=== Yoast SEO ===

Contributors: yoast, joostdevalk, tacoverdo, omarreiss, atimmer, jipmoors

Donate link: https://yoa.st/1up
License: GPLv3
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Tags: SEO, XML sitemap, Content analysis, Readability
Requires at least: 5.3
Tested up to: 5.4
Stable tag: 14.0.2
Requires PHP: 5.6.20

Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized
WordPress site using the Yoast SEO plugin.

== Description ==

### Yoast SEO: the #1 WordPress SEO plugin

Since 2008 Yoast SEO has helped millions of websites worldwide to rank higher in
search engines. This WordPress SEO plugin helps you with your search engine
optimization. Are you not entirely convinced? Yoast SEO is the favorite WordPress
SEO plugin of millions of users worldwide!

As Yoast’s mission is **SEO for Everyone**, the plugin’s users range from the
bakery around the corner to some of the most popular sites on the planet.

#### DON’T LET YOUR COMPETITORS WIN

Do you know who your competitors are in your niche? There’s a reason why they are
your competitors: they do what you do. And they might even do it better right now.
That does not mean you can't win from them, but it does mean you need all the help
to get on top and stay on top! Yoast SEO is here to help you out as we’ve helped
millions of people worldwide with their WordPress SEO efforts.

#### TAKING CARE OF YOUR WORDPRESS SEO

Yoast SEO does everything in its power to please both visitors and search engine
spiders. A dedicated team of developers, testers, architects and SEO experts work
daily to improve the plugin with every release. Yoast SEO offers:

* Title and meta description templating for better branding and consistent snippets
in the search results.
* A state-of-the-art Schema implementation helps search engines make sense of your
site and increases the chance on those coveted rich results.
* The most advanced XML Sitemaps functionality at the push of a button.
* Full control over your site's breadcrumbs.
* Automatically set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content.
* **[Premium]** support for our [Yoast SEO Premium](https://yoa.st/1v8) users.
* **[Premium]** the ability to expand Yoast SEO with the [News SEO]
(https://yoa.st/1uv), [Video SEO](https://yoa.st/1uw), [Local SEO]
(https://yoa.st/1uu) and [WooCommerce SEO](https://yoa.st/3rh) extensions.

#### WRITE KILLER CONTENT WITH YOAST SEO

We know content is king, that's why Yoast SEO is famous for its readability
analysis and its SEO analysis. Yoast SEO gives you:

* The SEO analysis: an invaluable tool to write SEO-friendly texts with the right
(focus) keywords in mind.
* The readability analysis: make sure that you are writing easy-to-digest, engaging
content for both visitors and search engines.
* Our snippet preview that shows you how your post or page will look in the search
results. Even on mobile!
* An **FAQ** and **HowTo** block for the WordPress editor so search engines know
when you are serving a FAQ page or HowTo guides.
* **[Premium]** Social previews to show you how your content will be shown on
Twitter and Facebook.
* **[Premium]** The Insights tool that shows you what your text focuses on. This
way you can keep your article in line with your keyphrases.
* **[Premium]** The ability to optimize your article for synonyms and related
keyphrases.
* **[Premium]** We now recognize different word forms of your keyphrase, like
singular and plurals, but also different tenses of verbs (just in English for now).
It helps you improve your text in a more natural way.
* **[Premium]** Automatic internal linking suggestions: write your article and
automatically get suggested posts to link to!

#### KEEP YOUR SITE IN PERFECT SHAPE

Whether you are a **business owner** or **blogger**, a **content creator**, a

**developer** or an **SEO expert**: Yoast SEO helps you keep your website in
perfect shape. Yoast SEO:

* Tunes the engine of your website so you can focus on creating great content.
* Gives you cornerstone content and internal linking features to help you rank for
the right keywords with the right pages.
* Helps you manage your team's WordPress SEO efforts: with our SEO roles you can
give colleagues access to specific sections of the Yoast SEO plugin.
* Has a bulk editor so you can make large-scale edits to the titles and meta
descriptions of your website.
* Translates your content to structured data where possible to help search engines
understand your website.
* **[Premium]** Gives you social previews to manage the way your page is shared on
social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
* **[Premium]** Has a full redirect manager to keep your site healthy by easily
redirecting deleted pages and changed URLs.

