On the 11th of May, people from all over the world will come together for another edition of YoastCon. An SEO conference like no other! It will be fun, it will be knowledge-packed and it will be accessible to everyone. So if you have anything to do with online marketing or SEO, you should not miss out! And if you’re not the one making that decision, we can help you out. In this blog post, we’ll share 7 tactics that you can use to persuade your employer to buy you a ticket. You can pick one or try them all, whatever gets you to YoastCon!
Want to join us at YoastCon 2023? You can find the full schedule and buy your tickets through our YoastCon page! We can’t wait to see all of you on the 11th of May, 2023!
Why should you convince your employer?
YoastCon is the place to be for people who want to know all there is to know about SEO. And because we haven’t been able to have an offline YoastCon for a few years now (due to the pandemic), we’ve decided to go big with this year’s edition!
There will be 13 world-renowned speakers with expertise in the field of SEO or online marketing. You can attend keynote talks by Jes Scholz, Luke Carthy, Hannah Thorpe, Barry Adams, Miriam Schwab, Thierry Muller, Kate Toon, Els Aerts and Greg Gifford. In addition, our resident experts Jono Alderson, Marieke van de Rakt, Thijs de Valk and Joost de Valk will be speaking. During the day, there will also be a few workshops that you can attend to work on your website!
In between the keynote talks and workshops, there will be a few breaks that give you the opportunity to talk to other attendees or a few of the speakers. There will also be a dinner and afterward, we’ll have some drinks to unwind and chat with each other. With YoastCon being a more intimate event, this really gives you the space to get to know other people or ask one of the experts your question in real life! Check out the full schedule and more on our YoastCon page.
7 tactics to persuade your employer to let you attend YoastCon
Now that you have an idea of why you should be at YoastCon 2023, it’s time to secure that ticket! Not sure how to convince your employer of the importance of YoastCon? We’ve got your back! Here are 7 persuasion tactics you can use:
1. Foot in the door
With this tactic, you ask for a small favor first and follow it up with a bigger one. Your employer will get into the flow of feeling committed to helping you, so granting your second favor feels like a continuation of something they’ve already agreed to.
2. Door in the face
Funnily enough, you can also do this the other way around. Ask for a big favor first and follow it up with a much smaller one. When you ask for something they’re likely to disagree with, this creates a feeling of guilt. They tend to agree with the second, easier request to get rid of that bad feeling. Bonus: you might get both!
3. Reciprocity
If you’ve done someone a favor, they feel like they have to or want to repay you. People tend to feel obliged to return favors! If you can’t think of anything awesome to do right now, just remind them of a favor or something you’ve done in the past.
4. Social proof
You might already be familiar with this tactic if you work in marketing: social proof. Individuals reflect on other people’s behavior and tend to act likewise, to assure they conduct appropriate behavior. It also builds trust to see other people doing something that you’re considering. Show your employer that others are doing it!
5. Scarcity
When something is scarce, people tend to value it more. If an event doesn’t take place that often, they’ll feel the need to take the chance when it does! Convince them the availability is limited and they’re more likely to want it and act upon it right away.
6. Commitment and consistency
People like to stick to their actions and beliefs. Follow their line of consistency by proposing something that fits in with their belief and goals, they won’t be able to disagree!
7. Emotional manipulation
A type of social influence that can come from different angles, for example by evoking pity. This is for when you get really desperate and we don’t encourage you to do so, but you could give it a try. For some employers, a sad pout should do the trick. Otherwise, excessive crying might work!
We hope to see you at YoastCon 2023!
Hopefully, we’ve convinced you (and your employer) to join us on the 11th of May, 2023, for the most fun SEO event of the year. And hopefully, you didn’t have to resort to the last tactic to get your ticket. If you want to know more and check out the full schedule, go and read all about YoastCon. We can’t wait to see you there!
Let’s say you have a website but know little about SEO. But you’ve heard about Yoast SEO, and people have told you it’s a great tool to optimize your site for Google, Bing, Yandex and other search engines. So you install the Yoast SEO plugin. What now? Well, our plugin needs your input to help your pages rise to the top of the search results. In this beginner’s guide to Yoast SEO, we’ll guide you through the most important steps to get the most out of this plugin and your content!
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimizing your pages to get them to a high position in the search results of Google or other search engines. If you have a website and want to attract more people to it, SEO should be a part of your marketing strategy. Our plugin, Yoast SEO, helps you with that by fixing a lot of the technical stuff. But also by giving you feedback on your content to optimize it for SEO and your website users.
A beginner‘s guide to Yoast SEO
Before we start, note that this isn’t a guide to every single detail of the Yoast SEO plugin. This post introduces some important things that you should use or configure first. In this beginner’s guide, we assume that you have the plugin installed. Not quite there yet? Check out how to install Yoast SEO Premium or our free Yoast SEO plugin before you read on.
The Yoast SEO first-time configuration is a great starting point to set up your plugin. You will get the option to start the first-time configuration right after installing Yoast SEO. Don’t see the welcome screen or already have the plugin installed? You can also the configuration in the backend of your WordPress website by going to Yoast SEO > General and clicking the First-time configuration tab:
Start your Yoast SEO journey with the first-time configuration
The first-time configuration guides you through several steps that help you set up our plugin to suit your site’s needs. By answering a few simple questions, Yoast SEO will learn more about your website and how it can help out with your SEO. Even if your site has been around for a while, it still pays off to complete the configuration. It’s also a good idea to repeat it now and again to make sure your settings are still up to date. Because the information you fill in here helps Google and other search engines understand your site better.
