process faster and more efficient.

Redirects

Redirects are a natural part of any website, and there’s nothing wrong with them. But keep in mind that redirects may impact your page’s loading performance if not configured properly. In most cases, they won’t significantly slow you down. But in the case of redirect chains, they will. By linking as close to the final destination as possible, you avoid creating too many redirects and thus, reduce your website’s load.

How to check if your page loads slowly

Unsurprisingly, some of the best resources for optimizing your website are from Google. We recommend that you explore their Web Fundamentals documentation to understand the techniques, tools, and approaches to building faster websites. Various tools are also available for measuring and monitoring the speed of your site. Here are a few that we recommend trying out:

• Google PageSpeed Insights – A very powerful option that provides ‘real user metrics’ of your website, straight from Google. It’s also one of the most important tools you should know how to use.
• The Page Experience report in Google Search Console – Don’t forget to check out this tool. It summarizes the user experience of visitors to your site, showing how many URLs pass or fail Core Web Vitals and other page experience signals.
• Lighthouse, for Google Chrome – This is one of the most sophisticated performance measurement tools available and great for benchmarking.
• WebPageTest – This tool provides a waterfall diagram of how all the assets load on your website. Great for spotting slow resources and bottlenecks.
• Chrome Developer Console – This tool shows you exactly what’s happening as your site loads, on your computer and in your browser.

Optimize your site is more than looking at numbers

As you know by now, page speed is not only crucial for SEO but also for your sales, retention, and brand loyalty. Create great content, optimize your website and pages to meet Core Web Vitals’ standards, and aim for that top spot on the first page of Google.

It’s good to note that optimizing your site for page speed is not as simple as getting a good score in all those speed test tools. Don’t blind yourself to scores and metrics as those numbers are not representative of all your visitors. Every user is different. Every visitor uses another type of internet connection, device, and browser. Find out who your users are, how they access your site, and what they do while they’re there. 

Combine tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest.org, and Lighthouse with analytical tools to get a broad overview of speed issues on your site. Use the recommendations to get started on improving your page speed, but do take these with a grain of salt. They are great starting points, but there is so much more you can do!

Page speed optimization resources for you

To get started with optimizing your page’s performance, check out these articles and documentation:

• Google’s Why Speed Matters article
• Google’s Web Vitals documentation 
• Page experience: a Google ranking factor
• Core Web Vitals report Search Console checks site speed
• 5 ways to improve your Core Web vitals 
• How to check site speed
• Improving site speed: tools and suggestions
• Site Speed Masterclass as part of Yoast SEO academy — access comes at no additional charge with Yoast SEO Premium
• Image SEO: Optimizing images for search engines
• Mobile SEO: The ultimate guide
• Site speed tips for faster video loading

Last but not least, an incredible source of information: Jono’s slide deck on site speed from a talk at SMXL Milan.

Read more: Why every website needs Yoast SEO »

The post What is page speed, and how does it influence SEO? appeared first on Yoast.

Have you heard the news? WordPress 6.1 is out! Welcome to the third and last major WordPress release of 2022. This release continues to build, iterate and refine the full-site editing experience introduced in WordPress 5.9 earlier this year. It brings us new possibilities to easily change up the styling of our website, spice up our page design, and other improvements to our favorite open-source platform. Let’s take a closer look at what 6.1 brings to the table!

This release is a step in the right direction for full-site editing. Full-site editing and block themes arrived to WordPress with the promise to put more control in the hand of users, allowing them to do more with creating and designing a website. Version 6.1 is on track to deliver this promise. We’re seeing a release that focuses quite heavily on providing customization options and enhancing the site-editing experience.

WordPress 6.1 introduces more than 2,000 updates since the release of WordPress 6.0 in May 2022. All the gains, enhancements, and improvements from version 13.1 to 14.1 of the Gutenberg plugin were committed to core. Since we can’t possibly cover all the updates in a single article, we’ll focus on several notable changes instead.

More control over your global style preset

The global style interface was first introduced in WordPress 5.9 and received a lot of attention and praise. It allows you to easily switch up the look and feel of your website. In just a few clicks, you can change the color palette of your entire site or change the default font, size, and color of your text and links. WordPress 6.1 brings even more customization to the global style interface. You can now determine presets for:

• The default appearance of typography for headings and buttons
• The default colors of headings and buttons
• The width of the main content area and block spacing in the global layout

All of this is great for design consistency. And that’s not all. You can even configure the default appearance for specific blocks, which allows for even more creativity in designing websites. Let’s say you want texts in the ‘list’ block to always be in the color green, you can easily do that now.

It’s good to note that the global style feature is only available on block themes, so you won’t see this option if you’re running a theme that doesn’t support full-site editing.

Twenty Twenty-Three default theme: powerful style variations

WordPress is determined to provide more design controls to users, which is reflected in the new Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3) default block theme. The new theme is designed to leverage all the new design tools introduced in 6.1. When you first install this theme, it may look a bit underwhelming with the default style, but there’s a lot more than meets the eye. 

Going into customizing TT3, you’ll find that it actually comes with 10 style variations for you to play around with. These variations were selected from a wide range of entries from the community. What’s impressive is that each of these variations is totally distinct from one another. Each variation has its own color palette, typography, layout,…. and they all look amazing. 

Previously, the default WordPress themes were a bit underwhelming when talking about their appearances. Many people would choose a third-party theme because they look better and offer more customization possibilities. TT3 may change that. The new 10 style variations may just satisfy the needs of many, especially bloggers and small website owners. Not to mention, this theme may set an example for other themes, paving the way for more style variations in non-default themes and making it a standard to have multiple variations.

Multiple enhancements in design tools

The design tools in the post editor are getting lots of improvements and enhancements, allowing you to get finer control of your page’s design and layout. WordPress 6.1 also brings consistency to the availability of design tools for different blocks. And it’s good to know that you can also override any global settings with adjustments made in the design tools in the post editor.

Dimension control in more blocks

WordPress 6.1 brings dimension control to blocks like paragraph, list, table, and more. In the sidebar of the post editor, you’ll find a section called “dimensions” where you can leverage this new enhancement. Don’t forget to check the 3-dot menu to see if any settings are hidden. For instance, you can now control the padding of the paragraph and group block. For the column and gallery block, it’s possible to control the spacing between elements in these blocks.

Border control improvements

This release also adds border support for more blocks and allows users to adjust the top, bottom, left, and right border separately. For instance, when using the gallery block, you can determine the border and its radius for each image in the gallery. And you can add actual borders to images, which was unavailable previously.

Featured image in cover block

You can now easily add your featured image to the cover block, allowing you to conveniently use the featured image anywhere on a page. When you add a cover block, there will be an option in the toolbar that lets you grab the featured image.

Visualizer for padding and spacing

There’s a real-time visualizer to help users with adjusting dimensions. It conveniently shows you how changes affect your page layout as you’re making the change. Pretty handy for retaining layout and design consistency.

