EDITS.WS

Category: yoast.com

  • How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide

    Do you have a website or maintain the website of the company you work for? Of course, to do this right, you need to keep a keen eye on the performance of your website. Google offers several tools to collect and analyze data from your website. You probably have heard of Google Analytics and Google Search Console before. These tools are free for everyone maintaining a website and can give you valuable insights about your website. Here we’ll explain how to use Google Search Console for SEO!

    Table of contents

    Why everyone should use Google Search Console

    Google Search Console helps you track the performance of your website easily. You can get valuable insights from your Google Search Console account, which means you can see what part of your website needs work. This can be a technical part of your website, such as an increasing number of crawl errors that need to be fixed. This can also give a specific keyword more attention because the rankings or impressions are decreasing.

    Besides seeing this kind of data, you’ll get email notifications when Google Search Console notices new errors. Because of these notifications, you’re quickly aware of issues you need to fix. That’s why everyone with a website should learn how to use it!

    Search Console is structured around various sections

    Search Console has several sections, which keep expanding as Google adds more:

    • URL Inspection
      • The URL Inspection tool lets you get insights on specific URLs and how Google sees and indexes these. You’ll also see if the page is eligible for rich results.
    • Performance
      • In the Performance section, you’ll discover how your site is doing in the regular search results, on Discover, and on Google News, if your site is eligible for that.
    • Indexing
      • In the Indexing section, you’ll find all the insights you need to see how Google discovers and indexes your pages.
    • Experience
      • The Experience section gives you an idea of how Google values the performance of your page in the form of Page Experience, Core Web Vitals, and mobile usability.
    • Shopping
      • In the Shopping tab, you’ll find more information about how Google sees your products — if you own an ecommerce site or sell something else online.
    • Enhancements
      • The Enhancements section lists all the structured data that Google found on your site and whether or not these are eligible for rich results.
    • Security & Manual Actions
      • The Security & Manual Actions shouldn’t be a much-visited destination as this lists security issues found by Google or when it issues a manual action against your site.
    • Links
      • The Links section overviews your site’s internal and external links.

    Setting up an account

    You’ll need to create an account to start using Google Search Console. Within Google Search Console, you can click on ‘add a new property’ in the top bar:

    adding a new site property to google search console
    Add a new property to get started

    You can insert the website you want to add by clicking on the ‘Add property’ button. If you choose the new Domain option, you only need to add the domain name without www or subdomains. This option tracks everything connected to that domain. With the ‘old’ URL prefix option, you have to add the correct URL, so with ‘HTTPS’ if you have an HTTPS website and with or without ‘www’. To collect the correct data, it’s essential to add the correct version:

    Choose domain if your want to track all your URLs or URL prefix if you want to track specific URLs

    You must verify that you’re the owner when you’ve added a website. There are several options to verify your ownership. The Domain option only works with DNS verification, while the URL prefix supports different methods. You can learn more about the differences in Google’s documentation: adding a new property and verifying your site ownership. You can also use Google’s Site Kit WordPress plugin to connect Analytics and Search Console while giving you statistics in your site dashboard.

    Add to Yoast SEO

    For WordPress users who use Yoast SEO, get the verification code via the ‘HTML tag’ method from the Ownership settings in Search Console. Copy the long, random string of characters.

    See your verification methods in the Google Search Console ownership settings

    You can easily copy this code and paste it into the ‘Webmaster tools’ tab within the Yoast SEO plugin:

    Paste your code into the Google field to finish the process

    After saving this, you can return to Google Search Console and click on the ‘Verify’ button to confirm. If everything is ok, you’ll get a success message, and GSC will start collecting data for your website.

    Features in Google Search Console

    Now you’ve set up your account, what would be the next step? Well, it’s time to look at some of your data! We’ll explore some of the reports and information available in the rest of this article.

    Performance tab

    In the Performance tab, you can see what pages and keywords your website ranks for in Google. You’ll also find reports on your content’s performance in Google Discover and on Google News if you’re eligible for that. It wasn’t that long ago that you could only see the data as far back as 90 days, but today, it’s possible to see the data for up to 16 months.

    If you check the performance tab regularly, you can quickly see what keywords or pages need more attention and optimization. So, where to begin? Within the performance tab, you see a list of ‘queries’, ‘pages’, ‘countries’, or ‘devices’. With ‘search appearance,’ you can check how your rich results are doing in search. You can sort each section by the number of ‘clicks’, ‘impressions’, ‘average CTR’, or ‘average position’. We’ll explain each of them below:

    The Performance overview harbors a ton of information

    1. Clicks

    The number of clicks tells you how often people clicked on your website in Google’s search results. This number can say something about the performance of your page titles and meta descriptions: if just a few people click on your result, your result might not stand out in the search results. It can be helpful to check what other results are displayed around you to see how you can optimize your snippet.

    The position of the search result also impacts the number of clicks. If your page is in the top three of Google’s first result page, it will automatically get more clicks than a page that ranks on the second page of the search results.

    2. Impressions

    The impressions tell you how often your website or a specific page is shown in the search results. The number of impressions after this keyword shows how often our website is shown for that keyword in Google’s search results. You don’t know yet what page ranks for that keyword.

    To see what pages might rank for the specific keyword, you can click on the line of the keyword. Doing this for a keyword, the keyword is added as a filter:

    You can query the data in many ways

    Afterward, you can navigate to the ‘Pages’ tab to see what pages rank for this keyword. Are those pages the ones you’d want to rank for that keyword? If not, you might need to optimize the page you’d like to rank. Think of writing better content containing the keyword on that page, adding internal links from relevant pages or posts to the page, making the page load faster, etc.

    3. Average CTR

    The CTR – Click-through rate – tells you what percentage of the people that have seen your website in the search results also clicked through to your website. You probably understand that higher rankings mostly also lead to higher click-through rates.

    However, there are also things you can do yourself to increase the CTR. For example, you could rewrite your meta description and page title to make it more appealing. When the title and description of your site stand out from the other results, more people will probably click on your result, and your CTR will increase. Remember that this will not significantly impact you if you’re not ranking on the first page yet. You might need to try other things first to improve your ranking.

    4. Average position

    The last one on this list is the ‘Average position’. This tells you the average ranking of a specific keyword or page in the time period you’ve selected. Of course, this position isn’t always reliable since more and more people seem to get different search results. Google seems to understand better and better which results fit best for which visitor. However, this indicator still shows whether the clicks, impressions, and average CTR are explainable.

    Indexing

    The’ Indexing’ section is a more technical but treasured addition to Google Search Console. This section shows how many pages are in the index of Google since the last update, how many pages aren’t, and what errors and warnings caused difficulties for Google indexing your pages correctly. Google split this section into parts collecting your regular pages and video pages while giving a home for your XML sitemap and the removals sections.