### Premium support

The Yoast team aims to provide regular support for the Yoast SEO plugin on the
WordPress.org forums. But please understand that we do prioritize our premium
support. This one-on-one email support is available to people who [bought Yoast SEO
Premium](https://yoa.st/1v8).

Did you know that the [Yoast SEO Premium](https://yoa.st/1v8) also has several
extra features:

* It gives you the option to have **synonyms and related keyphrases**.

* A **redirect manager** that f.i. helps you prevent 404 Page Not Found errors.
* **Internal linking** suggestions while you write.
* Write more natural with our automatic **recognition of word forms**
* **Cornerstone content checks** to point search engines to your main pages.

The [Yoast SEO Premium plugin](https://yoa.st/1v8) is well worth your investment!

#### Our addons to further improve your WordPress SEO

You should also check out these other products by Yoast:

* **[Yoast Local SEO](https://yoa.st/1uu)** to optimize all website that serve a

local audience, like certain small businesses, or businesses with multiple
locations.
* **[Yoast Video SEO](https://yoa.st/1uw)** to make sure Google understands what
you video is about, thus increasing your chances to rank in video results.
* **[Yoast News SEO](https://yoa.st/1uv)** for websites that are in Google News and
want to optimize all news articles for the best indexation and ranking.
* **[WooCommerce SEO](https://yoa.st/3rh)** for all online shops that want to
perform better in search engines and on social platforms.

They work with the FREE version of Yoast SEO already, and these premium extensions
of course come with support too.

Oh, and don't forget: our **[Yoast Academy](https://yoa.st/3ri)** is for all the
business owners, bloggers and everyone else who wants to learn more about
optimizing websites, improving their WordPress SEO and taking their online content
to the next level.

### Bug reports

Bug reports for Yoast SEO are welcomed in our WordPress SEO [repository on GitHub]
(https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo). Please note that GitHub is not a support
forum, and that issues that aren’t properly qualified as bugs will be closed.

### Further Reading

For more info on search engine optimization and WordPress SEO in specific, check
out the following:

* The [Yoast SEO Plugin](https://yoa.st/1v8) official homepage.

* The [Yoast SEO Knowledgebase](https://yoa.st/1va).
* [WordPress SEO - The definitive Guide by Yoast](https://yoa.st/1v6).
* Other [WordPress Plugins](https://yoa.st/1v9) by the same team.
* Follow Yoast on [Facebook](https://facebook.com/yoast), [Instagram]
(https://www.instagram.com/yoast/) & [Twitter](https://twitter.com/yoast).

== Installation ==
Starting with Yoast SEO consists of just two steps: installing and setting up the
plugin. Yoast SEO is designed to work with your site’s specific needs, so don’t
forget to go through the Yoast SEO configuration wizard as explained in the ‘after
activation’ step!

### INSTALL YOAST SEO FROM WITHIN WORDPRESS

1. Visit the plugins page within your dashboard and select ‘Add New’;
1. Search for ‘Yoast SEO’;
1. Activate Yoast SEO from your Plugins page;
1. Go to ‘after activation’ below.

### INSTALL YOAST SEO MANUALLY

1. Upload the ‘wordpress-seo’ folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory;

1. Activate the Yoast SEO plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress;
1. Go to ‘after activation’ below.

### AFTER ACTIVATION

1. You should see (a notice to start) the Yoast SEO configuration wizard;
1. Go through the configuration wizard and set up the plugin for your site;
1. You’re done!

