Integrating human insight with AI-generated content: How to maintain E-E-A-T

/0 Comments/in , /by

Now that so many people use AI tools to create content, the questions about the credibility of those tools keep popping up. Can you really make AI-generated content and still meet Google’s E-E-A-T standards? Of course, the answer is yes, but there’s a limit to what you should let these tools do. Incorporating human insights in AI content can help uphold these standards.

Table of contents

AI is a tool, not a replacement for you

AI helps you move faster and do more, but it can’t replace humans (yet). Do you want readers to trust your content and have it seen as a reliable source in traditional and AI-driven search? Then, you need to have people involved in every stage of the content production process.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to combine AI content with human editing to maintain experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. But we’ll also discuss what happens if you don’t do that.

AI can help you start, but humans make it credible

AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are trained on enormous data sets. These tools are very good at outlining topics, summarizing facts, and writing initial, high-level drafts of articles. However, the benefits stop there, and going much further will present a risk.

You must remember that AI does not have the intent, context, or experience in your industry. With all the low-quality content that’s spit out daily, that matters more than ever. Google, using the AI Overviews and AI Mode, is trying to surface content that shows real insights from real people.

But why does human involvement matter so much? AI is great, but it often misses nuances and is prone to add filler to your content. It’s also very good at oversimplifying topics. And, because of the way these systems were taught, they cannot pick up evolving best practices or shifts that happen in the real world.

What’s more, if you let the AI run wild, it can even produce content that’s factually wrong. These hallucinations are so confidently written that they sound like they are true, which makes it harder to detect misinformation.

What to do?

It’s fine to use AI, but use it to help you structure content or brainstorm, and don’t publish anything directly. Always use real editors with real knowledge of the topics to fact-check, correct the tone, and make sure the message is on point. This helps you improve trustworthiness in E-E-A-T. You should show that you wrote your content with good intent and oversight.

Our Principal SEO, Carolyn Shelby, wrote The Role Of E-E-A-T In AI Narratives: Building Brand Authority For Search Success for Search Engine Journal. That article provides more insight into this topic.

Carolyn also wrote an insightful post on how to optimize content for AI LLM comprehension using Yoast’s tools.

Relying too much on AI can lead to risk

Remember that AI-generated content is not perfect. In fact, if you use it without having actual people working on it, it could hurt your visibility or reputation. In the end, this could hurt your business. But what are some of those risks when you over-rely on AI content?

False authority and misinformation

Search online and you’ll find many stories describing how AI wrote things that are just plain wrong. AI can misstate facts, make up statistics, and even come up with well-known experts that don’t exist. Publishing content like this in your brand’s name can damage your trustworthiness. What’s more, when search engines or visitors lose trust, it’s very hard to regain that.

Outdated or incomplete information

While there are many developments on this front, with grounding/RAG and LLMs connected to search, most models aren’t updated in real-time. These models often don’t know the latest insights until you specifically tell them. It’s easy to create outdated AI content when you don’t keep a very close eye on this.

Content redundancy

As you know, AI tools get data from existing sources, which will lead to content that looks a lot like content that’s already out there. If your content only repeats those same things, it’s very easy for search engines to ignore your site. It will be hard for Google to see your site as an authority on the topic.

Legal and compliance issues

There are many topics and industries that are very risky to publish on, for instance, the medical, financial, and legal fields. If your AI tool spits out incorrect advice and you publish without a human doing the fact-checking, your business could be found liable in court.

Trust breakdown with your audience

Remember that your readers are also developing a nose for AI content. When they sense that something sounds too generic or disconnected, they might move on to your competitor’s content, if that’s real. This will especially hurt industries that thrive on expertise and trust.

Add experience to strengthen the E’s

The biggest update of E-E-A-T was the addition of Experience. This is Google’s way of recognizing content created by people who have done or experienced what they wrote about. AI does not have this experience; real human beings do.

So, how do you do this? Be sure to include real stories from your team, clients, or projects, ideally with real names, results, and lessons learned. Give internal experts, such as engineers, consultants, or practitioners, a voice and direct input in your content. Don’t forget to interview team members and customers and use their perspectives in your content.

Giving your content more context can also make it stand out more, even in AI search. For instance, instead of simply writing “Solar panels reduce energy bills,” write, “After installing 28 commercial panels, our client in Portland, Oregon, cut annual costs by 35% — enough to pay off the system three years early.”

Make it easy for Google (and your audience) to trust you

Google’s systems, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, look at a lot more than just the words on your page. Google looks at all of the signals surrounding your business and yourself. These signals can help it understand if you and your content are trustworthy.

Improving your credibility signals for users and search engines starts by adding clear bylines with author bios that link to real credentials. This way, it’s easier to find out who is behind the content and why it makes sense for them to write about the topic. Support this with proper structured data, like schema markup for authors, products, reviews, and what else makes sense. Search engines use this to understand your content.

Remember to cite high-quality sources when referring to data instead of vague phrases like “research shows.” Also, set up a system to gather and use reader feedback so you can immediately fix things when they are unclear or plain wrong. Try everything to build and maintain trust while keeping content quality high.

Keep an eye on your Knowledge Graph. Try to get your brand and your experts or owners recognized as entities in search through structured data, Wikidata, Google Publisher Center, or by getting other citations. Think of authority and trust in E-E-A-T as something more visible, both to users and large language models (LLMs).

Always show who’s behind the content

AI content isn’t “real”. You, as a writer, are real. The best way to make your content real is by showing who wrote or reviewed it. Plus, you should show what makes them qualified to write about it. Transparency supports user trust and sets content apart from generic, anonymous posts.

Now, you don’t need a PhD from Harvard to be recognized as an expert for E-E-A-T, but you do need real-world, verifiable experience. In addition, you should publish author bios on your site with specific roles and industry backgrounds. You can also add an editorial or “reviewed by” credit for topics that your experts have fact-checked and edited.

Many big publishers have content guidelines and/or review policies that are available to read at any time. In those guidelines, you might have something simple, like what kind of disclosure you use when you’ve used AI to create a piece of content. That might be something simple like: “This article was drafted using generative AI and reviewed by [Editor Name], [Job Title] at [Company Name].”

Final thoughts

AI is a helpful tool for quickly generating content, but it shouldn’t replace real experiences, insights, or proper editing. Without the human element, you’ll miss the quality and trustworthiness needed to succeed with your content.

If you want your brand to be mentioned in AI search results and stand out amongst the competition, you need to make it clear that there are real people behind this content — real people with real knowledge and experiences.

Feel free to use AI where it can to speed up your work. But do make sure that the essential parts that your readers and search engines will value most are always human.

Google’s guidance on using AI-generated content (for quick reference)
The bottom line is that using AI is fine as long as the final content is accurate, original, clearly labeled when necessary, and actually helpful to users.

  • Generative AI can support research and help structure original content—but using it to mass-produce low-value pages may violate Google’s spam policies, especially those related to scaled content abuse.
  • Content must meet Google’s Search Essentials and spam policy standards, even when AI tools are involved.
  • Focus on accuracy, originality, and value—this includes metadata like </code> tags, meta descriptions, structured data, and image alt text.</li>
  • Always ensure your structured data aligns with both general and feature-specific guidelines, and validate your markup to remain eligible for rich results.
  • Add transparency by explaining how the content was created—especially if automation was involved. This could include background details and appropriate image metadata.
  • Ecommerce sites must follow Google Merchant Center’s policies, including correctly tagging AI-generated product data and images (e.g., using IPTC metadata).
  • Review Search Quality Rater Guidelines sections 4.6.5 and 4.6.6 to understand how low-effort or unoriginal AI-generated content may be evaluated by Google’s systems.

Source

The post Integrating human insight with AI-generated content: How to maintain E-E-A-T appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

The beginner’s guide to SEO reporting

/0 Comments/in , /by

When you work on your site’s SEO, reflecting on those efforts should be part of your ongoing strategy. Whether it’s for a client, your manager, or your team, creating an SEO report is the best way to do so. This helps you justify your efforts, keep track of performance and figure out what needs to be tackled next. And it’s not as hard as you would think. In this blog post, we’ll explain what SEO reporting is and take you through the process step by step.

Table of contents

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps drive more traffic to your site and improve your brand image. It should be part of anyone’s marketing strategy whose goal is to grow their (online) audience. Originally focused on performance in organic search, SEO now entails much more than that. It helps you build a strong brand name, become an authority in your field, and be visible on the platforms where your audience can be found. All this is to increase customer loyalty and grow your business.

What is SEO reporting exactly?

SEO reporting is best described as evaluating your online marketing efforts and presenting the outcomes in a report. This can be a report you create for yourself, your team, management, or a client. Often, a company has a specific template they use to do SEO reporting regularly (for example, every month). This can be in the form of a slide deck, online document, Excel sheet, or online dashboard. But it can also be any other reporting tool you feel comfortable with or your company uses for presentations.

In an SEO report, you will find metrics related to a website’s performance and other marketing activities related to SEO. This helps you track how your SEO strategy is performing and where tweaks are needed. That’s why an important part of any SEO report is the interpretation of metrics and conclusions that come out of that.

What to include in your SEO report

Whether you’re creating an SEO report for internal use, or for your client(s), it’s good to have a template. This allows you to compare recent findings with earlier ones, regardless of the frequency with which you’ll be reporting. Of course, you can make changes to this template along the way. But having a template saves you time and helps you recognize bigger issues and opportunities over time.

Naturally, it depends on your business goals what should be in your SEO report. The most important thing is that your SEO report reflects your (or your client’s) goals. This is to understand how your marketing efforts are contributing to reaching these goals and what actions need to be taken. But there are a few basics that most of us will want to include.

A general data overview

Start with an overview of the most important data for your business or website. This gives you an idea of how you’re doing right away. Especially when you’re reporting regularly, this overview will tell you or your client how the website (and online business) is performing. You can also choose to include data from the previous period (or the previous year) for comparison.

