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.
Starting with SEO can be hard, but tools like Yoast SEO simplify the process. One crucial feature is our traffic light system. We’ve designed this system to guide you and your content toward SEO success. Let’s find out what these traffic lights mean for your work in Yoast SEO.
How the Yoast SEO traffic lights work
In Yoast SEO, traffic lights act as your digital traffic controllers, signaling the SEO health of your content. Picture them as your navigational aids: green for smooth sailing, orange for a cautious approach, and red for areas requiring immediate attention. These traffic lights provide a quick snapshot of how well your content aligns with SEO best practices and search engine requirements.
The philosophy of the traffic lights
While not all traffic lights have to be green, the goal is to ensure that the overall balance of green lights reflects a well-optimized piece of content. Embrace the feedback each traffic light color provides to enhance your content’s quality, relevance, and SEO-friendliness.
Aim for green traffic lights overall — not for every analysis in Yoast SEO
Green traffic light
A green traffic light signifies that your content meets the SEO criteria set by Yoast. It indicates that your content is well-optimized for search engines and has a higher chance of ranking well in search results. However, achieving a green light is not the only goal; the quality and relevance of your content are even more critical.
Orange traffic light
An orange traffic light is a warning sign, suggesting areas where your content can be further optimized. It prompts you to review and improve specific aspects of your content, such as keyword usage, readability, or meta information. While an orange light doesn’t indicate critical issues, addressing these areas can enhance your content’s SEO performance.
Red traffic light
A red traffic light demands immediate attention as it highlights critical issues that must be addressed. Ignoring red lights can negatively impact your content’s visibility and ranking potential. It signals areas of concern, such as missing meta tags, keyword stuffing, or other SEO issues that can prevent your content from performing well.
Inclusive language analysis traffic light
A recent addition to Yoast SEO is the inclusive language analysis traffic light. This focuses on using inclusive language in your content. This traffic light evaluates your content for inclusivity, sensitivity, and diversity in language use. A green light indicates that your content is inclusive and respectful. An orange or red light suggests areas for improvement in promoting diversity and inclusivity.
Understanding the nuances of Yoast SEO traffic lights helps you optimize more effectively. The feedback lets you make informed decisions to improve your content so it will reach its goals.
Responding to Yoast SEO traffic light feedback
To effectively respond to the feedback provided by Yoast SEO traffic lights, consider the following strategies:
Green traffic light feedback:
Analyze how you earned your green lights and replicate those practices in future content.
Optimize future and existing content based on the successful tactics identified through green lights.
Orange traffic light feedback:
Prioritize areas flagged by the orange lights that significantly impact how well your content performs.
Implement the recommended improvements provided by Yoast SEO to address the identified issues and enhance your content.
Red traffic light feedback
Address critical issues identified by red lights promptly to prevent SEO mistakes and improve your content’s visibility.
Follow the actionable advice given by Yoast SEO to fix the issues causing the red lights. This helps ensure that you follow SEO best practices.
Implement the strategies and respond to the feedback provided by the Yoast SEO traffic lights. Optimizing your content means improving its SEO-friendliness and boosting its visibility in search results.
You can quickly see the scores from the front-end of your site with the admin bar and front-end inspector in Yoast SEO
Don’t go chasing green traffic lights
While achieving green lights in Yoast SEO is desirable, balancing getting those lights with a holistic SEO strategy is essential. Focusing solely on obtaining green lights may lead to overlooking critical SEO elements. In addition, you might be compromising the overall quality of your content.
There are multiple pitfalls when you chase green lights:
Tunnel vision: Fixating on green lights may distract you from the broader SEO strategy and content quality.
Over-optimization: Striving for all green lights can result in keyword stuffing or unnatural content, harming your results.
Lack of user focus: Prioritizing green lights over quality and relevance can lead to content that fails to engage and convert visitors.
Getting those green lights comes with many benefits:
SEO-friendly content: Green lights indicate that your content aligns with SEO best practices, increasing its visibility and ranking potential.
User-friendly content: Well-optimized content with green lights tends to be more user-friendly and engaging, enhancing the overall user experience.
Search engine visibility: Content with green lights might have a bigger chance of being indexed. Search engines can rank it favorably, driving organic traffic to your site.