For example, in the second step, you’ll be asked if your website is about you or an organization you represent. This is relevant because the information you fill in here is used in Google’s Knowledge Graph. What is a Knowledge Graph, you ask? It is the block of information you often see on the right-hand side of the search results when you search for a company or person. So make sure to fill in all the fields you can in this step to provide Google with this information and increase your chances of a Knowledge Graph. But the first-time configuration also improves your site’s technical settings with SEO data optimization and asks for your social media profiles to help Google understand these belong to the same person or company. If you want more help getting Yoast SEO configured correctly for your site, check out the help article on how to use the first-time configuration.
The tip of the technical iceberg
There are many aspects to SEO and many more settings you can tweak in the plugin. But we set the first-time configuration so that it correctly configures the plugin’s general settings for your website. And there’s also loads of other stuff that Yoast SEO handles for you, to give you a head start on your technical SEO. Here are a few of the things Yoast SEO automatically takes care of in the background. Our plugin:
Outputs structured data for your pages, helping Google understand them even better.
Creates an XML sitemap that search engines use to find and index your pages.
Yoast SEO Premium also avoids dead ends on your site by automatically creating redirects when you move or delete content.
There are lots more hidden features and settings that you control, we’ll talk about those later on. For now, it’s good to know that all of this allows Yoast SEO to roll out the red carpet for the search bots, making it easy for search engines to find and understand your content.
Using the Yoast SEO sidebar or meta box
Yoast SEO is known for its green, orange, and red traffic lights, giving you feedback that helps you optimize your content. Back in the day, you’d find these in the Yoast SEO meta box below your post editor. Nowadays, if you’re using the WordPress Block editor, you can also find them in the Yoast SEO sidebar on the right side of the editor.
Are you using the block editor, but not seeing the sidebar? Make sure to click on the Yoast SEO sidebar icon at the top right of your screen:
Click the Yoast SEO icon to open the Yoast SEO sidebar
Here, we’ll highlight four essential elements you’ll find in both the Yoast SEO meta box and the Yoast SEO sidebar:
The Focus keyphrase
The SEO analysis
The Readability analysis
The Google preview
When you write a post or page for your website, checking these four elements should be the bare minimum before publishing your content. If you have more time and want to fully optimize a post, we’d advise following the steps described in this blog post checklist.
The focus keyphrase
The focus keyphrase field is the first in the Yoast SEO sidebar and the meta box. In your Yoast SEO sidebar, on the right side of your editor, you’ll find this field at the top:
The focus keyphrase input field in the Yoast SEO sidebar
Below your post, you’ll find it in the SEO tab of the meta box:
The focus keyphrase input field in the Yoast SEO meta box
In this field, you can enter the phrase you’d like this specific post or page to rank for in the search engines. By adding this keyphrase (or keyword), Yoast SEO will give you feedback on how well you’ve optimized the content for that specific keyphrase. It’s good to note that adding a keyphrase here doesn’t mean that Google will ‘know’ that you want the page to rank for that keyphrase. It simply helps Yoast SEO give you helpful feedback, so adding the keyphrase without looking at any of the feedback will not do anything for your rankings.
You can add this keyphrase at any moment, but we suggest adding it immediately as a reminder to keep your content focused on this topic. Wondering how to choose the perfect focus keyphrase? Read our guide on choosing a focus keyphrase, as it will help you select the right keyphrase you want to (and can) rank for. You can select a keyphrase post-by-post, but if you’re serious about your rankings, you must conduct keyword research first.
Yoast SEO Premium allows you to set related keyphrases and synonyms too, which is great if you want to take your SEO copywriting to the next level. You need user-focused and high-quality content to rank high in a (competitive) market. Because Google is getting smarter, Yoast SEO Premium recognizes variations of your keyphrase and helps you write natural and user-friendly content.
The SEO analysis
When you’ve added a keyphrase (and ideally a bit of content), Yoast SEO is able to run the SEO analysis. This analysis evaluates how well your content is optimized to rank for that keyphrase. For instance, it checks whether you’ve used the keyphrase enough and not too often. But also whether it’s in your SEO title, meta description, images, or subheadings. Moreover, it checks other SEO aspects of your content that are not related to your keyphrase, for instance, if you have any internal links to other articles on your website which is also important for search engines to understand your content.
The SEO analysis in the Yoast SEO sidebar
Getting orange or red traffic lights? Look at the feedback the analysis gives and try to make improvements where possible. To dive deeper into this, read our article on how to use Yoast SEO’s content analysis.
The readability analysis
Below the focus keyphrase field and SEO analysis, you can find the Readability analysis tab (in the Yoast SEO sidebar). It’s best to look at this tab after you’ve written the first version of your post or page. It gives you a red, orange, or green traffic light, which reflects your text’s readability score. This analysis contains a few different checks that our plugin automatically does on your content. Open the tab to find out how you score on all the individual checks and what you can improve on. You may wonder why you should look at this tab, but trust us: readability is crucial for SEO!
The Yoast SEO readability checks in the sidebar
If a traffic light is green, you’re doing great in that field. Is it orange or red? You can follow the instructions along with the traffic light to improve on this front. If there’s an eye icon, you can click that to see what part of the text still needs some checking. Now you don’t need to get every traffic light green but try to get the overall traffic light for the readability analysis green to end up with readable text. That way, the readability analysis helps you write easy-to-read content that your readers will love!
Our readability analysis works for many languages, and our team is working hard to add more languages as we go. If you’re interested in finding more about the logic behind this analysis, you can read more on how to use this analysis in Yoast SEO.