Website data to include:

  • The number of site visitors
  • Number of purchases (or other actions you want people to take)
  • A visualization of your traffic over the selected period 
  • Keyword rankings for a few important pages
  • A traffic overview by source or medium 
  • The type of visitors (new or returning)
example of a overview in an SEO report
Example of a general overview in an SEO report

Data on (content) performance

The general overview gives a quick insight into the current state of play, but to figure out how you got there, you must go into more detail. That’s why your report should include a closer look at content performance. Make sure to include data on your most important pages, such as product pages, popular blog posts, or other landing pages that attract a lot of people. 

Collect data such as page views, visitors, engagement, event count, revenue, and traffic sources. You don’t have to include everything, as this will be overwhelming and will probably cause people to lose interest. Look at the data of your most important pages, pick out the numbers that stand out (growth or decline) and add those to your report. It can be tempting to focus solely on the positive numbers but also include the negative ones to paint a realistic picture. This speaks to your credibility, makes it easier to spot issues before they get out of hand and helps the company in the long run.

Other elements to include here are an overview of new backlinks to the website, stats related to site health and the Core Web Vitals, and an overview of keyword rankings. But do remember that keyword rankings can change on a daily basis, and obsessing over individual drops in rankings isn’t going to help your overall SEO. Use these averages to get an idea of whether your overall rankings are dropping and what you can do to get your organic traffic back up again.

Activities previous period

When you have had a look at the data, it’s time to summarize what has gone out that month (or period of your choice). Use this section to highlight how many posts have gone out on social media, how the audience has interacted with those, what blog posts have been written or updated, and how your running ads are performing. But you can also include other online or offline marketing activities to show what has been done. 

Where possible, you can tie this in with any peaks in traffic or engagement. Or it can help you explain why some areas have gotten less attention than others. Either way, use this to make sense of the data and to highlight the hard work that has been put in by the team.

A summary with recommendations

Always end your SEO report with specific action points that come out of that month’s evaluation. It helps to start with a summary of the ‘highs and lows’ that were brought up in the report so far. For example, if you have noticed a noticeable drop in rankings, and therefore organic traffic, to one of your most important pages, it will make sense to focus on getting to the bottom of that in the coming weeks. And making improvements based on your findings. Or if a new type of social media post did very well, another action point could be to create a series of those and see if you can keep this success going. 

But this last part is also a moment of reflection on a bigger level. Are you still on track with the business goals, or any specific SEO goals you’ve set for yourself? And don’t forget to go through the action points you thought up in the previous SEO report. Were you able to get those done? Are a few of them still in progress? Or are there any blockers that you need help with? Make sure to end with an action plan for the upcoming month and a team (or client) that’s on board with everything discussed.

Creating an SEO report: step by step

Now that you know what to include, let’s talk about how to get started with your SEO reporting. Before you start pulling together the data, it’s important to set clear KPIs and create a setup that works for your company.

1. Set up your KPIs

The first step is to define KPIs, which stands for key performance indicators. These should be measurable goals, based on the marketing goals and/or business objectives within the company. To give a simple example, if one of the marketing goals is to grow traffic to your website, a corresponding KPI can be to increase your organic traffic by 10% that year. Other popular KPIs are conversion rate, overall rankings, click-through rates, bounce rate, page load time, and branded/non-branded traffic.

Make these KPIs realistic, especially when you’re setting expectations with a client, and reflect on the progress in your SEO reports to stay on track. I would suggest not focusing too much on maintaining certain rankings or data on specific pages. Rankings are heavily subjected to external factors and can change daily, and zooming in on one page too much can make you lose perspective. Of course, a drop in traffic for an important page is something to keep an eye on and can be a reason to make some adjustments. But keep the overall KPIs in mind and be aware of the bigger picture, while tweaking what’s needed without obsessing.

2. Set up the structure for your report

Choose a tool for your SEO reporting. This can be a presentation tool that your team often uses, an information-gathering tool such as Excel or an Analytics dashboard, or one that your client is familiar with. Just make sure that you can set it up yourself and make tweaks when needed. 

Add the sections that we’ve discussed above: a general overview, data on performance, marketing activities, and a summary with recommendations. I would suggest looking at your KPIs to figure out exactly what you want to show in the general overview and data on performance section. So, if your main KPI is growing your conversion rate, make sure that you add the data on this KPI to the general overview.

Test drive your new report by filling in this month’s data (or whatever period of time you choose). See the next step on how to tackle this. But this will help you figure out if the setup works for you in its current form. Always tweak when needed, whether that’s right now or a few months along the line. This report should work for you, you shouldn’t be jumping through hoops to get it to make sense. 

3. Gather and fill in the data

It’s time to start retrieving the data you need. There are a few tools you can use. For the general overview and data on performance, you can mainly rely on Google Analytics and Google Search Console. To get an easy overview of your marketing activities for that month, your own marketing calendar and the platforms that you posted on will give you the insights that are needed.

Data on website performance

For the general overview and data on performance, we are going to use Google Analytics and Search Console. Here you’ll find data such as visitor numbers, engagement, number of purchases (you will have to set this as an event), visualizations of your traffic, keyword rankings, traffic overview by source/medium, and type of visitors. Stats related to site health and your Core Web Vitals can also be found in Google Search Console. Lastly, if you want to get an overview of your backlinks, Semrush can provide you with that. 

A screenshot of the ‘performance on search results’ section in Google Search Console

While you’re putting those numbers into your report, remember to be mindful of how you present them. Don’t just throw everything in there and overwhelm (yourself and) others with raw data. Highlight important data and make visualizations of certain data to break up the wall of text. You can also just copy and paste a few graphs and add those in. Using a graph to show overall traffic or pie chart to show traffic by source/medium can already make a big difference.

Write down what speaks to you while filling in the data. What has been a success this month and what are areas that need more attention? And if you see something that you can’t explain right away (f.e. a drop in traffic, or a post that has an enormous amount of views), try to figure out what happened there so you can answer questions that people will inevitably ask about them.  

Data on marketing activities

If you keep a marketing calendar, this is a great way to reflect on what you’ve published in the last month. Use this to summarize how many blog posts, social media posts, videos, newsletters and other marketing-related activities you’ve worked on. This includes other activities such as attending events, workshops, appearances you’ve made, or perhaps even print media.

When it comes to blog posts you’ve published, you could highlight one that stands out and use data from Analytics and Search Console to explain how it’s performing so far. Or you could just add the numbers up and give an idea of the overall effect of this content. Keep in mind that content needs some time to get noticed by people, so don’t fret if it hasn’t done that much yet. 

Also, use this section to evaluate your social media posts and videos that you’ve uploaded to channels such as YouTube. I would recommend going to the platforms where you’ve posted content and using their analytics tools to see how well they’ve performed. This shows you what content works best and helps you draw conclusions from data from the source itself. 

For other marketing activities that have happened that month, it really depends on the activity how to mention it in your report. If it’s an offline event or workshop, try to get some feedback from (potential) customers on their experience. When it comes to print media, you could try and get some idea of the effect by how many people have contacted you after seeing it. Just make sure to think about these things beforehand, to get an idea of the effect of these activities.

4. Evaluate and take action

When you’ve added the relevant data and summarized your marketing efforts, it’s time to properly evaluate. Go through your report and write down any patterns, issues, successes and opportunities. Add these to your overall summary and compare these findings to the ones you found last month (or the months before that) to recognize bigger issues and successes. This will allow you to properly evaluate your findings and turn them into actionable recommendations and action points.

When you’ve completed your SEO report and know what actions come out of it, it’s a good idea to present it internally. Or to your client. This helps them understand what you (and the team) have been working on and will probably spark a discussion that helps you figure out what to pick up first. Finally, after sharing this report with the relevant people and agreeing on next steps, make sure to plan these so they don’t get lost. Make a realistic plan for yourself or the team and pick up the action points to set everything in motion. And plan in the next SEO report to keep this cycle going!

Conclusion

Any good SEO report, whether this is for yourself or a client, starts with clear KPIs. Make sure to get those done before you start evaluating your SEO efforts. This will allow you to set up a proper template for the report and figure out what data you need to look at. Use the right tools to get the data you need, but don’t get lost in trying to report on everything. Show the relevant data and present this to the relevant parties to get everyone on board. Use all of this to figure out what your next steps are and follow up on the action points to make sure you keep focusing on the right things. Happy SEO reporting!

Read more: How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site? »

The post The beginner’s guide to SEO reporting appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

Turning data into actionable insights: a data-driven SEO strategy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Modern SEO is all about data. Rankings can change overnight, user behavior as well, and search engines increasingly use AI to power the search results. To be able to respond, your decisions should be dictated by real, measurable insights. This article offers a practical way to turn SEO data into actionable insights.

Table of contents

The role of data in modern SEO

The search landscape is more complex than ever, so you need all the help you can get. By analyzing data, SEOs and business owners can learn and understand what works and what doesn’t. Metrics from tools like Google Analytics and Search Console provide glimpses of how visitors behave, keyword usage, and page performance. Using data to make decisions takes the guesswork out of the SEO work.

Good data gives you a clear picture of user engagement. For instance, tracking engagement time, engagement rates, and click-through rates will reveal whether content meets audience needs. These are crucial data insights that uncover gaps that might hinder performance. Data-driven insights help you understand what to focus on and what to prioritize.

Data doesn’t just identify issues, but also opportunities. Trends in keyword performance or a shift in traffic sources can lead to new content ideas or a new market to target. This is data-driven marketing, as you are making decisions based on evidence instead of hunches. These insights will lead to strategies focused on real user behaviors, which should lead to better results.

The goal isn’t to find interesting stats — it’s to find what you can do next. In SEO and AI-driven search, the data that matters is the data that leads to action: fix this page, shift that content, change how you’re showing up. If your insights don’t lead to decisions, they’re just noise.

Carolyn Shelby – Principal SEO at Yoast

A Yoast example

Let’s take a simple example from Yoast. We noticed one of our articles (What is SEO?) was gradually losing traffic and slipping in the rankings for key terms. The content hadn’t been updated for a while, so we took a closer look. We analyzed the search results and compared our article with those from competitors. We looked at intent, structures, relevance, and freshness. It was easy to see that our article lacked depth and context in key areas.

