Oct 31 2023
Yoast SEO 21.5: Helping you block AI bots in Premium

We are pleased to announce Yoast SEO 21.5, packed with valuable features to elevate your optimization efforts. This release introduces a highly requested option allowing you to block AI web crawlers. Now, you can effortlessly control access to your content and ensure it remains where you want it to be.

Blocking bots used to train AI systems (Premium)

Having the option to block an AI from accessing your content with a web crawler is essential. It helps prevent unauthorized scraping, protect your intellectual property, maintain data privacy, and control your valuable content.

Yoast SEO Premium now introduces a user-friendly feature that simplifies the process in response to the increasing demand for controlling AI robots. With a simple toggle switch, you can effortlessly block AI robots like GPTBot, CCBot, and Google-Extended.

This automated functionality seamlessly integrates with the robots.txt file by automatically adding the necessary lines to disallow access for these crawlers. This solution helps you efficiently protect your content from AI bots without the hassle of manual configuration or intricate technical adjustments.

Yoast SEO Premium lets you block AI bots

Think before you do

It is essential to note that blocking or allowing AI bots remains a matter of free choice for each site owner. Every website is unique, with its specific considerations, objectives, and content requirements. Consequently, the decision to block or allow AI bots is one that you must carefully make for your websites.

By providing the flexibility to choose, Yoast SEO lets you personalize your approach and make decisions that align with their needs and preferences. This ensures each site can optimize its content protection and crawler access settings to suit its distinct circumstances.

Please read our article on whether or not to block AI bots from accessing your content.

There’s more

But that’s not all! This update also includes regular enhancements, improvements, and fixes. We have fine-tuned various aspects of our product to provide a smoother, more seamless experience.

Word complexity improvements

We’ve improved various language tools that will assist you in crafting compelling web content. Our enhanced language tools aim to empower you to write better, more engaging content that captivates your readers and strengthens your online presence.

The first one we’ve improved is the word complexity assessment. In this release, we’ve expanded the list of frequently used words in the English language to make the assessment pick up more difficult words.

Inclusive language enhancements

Yoast SEO 21.5 features significant enhancements to the inclusive language analysis. Now, you can ensure your content is optimized for search engines and fosters inclusivity. In this release, we’ve updated the word lists, improved the feedback for specific terms, and fine-tuned the traffic light. Embrace the power of inclusive language and create a more inclusive online space for all.

Changes in handling RSS feeds

We’ve changed how we handle RSS feeds in Yoast SEO 21.5. In the past, we automatically added a nofollow the RSS feeds in WordPress, but we’re changing that today. We have removed the nofollow attribute from RSS feeds.

This change means that search engine crawlers can now freely index and follow the links in your RSS feeds. By removing the nofollow attribute, your content has a higher chance of being discovered by search engines, which might lead to increased visibility.

Updates to attachment page in WordPress 6.4

WordPress 6.4 introduces the wp_attachment_pages_enabled option. You can now control the behavior of attachment pages by enabling or disabling them based on your needs. This offers greater flexibility and allows for a more focused website experience. In Yoast SEO 21.5, we support it, reducing the chances of inconsistencies with our "Enable media pages" setting.

Yoast Local SEO 15.1

We are also updating our Yoast Local SEO plugin to version 15.1! This update includes bug fixes and improvements to enhance your local search optimization experience. Our team has worked hard to address issues and ensure a smooth and efficient user experience. We understand the importance of local SEO for your business, and this update aims to provide a more stable and reliable solution for optimizing your website for local search.

Update now to Yoast SEO 21.5

At Yoast, we are committed to providing you with the best SEO tools and features to help you achieve your goals. Whether you are a seasoned professional or new to the field, we’ve designed our products to cater to your unique needs and help you reach your goals.

Upgrade today to take advantage of the latest features. This includes blocking AI robots, regular updates, and fixes. Plus, you’ll leverage our improved language tools to enhance your content creation process.