Fluid typography

Another design improvement coming in this release is fluid typography. This feature allows theme makers to configure text to automatically scale depending on the screen where it’s viewed. Of course, websites nowadays are responsive so text does scale and resize according to screen sizes. But the problem is that it only scales to specific screen sizes, so text on anything outside of those pre-determined sizes won’t scale properly.

On the other hand, fluid typography lets you resize text smoothly to match any device’s width. However, this feature is opt-in, so it only works if theme makers decide to implement the feature. It also works on blocks that support typography control, of which list you can find here.

New templates in the site editor

With full-site editing, you get a new editing experience with the “site editor” instead of working with the theme customizer tool. In the site editor, you can create templates for various pages, including your homepage, single post, 404 page, and search result page. The template creation experience has been expanded in WordPress 6.1, allowing you to create custom templates to use on any type of post or page. In addition to that, you get finer control over some of the templates that you can create, including:

• Post: You can choose to create a single template for all posts or for a specific one.
• Page: You can now create a template for pages and determine which page will use this template.
• Author: You can create a template to use for all authors or for a specific one.
• Category: Similar to the post template, you can create a template for all categories or for a single category.

Inner block editing capability

Inner block editing is a new feature coming to the quote and list block. As the name suggests, it’s now much easier to separately edit elements within the quote and list block. This is a quality-of-life improvement, especially for those who often work with the list block.

For instance, let’s say you want to move an entry up or down in your list. All you need to do is click on that entry, which prompts the toolbar to appear, and click on the arrow to move it up or down the list. Another way is to use the list view. Entries in a list block will also be displayed as separate elements in the list view instead of aggregated into a single element.

Content-only block editing

WordPress 6.1 introduces an experimental feature called content-only editing for blocks, patterns, and templates. When this feature is enabled, users can only change the content inside a group of blocks, patterns, or templates. The idea is to prevent users from accidentally breaking the page layout or changing the styles.

At the time of this release, content-only editing is not accessible from the Visual editor interface. You would need to use the Code editor interface to enable it. You can do this by navigating to the 3-dot menu at the top right of your post editor and selecting “Code editor”. The next step is to set the  templateLock attribute to contentOnly like in our example below.

You’ll notice that when content-only editing is enabled on a group of blocks, the sidebar changes as well. You won’t see the usual controls but a list of blocks included in the group. You can select any of those blocks by clicking on the block in the editor or on the corresponding item in the sidebar. If you have the list view open, clicking on this group of blocks in the list view will prompt the toolbar to appear. Clicking on the “Modify” button will temporarily disable content-only editing and bring back all the design tools.

Other small improvements and enhancements

Cross-device preference in the post editor

In the sidebar of the post editor, you can select preferences for how your editor should look when you’re working in this environment. For example, some people like to focus on the block they’re working with, so they select the “spotlight mode” in the view setting. Unfortunately, these preferences are only saved locally in previous WordPress versions. A bit inconvenient for those who use multiple devices, if you ask us. WordPress 6.1 enables cross-device preferences so your settings are saved and you’ll have the same editing experience on other devices.

Small changes and additions to the post editor

The UI of the post editor gets a small update in this release. The following changes and additions won’t have a big impact on your workflow, but you might take some time to get used to them:

• The Preview button becomes “View“
• There’s a new “time to read” feature in the “Details” section of the top bar
• The previous “Status & Visibility” section is now “Summary“
• The new “Summary” section now contains the post’s URL, post format, and template
  

Block parts to use in classic theme

The post editor of WordPress 6.1 gets a new section called “Template parts”. Basically, you can create templates for parts of a page, export those templates, and use them in a classic theme. WordPress 6.1 lets you create template parts for the comment section, header, footer, post meta, and general templates that are not tied to any area.

Though this new feature seems useful, it’s quite cumbersome in practice. You would need to do a bunch of things to make the template parts work on a classic theme. Should you want to test this feature out, you can find instructions and resources in this thread.

Time to update your WordPress to get the latest features, improvements, and security updates! To ensure the update works as intended, make sure to test it on your staging site to see if there are any conflicts with your themes or plugins. Happy updating!

The post WordPress 6.1: Enhancing the full-site editing experience appeared first on Yoast.

When embedding a YouTube video on your website, you’ve probably discovered a minor but very annoying issue: YouTube embeds are not natively responsive. This means that when you’re viewing your web page on a mobile device for example, the video doesn’t properly resize with the rest of the page elements. This can negatively impact your website’s design and usability. So why does this happen, and what can you do about it?

Why YouTube videos aren’t responsive 

Standard YouTube Embeds, such as the one below, use iFrames to generate an embedded video player:

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/5kW0RtcJZC8″ title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>

The advantage of using iFrames? It’s a straightforward piece of HTML. Plus, it allows YouTube embeds to be compatible with the broadest possible selection of use cases, applications and content management systems. YouTube can also update existing video embeds with, for example, new player styles or advertising scripts from the server side without requiring users to change the code on their websites. This works because an iFrame essentially acts as a window to a different page.

But there’s also a downside. Using iFrames can make YouTube videos slower to load on any given page. It could also mean that the videos aren’t always visible on first-paint, since a browser needs to find and load the iFrame before being able to load the video. Finally, and more frustratingly, without CSS or Javascript, there isn’t a native way to make YouTube videos adapt to a container. Which is why the embed specifies a size (560 x 315 by default).

As a consequence, to make a YouTube embed truly responsive and optimized for mobile display, you need to do a bit of extra work. Luckily, there are several simple mays to make it happen.

Method 1: With a bit of custom CSS

The simplest way of using CSS to create responsive embeds is to create a class that features the property “aspect-ratio”. This property allows you to stipulate the aspect ratio of the class you are creating, such that it’s always resized within a container along that aspect ratio. Given that embeddable YouTube videos are all presented with a 16×9 aspect ratio, this means you can use the property to ensure everything scales accordingly.

Let’s look at how method one works.

First, create a class such as “youtube-video”. Next, give it the property aspect-ratio set to 16/9 with the width at 100%.

.youtube-video {
  aspect-ratio: 16 / 9;
  width: 100%;
}

You’ll then need to apply this class to any YouTube embed in the code, while removing the default width and height stipulation.

<iframe class="youtube-video" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5kW0RtcJZC8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This method is very simple for anyone comfortable editing basic CSS and HTML. However, it does require some work for each individual YouTube embed. This is less than ideal, especially for websites with multiple authors and editors who likely all try to embed YouTube videos in pages and posts.

Method 2: With Gutenberg Blocks in responsive themes

Some WordPress themes, such as Inspiro and responsive, have features that automate responsiveness for video embeds. So if you’re open to changing your theme and templates, it’s a simple matter of installing one of these. These themes have a CSS rule similar to method one that is baked into the theme. This rule will then be applied to certain blocks, and featured within the theme.

In other words: If you use the “video” Gutenberg block, where you paste in the URL of the YouTube video you want to embed, your videos will remain responsive.