We wrote a good brief for the article and detailed the work needed. Then, we rewrote sections, updated examples, improved internal linking, and made it generally easier to read. We also added new custom graphics and on-topic expert quotes from our in-house Principal SEO, Alex Moss.

After republishing, the article quickly regained visibility. Plus, it climbed back towards the top of the search results, which brought in extra traffic. This was a clear reminder for us; when data shows a drop, improving the quality of the content backed by a good analysis can still win.

And an example of going from data to actionable insights to results

Turning data into insights

You need a process to quickly and systematically turn raw data into valuable insights. Eventually, you’ll get these insights once you ask the right SEO questions, gather the data, analyze it, and plan accordingly. 

Start with your goals, then ask: what’s holding us back? Actionable insights live in the gap between where you are and where you’re trying to go. That gap is different for every site and that’s what makes good analysis so powerful.

Carolyn Shelby – Principal SEO at Yoast

Step 1: What do you want to know?

Start by writing down the SEO questions you want answered. Do you want to improve performance, get more organic traffic, or better engagement? Analyze a traffic drop? For instance, an online store owner might want to understand why certain product pages don’t convert as well as expected. Thinking these things through before you start digging into the data makes it easier to focus on the metrics that matter.

Step 2: Gather the relevant data

Collect the data you need using tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, Wincher, Ahrefs, or other platforms that can power your data-driven SEO strategy. If you’d like to investigate a product page with subpar performance, you’ll look at page views, click-through rates, average engagement times, and engagement rates in GA4. Data like this should give you an idea to find and address the issues. 

Step 3: Analyze and spot trends

Dive into the data and try to spot patterns and trends. For example, an educational site might notice that articles on a particular topic get a lot of traffic but low engagement. Digging deeper might find that the titles of the articles attract visitors, but for some reason, the content doesn’t keep them interested. Trends like these help turn that data into insights that you can act upon. You can also use things like segmentation to find differences between groups of people from specific regions, who could engage wildly differently with your content. 

Step 4: Turn findings into actions

Once you’ve pinpointed the issues, it’s time to decide what you want to do. For instance, if you’ve found that an article has a low engagement rate because of the time it takes to load the page, you could fix the images and scripts on the page. Or, if you find that some keywords get traffic, but no conversions, you might need to improve the CTA on the page. Or it might be a search intent mismatch to fix. This is the thing that turns the insights from data into actionable insights.  

This is a nicely structured way of getting the insights needed to inform your data-driven SEO strategy. You can use every piece of information you find to improve your work as you go. This will not only help you understand the data but also make it easier to make the improvements needed to reach your SEO and business goals. 

An example: Addressing brand performance in LLMs

For this example, think of a tech publisher named Digital Mosaic. It’s a reputable source for in-depth news from the tech industry. Recently, their marketing team noticed something off. Users interacting with AI search engines and large language models (LLMs) like Google Gemini or ChatGPT rarely saw mentions of the Digital Mosaic brand. In other words, even when asked for the latest tech insights, the AI-driven sources and answers often omitted Digital Mosaic in favor of other options. 

After finding the issue, the team started analyzing data from various analytics platforms, brand mention trackers, and user surveys. They found their SEO and content work was pretty good, but the content was not properly optimized to help LLMs surface it. The data showed that their content lacked the language and brand signals needed to help LLMs understand the brand’s authority. 

When they found this, the teams got to work to improve how LLMs perceive their content:

Improving brand signals

The content team added clearer brand signals to their content, and each post received better metadata and structured data. The goal was to clearly tie the brand to the content to help LLMs recognize the sources. 

Changes in content

Next, the team restructured certain articles to include branded segments, such as “Digital Mosaic Exclusive Analysis” or “Today’s Tech Insights by Digital Mosaic”. This makes the brand more visible to users and gives LLMs a chance to associate the content with the brand, coming from a trusted source.

Investing in partnerships and collaboration 

The publisher set up a series of collaborations with well-known tech influencers and other outlets. They made co-branded content and were mentioned in many podcasts and webinars. This helped improve the brand’s presence in online conversations. LLMs love to look for what’s available on third-party sites about brands while generating responses. 

Rinse and repeat 

The team reviewed the changes’ performance to see if the LLMs would improve brand mentions. They used AI tools, like AI brand monitoring tools, to monitor and simulate the LLM outputs to see if the work was effective. Based on their findings, they would fine-tune their work and continue to improve performance. 

Within a few months, the results were encouraging. LLMs were increasingly showing content from and mentioning Digital Mosaic, and the brand’s footprint in LLMs was steadily improving. This did not just help visibility and increase the brand’s authority in the industry, but also led to a new source of traffic from AI search interfaces.

This fictional example shows how a publisher can use data insights to overcome a very specific challenge. Mixing traditional SEO solutions with new technologies helped Digital Mosaic turn data into actionable insights. Not only did it help the brand’s visibility right now, but it also prepared it for the AI-powered future.

Read more: How to optimize content for AI LLM comprehension using Yoast’s tools. 

Tools and techniques to get data insights

You need the right tools to turn data into actionable insights. This will be a mix of the tools we all know and love, and more specific ones to understand user behavior and site performance. 

We all start with Google Analytics 4 and Search Console. GA4 tracks many metrics, including user engagement, event counts, and traffic sources. Properly set up, it gives you a good overview of how users use your site. Search Console shows how your site performs in the SERPs, including keyword rankings, indexing status, and crawl errors. 

Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush provide information about backlinks, rankings, and search trends. These search marketing tools also have many features for competitive analysis and keyword research. You’ll get a big database of historical data, so you can spot and interpret trends over time. This data helps you with your data-driven marketing on all fronts. 

Looker Studio is a great tool to tie various data sources together and build dashboards
Looker Studio is a great tool to tie various data sources together and build dashboards

Advanced techniques and technologies

The are so many options to dive ever-deeper into your data to find the insights you need. Beyond the basics, you can use:

  • Segmentation: It could help to break up your data into specific audience segments. For instance, you could look at visitor behavior based on demographics, location, or the type of device they use. Segmenting data helps you understand why certain groups behave differently. For instance, if mobile users show lower engagement than desktop users, there might be something wrong with your mobile site.  
  • Trend analysis: Don’t just focus on looking at data for a specific day. It’s often better to look at metrics over different time periods. Look at the monthly or quarterly performance. This gives you an idea of the long-term impact of changes. 
  • Build dashboards to visualize data: Make a dashboard with data from various sources. Use tools like Looker Studio to combine Google data with SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs. This will give you reports that will show all key data at a glance. A dashboard makes it easier to understand data and communicate it with other team members or management. 
  • Big data: Big data is becoming increasingly important for data-driven SEO. Huge data sets can provide insights that smaller sets can overlook. They allow you to examine user behavior, search trends, and site performance at scale. With machine learning and automation, you can use big data to get better and faster results to inform your SEO strategy.

Iterative optimization and reporting

SEO is an ongoing process, and you’ll have to adjust course regularly. Don’t treat your site’s performance as a snapshot, but as something dynamic that evolves over time. Regularly looking at your data keeps you on top of things, from changes in user behavior to emerging search trends. 

Make it a routine

Schedule when you review data. This might be daily checks for urgent work or weekly to track short-term changes. For long-term trends, do monthly or quarterly deep dives. Route analysis helps you spot patterns that might not be so obvious at first glance. 

Test and experiment

With an iterative optimization approach, you test what works. For example, you could A/B test different page layouts, CTA buttons, or various meta titles. You might also try different content formats to see what gets more engagement. These tests will get you the data and insights needed to make the most of your SEO work.   

Feedback loop

A true feedback loop helps validate your improvements. After turning data into actionable insights, implement the changes in your content or technical SEO work. Keep updating your data to see if you need to refine your strategy. If a new tactic works, adopt it as a standard practice. But if it doesn’t work as intended, find out why and try a variation of it. Measuring trial and error and adopting your tactics makes you flexible and responsive.

Internet marketing tools like Wincher give key data points about your content's performance, like rankings
Internet marketing tools like Wincher give key data points about your content’s performance

Towards a data-driven SEO strategy

Using the knowledge you gain from turning data into actionable insights can greatly improve your SEO performance. Be sure to structure the data-gathering process: ask the right questions, collect the right data, analyze the trends, and create a system that turns those insights into action. 

What you change on your site isn’t even that important; it might be updating metadata, improving content, or diving into technical SEO aspects. If only what you do is the correct answer to the questions you wanted to have answered. 

Every insight can lead to big improvements in rankings and user engagement. Use this data-driven marketing approach to make the right decisions that will keep your SEO strategy effective in the future.

The post Turning data into actionable insights: a data-driven SEO strategy appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Just like most other website owners, you want your website to attract customers. But how can you see who visits your website? And how can you use this knowledge to increase website traffic over time? Luckily, there are loads of tools that can help you. Let’s get you started with the right one for your website without the need to become a data expert!

What is website traffic?

The term website traffic refers to the number of internet users visiting your website. Traffic can arrive from wide-ranging sources, such as directly typing in your website address, through other websites that link to your site, organic traffic (meaning they come to your site from the search results), paid traffic (people who click on your online ads), through your social media, and other channels. The total number of these users visiting your website combined is what we call website traffic.

How to check how many people enter a website

There are online tools that can help you make sense of your website traffic. These tools provide you with lots of different metrics, but we’ll go into the most important ones when it comes to website traffic.

Tools to track website visits

Numerous tools can help you track your website traffic. We’ll look at a few well-known tools that provide you with the insights you need.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the go-to tool for a lot of website owners when it comes to getting insights into their audience and website performance. What’s great about Analytics is that you can use it for free and it gives you loads of detailed insights. All the metrics mentioned above can be found in Analytics and give you the possibility to dive into visitor behavior and page performance. It allows you to mark key events, to track if people are performing the actions you want them to. 

