As of today, Thijs de Valk is no longer the CEO of Yoast. He decided to step down and pursue other dreams. Newfold Digital and Yoast will miss him and want to thank him for his time at Yoast and for all the wonderful things he has done.
Thijs’ career at Yoast
Thijs was one of the first Yoasters. He joined the company in 2012 as one of the first employees. He started out as a support engineer, did SEO consultancy, was active as a marketer, and later served as our Chief Commerce Officer.
In the last year and a half, Thijs was the CEO of Yoast. He successfully led the company through the first year post-acquisition, in which Yoast had to adapt to the Newfold structure. In addition to that, he kicked off the launch of the Yoast SEO for Shopify App, bringing a whole new CMS to our WordPress-minded company. And just a few weeks ago, he rocked the stage at WordCamp Asia.
In search of a new business leader
With Thijs leaving, Yoast will search for a new business leader. We hope to join forces with a superb new business leader that can help us improve our product and our impact in both WordPress and SEO.
While seeking a new business leader, Yoast will be led by the current Executive Team consisting of Chaya Oosterbroek (COO), Marieke van de Rakt (CGO), and Derek Herman (CTO), as well as our Leadership Team consisting of Sam Alderson, Floortje Scheurwater, Jono Alderson & Taco Verdonschot. Moreover, we’ll be assisted by Jason Cross, who is SVP Product: Commerce, Presence and WordPress at Newfold Digital. And Joost de Valk is still on board, providing guidance and expertise.
While we are sad to see Thijs leave, we are also full of hope and enthusiasm about this next phase. The current SEO climate is one of changes and excitement. There’s a lot to look forward to and to be passionate about. Team Yoast and Newfold are as committed as ever to improving WordPress and remain passionate about our mission ‘SEO for everyone’. So, onwards it is!
If you optimize your articles for similar terms, your rankings might suffer from keyword cannibalization: you’ll be ‘devouring’ your own chances to rank in Google! Especially when your site is growing, chances are your content will start competing with itself. Here, I’ll explain why keyword cannibalism can be detrimental to SEO, how you can recognize it and what to do about it.
What is keyword cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization means that you have various blog posts or articles on your site that can rank for the same search query in Google. Either because the topic they cover is too similar or because you optimized them for the same keyphrase. If you optimize posts or articles for similar search queries, they’re eating away at each other’s chances to rank. Usually, Google will only show 1 or 2 results from the same domain in the search results for a specific query. If you’re a high authority domain, you might get 3.
An example of keyword cannibalization
Let’s look at an example of optimizing posts for a similar keyphrase. I wrote two posts about whether or not readability is a ranking factor. The post ‘Does readability rank?‘ was optimized for [does readability rank], while the post ‘Readability ranks!‘ was optimized for the focus keyword [readability ranking factor]. The posts had a different angle but were still very similar. For Google, it is hard to figure out which of the two articles is the most important.
Update: Did you see the same article? That’s correct, by now we’ve fixed this cannibalization issue, but we’ve kept this example for the sake of illustration.
Why is keyword cannibalism bad for SEO?
If you cannibalize your own keywords, you’re competing with yourself for ranking in Google. Let’s say you have two posts on the exact same topic. In that case, Google can’t distinguish which article should rank highest for a certain query. In addition, important factors like backlinks and CTR get diluted over several posts instead of one. As a result, they’ll probably both rank lower. Therefore, our SEO analysis will give a red bullet whenever you optimize a post for a focus keyword you’ve used before.
How to recognize it?
Checking whether or not your site suffers from keyword cannibalism is easy. You simply do a search for your site, for any specific keyword you suspect might have multiple results. In my case, I’ll google site:yoast.com readability ranks. The first two results are the articles I suspected to suffer from cannibalization.
Googling ‘site:domain.com “keyword” will give you an easy answer to the question if you’re suffering from keyword cannibalism or not. You can check your findings by typing the same keyword into Google (using a private browser or local search result checker like https://valentin.app/). Which of your pages do you see in the search results, and what position do they rank? Of course, if two of your pages for the same keyword are ranking #1 and #2, that’s not a problem. But do you see your articles, for example on positions 7 and 8? Then it’s time to sort things out!
The first two steps will help you decide which articles to keep and which ones to merge or delete. In many cases, step 4 will consist of combining and deleting articles, but also improving the internal linking on your site.
Merge or combine articles
If two articles attract the same audience and tell the same story, you should combine them. Rewrite the two posts into one amazing, kickass article. That’ll help your rankings (Google loves lengthy and well-written content), and solve your keyword cannibalization problem.
In fact, that’s exactly what we did with our two posts on readability being a ranking factor. You can use the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin to clone one of the posts and work from there. And don’t just press the delete button! Always make sure to redirect the post you delete to the one you keep. If that’s something you’re struggling with, Yoast SEO Premium can help: It makes creating redirects as easy as pie!
Improve internal linking
You can help Google figure out which article is most important by setting up a decent internal linking structure. This means that you should link from posts that are less important to posts that are the most important to you. That way, Google can figure out (by following links) which ones you want to pop up highest in the search engines.
Your internal linking structure could solve a part of your keyword cannibalism problems. You should think about which article is most important to you and link from the less important long-tail articles, to your most important article. Read more about how to do this in my article about ranking with cornerstone content.