Now you understand the allure, pitfalls, and benefits of green lights in Yoast SEO. Use these insights to balance optimization and content quality. Your goal is to publish the best content out there — with some help from Yoast SEO!
Mastering the traffic lights in Yoast SEO
Interpreting and responding to Yoast SEO traffic lights is a fundamental step in your SEO journey. Use the feedback provided to improve your content’s visibility. Working with Yoast SEO gives your content a better chance of standing out from your competitors!
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.
Recently, Google announced an update on how it uses business details in search. To help you make the most of that, we are happy to announce Yoast SEO 22.0, which expands support for Organization structured data. Here, you’ll find how we help Google understand everything about your company.
Expanded support for Organization schema
Yoast SEO has always been at the forefront of supporting structured data for our users — we have the most robust framework out there. We’ve also made it easy for you to make the most of it. For instance, you can add details about yourself and your site via our settings. Yoast SEO will add these details to our full-fledged graph if you do so. Today, we’re going to do even more.
Yoast SEO Premium and its Local SEO add-on offer expanded support for Organization schema, keeping your website at the forefront of (local) SEO. With this update, you can seamlessly incorporate detailed information about your organization, including its name, address, contact information, and various business identifiers. New in this release, among other things, are founding dates, number of employees, Tax/VAT IDs, ISO numbers, and more! And, of course, Yoast SEO will add all the structured data for these fields — you just have to fill them in.
You can fill in a long list of details about your organization in Yoast SEO Premium
But what is Organization schema?
Organization schema is structured data that provides search engines with detailed information about your organization. It includes essential details such as the organization’s name, address, contact information, and business identifiers. By implementing the Organization structured data, you can enhance your website’s visibility. It improves its chances of appearing in knowledge panels and other rich search results.
Google recently announced an expansion of its use of Organization structured data, so it’s vital that your site also provides as many details as possible. Check out the official announcement from Google.
Leveraging Organization schema for Local SEO
Local SEO is crucial for businesses targeting specific geographic areas. By combining the power of Organization and LocalBusiness schema with local SEO strategies, you can significantly improve your website’s visibility to local customers actively searching for your products or services. So start filling in those details!
The importance of structured data in the age of AI
Local SEO is not the only reason to use structured data. The use of artificial intelligence in search makes it essential that search engines accurately understand and interpret your website’s content. By providing context through structured data, you can help AI algorithms find and figure out the entities on your site so users get the relevant search results they need.
Stay ahead with Yoast SEO 22.0
Upgrade to Yoast SEO 22.0 and Local SEO 15.3 and use the expanded support for Organization schema. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to optimize your website for search engines further. Download Yoast SEO today and unlock the full potential of structured data!
Yoast SEO checks for the keyphrase density or keyword density of your text. But what is keyphrase density exactly? And why is it important for your SEO? In this article, we answer these questions. On top of that, we’ll discuss what you can do to improve the keyword density of your content so you score a green bullet on the plugin’s keyphrase density check. Let’s dive in!
Keyphrase density is the number of times your focus keyphrase occurs in your copy, compared to the total text of that page. So if you have a text that is 100 words and 5 of those are your focus keyphrase, your keyphrase density is 5%. We used to call it keyword density, but nowadays it’s more common to focus on a search term that consists of more than one word. That’s why we rather call it keyphrase density in Yoast SEO.
Why is it important for SEO?
Your keyphrase density is important for SEO because Google tries to match a user’s search query to the best-fitting page out there. To match your pages with a certain query, Google needs to understand what the page is about. That’s why you need to use your keyphrase, the phrase you’d like to rank for, in your copy. Luckily, this often comes naturally. If you want to rank for, for instance [bake vegan pancakes] you probably use this phrase or variations of it throughout your text.
However, if you repeat your keyphrase too often in your copy it becomes unpleasant to read. That’s something you should avoid at all times. After all, you want users to enjoy and understand your copy well. A high keyphrase density is also a signal to Google that you might be stuffing your text with keywords – also known as over-optimizing. As Google likes to show the best result to users, both in relevance and readability, this can negatively affect your rankings.
What does the keyphrase density check do?