    You can see how Google indexes your content over time

    We recommend you check this tab regularly to see what errors and warnings appear on your website. However, you also get notifications when Google has found new errors. Please check the error in more detail when you get such a notification.

    You may find that errors are caused when, e.g., a redirect doesn’t seem to work correctly or Google finds broken code or error pages in your theme. Google has a long list of possible reasons why pages aren’t indexed and what you can do to fix that.

    Clicking on one of the issues, you can analyze the error more in-depth to see what specific URLs are affected. When you’ve fixed the error, you can mark it as fixed to make sure Google will test the URL again:

    Fixed the specific error? Validate it so Google can check if it’s gone for real

    Things to look out for

    There are a few things you should always look for when checking out your indexing coverage reports:

    • If you’re writing new content, your indexed pages should steadily increase. This tells you two things: Google can index your site, and you keep your site ‘alive’ by adding content.
    • Watch out for sudden drops! This might mean that Google is having trouble accessing (all of) your website. Something may be blocking Google; whether it’s robots.txt changes or a server that’s down: you need to look into it!
    • Sudden (and unexpected) spikes in the graph might mean an issue with duplicate content (such as both www and non-www, wrong canonicals, etc.), automatically generated pages, or even hacks.

    We recommend you monitor these situations closely and resolve errors quickly, as too many errors could signal low quality (poor maintenance) to Google.

    URL Inspection

    The URL Inspection tool helps you analyze specific URLs. You retrieve the page from Google’s index and compare it with the page as it lives now on your site to see if there are differences. You can also find more technical info on this page, like when and how Google crawled it and how it looked at that moment. Sometimes, you’ll also notice several errors. This might be regarding Google’s inability to crawl your page correctly. It also gives information about the structured data found on this URL.

    The URL Inspection tool gives insights into every URL on your site

    Experience

    The experience report is an invaluable addition. This report gives a good idea of how fast your site loads on mobile and desktop and how Google grades its page experience and core web vitals. In addition, it also shows which pages have issues that keep them from performing well. The data is based on the Chrome UX report, so it’s accurate data from real users.

    Site speed, page experience, and user experience are complex topics containing many moving parts, so it’s good to learn how to think about page speed. You can find the answer here: how to check site speed.

    Find out which pages offer a bad experience and how you can fix that

    Mobile usability

    The mobile usability tab in the Experience section shows you usability issues with your website or specific mobile pages. Since mobile traffic is rising worldwide, we recommend checking this regularly. If your mobile site isn’t user-friendly, many visitors will leave it quickly.

    See if you need to improve your mobile pages

    Enhancements: rich results

    If you have structured data on your site — provided by Yoast SEO, for instance — it’s a good idea to check out the Enhancements reports in Search Console. The Enhancements tab collects all the insights and improvements that could lead to rich results. It lists all the structured data that Google found on your site. There’s an ever-expanding list of rich results, and you can find the following, among other things:

    • breadcrumbs
    • events
    • faqs
    • how-tos
    • jobs
    • logos
    • products
    • reviews
    • sitelinks searchboxes
    • videos

    All these tabs show how many valid enhancements you have or how many have errors or warnings. You get details about the kind of errors and warnings and on which URLs these are found. There’s also a trend line that shows if the number of issues is increasing or decreasing. And that’s just the start of it.

    Here’s an example of a job posting enhancement. You can overlay Impressions to get more context for the stats

    The Enhancements reports help you find and fix issues that hinder the performance of your rich results in search. By checking the issues, reading the support documentation, and validating fixes, you can increase your chance of getting rich results in search. We have a more expansive guide on the structured data Enhancement reports in Google Search Console.

    Sitemaps

    An XML sitemap is a roadmap to all important pages and posts on your website. Every website would benefit from having one. Do you run the Yoast SEO plugin on your website? Then you automatically have an XML sitemap. If not, we recommend creating one to ensure Google can easily find your most important pages and posts.

    You can find an option for XML sitemaps within the Indexing tab of Google Search Console. Here, you can tell Google where your XML sitemap is located on your site:

    Don’t forget to check your XML sitemap

    We recommend everyone enter the URL of their XML sitemap into GSC to make Google find it easily. In addition, you can quickly see if your sitemap gives errors or if some pages aren’t indexed, for instance. Checking this regularly, you’re sure Google can find and read your XML sitemap correctly.

    We recommend regularly checking the XML sitemap section in our plugin to manage which post types or taxonomies you include in your sitemaps!

    Shopping

    A recent addition is the Shopping section. Here, you can check how Google sees your products and if they get proper rich results. You’ll see if they are valid or if they are missing fields that make the product snippets more prominent. Click on a product to see which fields are missing for particular products and if these are essential parts or nice-to-haves. If you’ve added these to the structured data of your products, you validate the fix in Search Console.

    In the Shopping section, you’ll also find your Google Merchant listings and an option to enable shopping tab listings to show your products on the Shopping tab in Google Search. With these options, Google gives ecommerce site owners — and people selling stuff — more ways of checking how their listings are doing.

    Optimize your product listings in Google search

    Within the links to your site section, you can see how many links from other sites are pointing to your website. Besides, you can see what websites link, how many links those websites contain, and what anchor texts are used most in linking to your website. This can be valuable information because links still are vital for SEO.

    Find out which pages receive lots of links

    Within the internal links section, you can check what pages of your website are most linked from other spots on your site. This list can be valuable to analyze regularly because you want your most important pages and posts to get the most internal links. By doing this, you make sure Google understands as well what your cornerstones are.

    You can even see how many links individual pages get

    Manual Actions

    You don’t want to see anything in the manual actions tab. You’ll get more information if your site is penalized by Google. If your site is affected by a manual action, you’ll also get messaged via email.

    Several scenarios can lead to these kinds of penalties, including:

    • You have unnatural/bought links
      Ensure links from and to your site are valuable, not just for SEO. Preferably your links come from and link to related content that is valuable for your readers.
    • Your site has been hacked
      A message stating your site’s probably hacked by a third party. Google might label your site as compromised or lower your rankings.
    • You’re hiding something from Google
      If you’re ‘cloaking’ (that is, intentionally showing different content to users to deceive them), or using ‘sneaky’ redirects (e.g., hiding affiliate URLs), then you’re violating Google’s guidelines (now known as Google Search Essentials).
    • Plain Spam
      Automatically generated content, scraped content, and aggressive cloaking could cause Google to blocklist your site.
    • Spammy structured markup
      If you use rich snippets for too many irrelevant elements on a page or mark up content hidden from the visitor, that might be considered spammy. Mark up what’s necessary and only necessary things.

    Security issues

    Within the security issues tab, you’ll get a notification when your website seems to have a security issue.

    Search Console: an incredibly helpful tool

    Reading this post should give you a good idea of what Search Console is capable of and how to use it, so I’d like to ask you this: Do you already use Google Search Console for your website? If not, create an account to collect data about your website. Do you think something is missing? Feel free to leave a comment!