The inclusive language analysis
The third analysis that you can find in Yoast SEO is the inclusive language analysis which gives you feedback on any potentially non-inclusive words or phrases you’re using in your text. We at Yoast strongly believe that you should inclusive language in your content. Because creating inclusive content is good for both your users and SEO. Wondering how that works? Read more about it in our post on inclusive language and SEO.
The Yoast SEO inclusive language analysis in the sidebar
Wondering how it works and what the analysis looks at? You can read all that and more on our page dedicated to the inclusive language analysis. Also, it’s good to note that the inclusive language analysis is opt-in, so it won’t be activated by default. It’s up to you whether you want to get feedback on the inclusiveness of your content.
Does every traffic light need to be green?
No, not every single traffic light in the different analyses has to be green for your post or page to rank. Similarly, getting your post and traffic lights ‘all-green’ in no way guarantees that it will rank. While it’s tempting to aim for all-green traffic lights on every post or page without working on other aspects of your SEO, this isn’t the best SEO strategy. Proper keyword research and site structure always come before getting green bullets. Read more about properly using the colored traffic light system in Yoast SEO.
The Google preview
In addition to analyzing your content, we provide an editable snippet or Google preview. In the meta box below your post, it’s in the SEO tab, and in the sidebar, you can find it here:
You can find all the features of Yoast SEO in the sidebar in the block editor
The Google preview makes it easy to optimize your post for the search results
In the Google preview, you can set an SEO title and meta description. Make an effort and write a title and meta description that reflect what your post or page is about. Let people know they’ll find what they’re looking for on your site and entice them to visit your page. There’s no guarantee that Google will display your meta description in the results pages. But if the meta description you add here is good, you’ll increase the odds of it being used.
Other items in the sidebar and meta box
As said before, we believe this is the minimum investment you should make before publishing a page or post. You may have noticed more items in the Yoast SEO sidebar and meta box, like the internal linking suggestions, social previews, Schema, cornerstone content, insights, and advanced section. It’s worth looking at those, as these can also help your SEO efforts!
A bit more advanced: Yoast SEO Settings
Of course, there is so much more you can do with Yoast SEO. You can access and change lots of settings in the Yoast SEO settings overview. There’s usually no need to change anything. Especially if you’re new to SEO, it’s wise to start with the settings you set with the first-time configuration. But let’s quickly look around to give you an idea of the options.
Go to Yoast SEO > Settings in the left-hand side navigation in your WordPress dashboard to go to the Settings overview. Here you can select which features you want to use, how your site should appear in search engines and loads more! Use the menu on your left to navigate the different settings that are divided into four categories: General, Content types, Categories & Tags and Advanced.
The Yoast SEO settings overview
When you go to the Yoast SEO Settings, you land on the Site features page in the General section. Here you can select which Yoast SEO features you want to actively use and which ones you want to opt out on. Each feature that is listed there comes with a short explanation of what it does and you can use the toggle below to activate or deactivate the feature.
Site basics
In the General section, you can also find Site basics. As the name suggests, you can configure the basics of your website here. Take the Title Separator, for instance. You can choose whether you want a dash, asterisk, or something else between the different parts of your SEO title that will be shown in the search results. But, if you change your mind later, you can always change it here. Read more about the options in our help article on the Yoast SEO Settings: Site basics.
Simply pick what you want, but the default option is usually the best one
In addition to the separator of your SEO title, you might also want to change how your SEO titles are set up. Simply go to Content types, click on Posts or any other content type (depending on which one you want to change) and go to Search Appearance. Here you can change how our plugin sets up your titles and meta descriptions. Set up by using snippet variables that tell the plugin what the title of your post is or the separator of your choice.
Change the variables in any way you like
This simply means we will use the title of your page or post as the page title. Then we add a title separator (which we discussed in the first paragraph of this section) and the site name you set when creating your site. So, for example, the title for this Beginner’s guide to Yoast SEO post would look like this:
Feel free to change this setup, but this is the one we recommend. It’s focused on the page title (Beginner’s guide to Yoast SEO) and has proper branding at the end (Yoast). We’re highlighting this to give you an example of the type of settings that you can find here, but of course, there are loads more.
We hope this gives you an idea of the options that Yoast SEO gives you. Throughout the years, we’ve introduced a lot of new features to our plugins. With that said, there are also many things we haven’t done in Yoast SEO, a few of them being things that we probably won’t ever do. If you’re curious as to what these are, check out our blog post on things we don’t do in Yoast SEO and why.
Other guides for (Yoast) SEO beginners
That’s it for our beginner’s guide to Yoast SEO. With Yoast SEO properly installed, your website is ready to take on the competition and climb to the top of the search results!
If you want to become a pro user of the Yoast SEO plugin, here are a few more reading recommendations:
So you want to write more inclusively? Great! That means more people will feel welcome when they read your content, and you won’t accidentally exclude them. But if that’s not enough reason, just think how many more people will engage with your content if you involve them and make your content relatable to them! So, what does inclusive language look like? We’re here to give you some examples.
Let’s look at an example of non-inclusive writing first. We’ve bolded the non-inclusive word:
I was just on my way to the grocery store when a group of seniors decided to visit too. At first, I was worried I’d have to stand in line for ages. But as I walked in, I got to talking with one of the women. She was very lovely, and explained they were actually here to do some volunteering!