However, be sure to test out these themes with your website first. The specific implementation may not work perfectly with your videos.

Method 3: With the Yoast Video SEO Plugin

If you’re a WordPress user, the simplest and fastest way to solve this problem is with the Yoast Video SEO plugin. In addition to automating the inclusion of metadata, which gets your videos ranking in Google search results, JavaScript automatically resizes the video embed for any device and browser size. Beyond just the container size, the video will adjust its height and width as the page scales. So you don’t need to worry about implementing custom CSS or tiresome browser testing!

In addition, the Yoast Video SEO plugin uses asynchronous JavaScript to speed up loading times for YouTube videos as much as possible. This ensures that your videos are delivered in the best way possible to guarantee high play rates and engagement. The plugin is $79 a year, takes just a couple of minutes to install and set up, and ensures you never need to worry about responsive videos ever again. 

Summary

Videos are a great tool to use on your website. People love them! But if they don’t scale with the rest of your site, they can look clunky. Luckily, there are multiple ways to ensure that your embedded videos are responsive. Either with a bit of custom CSS or by installing a useful plugin like Yoast Video SEO, you can make sure your YouTube videos resize properly. You can also opt for changing your theme to one that has automatic video responsiveness. If you have any further questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Read more: YouTube vs your own site: Which is better for video SEO? »

The post How to make YouTube videos responsive appeared first on Yoast.

Writing great page titles and SEO titles is an essential skill for anyone doing SEO. Why? Because the title tag can be the first thing a user sees in the search results and it’s also one of the most important factors that Google uses to determine the topic of a page. Well-written titles are essential to SEO! This article covers why you need great page titles and SEO titles, and how to create them.

Yoast SEO checks if you’ve used your keyphrase in the SEO title and whether your SEO title is a suitable width. It also checks if your post title is empty. Read about how those checks work, and how to use your keyphrase in the title.

What is an SEO page title? 

Let’s start with the basics. If you look at the source of a page (right-click on the page, then choose View Page Source), you find a title in the head section. It looks like this:

<title>This is an example SEO title - Example.com</title>

This is the HTML title tag, which we also call the SEO title. When you look something up in a search engine, you get a list of results that appear as snippets. The part that looks like a headline is the SEO title. The SEO title usually contains the post title, but it can include other elements too, such as the site name. Or even emojis!

In most cases, the first thing people see, even before they get on your site, is the SEO title. In tabbed browsers, you will usually also see the SEO title in the page tab, as shown in the image below.

What’s a post title? How is it different to an SEO title?

The post title (also known as the headline) is the main heading (H1) of your page. Like the title of any document, it gives readers an indication of the topic being discussed. First and foremost, your post title exists for users. It helps them to understand what you’re writing about and adds structure to your page.

Just to be clear, you should not confuse the SEO title with the post title. The SEO title is what appears in the search results; the post title is what users see after they click on the SEO title and get on the page itself.

What’s the purpose of an SEO title?

The purpose of your SEO title is to make people click on it, visit your website and read your post or buy your product. If your title is not good enough, people will ignore it and move on to other results. Essentially, there are two goals that you want to achieve with an SEO title:

1. It must help you rank for a keyword;
2. it must make the user want to click through to your page.

Google uses various signals when deciding how relevant you are for a specific keyword. Even when you’re initially ranking well, if nobody is clicking on your result, your rankings might deteriorate over time. The opposite is also true. At first, you may be positioned lower in the search results. But, if your title gets people to click on it, Google will notice. Consequently, over time, your rankings may improve.

Also, as mentioned before, Google uses what has been specified as your SEO title as ranking input. So it’s not just about those clicks, you also need to make sure that your title reflects the topic being discussed on your page and the keyword that you’re focusing on. The SEO title you use has a direct influence on your ranking.

Now that you know about the importance of SEO titles you’ll be pleased to know that Yoast SEO can help you craft them. In its SEO analysis, the plugin checks two crucial aspects of the SEO title: the width of your title and whether you use your keyword. The Premium version of the plugin also includes a check to make sure your post title (H1 heading) isn’t empty.

What does the empty title check in Yoast SEO do?

The empty title check in Yoast SEO Premium is fairly self-explanatory: it checks whether you’ve filled in any text in the ‘Title’ section of your post. If you haven’t, you’ll see a red traffic light reminding you to add a title. Once this is filled in, the post title can be automatically added to the SEO title field using the ‘Title’ variable:

Note that your post title is output as an H1 heading. You should only use one H1 heading per page to avoid confusing search engines. Don’t worry, we’ve got a check for multiple H1 headings in Yoast SEO too!

What does the SEO title check in Yoast SEO do?

You find this assessment in the SEO tab of the Yoast SEO sidebar or meta box. If you haven’t written an SEO title yet, the assessment will remind you to do so. In addition, Yoast SEO checks the width of your SEO title. When it is too long, you will get a warning. We used to give you a warning if your SEO title was too short as well, but we’ve changed that since our Yoast 17.1 release. A title with an optimal width gets you a green traffic light in the analysis.

How to write an SEO title with an optimal width

If your SEO title doesn’t have the right width, parts of it may be cut off in Google’s search results. How the result looks may vary, depending on the device you’re using. That’s why you can also check how your SEO title will look in the mobile and desktop search results in the Google preview in Yoast SEO. The tool uses the mobile version as a default, but you can also switch to view it in the desktop version.

Here’s a desktop result:

And here’s the mobile result for the same URL:

Width vs. length

Have you noticed that we talk about width rather than length? Why is that? Rather than using a character count, Google has a fixed width for the titles counted in pixels. While your title tags can be long and Google doesn’t have a set limit on the number of characters you can use, there is a limit on what’s visible in the search results. If your SEO title is too wide, Google will cut it off visually. That might not be what you want. Also, you should avoid wasting valuable space by making the title too short. Not only that, the SEO title often informs other title-like elements, such as the og:title , which also have display constraints.

Luckily our Google preview can help you out! You can fill in your SEO title and our plugin will give you feedback straight away. The green line underneath the SEO title turns red when your title is too long. So keep an eye on that, and use the feedback to create great headlines.

• Yoast SEO for WordPress
• Yoast SEO for Shopify

What does the keyphrase in SEO title assessment in Yoast SEO do?

This assessment appears in the SEO tab of the Yoast SEO sidebar in WordPress and Shopify, and also in the meta box in WordPress. It checks if you’re using your keyphrase in the SEO title of your post or page. The plugin check for this is quite strict. Since Google uses the title to figure out your page’s topic, not having the focus keyphrase in the SEO title may harm your rankings. In addition, potential visitors are much more likely to click on a search result that exactly matches what they were looking for. For the best results, you should try to add your keyphrase at the beginning of the SEO title.

How to use your keyphrase in the SEO title

Sometimes, when you’re optimizing for a high-competition keyword, everyone will have the keyword at the beginning of the SEO title. In that case, you can try making it stand out by putting one or two words in front of your focus keyword, thereby slightly “indenting” your result. In Yoast SEO, if you start your SEO title with “the”, “a”, “who” or another function word followed by your keyphrase, you’ll still get a green traffic light.