Keyword cannibalization and online shops
Now, if you have an online shop, you might be worried about all those product pages targeting similar keywords. For online shops, it makes sense that there are multiple pages for products that are alike. If that’s the case for you, then it’s very important to give site structure some thought. A good strategy is to link back from every product page to your category page – the page you should optimize to rank. In addition, you should keep an eye on old product pages that could potentially cannibalize more important pages. If that’s the case, simply delete and redirect those. And don’t forget that Yoast SEO Premium can help make redirecting easier with its handy redirect manager!
Keyword cannibalism will affect growing websites
If your site gets bigger, your chances will increase that you face keyword cannibalism on your own website. You’ll be writing about your favorite subjects and without even knowing it, you’ll write articles that end up being rather similar. That’s what happened to me too. Once in a while, you should check the keywords you want to rank for the most. Make sure to check whether you’re suffering from keyword cannibalism. You’ll probably need to make some changes in your site structure or to rewrite some articles every now and then.
Today, we’re making Yoast SEO 20.3 available to the world. This release comes with a long list of enhancements, bug fixes, and other improvements designed to help you improve your SEO experience.
Improved highlighting in analyses
One of the most significant updates in this release is an improved highlighting feature. Yoast SEO helps you quickly locate where you need to make your edits to improve the readability of your content by highlighting the pieces in your text.
In this release, we’ve made the highlighter better. We can now highlight content in captions of audio, embed, gallery, image, table, and video blocks in WordPress. You can also use it to highlight content in Yoast SEO FAQ and How-to blocks.
The highlighter helps you locate the places where you’ve used your keyword, like in this caption
Portuguese language enhancements
We’ve made important improvements to our Portuguese assessments in the release, like the passive voice and transition words assessments.
Yoast SEO’s passive voice assessment helps you create clearer and more concise content. Passive voice can weaken sentences. It can make them harder to understand, so this assessment checks your text for instances of passive voice. By reducing the use of passive voice in your writing, you can improve your content’s overall quality and readability. The assessment is available in multiple languages.
The transition words assessment in Yoast SEO helps improve the coherence and readability of your writing. Transition words are essential to connect ideas and help readers understand the flow of your content. By analyzing your text for the use of transition words, the assessment can suggest improvements to your writing. We’ll highlight instances where transition words could be added or replaced.
In Yoast SEO 20.2, we’ve improved these two assessments for the Portuguese language. The passive voice assessment now has better detection of participles. Plus, we’ve added new transition words to the transition words assessment, thanks to the contributions of Mathias Ribeiro.
Bug fixes and enhancements
Regarding bug fixes, we’ve addressed several issues in this release. For example, shortcodes in the Block editor will no longer be treated as words in the content analysis. Additionally, editing text in the Classic editor while the highlighting feature is enabled will no longer make the text unfocused, and self-closing break tags </br> will now be removed when analyzing content.
Other improvements in this release include avoiding PHP warnings due to a wrong variable type. Also, we removed the beta badge for the inclusive language assessment.
Yoast SEO Premium redirect manager
Yoast SEO Premium also gets a round of enhancements this time. For one, we’ve made the links in the redirect manager clickable. It’s now easier to check if these are functioning properly. The redirect manager in Yoast SEO Premium is a valuable tool for ensuring that your website visitors always find what they need. It helps prevent 404 errors and maintain a well-structured website, improving search engine rankings and user experience.
Update to Yoast SEO 20.3
At Yoast, we’re always working hard to improve our line of SEO plugins. Each release brings improvements and enhancements that make it easier to manage your site or improve its SEO. Yoast SEO 20.3 has a long list of fixes and improvements, from highlighting content to enhanced support for the Portuguese language.
HTTP status codes, like 404, 301, and 500, might not mean much to a regular visitor, but they are incredibly important for SEO. Not only that, search engine spiders, like Googlebot, use these to determine the health of a site. These status codes offer a way of seeing what happens between the browser and the server. Several of these codes indicate an error, for instance, that the requested content can’t be found, while others simply suggest a successful delivery of the requested material. In this article, we’re taking a closer look at the most important HTTP header codes and what they mean for SEO.
What are HTTP status codes, and why do you see them?
An HTTP status code is a three-digit message the server sends when a request made by a browser can or cannot be fulfilled. According to the official W3C specs, there are dozens of status codes, many of which you’re unlikely to come across. If you need a handy overview of status codes, including their code references, you can find one on HTTPstatuses.com.
To fully understand these codes, you must know how a browser gets a web page. Every website visit starts by typing in the URL of a site or entering a search term in a search engine. The browser requests the site’s IP address for the associated web page. The server responds with a status code embedded in the HTTP header, telling the browser the result of the request. When everything is fine, an HTTP 200 header code is sent back to the browser in conjunction with the website’s content.
However, it is also possible that there’s something wrong with the requested content or server. It could be that the page is not found, which gives back a 404 error page, or there might be a temporary, technical issue with the server, resulting in a 500 Internal Server Error. These HTTP status codes are an important tool for evaluating the health of the site and its server. If a site regularly sends improper HTTP header codes to a search engine indexing its contents, it might cause problems that will hurt its rankings.
Here’s part of the HTTP header for a web page, with a 200 OK message:
There are five ranges of HTTP status codes, defining different aspects of the transaction process between the client and the server. Below you’ll find the five ranges and their main goal:
1xx – Informational
2xx – Success
3xx – Redirection
4xx – Client error
5xx – Server error
If you ever try to brew coffee in a teapot, your teapot will probably send you the status message 418: I’m a teapot.
Most important HTTP status codes for SEO
As we’ve said, the list of codes is long, but a few are especially important for SEOs and anyone working on their own site. We’ll do a quick rundown of these below:
200: OK / Success
This is how it probably should be; a client asks the server for content and the server replies with a 200 success message and the content the client needs. The server and the client are happy — and the visitor, of course. All messages in 2xx mean some sort of success.