The bolded word could be potentially harmful to older adults, unless they actually use these words to refer to themselves. Here’s what you could do to write more inclusively:
I was just on my way to the grocery store when a group of older people decided to visit too. At first, I was worried I’d have to stand in line for ages. But as I walked in, I got to talking with one of the women. She was very lovely, and explained they were here to actually do some volunteering!
As you can see, a few minor changes to the text can already make a difference. And it isn’t that much of an effort to make the text relatable to a larger group of people.
Inclusive language example: appearance
You probably know the famous saying: don’t judge a book by its cover. Whatever a person looks like, you shouldn’t judge them based on their appearance. Especially when that judgment is based on prejudices.
Here’s an example of non-inclusive writing. We’ve bolded the non-inclusive word:
We’d booked a hotel near the sea, so we visited the beach every day. Both locals and tourists seemed to love this beach. And we highly recommend it too! If you’re insecure about your body, don’t worry. Both fat people and thin people came to enjoy the sun at this beach.
There’s something called an ‘anti-fat bias‘, also known as fatphobia. This occurs when people are judged or mistreated for having a weight higher than what is perceived as “standard”. To avoid reinforcing this bias, it’s good to pay attention to your language when talking about people’s weight. In general, avoiding commenting on people’s weight unless it’s relevant to the topic. If it is relevant, avoid using “fat” unless you are referring to someone who prefers that term to describe their appearance.
So let’s look at the same text but with an inclusive word:
We’d booked a hotel near the sea, so we visited the beach every day. Both locals and tourists seemed to love this beach. And we highly recommend it too! If you’re insecure about your body, don’t worry. Both people who have a higher weight and a lower weight came to enjoy the sun at this beach.
Before we move onto the next category, let’s do one more example. We’ve bolded the non-inclusive word:
My day was good! I actually got a new colleague who’s going to work on the renovation project with me. He’s a midget, and overall a really nice guy.
Ah, the “m” word. It’s never been an official term to identify people with dwarfism. Rather, it’s been used to put people of short stature on display and nowadays, it’s considered a derogatory slur. So here’s the same text with an inclusive word instead:
My day was good! I actually got a new colleague who’s going to work on the renovation project with me. He has a short stature, and he’s overall a really nice guy.
Inclusive language example: race, culture, and ethnicity
When you think about inclusive language, this category is probably top of mind. And while the topic has gained popularity over the years, it’s always good to be extra mindful of your language. You don’t want to maintain a bias toward people based on their race, ethnicity, country of origin, or culture.
Let’s look at an example of non-inclusive writing. We’ve bolded the non-inclusive words:
If you want to travel around the world, we only have one thing to say: do it! It’s truly an amazing experience. We always recommend people to visit East Asia, because it’s a stunning region. If you decide to visit Japan, we highly recommend Tanaka’s curry house in Osaka. It’s run by a lovely oriental couple. But don’t write off third world countries when you’re planning your trip! They are very gorgeous too.
First of all, you shouldn’t use a word like ‘oriental’, because it’s othering towards Asian people. What’s othering? In the simplest terms, it’s pointing a finger at someone and saying you are different. Which is obviously bad. And second, don’t use the word ‘third world’. You might not realize it, but it’s very derogatory.
Here’s what you should write instead:
If you want to travel around the world, we only have one thing to say: do it! It’s truly an amazing experience. We always recommend people to visit East Asia, because it’s a stunning region. If you decide to visit Japan, we highly recommend Tanaka’s curry house in Osaka. It’s run by a lovely Japanese couple.But don’t write off low-incomecountries! They are very gorgeous too.
Inclusive language example: disability and neurodiversity
Telling a wheelchair user to ‘walk it off’ can be very insensitive. But that’s exactly what you do when you don’t take disability and neurodiversity into account when writing. And be aware that some disabilities aren’t always visible!
First, the non-inclusive example. We’ve bolded the non-inclusive words:
Our company has some crazy benefits for its employees. And if it isn’t sorted, just say the word and we’ll fix it for you. Nothing will fall on deaf ears! And we support the disabled too. Because we want everyone to feel welcome!
Using words like ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ has become pretty common in our society. But it can minimize or trivialize the experiences of people who have a particular condition or symptom. So take care to avoid these types of words.
Let’s look at what you should write instead:
Our company has some amazing benefits for its employees. And if it isn’t sorted, just say the word and we’ll fix it for you. Nothing won’t be addressed! And we support people with disabilities too. Because we want everyone to feel welcome!
Do note that neurodiverse people and disabled people may prefer different approaches to how they want to be described. There are generally two: person-first language (PFL), and identity-first language (IFL). It’s the difference between ‘person with a disability’ or ‘disabled person’. You can learn more about PFL and IFL on our help page. And don’t hesitate to ask people what they prefer!
Inclusive language example: gender
When we talk about writing inclusively, this also means looking out for gendered words. ‘Man-hours’ is a very obvious example, as is simply using ‘he/him’ to refer to people in general. We also call the latter male bias.
Let’s look at a non-inclusive example. We’ve bolded the non-inclusive words:
If you’re looking for your next read, look no further. We’ve got an awesome list of books that both men and women will love. These titles are truly some of mankind’s best novels. And as part of our inclusivity campaign, we also included books that center transgenders.
A great thing to remember is that neither gender nor sex is inherently binary. There are more gender identities than men and women, such as genderfluid and non-binary people. In addition, there are also people with no gender, such as agender and some non-binary people.
Here’s the same text, but written inclusively:
If you’re looking for your next read, look no further. We’ve got an awesome list of books that everyone will love. These titles are truly some of humanity’s best novels. And as part of our inclusivity campaign, we also included books that centertransgender people.