Other times, like when you have a very long keyphrase, adding the complete keyphrase at the beginning doesn’t make sense. If your SEO title looks weird with the keyphrase at the beginning, try to add as much of the keyphrase as you can, as early in the SEO title as possible. But always keep an eye on the natural flow and readability.

Want to learn all about how to write a text that’s pleasant to read and optimized for search engines? Our SEO copywriting course can help you with that. You can get access to this course, and all of our other SEO courses, with Yoast SEO Premium. This also gives you access to extra features in the Yoast SEO plugin.

Go Premium and get free access to our SEO courses!

Learn how to write great content for SEO and unlock lots of features with Yoast SEO Premium:

Get Yoast SEO Premium »Only $99 USD / year (ex VAT)

Should you add your brand to the SEO title?

For quite some time it was a fashion among some SEOs to leave the site name out of the SEO title. The idea was that the “density” of the title mattered, and the site name wouldn’t help with that. Don’t do this. Your SEO title needs to have your brand in it, preferably in a recognizable way. If people search for a topic and see your brand several times, even if they don’t click on it the first time, they might click when they see you again on their next page of results.

If you don’t include your site name in your SEO title, you’ll also run the risk of Google automatically changing the snippet for you. As explained in our article on why isn’t Google showing my SEO title, Google thinks it needs to be there too. If you want to read more about branding, be sure to read this post by Marieke: 5 tips on branding.

Optimizing titles after publication

A while ago, while looking at our Google Search Analytics data for yoast.com, we noticed that, while we ranked well for [wordpress security], we weren’t getting a lot of traffic for it. We optimized the SEO title and meta description for our WordPress security article and this increased traffic by over 30%. These changes to the title were done around the same time as the update – indicated by the vertical line in the graph below:

The change was fairly simple. Instead of the SEO title being:

WordPress Security • Yoast

We changed it to:

WordPress Security in a few easy steps! • Yoast

As you can see, this doesn’t necessarily improve the rankings of this page at all. From a keyword perspective, the title isn’t much better, but it is more enticing, and it did lead to many more clicks, which, of course, was the desired result.

Note: Google won’t always use your SEO title

In August 2021, Google announced an update on how they generate titles in search result snippets. This means that sometimes they will show a different title in their search results than the one you set. Before we get into that, it’s good to note that in most cases (more than 80% of the time) the HTML title tag that your page outputs is still the most likely to be used.

Although we’re talking about an update here, Google deciding on how to display your SEO title in the search results is nothing new. They’ve been doing this for a while now. What is new is that they now want to use one title only, and won’t change it up anymore for different search queries. And that they will use different elements on your page to decide on what this title displayed in the search results will be. Elements such as your title tag, headings, prominent text on the page, and even how you link internally to this page.

So what does this mean for you? Right now these changes don’t require you to do anything different. The SEO title you set is still very likely to be used, and more importantly, your title helps you rank for a keyword. These changes don’t impact your page rankings. The title you give is what Google will look at when deciding how your page ranks. Just like before.

But, with all these changes, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on how Google displays the titles of your most important pages! So we recommend you monitor the situation with your site for the time being. Keep an eye on Google Search Console, spot-check your search results, and look out for changes in the click-through and bounce rates for your key pages. If you find anything problematic (or just really, really wrong) you can let Google know in this feedback thread.

Titles for social media

What might be a good SEO title isn’t necessarily a good title for social media. In social media, keyword optimization is less important than creating a title that entices people to click. You often don’t need to include the brand name in the title. This is especially true for Facebook and Twitter if you include some form of branding in your post image. Our social previews in Yoast SEO Premium and Yoast SEO for Shopify can help you with that.

If you’re using Yoast SEO, you can have a separate title for Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Just enter the Google title in the Yoast SEO snippet editor. The Facebook and Twitter title can be entered on the social tab in their respective fields. If you don’t enter a specific Twitter title, Twitter will use the Facebook title instead.

Conclusion: Craft your (SEO) titles well!

In conclusion, the main point of this article is to encourage you to invest a little more time in writing good titles. It really is worth it. Going back and optimizing some of your SEO titles after publication might also be worthwhile. This is especially true if you’re already ranking well, but aren’t getting very many clicks.

Read more: How to create the right meta description »

The post How to craft great page titles for SEO appeared first on Yoast.

Yoast SEO 19.9 and Yoast SEO Premium 19.4 are out now. In these releases, we’ve enhanced support for Google’s new Site Names in the mobile search results. Yoast SEO for Shopify will get this expanded support for site names later this week. We’ve also improved our Premium analysis and did many fixes and enhancements — including some provided by community members. Find out more!

Yoast SEO already supports Google’s new Site Names

Last week, Google introduced an updated way of presenting Site Names in mobile search results. This update makes it easier to identify the website that belongs to each search result. One of the things Google looks for to find out what to show is WebSite structured data, with a name property. This has been available in Yoast SEO for quite some time, so you are ready for this update. Yoast SEO outputs this value correctly using the WordPress site name, but we are going one step beyond with Yoast SEO 19.9. Yoast SEO for Shopify will get this expanded support for site names later this week.

In this release, we’re giving you, as site owners, more control over this value. For this, we’ve added input fields to overwrite the site name and an extra input field for a (potentially shorter) alternate name, which we output as alternateName. This is what the fields look like:

New in Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast SEO Premium helps you write more naturally. It has many intelligent features and additional feedback to help you write better copy for your audience and search engines. One of the most incredible things about the Yoast SEO Premium analysis is that it can recognize different grammatical forms of your keyphrase words, making optimizing your content more seamless.

We’re continually improving the Premium analysis with better algorithms, new features, and assessments. For instance, in Yoast SEO Premium 19.4, we’ve added a new assessment that checks if you’ve added a title to the post. Having a good title is essential as it can do wonders for your SEO, but sometimes people forget to add one while rushing to get their posts published. This check is a helpful reminder for them. While at it, learn how to create great titles for your content.

A new addition to the crawl cleanup settings

A new addition to the crawl settings in Yoast SEO Premium is the option to redirect ‘pretty’ search URLs to their ‘raw’ equivalent. Managing how search engines access and crawl your internal site search URLs can significantly impact your site’s SEO. But WordPress supports two different formats of site search URLs, which means twice the number of things that Google has to crawl. We provide an option to turn off one of these formats. That’s good for your SEO and good for the environment.

WordPress supports two formats for site search queries. The raw one looks like this: example.com/?s=example, while a pretty one appears once you activate pretty permalinks: example.com/search/example/. Supporting the ‘raw’ as opposed to the ‘pretty’ version may seem unintuitive, but there’s a reason we made this choice. The raw version is relatively universal and language/territory-agnostic in a way that ‘search’ isn’t, even though WordPress doesn’t support translating that string. Plus, the raw version is more natively interoperable with most analytics and tracking systems, whereas ‘search’ requires customization, which can be a lot of work.

