During the initial rollout, we discovered a technical issue where unintended classes were being added to content for some users. While these added classes are harmless and do not impact the functionality or appearance of your content, they should not have been added, that’s on us.
We take this seriously, and to maintain the quality you expect, we’ve been actively working on a solution. We’re pleased to share that a fix has now been released, and the issue has been resolved. For users already affected, we are automatically cleaning up the unintended classes as part of the fix, no action is needed on your part.
As part of our commitment to delivering reliable and thoughtful features, we have also temporarily disabled the AI Optimize feature for the Classic Editor. This will give us time to reconsider our approach and develop an improved solution. We’ll keep you updated and reintroduce the feature as soon as we’re confident in its performance.
Please update your Yoast SEO plugins to the latest version where available. Should you have any concerns, feel free to contact our support team.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support.
Beth is Product Marketing Manager at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
Ever feel frustrated having to jump between different apps just to check your site’s SEO performance? We’ve simplified things for you. Yoast now seamlessly integrates insights from Site Kit by Google (Google Analytics and Search Console) right into your Yoast Dashboard, giving you one clear view to manage your website’s SEO effectively.
Here’s why you’ll love this:
Connect once, get instant clarity: Easily link your Yoast Dashboard and Site Kit by Google just once, avoiding multiple logins and complex workflows.
Instantly see where to focus your efforts: Efficiently recognize your best opportunities to boost visibility and rankings, allowing you to prioritize SEO tasks effectively.
Stay effortlessly informed: The Yoast Dashboard integration with Site Kit by Google connects your analytics and search data seamlessly in one place, so you can quickly see important metrics like organic traffic, impressions, clicks, and bounce rates without switching tabs.
How to connect your Site Kit by Google to the Yoast SEO Dashboard
Update your Yoast plugin to the latest version.
Go to your Yoast Dashboard in WordPress.
Follow the steps in the Site Kit installation widget.
Start reviewing insights directly in your Yoast Dashboard.
Connect Site Kit by Google to your Yoast Dashboard today and simplify your SEO workflow!
Disclaimer!
Please note that we’re rolling out this new feature in phases. This means that you might not see the Site Kit integration in your Yoast Dashboard yet. Eventually, this integration will be available to everyone, so stay tuned!
When I first started working in marketing, Yoast SEO was the first plugin I used. Today, I work with the tool that I depended on the most. I’m Carl Henry, my background is in SaaS growth marketing with a focus on content. I like basketball, padel, painting, and gaming.
We’re excited to announce that Yoast AI Optimize is now also available when using the Classic Editor in WordPress!
You’ve finished your copy, great! But those pesky Yoast SEO Analysis lights aren’t all green and you have to make manual changes. That’s where Yoast AI Optimize comes in. With Yoast SEO Premium, you can now get AI-powered suggestions right inside your Classic Editor to help fine-tune your content.
What is Yoast AI Optimize?
Yoast AI Optimize brings smart, targeted SEO support into your writing flow. It gives AI-powered suggestions for specific assessments in the Yoast SEO analysis, such as length, structure, and keyphrase distribution. You’ll see exactly where improvements can be made and get quick, editable suggestions to help you fix them. You can quickly apply or dismiss them; the final decision always remains yours.
Benefits:
Get real-time AI suggestions that help improve SEO and readability
Edit suggestions to match your style and tone of voice
Apply or dismiss suggestions easily without breaking your writing flow
Use it in both the Classic and Block editors with Yoast SEO Premium
Supports optimization for:
Keyphrase in introduction
Keyphrase distribution
Keyphrase density
Sentence length
Paragraph length
Whether you’re using the Classic Editor or sticking with the Block Editor, Yoast AI Optimize helps you improve your SEO score faster, without losing the personal touch.
If you’re curious to know how we built this feature, check out our developer blog post with all the behind the scenes.
Ready to optimize smarter? Update to Yoast SEO Premium to try AI Optimize in the Classic Editor today!
Beth is Product Marketing Manager at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
With the new Yoast SEO Dashboard, you can see how your site is doing at a glance. Instead of hunting through pages, you’ll find all your key metrics in one place. It’s easy to spot which posts need attention, see where you can improve, and figure out what to tackle first so you can spend more time refining your content and less time searching for data.
We know it can be challenging to improve your content when you have to dig through every post and page. That’s why we created a dashboard that instantly shows your site SEO Perfomance. It streamlines the process so you can focus on what matters: making your content shine.