Inclusive language example: socioeconomic status
When you write about topics that center around income, education, occupation, and social class, you might want to pay extra attention to what words you use. You don’t want to alienate or harm parts of your audience by being non-inclusive. The key is to try and be as specific as possible.
Here’s a non-inclusive example. We’ve bolded the non-inclusive words:
Hubert was a truly remarkable man. He dedicated his life to helping others. As an ex-offender, he knew how bad life could get. That’s why he frequently organized fundraisers for the poor and homeless. In addition, he volunteered at soup kitchens and provided care packages for illegal immigrants.
As we said, when writing about income or housing, try to be as specific as possible. Don’t overgeneralize. As for the term ‘illegal immigrants’, it’s not only harmful but also inaccurate. And finally, don’t reduce people to their experiences with the criminal justice system. That’s dehumanizing.
Let’s look at the same text but with inclusive words:
Hubert was a truly remarkable man. He dedicated his life to helping others. As a person with felony convictions, he knew how bad life could get. That’s why he frequently organized fundraisers for individuals with low income and people who are homeless. In addition, he volunteered at soup kitchens and provided care packages for undocumented people.
Inclusive language example: sexual and romantic orientation
Before we dive into the example, let’s quickly get on the same page. Sexual orientation is who you experience sexual attraction to, and romantic orientation is who you feel romantically attracted to. It’s also important to keep in mind that not everyone is comfortable with certain labels. Some people describe themselves as bisexual, while others might prefer queer or simply no label at all.
Here’s an example with non-inclusive words. We’ve bolded what is not inclusive:
When we visited Amsterdam, we had no idea it was Pride Amsterdam. There was a canal parade that we attended, which was really awesome. There were rainbows everywhere. And it was great to see so many homosexuals and lesbians celebrating who they are. We even got to dance and sing along. It was fun!
First things first: Don’t use the word homosexual. It’s often considered derogatory because of its clinical associations. Next, you should be careful with assumptions. Assuming everyone at pride is gay or a lesbian is an overgeneralization, and probably wrong. You’d be excluding a lot of other sexual and romantic identities. That’s why it might be better to use descriptions instead of labels, unless someone tells you what label they prefer of course.
Here’s one way of writing the previous text more inclusively. We’ve bolded the changes we made:
When we visited Amsterdam, we had no idea it was Pride Amsterdam. There was a canal parade that we attended, which was really awesome. There were rainbows everywhere. And it was great to see so many gay people, lesbians and other people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community celebrating who they are. We even got to dance and sing along. It was fun!
Make it easier for yourself
Now that we’ve gone over every category, you might feel a little overwhelmed. And we get it. It’s a lot to remember all at once. That’s why we’ve introduced the inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO. How does it work? Simply write your text, and the analysis feature will assess your post. You’ll get valuable feedback to help you improve your content, so your posts and pages will appeal to a wider audience. Meaning: You don’t have to Google everything!
The inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO
Don’t be afraid to ask
Good job, you! By reading this post, you’ve taken the first step into writing more inclusively. And while you might not get it right straight away, it’s good that you’re trying. So keep doing that! And don’t be afraid to ask people about their identities, and learn from them. Because inclusive language is here to stay.
We often get questions from people asking about the influence of domain names on SEO. Is there any relation at all? Does it help to include keywords like product names in your domain name? Is the influence of domain names different per location? And what’s the use of using more than one domain name for a site? In this article, we’ll answer all these questions and more.
What’s a domain name?
Let’s start from the beginning. A domain name is an alias. It’s a convenient way to point people to that specific spot on the internet where you’ve built your website.
Domain names are generally used to identify one or more IP addresses. For us, our domain name is yoast.com.
Note that we deliberately included “.com” here, where others might disagree with that. We think the most common uses of the word “domain name” include that top-level domain.Â
On a side note, if you’ve been on the internet for a while now, you may notice that websites back in the day used to have the “www” prefix before the domain name. So for Yoast that would be www.yoast.com. In this case, the domain name is still yoast.com, while www is the subdomain. These days people don’t add the “www” before the domain name anymore. It’s unnecessary, it makes your URL long, and frankly, nobody uses the term “world wide web” anymore.
Top-level domain (TLD)
Where “yoast” is obviously our brand, the “.com” bit of our domain name is called TLD (or top-level domain). In the early days of the internet:
.com was intended for US companies,
.org for non-profit organizations,
.edu for schools and universities and
.gov for government websites.
But this is from 1985. Things have changed quite a bit since then. For the Netherlands, we use .nl. But lots of companies are using .com for when the .nl domain name was already taken.
These days, TLDs like .guru and .pro are available. Automattic bought .blog in 2015. And what about .pizza? But these are not all. You can find all kinds of TLDs now. Many tech startups and SaaS companies are choosing .io as their TLD instead of the more “traditional” ones like .com or .net.
The list of available TLDs is updated and maintained by the IANA – the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority – which you can find here. We call this kind of TLD generic TLDs.
Generic TLDs
For SEO, you probably want to use just one TLD. And, in most cases, it’s best to choose a common option, like .com, .net, .biz, etc.
If your business is in a very competitive field, it might be a good idea to buy a few more common TLDs. This is to make sure someone else doesn’t use them to build a website with your brand name. It would be frustrating if your website is epicbusiness.com and someone starts epicbusiness.biz, right? But in most cases, it may not be needed. So whether or not this is necessary is up to you.