Happy optimizing!



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Oct 18 2023
Yoast SEO 21.4 brings more enhancements

We are excited to announce the latest release of Yoast SEO, helping you optimize your website’s performance in search engine results. This update improves our features and brings enhancements that will take your SEO efforts to the next level. Get ready for Yoast SEO 21.4!

More assessment improvements

At Yoast, we understand the importance of writing content that resonates with your audience and search engines. We help you achieve this delicate balance with our readability tools. Using these with our SEO analysis, you can ensure your content is ready for prime-time.

The readability assessments study the readability of your content and provide insights into how to improve it. We’re constantly refining these features, offering a better view of how your content appears and what you can do to make it more appealing to users.

In Yoast SEO 21.4, we’ve made various improvements to the assessments. For instance, we’ve improved the keyphrase matching in the keyphrase density assessment. Plus, we’ve made the highlighting for the keyphrase density and single H1 assessments more robust. Keyphrase matching in Japanese is better because we can now match keyphrase occurrences containing upper-case characters.

With these improvements, you will gain deeper insights into the readability of your text and receive actionable recommendations to make your content more accessible to a broader audience. Whether you are a seasoned writer or just starting your SEO journey, the readability analyses will be your trusted guide in creating content that perfectly balances sophistication and clarity.

Update now to Yoast SEO 21.4

Upgrade to the latest version of Yoast SEO and unlock a world of possibilities for your SEO. With improved features, enhancements, and refinements, this release is designed to elevate your SEO efforts to new heights.



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Oct 3 2023
Yoast SEO 21.3: Performance and readability improvements

We are happy to announce the release of the latest version of Yoast SEO. This update focuses on enhancing performance, fixing bugs, and improving our features. Don’t forget to check out our recently launched generative AI feature! Here’s Yoast SEO 21.3.

Performance enhancements

By design, Yoast SEO stores image metadata for every post upon saving, which we use in several features, like schema output. This meant that for larger websites with loads of images, publishing or editing a post could take longer than expected, especially if a post contained a lot of those images.

With Yoast SEO 21.3, we released an improvement for this by taking advantage of each editor’s inherent handling of images. This enabled us to stop calls to the database that created these delays in the first place. For the combination of editors and blocks that worked, we noticed considerable decreases in the duration times of post-saving in our benchmark tests. Of course, the improvements heavily rely on the editor used for post creation and the image blocks added to the post content.

Word complexity improvements in Premium

Improving readability is a vital part of creating high-quality content. It’s one of the reasons we give you the tools needed to help you write that awesome content. Our in-house linguists always work hard to make these tools as good and helpful as possible. In Yoast SEO 21.3, our team updated the word complexity feature available in Yoast SEO Premium.

The word complexity assessment marks complex words so that you can replace these with simpler alternatives. This will make your text easier to understand.

In Yoast SEO 21.3, we’ve improved the accuracy of this assessment in English by recognizing more plural forms of non-complex words. For example, the plural form universities is no longer marked as a complex word, just like the singular form university.

Generative AI in Yoast SEO Premium

As a reminder, in Yoast SEO 21.0, we added an innovative AI-powered feature that makes you quickly generate titles and meta descriptions. With this cutting-edge technology, you can optimize your content and metadata more effectively, saving you valuable time and resources.

Update now to Yoast SEO 21.3

Upgrade to the latest version of Yoast SEO now and benefit from better performance, advanced features, and easier SEO optimization. If you go Premium, you can use our AI-enhanced technology to achieve great results quickly. Download today’s update and enhance your visibility in the search engines.



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Sep 5 2023
Yoast SEO 21.1 brings even more improvements

Today, there’s a constant demand for more efficient and effective SEO practices. Keeping this in mind, we’re constantly updating and refining the features of Yoast SEO. One of our key milestones was the release of Yoast SEO 21.0, where we revealed a pioneering generative AI to redefine SEO optimization. In our next release, Yoast SEO 21.1, we’re improving upon that work.

