Hey guys,
Time to start easing into the weekend, while we use beautiful tools to optimize both our own websites as well as our clients’.
If you create websites in WordPress, you are probably familiar with the Yoast SEO plugin.
In essence, the Yoast plugin is here to optimize your endeavors when it comes to SEO, from a snippet editor to a real time page analysis – anything and everything there is to make sure your site is displayed well on SERPs.
The Yoast SEO premium version always went hand-in-hand with Google Search Console, so this is nothing new to report; now it always displays crawl errors, which lets you fix these issues as quickly as possible.
Another nifty feature is the ability to append redirects.
Back in the day, 404 pages could only be redirected using a 301 but now, Yoast SEO can now use 451, 410, 307 and 302 redirects.
There is also a new upgrade to the Internal Linking Tool, which now recommends you to add links that would make sense, as in only connected to the content your users currently view.
The tool also detects if this kind of link has already been added, to avoid any kind of redundancy that may impede SEO in the long run.
Albeit being featured on the premium version, some of these tools exist on Yoast 4.4, the free version of Yoast SEO, including changes made for mobile users, ergo following Google’s recent transition to the Mobile-First Index.
In general, Yoast has changed in terms of UX and no longer has newcomers find it as daunting as before, as it now offers a more crisp feeling than ever before.
Now that we have finished reviewing 4.4, let’s hop on to 4.5!
4.5
4.5 has been released two days ago, and offers different features to site owners.
Even its creator doesn’t consider it a full on release, as its main features target websites that are hosted on outdated PHP servers to update their websites to PHP 7.
Ok, how is that important?
WordPress is built on PHP, ergo outdated PHP – outdated website or at least a slower one, which affects SEO as loading fast = ranking high.
Ok, how do I update it then?
It depends on your host, but in general here is how you should approach it.
What if I can’t do this on account of my hosting server?
A breakup should be dealt with the same way you would deal with a bandaid – painful, but over quickly.
Here’s a compiled list by Yoast of possible hosting partners for you website.
Two versions in one month, that’s incredible – but different issues require different approaches.