Generic TLDs give you the option to be a little more creative with your domain name. Some fun examples of the possibilities: order.pizza, visit.amsterdam, ice.land, or maybe buyher.flowers… If it fits your brand, you could give this a try. But you should keep in mind that not everyone might realize that they’re looking at a domain name. It might be a good idea to mention that you’re talking about a website when you put your domain name on a poster or show it somewhere, so people realize it’s a website they can visit.
Country code TLDs (ccTLD)
We’ve already mentioned the .nl TLD. We call these kinds of TLDs country codes or country-specific TLDs.
Years ago, Tokelau – an island in the Southern Pacific Ocean – started giving away their .tk TLD for free, and thousands of enthusiasts claimed their .tk. It’s like .cc, which you might have heard of, because it was once promoted as the alternative to .com. It’s actually a country-specific TLD belonging to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (although the people of Cypres might disagree)
Country-specific TLD or subdirectory for sites with multiple languages?
If your website is available in multiple languages, you might be wondering what the best solution is. Should it be domain.com/uk/ and domain.com/de/ (subdirectories or subfolders) or domain.co.uk and domain.de (which use country-specific TLDs)?
For SEO, using a subdirectory makes more sense. If you use a subdirectory, all links will go to the same domain. Marketing is easier because you have one main domain. And all the backlinks you get are also attributed to that main domain. If there are language differences per subdirectory, add the hreflang tag to your pages to tell Google about that.
Note that a subdomain, like the “www” we mentioned, is something totally different than a subdirectory. For instance, we have a dedicated website to store technical information related to our software for developers at developer.yoast.com, which is a subdomain of yoast.com. Google actually considers this to be a different website than yoast.com. Though we’re sure they can connect the dots.
Does the age of a domain influence SEO?
The age of a domain – referring to how long your domain already exists – doesn’t matter for SEO as much as it did before. Some may say it doesn’t matter at all. Nowadays, it’s much more about the content, the technical setup, the user experience, and how well your website answers the query people used in Google. You’ll have to be the best result to rank for a query.
As a matter of fact, John Mueller of Google confirmed way back in 2017 that domain age doesn’t matter:
no
— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) April 12, 2017
Is it that black and white? No, it’s not.
Domain age as such might not influence ranking. But older domains may have a nice amount of backlinks, pages ranking in the search result pages, etc. And obviously, that might influence ranking.
Does Exact Match Domain (EMD) give you a ranking advantage?
Let’s say Buycheaphomes.com is an existing domain name (it probably is). This is an example of an Exact Match Domain name.
In 2012, Google introduced what we now call the EMD Update. Google changed its algorithm so websites that used domain names like that wouldn’t rank just for the simple fact that the keyword was in the domain name. And yes, that used to be the case, before the update.
So, after this update, does it still pay off to use a domain name that includes a keyword? For the most part, the answer is no.
You don’t need a certain keyword in your domain name. You can build a site on a different domain, write content that targets that specific keyword or topic, and still outrank a site with the exact keyword in its domain name.
But if you managed to build a brand around an EMD, and you still get lots of traffic, keep up the good work. Just make sure your branding is absolutely top-notch.
Choose a domain name around your branding
Following the EMD update, branding became even more important. It makes so much more sense to focus on your brand in your domain name as opposed to just putting a keyword in the domain name.
For instance, you probably know LEGO.com, Amazon.com, or Google.com. It’s all about the brand. It’s something people will remember easily and something that will make you stand out from the crowd and competition. Your brand is here to stay (always look on the positive side of things).
In fact, Google’s John Mu also suggested picking a domain name that’s more like a brand and that you can build upon:
Make sure your brand is unique and the right domain name is available when starting a new business. This might be the reason to claim more than one generic TLDs or country-specific TLDs – to make sure no one else claims it.
We mentioned that a (known) brand is usually easier to remember. For the same reason, we’d suggest going with a short domain name or a catchy one so it stays with people. Like Booking.com for instance.
Does it pay off to claim multiple domain names and 301 redirect all the domains to the main domain name? In terms of branding: no. In terms of online ranking: probably not.
The only valid reason we can think of to actively use multiple domain names for the same website, is offline and sometimes online marketing. If you have a specific project or campaign on your website that you’d like to promote separately, a second domain name might come in handy to get traffic straight to the right page on your website.
“Actively” is the main word in that last paragraph. As mentioned, feel free to register multiple domain names, but make sure not to confuse Google. Besides that, actively using multiple domain names for the same website will diffuse the links to your website. And that isn’t what you want, as mentioned in the subdirectory section as well.
Domain Authority or Domain Rating, what are they?
We feel like we should mention and clarify these concepts. You’ve probably known or heard about Domain Authority, Domain Rating, or Authority score. They are metrics developed by popular SEO software providers:
Domain Authority: developed by Moz. This is a score that predicts how well your website will rank on the search results pages.
Domain Rating: developed by Ahref. This metric shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile.
Authority score: developed by Semrush. This metric is used for measuring a domain’s or webpage’s overall quality and SEO performance.
Essentially, these metrics aim to quantify the quality of a website based on many factors. They all have one thing in common, which is the inclusion of a site’s backlink profile in calculating the score. For the Domain Rating metric by Ahref, the metric is purely link-based.
Let us clarify that none of these are ranking factors that Google uses. They are metrics specific to the software that uses them. While Google doesn’t use these metrics, you can still use them as a reference point in your SEO strategy. But don’t blindly rely on them as there may be flaws in how these metrics are developed or calculated.