The homepage gives an overview of data that Analytics deems relevant to you, based on your behavior in the tool. Some reports provide the metrics mentioned and much more, all focused on understanding your audience. Explorations allows you to create your own ‘reports’ to dive into one specific question you have or element you want a deeper understanding of. When you have Google Ads running, Analytics also provides insights into your ads and what actions to take there.

Screenshot Google Analytics 4
Screenshot of Google Analytics 4, found on Google’s blog

You will have to connect Analytics to your website, but luckily, there are tools out there that help you with that. Also, Google explains how to do this properly in their guide for beginners, which also gives you more information on this tool. One downside of Analytics, if you can call it that, is that all the information provided there can be overwhelming for some. They do expect you to find your way and figure out what data is relevant for your website. This makes it difficult to stay focused on the right things and not get lost in the woods.

Google Search Console

Another tool provided by Google, free of charge, is Google Search Console. Although there is some overlap with Analytics, this tool is focused more on showing your visibility in different parts of the Google ecosystem. Similar to Semrush, it’s very helpful when working on the performance of your pages and increasing website traffic. So if increasing organic traffic to your website is a big part of your marketing strategy, make sure to add this tool to your favorites. 

We have a beginner’s guide to Search Console, that goes into the details and explains how to set up an account. 

A screenshot of the ‘performance on search results’ section in Google Search Console

I wanted to mention this tool as it can help you boost your website traffic when used correctly. But if you’re mainly looking for a tool that provides you insights into your current website traffic, I would recommend investing your time in another tool first (f.e. Analytics). Search Console is great for figuring out what parts of your website you should work on, but if you want to take a step back and get familiar with your website stats first, then this might be for a later time.

Semrush

Semrush is another online tool that shows you how many people visit your site.e. This platform is used by a lot of people working on their website visibility. To give an idea, you can use Semrush to get data on your site’s performance, but it also allows you to do keyword research and compare yourself to competitors. 

Like Analytics, it provides a lot of information. But it does depend on your subscription on how extensively you can use this tool. There is a free version that may get you the data you need when starting out. It offers a site audit (of 100 pages), position tracking (for 10 keywords), personal recommendations, and traffic data such as visits, conversion, and bounce rate.

Semrush SEO dashboard
A screenshot of the ‘SEO Dashboard’ section in Semrush, from Semrush’s knowledge base

If you want to give Semrush a try, simply create a free account and fill in your website where the tool asks for your main domain. This will give you insights right away. You will notice that not all the data is available, and getting access to some more detailed stats will require an upgrade. But especially when you want to work on your SEO, Semrush gives you a lot of relevant information.

Metrics on website traffic

Every tool comes with different data, but there are a few relevant metrics that you will find in most of them. I’ll explain a few of them that will help you figure out who’s visiting your website and what they’re doing while on your pages.

Number of users

First of all, there’s the number of users. The number of total users tells you how many people have visited your website or a specific page in the selected period. In addition to the total number, you might also see the following metrics: active users, new users and/or returning users. 

Active users are the number of people who engaged with your page in that date range. Then there’s the difference between new users (the number of people who are first-time visitors of your site) and returning users (the number of people who have visited your site before).

Number of sessions

When a user opens your website, they start a new session. All the interactions that take place during the time they spend on your website are part of that one session. There’s no limit to how long a session can last, but it typically ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If the user interacts with the website after that time or comes back at a later time, this will count as a different session.

Pageviews

When you encounter the metric pageviews, it tells you how many times a page is loaded or reloaded in a browser. Each time a user visits a page, it counts as one pageview—even if they refresh the page or navigate back to it multiple times. This metric helps measure how often your content is being viewed, regardless of how many unique users are visiting.

Source/medium

Source/medium tells you how users arrive at your website. The source is the specific origin of your traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook.com), while medium describes the general category of that source (e.g., organic, cpc, referral). Together, they give you insight into what channels are driving the most traffic and which ones could do better.

Engagement and events

Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions that were actively engaged, meaning users spent at least 10 seconds on the site, had a conversion event, or viewed two or more pages. It helps measure how meaningful or valuable a user’s interaction is. 

Events, on the other hand, track specific user actions—like clicks, downloads, video plays, or form submissions—providing detailed insight into how users interact with your content. Metrics related to engagement and events give you an idea of whether people are engaging with your pages and taking the actions you want them to take.

Other interesting metrics

Those metrics give you a lot of information about your website traffic, but of course, most tools offer you other interesting metrics as well. You could also look at the bounce rate, which tells you the percentage of users that leave after viewing just one page. The average session duration shows you how much time users spend on your site. Traffic by device gives an overview of how many of your users visit your website through desktop, mobile and/or tablet. Finally, top (performing) pages tells you which pages get the most visits.

Why you should know who visits your website

As I touched on in the previous paragraphs, data on your website traffic gives you insight into the behavior of your website visitors. Understanding who visits your website, and how they interact with it, helps you make more informed decisions about your website. It’s not just about counting clicks or visitors. It’s about uncovering trends, identifying growth opportunities, and optimizing the user experience to increase conversions, engagement, or other goals.

Are you visible on the right channels?

Knowing where your visitors come from, whether that’s organic search, social media, direct traffic, referrals, or paid ads, helps you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re investing heavily in social media campaigns but see little traffic from those platforms, that might mean it’s time to reevaluate your social strategy. On the other hand, high traffic from a specific channel might indicate a strong presence you can build on. This insight allows you to allocate your time and resources more strategically.

Pages that perform (or don’t)

Website data shows you how people are interacting with your pages, which tells you what your top-performing pages are and what pages need improving. Your top-performing pages might show high engagement, conversions, or time on site, indicating content that resonates with visitors. Pages that underperform can show you where users are dropping off or losing interest. This insight is invaluable for identifying what content needs updating, restructuring, or even retiring to improve your overall site performance.

Website performance over time

Tracking your traffic trends over days, weeks, or months allows you to assess the health of your online presence. Are you seeing growth? Seasonal spikes? Or sudden drops in traffic to your website? These patterns help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and how external factors might be affecting you. It also gives you a baseline to measure the success of any changes you’ve made to your website or other marketing activities.

Understanding your audience

Essentially, looking at the data that tells you who is visiting your website helps you get a deeper understanding of your audience and how your website is doing. This doesn’t mean you should be obsessing over these numbers daily, but having a monthly evaluation to go over everything helps you make informed decisions. Decisions that will improve your (online) presence and attract more people to your website.

Which tool is the best choice for you?

These tools are just the tip of the iceberg, but they are a great starting point when you want to keep track of your website visits over time. So, which one should you start using? If you’re looking for one tool that provides you with detailed insights into your website traffic (and therefore audience), I would recommend setting up Google Analytics first. It is the tool that’s focused on tracking website traffic and has the biggest variety of data.

To conclude

In this blog post, we discussed the importance of gaining insight into your website traffic. This can help you understand your audience and their behaviour and it helps you make improvements to your website. There are loads of tools out there, but the ones mentioned above are a great starting point. So make sure to choose one and get a grip on your website traffic!

Read more: How to measure the success of your content SEO strategy? »

The post How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site? appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

What is Site Kit by Google? A guide for WordPress users

/0 Comments/in , /by

Site Kit by Google is a free WordPress plugin that connects your site to important tools like Analytics, Search Console, and Ads. After installing, it’s easy to verify your accounts, after which you see data in your dashboard. That data is nice to have, but it has limits, especially if you need detailed reports.

Table of contents

What is Site Kit by Google and why use it?

Site Kit by Google is a fundamental analytics tool that helps you answer questions like:

  • How many people are visiting your site?
  • What page do they land on first?
  • Which keywords did they search to find you?
  • Are your ads earning clicks?

With Site Kit, Google puts the data right into WordPress, so you don’t need to go digging around different platforms to seek your data. The tool gets its data straight from each service, and shows the most important data in clear graphs, tables, and a flexible, customizable Key Metrics widget. 

Who is it for? (and when it’s not enough)

But Site Kit is not the analytics tool to rule them all in WordPress land. It covers the basics well, but it won’t work for everyone’s goals. What it does do is make it incredibly easy to set up and run various Google Analytics accounts. 

Site Kit by Google works well for:

  • WordPress users who want to track basic performance
  • People who prefer not to use extra plugins or code
  • Site owners who manage everything themselves

But it may feel limited if you:

  • Run ads at scale and need conversion-level insight
  • Use custom events or eCommerce tracking
  • Want to control every aspect of your website’s scripts and tags

It covers the basics well, but it’s not built for advanced setups.

What does it look like?

After installing and connecting Site Kit, you’ll find a new menu item in your WordPress dashboard. Clicking this will lead you to the dashboard where most of the statistics and settings live. You’ll also notice a new drop-down menu when you visit posts on your site. Thanks to this drop-down, you can quickly see statistics for this specific article without having to open Analytics.

Overview dashboard

The Dashboard gives you an overview of how your site is performing. Of course, depending on what services you connect your site to, you might see something like this:

  • Traffic and engagement insights from Google Analytics 
  • Clicks and impressions from search traffic provided by Search Console
  • An overview of the top-performing pages
  • Earnings from Ads or AdSense, if you run ads, that is
  • Site speed performance powered by PageSpeed Insights 
  • An overview of how different groups compare, for instance, new vs. returning visitors

Some sections also show trend indicators like arrows or percentage changes compared to the previous period. This will help you spot trends and act upon them. Click on any source to open a more detailed view in the corresponding Google tool.

Part of the Site Kit dashboard showing various stats and the Key Metrics widget at the top
Part of the Site Kit dashboard showing various stats and the Key Metrics widget at the top

Key Metrics widget

You can set up the Key Metrics section the way you want. Site Kit will ask you a couple of questions about your site’s goals and what you want to focus on. Then, it will suggest metrics to show at the top of the dashboard. You can choose which blocks you want to see, such as top converting traffic sources, new visitors, recent trending pages, and much more. 

Admin bar stats

After Site Kit is active, you’ll also see a small dropdown at the top of your WordPress admin bar when you’re viewing your site. Click it, and you’ll get a mini-report showing page-specific stats, including search impressions, clicks, and traffic over time.