301: Moved Permanently
A 301 HTTP header is used when the requested URL is permanently moved to a new location. As you are working on your site, you will often use this, because you regularly need to make a 301 redirect to direct an old URL to a new one. If you don’t, users will see a 404 error page if they try to open the old URL and that’s not something you want. Using a 301 will make sure that the link value of the old URL transfers to the new URL.
A 302 means that the target destination has been found, but it lives in a different location. However, it is a rather ambiguous status code because it doesn’t tell if this is a temporary situation. Use a 302 redirect only if you want to temporarily redirect a URL to a different source and are sure you will use the same URL again.
Since you tell search engines that the URL will be used again, none of the link value is transferred to the new URL, so you shouldn’t use a 302 when moving your domain or making big changes to your site structure, for instance. Also, when you leave 302 redirects in place for a long time, search engines can treat these 302 redirects as 301 redirects.
304: Not Modified
A 304 redirect is a type of HTTP response code that indicates that the requested resource has not been modified since the last time it was accessed by the client. It means that the server does not need to send the resource again but instead tells the client to use a cached version. The 304 response code is a way to save crawl budget for large websites. This is because Google’s crawler won’t recrawl unchanged pages and can instead focus on crawling new and updated pages.
307: Temporary Redirect
The 307 code replaces the 302 in HTTP1.1 and could be seen as the only ‘true’ redirect. You can use a 307 redirect if you need to temporarily redirect a URL to a new one while keeping the original request method intact. A 307 looks a lot like a 302, except that it tells specifically that the URL has a temporary new location. The request can change over time, so the client has to keep using the original URL when making new requests.
403: Forbidden
A 403 tells the browser that the requested content is forbidden for the user. If they don’t have the correct login credentials, this content stays forbidden for that user.
404: Not Found
As one of the most visible status codes, the 404 HTTP header code is also one of the most important. When a server returns a 404 error, you know the content has not been found and is probably deleted. Try not to bother visitors with these messages, so fix these errors when you can. Use a redirect to send visitors from the old URL to a new article or page with related content.
Monitor these 404 messages in Google Search Console and keep them to the lowest amount possible. A lot of 404 errors might be seen by Google as a sign of bad maintenance. Which in return might influence your overall rankings. If your page is broken and should be gone from your site, a 410 sends a clearer signal to Google.
The result from a 410 status code is the same as a 404 since the content has not been found. However, with a 410, you tell search engines that you deleted the requested content. Thus, it’s much more specific than a 404. In a way, you order search engines to remove the URL from the index. Before permanently deleting something from your site, ask yourself if there is an equivalent of the page somewhere. If so, make a redirect. If not, maybe you shouldn’t delete it and just improve it.
The 451 HTTP status code shows that the requested content was deleted for legal reasons. If you received a takedown request or a judge ordered you to take specific content offline, you should use this code to tell search engines what happened to the page.
A 500 error is a generic message saying the server encountered an unexpected condition. This prevented it from fulfilling the request without determining what caused it. These errors could come from anywhere. Maybe your web host is doing something funny, or a script on your site is malfunctioning. Check your server’s logs to see where things go wrong.
503: Service Unavailable
A 503 HTTP status code is a server-side error that indicates that the server is temporarily unable to handle the request. This could be due to overloading, maintenance, or other issues on the server. A 503 status code can affect SEO if it lasts long, as it may signal to search engines that the site is unreliable or unavailable. To avoid negative SEO impacts, a 503 status code should be used only for short-term situations and provide crawlers with a clear message about when the site will return online. You can use the Retry-After value to ask crawlers to try again after a certain amount of time.
HTTP status codes are a big part of the lives of SEOs and that of search engine spiders. You’ll encounter them daily, and it’s key to understanding what the different status codes mean. For instance, if you delete a page from your site, you must know the difference between serving a 301 and a 410. They serve different goals and, therefore, have different results.
To understand the kinds of status codes your site generates, you should log into your Google Search Console. In the Indexing section, you’ll find the crawl errors Googlebot found over a certain time. These crawl errors must be fixed before your site can be indexed correctly.
Google Search Console lists errors it found on
Manage redirects with Yoast SEO Premium
We get it; working with these things is time-consuming and boring. However, creating redirects has never been easier if you use Yoast SEO Premium. Whenever you delete or move a post or page, the Redirect Manager in Yoast SEO asks you whether you want to redirect it. Just pick the correct option, and you’re good to go.
That’s all, folks
Make yourself familiar with these codes because you’ll see them pop up often. Knowing which redirects to use is an important skill that you’ll have to count on often when optimizing your site. One look at the crawl errors in Google Search Console should be enough to show you how much is going on under the hood.
Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Wende. She was incredibly intelligent, yet she had a hard time learning things by heart. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t memorize the planets of the solar system. One day, she asked her teacher what she should do. In response, he told her a story about the planets. A story about how the sun was lonely, and Mercury was his first friend. How Mercury fell madly in love with Venus, which made Planet Earth jealous. After telling her the story, Wende was able to remember all of the planets in the right order. Why? Because of the magic of storytelling. Wende could remember the story and with that, she could remember the planets.
In this blog post, I’ll tell you what storytelling is and why it’s an important tool to use in the texts on your website.
What is storytelling?