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= How do the XML Sitemaps in the Yoast SEO plugin work? =

Having an XML sitemap can be beneficial for SEO, as Google can retrieve essential
pages of a website very fast, even if the internal linking of a site isn’t
flawless.
The sitemap index and individual sitemaps are updated automatically as you add or
remove content and will include the post types you want search engines to index.
Post Types marked as noindex will not appear in the sitemap. [Learn more about XML
Sitemaps](https://yoa.st/3qt).

= How can I add my website to Google Search Console? =

It is straightforward to add your website to Google Search Console.

1. Create a Google Search Console account and login into your account.
1. Click ‘Add a property’ under the search drop-down.
1. Enter your website URL in the box and click ‘Continue’.
1. Click the arrow next to ‘HTML tag’ to expand the option.
1. Copy the meta tag.
1. Log in to your WordPress website.
1. Click on ‘SEO’ in the dashboard.
1. Click on ‘General’.
1. Click on the ‘Webmaster Tools’ tab.
1. Paste the code in the Google field and click ‘Save Changes’.
1. Go back to Google Search Console and click ‘Verify’.

If you want more details steps, please visit [our article on our knowledge base]
(https://yoa.st/3qu).

= How do I implement Yoast SEO breadcrumbs? =

The steps below are a temporary solution as manual edits made to theme files may be
overwritten with future theme updates. Please contact the theme developer for a
permanent solution. We’ve written an article about the [importance of breadcrumbs
for SEO](https://yoa.st/3qv).

To implement the [breadcrumbs]https://yoa.st/3qw) function in Yoast SEO, you will

have to edit your theme. We recommend that prior to any editing of the theme files,
a backup is taken. Your host provider can help you take a backup.
Copy the following code into your theme where you want the breadcrumbs to be. If
you are not sure, you will need to experiment with placement:

```
<?php
*if* ( function_exists(‘yoast_breadcrumb’) ) {
yoast_breadcrumb( ‘<p id=“breadcrumbs”>’,’</p>’ );
}
?>
```

Common places where you could place your breadcrumbs are inside your `single.php`
and/or `page.php` file just above the page’s title. Another option that makes it
really easy in some themes is by just pasting the code in `header.php`at the very
end.

In most non-WooTheme themes, this code snippet should not be added to your
`functions.php` file.
Alternatively, you can manually add the breadcrumb shortcode to individual posts or
pages: `[wpseo_breadcrumb]`
If you need more details or a step by step guide, read our [Implementation guide
for Yoast SEO breadcrumbs](https://yoa.st/3qx).

= How do I noindex URLS? =

Yoast SEO provides multiple options for setting a URL or group of URLs to noindex.
[Read more about how to do this in this guide](https://yoa.st/3qy/).

= Google shows the wrong description, how do I fix this? =

If you’ve crafted nice meta descriptions for your blog posts, nothing is more
annoying than Google showing another description for your site completely in the
search result snippet.

Possible causes could be:

1. wrong description in code
2. Google cache is outdated
3. Search term manipulation
4. Google ignored the meta description

You can [read more here on how to solve the issue with the wrong description]
(https://yoa.st/3qz).

= How often is Yoast SEO updated? =

Yoast SEO is updated every two weeks. If you want to know why, please read [this
post on why we release every two weeks](https://yoa.st/3q-)!

= How do I get support? =

As our free plugin is used by millions of people worldwide, we cannot offer you all
one on one support. If you have trouble with the Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin,
you can get help on the support forums here at [wordpress.org]
(https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wordpress-seo/) or by checking out or
knowledge base at [kb.yoast.com](https://yoa.st/3r1).

The plugins you buy at Yoast are called ‘premium plugins’ (even if Premium isn’t in
its name) and include a complete year of free updates and premium support. This
means you can contact our support team if you have any questions about that plugin.

[Read more on how to get support](https://yoa.st/3r2)

= I have a different question than listed here =

Your question has most likely been answered on our knowledge base: [kb.yoast.com]
(https://yoa.st/1va).