Site Kit will help you quickly find out how your content is doing, straight from the WordPress admin bar
Site Kit will help you quickly find out how your content is doing, straight from the WordPress admin bar

What Google services can you connect?

Once installed, you can connect the following tools. Two of them — Search Console and Google Analytics 4 — are enabled during the initial setup. You can connect:

  • Google Analytics 4
  • Search Console
  • AdSense 
  • Reader Revenue Manager
  • Google Ads
  • Tag Manager

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Site Kit will add your GA4 tag automatically, after which it shows data such as:

  • The number of visitors
  • Sources of sessions (organic search, direct, referral)
  • Average engagement rate
  • Session durations

The data shown is summarized, so if you want custom reports or event tracking, you need to open GA4. 

a new dashoard in site kit showing the difference in interaction between various visitor groups
Visitor grouping is the newest addition to Site Kit by Google

Google Search Console

After installing and connecting, you’ll get some key data from Search Console right inside your WordPress dashboard:

  • The queries people searched to find your site
  • Number of clicks and impressions
  • Unique visitors from search
  • Page-level performance in search

This kind of data is very helpful for content optimization purposes and to inform your SEO strategy. 

AdSense/Ads (monetization)

If you use Google’s systems to run ads, Site Kit can show data on ad impressions, top-earning pages, and estimated revenue from auto ads, for instance. Simply connect the services to see the data. Remember that it doesn’t replace the AdSense dashboards, but it does give you quick insights.

Reader Revenue Manager

Reader Revenue Manager is a Google tool for adding subscription and contribution options to your website. It’s designed for publishers and content creators who want to monetize their content through reader support, such as recurring memberships or one-time donations.

With Site Kit, you can connect Reader Revenue Manager to your WordPress site in just a few clicks. Once linked, it adds the necessary code to your site automatically, so you don’t need to add tags or install it manually. This feature is optional in Site Kit and is mostly used by publishers offering paywalled or premium content.

PageSpeed Insights

Site Kit runs a PageSpeed test directly inside WordPress. In the PageSpeed Insights section, you’ll see both lab data and field data. Lab data is based on simulated testing in a controlled environment and helps you identify performance issues during development. Field data, on the other hand, reflects how real users experience your site across different devices and network conditions. Together, they provide a balanced view of how your pages perform.

The report shows load performance scores, data on Core Web Vitals (like LCP and CLS). It also gives suggestions for improving speed. But it only tests your homepage and doesn’t include custom settings. For full reports, you can still visit PageSpeed Insights separately.

Tag Manager

You can link a Google Tag Manager container through Site Kit. This lets you manage third-party scripts (like Facebook Pixel or custom tracking tags) from one place. The plugin doesn’t give you a full interface for editing tags — you’ll do that inside the Tag Manager platform.

Managing Analytics in Site Kit by Google

For most site owners or managers, Analytics and Search Console are the most important Google tools. Site Kit makes it easy to set those two services up properly. Of course, you can also use existing accounts.

Enhanced measurement support

GA4 also has Enhanced Measurement, which tracks scrolls, outbound links, file downloads, and other actions automatically. If you activate these in your GA4 property, Site Kit can track them. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to choose which ones to turn on from inside WordPress; you need to go into your GA4 settings for that. 

Event tracking and tag insertion

Site Kit doesn’t support event setup or tracking reports inside the WordPress dashboard. If you need full control over events, you have to use GA4 directly or use Tag Manager to set up the custom events.

Limitations of Analytics in Site Kit

You’ll probably understand by now that Site Kit is not a replacement for GA4 — it’s a neat tool that gives quick insights and nothing more. You don’t get access to funnel reports, attribution models, or filters. You can’t edit events or see predictive metrics, and there’s no support for GA4 audiences or Google Analytics 360.

What’s Enhanced Conversion tracking?

With Enhanced Conversions, you can connect Google Ads clicks to leads or form submissions. This improves the reporting of these events when users are on different devices or block cookies. After setting this up, Site Kit will detect form submissions and pass the data to Google Ads.

Site Kit currently supports some of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins, such as Contact Form 7, WPForms, and Ninja Forms. However, if you use an unsupported custom form, Site Kit can’t automatically add enhanced conversions. 

Again, Site Kit has many limitations in this area. For instance, it doesn’t support purchase-based eCommerce conversions or offline conversions. It also doesn’t support pixel-level tracking, third-party forms, popups, and embedded forms. So, it’s specifically designed for simple lead form submissions. 

Key Metrics widget for quick performance insights

Key Metrics are a very valuable addition as they give quick insights into data of your choosing. They’re quick to understand but not very in-depth. For key strategy decisions, you’re going to need more data.

This widget pulls together important GA4 and Search Console data into a block on your dashboard. You can choose which metrics to show and reorder them. To change your selection, click the Change metrics button in the corner of the Key Metrics section. You can also rerun the question from the Site Kit admin settings.

Each metric includes a figure and a trend comparison from the previous period. For example, you may see engagement is “up 6%” compared to the last 28 days. Click any of them to open the full source report in GA4 or Search Console.

The widget has limitations. It doesn’t show custom events or real-time reporting, campaign attribution breakdowns, or GA4-specific collections like audiences or conversions. The widget and Site Kit, in general, are for broad insights, not advanced analytics. 

The Site Kit Key Metrics widget shows various data that you can tailor to your needs and goals
The Site Kit Key Metrics widget shows various data that you can tailor to your needs and goals

Is Site Kit by Google enough for your goals?

Site Kit is a good starting point for most WordPress users. It brings together valuable Google data without having to do much work. But whether it’s enough depends on whether you need to get from your analytics and tracking tools. 

SEO and content insights

Site Kit is not an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO. However, you can get data from Search Console that will help you understand how people find your website in the search results. With this, you’ll form an understanding of which content works well and how your site performs in the search results. 

However, as mentioned, it’s not an SEO plugin, so you need to install a tool like Yoast SEO to do much of the heavy lifting. Plugins like these help with most SEO tasks, like fixing technical issues, adding structured data, and improving your content. 

Monetization

If you’re running ads, Site Kit shows basic ad metrics like impressions, estimated earnings, and top-earning pages. It helps you monitor your ads without having to log into another app. 

It doesn’t support advanced ad setups, and you can’t manually place ads. It’s also not possible to optimize layouts based on behavior or run A/B tests to find the best ad format. If you’re working with multiple ad networks, you’ll need a tool that can do a lot more than Site Kit.

Marketing analytics

For reporting basics, Site Kit will do just fine. You can see trends in users, sessions, referral sources, and engagement time — all brought to you by Google Analytics 4. 

However, Site Kit doesn’t give access to campaign statistics, UTM tracking, or event-based funnels. It also doesn’t offer the option to set goals or segment traffic by behavior. For these kinds of insights, you need to dive straight into GA4 or use a more in-depth reporting tool. If you run marketing campaigns, track conversions, or use CRM tools, Site Kit won’t provide enough data. 

eCommerce and advanced use cases

For eCommerce, Site Kit won’t cut it. It doesn’t integrate with WooCommerce and doesn’t offer a revenue tracking option. It also doesn’t have access to carts, products, transactions, or customer behavior. There’s no way to measure things like average order value or conversion rates. 

For advanced eCommerce tracking, you need to set this up in GA4 directly or use other methods to access this data. Site Kit doesn’t support this at all. 

Should you use Site Kit by Google?

Site Kit is a good option if you want a free tool to view traffic, search, and performance statistics without having to set up a bunch of tools. It’s very easy to use and useful enough for small websites. 

If you’re running a huge publication or an online store, need to track custom campaigns, or manage a large number of ad accounts, Site Kit won’t cut it. That’s not to say it’s useless for those cases. One of its biggest draws is that it makes setting up GA4, Search Console, Ads, and Tag Manager accounts incredibly easy. It’s a great starting point to build your analytic toolkit upon.

The post What is Site Kit by Google? A guide for WordPress users appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

How to optimize content for AI LLM comprehension using Yoast’s tools

/0 Comments/in , /by

As AI-driven search engines rewrite the rules of content visibility, one thing is clear: optimization isn’t dead — it’s evolving. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity AI don’t just retrieve web pages; they synthesize answers. And your content? It only gets included if it’s clear, relevant, and easy to extract. The good news? If you’re already using the Yoast SEO plugin, you have some of the most critical tools for this new era baked right into your workflow.

Table of contents

Learn how to structure content for AI

In this post, I’ll walk through how LLMs evaluate and extract content — and how Yoast SEO’s content analysis features, particularly the Flesch Reading Ease score and green light checks, can help you structure your writing for AI retrieval, not just human readers.

And more importantly, I want to clarify a common misconception: Yoast SEO isn’t about “chasing green lights.” It’s about helping you become a better, clearer communicator. Green lights aren’t the end goal—they’re indicators that you’re aligning your content with the kinds of clarity and structure that serve both readers and AI systems. In a world where LLMs decide what gets surfaced and summarized, being a better writer is your best competitive advantage.

Even if AI search doesn’t dominate your vertical today, it will. The best time to prepare was years ago. The second-best time is right now. Consider this your SEO shade tree: start planting.

What AI search wants from your content

Forget rankings — AI search is about retrievability and clarity. LLMs ingest and parse content based on:

  • Literal surface-level term matching (yes, keywords still matter)
  • Structural formatting cues like headings, lists, and bullet points
  • Clarity of ideas — one idea per paragraph, one purpose per section
  • Prompt alignment — using the same terminology your audience would use

Even the smartest LLM will skip your content if it’s overly complex, meandering, or fails to mention the query terms directly. That means no more hiding your key points in paragraph five. No more cute, clever intros that never get to the point. The models are pulling excerpts, not reading for nuance.

This is where Yoast SEO shines. Its features, often seen as basic hygiene, are perfectly aligned with what makes content usable by AI.

The Flesch Reading Ease score is more important than ever

In a world of AI Overviews and synthesized summaries, readability is a superpower.

The Flesch Reading Ease score — included in the Yoast SEO content analysis — doesn’t just help human readers skim your content. It helps machines parse and interpret it.