With this new addition to the crawl settings, we give you even more control over which URLs you want to have crawled.

Community improvements

In Yoast SEO 19.9, we’re adding a list of improvements suggested by our developer community. For instance, Sven von Arx suggested an improved way to filter the term crumbs in a breadcrumb with wpseo_breadcrumb_links, so we’ve added taxonomy information to breadcrumbs.

Sergey Svetlichnyy from the SEO data platform Ahrefs asked us to add a wpseo_primary_category_admin_pages filter to use the primary category in the post URL of additional admin pages besides the default ones. Thanks to Saša Todorović, we’ve fixed a bug where social or canonical URLs containing @ would lead to encoding issues. And Fedir Kudinov from Ukraine fixed a Schema bug where the number of words in a text written in Cyrillic (Russian and Ukrainian) was incorrectly calculated.

Other fixes and enhancements

In the last release, we deprecated the old Twitter card format but deleted a filter that should have stayed in place. In this release, we’re reinstating the wpseo_twitter_card_type filter that was wrongly deprecated in Yoast SEO 19.8. We’ve also added an option to track keyphrases once you connect to Wincher immediately. And we no longer output an empty array if no social profiles have been added for an Organization.

Update now to Yoast SEO

As you can see, there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in this release. We’re enhancing support for Google’s new site name update, adding a new assessment to and improving the Premium analysis, having some help from our developer community, and adding some more enhancements.

Happy updating!

The post Yoast SEO: Enhanced support for Google Site Names appeared first on Yoast.

You might have heard about structured data, Schema.org, and JSON-LD. You might have even heard that it’s becoming more and more important to add them to your site. But what do these terms mean exactly? What is structured data? And what does it have to do with SEO? We’ll explain all of this, and how to get started, in this post!

What is structured data?

Structured data is a way of describing your site to make it easier for search engines to understand. To describe your site to search engines, you’ll need a vocabulary that presents content in a way that search engines can understand. The vocabulary used by the big search engines is called Schema.org, which translates your content into code that they can easily process. Search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a specific and much richer way. You can easily put this piece of code on your website.

Imagine you have a website with a lot of recipes. If you add structured data to a page with a recipe, your result in the search engines might change. It will be much “richer” regarding the other content that’s shown. That’s the reason we call these results rich results or rich snippets. Here’s what a rich result can look like:

Besides the title, the URL, and the description of the search result, you can see how long it will take to make the world’s best lasagna. Also, you’ll see how many calories the lasagne contains. You need to add structured data to your web page to get such a rich snippet. This also works for the products you offer in your Shopify online store.

In the following video, we explain what structured data is:

Want to know everything about structured data? Take our Understanding structured data training course! In this course we explain what structured data is in detail and how you can improve your chances of getting rich results. Get access to this course, all of our other SEO courses and extra features in Yoast SEO by going Premium:

There are lots of different rich results

There are all kinds of structured data. It’s always a code format. You have them for books, for reviews, for movies, and for products in your online store, for instance. In all cases, it adds more details to your snippet in the search results. Browse Google’s Search Gallery to see which rich results are powered by structured data.

We have to make one side note here. Unfortunately, Google does not always create a rich snippet of your page, even if you’ve added the structured data. There are no guarantees. So all you can do is add it to your page, and hope Google will pick it up!

But why do we structure data?

It’s quite simple, we structure data so computers can easily read, understand and categorize that information.

Structured data refers to data that is organized, while unstructured data is unorganized data. For instance, this sentence: “Marieke is the author of this post and she works at Yoast” contains unorganized data.

As humans, it’s easy for us to understand the sentence and information in it. Marieke is a person, she’s an author, she works at Yoast, and Yoast is a company. Search engines can also understand and organize this information, but it’s not immediately clear to them. They would need to do a bunch of analysis to reach the same conclusion as us, while we do that simultaneously as we read.

That’s because the above sentence contains ambiguous information. We know Marieke is a person because we see her author profile and we know Yoast is a company because it has a website and offers products. But to search engines, Marieke might be the name of a company, while Yoast may just be the name of the author. By structuring all this data, you disambiguate it to search engines, helping them to serve better information to searchers.

The need for structured data

As technology advances and the internet grows in size and complexity, the need for structured data also grows exponentially. While Google and other search engines become smarter and more advanced over the years, their resources are still limited. They only have so much time, processing power, and energy to distribute across all the activities required to keep search engines up and running. And they still struggle to serve the most helpful and relevant results to users’ queries.

Structured data can help take some work off search engines. When you add structured data to your pages, you facilitate search engines to serve better and richer results. You also help them save resources like processing power and energy which they can use somewhere else.

What do you do with structured data?

With structured data, you can “talk” to search engines. You can tell the search engines which ingredients there are in your recipe, you can tell them how long the preparation time is, and you can tell them how many calories the dish will contain. You can tell who made your Shopify products, for what price you sell them, and what people thought of them. Google will be able to grasp all that information instantly and can decide to show it in the search results.

Structured data is a tool you can use to tell Google detailed information about a page on your website. Then, Google can use this information to create informative, rich results. And audiences love these rich snippets.

What is Schema.org?

The big search engines have developed a project called Schema.org. On Schema.org you can find all the structured data markup supported by the search engines. This makes Schema.org a large collection of pieces of code.

You can use Schema.org to find the markup you need for your particular page. For instance, if you sell t-shirts on your Shopify store, you could show what color t-shirts you sell and what sizes you offer in your snippet. You should investigate Schema.org/Product and find out the possibilities. Yoast SEO for Shopify and WooCommerce SEO automatically add this for your products.

On Schema.org, you can copy code examples. After copying it, you’ll have to adapt the code to your specific preferences. You can also use SEO tools like Yoast SEO first-time configuration or the initial setup in Yoast SEO for Shopify to help you get started with structured data.

Schema.org is a taxonomy of code formats that the large search engines understand. You’ll find examples of what the code looks like. There are other forms as well. For instance Open Graph (used by Facebook) and Twitter cards (used by Twitter).

Read our history of Schema if you’d like to know more about how this came to be. Or check out the digital story we made on rich results, structured data and Schema.

Read more: Why Schema needs to be a graph »

What is JSON-LD?

JSON-LD is one of the markups of Schema.org. It’s just a way to write code. On Schema.org, you’ll also find other markups like Microdata or RDFa. At Yoast, we’ll advise you always to use JSON-LD, because it does not break your site as easily as other markups do. Plus, it’s the format that Google prefers. Yoast SEO automatically adds lots of structured data JSON-LD to your site. That’s not possible with the other markups.

Why is structured data important for SEO?

Structured data is important for SEO because it’ll make it easier for Google to understand what your pages, products, and your website are about. Google needs to find out what a page is about to show it in the search results. Using structured data is like talking to Google and telling Google what your site is about. That’ll help with your rankings.