== Screenshots ==

1. The Yoast SEO plugin general meta box. You'll see this on edit post pages, for
posts, pages and custom post types.
2. Example of the SEO analysis functionality.
3. Example of the readability analysis functionality.
4. Overview of site-wide SEO problems and possible improvements.
5. Control over which features you want to use.
6. Easily import SEO data from other SEO plugins like All In One SEO pack,
HeadSpace2 SEO and wpSEO.de.
== Changelog ==

= 14.0.2 =
Release Date: April 29th, 2020

Because we’ve changed the underlying framework of our Indexables technology, we’ve
chosen to rebuild the table. This means you will have to go through the indexing
process again. We’re sorry. For sites with more than 10,000 posts, we advise using
the [WP CLI command to do the indexation on the server](https://yoa.st/wp-cli-
index).

Bugfixes:

* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when a title contained more than
191 characters.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when a focus keyphrase contained
more than 191 characters.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when search engines were
disallowed from indexing the site.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown on WooCommerce installations when
the `wpseo_metadesc` filter was called with only 1 argument.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when using the `WPSEO_Frontend`
class to get the meta description.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when `WPSEO_Frontend` or
`WPSEO_Breadcrumbs` was called before the `init` action.
* Fixes a bug where a non-object property retrieval notice would be thrown when the
site's content was being indexed.
* Fixes a bug where a trailing slash would be added to canonical URLs and some
`rel="prev"` URLs, even when the permalink structure settings didn't contain that
trailing slash.
* Fixes a bug where a double breadcrumb would be shown on home pages.
* Fixes a bug where the indexation would continue indefinitely under specific
circumstances.

Other:

* Removes all usages of `PDO` and `mysqli` directly and uses `wpdb` everywhere.
This should prevent a lot of errors for database installations that have different
encodings or configurations than what is generally seen.

= 14.0.1 =
Release Date: April 28th, 2020

Bugfixes:

* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when a breadcrumb title was too
long.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when `DB_CHARSET` was not
defined.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when breadcrumbs were rendered in
the admin.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when the Yoast migrations table
did not have a primary key.
* Fixes a bug where a fatal exception would be thrown when building an indexable
failed.
* Fixes a bug where the order of the breadcrumbs was incorrect when more than 3
nested taxonomies were used.
* Fixes a bug where HTML tags would no longer be allowed in the breadcrumbs.
* Fixes a bug where no title would be shown in the Yoast indexation status modal.
* Fixes a bug where changes made through the `wpseo_robots` filter would not be
shown in the googlebot and bingbot meta tag output.

Other:

* Yoast SEO needs to have the right to create a database index. If you have
restricted the creation of database indexes on your setup, please make sure to
temporarily allow Yoast SEO to create indexes before updating.

= 14.0 =
Release Date: April 28th, 2020

Today is a special day. Today, a project we’ve been working on for a year sees the
light of day. Yoast SEO 14.0 rewrites the playbook on how a WordPress SEO plugin
can work. Thanks to an approach we call indexables, we bring you a much faster
experience and a new foundation that helps us get ready for an exciting future!
Read more about this release in [our release post](https://yoa.st/release-14-0)!

Bugfixes:

* Fixes a bug where the Open Graph image would be set as Twitter image when Open
Graph was disabled.
* Fixes a bug where the `article:publisher` meta tag would not contain the Person's
Facebook account if the Knowledge Graph was set to Person.
* Fixes a bug where no `title` meta tag would be output when no post or page-
specific title was specified.
* Fixes a bug where the date archive description from the Search Appearance
settings would not be used for the `og:description` meta tag.
* Fixes a bug where a notice would be thrown when a field in the FAQ or HowTo block
was left empty.
* Fixes a bug where the Help Scout beacon was aligned to the right on settings
pages on installations with a right-to-left language.
* Fixes a bug where UTF-8 encoded urls were not always readable in the snippet
preview.
* Fixes a bug where the embedding of posts on LinkedIn was broken.