What you get from the Yoast SEO Dashboard:
Top-level overview of your SEO: see critical insights at a glance without hunting through individual pages
Filterable views of SEO and readability scores: quickly spot where you can make the most significant improvements
Designed for clarity and direction, our dashboard makes it easy to check in, prioritize your next steps, and enhance your content strategy immediately. It’s straightforward, efficient, and all about helping you work smarter.
How to access the Yoast SEO Dashboard:
To access the Yoast SEO Dashboard, you just need to:
Ensure your Yoast SEO is up-to-date: In your WordPress admin area, go to “Plugins” and update Yoast SEO to the latest version
Navigate to the Dashboard: Click on “Yoast SEO” in your WordPress sidebar to land on the dashboard, or click on “Dashboard”
Explore your insights: Review the overview, filter your scores, and start working through your task list
Ready to see how much simpler managing your SEO can be? Get Yoast SEO today and let your new dashboard guide you toward better performance.
Carl Henry Addoumieh
When I first started working in marketing, Yoast SEO was the first plugin I used. Today, I work with the tool that I depended on the most. I’m Carl Henry, my background is in SaaS growth marketing with a focus on content. I like basketball, padel, painting, and gaming.
Take your content strategy to the next level with expanded Semrush insights in the Yoast SEO plugin! Simplify your SEO process and focus on what matters the most: crafting and optimizing content that resonates and ranks. The Yoast Semrush integration means all Yoast SEO users can access keyword intent, and keyword difficulty and track and analyze up to four keywords. All powered by Semrush—seamlessly integrated into Yoast’s focus keyphrase section.
Keyword difficulty and intent:
Make your keyword choices smarter with data-driven insights:
Keyword difficulty shows how challenging it is to rank for a specific keyword, helping you focus on keywords that are within reach and maximize your chances of ranking.
Keyword intent, or search intent, reveals whether users searching for a keyword are looking for information, products, or services. This gives you the context to create content that genuinely connects with their needs.
These insights empower you to shape content that ranks and resonates—right from Yoast SEO’s analysis section.
Terms can sometimes be overwhelming, so the Yoast team prepared a comprehensive glossary with all the SEO terms you need to build and implement an SEO strategy successfully.
Get started
Click “Get related keyphrases” below the focus keyphrase box to get started. If you haven’t activated your Yoast Semrush integrations, you will be redirected to the Semrush login page. Afterward, you will instantly see keyword insights in the related keyphrases section. This makes adapting your content strategy seamless, allowing you to make quick, data-driven adjustments as you write.
Get started in simple steps:
Click “Get related keyphrases” below the focus keyphrase box.
If you haven’t activated your Yoast Semrush integrations, you will be redirected to the Semrush login page.
You will instantly see keyword insights in the related keyphrases section.
This makes adapting your content strategy seamless, allowing you to make quick, data-driven adjustments as you write. To learn more about activating your integrations within Yoast SEO, visit our help center.
About Yoast Semrush integration
Expanded Semrush insights are available at no additional cost to all users with a Semrush account. Just update your plugin and enjoy the data you need to rank higher, right next to your keywords—effortless, real-time SEO insights, all within Yoast!
Integrate your Semrush account into your Yoast SEO and boost your ranking with valuable data within the plugin. Directly bringing comprehensive keyword research tools to your fingertips without switching platforms. Learn more about the Yoast Semrush integration.
Today we’re welcoming Yoast AI Optimize to our family of AI features. The AI features are designed to make SEO tasks easier than ever by harnessing the power of AI. The tool is perfect for marketing professionals, freelance writers, and content strategists. This brand new feature ensures your carefully-crafted content is search engine friendly.
What does Yoast AI Optimize do?
You have finished drafting your copy, and you are relatively happy with the results. Great! Until you realize that there’s a lot of manual tweaking needed to implement the suggestions in the Yoast SEO analysis. We get it, reworking copy is not the most interesting part of blogging. In fact, internal research informed us that optimizing content for SEO is the most tedious and challenging part of the content creation process. At the same time, our customers know how important this final stage can be to gaining visibility in the SERPS. So we found a solution. This is where Yoast AI Optimize steps in to help your content over the ‘SEO’ finish line.
How you can access the new feature
Easily recognizable by the color fade and signature sparkle icon, Yoast AI Optimize is automatically available to all our Yoast SEO Premium customers. To access, customers must have updated to the most recent version, 23.2 and granted consent to use AI.