On top of that, structured data will change the way your snippet (your search results) will look like. It’ll show more information to your customer. More specific information. And this will increase the likelihood a customer will click on your results. More clicks will eventually lead to even higher rankings! We’re seeing more and more structured data powered rich results pop up, so it is important to keep an eye on this.

How to use structured data?

Using it may sound complex, but everyone can do it as we made the essential pieces of structured data automatically available in our plugins. If you want to adapt or expand these, you might need some development skills. You have to get the correct code, you’ll have to adjust that code, and you’ll need a way to put it on your site.

We already have written a lot of posts about Schema.org and JSON-LD, which will help you to understand more about this subject. In addition, we’ve launched a free Structured data for beginners course to get you started and an Understanding structured data course that helps you understand this topic in even more detail.

No code hero? Use a plugin!

A lot of structured data markup can also be added to your website using plugins. As mentioned, Yoast SEO automatically adds the most important data for your site. You can even determine per page or article what type of content is on there. So, you can describe the Contact page on your site as being a ContactPage to search engines. You can do this by simply selecting the type in the Schema tab in the meta box or the block editor sidebar. In addition, you can use the free Yoast SEO content blocks to markup your FAQ pages and how-to articles with valid structured data.

Our local SEO plugin uses structured data to show your store’s location or multiple locations, while the WooCommerce SEO plugin improves the structured data of your products. The same goes for our Yoast SEO for Shopify app and we discuss this in the Shopify SEO ultimate guide.

You don’t have to write code to get that rich snippet, you’ll just use our WordPress plugins or Shopify app, fill out some details and we’ll do it for you. And there are many more plugins that’ll help you use structured data without the need to struggle with any code!

Keep reading: Structured data: the ultimate guide »

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Does having multiple similar pages cause problems for SEO? Can you write about the same topic many times and still get all those pages ranking? It can seem like a real conundrum, but there are solutions. In this post, we’ll consider the issues and options for getting multiple posts about the same topic to rank.

Can you cover the same topic twice in your blog? The simple answer is ‘yes’, you definitely can. But it’s worth thinking about whether that’s something you really want to do. It’s much easier to get your content ranking when you stick to one page per topic. If you really need to have multiple posts covering the same topic, it is possible to rank them all. You just need to make some careful adjustments.

What can go wrong with your SEO?

When creating multiple similar pages, there are a couple of issues that can arise: duplicate content, and keyword cannibalization.

When you have a lot of content similarity across multiple pages, search engines don’t know which one they should show in the search results. As a result, all of those pages can end up ranking lower than they otherwise would. This is known as a duplicate content problem.

Meanwhile, keyword cannibalization can occur even if the content on your pages is very different. If both posts target the same keyword, you can end up competing with yourself in the search results. Again, Google and other search engines won’t know which page to rank higher. Both pages can suffer as a result.

Can you avoid creating similar content?

Of course, the best way to avoid duplicate content and keyword cannibalization issues is not to create them in first place! It’s worth asking yourself these questions:

Firstly, do you really need multiple pages on this topic? Would it be possible to combine those posts instead? If you do need both pages to exist independently, do they both need to appear in the search results? You could set your preferred page as canonical if the others don’t need to rank. Or stop search engines from showing certain posts by noindexing them.

If you’ve decided it’s best to keep all of your similar pages, and you want them all to appear in the search results, then you need another solution. There must be some difference between your pages, if you’ve decided to keep them all separate, right? Thinking about why each post needs to exist can help you figure out what the difference is. And how to make that difference clear to search engines.

Think about long-tail keywords

Are your pages about different aspects of the same topic? Then you might want to think about targeting long-tail keywords, instead of having them all target one head keyword. Long-tail keywords can help you drill down into various related topics and subtopics, creating many more opportunities to rank. It also helps you to tailor your content to answer more specific questions and meet different needs. This can be a powerful strategy if you’re producing a lot of content around similar topics.

Same topic, different search intent?

If the topic is truly identical, maybe the difference is that each page targets a different search intent. For instance, one page might offer in-depth information about guitars, while another similar post exists for users to actually buy a guitar. Often, Google or other search engines can pick up on the search intent different pages will be suitable for (even when they target the same keyword). However, there is a better way to make sure they know the difference: schema!

Use schema to show the difference between similar pages

Structured data is a special kind of metadata for your posts. It gives search engines extra information to help them understand what each post is about. In the case of similar pages with different search intents, that can be a great solution.

Rather than relying on search engines to figure out that one page is an informative post about guitars, and another one is a sales page, you can just tell them what the difference is. By marking up the first post as an article and the other page as a product page, you can make each page’s purpose absolutely clear.

“But isn’t schema hard to get right?”

It’s true, working with Schema.org structured data can get very technical. But with Yoast SEO you don’t need to worry about that! Our plugins do all the hard work behind-the-scenes, so all you need to do is let us know what kind of page you have and fill in the gaps. Developed with some of the world’s top schema experts, you can rely on Yoast SEO to get your structured data right.

Tip: If you’re working with product pages, be sure to check out our WooCommerce SEO plugin. It comes with a whole bundle of schema dedicated to making sure your products stand out in the search results. Not a WooCommerce user? We have a Yoast SEO for Shopify app, too!

So there you have it: how to rank with multiple similar pages

As you can see, it is possible to rank with two very similar pages. But it can take some work! It’s always best to consider why you want to create similar content first. If you have good reasons, then it’s all about finding the difference between those pages, and making that difference clear to search engines. That’s really all there is to it!

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At Yoast, we often advise that you should write for your users and not yourself. Why? Because they’re the ones who visit your site and read your content. But did you know there’s a specific type of writing that focuses solely on creating a good user experience? It’s called UX copywriting. In this blog, we’ll explain what it is, and why you should start implementing it too. Finally, we’ll give you five tips so you can get started!

What is UX copywriting?

Okay, first things first. UX copywriting stands for user experience copywriting. In other words: Text that makes interacting with your website or product as easy and seamless as possible. It guides the user through your website or interface, and helps them navigate your product. More specifically, UX copy can be the text on menu labels and buttons, but also chatbot messages, error messages and success messages. For example: “You’ve now completed the SEO workout. Good job!”

If you want to know more, you can read our article on what UX is and why it’s important.

What’s the difference between copywriting and UX copywriting?

Good question! The main goal of copywriting is to boost sales and increase traffic to your website. Basically, you want to attract new customers and persuade them to buy your product or service. UX copywriting, however, is not about selling or persuading. You want to improve the user experience by guiding them quickly and effortlessly through your website or product. 

Why you should focus on UX copywriting

As a website owner, you probably have a goal for your website. This could be to attract more visitors, generate more leads or sell your product. In order to achieve this, people have to understand how to navigate your website and your product. It’s great if they find your site, but if they don’t know how to sign up for your email or buy your service, then you’re missing out! That’s where UX copywriting comes in. It helps and guides people, so they know how to use your website.

5 tips to improve your UX copywriting

Now you understand what UX copy is, and why you should focus on it. The next step: Actually writing it! Here are five tips to help you improve your UX copywriting. 

