SEO + Follow

Reviews or testimonials are mostly said to work based on social proof. Social proof is a psychological process in which people copy the behavior of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior. In addition, search engines are increasingly looking for that proof as well. In this post, I’ll look at how reviews work, how …

This month, Google held their annual I/O conference, an event at which they announce new product releases and other interesting stuff. They introduced us to MUM, their new language model and the next step in understanding online content. But meeting (their) MUM wasn’t all. There was lots of SEO news in May 2021 and our …

Have you ever looked at a piece of content online and thinking: Hmm, I’m not sure I can trust this? Who wrote this? Why should I believe a word of what they are saying? This happens more often than you think, especially if you are looking for content that you use to make decisions that …

When publishing a new video on your website, there are several considerations you need to take into account for video SEO. Not only does the video itself need to be optimized, but so does the page it’s embedded on. In this post, we’ll explain what you can do to work on your on-page video SEO. …

Wondering what a niche is, and how can you find yours? Google defines a niche as: “products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population”. That’s a bit abstract, but the chances are that you already have a good idea of what your niche is, and you just need to …

Natural language understanding has been a tough nut to crack, but thanks to Google’s continued investment in AI, it has reached a whole new level. At I/O 2021, Google introduced MUM — Multitask United Model. According to Google, this new language model is 1000x powerful than BERT, released in 2019. MUM is coming to Google …

If you have a website for a business, it’s essential to maintain a good contact page so that (potential) customers can contact you or find your store. Not only is it detrimental to UX if your visitors end up struggling to contact you — you could lose out on sales, too. So it’s not good …

Rich search results are everywhere. Years ago, search engines presented search results without much adornment. Today, the search results look very different, especially on mobile. We see extra information beneath the links, plus a couple of big blocks of rich — often visual or action-oriented — content, depending on what you look for. In this …

Making sure search engines can understand your site is one of the top priorities in SEO. One of the most effective ways of getting that understanding is to add Schema.org structured data. This describes the different parts of a page to get what every piece is about. Yoast SEO adds structured data automatically, plus it …

People often ask us to explain what makes a good website. Whether we have a list of elements that a great site should have. There isn’t an easy, one-size-fits-all answer to this. As in many things SEO, the answer will be: it depends. What kind of site do you have, who do you want to …

This month we are commemorating 5 years since the Yoast SEO readability check was first released! Since then, we’ve continued making improvements. We sat down with our Linguistics team lead, Manuel Augustin, and researcher-developer, Hanna Worku, to get a deeper view of how the readability check works and how they adapt the tool to add …

Creating content is essential for SEO. However, if you’re a blogger or content creator of some kind, chances are that you feel stuck from time to time. You’ve made the time to write, but nothing comes to mind. A writer’s block. This is where creative writing exercises can help: they give your brain the space …

The canonical URL allows you to tell search engines that certain similar URLs are actually one and the same. Learn how to use rel=canonical!

Writing seems simple enough, but writing a compelling text that keeps the attention is quite hard. Especially online. To keep people on your page, you need to write quality content that’s easy to read. Easier said than done? You’re absolutely right. That’s why we introduced a readability analysis in our Yoast SEO plugin five years …

When it comes to writing, it can be hard to look at your work objectively. Of course, most of us are able to write a few paragraphs or article on a certain topic. But making sure that your text is entertaining and easy-to-read is where it gets more challenging. Using too many difficult words, long …

One of the things you can do to present your local business better in search results is Schema.org data for rich snippets. By adding structured data to your site, you can help search engines understand what your business is about and how it performs. For this reason, you have to add your NAP details, a …

If you have a business nowadays, your website might just have become your lifeline. There’s no time to waste: Let’s get started with SEO and improve your rankings in Google. Keyword research is an essential first step. Here, you’ll find out what it is and which factors you should take into account. What is keyword …

WordPress wouldn’t be WordPress if it wasn’t for the people. A strong community that’s open to anyone that wants to do something with this open-source platform. But also a community that’s made up of a lot of volunteers, people investing a lot of their time and other resources to make WordPress even better. To make …

A good XML sitemap acts as a roadmap of your website that leads Google to all your important pages. XML sitemaps can be good for SEO, as they allow Google to find your essential website pages quickly, even if your internal linking isn’t perfect. This post explains what they are and how they help you …

Every business owner with a website is looking for ways to get noticed in the search results. Now, during the pandemic, it’s essential to offer customers an up-to-date Google profile for your business. There are loads of tactics to rank well as a local business, but there is no silver bullet. As with most SEO …

If you take your SEO and users seriously, you’ll be working on a kick-ass site structure. But, setting up a decent site structure can be challenging. Maintaining a decent site structure when your site is growing, is even harder. With all these new pages on your site, it’s easy to overlook something or make a …

Going to the gym regularly might get you fit, but dropping that routine will get out out of shape in no time. The same goes for your website — without a good fitness routine and proper maintenance, it might become a mess. Yoast SEO helps your site with its technical SEO fitness and gives you …

One of the focal points of Yoast SEO is getting out of your way. If we look at the technical aspects of SEO, Yoast SEO gets stuff done. Plus, most of it happens in the background, without you noticing it. But whenever you need to dive deeper and customize your setup for specific use cases, …

In April 2021, Google changed how they assess content which ‘reviews’ products and services. The “Product reviews update” made it harder for pages that do little more than “summarize a bunch of products” to rank highly. But, unlike many other Google updates, this one came with a cheat sheet that describes what site editors need …

One of the big questions with video SEO is whether you’re better off hosting all your videos on YouTube or whether you should host them on a different platform. Hosting your videos on YouTube means driving traffic to your content on youtube.com. Hosting your videos on another platform allows you to make your website the …

A bit of a scandal involving hospitals and the noindex tag, a postponed deadline for your Core Web Vitals and a whole new editing experience in WordPress. Our SEO experts Joost de Valk and Jono Alderson discussed the latest SEO news in April 2021 in our monthly webinar. If you’ve missed it, or simply want …

Have you been in the SEO industry for a couple of years? Then you’ve probably noticed that keyword density (or keyphrase density) has a bad reputation. So why do we still include it in Yoast SEO’s content analysis? When used correctly, the keyword density metric can be a great way to help writers keep their …

The web, and our online habits with it, are never at a standstill. One result of our fast-paced online behavior is that we scroll through our social media channels like nobody’s business. Or without having our full attention on it. Most of the time, your social image is the first (or only) thing that users …

Your focus keyphrase is the keyword(s) you want your post or page to rank for. If you’re particularly eager to rank for a specific keyword, you’ll probably be tempted to optimize many articles on your site for that keyphrase. But, that’s not what a focus keyphrase is for! You should only ever use a focus …

Here’s the thing: your site should be mobile-friendly. This should be your number one priority. If you want to optimize your mobile site, you have to improve your site’s performance, plus you have to make sure that it offers users an excellent user experience. In this SEO basics article, you’ll find an overview of what …