Where you can use Yoast AI Optimize
Currently you can optimize three of the assessments in the Yoast SEO Analysis; Keyphrase in introduction, Keyphrase distribution and Keyphrase density. Just click on the sparkly icon next to the assessment to receive the AI-powered suggestions.
Pricing and usage
You can look out from behind your fingers, there are no additional or hidden costs! That said, we know you will all understand that to continue offering sustainable innovation using AI, we must consider fair ways to maintain our current pricing. For this reason, we have introduced the spark counter which keeps track of how many interactions you have with our AI features.
At the moment there is no limit on the number of sparks you can generate. Currently, the counter is set to 100, but you may surpass this limit without issue for now. Of course, the general Yoast AI rate limits apply. The counter resets on the first day of every calendar month. Our internal research on usage tells us that this number will not pose a challenge for the vast majority of our customers, allowing for flexible and uninhibited use across all our AI features.
What are sparks and how do they work?
A spark is defined as a single click on a button of one of Yoast SEO’s AI features. In practice, this means that when you click ‘Use AI’ to generate five example meta descriptions, this would be considered one spark. Should you regenerate another five, this would be another single spark.
You can find the spark counter at the top of the dismiss or apply modals which pop up whenever you interact with the feature within the Yoast SEO analysis sidebar.
The new signature colors help you know when you interact with AI
Kai van Grunsven, UX Designer at Yoast, comments on how the UX team created awareness around when our customers interact with artificial intelligence in line with our core ethical values. The spark counter applies to all Yoast’s AI features. Naturally, this is also fully responsive on mobile.
“As a UX designer, my goal was to give our AI features distinct branding that stands out and integrates seamlessly into our UI. I used a ‘sparkles’ icon and a gradient transitioning from Yoast’s purple to indigo to enhance AI buttons and the spark counter. This familiar icon and modern color scheme help users recognize and engage with our AI features effortlessly, ensuring a visually engaging and intuitive experience for our customers.”
Limitations
Yoast AI Optimize, like all other AI features, is currently in beta. This means you may experience limitations when using the tool. For transparency, these are listed below.
Yoast AI Optimize is only available for texts up to around 1000 words. For longer texts, the button will be inactive.
Yoast AI Optimize is only available for the Block editor. It can optimize content in the following blocks: Paragraph, Heading, List, and Table block. Content from other blocks cannot be optimized.
Yoast AI Optimize currently is available for the following SEO checks: Keyphrase in Introduction, Keyphrase Density, Keyphrase Distribution. For keyphrase density, we only support the case in which the keyphrase is underused. If the keyphrase is overused, we do not provide the Yoast AI Optimize feature.
You can only accept or reject all suggestions. It is not currently possible to accept parts of a suggestion.
For longer texts, it might take up to a minute for AI Optimize to produce a result.
Provide feedback on the new beta feature
Yoast AI Optimize is currently in beta, with this in mind, we value your feedback to make it even better. Your insights and suggestions will help us refine and enhance the AI-powered title and meta description generation feature. To help shape this tool’s future and contribute to your SEO strategy’s success, please provide feedback here.
Try out Yoast AI Optimize today
Upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium to unlock the full potential of our AI features! Gain access to all our advanced tools, including the award-nominated Yoast AI Generate and the powerful Yoast AI Optimize. Streamline your processes and receive SEO-ready suggestions at a click when you upgrade to the latest version, 23.2.
Beth is the Product Marketeer at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
Get ready for a smoother ride with Yoast SEO 22.4! This update packs a punch, improving performance, fixing bugs and enhancing your overall user experience. Say goodbye to pesky ‘elementor’ slugs and enjoy seamless navigation. Plus, thanks to Yoast WooCommerce SEO 16.2, our webshop customers will better control how their product variants show to shoppers online.
Improvements for Yoast SEO 22.4
Across the plugin, customers can expect to see improved performance as a whole. We’ve removed unnecessary queries and fixed bugs, enhancing the user experience. In essence, we have been doing some spring cleaning.
One particularly noticeable fix is personalized for the vast Elementor community within our user base. You might have noticed that when saving a post with Elementor for the first time, the slug would stubbornly add on the word ‘elementor’ at the start. Well, no more! We’ve put an end to that annoyance. Say goodbye to those unnecessary redirects when you update to Yoast SEO 22.4!