1. Your writing needs to be clear

This sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s important to remember. Your users should understand what action they’re taking when they click on a button, what it requires of them, and what the outcome of clicking will be. With UX copywriting, you shouldn’t ‘trick’ your customers. If your button says “Try for free”, then users should really be able to try it for free. 

2. Be concise

Don’t use too many words! Think about the last time you installed a new app or program. You wanted to get through the setup as quickly as possible, right? Chances are, it’s the same for your users. Besides, a wall of text will not only seem like a chore to read, but too many words can also confuse your users. Instead, try to convey the message as concisely as possible. This doesn’t always mean to use as few words as possible. Sometimes it’s about only using words that have a function. A simple “Wrong password” can be sufficient.

3. Don’t write like a robot

Because you’re not! Unless your brand’s mascot is a cute little robot like Discord, it’s better to write like a human. Plus, other humans are more likely to understand and connect with your writing. A great example of this is Duolingo. Instead of writing: “All progress will be lost if you close this window. Are you sure?”, users see this message: “Wait, don’t go! You’re right on track. If you quit now, you’ll lose your progress.”. Sounds more human, doesn’t it?

Let’s look at another Duolingo example.

This is a good example of fun and clear copywriting. First, the button on the lower half of the screen is clear and concise. Second, below the blue button is a helpful link for users who don’t know what a streak is. And third, the white text explains in a fun way that users also need to practice tomorrow or else they’ll lose their streak. This message is also visualized with the calendar. That’s what you call good UX design and copywriting!

4. Put yourself in your user’s shoes

It isn’t UX copywriting if you aren’t thinking about your user every step of the way. Ask yourself: What does the user want? What could they be worried about? How can I improve their experience? Try to look at your product or website from their point of view.

For example, if your user is filling in personal information, they might be worried they can’t change it later on. By adding a simple “Don’t worry! You can change this information later” message, you’ll be taking away a lot of concerns and improving the user’s experience.

5. Be inclusive

Imagine you just downloaded a new app. You’re excited to use it, but as you’re setting it up, the text doesn’t address you at all. What’s worse, when you have to fill in personal details, your identity is not even an option! That’s bad UX writing. You shouldn’t exclude people, whether it’s for their gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. Especially for languages that use different forms depending on gender, it’s good to be aware of this. 

Good news: the Yoast SEO Premium plugin now offers an inclusive language check! This feature reads your texts and checks if you’re using words that don’t discriminate people based on age, appearance, race, disability, gender, and much more.

Conclusion: UX copywriting is important

Creating a pleasant and easy experience for your users is more important than ever. Especially if you work in a field with a lot of competition. Even if your product or website is amazing, if people don’t know how to use it, they won’t. So take a look at your product from a user’s point of view. Write copy that will smoothly guide them through your product, while anticipating any worries they might have. Just a few words can already make a huge difference! 

Read more: SEO copywriting: The ultimate guide »

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Writing a successful blog post all comes down to the proper preparations. It starts before you even begin writing: what do you want to say and to whom do you want to say it? You might want to get going right away but remember: writing takes some time. And once you’ve written an awesome blog post, you’ll need to invest time in promoting it and keeping the content up to date. Today, we’ll cover all you need to do to write a successful blog post, from the first inception, to long after publication. So let’s dive right in!

Before we get going with our step by step guide, have a quick look at this image that depicts the three phases of a proper writing process: 

In total, there are 6 steps you should take when writing and publishing a blog post. Does this sound a bit overwhelming? Don’t worry, at the end of this post, you’ll find a practical (and downloadable) checklist with an overview of these steps!

• Step 1: Preparation
  • What is the purpose of your post?
  • What is the main message of your post?
  • Who are your readers?
  • What information do you need?
  • What's the best way to structure your text?
• Step 2: Write your blog post!
• Step 3: Correcting, editing and optimizing
  • Optimize your post for the search engines
• Step 4: Practicalities before publishing
  • Don’t forget to add images
  • Add categories and tags
  • Optimize for social media
• Step 5: After publishing your post
  • Share your post on social media
  • Internal linking to a new post from other posts

Step 1: Preparation

Let’s say you’ve taken a good look at your keyword research and decided upon a topic for your next blog post. Don’t start typing just yet. First, it’s time to prepare the post! That means you have to answer a few questions. And trust me, answering these questions will definitely help you write a great blog. So, let’s have a look at the questions you should ask yourself:

What is the purpose of your post?

Before you start writing, you should first take some time to think about why you’re writing and what you want to achieve with this specific article. Articles can have different purposes:

• You can write because you want to persuade people. You want to convince them to buy your product or adopt your ideas. 
• The aim of your article could also be to entertain and amuse people. A column is a good example of an entertaining text. 
• Your blog or article could also be informative. In this case, you want to share knowledge about a certain topic. 

Different articles on your website can have different purposes. A blog can be informative as well as entertaining. In any case, it’s important to think about the purpose of your article because it will give you a direction to follow. An article that intends to persuade people should be written differently than an article with a solely informative or amusing function. 

Read more: Why the purpose of your text is important for SEO »

What is the main message of your post?

You should also think about what you want your readers to know or take away after they’ve read your text. We refer to this as the message of your text.

In order to formulate your message, you could try to phrase a question which your text should answer. We refer to such a question as the central question of a text. And the text you write should give an answer to your central question. So make sure that your central question is clear. Try to come up with a summarized answer to your central question in one or two sentences. This summarized answer is the message of your article. 

We usually put the message in the introduction of the post (where you tell readers what the post is about) as well as in the conclusion of the piece. Making your message explicit is, in our opinion, especially important in web texts. It helps readers to instantly grasp the message of your article and increases the likelihood people will keep reading.

Who are your readers?

Ideally, you already thought about the kind of audience you want to reach when you started your website. But it never hurts to remind yourself before writing your text. So, take some time to think about the people you are writing for. Make sure you adapt your text to them and adjust the difficulty level of the information in your article as well as the difficulty of your style (use of jargon, long sentences etc.). A good rule of thumb is to keep things readable and accessible to reach a wider audience.

What information do you need?

In some cases, all the information you need to write your text is already in your head. For example, if the chef of a local Italian restaurant wants to write a blog post about the types and uses of pasta, they probably don’t need to open any books. But if they want to write an elaborate culinary history about 500 years of Italian cuisine, they might need some other sources. So, determine whether you need sources (the internet, books, newspapers) to get the information you need for your text. 

You should take the central question of your piece and come up with a number of sub-questions you want to answer. Find and formulate answers to all your sub-questions using your sources (books, the internet, scientific articles, etc.). This will provide you with the basis of your post or article.

After this phase, you might want to make some adjustments to the (central) message of your article. Take some time to phrase or rephrase your message (the summarized answer to your central question) to make it entirely clear.

What’s the best way to structure your text?