    Read more: How to make your site stand out in the search results »

    The post How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide appeared first on Yoast.

  • What is site structure and why is it important?

    Site structure is a vital aspect of your SEO strategy. Why? Because the structure of your website shows Google which pages of your site are most important. This means you can influence which content will rank highest in the search engines with your site’s structure. And good news: You can start improving your site structure today! In this post, you’ll read why site structure helps SEO, and we’ll give you three quick tips on how to start improving it.

    What is site structure?

    Site structure refers to how you organize your website’s content. In other words: the pages and posts on your website. These often have a variety of – related – topics, and site structure deals with how this content is grouped, linked and presented to the visitor. You can use taxonomies, like categories and tags, but also internal links, your navigation, and breadcrumbs as tools to improve your site structure. If you do this well, your users will find their way around your website more easily. Plus, Google can index your URLs better!

    Learn how to do this well. Our site structure training teaches you how to set up the best site structure for your visitors and Google!

    As your site grows, it’ll get cluttered

    As you’re writing more blog posts or add more product pages, your site will get cluttered. You need to organize it neatly to make sure that you, your visitors, and Google will be able to find what they’re looking for. But why is that? Well, let me tell you a little story.

    Once upon a time, there was this young woman. Her name is Alice. Alice gets up every morning, sits down at her desk and starts to write a beautiful story. She writes one story every day. Alice types all her stories on this beautiful old-fashioned typewriter. Whenever she’s done writing, she pulls the paper out of the machine and puts her lovely new story on her desk. As you can imagine, her desk will slowly get cluttered with all these sheets of paper. After a year of writing, she’ll have 365 sheets of paper on it. After three years of writing, she’ll have more than a thousand. Alice will not be able to find her favorite story, because of the abundance of stories on her desk.

    Conclusion: If you don’t structure your stuff neatly, your stories, blog posts and product pages will get lost. In addition, your visitors won’t be able to find what they’re looking for, and Google will also get lost (which is bad for your SEO).

    Why is site structure important for Google – and users?

    There are three reasons why site structure is important for Google and, therefore, your chance of ranking in the search engines.

    1. Structure is a guide for Google

    The way your site is structured will give Google clues about where to find the most essential content. Your site’s structure determines whether a search engine can understand what your site is about and what you’re selling.

    Google crawls websites by following internal and external links, using a bot called Googlebot. By following those links, Google determines the relationship between the various pages. In other words: Your site structure is like a guide to Google, and therefore very crucial.

    2. Not competing with your content

    You probably have blog posts or articles on your site that cover the same topic. At Yoast, for example, we write a lot about SEO. We have multiple posts about site structure, each covering a different aspect. But Google won’t know which of these is most important unless we ‘tell’ Google.

    A good tip is to order your content by importance. Think about Alice’s cluttered desk. She could clean up by making piles of her sheets of papers. She could order her stories by topic: bumble bees, flowers, and fairies. But, if Alice were to make these piles without any kind of structure and without putting the most beautiful stories at the top of the pile, no one would ever know which story is most important to her.

    In conclusion: If you don’t tell Google which posts are most important, all of your posts will be competing for attention. You’ll be competing with your own pages for a high ranking in Google. Luckily, the solution is rather simple: Let Google know which page you consider to be the most important. To do this, you need a good internal linking structure.

    3. Site structure is important for UX

    Did you know that your site structure is also important for your User eXperience (UX)? After all, when people can easily find their way on your website, they’ll have a better browsing experience. This will also increase your chances for people to convert: buy your products; subscribe to your newsletter or return for another visit. And Google likes sites that perform well too! So make sure your site structure is reflected in the navigation of your website.

    How to get started with site structure

    What do you need to do to improve your structure? And what can you do to avoid your site structure becoming an issue?  Read on for three basic tips on how to quickly improve your site structure.

    1. Remove old content

    Lots of shops sell a different collection of products (clothes, shoes, etc.) every season. And when the season is done, the item pages are removed. This is a great practice if you don’t expect to sell the same product again. But what about all the links that point to the deleted product page? As you know, links to your page are valuable for your SEO! That’s why you should redirect the URL. This way, you still benefit from the links, even though the page doesn’t exist anymore.

    2. Evaluate your categories

    You should ensure that categories are about the same size. Think of Alice and her stories. Alice could categorize her stories by making piles. Now imagine one of these piles becoming huge, while the others remain much smaller. It would be hard to find a specific story in that big pile, while it would be much easier to search through a small pile. At the same time, that big heap is probably very important, because Alice wrote a lot of stories about that specific topic.

    Categories can become too large when you write a lot about one specific subject and less about others. At some point, you should divide the big category into two smaller categories. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that no category is more than twice the size of any other category. When one category is significantly larger than other ones, your site becomes unbalanced. You’ll have a hard time ranking with blog posts within a huge category. The pile has become too large to search through. In this case, you should evaluate and optimize your categories; perhaps merge or split some of them.

    3. Improve your internal linking structure

    You should link to the most essential content on your site to show Google that these are your best and most complete articles. But it makes sense to users too. You want them to read your best posts, right? Read Meike’s blogpost about Internal linking for SEO to learn how to improve your internal linking structure.

    Read more: Avoid these site structure mistakes! »

    Yoast helps you out!

    Yoast SEO premium can really help you set up and improve the structure of your site. The redirect functionality will allow you to easily redirect pages you deleted (so you’ll pass on the linking juice to another page). And our related links functionality will make sure you are interlinking articles with similar topics.

    On top of that, we have a site structure training. This can be especially helpful if you need some guidance when starting with site structure. This training will guide you through the process. So, take a look!

    Conclusion: Get started with improving your site structure

    It’s important to remember that site structure is part of a bigger, ongoing process. Your site will grow and therefore, the structure will require maintenance. Improving and maintaining the structure of a site should be a core aspect of every SEO strategy. It’s a very actionable part of SEO, because it’s something you can control and improve rather quickly. So, let’s get started!

    Keep reading: Site structure: the Ultimate guide »

    The post What is site structure and why is it important? appeared first on Yoast.

  • Inclusive language and SEO: Does inclusive language help you rank?

    If you own a blog or a business, SEO is probably important to you. Then you also know that Google cares a lot about user experience. But there’s one aspect of user experience that’s often overlooked: inclusive language.

    But why should you care?

    Creating inclusive content is good for your users and your SEO. On the other hand, if you use language that isn’t inclusive, you can exclude people and reinforce systemic biases. Yikes, right? In short, your users definitely value inclusive language, but the big question is: Does Google care?

    What is inclusive language?

    Before we dive deeper into the topic, let’s look at what inclusive language means. Inclusive language aims to use words that don’t express or imply ideas that are derogatory or excluding towards marginalized groups. For example, using a racist or misogynistic slur.