The word storytelling speaks pretty much for itself, right? You tell stories. But storytelling is also about using stories to engage your audience or make something clearer, since stories are much easier to remember than simple facts. That’s why Wende from the story remembered the planets. In addition, stories are enjoyable; they stimulate your imagination. That’s why parents tell their children stories, and why we like to see movies and read books. People love stories!
You can also use photos, pictures and film to help you tell a good story. You can even create your very own digital story with the use of storytelling.
Now you know what storytelling is. But there’s more to it than simply telling a story, otherwise anyone could write a best-selling novel. To tell a good story, you usually have to include 4 elements: a character, a problem, an action, and a solution. Let’s dive a little deeper into these.
Every story needs a main character with a problem. Why? Because if someone is happy, there’s not really a story. Take Wende, for example. She wasn’t happy because she couldn’t memorize the planets of the solar system. That was the problem of the story. Next, you need action. Because a main character who doesn’t do anything to fix their problem isn’t fun to read about. In my example, Wende asked her teacher to help her. The teacher then told her a story, which made it easier for her to remember the planets. So, the story was the solution.
Why use storytelling?
Using storytelling in your blog post will – if you do it right – make your post more engaging. Your post will become something people want to read. In other words: Stories increase the attention of your audience. But they will also help you to clearly communicate your message. My story about Alice (see screenshot below) is written in order to help people understand the importance of a clean site structure, which can be a difficult subject to grasp.
Most importantly, however, is that people remember stories. Which means that if you use storytelling, people will also remember the message of your post or even your brand. You could even inspire people to take action, like cleaning up their website or getting started with storytelling in their blog posts and presentations.
When can you use storytelling?
Storytelling is a great and versatile tool. You can use it for posts, product pages and even presentations! I first got the idea to use storytelling for presentations in 2017, when I visited a conference and saw David JP Phillips on stage. He talked about the magical science of storytelling. I was blown away. His talk was such an inspiration for me. Two weeks later, I used this inspiration for my own talk at a WordCamp.
In addition to presentations, you can obviously use storytelling in writing. But it’s not limited to a certain type of blog. Lots of travel blogs or personal blogs use storytelling throughout all of their posts. Geraldine DeRuiter has a really funny blog about travel and many other things. Every post is a little story. Even informational blogs could use this principle by adding an anecdote or an example. In my post about site structure and why it is important, I use the exact same story as in my presentation at the WordCamp.
In this series
For this series, I’ve focused on using storytelling in your writing. For instance, I’ve written about how to use storytelling in a blog post, which discusses the elements that are necessary for a good story. The post also reveals some practical tips and examples of how to integrate storytelling into your blog posts! We also dove into the connection between storytelling and SEO, and discussed how you can use storytelling on product pages.
If you have nice examples of your own use of storytelling, or suggestions for related topics you’d like to read more about, I would love to see those!
We take security seriously at Yoast and continually look for potential threats and vulnerabilities that could affect our products and customers. That’s why we were alarmed when security firm WordFence found XSS vulnerabilities in another SEO plugin. After carefully reviewing the issues, we found a similar but less severe vulnerability in Yoast SEO, which we chose to patch immediately.
Please update to the latest version today to ensure your site is protected.
Am I affected?
The issue only affected websites with multiple users, where those users had ‘contributor’ level access or above. In some cases, those users could store and execute code in our snippet editor, which would have run for other users. A malicious person could have taken advantage of this to compromise other users or the website in question. This is a type of ‘XSS’ attack.
In short, some of the people you’d given limited permission to publish or edit content on your site might have been able to work around those permissions and do harm should they have wished to.
What’s an XSS vulnerability?
XSS stands for cross-site scripting, a type of attack that allows malicious actors to inject scripts into web pages viewed by other users. An issue like this can lead to various consequences, such as hijacking user sessions, defacing websites, or redirecting users to malicious sites.
XSS vulnerabilities occur when user input fields are not properly sanitized (ensuring that values are safe and conform to expected formats and patterns) or not properly escaped (where special characters or code is safely converted to text).
What do I need to do?
If your site has multiple users, you may have been affected. If this applies to you, you should update your Yoast SEO plugin immediately. We also recommend conducting a security audit (see our security guide), enabling auto-updates for plugins, and ensuring that you have regular backups in place.
If your site doesn’t have multiple users, you don’t need to worry. Of course, you should still update your plugin as part of best practices.
What did Yoast do?
We’re proud that we reacted quickly, fixed this issue, and released a patch within 24 hours. We also thoroughly reviewed parts of Yoast SEO and found no other security issues present. Thanks to this fix, Yoast SEO is now more secure than ever. Our development processes now include extra checks to ensure that issues like this don’t happen again.
We can proudly say that our ability to react, diagnose, and deliver updates this quickly – whether they’re security fixes or responses to changes in Google’s algorithm — sets us apart from others.
It takes a village
While this issue should have never happened in the first place, we’re happy that we discovered it ourselves before it became common knowledge and a larger risk.
That was made possible partly by the great work from WordFence in disclosing the related issue in another plugin and by Roger Montti’s article in Search Engine Journal covering the leak. We appreciate their professionalism and expertise in helping WordPress plugin developers improve their security.
We also want to thank our customers for their trust and support. At Yoast, we’re committed to providing you with the best SEO plugins and will continue to improve them.
If you have any questions or concerns about this issue or any other security matter, please do not hesitate to contact us at security@yoast.com. You can also participate in our security program to help us improve our work.
Thanks for your understanding, and keep in mind that we are always here to help.
