Ask Yoast: noindex posts that need an update?
If you own a blog for a long time, it could be that some of your old blog posts need to be updated or optimized. Every once in a while, you should go through your archive to check that. When you go through your archive pages, you might see posts with low quality content that you […]
Metadata and SEO part 2: link rel metadata
In the first post of our metadata series, I discussed the meta tags in the <head> of your site. But there’s more metadata in the <head> that can influence the SEO of your site. In this second post, we’ll dive into link rel metadata. You can use link rel metadata to instruct browsers and Google, for example to point them to the AMP version […]
Ask Yoast: redirecting your site to non-www and HTTPS
Let’s say you own the website http://www.some-example.com. At one point, you might like visitors to go to the non-www version instead of the www version of your domain. In addition to this, if you follow security best practices, you might want to switch from HTTP to HTTPS. What should you do if you want to make both these changes? You […]
WordPress archive pages: the tutorial
Once your website starts growing and you continue writing blog posts, you’ll eventually end up with archive pages. These archive pages can be based on taxonomies, categories, custom post types and even dates. WordPress has built-in support for these archive pages, however there are some small drawbacks. In this post, I’ll explain to you how […]
Local ranking factors that help your local business’ SEO
If you have a local business, selling products or services, you have to think about the local ranking of your website. Local optimization will help you surface for related search queries in your area. As Google shows local results first in a lot of cases, you need to make sure Google understands where you are […]
Metadata and SEO part 1: the head section
Metadata is all the information about a page that you send to a search engine that isn’t visible to your visitors. There seems to be some misunderstanding about this, as most of the articles I read about SEO metadata seem to imply that it’s just the title, description, keywords and robots declaration in the <head> of […]
Which redirect should I use?
As an SEO or site owner, you are bound to run into redirects. Whenever you delete a page, change your URL structure or switch to a new domain, you are going to have to redirect your URLs. You have to tell search engine robots that there has been a change in your URLs and that […]
Ask Yoast: duplicate content issues on my shop?
If you own an eCommerce site, you might wonder how to optimize your category pages and your product pages. Could you have the same content on your category page and your product pages? If you have the same content on multiple pages of your website, would Google know what to rank first? Or would it cause duplicate […]
New online course: Technical SEO 1
Today we’re launching our first technical SEO training. This training will help EVERYONE to understand those difficult technical SEO issues. We’ll teach you exactly how to analyze (and solve) the most common technical SEO issues. Technical SEO can be quite daunting, but with this training, you’ll be able to fully grasp al those complicated technical […]
SEO basics: What is crawlability?
Ranking in the search engines requires a website with flawless technical SEO. Luckily, the Yoast SEO plugin takes care (of almost) everything on your WordPress site. Still, if you really want to get most out of your website and keep on outranking the competition, some basic knowledge of technical SEO is a must. In this post, […]
Ask Yoast: how to get users to the right subdomain?
As a site owner you want search engines to point people to the most “fitting” language. For instance, if you’re Dutch, you’d rather see the Dutch version than the English version, if the Dutch version is available. But sometimes you might want to switch. For instance, if you’re aboard, you’d want to be able to […]
SEO Basics: How to improve your mobile site
Here’s the thing: your site should be mobile-friendly. In fact, this might just be your number one priority. If you want to improve your mobile SEO, you have to improve the performance of your site, plus you have to make sure that it offers users an excellent mobile experience. In this SEO Basics article, you’ll […]
Ask Yoast: should I redirect my affiliate links?
There are several reasons for cloaking or redirecting affiliate links. For instance, it’s easier to work with affiliate links when you redirect them, plus you can make them look prettier. But do you know how to cloak affiliate links? We explained how the process works in one of our previous posts. This Ask Yoast is […]
How to remove www from your URL
At Yoast, we sometimes receive the question how to remove www from your website’s URL – or add it. In this post, I’ll show you how you can enforce either a www or non-www URL by tweaking your .htaccess file (or nginx.conf if you’re running on an Nginx server). Does using one or the other […]
Meta description for search & social
Meta description elements have many uses and can be constructed in several ways. First and foremost, a good meta description entices the user to click. It does that both by the fact that it contains enticing, well readable text and the keyword or keyphrase, as that becomes bold in the search results. Our view on that […]
Ask Yoast: nofollow layered navigation links?
If you have a big eCommerce site with lots of products, layered navigation can help your users to narrow down their search results. Layered or faceted navigation is an advanced way of filtering by providing groups of filters for (many) product attributes. In this filtering process, you might create a lot of URLs though, because the user […]
HTTP status codes and what they mean for SEO
HTTP status codes, like 404, 301 and 500, might not mean much to a regular visitor, but for SEOs they are incredibly important. Not only that, search engine spiders, like Googlebot, use these to determine the health of a site. These status codes offer a way of seeing what happens between the browser and the server. […]
The sense and nonsense of XML sitemaps
Fact: if your website is set up the right way, you shouldn’t need an XML sitemap at all. You shouldn’t need to think about your category’s XML sitemaps or about including images in your post’s XML sitemap. But why do we keep talking about them like it’s the most important thing ever for SEO? It’s an almost daily […]
Ask Yoast: security measures new domain
There are several reasons to move your website to a new domain. Maybe you’ve gained access to a much stronger domain. Perhaps you’re changing direction or you’re rebranding. Or you’d like to start over with a new name and a new site. Assuming you have a good reason for moving your site to a new […]
Structured data with Schema.org: the ultimate guide
Schema.org takes care of all the structured data needs on your website. You can use it to markup products, reviews, events and menu items so search engines like Google can pick up this data and present it in an enhanced way. If you want rich snippets, mobile rich cards or a listing in the knowledge […]