    Just like accessibility, inclusive language makes everyone feel welcome on your website. If you use non-inclusive words, you’re likely to exclude part of your audience. And in a worst-case scenario, you may even offend people. This, of course, can cause them to quickly leave your site and never come back, which is bad for your SEO and your business.

    How could inclusive language affect your ranking?

    As you know, Google and other search engines’ goal is to provide people with the best result for their query. That’s why, with a few exceptions, it’s usually not great if users leave your website quickly and never return — for example, if they feel excluded by your content, then they will think it’s not for them.

    So, why is this bad? Well, Google sees these behavioral patterns and uses them to figure out how people are experiencing your site. If a number of people leave quickly, Google may think they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Meaning: Your site isn’t useful for the query you’re trying to rank for. As a result, your website’s ranking can decrease.

    On the other hand, if your content is available to more people because you use inclusive language, the chances of people sharing your posts and linking to them will increase. Just think about it: If you write a funny post about “Things firemen do that just make sense“, you’re only referring to firefighters who are men. Which means only people who don’t notice or ignore that other genders weren’t included will share your post. You might think: So what? But you could be excluding a lot of people, and missing out on a lot of engagement. However, if you write “Things firefighters do that just make sense“, more people will read and share your post. So by taking advantage of our inclusive language analysis you open up your content to more people. Which in turn means more people can relate to it, like it, engage with it, share it, and link to it. Which is obviously great for your SEO!

    Google cares about inclusive language

    We are not the only ones that believe that inclusive language is important. Let’s see what Google says. On their website, they have the following statement: “Everyone should be able to access and enjoy the web. We’re committed to making that a reality.” In other words: Google cares about its users, and they also care about inclusive language. Recently, they also tweeted about inclusive language confirming this:

    If you write anything for SEO […] please watch out for inclusive language. It doesn’t take much work, and you might not get it right all the time, but taking steps to get better matters too.

    John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google

    Stand out from the crowd

    As with accessibility, inclusive language is widely overlooked by other websites and businesses. Did you know that a whopping 98% of websites in the United States aren’t built with accessibility in mind? That’s a ridiculous amount! 

    You’ll be one step ahead of the competition if you ensure your website is available to everyone. Plus, it sends a message to your audience that you value them. This could lead to great word-of-mouth advertising because you’re one of the few who actually focuses on inclusive language. Of course, more advertising can lead to more visitors, which can lead to more shares and likes, and… you get it. We firmly believe that using inclusive language is great for your SEO and can actually improve your rankings.

    Inclusive language analysis

    What is and isn’t inclusive can be hard to figure out. Especially since language is constantly evolving. Keeping up with all the changes can be very time-consuming, but we have good news: You don’t have to figure out how to write inclusive content all by yourself. Yoast SEO now has an inclusive language analysis, developed and maintained by linguists.

    So, what does the analysis do? This new feature works similarly to our other analyses by giving you real-time feedback on your text with the use of traffic lights. It scans your text (and also looks at context), then highlights words or phrases that might not be inclusive. It also gives you an alternative word to use, so you don’t have to spend time searching for one. Easy, right?

    Point to remember! This feature is opt-in! So, it will be turned off by default. This feature is available in our free and premium plugin, read more about the inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO.

    In conclusion

    As a business owner, inclusive language may not be part of your business goals. Especially in terms of SEO. However, inclusive language can have a positive impact on your SEO and your users’ experience. You’re less likely to offend anyone, and more likely to include everyone. As a result, more people feel engaged, so your content is more likely to be read and shared. That means your audience grows, which can also boost your rankings. Plus, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition.

    The post Inclusive language and SEO: Does inclusive language help you rank? appeared first on Yoast.

  • New in Yoast SEO Free: the inclusive language analysis

    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.

    Screenshot of activating inclusive language feature
    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.

    The post New in Yoast SEO Free: the inclusive language analysis appeared first on Yoast.

  • What is natural writing?

    No, it’s not writing about nature. It means you write in a way that flows well and sounds natural. As if you were talking to someone. Now, we’re not saying to write slang words and half-finished sentences, because that wouldn’t read very well. So, what is natural writing? Read more to find out!

    Write like you talk (kind of)

    As we mentioned before, natural writing is writing in a way that’s similar to how you talk. Except a little prettier. Words like ‘kinda’ and ‘yeah’ and ‘cuz’ aren’t generally accepted as ‘professional’ language, so if you want to write for businesses (maybe your own) you should avoid slang. 

    However, there are things you can copy from the way you talk. For example, keeping things short and to the point! Just think about it: If you’re telling a story to friends, you won’t spend paragraphs introducing your story. Generally, you give context in a few sentences before you dive right in. And that’s also what you should do when writing!

    Use short and common words

    If you’re a language nerd, you probably know a lot of big, impressive words. Which is exceptional, exemplary, and marvelous! But they can also make your texts harder to read. If you use short and simple words, your writing will read more quickly. Of course, it’s fine to use ‘receive’ instead of ‘get’ every once in a while. But try to keep your vocabulary relatively simple.

    Read your texts out loud

    Natural writing is all about flow. The best way to find out if your story flows well and sounds natural is to read it out loud. You’ll quickly notice which parts feel awkward, too long, or overly formal. Imagine how you would say those sentences if you were telling the story instead. Then write that down. 

    Don’t overuse your keyword

    Why not? Well, if you repeat the same keyword over and over again, your text will read very unnaturally. Just think about it. Would you rather read: “A blueberry pie is the best dessert to eat during the holidays. Everyone likes blueberry pie. That’s why I created this blueberry pie recipe. So you can treat everyone with a delicious blueberry pie this year.” Or: “A blueberry pie is the best dessert to eat during the holidays. Everyone likes it. That’s why I created this recipe, so you can treat everyone this year.” The second reads better, right?

    And overusing your keyword is not even necessary for your SEO! Because Google wants your audience to have a great experience on your website. But if your text is unreadable, your audience will quickly click away, and Google won’t rank your page or post very high.

    Let your sentences flow

    Okay, we mentioned ‘flow’ a few times now. After all, flow is important if you want your text to read naturally. But what does it mean when a text flows well? Generally, a good flow is when your sentence length alternates. You can go: short, medium, long. Or: long, short, long. Heck, you could even try: short, short, long. As long as you alternate your sentence length and never write four short/medium/long sentences in a row, you’re good to go! And try to read your writing out loud afterwards. It really does help!

    Dictate, then write

    If you’re struggling with writing like you speak, why not switch it around? Dictate your text, or simply record what you’re saying, then write it down. Of course, you’ll still need to review your text. When people talk they sometimes forget the point they’re trying to make. But that’s fine. You can always edit and adjust until it sounds coherent. 

