Ask Yoast: AMP for small business owners
You may have heard the term “AMP” very often lately. In 2015, Google pushed out this new concept called Accelerated Mobile Pages, in short AMP. AMP aims to make pages load instantly on mobile and, thereby, drastically improve the performance of the mobile web. You might wonder if you should get started with it too. Because, as […]
Ask Yoast: can I cancel a 301 or 410 redirect?
After creating a redirect, it might happen you’d like to use the URL of that post or page again. Or perhaps you decide that you’d like to cancel that redirect after some time. Reasons for this could be that redirecting that post or page was a mistake, or the post or page contains valuable content again. In […]
Playing with the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header
Traditionally, you will use a robots.txt file on your server to manage what pages, folders, subdomains or other content search engines will be allowed to crawl. But did you know that there’s also such a thing as the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header? In this post we’ll discuss what the possibilities are and how this might be […]
Don’t block CSS and JS files
In 2015, Google Search Console already started to warn webmasters actively not to block CSS and JS files. In 2014, we told you the same thing: don’t block CSS and JS files. We feel the need to repeat this message now. We’re currently working on the websites of our first Yoast SEO Care customers, and this […]
How to get mobile Rich Cards in Google
Rich Cards are the newest addition to Google’s enhanced search results. Using structured data in the form of Schema.org, certain types of subjects can get an enhanced presentation in Google. Rich Cards, not to be confused with rich snippets, are search results in card form that the user can swipe through and mostly pop up […]
Ask Yoast: change URLs when relaunching website?
Relaunching a website can be an overwhelming project. You need a new design and perhaps new functionalities. What should you do with your existing content? And what about new content? The more changes you want, the more challenging it gets. In this process you might face the question if you should change or keep your URLs. […]
How to use data to justify SEO fixes
What if I told you I could give you a process which can put a definitive number on the returns you would get from SEO fixes?
Rich snippets everywhere
Rich search results are everywhere. Years ago, search engines presented search results without much adornment. Today, the search results look very different. We see extra information beneath the links, plus a couple of big blocks of rich content, depending on what you look for. The additional lines beneath results are called rich snippets, and they […]
Pagination or infinite scrolling: which is best for SEO?
Something that’s always up for discussion is how to load new content on your archive, category or search results pages. You can do this in a number of ways. You can list a certain amount of posts or products and add a ‘next’ link at the bottom of that list. You can add a ‘load more’ button at […]
Archive SEO: archive by topic, not by date
A common practice for many blogs is to use date-based archives for their archive pages. These long lists of links, sorted by month and year, group posts that were made during that period. Although this initially might make sense, it can have an adverse impact on your archive SEO. So how do you optimize your […]
Let us care for your site: Yoast SEO Care
As a hard-working site owner, it is often difficult to find the time to work on issues that are holding your company back. You might find that the blog posts of your competitor appear higher in search results, but you don’t know what to do about it. Or, you might discover that your site isn’t […]
5 Secret Ways You Can Use Google Tag Manager to Boost Your SEO Strategy
Boost your SEO strategy with these 5 hacks using Google Tag Manager: classify your blog posts, implement structured data, rel canonicals and others.
Post from Pete Campbell
Local business listings with Schema.org and JSON-LD
One of the things you can do to present your local business better in search results is Schema.org data for rich snippets. By adding structured data to your site, you can help search engines understand what your business is about and how it performs. For this reason, you have to add your NAP details, a […]
Ask Yoast: why and how to minify your JS and CSS
If you check your site speed with Google PageSpeed Insights you might get the advice to minify your Javascript (JS) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files. Your JS files contain the code for the interactive elements of your website. And in your CSS files you specify the design of your pages. Minifying those files will decrease your page […]
Grow your business with ratings and reviews
Reviews or testimonials are mostly said to work on the basis of social proof. Social proof is a psychological process in which people copy the behavior of others, in an attempt to reflect correct behavior. A testimonial tells you that someone you can identify with has bought a product and loved it. That must mean […]
Use JSON-LD to add schema.org data to your website
In this post, we’ll shed some light on Schema.org and JSON-LD. What is it and how can you put it to use for your website? There are many ways to let Google and other search engines know what your page is about. Next to writing awesome content, which should always be your starting point, we […]
Ask Yoast: what’s a slug?
For this edition of Ask Yoast, we received a question that belongs in the SEO basics category: what’s a slug? The answer is simple because it’s the piece of the URL that distinguishes a post. In this Ask Yoast, Joost explains what a slug is and what its SEO benefits are. This Ask Yoast is all about the […]
Why every developer should read Plato
At WordCamp Milano, I gave a talk with the enticing title Why every developer should read Plato. The short answer to that question: to learn Socratic thinking. In this post, I will share some of my personal journeys as a philosopher in software development. In doing so, I will also introduce a few philosophical concepts that might help you […]
How to get Google to crawl your site faster
A question that often pops up for sites that are chasing “hot topics” is: how to get Google to crawl our site faster? This could be either because you have a big site and want to see changes faster or because you’re optimizing a news site. There are a few things you can do to […]
Ask Yoast: when should I use hreflang?
Do you own a site in multiple languages or aimed at different regions? In that case, you want search engines to point people to the most “fitting” language and site. On top of that, you want to prevent Google from seeing similar content on sites for different markets as duplicate content. hreflang is the technical […]