The keyphrase density check in Yoast SEO assesses whether you’ve used the word(s) from your focus keyphrase often enough in your copy. It also checks if you didn’t go overboard and use the keyphrase too often. It’s good to know that the length of your keyphrase plays a factor in how your score is calculated. If you choose a longer phrase, it might be much more difficult to use it a certain number of times in your text, than if you’re using a shorter keyphrase. The check takes this into consideration to preserve the readability of your text.
We’ve included the length of your keyphrase as a weighting factor when calculating keyphrase density. That means that you will need to use your longer keyphrase less often in the text than your shorter keyphrase, to get a green traffic light. Not only do we tell you how many times you already used your keyphrase in the text, we also give you an idea about how many times you should use it.
An example of the keyphrase density assessment feedback in Yoast SEO
In the free version of Yoast SEO for WordPress, you’ll get a green traffic light if your keyphrase density lies between 0.5 and 3%. For a match to be counted, all words should occur in one sentence, but the order of the words may differ.
You won’t see the percentage mentioned in your feedback. Instead, we mention the exact number of times you used your keyphrase throughout your text and compare this to the number we advise. We feel that absolute numbers make it easier to work on improving your text.
Premium and Shopify: Word form recognition and related keyphrases
In certain languages, Yoast SEO Premium and Yoast SEO for Shopify recognize various word forms of your keyphrase. For instance, [train], [trained] or [training]. This means that Yoast SEO picks up on these variations and sees them as forms of your chosen keyphrase. Making it easier for you to naturally write about your topic and be less concerned about using your keyphrase often enough.
Let’s say you’d like to rank for [bake vegan pancakes]. If you write, “Here, you’ll learn how to bake the best vegan pancakes” this will be counted as an occurrence of the keyphrase. Also, if you’d write “baking a vegan pancake is easy as pie”, Yoast SEO Premium and our Shopify app recognize that as the focus keyphrase as well. That’s why the upper boundary in these tools is a bit higher: 3.5% instead of 3%.
In Premium and our Shopify app, you can also enter related keyphrases. These are words and phrases that are connected to your focus keyphrase, but not synonyms. Any related keyphrases you add have a keyphrase density check of their own. So if the density of your focus keyphrase is too high, have a look at any related keyphrases and see if those are more suitable to use instead.
Go Premium to get access to this feature!
Unlock lots of features and get access to all of our SEO courses with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin:
How to improve your keyphrase density
If your keyphrase density score is too low, that means that it’s not clear enough that your text is about that specific topic. In that case, you should use the keyphrase (or variations of it) more often. Check your copy and make sure you make clear what you’re writing about. Stay on topic! If the keyphrase density is too high, you’re using your keyphrase too often. Your text will probably come across as quite spammy, to both your website visitors and Google.
Using synonyms is a great way to avoid repetitiveness. Synonyms do not count towards your keyphrase density score, as that exclusively looks at the use of your actual focus keyphrase. If you’ve used synonyms and are worried it might be too much, here’s a tip! Have a look at the keyphrase distribution check in Yoast SEO. That highlights your focus keywords and its synonyms throughout the text. If you’ve entered synonyms that is. By looking at the highlighted phrases you can determine whether your keyphrase (in any form) is mentioned often enough throughout the text. A good check to see whether you stay on topic until the end!
Why do I have a red score on the keyphrase density check?
If you get a red traffic light for using your focus keyphrase too often or not enough and you’re not sure why, here are some things to look out for.
An example of a red feedback traffic light for the keyphrase density check
First off, make sure your full focus keyphrase is within one sentence to make sure it’s being counted.
Check your spelling. If you use [pancake] in your text, but wrote [pencake] in the focus keyphrase field, the plugin will not recognize it. Using capital letters, like in [Pancake] or even [PANCAKE] will not impact recognition though.
If your keyphrase density is too high, make better use of synonyms. Synonyms of your focus keyphrase will not count towards your total score, but they’ll probably make your text more pleasant to read.
Some page builders in WordPress conflict with our plugin. If our plugin is not able to find your content or your keyphrase due to a page builder, the results will be distorted. The fastest way to rule out conflicts is to perform a conflict check.
Some non-latin, non-ideograph based languages may not calculate accurately. Please submit a bug to notify us of that, it’s much appreciated.
I don’t get feedback on my keyphrase density. Why is that?