    The text was written naturally by you

    This is an example of a passive sentence. And let’s be honest: Who talks in passive sentences? No one! Sure, they come up every once in a while, but not often. So if you want to write more naturally, be mindful of the passive voice. It can come across as impersonal, or simply boring. 

    Unfortunately, passive sentences still creep into your texts sometimes. So what do you need to look out for? Search for sentences with the word ‘to’. People often use ‘to’ when they’re slipping into a passive voice. For example, “When it’s time to clean your house, you better clear your calendar.” A more active sentence would be: “Clear your calendar before you clean your house.” Or even: “Need to clean your house? Then clear your calendar.” 

    Good to note: Passive sentences aren’t wrong. They’re totally fine to use every once in a while. Just be mindful of them. Especially if you tend to use them a lot in your writing. Luckily, the Yoast SEO Premium plugin scans your text and highlights passive sentences, so you can easily fix them.

    Example of what natural writing is

    Natural writing sounds great in theory, but what does it look like in practice? Well, let’s look at an example. First, we have a formal and slightly boring text:

    Stamp collecting is generally accepted as one of the areas that make up the wider subject of philately, which is the study of stamps. A philatelist may, but does not have to, collect stamps. It is not uncommon for the term philatelist to be used to mean a stamp collector. Many casual stamp collectors accumulate stamps for sheer enjoyment and relaxation without worrying about the tiny details. The creation of a large or comprehensive collection, however, generally requires some philatelic knowledge and will usually contain areas of philatelic studies.

    Be honest. Did you read all of that? Probably not. So let’s make it a more interesting text by using short and simple words, alternating our sentence length, and just getting straight to the point. You’ll get:

    Philately is the study of stamps. You’d think that a philatelist is someone who collects stamps, but that isn’t always true. Some philatelists collect stamps, and some don’t. But why do people collect the little squares in the first place? Multiple reasons! Sometimes for enjoyment and relaxation. Others, however, simply want to own a large collection. In order to start a collection though, you have to know at least something about stamps. 

    Reads better, right?

    Anyone can write naturally

    Like most skills, natural writing is also something you can learn. You just have to know what to do, then practice! And don’t worry if you don’t get it right on the first try. Most people have to revise their texts at least once. Just remember to get straight to the point, use simple words, and alternate your sentences. And when you’re done, read your text out loud to see how it flows. Good luck!

    The post What is natural writing? appeared first on Yoast.

  • Common rel=”canonical” errors in video SEO

    Do you have two pages on your site that are practically identical yet necessary in order for your site to work? And do you need one of them to be indexed in Google search? Then you should use the rel=”canonical” tag. It’s a useful tool in any SEOs arsenal. But where can you find the tag? It sits in the <head> of the duplicate page, and points to the version you want to be indexed. In other words: It tells Google and other search engine crawlers that this version is the “canonical”.

    With video marketing, there are common technical implementations that require specific use of the rel=”canonical” tag. For example, to prevent the indexation of duplicate and low-quality pages. There are also common ways many plugins and tools default to implementing rel=”canonical” that can hamper video SEO.

    In this post, we’ll break down the common mistakes typically made with rel=”canonical” for video SEO. And we’ll explain how to avoid them!

    1: Leaving isolated video hosting pages indexable with self-referencing canonical tags

    When self-hosting videos use a custom player and CDN, it’s very common to embed the videos as an encapsulated media file on an otherwise blank page. A video player can then reference the files via iframe or JavaScript. These pages will often live on a subdirectory or subdomain, e.g. videos.example.com/video-5.html. They usually serve no functional purpose for users, except to offer a location from which video players can find and pull in video files.

    Because the purpose of these pages is technical and they’re often not linked to (beyond instances in the video player code), the pages are true duplicates. Which means it’s not appropriate to leave them open to the index. However, the pages do need to be crawlable. Otherwise, Googlebot Video won’t be able to find the video files and index the videos.

    The best solution is therefore to implement rel=”canonical”. This will make your pages crawlable, while telling Google not to index them. Instead, Google will see them as subsidiary assets for the core page that the videos are presented on. This could mean that you need to adjust default self-referencing rel=”canonical” rules, so these isolated page include self-referencing canonical tags by default.

    Solution: Use rel=”canonical” to point isolated video pages to the pages they are primarily embedded on.

    2. Implementing canonical tags for the same video on multiple pages

    When indexing videos, Google considers a video as a child of a page rather than an individual asset with its own distinct URL, as they do with image files. What does this mean? It means duplication at a video level currently isn’t a particular consideration for Googlebot. Even if you include the same video on two pages and implement structured data so Googlebot can find and index the videos, Google doesn’t per se consider them to be the same video. 

    Note: This doesn’t mean you can publish the same video on as many pages as you like with no consequences. If the pages are otherwise very similar, target similar keywords, and have identical video titles and thumbnails, then this can still create confusion and ranking cannibalization. However, this would be a problem at page level rather than video level.

    In the future, there may well emerge a tool to indicate duplication at a media asset level. For now, though, the best solution is to ensure that each page you create contains unique content in addition to any duplicated assets. And trust Google to know which page is most appropriate to rank for any given query.

    Solution: Don’t use rel=”canonical”. Just make sure every page has unique copy and other unique media.

    What if you need to use the same video multiple times?

    For example, if you want to use it on a help page and a blog post. Rest assured, you can still do this without worrying about duplication. However, some people still feel that you should use rel=”canonical” to indicate this duplication. Their reason? The videos are identical, so one of the pages has to be more appropriate than the other to rank. This isn’t true, though. Because rel=”canonical” only operates at a page level rather than a media asset level, it would be an incorrect use of the protocol.

    3. Using URL parameters to indicate timestamps without rel=”canonical”

    If you want to stipulate to a browser to start a video at a specific point (rather than the start), you would probably use URL parameters. For example, YouTube videos work with a “?t=” parameter, and Wistia videos work with “?wtime=”. 

    URL parameters are a really useful feature. But they can be especially beneficial for Video SEO, since they allow you to create URLs to use in Clip Schema in combination with VideoObject. This, in turn, allows you to ensure that your videos are indexed for “Key Moments” in Google search, thereby taking up more attention and space in the results pages for any given query.

    However, if you use URL parameters like this, you’re technically creating duplicate pages for each “clip”. Which Google isn’t always able to assume should be defaulted to the page root. You therefore need to implement rules which ensure that any URL using the query parameter that stipulates video rules is automatically canonicalized back to the page without this query parameter (typically the root URL).

    Solution: Ensure that canonical rules automatically add a tag for URLs with a timestamp parameter. Make it point to the variation of the URL without this parameter included.

    4. Automatically canonicalizing query parameters that determine lightboxes and video galleries

    Do you have a video lightbox or gallery on your site? If so, then chances are you’re using video plugins or embed codes that use query parameters or hashes to indicate a URL variation.