AI in Yoast SEO

In Yoast SEO 21.0, we introduced a generative AI tool that simplified the generation of SEO-optimized titles and meta descriptions. No longer a tedious manual effort, this tool gives you the power to create engaging titles and descriptions at the click of a button. This innovative application of generative AI eliminates the complexity of SEO optimization, freeing up valuable time to produce top-quality content.

Here’s the awesome video we made to remind you!

Building upon this foundation, we’re excited to present Yoast SEO 21.1, continuing our journey into optimizing your SEO with AI. We’re making the first behind-the-scenes improvements to improve the performance and results of the generative AI feature. This makes your content more appealing, while also upholding its SEO-friendly character. Remember that the AI generator functionality only works when the SEO analysis is turned on. If you don’t have it activated, we’ll show a message alerting you about this.

Let generative AI in Yoast SEO help you make great titles and meta descriptions

Making the most of Yoast SEO Premium

If you’re still on the fence about including AI in your SEO strategy, we recommend trying out Yoast SEO Premium. This grants access to our robust AI feature and equips you with other advanced tools to enhance your site’s SEO performance. More so, these tools are specifically designed to streamline your workflow and amplify your productivity.

Fixes and enhancements

As usual with our new releases, Yoast SEO 21.1 brings a series of fixes and enhancements to boost performance. We’re always at work to keep Yoast SEO a practical and reliable tool that supports your needs.

We value your trust in Yoast SEO, and our goal is always to deliver tools that simplify your SEO routine. So, we would like to encourage you to upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium to unlock the full potential of your site’s SEO capabilities with AI and our advanced features.

Update to Yoast SEO 21.1

Yoast SEO 21.0 was a great success, and we can’t wait to show you what’s next. As we continue to improve your SEO experience, we invite your feedback to help us refine our services further. Comment on this post, use the WordPress forums, or contact us via our socials — it’s all good. Guided by your input, we can ensure Yoast SEO remains high-quality, effective, and user-friendly. Be smarter with SEO in Yoast SEO 21.1!



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Aug 22 2023
Boost your SEO with AI: Now available in Yoast SEO 21.0

Say goodbye to the manual labor of creating SEO-optimized titles and meta descriptions! We’re excited to introduce an AI-powered breakthrough in Yoast SEO 21.0 that transforms how you optimize your content. We’ve harnessed the power of generative AI to bring you effortless title and meta description generation at the click of a button. Dive into our newest release and experience the benefits of seamless SEO optimization, giving you more time to craft quality content and less time worrying about SEO details.

Simplified SEO

We’ve designed this update of Yoast SEO to eliminate the hassle of your SEO optimization efforts. We all know that creating SEO-friendly titles and descriptions can be complex, often consuming a lot of your time and requiring an understanding of SEO best practices. Not anymore. Unlock the potential of AI with the newest release of Yoast SEO Premium. You can now generate titles and meta descriptions with just a click!

Now available as beta in Yoast SEO Premium

The new AI feature is now available as a beta in Yoast SEO Premium. As we fine-tune the API, you might see system messages in this beta phase. These are not huge issues, and it’s certainly not your fault. Simply try again if you see a message pop up! Think of it as getting a sneak peek behind the scenes, like witnessing a chef in a restaurant kitchen perfecting your dish. It’s all part of the process as we refine and optimize the product. You can activate the AI feature in the Yoast SEO settings.

We’re constantly working to improve our AI features, which is where we need your input. We value your feedback and ideas to ensure our products serve you better each time. We understand how quickly the world moves, particularly in areas like LLMs and generative AI. So, we are ready to make numerous tweaks and changes to keep pace and maintain high quality. Together, let’s explore this exciting new chapter!

Powered by generative AI

The new feature in Yoast SEO 21.0 uses advanced generative AI to create engaging, creative, SEO-optimized titles and meta descriptions. Relying on large language models, machine learning algorithms and fed with vast amounts of data, our AI understands your content to provide you with optimal suggestions.