At Yoast, we believe that the best SEO strategy is a holistic approach. With a holistic approach, SEO has a lot of “teammates” that have to work together. Simply optimizing your page titles isn’t enough. You also need to work on aspects like site speed, great content, and user experience (UX). In this post, we’ll focus specifically on the areas where SEO and UX meet. Why? Because both are vital topics to pay attention to if you’re running a website.
Common page elements that influence both SEO and UX
If you look at the basic elements on a page that influence your SEO, you’ll find a close relationship between SEO and user experience (UX). Below, we’ll discuss a few of these elements.
Page titles and headings
In general, understanding how to use the headings on your site is quite important. Why? Because they benefit your SEO and your users. An optimized page title and a related, visible <h1> element will tell Google what your page is about. But the page title and <h1> element also inform your visitors what the page is about. In addition, subheadings such as <h2> also help both Google and your visitors to scan a page and grasp the general idea of that page’s content.
External links
What about external links? They’re great for SEO, because they tell Google that you respect your sources. Plus, external links can increase the odds that your sources will link back to you in their content. For your users, however, external links provide a way to access background information. They also give you credibility, because external links show visitors that you’ve done your research.
Great content
If you provide quality content, people want to link to you, and visitors want to read what you have to say. Plus, they’re more likely to stay on your site. That’s great, because these incoming links and time-on-page are things Google will notice. In fact, Google could even start to consider your content as the main source of information on a certain topic. So focus on creating that quality content! For example, you can add images and videos to your posts and pages, which will make both Google and your users happy.
Site structure
Let’s say your post or page hasn’t fully answered the user’s question, then it’s great to point them to another page on your site. Why? Because you want to prevent users from clicking back to the search result pages. This is otherwise known as a bounce. A high bounce rate can have a negative influence on your SEO. It indicates to Google that you may not be answering your visitors’ search query.
One way to prevent a bounce is to make sure your site structure is clearly reflected on your page. In other words: No matter which pages a user visits, they know where they are on your website. It’s especially important that visitors know there’s more to explore on your site. So, how do you achieve this? Partly by creating (and maintaining!) an optimized menu, but also by making sure your website has a good structure. You can show your structure by using breadcrumbs, but you can also think along the lines of related posts and products. If you want more in-depth information, take a look at our site structure course!
And there’s another benefit to having a nice, hierarchical site structure: You make sure that Google can efficiently crawl your pages!
Site speed
You might already be familiar with site speed. Still, it’s good to address the topic again, because it heavily influences your SEO and UX. How? First, visitors don’t like waiting for your content to load. Just think about it: How long do you want to wait for a page to load? A few seconds at most, probably.
Second, Google only wants to spend a certain amount of time on your site to crawl it. That’s why it’s important to optimize your site speed. Try different techniques, such as lazy loading images. In addition, you can defer parsing of JS and CSS files where possible. That way, you make sure your page will show something as soon as possible.
Mobile experience
Nowadays, having a good mobile experience is extremely important. Luckily, the same rules that apply to your website also apply to its mobile version. It should be fast, well-designed, and have an easy-to-use navigation. After all, you want both users and search engines to quickly find what they’re looking for.
So think hard about the mobile version of your homepage! Does it cover the main areas of your website? Does it invite your visitors (and any search engine) to explore the rest of your website as well? Even button sizes could influence a user’s experience. You can always ask Google’s opinion on your mobile website via their mobile-friendliness test, or read our post on how to improve the mobile version of your site.
Conclusion: SEO and UX go hand in hand
As you can see, there are many areas where SEO and UX meet. It’s probably fair to say that almost every optimization that benefits your users (UX) will also have a positive effect on your SEO. And it’s the other way around too! If you deliver a poor user experience, you might see this reflected in the search result pages. Obviously, the impact may differ from optimization to optimization. But SEO and UX are clearly a great match in our larger concept of holistic SEO!
If you want to learn more about user experience (UX) and other essential SEO skills, you should check out our All-around SEO training! It doesn’t just tell you about SEO: it makes sure you know how to put these skills into actual practice!
In Yoast SEO 20.2, we’ve improved our innovative indexables technology. We’ve developed a faster and more reliable way of indexing your site’s data. In turn, we make better use of this data to improve your site’s SEO. Plus, this technology helps us do our best to make the web greener and lays the groundwork for exciting future possibilities.
An improved indexing system
You might be wondering, “What exactly are indexables?” Well, think of them as a way to help search engines find and understand the content on your website. An indexable is any resource a search engine can index via a URL.
When a search engine “indexes” your website, it creates a map of all the pages it knows about. The indexables framework allows Yoast SEO to make a similar map of your site, interact with it and manage important SEO-related information.
But what makes indexables so special? Essentially, they allow Yoast SEO to better handle different types of content on your website beyond just traditional pages. This includes things like categories, archives, media files and far beyond that. This can greatly help larger sites with many different content types. Plus, it helps us build features on top of it!
And the best part? The indexables technology means better performance and more efficient use of resources. It’s a step towards making the web a little bit greener, as it reduces the amount of processing power needed to manage SEO metadata.
So, how does this work?
When you create a website, you like stuff to be easily accessible online. Indexables help Yoast SEO understand your website, so it can help search engines like Google understand your website better. Yoast SEO stores information about your website in a unique database table that we use to uncover and use your data — and speed up your database.
To put indexables to work, you need to optimize your website’s SEO data. You can do this when you set up Yoast SEO or at a later date. When you optimize your SEO data, Yoast SEO will store information about your website’s pages in a unique table. This can take some time, especially for large websites, but you only need to do it once. After the initial optimization, Yoast SEO will automatically update the indexables table whenever you change something on your website.