Schema updates for product variants
In February 2024, Google updated its guidelines on structured data specifically for product variants, a complex issue for many ecommerce sites. They aim to match customer intent to results online more effectively. If you’ve ever searched for a t-shirt in a specific color and had a different colored t-shirt pop up in the search results, you can relate to the shopper’s experience.
We’ve updated our product schema in Yoast WooCommerce SEO 16.2 to align with best practices to communicate your product attributes to search engines more effectively. This will ensure your products match potential shoppers’ search criteria as closely as possible. So, now is a great time to ensure that all your site’s product variant data is correct on your website. Check our configuration guide for Yoast WooCommerce SEO for more guidance on how to do this.
Product schema settings in WooCommerce SEO
Yoast SEO workouts to guide you through optimizing your website
In the spirit of seasonal change, now is the perfect time to complete spring cleaning on your site by completing one or more SEO workouts. For Yoast SEO Premium customers, consider these workouts your personal trainers, guiding you through optimizations in just three simple steps each, ensuring your favorite content gets seen by your customers.
Update now to Yoast SEO 22.4
We’re here to empower your digital journey with bug fixes, enhancements, and tailored solutions like our exclusive SEO workouts. Happy optimizing with Yoast SEO 22.4!
Beth Parker
Beth is the Product Marketeer at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
Yoast SEO 22.3 introduces a highly-requested AI feature exclusively for our Yoast SEO Premium customers. AI-generated titles and descriptions—simply input your keyphrase for SEO-optimized suggestions. Effortlessly enhance category and tag pages, save time, and stay ahead in SEO. Yoast SEO 22.3 also includes additional refinements and fixes, enhancing the user experience from which all our customers can benefit.
Generated titles and descriptions for taxonomies for Yoast SEO Premium
Building on the enthusiastic reception of AI generated titles and meta descriptions for our customers’ content and product pages over the last year, we are taking it one step further. Yoast SEO 22.3 introduces AI-generated titles and descriptions tailored for your category and tag pages!
Just input your chosen keyphrase and you will receive SEO-optimized suggestions for you to choose from. As with our other generative AI features, you stay in control of what the end result looks like as it is easy to tweak the results to fit your requirements or generate five more at the click of a button, as shown below.
Why it matters:
At Yoast, we recognize that content creators often overlook category and tag pages amidst the hustle of new content creation and site optimization. Many times, creators build these pages and then neglect to revisit them as frequently as necessary. After all, although establishing the right site structure and taxonomy system is crucial, it may not offer the most enjoyable aspect of content creation. Now, with our AI-generated titles and descriptions, you can effortlessly enhance these pages without sacrificing your precious time and resources.
Benefits:
Save time and resources:
Cover SEO fundamentals as part of your workflow, without adding the extra effort or time.
Focus on creating new content while our AI makes the optimization of your category and tag pages a breeze.
Worry-free title and descriptions. Our suggestions will be there to guide you, even when you are tired or lacking inspiration.
Boost search engine ranking:
Seamlessly complete another task which contributes to improving your site’s SEO performance.
Stay ahead in search results by effortlessly fine-tuning your taxonomies.
Other refinements and fixes
Yoast SEO 22.3 introduces additional refinements and fixes, enhancing the user experience for all our customers. We’ve also configured the social profile settings to enable x.com websites to be added. We’ve streamlined processes and eliminated unnecessary queries, ensuring a smoother overall interaction with the plugin.
Update now to Yoast SEO 22.3
Upgrade to Yoast SEO 22.3 now to enhance your workflow and productivity. We’re eager to learn how this update contributes to your online success, and your valuable feedback could inspire future features like the one introduced today. Your journey to improved SEO starts with this update!
Beth Parker
Beth is the Product Marketeer at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
Here at Yoast, we want to ensure your carefully-crafted content is well-received by the widest possible audience. Yoast SEO 22.2 brings more enhancements to our inclusive language analysis feature. You can expect to see more accurate keyphrase recognition, to ensure your keyphrase strategy is spot on every time! Additionally, we’ve introduced fresh translation enhancements for Yoast News SEO.