LLMs prefer:

  • Shorter sentences
  • Simple phrasing
  • One idea per paragraph

These are the exact factors the Flesch score evaluates. So when Yoast flags your content as difficult to read, it’s not nitpicking — it’s showing you what might keep your article out of an AI Overview.

Pro tip: When possible, aim for a Flesch score above 60, especially for top-of-funnel or FAQ-style content you want to be quoted or summarized.

And let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean your content has to be simplistic or dumbed down. It just needs to be accessible. Plainspoken, not generic. Direct, not dull. Think of it as writing for a global audience — or a machine that doesn’t have time for interpretive poetry.

an example of the flesch reading ease score in Yoast SEO for this specific post. it shows a score of 68.4
You can find the Flesch reading score in Yoast SEO Insights in your sidebar — this is the score for the post you are reading now

Don’t ignore those green lights (Even when you think you know better)

I’ll be honest: I’ve been one of the worst offenders when it comes to ignoring those green lights. I like long sentences. I enjoy prose that meanders a little if it means delivering a point with style. And I’ve spent enough of my career writing professionally that being told how to write by a plugin occasionally rubbed me the wrong way.

But here’s the thing I’ve come to accept: it’s not that the plugin is trying to replace your voice or artistry. It’s that it’s trying to ensure your work can be understood, parsed, and surfaced—especially by machines.

It is absolutely still possible to create highly visible content that doesn’t earn a green light for sentence structure or reading ease. I’ve done it. But those pieces need to be intentional. They need to be structured so that the core ideas—the “meat” of the argument—aren’t buried in the longest paragraph of the article or expressed only in dense, lyrical blocks of text.

If you want to break the rules, fine. But make sure you know where the lines are before you step over them. The art is still welcome—it just has to be thoughtfully placed.

Yoast’s content checks aren’t arbitrary — they’re aligned with how both humans and machines understand text. In fact, many of the green-light criteria align shockingly well with what LLMs are known to favor:

  • Subheadings every 300 words = easier segmentation and extraction
  • Introductory paragraph present = good for AI frontloading
  • Paragraph length = one idea per chunk, which is LLM-friendly
  • Sentence length limits = fewer chances for parsing failure

In other words: the green light checklist is not just “SEO best practice.” It’s an LLM comprehension checklist in disguise.

And while experienced writers might feel tempted to override these warnings with “but this sounds better to me,” it’s worth considering how much clearer your writing becomes when you follow them. Especially when writing for an audience that might include an algorithm.

an example of the Yoast SEO sidebar showing three overall green traffic lights for a post
Not every traffic light for individual checks has to be green — just make sure the overall lights are

Structuring for LLMs: A Yoast-assisted framework

If you want your content to get pulled into AI-generated answers, try this simple structure — and let Yoast SEO help enforce it:

  1. Start with a TL;DR or definition: Use short, declarative sentences. Bonus if you can bold the key phrase or structure it as a definition. LLMs love to latch onto clear, answer-style content.
  2. Use subheadings to divide your points: Make sure each section answers one specific question or explains one concept. Headings serve as cues for both readers and models.
  3. Use bulleted or numbered lists: Yoast SEO will warn you if a list is too long without proper formatting. LLMs love well-structured lists because they can be directly extracted.
  4. Echo the query language: Use the exact phrases people search for. This helps the AI match your content to user prompts. Literal matching still matters.
  5. End with a clear summary or CTA: AI often pulls from intros or conclusions. Don’t waste them. Reinforce your main point and point readers toward next steps.

Even if you’re writing complex thought leadership content, this structure ensures your brilliance is actually understood and surfaced.

You don’t need Schema if your structure is clear — but it helps

Structured data is still valuable, especially for establishing context and disambiguating entities. But Yoast SEO users should remember: if your page is poorly written or confusing, schema won’t save it.

LLMs cite content that is:

  • Logically segmented
  • Written in plain, direct language
  • Free of interruptions, overlays, or unrelated diversions

Yoast SEO helps you get there — not just with schema tools, but with live readability feedback during writing.

It’s also worth noting that while structured data might support AI understanding, it’s the structure of the writing that matters most for inclusion in AI responses. LLMs pull paragraphs and list items, not rich snippets. If you want to be quoted, you have to be quotable.

TL;DR: Use Yoast SEO to make your content AI-ready

In the age of AI search, optimization means:

  • Writing like a human, formatting like a machine
  • Saying things plainly
  • Echoing how people phrase questions
  • Structuring content so it can be lifted and used

Yoast SEO’s content analysis isn’t just a checklist — it’s an AI visibility strategy. That little green light might be your ticket to being the source LLMs choose to summarize.

Don’t fall into the trap of writing for the plugin. Use the plugin to write better for people and machines. That shift in mindset makes all the difference.

And as LLMs continue to power more and more of the search experience, from Google AI Overviews to tools like ChatGPT Browse, that visibility is worth more than position #1 ever was. Start now. You’ll be glad you did.

The post How to optimize content for AI LLM comprehension using Yoast’s tools appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

15 years of Yoast: 15 SEO tips for 2025 and beyond

/0 Comments/in , /by

We’re celebrating 15 years of Yoast, and we can’t celebrate without offering some SEO insights. So, here are 15 SEO essentials to focus on in this year and beyond. Whether you are a beginner or an SEO expert, these tips will help you focus on what’s important right now.

In collaboration with our Principal SEO, Alex Moss

Table of contents

1. Embrace AI-powered SEO tools

Artificial intelligence is making every part of SEO faster and more efficient, from keyword research to real-time performance tracking. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs help you plan content quickly and uncover opportunities you might have missed. These platforms use data in new ways to help you improve your strategy based on live trends and competitor changes. Use tools like ChatGPT or Gemini for research, inspiration, coding, and data analysis.

Thanks to AI tools, you can automate time-consuming tasks like technical audits, site crawls, and content analysis. The time you win by doing that helps your team focus on the bigger picture, from setting the strategy, building authority, and creating content that connects with audiences and brings something new to the world.

Yoast SEO’s AI features offer guidance to help your content succeed.

Did you know?

Yoast is 15 years old!

We’re celebrating 15 years of Yoast this year and have all kinds of nice stuff planned. Of course, we’re also offering a deal on our SEO products. Use coupon code yoast15_gift4you at the checkout for a 15% discount!

Shop our products

2. Optimize for zero-click searches

In 2025, Google shows more quick answers than ever. You’ll see AI overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels, People Also Ask boxes, and more. To be featured in those places, your content has to be high-quality and unique, above all, unique – regurgitating what’s already out there won’t cut it. But, it also has to be easy to read and scan. Don’t forget to use lists, highlighted snippets, and concise definitions at the top of your articles.

Keyword research helps you to find the questions your audience is asking. Write clear answers to those questions, making them as concise as possible. Use tools like AlsoAsked to find opportunities to rank even when a user doesn’t click through to your site.

3. Invest in video content

Video dominates search results and offers a good way to diversify traffic sources. The growth of a platform like TikTok shows that many people prefer consuming video content. Create videos that answer questions, demonstrate your products, or explain complex topics. Optimize the videos to make them easy to find, and don’t forget to add a transcript and timestamps to help with indexing and user experience. 

Depending on your video strategy, hosting them on YouTube and embedding them on your site can boost engagement and dwell time. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, and building a solid presence there can reach a massive audience.

4. Improve e-commerce SEO

SEO for your products is not just about rankings, but also about conversion. Your product titles and descriptions should naturally include your most important keywords while also sounding persuasive. Don’t forget your category pages! Proper optimization helps customers find what they need. At the same time, you are building a strong internal linking structure. 

Structured data is essential for e-commerce stores because it can trigger rich results, highlighting reviews, pricing, and stock status. When done well, these show up nicely in Google, boosting your visibility. Rich snippets make your SERP listings more trustworthy and clickable. Do everything you can to get more traffic and, eventually, more sales. Our Yoast SEO for Shopify app can help your business succeed.

5. Prioritize local SEO

If your business is locally oriented, local SEO should be at the top of your strategy.  Keep your Google Business profile updated with opening hours, services, and nice photos. Post regularly about special offers, events, or published blog posts to show you are active and encourage engagement. 

Build citations in trusted local directories and get high-quality local backlinks. You should publish high-quality, localized content or case studies from regional customers. This signals that you are active in a geographic area, which could help local search visibility — Yoast Local SEO helps you do this.

6. Improve user experience (UX)

UX and SEO are deeply connected; we all know that. If people can’t use your site, they won’t stick around. Focus on a clean layout with plenty of whitespace and add clear call-to-actions for the user to click on. Make your site load quickly and test it regularly on mobile devices. 

Heatmaps, scroll maps, and user recordings made with tools like Hotjar can show where people get stuck on your site. Friction could occur with long loading times, confusing menus, missing CTAs, or other similar issues. Solving these can help reduce bounce rates, increase engagement and conversion.

7. Participate in SEO communities

Joining SEO communities isn’t just about asking for help when facing issues; it’s about much more. Platforms like LinkedIn, X, Reddit, Facebook groups, or SEO forums sometimes offer insights and advice you can’t get anywhere else. Sharing wins, failures, and experiments helps you stay connected to the SEO community and lets you build a name for yourself.

These platforms often surface research, news about Google core updates and warnings about issues some time before becoming common knowledge. News might be shared just early enough for you to take advantage of it before your competitor does. Building relationships can help you get business opportunities, collaborations, or friendships. 

8. Optimize for AI discovery

AI tools and chatbots are trained on information from the web, so it’s important to understand how your content is surfaced by large language models (LLMs). These systems, like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, reshape how users uncover information. The results are often served without a way to click to your site. If your brand is not visible in these generated answers, you could be missing out in a growing share of visibility. 

Research your topics and content to see how the system responds to your queries and if your content appears in the answers. Audit your content to see if you structured it so LLMs can understand it. Use clear language, be factual, build your topical authority, and use easy-to-understand layouts. Most of all, be sure that the crawlers of the AI services can reach your site without issues. 