Today, we’re launching improvements to this system for Yoast SEO and WooCommerce SEO.
You can run the indexables SEO optimization from the first-time configuration screen or in the tools section of Yoast SEO
Going green with Yoast SEO
Our enhanced database system is one of the many improvements we’ve made to make a difference on the web. Thanks to this technology, we’ve improved the loading times of millions of websites. Features like our crawl optimization options help you determine what search engines should and shouldn’t crawl — keeping them in check and making them waste fewer resources.
When your website loads faster, it reduces the time and energy required to load and display each page. Less resources, such as electricity and data, are needed to load your website. This increased efficiency can positively impact the environment by reducing the energy required to power and cool the servers that host your website.
Additionally, optimizing your SEO data and improving the crawlability of your website makes it more efficient and easier for search engines and visitors to navigate.
Update to Yoast SEO 20.2
Yoast SEO 20.2 comes with an update to our indexable database system. With this release, we’re laying the groundwork for some interesting new developments. Plus, we’ve improved the system’s performance, helping to achieve a better web — and a greener planet! — for all.
Google Search Console is an essential tool for website owners. This tool shows you how your site appears in Google’s search results. It also shows you what to improve to maximize your listings in the results. One of the many cool features of Search Console is the structured data analyses found in the Enhancement reports. Let’s dive into that!
What is Google Search Console?
Google Search Console is like the Swiss army knife for site owners. You’ll get incredible insights into your site’s performance and inner workings at a glance. Not only that, it shows issues and helps you fix those issues by giving guidance. Google even sends you emails when it finds new issues.
In this post, our main focal point is structured data, so we’ll jump to the Enhancements report section of Google Search Console. Clicking on the various structured data reports — identified by the layer icon — will show you an overview of the pages with some structured data attached.
Structured data is all the extra information you give search engines to help them understand what a page is about. For instance, as the writer of this article, I am both a Person and an Author. I work for Yoast, this is my short bio, and you can find me on social media. Yoast SEO also lets you add extra details to your profile, like your accolades and expertise. All this supports the things search engines know about me and where to find me on the web.
If I add this data to the source code of this page, search engines can use that data to do incredible things. For instance, you can enhance your search listings with reviews, ratings, prices, and availability if you sell products. These might all become visible in the search results.
Author structured data as generated by Yoast SEO
How does Yoast SEO handle structured data?
Yoast SEO has a very sophisticated Schema structured data implementation. Yoast SEO doesn’t just add structured data to separate parts of your site but ties everything together to create a connected graph.
In addition, Yoast SEO has a robust, adequately documented Schema.org structured data framework, including a Schema API that developers can use to connect their structured data to ours, creating an extensive network of structured data. On the Integrations page of Yoast SEO, you’ll see which WordPress plugins integrate with it.
Helping search engines understand your site with Yoast SEO
The SEO plugin handles most of the structured data for you; you don’t need to do anything for it. Well, not that much, anyway. You only have to select whether your site represents someone or an organization and add an image or a logo. This way, Yoast SEO knows what structured data to generate for this particular site.
Using the Yoast SEO Schema tab you can determine what your content represents on a per page basis
As we said, one of the things that makes the Yoast structured data framework unique is that all this code is interconnected. That means that search engines can see and make connections between every part of your site and its contents. All this helps make your content findable and readable for search engines.
What is the Enhancements report all about?
The Enhancements tab in Search Console is a place to collect all the insights and improvements that could lead to rich results. You’ll find a list of items in the Enhancements tab, from breadcrumbs to videos. In addition, you can find information on your product’s structured data in the Shopping tab. All these tabs show how many valid enhancements your site has or how many have errors or warnings. The list only shows what Schema structured data Google found on your site.
Clicking on an item, you’ll get details about the kind of errors and warnings and 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.
The Enhancements reports help you find and fix issues that hinder your performance in search. By checking the issues, reading the support documentation, and validating fixes, you can increase your chance of getting rich results in search.
For instance, if you have described your FAQs on your site with valid FAQ schema, these might appear highlighted in the search results. You can try to give search engines as much information about your site as possible — it helps them make the right connections.
You can find the list of structured data Enhancement reports on the left-hand side
What can we find there?
A lot! For every different type of enhancement, Google built a dashboard showing you how your site or page is doing. These insights help you to see how you are doing quickly and find areas to improve. The visual aspect helps make the data more concrete and easier to absorb, plus you can quickly locate the issues and on which pages these occur.
The report shows errors and warnings
Of course, you’d like to see structured data succeed in one go, but you’ll probably run into issues at some point. Following the guidelines and adding the required properties will be fine once you fix the issues. However, there are cases where Google asks for more input, the so-called recommended properties. Adding these will make your structured data item go from orange to green. So it boils down to this:
Errors are problems, warnings are potential enhancements to improve the results.
A warning is a chance to do better
For example, some how-to posts on our site use the Yoast SEO How-To structured data blocks for WordPress. These blocks automatically generate valid how-to structured data that leads to rich results. We haven’t built in support for the recommended supply and tool types, so we see Search Console generate a warning. Our how-to, however, is still valid, and we have a rich result to prove it.
In this case, valid with warnings still leads to rich results
Errors mean not eligible for rich results
If you have errors in your structured data, you’ll not be eligible for rich results. That doesn’t mean, however, that your page won’t rank well. These are separate things. Having valid structured data might make you a better fit, though.