Enhanced inclusive language analysis
Our commitment to inclusivity takes center stage in our Yoast SEO 22.2 update with enhancements to our inclusive language analysis feature. We understand the importance of language sensitivity in today’s diverse online landscape. So, we’ve been fine-tuning our prompts In Yoast SEO for WordPress and Yoast SEO for Shopify to further empower our customers to navigate these challenges seamlessly. When a phrase or word is identified as potentially non-inclusive, our feature steps in with constructive suggestions, offering you the opportunity to adjust your content for a wider audience. Another benefit of improved inclusivity is that it can contribute to a positive user experience, which is becoming more important to ranking highly in the SERPS.
More accurate keyphrase recognition
In Yoast SEO 22.2, we’ve focused on upgrading our keyphrase recognition prompts, resulting in a better-refined and more accurate tool for optimizing your content’s keyphrase density. You can now benefit from more contextual keyphrase matching when a phrase contains special characters such as hyphens. For instance, let’s say your keyphrase is ‘tips for training dogs,’ and your content mentions ‘dog-training tips’. We now highight the entire relevant phrase for you. This means that you can effortlessly spot and assess the full context in which you use your keyphrases. This helps you improve the overall effectiveness of your keyword strategy.
Enhancements and refinements in Yoast News SEO
This release also introduces new translation enhancements for Yoast News SEO, personalized to each user’s setup. These smaller plugin updates result in faster downloads for our users and are optimized for reduced file size, making them more server-friendly for our customers.
User experience improvements in Yoast SEO Premium
We’ve also been busy in the background focusing on our customers’ user experience. We’ve made it even easier for you to access and locate our features within the Yoast SEO Premium plugin.
Update now to Yoast SEO 22.2
Make the most of our improved inclusive language analysis and keyphrase recognition configurations by updating to Yoast SEO 22.2.
Beth Parker
Beth is the Product Marketeer at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
In our most recent update, Yoast SEO 22.1, we are pleased to announce significant enhancements in our generative AI features. This improvement allows our Yoast SEO Premium customers to benefit from more advanced AI-generated meta descriptions and titles. This also means that you, our customers, will benefit from better support for languages other than English.
Why titles and meta descriptions matter
These seemingly modest input boxes play a very important role on your website. They convey to Google, and the end user scanning the SERP results what they can expect to find on the other side. Despite your efforts in crafting meticulous titles and meta descriptions, Google may opt to substitute its version if it deems it more effective. Consequently, there’s no assurance that your carefully written content will take center stage. Our plugin, however, empowers you with the best tools to maintain control and maximize your chances of being prominently featured.
With that in mind, you might ask, “So it is important to make sure that meta descriptions and titles are as attractive as possible to the viewer and Google, right?”. The answer is yes and no. Yes, you need attractive meta titles and descriptions. However, they also have to reflect what is on the landing pages accurately, or people will be disappointed and quickly leave. This can cause your website more harm in the long run. This scenario is known as ‘clickbait,’ and no one wants their website associated with that.
What exactly has changed?
Our generative AI features, just like your mobile phone, need updates every once in a while as technology improves. As you know, AI capabilities have changed dramatically over the last year. Our customers can see the benefit of this, especially when writing content in languages other than English. For example, our generated content in Polish is returning better results, and we expect this to be the same for other languages.
To ensure our customers get the full benefit of the performance improvements, we have also fine-tuned our prompts. This helps us make the most of the enhanced prompt engineering abilities, resulting in higher-quality text generation.
How Yoast SEO Premium returns our customers’ time
Time. Here at Yoast, we recognize that our customers are constantly balancing where to put this precious commodity. You’ll appreciate a quicker way to write titles for your content pages when you’re busy wearing many hats! With Yoast SEO Premium, we take care of this task for you, or at least get you 95% of the way. Ultimately, you remain the final decider on what goes on your website; you’re still in the driver’s seat! To read more about the benefits of our AI integration, check out our extended release post from 2023.
Other improvements and fixes
We have been busy in the background, making enhancements to our search functionality on the settings page. We’ve also been continuing our efforts to improve structured data for Yoast SEO. Utilizing structured data to offer context, Yoast SEO assists search engines in understanding your site. You can read more about how you can maximize the capacity of Organization schema on our Yoast SEO 22.0 release post.
Update now to Yoast SEO 22.1
We’re committed to keeping you on top of your game with the latest technological advancements. Yoast SEO 22.1 comes with fantastic new capabilities for our generative AI features, bug fixes, and schema updates. Take advantage of all these by updating your Yoast SEO plugin today.
Beth Parker
Beth is the Product Marketeer at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