9. Focus on content pruning

Sometimes, ranking higher isn’t about adding more content to your site; it’s often about cleaning up what you have. Content pruning means removing, merging, or updating poorly performing content. Ancient blog posts that no longer get any traffic, outdated product pages, and thin articles with no value may impact your site’s overall performance. 

Start with a content audit using Semrush, Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs. Find pages with limited traffic, few backlinks, and poor engagement. You can update these posts if you have enough insights to add. If they’re no longer relevant, merge them into a single, more authoritative page. If nothing works, delete and redirect. Keep your site lean and focused to improve the overall quality and authority, which also helps you fix keyword cannibalization.  

10. Implement structured data markup

Part of SEO is making your site easy for crawlers and search engines to understand. Structured data markup is one of the best ways to tell Google what your pages are about. With the correct schema items, you can highlight things like product prices, event dates, business locations, recipes, and more. 

Plugins like Yoast SEO make this process much easier. Start with your most important pages and products, select the proper schema, and fill in the details needed. Once you have the basics done, you can expand it to more complex structured data if needed.

11. Keep focusing on mobile

If you’ve been living under a rock, you might have missed that today’s world is all about mobile. We’ve been spending more and more hours glued to our mobile phones. So, having a perfect mobile site is no longer an option. Make sure that it adapts to all screen sizes, that the buttons work, and that no nasty pop-ups overlay the screen. 

Test your site often in various browsers on Apple and Android devices. See if it offers a great user experience. If not, fix it. Fixing even small accessibility issues or loading performance can greatly impact user satisfaction.

12. Create helpful, people-first content

Google is no longer just rewarding keyword-optimized pages, but genuinely helpful, people-first content. Your articles should satisfy user intent by providing clear, trustworthy and actionable information. Instead of writing the same things everyone has already done, create unique content that informs, solves problems, and adds value for your readers. 

When thinking about your content, ask yourself the questions that Google recommends: “After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?” and “Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and depth of knowledge?” If your content doesn’t do any of these things, you might need to rethink it. Focus on things you know well, avoid clickbait and write for your readers, not search engines. 

13. Optimize for Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals gives you a sense of your site’s health, especially with speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. They measure three main things: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which looks at loading performance. The second is Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which shows how quickly your site responds to user actions. The third one is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which checks for unexpected layout shifts when your page loads. Google uses these metrics to determine whether your site gives a good user experience. 

You can monitor your Core Web Vitals in Google PageSpeed Insights, Search Console, or Lighthouse. Improvements you can often make include optimizing images, using faster hosting, reducing reliance on JavaScript, and setting proper dimensions for media. Test your site often to see if your improvements improve the user experience. 

14. Diversify content formats

Not everyone wants to read a 2000-word blog post. Some people enjoy graphics, videos, or podcasts. You can quickly repurpose your content in various formats, instead of starting over every time. 

Doing so makes your site more interesting for readers and search engines alike. Adding helpful videos to articles or offering downloadable checklists or research reports makes your content more appealing.

15. Always stay updated

In SEO, change is a constant. There are algorithm updates, new AI features emerge, and best practices change. It’s a lot, so staying up to date with the news is essential. Follow reliable sources like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, the Yoast SEO newsletter, or our monthly SEO update to get the needed insights.

Plan some time every week to read up on SEO news. Join the conversation whenever you feel like it. Use the new insights to improve your strategies. Sticking to last year’s strategy will not cut it if your competitors are faster to adapt!

15 SEO tips for 15 years of Yoast

Here’s to 15 years of Yoast and 15 more years of helping the world rank better. Whether you’re launching your first site or revamping your SEO strategy for the AI age, it doesn’t matter — we’ll help you succeed.

Which SEO tip do you swear by in 2025? Please share it with us on our social media platforms (X, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram), or in the comments below.

The post 15 years of Yoast: 15 SEO tips for 2025 and beyond appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

Keyword and content cannibalization: how to identify and fix it

/0 Comments/in , /by

If you optimize your articles for similar terms, your rankings might suffer from keyword or content cannibalization: you’ll be ‘devouring’ your chances to rank in Google! Especially when your site is growing, your content could start competing with itself. Here, we’ll explain why keyword and content cannibalism can harm SEO, how to recognize it, and what to do about it.

Table of contents

What is keyword cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages on your website target the same or very similar keywords. This often occurs unintentionally, especially as your site grows and more content accumulates. Pages that are too similar in focus might confuse search engines, which may struggle to decide which to rank higher. As a result, your pages compete with one another, and all of them can rank lower.

For example, if you publish two posts — one optimized for “does readability rank” and another for “readability ranking factor” — Google may see them competing for the same query. Instead of one strong result, both might hover around lower positions, weakening your site’s overall performance.

What is content cannibalization?

Content cannibalization is closely related but centers on the issue of multiple articles covering the same topic, regardless of whether they’re optimized for the same keyword. It’s a broader issue that affects thematic overlap more than exact keyword matching.

Where keyword cannibalization focuses on duplicating keywords, content cannibalization involves too many pages delivering overlapping value. This undermines user experience, spreads authority thin, and can make your content performance uneven.

Is cannibalization harmful?

Both keyword and content cannibalization can hurt SEO.

  • Lower rankings: Google often limits the number of results from a domain per query. When several of your pages try to rank for the same keyword, they could all underperform. This is especially true when neither page is clearly better in content depth, backlinks, or relevance.
  • Diluted backlinks: Instead of one strong page getting all the backlinks, multiple weaker ones split the attention. If many pages discuss a similar topic, other sites may link to each inconsistently. As a result, no one page accumulates strong authority. This fragmentation makes it harder for your content to rank competitively.
  • Confused crawlers: Search engines can’t always easily figure out which page they should prioritize. As a result, this could lead to inconsistent rankings. These days, Google is better at understanding topical relationships and can often see their differences. If content overlap is too high and intent is unclear, prioritization issues can still arise, especially on sites with thin or low-quality pages.
  • Reduced Click-Through Rate (CTR): Spreading clicks across several similar listings may lower the collective performance. If multiple similar titles from your domain show in results, users may split clicks between them. Worse, one strong CTA title might appear further down the page than a weaker or outdated one. This can impact user engagement and CTR for both pages, especially if they fall further down the SERPs.

In short, cannibalization limits your content’s potential by weakening each page’s authority and clarity.

How to identify cannibalization issues

As your site grows, you’ll have more and more content. Some of these articles are going to be about a similar topic. Even when you’ve always categorized it well, your content might compete with itself. You’re suffering from keyword or content cannibalization. Finding and fixing keyword cannibalization issues should be part of your content maintenance work to prevent all this.

Identifying keyword cannibalization

Start with a site search. Use site:yourdomain.com “keyword” in Google to surface all pages relevant to a particular term. If you see two or more of your URLs targeting the same term, they may be in conflict.

Next, use tools like Google Search Console. Look under the Performance tab. Filter by query to view keywords that bring in impressions and clicks, then see which pages receive traffic from those terms. Then, use SEO tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to track keyword rankings and expose overlapping URLs targeting the same terms.

Look especially for pages that rank beyond the top five positions for the same term. When two of your URLs rank closely together outside the top spots, it’s often a sign that neither is performing optimally.

A Google site search with a domain and keyword showing post keyword cannibalization results
A simple site search with your domain and keyword will show all the pages ranking for that term

Identifying content cannibalization

Content cannibalization is subtler. You might not see overlapping keywords, but you may notice thematic overlap.

Review URL structures and tags to catch duplicates

Start by scanning your site’s URLs and content categories to catch pages covering the same topic in different formats. Look for similar slugs, repeated folder structures, or articles under the same tag or category. This quick check often reveals duplicate coverage, especially on larger sites or those with multiple writers.

Use keyword/topic mapping tools

Trace what each page is targeting. Create a list of your key pages and their target keywords or main topics. This helps you spot when multiple pages aim for the same term or cover the same subject. It doesn’t matter whether you use a tool or a spreadsheet, but keyword mapping helps explain the purpose of content. It also helps avoid overlap and ensures that all pages on your site have a place in your strategy.

Use the page filter

In Google Search Console, use the Page filter to see how each URL performs. The data gives insights into impressions, clicks, and average position. Look for pages that are getting traffic from similar queries. Multiple pages appearing for the same or closely related terms could signal content cannibalization. You can also use the Query filter to search by keyword and review which pages compete for it.

How to fix cannibalization issues

You should know your content, its performance, and where overlaps exist. Fixing keyword or content cannibalization means auditing, evaluating, and restructuring your pages. It doesn’t mean you should delete content blindly. Every page on your site should have a purpose and support your site’s overall SEO strategy. Below are practical ways to resolve both types of cannibalization.

Fixing keyword cannibalization

In many cases, solving keyword cannibalization means deleting and merging content. We will run you through some of that maintenance work as we did it at Yoast to show you how to do this. In particular, we’ll show you some thinking around a cluster of keywords related to keyword research.

Step 1: Audit your content

The first step is finding all the content on the keyword research topic. Most of that was simple: we have a keyword research tag, and most of the content was nicely tagged. This was also confronting, as we had many posts about the topic.

We searched for site:yoast.com "keyword research" and Google showed all the posts and pages on the site that mentioned the topic. We had dozens of articles devoted to keyword research or large sections mentioning it. Dozens or so mentioned it in passing and linked to other articles.

We started auditing the content for this particular group of keywords to improve our rankings around the cluster of keywords related to keyword research. So we needed to analyze which pages were ranking and which weren’t. This content maintenance turned out to be badly needed. It was surely time to find and fix possible cannibalization issues!

Step 2: Analyze the content performance

Go to Google Search Console and find the Performance section. In that section, click the filter bar. Click Query and type “keyword research” into the box like this:

A Google Search Console keyword query filter helping you find which articles rank for terms
Google Search Console helps you find which articles rank for certain terms

This makes Google Search Console match all queries containing keyword and research. This gives you two very important pieces of data. A list of the keywords your site has been shown in the search results for, and the clicks and click-through rate (CTR) for those keywords. A list of the pages that were receiving all that traffic, and how much traffic each of those pages received.