You might have been hearing more and more about it in the last few years: inclusive language. But what do people mean by it exactly? Is it a new thing? And why should you think about it when writing web copy? Find the answer to all of these questions in this post. We’ll do some myth-busting too!
Inclusive language
First things first: What is inclusive language? Inclusive language is language that avoids terms that might exclude marginalized groups of people. Typically these are terms that perpetuate prejudice, stigma, or erasure. Inclusive language favors alternatives over these terms that are less likely to be experienced as harmful or exclusionary. At the same time, these alternatives aim to keep the intended meaning.
Advocates of inclusive language generally strive for a more inclusive society. Language is an important aspect of society and it’s known to have the power to normalize ideas or beliefs. Therefore avoiding terms that imply sexist, racist, ableist, or otherwise biased ideas, can make more people feel genuinely part of society.
Some examples of inclusive alternatives
As this may sound complicated, let’s show some examples to demonstrate how this works.
Firemen vs firefighters
Take a look at this example:
” What happened? I saw all these firemen passing by!”
The word firemen generates a male or masculine image of the word in your mind. However, firefighters don’t have to be men. So, unless you’re referring to a group of male firefighters specifically, a better and more accurate alternative would be firefighters. A better sentence here would be:
” What happened? I saw all these firefighters passing by!”
By using this word in the right context you’re making sure all firefighters, whatever their gender, feel addressed, seen, or heard.
Inclusive language is context and language-specific
Inclusive language is a nuanced subject. What is or isn’t inclusive can depend on the context of the word. Some words are derogatory on all occasions; other words’ appropriateness can depend on the way they are used in a sentence.
For instance, in English using the word seniors when referring to older people is considered non-inclusive, while seniors when referring to children in high school is considered perfectly fine. At the same time, in Dutch, the word senioren (the literal translation of seniors) is actually considered more appropriate than oudere mensen (literal translation of older people). So what’s inclusive or not can really differ per context and per language.
Why write inclusive web copy?
So why would you write more inclusive content for the web? Well, when you’re creating content for your website you probably want as many people as possible to see, read and enjoy it. If you want people to feel seen and heard in your content it’s not only ethical but also smart to avoid certain words and phrases. By writing more inclusively you can give more people a better user experience as you’re making your content more accessible and relatable. That in itself is already a great reason to write more inclusively.
But it has more advantages. Creating inclusive content allows you to broaden your audience: it’s more likely people will engage with, link to, or share your content if they feel like you’ve written it for them. Which, in turn, is great for SEO, not to mention conversion. In fact, Google’s John Mueller stated on Twitter that they value and promote writing more inclusively as well. And as he says: “You might not get it right all the time but taking steps to get better matters too.”
Let’s conclude this post by debunking some myths that exist around the inclusive language phenomenon.
(Non-)inclusive language doesn’t have any real-life effects
Language has the power to influence how we think about something. It can normalize certain ideas or beliefs. If an idea is encoded through language and we hear it repeated over and over again, it gets normalized. Particularly if it’s part of standard or mainstream language! Non-inclusive language can also function as microaggressions. If you’d like to learn how this works, read this article about the power of everyday language.
So inclusive language affects real life AND vice versa. The more places that are safe for marginalized people appear in real life, the more these values reflect in how we communicate with each other.
Inclusive language is a new invention
The topic of inclusive language has been quite popular lately, this may make it seem like it’s a new invention. However, language has always been connected to social and cultural norms. It reflects them, and can also play a role in spreading them. When norms change, so does language. And when people try to challenge harmful ideas, they often also challenge the use of language that reflects and normalizes them.
For example, feminist activists of the 1960s and 70s were challenging the use of words like ‘he’ and ‘man’ to refer to humans in general. This was part of their fight to increase the visibility and status of women. You can read more about this here and here.
It is arbitrarily decided what language is inclusive
Society is always changing and evolving, and so is our understanding of it. This means that with time, we can realize that language that at one point was seen as inclusive, is not so inclusive after all.
An example of advice that has evolved is the use of handicapped vs special needs vs disabled. It used to be common to use the term special needs to replace the non-inclusive term handicapped. But conversations around disability have evolved into including disabled people. Therefore, inclusive language advocates now recommend using the word disabled instead.
These changes can happen fast, which may seem like there are constantly new ‘rules’ about what language is inclusive and what isn’t. And it may even feel like people can’t make up their minds about what language they want you to use, and make up new rules just to make your life harder.
However, this is not true – when there is any significant pushback against certain words or phrases, it is usually for a good reason. The reason may not be obvious at first, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And of course, it doesn’t mean that people always get it right – as mentioned earlier, our idea of what is and isn’t inclusive is always evolving. But the point is that more often than not people have specific reasons for advocating for or against certain language, even if sometimes their reasoning ends up being misguided.
The Yoast help articles on inclusive language can serve as useful explanations of why certain words and phrases are targeted by our inclusive language check.
You should feel bad for using non-inclusive language
It’s not a nice feeling to realize that the language you’ve been using might be harmful to other people. But we have all done it, and even the most dedicated people still make mistakes and are learning. As mentioned, our understanding of what is and isn’t inclusive can evolve quite fast, so naturally, we will be making mistakes along the way. It doesn’t make you a bad person if you have (unintentionally) used language that is not inclusive. In the first section of this article on Medium the writer does a good job of explaining this.
Inclusive language is language that makes everyone happy
Making everyone happy is impossible. Inclusive language is about avoiding language that harms certain groups of people, for example through stereotyping or erasing them. Some people may even be unhappy when they see inclusive language being used. For example, people who hold transphobic views may feel unhappy when they see trans-inclusive language being used. However, inclusive language doesn’t harm anyone, even if it can make some people unhappy by challenging their (harmful) beliefs. In fact, challenging harmful beliefs is part of what makes inclusive language inclusive.