There are many reasons why your structured data implementation may need fixing. Sometimes, you forget to add necessary stuff correctly; sometimes, it’s an issue with code quality. For whatever reason, pages with structured data issues will not get rich results in the search results pages. So you’ll need to work on that.
Clicking on a page with an error opens a modal with the structured data highlighted. From here, you can copy the code to start fixing it. Once you do that, mark this issue fixed, so Google knows you’ve worked on the problem. If the problem persists, the issue will come back to Google Search Console.
Search Console highlights the line where the error appears
You can also hit Inspect in the bottom right corner to retrieve the page from the index to see what else is happening on that page. From there, you can run the live URL to do further testing.
If Search Console can’t read your structured data due to programming errors or determine which type it’s supposed to describe, it’ll send these messages to the Unparsable structured data report. Run your code in the Schema Markup Validator, fix the errors and see if they disappear.
Eligibility for rich results
Green is good! These items have properly structured data attached, which might lead to a rich result. Red is an error and something you should fix if you want the whole, rich result experience. Warnings are orange and allow you to improve or extend your structured data to get the whole experience. However, it is up to you if you want to fix it. Sometimes, fixing a small thing is easier said than done.
This page is eligible for articles, how-to, breadcrumbs, logos, video and sitelinks rich results
Trends in crawling and errors
A handy little addition to Search Console is the trend line. This helps you determine a trend in the number of items validated and error changes.
Trend lines help you uncover trends in errors or validations
Retrieve post from index to evaluate/fix
As Search Console gives you insights into how your pages perform in Google, it would be cool to get an idea of how Google sees those pages. Luckily, you can! There are several ways to do this, but the easiest is pasting your URL in the big search bar at the top of the Search Console interface.
Comparing indexed and live pages can lead to interesting insights
This gives you an overview of everything index related to this URL, including how Google crawled the page. See below. You can even compare the indexed URL to the live URL by hitting Live Test URL button in the up-right corner. These should be the same, but sometimes there are errors on your live page that have yet to reach the index. From here, you can perform all kinds of tests and checks.
Sometimes, the indexed page doesn’t have errors while the live page does
Which types are available in Google Search Console?
Google is quickly expanding the content types we see in Search Console. There are enhancements for things like books, reviews, app listings, events, courses, movies, recipes, and many more. You can see the complete list of supported structured data in Google’s structured data documentation or an overview of the different types of rich results in the search gallery. Below is a sampling.
Remember, when implementing, try to follow the rules, or you might not get any results. Badly implemented structured data doesn’t do you any good.
Breadcrumbs
Adding breadcrumb structured data to your site helps Google determine how your navigation works and how a specific page fits in the site hierarchy. Yoast SEO automatically generates this for your pages. You only have to add some code to your WordPress theme to activate the feature. After that, enable the breadcrumbs in Yoast SEO and set the breadcrumbs to your liking. After a while, check your Search Console to see if there are any errors in your implementation.
Events
Marking up your events with event structured data helps them stand out in search results. Event markup is available for every type of event. You can add dates, locations, images, performs and more to maximize your listings. In Search Console, you’ll see if your events are properly marked up with the essential items and the recommended properties that help to enhance your listing.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
One handy piece of structured data is the FAQ, which marks up frequently asked questions pages. By implementing this, you might get a nice eye-catching dropdown in the search results. Building a valid FAQ listing is peanuts, thanks to the structured data content blocks in Yoast SEO. Pick the FAQ block, fill in the fields, and ready. Here’s how to build a structured data-powered FAQ page using Yoast SEO. Search Console will show you if your listing is valid. After that, you can check it in the Rich Results Tester to see what it will look like.
How-to
Next up is another handy structured data powered rich result: the how-to. You can add how-to structured data to content that describes how to do something in a couple of steps. Like the FAQ above, Yoast SEO has structured data content blocks to help you build a valid how-to. Pick the block, fill the fields, add images and publish. It’s that easy! Learn how to add HowTo Schema to your how-to article. Again, in Search Console, you’ll see if your how-tos are valid or can be improved. The free Yoast SEO How-to content block helps you add it in you WordPress posts.
Job Postings
Job Postings are another interesting addition. Google runs a job site that loves to present its listings in a structured way. Adding job posting structured data to your available jobs helps them enrich your job postings, which in turn leads to better visibility for your jobs. As with the previous enhancements, Search Console gives you an idea of how your listings are doing and gives you tips to further improve them.
Logos
Adding markup to your logo helps search engines validate your logo to use the correct one in search. Google likes to use these files in things like the Knowledge Graph-powered knowledge panels on the right-hand side of your screen. Yoast SEO automatically adds structured data to your logo so search engines can pick it up properly.
Products
Products are the lifeblood of many sites. Structured data can help showcase products in search. By adding relevant data, you might get highlighted in search with reviews, ratings, prices, availability, and much more. Like all the other reports here, Search Console shows you which products are valid for rich results and which aren’t. Plus, you get tips on what you should fix to get them.
If you’re using Yoast SEO, our WooCommerce SEO add-on offers an easy way to add structured data for your products. It automatically arranges everything for you and even adds your product structured data to the rest of Yoast SEOs structured data, building a complete and interconnected overview for search engines.
Sitelinks searchbox
You know the search bar you see for some sites in the search results? That’s a sitelinks searchbox. This allows users to directly search on a site, without opening the site first. Yoast SEO automatically adds all the structured data necessary for sitelinks searchboxes for your site, but it’s up to Google to decide who gets one and who doesn’t. In Search Console, you’ll see which URLs on your site might get a searchbox.