    In such cases, the video player won’t load until the JavaScript is triggered, which is indicated by the adapted URL. For Googlebot to be able to find, render, and index these embedded videos, the URL variations themselves must be crawlable and indexable. This might sound contradictory to the advice we gave before. But there’s a crucial difference between the two situations: The change in content on the page, which occurs with the JavaScript function.

    You need to make these types of dynamically generated pages, such as those created through Wistia Channels, available for search engine crawlers. However, we recommend that you don’t use noindex or rel=”canonical” tags. This does mean you have to carefully consider the automatic canonical rules. In addition, you have to ensure that any parameters you use are not automatically grouped in with timestamp parameters, or tracking parameters that are implemented by other analytics platforms. These should be automatically canonicalized.

    Solution: Don’t add canonical tags to these pages.

    In summary

    The rel=”canonical” tag can be a useful tool in your SEOs arsenal. It specifies the “canonical URL,” or the “preferred” version of a web page. This means you can avoid pointing Google towards duplicate content. So if you use the rel=”canonical” tag correctly, it will improve your site’s SEO. Awesome, right? That’s why it’s good to know what the common mistakes are when using this task, and how to correct them.

    Read more: How to use the new video indexing report in Google Search Console »

    The post Common rel=”canonical” errors in video SEO appeared first on Yoast.

  • SEO, Schema, and the future of search

    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.

  • Internal linking for SEO: Why and how?

    Before your content can rank, it needs links. Google finds your posts and pages best when linked to from somewhere on the web. Internal links also connect your content and give Google an idea of the structure of your website. They can establish a hierarchy on your site, allowing you to provide the most important pages and posts with more link value than other, less valuable pages. So using the right internal linking strategy can boost your SEO! In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of internal linking, how to approach it, and how Yoast SEO can help you with internal linking.

    Did you get a red bullet for internal links in Yoast SEO? Jump straight ahead and read how this assessment works in Yoast SEO and how to improve your internal linking.

    Table of contents

    An internal link is any link from one page on your website to another page on your website. Your users and search engines use links to find content on your website. Your users use links to navigate through your site and to find the content they want to find. Search engines also use links to navigate your site. They won’t see a page if there are no links to it.

    There are several types of internal links. In addition to links on your homepage, menu, post feed, etc., you can also add links within your content. We call those contextual links. Contextual links point your users to interesting and related content. Moreover, they allow search engines to determine what content on your site is related and its value. The more links a significant page receives, the more important it will seem to search engines. Therefore, good internal links are crucial to your SEO.

    Every website — even online stores — consists of internal and external links. Internal links connect pages and posts on your website, and external links connect your pages to other websites. This post focuses on internal links and what they mean for SEO. See our posts on link building if you want to get more external links pointing to your site.

    Internal linking is an essential factor for Google and other search engines. But why? Google follows links to discover content on websites and to rank this content in the search results. If a post or page gets many links, this signals to Google that it’s an essential or high-value article. This counts for internal as well as external links.

    Internal linking is something you control as a site owner. You’ll guide visitors and Google to your most important pages with the correct internal links. Our internal linking tool (not available yet in Yoast SEO for Shopify) can help you suggest related posts to link to!

    Internal links establish relationships between content

    Google crawls websites by following internal and external links using a bot called Googlebot. This bot arrives at the website’s homepage, renders the page, and follows the first link. By following the links, Google can work out the relationship between the various pages, posts, and other content. This way, Google finds out which pages on your site cover a similar subject matter.

    For example, this post will have links to the ‘Content SEO’, ‘Internal linking’, and ‘Site structure’ tags. We make sure Google understands that the content on those pages is related to the content of this post by adding these links.

    Internal links help search engines better find your content

    As websites grow in size and complexity, orphaned content becomes an issue for many. Orphaned content refers to pages on your website that have no internal links pointing to them. This issue is because search engines can’t find and index them without any internal link to lead the Googlebot to these pages.

    Even though websites nowadays have sitemaps that list the URL of — most — pages on your site, search engines may take a long time to reach these pages eventually. This is especially true for very big websites that take a lot of resources to crawl or newly created sites that don’t get visited often by Google. Adding internal links to your newly published pages provides search engines with more ways to reach those content.

    In addition to understanding the relationship between content, Google divides link value between all links on a web page. Often, the homepage of a website has the most significant link value because it has the most backlinks. That link value will be shared between all the links on that homepage. The link value passed to the following page will be divided between the links on that page and so on.

    Therefore, your newest blog posts will get more link value if you link to them from the homepage instead of only on the category page. And Google will find recent posts quicker if they’re linked to from the homepage.

    When you understand that links pass their link value on, you’ll understand that more links to a post mean more value. That’s because Google deems a page with lots of valuable links more important; you’ll increase the chance of that page ranking. 

    Setting up an internal linking strategy

    It’s crucial for your SEO to evaluate and improve your internal linking strategy regularly. It’s one of the ways to improve the fitness of your website. By adding the right internal links, you make sure Google understands the following:

    • the relevance of pages;
    • the relationship between pages;
    • and the value of pages.

    There are several things to consider to set up your internal linking strategy. How you go about it depends on your site and goals, but the following steps are a good rule of thumb.

    1. Determine the ideal structure for your site

    We always advise website owners to imagine their website as a pyramid. On top of it is your homepage; below are some sections or categories, and further down are individual posts and pages — possibly with subcategories in between.

    ideal site structure pyramid

    Your website’s menu should reflect this structure if you do it well. In our Ultimate guide to site structure, you can read how to create the best site structure for your site.

    2. Decide what your most important content is

    It would help if you determined what your most important content is. If you’re not sure, please read our article on cornerstone content. In short, it’s your best and most complete content about the core of your business. It’s the content you want people to find when searching for topics or products you specialize in.

    You must add many links to inform Google that this is your most important content. There are various spots from where you can link to your cornerstone content. Here, we’ll give the most common options, from your post’s copy to your navigation.

    When you’ve written various articles about a certain topic, you should contextually link them. This will show Google – and your users – that those articles are topically related. You can link directly from sentences in your copy or add links at the end of your post.

    Moreover, you want to show Google which articles are your cornerstone: your most complete article on this topic. To do so, you must add a link to the cornerstone in all articles on this topic. And don’t forget to link back from the cornerstone to the individual posts.

    Contextual linking: an example

    Our blog has a cornerstone content article called ‘The ultimate guide to keyword research’. This post will rank for all related search queries about [keyword research] in Google search results.

    So we’ve added links from other relevant articles, such as ‘7 keyword research mistakes to avoid‘, ‘ What is keyword research‘, or ‘Focus on long tail keywords‘ to the main article. And we link back from the main article to these posts. In doing so, Google will understand that the ultimate guide contains the most information about [keyword research]. So, in the end, Google will rank the ultimate guide above the other shorter posts about keyword research.