Inclusive language is language that doesn’t offend anyone
Non-inclusive language is often offensive to people, however not all language that offends people is non-inclusive. Being offended is a subjective feeling – people can get offended by different things. For example, a person who expresses racist views may be offended if someone calls them racist. This doesn’t mean that calling racist behavior racist is not inclusive. There is a difference between language that causes personal offense and language that causes harm. Inclusive language is about avoiding the latter.
How to write more inclusively
So now you know what it is (and isn’t) and why you should use it. But how to make sure your content is inclusive? There are many guides on the internet on how to write more inclusive. So you might feel overwhelmed and not 100% up to date on best practices regarding inclusive language. We understand! It can be difficult because you might not be aware of potentially harmful words. Even when you are, you’d also need to know the alternatives! Also, as we explained, guidelines might change and that’s hard to keep up with.
Fortunately, Yoast can help you with an easy solution if you create content on WordPress or Shopify. It’s our Inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO. It will check your copy for non-inclusive terms. These checks are developed by our in-house linguists, in cooperation with Maxwell Hope from the University of Delaware. The analysis will highlight the words that could be non-inclusive and will also provide alternatives. Check out how it works in this screenshot:
Example of a check in the inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO
It checks for problematic terms in the following categories: Age, appearance, race, culture, ethnicity, disability, neurodiversity, gender and socio-economic status. Here you’ll find an overview of these categories. It’s opt-in, so you can switch it on if you care about this topic and want to make great content for everyone!
Earlier this year, we added a new feature to our Premium plugin, the inclusive language analysis. Now we’re excited to say that we’re bringing it to Yoast SEO Free as well. Why? Because we believe that using inclusive language is essential in making the web a better place.
Taking a stance
We believe that inclusive language is so important that we wanted to make sure that everyone (who wants to) can use this feature. Not only does it make you less likely to exclude people and alienate them with your content, but it’s also becoming more important in SEO every day. If you want to take advantage of this new feature, head to your features settings in Yoast SEO to turn it on. This will also be available in Yoast SEO for Shopify later this week.
Does inclusive language matter for SEO?
You might be wondering why we added a check for inclusive language in Yoast SEO, a product focused on improving your SEO. Using inclusive language helps you reach a wider audience and avoid alienating potential customers. It aims to create content that’s accessible and understandable to as many people as possible. This leads to more people returning to your website, sharing your content, and even buying what you’re selling.
It simply helps you to write content that doesn’t exclude people. Content that doesn’t alienate or even offend a portion of your audience. Which, especially as a business owner (or website owner), you don’t want to do. And that can happen easily without you even realizing it. Google also points out the importance of using inclusive language in your content. You can learn more about this in our post about inclusive language and SEO.
The inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO
This new feature works pretty similarly to our other analyses by giving you real-time feedback on your text with the use of traffic lights. Here is an example of what it looks like when in use:
The inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO
It’s up to you whether you activate the analysis
It’s good to know that the inclusive language analysis is opt-in, so it won’t be activated by default. It’s up to you whether you want to get feedback on the inclusiveness of your content. You can activate it by going to Yoast SEO > General > Features and toggling the inclusive language analysis switch. If you choose not to use this feature, the SEO and readability analyses won’t change.
Activate this feature ve language analysis in Yoast SEO > General > Features
We strongly suggest using it as it can benefit your SEO and helps you make your content relatable for a bigger audience. The goal of inclusive language is to avoid excluding or alienating people. So, this new analysis helps you create content that everyone can enjoy and that’s less likely to offend anyone!
Other improvements and fixes
Of course, we’ve also worked on improvements for our SEO plugins. For instance, we’ve improved the subheading distribution assessment to make it easier to find those overlong paragraphs. Now, hit the eye icon to highlight the subheading where the piece of text appears. Very helpful when working on long articles! The same assessment also keeps an eye on your intro and warns you if you start your article with an overly long introduction.
Quickly find overly long pieces of text
We’ve improved our Integrations page, making it clearer which WordPress plugins hook into our Schema API. This means that the structured data output by these plugins will be neatly tied into the graph Yoast SEO generates for the site. Together, this forms a very comprehensive Schema solution. We urge other plugin developers to come on board — check out our Schema documentation!
Improved admin bar menu
Today, we’re cleaning up the admin bar menu and expanding the range of options. If you are a Yoast SEO Premium user, you can open up the front-end SEO inspector instantly to check the SEO settings of the page you are currently on. You’ll also find the focus keyphrase you set for this page and the overall readability and SEO scores in the famous colored dots. Plus, you can find quick links that let you send the page to be analyzed by external tools, like Google’s Rich Results Test or PageSpeed Insights. Of course, you also access the Yoast SEO settings from there.
Updated admin bar menu in Yoast SEO 19.12
Of course, there’s more. We’ve added a new Website name text field in the Site representation step of the First-time configuration. You can also set this in the Search Appearance section of the settings.
We’ve also worked on improving compatibility with PHP 8.2. In addition, we now ask users to update to a recent version of PHP, as we are dropping support for PHP < 7.2 starting March 1st, 2023.
Enjoy these Yoast SEO updates
In this release, we’ve added support for our inclusive language analyses to our free Yoast SEO version. Try it out and see if you can write more inclusive content that will help you reach a broader audience.
(@JohnMu) 