Video
The Enhancement reports is also has a Video video section. You’ll find more information about how Google sees your embedded videos here. Also, Google also implemented a special search feature in the Search Appearance part of the Performance tab so you can see how many times your videos showed up in search and how many people clicked on them. The Yoast Video SEO add-on automatically adds the necessary code and ties everything neatly together. Here’s more information on how to get Google’s video reporting with the Yoast Video SEO plugin.
Keep an eye on your structured data in Google Search Console
As we mentioned several times: Google Search Console is a goldmine. It should be your go-to tool to see how your site is doing in the search engine. There’s a lot to see and do. The Enhancement reports, for instance, show you if your structured data implementation is valid for rich results. These reports help you fix errors and warnings to get the most out of your structured data.
Nowadays, short-form content is all the rage. Just look at TikTok’s astounding popularity amongst younger generations. It has lead to the development of new and compelling video formats that are mostly found in feeds with a passive discovery mechanism. Or as the younger generations (ominously) call it: the algorithm. In this post, we’ll take a look at how businesses should respond to this trend. We’ll also discuss where short-form video fits within a wider creative content marketing strategy.
What is short-form video?
Short-form video is not quite the same as videos that are short. It refers to videos that are roughly 06-60 seconds long, organically distributed through feed-orientated social media platforms, and consumed overwhelmingly through mobile devices. They are typically, but not always, shot vertically. This is to keep in line with the screen they’re typically consumed on. You can find short-form videos on TikTok, Instagram Stories, YouTube shorts, and the like.
What about 30-second ads? Are they also considered short-form content? Not in this context. We’re really referring to formats created for organic distribution rather than paid. Another example are short films. They’re historically considered short-form, but in the online world where video has been led by YouTube formats, something that’s 5 to 10 minutes in length is actually considered a mid-length piece.
How short-form video works
Short-form video is mostly passively distributed. The user opens up the app in question, presses a button, then receives a stream of content, which they may choose to watch or skip depending on their interests. Depending on the app, the feed is influenced by different things. Instagram’s feed is influenced by who you have chosen to follow, whereas TikTok focuses more on your engagement level with the content and what the algorithm thinks you’re most likely to engage with next. YouTube Shorts sit somewhere in the middle, combining subscription factors, demographic and other data into a complex recommendations algorithm.
Quickly capture people’s attention
Short-form video is geared exclusively to offer instant appeal. There’s a 1-3 second window where users will decide whether to keep watching or move on to the next thing. So you only have a few seconds to try and capture people’s attention. Combined with the short nature of the content, this means that most videos follow a “gag†format. Every video that works immediately sets expectations of what the audience will receive, then swiftly delivers or subverts it.
Visual storytelling
People primarily watch short-form videos on their smartphones. Because this usually happens in in public, most people turn off their sound and watch videos in silence. This means all of the storytelling and creative execution needs to be primarily visual. Videos can still include music, though. After all, some of the most successful short-form videos use music extremely effectively. But it’s important to keep in mind that the essential message and narrative of any video needs to be communicable without sound, such that the essence of it still holds together.
So what can you do for existing videos? You can adapt existing videos by including subtitles and visual overlays where audio or speech is critical to understanding. You can also visually point out to users that the essential “gag†is tied to the musical/aural aspect of the video.
When to invest in short-form video
From a business and marketing standpoint, it can be tricky to work out if and when to invest in short-form video. It’s not a reliable way to build an audience or ensure returns, because short-form video discovery is mainly led by algorithms, and less influenced by things like subscriber numbers and historical brand/channel performance. Even experienced creators should generally expect that for every video that gains traction, 30 videos will not.
So it’s important that you’re comfortable with uncertain and unreliable returns. Any business that approaches short-form video with a performance marketing mindset centered around ROI and optimization will find things very challenging. Even one viral success on TikTok or YouTube Shorts probably won’t do anything for the bottom line over the long run. A million hits on TikTok is not going to represent the same value as a million visitors to your website.
It’s absolutely possible to build a brand as a short-form video creator, though. But it’s good to note that brand salience external to the short-form video platforms tends to have only a minor bearing on the effectiveness of distribution. Unless you’re willing to continuously and repeatedly build up your identity as a short-form video creator. However, this can take many months and years. Not to mention, you would probably need to create hundreds if not thousands pieces of content.
So when is short-form video effective?
Short-form video is particularly effective when you can present your brand expertise in a visual format. For example, you could show the creation or function of your product, or demonstrate a process/action quickly. The purpose of these short videos is to provide value to an audience likely unfamiliar with your brand/product, and help them understand a bit about your brand value proposition.
Another way you can use short-form video is by advertising and promoting long-form pieces. If you’re creating a podcast, hosting webinars, or creating longer pieces for YouTube, then short-form platforms are a fantastic way to show clips and trailers of your longer content.
As a rule, if you’re investing in longer-form video, chop up your creation into clips and adapt those for short-form distribution. Your primary goal should be to encourage consumption of the bigger piece – likely to generate a deeper level of engagement with your brand.
Tips for getting started
Make sure the premise or “set-up†of the video is clear in the first couple of seconds
Ensure your video is fully comprehensible with the sound off. If that’s not possible, you should include overlays and captions!
Consider whether and what sort of music can enhance the entertainment value of your videos, and edit each one with specific tracks in mind
Be clear what you want audiences to do after they watch your video. Is there another piece of content they should watch? Should your audience remember something, or take a specific action?
Create lots and lots of videos. It may take hundreds before you find something that works. This is normal! Keep going.