Generating SEO titles and meta descriptions is now easy as pie with Yoast SEO Premium

Why use AI for SEO

SEO involves techniques and strategies to rank your site higher in search results. One of them is to have good, catchy titles and relevant meta descriptions that appeal both to readers and search engines.

But the challenges are real. Manually crafting these pieces of content can be tedious, and time-consuming and may require an advanced understanding of SEO. This is where our new feature steps in.

Here’s how the AI in Yoast SEO Premium benefits you

  • Saves time: You can focus more on creating quality content when you automate the generation of titles and meta descriptions.
  • Enhances creativity: It helps stimulate creative and engaging titles and descriptions, ensuring they grab the reader’s attention in search results.
  • Improved CTR: Leveraging AI for your SEO efforts can revolutionize your content optimization strategy and helps the number of people clicking through to your site.
  • Integrated workflow: By integrating different tasks — in this case, content creation and SEO optimization — into a seamless workflow, you save time, reduce complexity, and increase productivity. It also ensures that all your work is aligned toward one goal, increasing the effectiveness of your efforts.

Let us walk you through the functionality to show how this new feature will help you do SEO.

How does it work?

The AI feature in Yoast SEO 21.0 works for all your content. Here’s how:

  • Get started: Activate the AI feature in the Yoast SEO settings. Locate the ‘Use AI’ button. You’ll find this in the Google Preview in the Yoast SEO Premium sidebar or by scrolling down your post. Once your content is ready, click this button, and our AI feature will appear.
  • One-time consent: We’ve powered the AI features in Yoast SEO with external services. We need your consent to allow you to use them. Remember that we’ll transfer your data once you consent to use the AI feature.
  • AI at work: Ask it to generate titles or meta descriptions. Our advanced algorithms analyze your content after you click the button. The AI then uses this to generate a list of engaging and SEO-friendly titles or meta descriptions that align with your content.
  • View suggestions: You’ll see five unique suggestions for the title and meta description. Check them to see which ones suit your content the best. They are in the context of a Google SERP result. You can immediately see how it might look in the search results.
  • Choose or refresh: Find a title or meta description you love? Wonderful! Select it and click the ‘Apply AI title/meta description’ button next to the selection, and it will automatically populate the appropriate fields. Not entirely satisfied with the first round of suggestions? No problem! Click the ‘Generate more’ button, and five fresh suggestions for titles and meta descriptions will appear.
  • Finalize: The generated titles and meta descriptions are not set in stone. Tweak them to your liking.

Remember, there’s no need for any configuration. It also doesn’t cost you anything extra, like AI credits or an extra subscription — it’s all included in Yoast SEO Premium.

Keep Google in mind

Even as you use our AI feature to create SEO meta tags, it’s worth remembering that Google often rewrites titles and meta descriptions. This process is based on their algorithms’ understanding of your content and what they consider will be most helpful to users.

What does this mean? Google’s systems serve the user the best content according to their search query, which means it will occasionally adjust your titles and meta descriptions. This fact underlines the importance of your on-page content aligning with your meta tags.

Something else to keep in mind

While our generative AI is a powerful tool designed to deliver high-quality, SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions, we want to remind you that it doesn’t replace the human touch. The technology provides incredible choices by learning from your data, but it might only partially grasp the unique context, branding, or tone of voice your content requires.

The suggestions generated by our AI feature provide a solid foundation for your SEO data, saving you time and effort. However, it’s still important to review these suggestions to ensure they align with your brand’s voice and your content’s context and are factually correct. We have a blog post explaining evaluating the generated titles and meta descriptions.

The power of generative AI in SEO is immense, offering time-saving benefits and efficiency; still, the technology should complement human intelligence, not replace it. We ensured that Yoast SEO 21.0 allows and encourages you to review, refine, and tailor the AI’s output.