The final step in the preparation process is the most important one. You have to decide how you’ll structure the information you want to communicate to your readers. If you don’t think about this beforehand, odds are your text will lack a logical order and will be hard to follow for your audience. A proper text structure is also important for SEO. Not sure how to begin? This post offers practical tips to create a decent structure.

Step 2: Write your blog post!

At this point, you’ll have all the information you need and an outline of the subjects you want to discuss in your blog post. And yes, this means it’s finally time to start writing. So get going! And don’t worry, your text doesn’t have to be perfect yet. You can edit things later on.

Try to stick to the structure you decided on and make sure your tone and style are in line with the audience you want to reach. Also, you don’t have to write your blog post from start to end. Feel free to switch between paragraphs, and skip hard bits to get back to later on. Whatever feels most natural to you!

Keep reading: SEO Copywriting: The ultimate guide »

Step 3: Correcting, editing and optimizing

Once you’ve put everything on (digital) paper, it’s time for the editing phase. Now, you should look more closely at your text and smooth out weird sentences and errors. This means checking for mistakes on a sentence and paragraph level, and also evaluating whether the structure of your blog post actually makes sense. If you’re not an experienced writer, it can be very helpful to use online spell checks or to ask someone you know to read your text. Another pair of eyes has a fresh perspective on your text and can, therefore, spot mistakes much more easily.

Optimize your post for the search engines

Optimizing for search engines should, of course, be a big part of preparing your post for publication. For example, it’s important to check the distribution of your keywords, meta description and the readability of your text. As you know, the Yoast plugin offers a lot of help with this step! Check out the SEO analysis tool, and our post on how to optimize your blog post.

Step 4: Practicalities before publishing

Before you send your new masterpiece into the world, there are a few more things to do to improve your post’s chances to do well: 

Don’t forget to add images

Images are an invaluable addition to (almost) every blog post. So before publishing your post, you need to add at least one quality image and make sure your images are optimized. Some bloggers prefer to create photos and images before they start writing their texts. Others prefer to first write and then find the correct images. Whether you use stock photos or create your own graphics, make sure you have at least a header image that can also be shared on social media. In Yoast SEO Premium, there is a social preview where you can see what it looks like when your post is shared on Facebook or Twitter. Here, you can also set a different social image if desired.

Add categories and tags

Categories and tags provide an extra layer of structure for your site, so you really need to give some thought to how you use those. As you’re preparing your blog post, it’s easy to forget to add the right taxonomies. So check whether you’ve done that before you hit the publish button!

Optimize for social media

Not only can you set your own social image in Yoast SEO Premium, you can also write a different description for Facebook and Twitter than for Google. People who find you through Facebook often have a different connection with you than those who find you through Google. Make sure the description resembles that! 

If Pinterest is a platform that’s relevant to your blog, you should design a Pinterest image before you launch your post. This image should have a ratio of 2:3, which means it’s vertical. Good to know: Pinterest has a scheduling feature, which means you can schedule your pin before publishing the post. Just make sure you put the correct publishing URL in!

Read on: 10 tips to streamline your blog content workflow »

Step 5: After publishing your post

After publishing your blog post, you can either sit back and hope people will pick up your newest masterpiece or you can take action to draw attention to your new post. It’s time to make some noise and get the story out there!

Share your post on social media

Although social media are designed to keep users on their platforms, your followers love hearing from you. Especially if you write for your social audience, it’s important to post your blog posts on your social media accounts. There are plugins that push your blog posts to social media as soon as you hit publish, but you could also do this yourself.

And although Pinterest isn’t a social medium but a visual search engine, we’ll discuss it here as well. While Google finds out about your new blog post through crawling and sitemaps, Pinterest doesn’t. So, if you want your content on Pinterest, you need to actually tell Pinterest you have a new post by posting to the platform. So if you have not used the scheduler or want to place your pins on more boards, now is the time to do so!

Internal linking to a new post from other posts

Are you aware of the importance of site structure? To improve your post’s chances to rank, you should add internal links. Internal links are links that are in your text, which tell Google all about context. It’s important to link to your blog post. While writing your post, you most likely already linked to other posts you’ve written. After publishing, make sure you check which blog posts could have a link to your new post and add those links immediately. 

Step 6: A while after publishing your blog post

To make sure your blog posts don’t disappear in the large sea of content out there, it’s important to keep working on promoting and improving them even after they’ve been published for a while. 

Include posts in the newsletter

A lot of businesses maintain a newsletter. If you send out a newsletter, you have to decide if you are going to share all your recent blog posts, or will only share your funniest or most informative ones. You can share your newest blog post in today’s newsletter. And if it’s still relevant six months from now, or you’re doing a themed newsletter, you can include it again. The bottom line is: If the content is still relevant, it won’t matter if the article is one week or one month old.

Repost on social media

You shared your blog post on social media right after you published it, but that doesn’t mean you cannot republish it again after a few months! The same goes for the newsletter. Of course, don’t overdo it, but you can certainly reshare something 6 months after you first shared it. You can even decide to use another social image or another introduction text to give the social media post a different look.

Analyze the post’s performance

After a month or so, you can start to analyze your post’s performance. This is something you need to do regularly, for instance, every three months. You should look at Google Analytics and check Google Search Console to see how people find your blog post, but also whether you’re ranking for the keywords you want to rank for and if you should create more posts surrounding the subject or make the blog post even more in-depth. 

Optimize where necessary

SEO is an ongoing process. One month, you may rank #1 for a keyword, while the next month your competitor has created a better piece and starts ranking first. And did you know that search intent for a keyword can change over time? In short, you should periodically revisit your blog post with the data you have collected, then optimize where necessary. 

Check what your competition does better than you and decide whether you want to optimize. Do you feel it’s worth your time to improve a post if you dropped from first to second place? Optimizing could mean you need to focus more on things like link building, or Schema. Check what your competitors do that you don’t. Don’t copy, but learn from them.

While updating and optimizing your content, it might be a good idea to work from a copy of the original post. This makes it possible to work on your update without bothering visitors with work that’s half-done. By using the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin, you can clone the original post. Simply edit this clone to your heart’s content, then copy the content over to the original post once you are done.

More internal linking

Ideally, you already worked on your internal linking when you just published your post. If you did and kept an eye on it over time, then you can skip this step. If not, you probably need to work on your internal linking again! Use the orphaned content filter in Yoast SEO Premium to see which articles need some attention regarding internal linking.

Practical checklist

To keep track of what you need to do to write and publish a perfect blog post, we created a checklist. You can print it out and keep it with you as a cheat sheet when you’re preparing, writing, and fine-tuning your text. We even added some empty checkboxes so you can add extra steps if we didn’t cover something you consider absolutely necessary! Download the free checklist here!

Conclusion

Writing a blog post can be a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. You need to invest time in preparing and writing your blog post. And once it’s written, it’s important that you make sure it gets the attention it deserves by sharing and improving your text. This might seem like a lot, but in the end, you’ll see your content consistently perform well. And trust us, it will be worth it!

Keep on reading: SEO copywriting: The ultimate guide »

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