If you don’t get feedback on your keyphrase density, there are a couple of things you should check:
Did you enter your focus keyphrase in the focus keyphrase field? Because that’s a basic requirement for the plugin to run the check.
If you don’t enter a focus keyphrase in this field, the plugin is not able to perform all checks.
The keyphrase density check is only performed when your content consists of at least 100 words.
Sometimes our plugin conflicts with another plugin, a feature within your theme or, in rare cases, something on your server. For example, there has been a recent increase in users with a plugin or theme that provides a visual page or content builder. This may not be compatible with our page analysis.
Conclusion
Make sure you use your focus keyphrase enough throughout the whole text. But at the same time, don’t overdo it. You don’t want Google to think you’re stuffing your text with keywords. It’s doesn’t make for great user experience and will hurt your rankings.
If your keyphrase density is too low: add your focus keyphrase into your text more often. Also, check if your text stays on topic, because it should be quite easy to mention your keyphrase enough. If your score is too high, reassess your text first. See if there are places where you can replace your keyphrase with a synonym. With these tips, you should be able to score that green traffic light for keyphrase density!
As a site owner, you understand the significance of SEO in driving organic traffic and increasing visibility. Keeping your SEO efforts up to date is essential to stay ahead of the competition. The same goes for developing an SEO plugin — to keep you at the top of your game, we need to be at the top of our game. That’s why maintenance releases like Yoast SEO 21.9 are so important.
The importance of maintenance
Regular maintenance is essential to ensure optimal performance of Yoast SEO. Our latest release introduces various enhancements, optimizing the plugin for an improved user and search engine experience.
Through ongoing maintenance, we address specific bugs and issues within the plugin, enhancing its stability and reliability. Keeping your plugins updated allows you to enjoy a seamless and error-free experience.
Improvements in Yoast SEO 21.9
One of our improvements in Yoast SEO 21.9 is an enhanced sitemap rewrite rules mechanism, ensuring smoother functionality and improved performance. In addition, we’ve made significant optimizations to the update process. From now on, rewrite rules will no longer be cleared for every option update, eliminating unnecessary operations. Instead, the rewrite rules will only be cleared when changes are made to the ‘strip category base’ option.
Sitemap image filters
Yoast SEO 21.9 introduces a new option based on user feedback. With this release, we have enabled filtering images for taxonomies and the homepage in the sitemap. This user-requested option allows website owners more control over the images in their sitemap, even when using plugins to add images to taxonomies.
Previously, filtering URL images was limited to posts and pages, but we have expanded this functionality to include taxonomies and the homepage. This enhancement provides greater flexibility and empowers developers to optimize their sitemaps easily.
Smaller file size for Yoast SEO Premium
Installing our Premium SEO plugin is now a breeze. We’ve made it even easier by reducing the zip size and removing the free version from the file. Yoast SEO Premium is now around 3MB lighter. This improvement eliminates potential installation issues, ensuring a seamless experience for all.
Update to Yoast SEO 21.9
Maintenance is a crucial aspect of optimizing your website for search engines. It’s also a crucial aspect of developing Yoast SEO. By ensuring improved performance, stability, compatibility, and ongoing support, Yoast SEO helps you stay ahead. Don’t miss out on the benefits of our latest release. Update your Yoast SEO plugin today and advance your SEO efforts.
The title of your post or page usually gets the H1 heading tag. It’s only logical to give your post one title, right? Having more than one H1 is like saying: “Hey, this text is about two topics of equal importance.” Yoast SEO warns you with a red traffic light if you use more than one H1 heading. Here, we’ll explain why your post or page only needs one H1 heading.
In many CMSs like WordPress or Shopify, headings are ordered in ranks (or levels). The highest rank is H1, the title of your post or page. In the rest of the text, you use H2 – H6 headings. With them, you indicate the importance of each section and how it relates to the rest of the text. So, when a reader lands on your page, the headings help them make sense of the content. It helps readers to scan the text and learn how it fits together.
Search engines also “read” headings and try to understand the structure of your text. Instead of the regular text you and I read, they go to the HTML version of your site and read the HTML heading tags. The headings help them comprehend the relative importance of your text’s (sub)topic.
One or multiple H1s?