Stay involved in the process, use this tool to enhance your workflow, and remember — the magic truly happens when human creativity and advanced AI work together!

Get Yoast SEO 21.0 now

We can’t wait for you to dive in and use this helpful feature in Yoast SEO Premium. We firmly believe it has the potential to improve your SEO work and make it more efficient. It helps free up that valuable time to do what you do best — create fantastic content.

The update is free if you use the Premium version of our SEO plugin. If you’re not a Premium subscriber, upgrade today to enjoy this and many more advanced features to help your SEO.

We’re excited about this new chapter in simplifying and optimizing your SEO work. As always, we are open to feedback and suggestions about Yoast SEO, and we’re looking forward to hearing about your experiences with this new feature.

Get ready to harness the power of AI for your SEO efforts!



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Aug 8 2023
Yoast SEO 20.13: A few more enhancements

The latest update of our plugin is here: Yoast SEO 20.13. This release is packed with crucial fixes that improve your SEO workflow. We’ve focused on enhancing compatibility and performance, making your SEO efforts smoother and more effective. So, let’s dive into the details of our latest release.

Compatibility with WordPress 6.3

Today, the new version of WordPress will be released. This WordPress 6.3 release would cause a small issue in the form of a design overlap in Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Insight preview pop-ups when using our plugin. That’s why today’s Yoast SEO release comes with a fix for this compatibility issue. We understand how important these previews are for your workflow, as they allow you to see how your content will appear on these platforms. With this fix, you can continue to enjoy a seamless preview experience, ensuring your content always looks its best.

We’ve also made improvements to the Premium version of our plugin. We’ve fixed a performance issue on hosts with limited object caching that was caused by autoloading of redirect data. This enhancement means faster loading times and a smoother user experience.

Update to Yoast SEO 20.13

These updates are designed to make your SEO efforts more efficient. This allows you to focus on what truly matters: creating quality content that resonates with your audience. We encourage you to update to the latest version of Yoast SEO. Not only will you benefit from these enhancements, but you’ll also be equipped with the most up-to-date SEO tools to optimize your website effectively.

We’re committed to continuously improving our plugin, ensuring it remains your go-to SEO solution. Thank you for your continued support and trust in Yoast SEO. We can’t wait to see how these updates will help you take your website’s SEO to new heights.

Video SEO 14.8

In other news, we’re also releasing a new version of our Video SEO add-on that comes with some bug fixes. It contains a fix for a few of our users (with large websites) that got a timeout when reindexing. We also fixed a few other bugs that some users with specific situations encountered, so make sure to update if you are a user of Video SEO!

Sneak peek at our upcoming Yoast SEO release…

At the moment we are still dotting the i’s, but we’re working on something awesome in Yoast SEO and are bursting to share it with you! It’s almost ready to go, so keep an eye on our upcoming release post and for now, see what you can make of this short teaser:



Camille Cunningham

Camille is the team lead of the Search team at Yoast. She writes and optimizes blog posts and enjoys creating content that helps people master SEO.

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Jul 25 2023
Yoast SEO 20.12: Improvements and fixes

Meet our latest update, Yoast SEO 20.12. It’s loaded with improvements designed to enhance your SEO efforts and simplify your journey toward better rankings. We owe the growth and evolution of Yoast SEO to your constant support and invaluable feedback. This update will benefit your website optimization efforts as we improve our products.

More improvements in Yoast SEO 20.12

The heart of this Yoast SEO 20.12 lies in fixes and improvements. Our dedicated team has worked hard to fix issues, refine our plugin, and optimize functionalities to ensure a smoother, more efficient user experience.

Reliability is a cornerstone of effective SEO, so we’ve strengthened the stability of our plugin to give you consistent, peak performance. Also, we’ve ironed out issues to ensure your SEO strategy remains intact and your site’s performance soars.