Enhancements:

* Adds a notification that appears when your content hasn't been fully indexed yet.
* Adds a button to the SEO > Tools page to index all your content.
* Adds a feature toggle to disable the headless REST routes.
* No longer outputs the `og:type` meta tag on 404 pages.
* No longer outputs a `twitter:title`, `twitter:image` and/or `twitter:description`
meta tag when there is already an `og:title`, `og:image` and/or `og:description`
meta tag specified in the frontend output and they’re not specifically set to
something else.
* No longer outputs an `article:section` and `article:tag` meta tag as none of the
Open Graph consumers seems to use it.
* No longer outputs an `og:updated_time` meta tag as it was the same as
`article:modified_time` and all Open Graph consumers seem to prefer that.
* No longer outputs an `og:image:secure_url` meta tag as it was the same as
`og:image` and all Open Graph consumers seem to prefer that.
* Strips all HTML tags from text fields in the schema output.
* Adds `Term hierarchy` as a taxonomy snippet variable.
* Uses the Gravatar image as a fallback for author archive's `og:image` and
`twitter:image`.
* Improves the way gallery images are retrieved . Props to [stodorovic]
(https://github.com/stodorovic).
* Bing has added support for the same opt-in `meta robots` values as Google has,
see their [announcement post](https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/april-
2020/Announcing-new-options-for-webmasters-to-control-their-snippets-at-Bing). We
have decided to opt-in users of Yoast SEO by default to Bingbot crawling.
* No longer removes the default robots meta values.

Other:

* Deprecates the `wpseo_twitter_taxonomy_image` and `wpseo_twitter_metatag_key`

filters.
* Deprecates the `wp_seo_get_bc_ancestors` filter. Developers should use the
`wpseo_breadcrumb_links` filter instead to add and/or replace breadcrumbs.
* Deprecates the `wpseo_opengraph` and `wpseo_twitter` actions.
* Adds the following filters:
* `wpseo_debug_markers`, which allows users to disable the debug markers.
* `wpseo_frontend_presenter_classes`, which enables the filtering of
presenters.
* `wpseo_frontend_presenters`, which enables the filtering of presenter
instances.
* `wpseo_googlebot`, which enables the filtering of the googlebot meta output.
* `wpseo_og_article_publisher`, which enables the filtering of the article
publisher’s Facebook URL.
* `wpseo_og_locale`, which enables the filtering of the Open Graph locale.
* `wpseo_post_indexation_limit`, which enables the filtering of the amount of
posts indexed during each indexing pass.
* `wpseo_post_type_archive_indexation_limit`, which enables the filtering of
the amount of post type archives indexed during each indexing pass.
* `wpseo_term_indexation_limit`, which enables the filtering of the amount of
terms indexed during each indexing pass.
* `wpseo_post_types_reset_permalinks`, which enables the filtering of the post
types to reset permalinks for.
* `wpseo_public_post_statuses`, which enables the filtering of the list of
public post statuses.
* No longer calls the third-party `thematic_doctitle` and `woo_title` filters.
* Adds the `/wp-json/yoast/v1/get_head` endpoint to get the our head for an URL.
This endpoint takes a single parameter, `url` which should be the absolute URL of
the page to get the head for.
* Removes the minimum and maximum size requirements when outputting `og:image` meta
tags.

= 13.5 =
Release Date: April 14th, 2020

While we’re working on getting [Yoast SEO 14.0](https://yoa.st/3zs) ready for the
world, you can enjoy today’s release of Yoast SEO 13.5. Read all about Yoast SEO
13.5 in [our release post](https://yoa.st/release-13-5)!

Bugfixes:

* Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when saving a post while the type
was no longer WP_Post due to filtering.
* Fixes a bug where .xsl site map files would not be cached correctly.

Other:

* Sets minimum supported WordPress version to 5.3.

= Earlier versions =
For the changelog of earlier versions, please refer to [the changelog on yoast.com]
(https://yoa.st/yoast-seo-changelog).