Yoast SEO 9.4: Help us beta test the new SEO analysis!

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot about SEO. We felt the impact quality content and a technically flawless site has on a successful SEO strategy, so we built tools that help you to improve your own site. We’ve developed a strong set of defaults that can be applied to a broad spectrum of sites. As with everything, after a while, you need to evaluate what you are doing and see if you can make improvements. That’s what we did — in Yoast SEO 9.4, you’ll find an updated SEO analysis that you can beta test. It will be released in Yoast SEO 10.

Help us test the new SEO analysis, due for Yoast SEO 10

SEO is always changing. What worked years ago, might not work anymore. Sometimes ‘rules’ have become stricter, while other times looser. Since there is no SEO rulebook, we need to rely on experience, common sense and expert insights to make the right decisions. We need to keep up-to-date so we can keep our plugin up-to-date so we can keep you up-to-date, so to say.

Our latest project does just that. We carefully selected several Yoasters from different backgrounds — SEO experts, content specialists, linguists and developers — to form the research team that needed to align Yoast SEO with the latest insights in SEO. The outcome of this research, combined with your feedback, inform the choices we make that will result in the release of a new and improved SEO analysis in Yoast SEO 10.

Ready to help? Great! Activate the beta analysis and fill in the questionnaires you’ll receive. We’ll use your feedback to make the final version even better! Here’s more information on why you should test the new SEO analysis.

We need you!

As mentioned, we need feedback. We’re not going to change anything without your input. By activating the beta analysis, you can provide us with insights into how you experience the new analyis. Please use the new version of the SEO analysis like you normally do and report back. You’ll notice that it grades your content slightly different. We’ve made it extremely easy for you to take part in our beta test. Here’s how you can start:

• Switch on the toggle for the new SEO analysis in SEO > General > Features
• We’ll automatically add you to a special mailing list
• Start using the new SEO analysis
• Fill out the questionnaires we send you periodicaly
• Success!
• Done testing? Simply turn off the beta analysis

What’s changing in the new Yoast SEO analysis?

The project team thoroughly researched current SEO knowledge. They evaluated other SEO tools and writing software and carefully looked at all the analyses in Yoast SEO. Together, they came up with a solid set of improvements for the plugin. You can read more about the project or watch the documentary that gives a great overview of the how and why.

We launched parts of the updated analysis already, like keyword distribution, word form and synonym support in Yoast SEO 9.0. The bulk of the changes, however, will be in Yoast SEO 9.4 — which will eventually become Yoast SEO 10. Here are some of the changes you’ll notice once you activate the new SEO analysis:

New assessment:

• A new single H1 assessment: The single H1 assessment checks whether the body of the text contains an H1 at any position other than the very beginning.

Gone from the SEO analysis:

• The assessments that check the length of your URL and whether your URL contains stopwords.

Changes to the SEO assessments:

• Keyphrase density. This assessment now takes the length of the focus keyphrase into account, because it can be much harder to use a longer keyphrase in your text. In the new version, you’ll need to use your longer keyphrase less often in the text than a shorter keyphrase to get a green bullet. In addition, if you write in English, Yoast SEO Premium recognizes various word forms of your focus keyphrase — for instance, [dog], [dogs] or [dogged]. Naturally, your keyword density becomes higher. This is not because you are trying to over-optimize your text, but just because the plugin became smarter. We adjusted the formula so that you do not get penalized.
• Outbound links. We now show a red bullet instead of an orange one whenever we find no external links in a text. The web is built on links and you can help sustain that by adding relevant outbound links wherever it makes sense.
• Image alt attributes. As of now, the plugin not only looks at the number of images with alt text on a page but also whether the number of images with the keyphrase in the alt text falls within a certain percentage when you have multiple images, preventing you from over-optimizing.
• Keyphrase in title. For various languages, we’ll now filter out function words that precede the keyphrase in the title. This means that if you use words like [the], [on] or [what] before your keyphrase in the title, it won’t affect your score. The analysis will understand that you use your keyphrase at the beginning of your title and you’ll get a green bullet.
• Keyphrase length. In the new Yoast SEO analysis, languages without function word support can have longer focus keyphrases, because there might be function words like [the] or [for] between your content words.
• Keyphrase in subheading. Depending on whether we’ve already added support for your language, different rules apply when it comes to checking if you used the focus keyphrase in the subheading or not. For supported languages, you need to use all content words in your subheading for it to be recognized as reflecting your topic. For non-supported languages, we will check if you used at least half of the words from your keyphrase within a subheading.
• Text length. We’ve upped the word limit for taxonomy pages to a minimum of 250. This gives you more incentive to write enough, good quality content on your tag and category pages, making it easier for search engines to rank these pages.

You can find all the different checks in Yoast SEO on the assessment overview page. Please use the new SEO analysis like you always do and give us your feedback. Together, we make Yoast SEO better than ever!

What else is new in Yoast SEO 9.4

Yoast SEO 9.4 is mostly about the new SEO analysis, but you can find plenty of other enhancements and bug fixes under the hood. For instance, we’ve improved the accessibility of the analysis results and the Title Separator settings. We’ve fixed numerous bugs, including one where pagination elements were not shown in the Genesis theme. In addition, we’ve had a lot of help from Saša Todorović for this release, mostly with WooCommerce related improvements. You can find all the changes in the changelog for this release.

Update and help us improve the next generation SEO analysis!

There you have it. Yoast SEO 9.4 gives you a glimpse of what’s coming to Yoast SEO 10 in the near future. We took a long hard look at the current state of SEO and how Yoast SEO fits into that picture. Where necessary, we made changes that bring Yoast SEO into the now and maybe even the future. What’s more, you can help build that future! We would love for you to help us improve this new SEO analysis. Thanks!

Read on: Why try out the new Yoast SEO analysis? »

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