As mentioned above, the H1 is the title of your post (not to be confused with the SEO title). We would suggest using the H1 heading only once. We believe that’s the best choice because:
Headings help readers and Google understand your text. If there are multiple H1 headings, your readers and Google might get confused. People might get confused, distracted, or even frustrated when there’s no clear distinction between main and subtopics. As a result, they may leave your site.
Proper use of headings makes your text more accessible. Think of visually impaired people who use screen readers. These devices can use headings to navigate through your text. More than one H1 in one article complicates this, and without visual cues, it might confuse people even more.
Of course, using the other headings as much as you need is perfectly acceptable. Still, you should keep in mind that headings are hierarchical. For example, you should use H2 before you use H3 within a particular topic. Check out this extensive guide on headings and SEO if you want to use them optimally.
What does the single H1 heading check in Yoast SEO do?
The single H1 assessment of Yoast SEO (both in our WordPress SEO plugin and Shopify SEO app) checks whether the body of your text contains an H1 heading at any position other than the very beginning. If Yoast SEO detects an H1 heading in the body of your text, it gives you a red bullet in the feedback. Luckily, solving this issue is straightforward.
Yoast SEO lets you know when you’ve used multiple H1s in your text
Finding and changing your H1 headings
To ensure your post doesn’t have double titles, you’ll need to find all H1s in your text and change them to a lower heading level.
Changing an H1 heading in the classic editor in WordPress
If you click one of your headings in the classic editor, the clickable drop-down menu in the upper left corner will show the heading level you’ve selected. You can change it to another level by opening the drop-down menu and selecting another level. If the Yoast SEO feedback indicates that your text contains more than one H1 heading, check all your headings by clicking them. Then, select another level to change your H1 into H2 or another appropriate heading.
Changing an H1 heading in the block editor in WordPress
In the block editor, Yoast SEO helps you find the H1s quickly. Click the eye icon next to the assessment and see the H1 titles highlighted in the editor. If you want to change the level of your headings, click them. The menu bar above the block shows you the level of the heading. Then, select another level to change your H1 into H2 or another appropriate heading.
Change the header format by clicking on it
Changing an H1 heading in Shopify
When you go to one of your products or blog posts in the backend of Shopify, you’ll notice the ‘Title’ field at the top. This is where you fill in your title (which is automatically your H1 on that page).
In the description field below, you can write your product description or blog post and add headings by clicking the ‘Paragraph’ button above the content field. This dropdown allows you to add headings of different levels. If you get a red traffic light for your H1 assessment in Yoast SEO, find the wrong headings by clicking the eye icon. When you’ve found the H1 in your content, change it into H2 or another appropriate heading.
Click the eye icon to find the redundant H1s
Conclusion
Using headings in the right way helps your SEO. What you learned from this post is quite simple. An H1 heading is the title of your post. You don’t want double or triple titles, so use the H1 heading only once. If you need to remember, Yoast is here to help you!
If you’re on Shopify, the Yoast SEO app can help keep an eye on your headings and other important SEO elements. In addition, it gives you access to all of our SEO courses to master the art of SEO! When you’re on WordPress and ready to take your SEO to the next level, go Premium to get access to all the features in Yoast SEO and all of our SEO courses. This will help you further optimize your site for visitors and search engines.
Go Premium and get free access to our SEO courses!
Learn how to write great content for SEO and unlock lots of features with Yoast SEO Premium:
We’re excited to roll out Yoast SEO 21.8. This release is about refining your experience and enhancing your website’s performance. We’ve zapped some bugs for our users, making your SEO journey smoother and more reliable. But the real headline here is for our Yoast SEO Premium users – a feature we know you’ve been asking for: functional highlighting within Elementor!
Elementor users rejoice!
Many of you use Elementor to design and manage your WordPress sites. That’s why we’ve gone the extra mile to ensure this release makes your editing and optimizing process ten times better.
What’s new for Yoast SEO Premium users?
A seamless experience is what we are going for. Here’s what changed in Yoast SEO 21.8:
Elementor in-editor highlights for the SEO, readability, and inclusive language analyses: Watch as our plugin intuitively highlights feedback from the various analyses right where you’re working – inside the Elementor editor.
