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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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 also has this expanded support for site names. We’ve also improved our Premium analysis and did many fixes and enhancements — including some provided …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

You might have heard us say it before: the UX of your site is essential for SEO. But what is UX? And why is it important for SEO? In this article, we’ll explain what it is and why you shouldn’t overlook it if you want to rank high in Google. On top of that, we’ll …

Today, we’re releasing Yoast SEO 19.8 into the world. In this release, we’re focusing on general improvements and fixing several bugs. One of the main improvements this time concerns our Schema structured data output. Structured data helps search engines to understand your site, so they better get the right things to read! Schema structured data …

Video can be an incredibly effective way of promoting products and services throughout a website. Especially on pages such as the homepage, product pages, and blog posts. This is particularly true for websites built through Shopify, where there are several quick and easy ways to add videos. In this post, we will discuss the various …

It’s Monday morning and you open up your Google Analytics stats. Then there it is, something you don’t wish to see at the beginning of the week: a sudden drop in traffic. And not just a small decline in traffic, no this is a significant drop. Panic strikes, time for action! First, take a couple of …

Every product you buy has — or should have — a unique code identifying it. This product identifier comes in many forms, like an SKU, EAN, ASIN, or ISBN, depending on the product, where you sell it, or the area where you live. Adding a unique product identifier to your product is essential if you …

Do you have trouble getting your product to show up on Google? Are your competitors getting rich results, but the search results for your product are boring? It might be that Google doesn’t know every detail of your product. For instance, you might miss the product identifiers that Google uses to understand your products thoroughly. …

Reading from a screen can be difficult, so if you want people to read your whole blog post, it must be easy to read. This will get you more returning visitors and a higher conversion rate. Luckily, improving the readability of your content is something you can do relatively easily, to give your site a …

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!

Is your page not attracting the number of people you thought it would? Or are you wondering what you can improve to get your page higher up in the search results? And to get people to stay on (and come back to) your site? There are a few things you can do to give your …

There’s no getting around it – video files are big. So big, in fact, that they accounted for 81% of internet traffic in 2021. Videos loaded on any given web page will likely be the largest asset a browser will have to deal with. Unless you are doing something extremely unusual (and probably inadvisable) with …

We’ve all been lured into clicking on unsatisfying search results before. At first glance, it looks promising. But if you can’t see what you’re looking for when you get there, you’ll probably just leave again. *Boing* — there goes the bounce rate! The fact is, just making content and getting it into the search results …

Google Discover offers users a different way to search. Actually, it’s not really a search in a traditional sense — it’s a queryless discovery of content that fits your preferences and interests. It suggests new content based on your search activity and interaction with the Discover app. And it learns what you like, so it …

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 …

In this post, we’ll go into the basics of technical SEO. Now, discussing the basics of technical SEO might seem like a contradiction in terms. Nevertheless, some basic knowledge about the more technical side of SEO can mean the difference between a high-ranking site and a site that doesn’t rank at all. Technical SEO isn’t …

Over the last year or so, we’ve seen large-scale, widespread SEO spam ‘attacks’ on WordPress sites, all targeting their internal site search functionality. In most cases, these attacks aren’t harmful from an SEO perspective, but they do come with time and resource costs – for both the attacker and the victim. Most sites won’t need …

Non-inclusive language excludes people based on beliefs, gender, sexuality, or health, while inclusive language uses better alternatives to words that people might find harmful. Making your content inclusive helps you to reach a broader audience. But while writing, it is surprisingly easy to exclude people by accidentally using the wrong words. As inclusive language is …

It’s probably no secret that the search results for many topics on Google don’t give you the best results. Many topics are highjacked by high-paying ad buyers and companies with big budgets to write over-optimized SEO content at the expense of readability and user experience. The result is a frustration for the searcher. Google is …

We’re massive advocates of using Schema structured data to help search engines understand website content. Our plugins automatically take care of anything Schema-related for you, but we know that we’re not the only ones to do so. It’s possible to use our Schema output in combination with other tools. Although, sometimes, things may not work …

Public locations/venues — like art theaters, parks, bus stations, and stadiums – play a massive role in people’s lives in a community, town, or city. They are present in every community, and they are the foundational elements of a healthy and functional society. But when it comes to online presence, they may not get the …

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, allowing Google to find your essential pages quickly, even if your internal linking isn’t perfect. This post explains what they are and how they help you rank better. What …

Do you want to start a blog or online store? Then you’ll need a website. But did you know you’ll also need web hosting if you want to start your own website? There are many aspects to web hosting. You have to choose a host, a type of hosting, and many other things. That’s why …