    If you have hierarchical pages on your website, link parent pages to their child pages and vice versa. Also, don’t forget to link sibling pages to each other. These pages should be related to each other on a well-organized site, and connecting them like this make perfect sense.

    Read all about linking parent and child pages for SEO.

    5. Consider adding a related post section

    You can find many plugins and modules to add complete related post sections to your posts. This is an excellent way to show your posts to more visitors. If you use one, we recommend testing whether the related posts are related. If you’re not sure, linking to posts manually is probably best. That’s what we do on Yoast.com – we select a related post manually (or with a bit of help from our internal linking tool – more on that later) and place a link to that post at the bottom of the article. The related links block in Yoast SEO Premium helps you do this in a jiffy.

    We explain this in detail in this post about linking to related posts.

    Besides linking from topically-related posts and pages, it’s possible to make your cornerstone content more authoritative by adding links from the homepage or the top navigation menu. It would help if you did this with the posts and pages most important to your business. This will give these posts or pages a lot of link value and strengthen them in Google’s eyes.

    Taxonomies, like categories and tags, help you organize your site and help users and Google understand your content. If you have a blog, adding internal links to the taxonomies that the post belongs to could be beneficial. Adding links to the category and tags helps Google understand your blog’s structure and helps visitors navigate related posts more easily.

    For instance, on the first page of our SEO blog, we link to several tag pages, including technical SEO and SEO basics.

    A good practice after you publish a post or page is to link to that newly published post from other content on your site. Of course, the posts or pages that link to the recently published post must be of a similar topic. You shouldn’t just link to this new post from a random post or page on your site.

    Now, this might sound daunting, especially if you regularly publish content. But it’s worth the hassle, as you won’t end up with a bunch of orphaned content that needs fixing. Besides, adding internal links to your most recent posts ensure that search engine crawlers can crawl and index them when they land on other pages on your site.

    The last option to mention is creating internal links to your website’s most popular posts or pages. Preferably create these sections in the sidebar or the footer of your website to have them appear on all pages and posts. As link value passes to these most popular posts from many different pages, they get a boost. Besides, the posts will be more accessible for visitors, increasing traffic – and more traffic is a positive sign for Google.

    You also probably have links that aren’t important for SEO on your website. For example, if you have a login link for your clients on the homepage, you don’t want to leak link value to your login page – that page doesn’t need to rank high in the search results.

    You used to be able to prevent losing link value to unimportant links by giving them a nofollow tag. A nofollow tag asks Google not to follow the link, so no link value is passed. Now you might think: “I’m going to nofollow less important links to give the most important links more link value.” While this worked in the past, Google has become more competent. Now it seems that the link value for those nofollow links doesn’t automatically flow to the other links on the page. The nofollow link will be counted as a link, and the link value will be lost. Therefore it makes more sense to have fewer links on a page instead of nofollowing some of the links.

    Adding a nofollow tag doesn’t mean those target pages can’t be found in Google’s search results. You should give them a noindex tag if you don’t want pages or posts to appear in the search results. The noindex tag means that Google shouldn’t render the page and shouldn’t give the content a place in the Google index to show up in the search results.

    Read more: Why noindex a page or nofollow a link? »

    Anchor texts

    Once you have decided which links should be on a page and which pages should get link value, using the correct anchor text is essential. The anchor text is the clickable text that visitors see. For example, the anchor text of the two internal links in the example below are ‘link schemes’ and ‘paid links’:

    Anchor texts
    You can see the anchor text containing the link in this image.

    If you over-optimize anchor text, you might hurt your website. By over-optimizing, we mean keyword stuffing. Previously, you could give all anchor texts the same keyword, and Google would rank your site higher for that keyword. Nowadays, Google is smart enough to understand that the content around the anchor text says more about the relevancy of a keyword than the anchor text itself. So please ensure the anchor text looks natural in your copy: it’s OK to use keywords but don’t add the same keywords to every link’s anchor text. 

    Keep reading: The context of internal links »

    Internal linking in Yoast SEO

    Yoast SEO includes several checks and features to help you improve your internal linking.

    On a post level, the Yoast SEO plugin helps ensure you give internal links some thought. In the plugin meta box — or the sidebar, as shown below –, the internal link assessment of Yoast SEO checks whether you’ve created links to other pages on your website in your text. It also checks if these links are followed or nofollowed.

    For Yoast SEO for Shopify, this check only works on posts or pages. You do not have internal links on your product pages or product descriptions because you want to keep customers there — not send them to another part of your site. You need your customer to convert as quickly as possible. An essential part of Shopify SEO, right?

    Checking if you've added enough internal links in Yoast SEO
    Checking if you've added enough internal links in Yoast SEO for Shopify only works in posts and pages, not products

    Add internal contextual links to relevant content on your site to get a green bullet for this check.

    Text link counter

    If you install Yoast SEO for WordPress, you’ll also get a handy tool in your post overview called the text link counter. This tool counts the internal links in a post and the internal links pointing to a post. This visualizes which posts should receive more links. This will all help you work purposely on your site structure.

    You can see the number of internal links pointing to and from a post with Yoast SEO

    Easy internal linking with Yoast SEO Premium

    The internal linking suggestion

    You are probably aware of the importance of internal linking for SEO. But handpicking articles – and relevant articles – to link to isn’t always easy. Even if you have a small website, you might not remember every little thing you’ve published over the years. And suppose you’re managing a medium to large website, especially one where various people can write and publish content. In that case, knowing all your content on a given topic is difficult. When this happens, internal linking can take much more of your time than it should.

    That’s precisely why we’ve built a dedicated feature in Yoast SEO Premium for internal linking – the internal linking suggestion. It’s incredibly easy to use, and you only need to set up this feature once. Yoast SEO will first scan, analyze and try to make sense of all your content in WordPress. Then when you write a post, you can immediately link to a related post by copying or dragging the link directly into the editor. You’ll see the suggestions in the Yoast SEO sidebar on the right-hand side of your screen. For instance, the screenshot below shows the internal linking suggestions for this post you’re reading! The green tick indicates that we’re linking to the suggested post from this one.

    This feature makes internal linking much more intuitive. And that’s thanks to Yoast SEO content analysis running in real-time in the background. It analyses and compares your text to existing content on your site to pick out articles that best fit your new post, all while you’re writing! Even if the articles were written a while ago or by someone else on your team, Yoast SEO won’t miss them. This will help you create an outstanding structure by connecting related content without immediately overlooking articles you might not think of.

    the internal linking feature suggests 4 posts that are related to this post you're reading. We do use these suggestions and link to those 4 posts in this post.
    Internal linking suggestions by Yoast SEO Premium for this article

    The cornerstone approach internal linking workout

    Getting your internal links back in shape is important because that helps you rank with the content you want to rank. That’s why we’ve introduced the cornerstone content internal linking workout in Yoast SEO Premium. You can use this workout to improve your internal linking based on the cornerstone approach we discussed earlier. In six easy steps, you can improve your site structure by learning where to find your cornerstones, how many links they have, and how to add links pointing to these important posts.