User experience upgrade: No need to disrupt your creative flow by manually searching for where to make edits. Now, you have the power of immediate SEO insights as you edit.
Targeted improvements: This enhancement is designed explicitly for the huge Elementor community within our user base, showing our dedication to catering to your needs.
We’re passionate about making SEO accessible and efficient for all our users. Our latest update is a testament to that commitment, bringing you closer to highly optimized websites.
Ready to revolutionize your SEO workflow?
If you’re already enjoying the benefits of Yoast SEO Premium, this update is ready and waiting to take your Elementor experience to new heights. Update your plugin to the latest version, and you’re all set!
Haven’t upgraded yet? There’s no better time to get Yoast SEO Premium. Unlock the full suite of features and join the community of SEO pros who maximize their online potential with our plugin.
Other improvements and fixes
One of our improvements in Yoast SEO 21.8 is the enhanced sitemap rewrite rules mechanism, ensuring smoother functionality and improved performance. In addition, we’ve made significant optimizations to the update process. From now on, rewrite rules will no longer be cleared for every option update, eliminating unnecessary operations. Instead, the rewrite rules will only be cleared when changes are made to the ‘strip category base’ option.
We’ve also fixed several issues related to a recent release of the Gutenberg plugin. The first one was an issue where the highlighter for the keyphrase density assessment would not work when using the latest version of the Gutenberg plugin. In Yoast SEO Premium, we’ve fixed a bug where our Table of Contents block would prevent editing a post in Gutenberg.
Update now to Yoast SEO 21.8
Upgrade to Yoast SEO 21.8 today and experience the ultimate convenience and efficiency. We can’t wait to hear how this update helps you thrive online. Here’s to your success – optimized and amplified!
If you’re a user of Yoast SEO for WordPress or Shopify, then you’re probably familiar with the traffic lights in our plugin. Three parts of Yoast SEO use this system: the content analysis, the readability analysis, and the inclusive language analysis. The first checks whether your post or product pages are SEO-proof, while the latter checks if they’re readable for a general audience. The third checks if your content has language that might exclude people. Of course, these are interconnected, as readable content is crucial if you want your site to do well in the search results. Here, we’ll show you how to use the readability analysis.
What does the readability analysis in Yoast SEO do?
The readability analysis in Yoast SEO uses an algorithm to determine how readable your text is. We’ve crafted this algorithm to make it as accurate as possible without being too strict. It features several checks that will give you advice when you write your page. In other words, following this advice makes your text easier to read and understand.
It has been said that Yoast SEO suggests dumbing down your writing. Of course, that’s not the case. We merely want to help people write content that’s easy to understand. Just consider the following quote by content design hero Sarah Richards about making your content as readable for humans as possible:
“You’re not dumbing down, you’re opening up.”
By simplifying content, you’re automatically growing your audience as more people grasp the message of your content. Also, you’re not writing your content just for people anymore. Because virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri must also be able to work with it. Even Google increasingly uses well-written content for rich results like featured snippets, not to mention all the AI tools that love good content.
The current readability checks are available in Yoast SEO:
Transition words: Do you use transition words like ‘most importantly’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, or ‘besides that’ to tie your text together? Using these words improves the flow of your article as they provide hints to the reader about what is coming next.
Sentence beginnings: Do any of your consecutive sentences start with the same word? This might feel repetitive to your reader, and that can be annoying. Always keep your sentences varied, so your article is readable and free of obstacles. Unless you want to prove something or use it as a writing style, of course.
Word complexity: It would be a shame if you write something and your readers can’t fully grasp it, right? The more uncommon and complicated words you use, the harder it might be for your visitors to understand your writing. Thanks to the feedback from this assessment, you can easily identify complex words and change them accordingly. We’ll highlight them for you so you don’t have to spend time looking.
Paragraph length: Some people tend to use extremely long paragraphs. Doing so makes your text look daunting as it becomes just one big blob of text. Break it up, use shorter paragraphs and don’t forget to give your core sentences some thought.
Subheading distribution: Similarly to long paragraphs, texts without subheadings are difficult to scan, which makes them rather daunting. So, we check if you use enough subheadings to guide your readers through the text and help them find what they’re looking for.