Helping you do SEO

Quality readability analysis ensures your content is available and understandable to your audience. Adhering to recommended reading levels, using clear language, and structuring your content effectively can improve user engagement and lower bounce rates. Remember, Google and other search engines also focus on the user experience when ranking websites, which means good readability is critical for SEO.

Our well-executed SEO analysis helps you to improve your rankings and increase your visibility to organic traffic. By catering to relevant keywords and building high-quality backlinks, you can attract a larger, more targeted audience to your website.

Updating WooCommerce SEO

We’ve also updated our WooCommerce SEO plugin. We’ve made it easier to use, more stable, and with an enhanced user experience. Our team has worked hard to streamline the plugin, incorporating more intuitive controls and cleaner processes to make your SEO optimization as easy as 1-2-3. Moreover, we’ve improved the plugin’s stability, eliminating bugs and ensuring a smooth run for your SEO needs. The user experience is now seamless, with faster response and comfortable navigation, making your tasks more efficient and hassle-free.

Update now to Yoast SEO 20.12

Yoast SEO 20.12 is available to download for all. We appreciate your support and remain committed to continually improving our products to cater to your SEO needs. This update aims to make Yoast SEO not just a tool for your website but the ultimate companion in your online success journey. Try out our latest release and experience the difference.



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Jul 11 2023
Yoast SEO 20.11: Publishing principles to improve E-E-A-T

Building trust and establishing authority has become paramount for most online publishers. As Google strives to deliver the most reliable and high-quality content to users — especially in the age of generative AI, they have emphasized a concept known as E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. E-E-A-T serves as a critical framework to evaluate the credibility and reliability of websites and their content. Improving your E-E-A-T can solidify your position as a trusted authority in your field. Yoast SEO Premium now has a tool to help you work on that.

Yoast SEO Premium helps improve E-E-A-T

Google looks at your site from all angles to help determine its expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. There are so many options for you to point Google to the right places so it can quickly find what it needs to verify all that. For instance, your publishing principles pages provide excellent insights for Google. In today’s release of Yoast SEO Premium, we’ll enhance these pages via structured data.

Publishing principles are guidelines that govern the creation and dissemination of content. They encompass accuracy, integrity, relevance, transparency, engagement, privacy, accessibility, continuous improvement, and legal compliance. Following these principles ensures high-quality, trustworthy content that resonates with users.

Adhering to publishing principles establishes credibility and expertise, improves user satisfaction, and positively impacts SEO by enhancing E-E-A-T.

There’s structured data for that: publishingPrinciples

Yoast SEO Premium has new options to help Google find those all-important pages. We also make sure to add the publishingPrinciples schema to it so it’s instantly recognizable as such for search engines.

Head to the Site basics settings in Yoast SEO and scroll down to the Site policies section. Here, you can find different options for publishing principles, like:

  • General publishing principles
  • Funding information
  • Corrections policy
  • Ethics policy
  • Diversity policy
  • And more…

Select the appropriate pages from the fields, and you are ready. If you don’t have policies, this might be a good time to start writing those!

Adding publishing principles with Yoast SEO Premium

Update now to Yoast SEO 20.11

In Yoast SEO 20.11, we’ve added a new notification that reminds you to optimize recently added content types. You’ll not only see a notification on your dashboard, but we’ve also added a label to the content types to make them easily recognizable as new.

In Yoast SEO Premium, we’ve added a new option to add your publishing principles to your site. Select them from the options, and we’ll add the proper schema. This makes it easier for Google to find and recognize your essential principles, which helps your E-E-A-T!



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Jun 27 2023
Yoast SEO 20.10 brings a brand-new support/FAQ section

We are excited to present Yoast SEO 20.10, a release dedicated to fine-tuning your website and delivering an even smoother experience for all our fantastic users. This update focuses on fixing bugs and implementing minor enhancements to ensure your SEO journey is flawless. We’ve added a support section that gives you quick access to helpful content, while Premium subscribers can contact our dedicated support team.