    The first step in the cornerstone content workout in Yoast SEO Premium

    The orphaned content internal linking workout

    Orphaned content is pages and posts with no internal links. That makes them hard for users to find and also hard for search engines to crawl. In the orphaned content workout, we identify your orphaned content and give you all the options and tools you need to deal with it! Maybe you don’t want those pages to be found. Maybe you want to delete them. Or maybe you want these pages to rank in Google and be found by your visitors. Whatever you decide for each page, the steps in this SEO workout make it easy to clean up your content.

    The first step in the orphaned content workout in Yoast SEO Premium

    When you have our Premium plugin, you can find these internal linking workouts in the backend of your WordPress website. Go to Yoast SEO in your left menu, and select the menu item ‘Workouts’. This will take you to a page where you can find our workouts. Of course, we’ll add other SEO workouts as we go along, which you’ll also find here when they’re released!

    Go Premium and unlock this feature!

    Unlock our internal linking features and get free access to all of our SEO courses with Yoast SEO Premium:

    Get Yoast SEO Premium Only €99 EUR / year (ex VAT)

    Child and sibling block

    In the WordPress block editor, you can also easily link child and sibling pages with Yoast SEO premium. If you want to make sure you link all child and sibling pages, just select the sibling or subpages block, add it to your post, and you’re done. Of course, this only works for hierarchical post types.

    Find all the Yoast SEO blocks in the block editor

    Orphaned content filter

    Yoast SEO Premium has an orphaned content filter to make finding posts that aren’t linked even easier. This feature allows you to see which posts and pages aren’t linked to at all, by other posts and pages on your website. Using the filter, finding important posts that need more inbound internal links is a piece of cake!

    Go link your content

    Without links, your content can’t rank! With a solid internal linking strategy, you can show which content is related and which of your articles are most informative and valuable. If you follow the guidelines in this post both Google and your users will understand your site better, which will, in turn, increase your chance of ranking.

    Read on: Site structure: the ultimate guide »

    The post Internal linking for SEO: Why and how? appeared first on Yoast.

  • Yoast SEO 19.11: Upgrading your SEO data

    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.

  • Cyber Monday: 1 day left for a 30% discount on all products

    It’s Cyber Monday, and the Yoast Black Friday deals are still going strong. Have you claimed your 30% discount yet? If not, hurry! Time is running out. Get the advanced features of our Premium plugins and outrank your competitors in Google. Are you looking to save time and access easy tools and practical tips on boosting your rankings? Yes?! Then you should get Yoast SEO Premium! 

    Our 2022 Cyber Monday sale has now ended. But you can still sign up for our newsletter: you’ll get all the latest Yoast SEO news and blog posts delivered straight to your inbox. Register now so you don’t miss our next sale!



    Privacy policy

    Not convinced yet? In this post, we’ll tell you all about the benefits of Yoast SEO Premium and why your site can’t do without it — interested in one of our other plugins? Check out this post! 

    Write content that ranks in the search engines

    To stand out in search engines, you must write high-quality, SEO-friendly content. SEO is still king (or queen!). Why? People don’t want SEO-friendly content per se; they like what SEO-friendly content can do for them. You need to optimize your text for the right keywords without over-optimizing. Your text should be easy to read. You definitely should add keywords in a text; you should optimize your text. However, optimizing for search engines should never compromise the readability of your text. That could hurt your rankings. 

    Yoast SEO Premium has an advanced analysis that recognizes different word forms and synonyms. It can recognize plurals, past tense, and other word orders. You can add related keywords too. With Yoast SEO Premium, you’ll be able to optimize your text for SEO without compromising the readability of the text. 

    Setting related keyphrases and synonyms in the Yoast Premium SEO plugin
    An example from a text optimized with Yoast SEO Premium for [puppy training] with the synonym [obedience classes]

    Help Google to understand your site 

    Google is brilliant, but it needs help understanding the structure of your site. Always bear in mind that Google’s bots follow your internal links. That’s the way Google crawls through your site. That means you can’t have any dead ends or 404s on your site. Otherwise, Google will get lost. Yoast SEO Premium will help you to take care of all 404s with the redirect manager.  

    Posts with many will appear more important to Google than posts with little or no internal links. This means that you’ll need to optimize your internal links so that Google knows what the most important content is. Yoast SEO Premium offers practical SEO workouts to help you quickly improve and optimize your internal linking structure. Also, you’ll get internal linking suggestions within every post to further enhance your internal linking structure.  

    The cornerstone content workout in Yoast SEO Premium helps you to link to the most important articles

    Manage the SEO of a growing website 

    If you keep adding content to your website, Google will have more trouble crawling through a big site. And what to do with outdated content? You shouldn’t have old stale content on your site. How do you keep track of it all? 

    Yoast SEO Premium will help you with your SEO maintenance. We will remind you to update those stale articles and tell you if you don’t update your most essential pages regularly. Our SEO workouts will help you keep track of your SEO and solve all kinds of problems you’ll encounter if your site gets large. With SEO workouts, we help you get the work done. We’ve made it incredibly easy to stay on top of your SEO, saving you precious time and effort. If you follow the steps in our workouts, we’ll make sure to keep your website crawlable.

    Yoast SEO Premium also gets you access to a recent feature built to optimize crawling on your site. The crawl cleanup settings give you more control over which unnecessary and unimportant URLs, scripts, and metadata in WordPress you want to keep Google from crawling. WordPress automatically adds these to your site, only adding unneeded overhead. Blocking these URLs makes your site easier to crawl — making your site a lot more sustainable!

    In the Crawl optimization section of Yoast SEO Premium, you’ll find a load of options to finetune crawling

    Learn EVERYTHING about SEO with Yoast SEO academy 

    Buying Yoast SEO Premium will give you access to all of the online courses of Yoast SEO academy. And you want that! We’ll help you get started with keyword research and how to set up an internal linking strategy, but we’ll also teach you everything about structured data. Everything you ever want to learn about SEO is covered in one of our courses.  

    Each course consists of multiple short videos, reading materials, and quizzes. We’ll share a lot of practical tips that you can put into practice right away.  

    A small sampling of what’s available in Yoast SEO academy

    Only a couple of hours left to go green on Cyber Monday! 

    What are you waiting for? Make sure to go green today and buy Yoast SEO Premium with a 30% discount. And start outranking your competitors! But be quick, as this sale won’t last forever…

    Go Premium and unlock this feature!

    Unlock our internal linking features and get free access to all of our SEO courses with Yoast SEO Premium:

    Get Yoast SEO Premium Only €99 EUR / year (ex VAT)

    The post Cyber Monday: 1 day left for a 30% discount on all products appeared first on Yoast.