Sentence length: Sentence length is one of the core aspects that can make a text hard to read. If most of your sentences are too long – over 20 words – people lose track of your point. Readers often have to jump back a few words to find out what you mean. This is very tiring and inefficient. Try to keep the number of words in a sentence in check. Shorten your sentences. Aim for easy understanding, not a complex literary masterpiece.
Passive voice: Using a lot of passive voice in your text makes it appear distant, and your message will be less clear. Your sentences become wordy and difficult because the sentence structure is harder to understand. Whenever you use the passive voice, always consider whether a better, active alternative is available.
Transition words: Do you use transition words like ‘most importantly’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, or ‘besides that’ to tie your text together? Using these words improves the flow of your article as they provide hints to the reader about what is coming next.
Sentence beginnings (doesn’t apply for Product pages): Do any of your consecutive sentences start with the same word? This might feel repetitive to your reader, and that can be annoying. Always keep your sentences varied, so your article is readable and free of obstacles. Unless you want to prove something or use it as a writing style, of course.
Paragraph length: Some people tend to use extremely long paragraphs. Doing so makes your text look daunting as it becomes just one big blob of text. Break it up, use shorter paragraphs and don’t forget to give your core sentences some thought.
Subheading distribution: Similarly to long paragraphs, texts without subheadings are difficult to scan, which makes them rather daunting. So, we check if you use enough subheadings to guide your readers through the text and help them find what they’re looking for.
Sentence length: Sentence length is one of the core aspects that can make a text hard to read. If most of your sentences are too long – over 20 words – people lose track of your point. Readers often have to jump back a few words to find out what you mean. This is very tiring and inefficient. Try to keep the number of words in a sentence in check. Shorten your sentences. Aim for easy understanding, not a complex literary masterpiece.
Passive voice: Using a lot of passive voice in your text makes it appear distant, and your message will be less clear. Your sentences become wordy and difficult because the sentence structure is harder to understand. Whenever you use the passive voice, always consider whether a better, active alternative is available.
Lists(Product pages only): Using lists in your product pages enable your customers to scan the content on the page, and help highlight the benefits and features of your product. Try to include at least one list (ordered or unordered) in your product description.
Supported languages
The readability analysis is available in many languages. Check out the languages Yoast SEO supports for an overview. We’re continually working on adding new languages.
How to use the readability analysis in Yoast SEO
The readability analysis
You can find the readability analysis in your Yoast sidebar in WordPress and Shopify. In WordPress, you can also find the readability checks in the Yoast SEO meta box underneath the post or page you edit.
It’s very easy to use the analysis to improve your content. You can start writing the article you want to write. The readability score is calculated in real-time, so you can look at it while you write. However, if you want to stay focused, you can also choose not to look at the score while writing your first draft. That way, you can write without being distracted and make the final tweaks afterward.
The readability score helps you by giving you a green, orange, or red traffic light per check. If you get orange or red traffic lights, click on the eye icon to determine where improvements can be made. Easy peasy!
Everyone has their own writing and editing process, and this way isn’t necessarily how you should use it. You have to find out what works for you gradually. Practice makes perfect!
It’s good to note that the word complexity assessment is a Premium feature. If you’re using the free version of Yoast SEO, you’ll see this feature being greyed out. Upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium now to unlock this feature!
The readability analysis in the Yoast SEO for WordPress metabox
Should all traffic lights be green?
We often get this question: no, not every traffic light has to be green. What you should aim for, though, is a green, happy traffic light overall — the one in the tab that reads “Readability”. An orange traffic light for one of the checks, like in the screenshot above, is fine. Your article will still be able to rank even if it doesn’t pass all of the tests. This is merely an indication, not a necessity.
We want everyone to be able to read and understand content, but we also know that there are industries where the language used is different from what most people would use. That’s perfectly fine. Find out what works for you. Need help? Please read our ultimate guide to SEO copywriting.
Try it out!
The readability analysis and content analysis of Yoast SEO help you write excellent, SEO-proof articles and product pages that are easy for anyone to grasp. In doing so, you ensure that every piece of content you write is ready to start ranking in search engines while staying enjoyable for readers. Don’t have Yoast SEO yet? Do you want to use our Premium plugins’ excellent additional features? Find out about all the benefits of Yoast SEO for WordPress and Yoast SEO for Shopify!