A brand-new support section

At Yoast, we deeply value our users and understand the importance of reliable, responsive support. With Yoast SEO 20.10, we’ve made it easier for you to access the help you need, empowering you to optimize your website and achieve outstanding results confidently.

The latest release of Yoast SEO offers a new support page. Here, you’ll find options to get answers to all your burning questions quickly. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced pro, you’ll find a wealth of resources on our site to guide you through the intricacies of SEO optimization.

If you subscribe to Yoast SEO Premium, you’ll find an option to contact our support team instantly. Unlock unlimited 24/7 premium support and take your SEO to new heights by signing up for Yoast SEO Premium now!

Yoast SEO 20.10 introduces a new support section

Fixes and enhancements

In Yoast SEO 20.10, we’ve squashed numerous bugs that might have been causing a few hiccups along the way. Building stable foundations is crucial for your success, and we’re committed to providing you with a top-notch, bug-free experience. Of course, we’ve also added some interesting enhancements to our product.

For instance, we’ve expanded the list of HTML elements excluded from the content analysis to ensure these don’t influence the scores. In addition, we’ve introduced more robust HTML processing for the competing links, keyphrase in introduction, image keyphrase, and images assessments. Lastly, you can find a new option in the crawl optimization settings. This new one lets you block AdsBot crawling when enabled.

You can now block Google AdsBot from crawling — if you don’t use Google Ads, that is

Update now to Yoast SEO 20.10

Upgrade to Yoast SEO 20.10 today and experience the updated stability and fine-tuned enhancements. We appreciate your feedback, and we’re confident that this release will bring you peace of mind and increased optimization capabilities. Let’s take your SEO goals to new heights together as we continue to refine and perfect Yoast SEO.



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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Jun 13 2023
Yoast SEO 20.9: Improving the Wincher integration

Time to release Yoast SEO 20.9! In this release, we’ve added a new option for the Wincher integration, plus the regular round of enhancements, improvements, and fixes.

Enhancing the Wincher rank tracking integration

A while ago, Yoast SEO and Wincher joined hands to allow you to track your website’s ranking status in Google straight from the plugin. Wincher is a third-party tool that offers advanced rank tracking, in-depth keyword analysis, and other features that can help improve your website’s visibility in search engines.

The Wincher integration in Yoast SEO provides an easy way to track how your content is performing right from the post editor. You get critical ranking data in one place, which helps you monitor your website’s performance. On Wincher’s website, you’ll get many extra options to go in-depth with your data. You can also find great opportunities for untapped keywords!

In Yoast SEO 20.9, we’ve added a Wincher widget to the dashboard. This shows your top keywords added to Wincher via Yoast SEO. It also doubles as a connection button, so if you haven’t connected to your Wincher account, yet, you can from this widget.

Get quick insights into the performance of your most important keyphrases

Improvements in Yoast SEO 20.9

In the Crawl optimization settings, you’ll find a new pattern to help you prevent crawling from internal search results. We’ve added the line "/page/*/?s=" to the robots.txt. The asterisk * represents any numeric value, while ?s= is most websites’ typical query parameter to identify internal search URLs.

This addition will help improve websites’ crawlability by ensuring search engines do not index unnecessary pages, such as internal search result pages. This can help consolidate the website’s crawl budget, declutter the search results, and improve the website’s overall SEO performance.

Background indexing

Our latest update introduces scheduled indexing that creates the necessary database structure without requiring you to click on the SEO optimization button in Yoast SEO. With this feature, even websites not optimized previously will slowly receive automatic optimization of their databases. This process will be done gradually in chunks to ensure a smooth experience. Indexing might take some time for larger sites, but the scheduled indexation feature ensures that websites are continually optimized without user intervention.

Update now to Yoast SEO 20.9!

Yoast SEO 20.9 is out today, so download the latest update of your favorite SEO plugin. In this release, we expanded the possibilities of the Wincher integration. In addition, we did some regular bug fixes and made some enhancements to our database system.



Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

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