Start with the total number of clicks the content received for all those queries, then look at the individual pages. Something was clear: just a few posts were getting most of the traffic. But we knew we had loads of articles covering this topic. It was time to clean up. Of course, we didn’t want to throw away any posts that were getting traffic not included in this bucket of traffic, so we had to check each post individually. 

We removed the Query filter and used another option: the Page filter. This allows you to filter by a group of URLs or a specific URL. On larger sites, you might be able to filter by groups of URLs. In this case, we looked at the data for each post individually, which is best if you truly want to find and fix keyword cannibalization on your website.

Step 3: Decide on the next steps

After reviewing each post in this content maintenance process, we decided whether to keep it or delete it. If we deleted a post (which we did for most of them), we decided which post we should redirect it to.

For each of those posts, we evaluated whether they had sections to merge into another article. Some posts had paragraphs or sections that could be merged into another post. When merging posts entails more work (and time) than adding one paragraph or a few sentences, we recommend working in a new draft by cloning one of the original posts with Yoast Duplicate Post plugin. This way, you can work on your merged post without making live changes to one of your original posts.

Step 4: Take action

We had a list of action items: content to add to specific articles, after which each piece of content could be deleted from the articles it came from. Using Yoast SEO Premium, it’s easy to 301 redirect a post or page when you delete it, so that process was fairly painless.

With that, we’d removed the excess articles about the topic and retained only the most important ones. We still had a list of articles that mentioned the topic and linked to one of the other. We reviewed them and ensured each was linked to one or more of the remaining articles in the appropriate section.

Another example of fixing cannibalization by merging

Another example: We once had three separate articles covering how to do an SEO audit, split into parts 1, 2, and 3. Each post focused on a different section of the audit process, but none of them ranked well or brought in meaningful traffic. On their own, the articles felt incomplete, and splitting the topic likely made it harder for users (and search engines) to find everything they needed in one place. We decided to take a step back.

After reviewing performance data and gathering insights on what users were actually searching for, we merged the three posts into a single, more useful SEO audit guide. We rewrote outdated sections, expanded key points, added a practical checklist, included tool recommendations, and tightened up the structure. Since updating and combining the content, that article now ranks for more keywords than the separate posts ever did, draws more consistent traffic, and performs better overall. It’s a good example of how merging overlapping content, when done thoughtfully, can give users more value and improve SEO at the same time.

This shows three old seo audit articles that were merged in a much better, more comprehensive guide
Merging three simple posts into one big, much-improved SEO audit guide helped boost performance

Yoast Duplicate Post is a great free plugin

Ever wanted to quickly make a copy of a post in WordPress to work on some changes without the risk of ruining the published post?

You need Yoast Duplicate Post!

Fixing content cannibalization

Even if keywords differ slightly, topics may still overlap, and there are things you can do to improve that.

Create a cornerstone/pillar or landing page

Create a main page — a cornerstone article — that covers the broad topic in depth, then link to more specific articles that explore subtopics. This helps define a content hierarchy, improves internal linking, and signals which page should rank for the core topic to search engines. Supporting content can still rank independently, but will pass relevance and authority back to the pillar.

Consolidate underperforming content

If you have several pages covering similar ideas, but none are ranking well, combine them into one stronger, more complete resource. Prioritize the page with the most traffic or links, and bring valuable sections from the others. This helps reduce redundancy, improve content quality, and give search engines a clear page to index for that topic.

Use 301 redirects

Redirects are an important tool for your cannibalization actions. After deleting content, remember to use 301 redirects to send visitors from the old URLs to the updated one. Of course, you can also send them to the most relevant page as an alternative. This keeps existing rankings, backlinks, and traffic from the original pages intact. Plus, it also helps to avoid broken links or indexing issues. 

Preventive measures

Another way to avoid future keyword or content cannibalization issues is to prevent them, of course. 

Audit your content regularly

Analyze the content for your most important topics regularly. Look for overlapping pages, outdated posts, or content that doesn’t fit your keyword strategy. Regular audits will help you find issues early, which can help keep your site focused and maintain search visibility.

Assign a unique target keyword to each page

Before creating new content, please ensure no existing page targets the same keyword. Giving each page a clear, unique focus prevents internal competition and helps search engines understand which page to rank for a given query.

Write with a clear content brief

Start every piece with a brief that outlines the target keyword, search intent, key points to cover, and how it supports your existing content. Such a strategy helps your articles stay focused and avoids topic overlap. In addition, it ensures that the new content you add is truly unique to your site.

Keep a keyword and topic map

Maintain a simple record of which topics and keywords are already covered on your site. This makes it easier to spot gaps, avoid duplication, and plan new content that fits your overall strategy. A keyword map also helps when updating or pruning existing pages.

Also, if you’re running an e-commerce site with many similar product pages, make sure category pages are well-optimized and that your products clearly support them through internal linking.

Common mistakes in addressing cannibalization

Cannibalization happens, and many site owners have tried to address it in one way or another. Of course, there are right and wrong ways to do this.

Deleting pages without checking their value

Don’t delete content because you think it no longer serves a goal. Before you do that, look at traffic data, backlinks, and search performance before taking drastic measures. For instance, a page may look outdated, while in reality, it still drives traffic or has solid external links. Simply deleting it could lead to unwanted ranking losses.

Relying on canonical tags without checking content

Adding a canonical tag isn’t always the right fix. If two pages are too similar, merging or redirecting them may be better. Canonicals help when content overlap is minimal and both pages still serve a purpose, not as a quick workaround for duplication without analysis.

Merging pages that target different search intent

Just because two pages cover a similar topic doesn’t mean they should be combined. If each one is aimed at a very specific audience or answers a different question, merging them could hurt relevance and rankings. Always consider the intent behind each page before deciding to consolidate.

Overlooking internal linking opportunities

Internal links help search engines understand which pages are most important. If you skip this step, you may weaken page authority and miss chances to guide crawlers — and users — to your key content. Linking related pages strategically can reduce confusion and support stronger rankings.

Final thoughts on keyword and content cannibalization

A growing website means a growing risk of content overlapping. This could be a risk to the visibility of all that content. To prevent this, perform regular content audits and carefully plan and structure your content. 

Whether you’re fixing overlapping blog posts or aligning product pages under a clear hierarchy, regularly addressing cannibalization helps search engines — and users — find the most relevant, valuable pages on your site.

The post Keyword and content cannibalization: how to identify and fix it appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

WordPress 6.8: The highlights you should know about

/0 Comments/in , /by

On April 15th, 2025, ​WordPress 6.8 was released. This release, named Cecil, is aimed at bringing more control when it comes to the design of your website. It also comes with features that improve performance and enhance security for users and developers. Let’s dive into a few of the highlights in this latest release.

The Style Book for Classic themes

The Style Book, previously exclusive to block-based themes, is now accessible for Classic themes that have editor-styles or a theme.json file. It also comes with a new look and a few new settings to play around with. You can find this feature, or see if you have access to this feature, by going to Appearance > Design > Styles in your vertical navigation bar on the left side.

The Style Book in WordPress 6.8
The Style Book shows the design elements of your site.

This tool gives you an overview of your site’s design elements, including colors, typography, and block styles. Just scroll down to have a look at all the design elements and whether you’re happy with everything design-wise.

Increasing performance with speculative loading

WordPress 6.8 introduces speculative loading, a feature that leverages the Speculation Rules API to prefetch or prerender pages based on user interactions. When someone clicks on a link, this page can now be preloaded. This anticipatory loading results in faster page transitions and a smoother browsing experience.

Of course, WordPress will not load everything as this would compromise performance if it becomes too much. This feature aims to keep a balance between speed and efficiency in choosing which pages to load. Developers can customize this behavior by using a plugin or writing code if they want it to act differently. It’s also good to know that this feature only works in newer browsers.

This feature is part of a longer list of enhancements focused on performance and speed, for both editing and browsing. Without going into too much detail, this update comes with improvements to the block editor, query caching and shorter interactions thanks to the Interactivity API.

Improved design and editing tools

WordPress 6.8 brings a few new enhancements to the design and editing experience. We’ll go into a few of them, such as the improved global styles panel, the option to turn image blocks into featured images and new density settings in table layouts.​

Global styles panel

The Global Styles Panel in the full site editor has had an update, making it easier than ever to give your website a cohesive and polished look. Now, users can tweak typography, colors, and layout settings for their entire site — all from one convenient place. Whether you’re adjusting heading sizes, setting your brand colors, or fine-tuning spacing, this central hub helps you manage your site’s design without having to dive into custom CSS or theme files.

Set image blocks as featured images

One of the most welcome little updates in WordPress 6.8 is the ability to turn any image block directly into a featured image with a single click. No more uploading the same image twice — once in the content and once for the featured image. If you’ve already added a perfect image to your post, you can now designate it as the featured image straight from the block editor, which simplifies your workflow and saves time.

WordPress 6.8 feature: setting image block as featured image
Simply select any image in your post and click ‘Set as featured image’

Density options for your tables

WordPress 6.8 introduces new density settings for table-based layouts, particularly useful when you’re managing data-heavy content like tables in the admin or Data Views. With these new controls, you can choose how compact or spacious you want your table rows and cells to appear, depending on your personal preference or the type of content you’re handling. Whether you prefer a minimal, airy look or a dense, info-packed table, WordPress now gives you the flexibility to adjust it to suit your needs.

Under-the-hood improvements

Beyond the user-facing features, WordPress 6.8 includes a lot of enhancements under the hood. Let’s check out a few highlights.​

Higher security with bcrypt

Although less visible, this feature is one to get excited about as well. As it brings a significant boost to security. The system is moving away from the MD5-based system for password hashing and transitioning to bcrypt. This change improves overall password security and requires no action from you or your users. It’s automatically implemented and will make it a lot harder to crack passwords.

Efficient block type registration

The new release introduces a new function that makes registering multiple block types much easier for developers. Instead of writing separate code for each block, plugin and theme creators can now register a whole collection of blocks in one go. This not only reduces repetitive code but also helps keep projects organized and easier to maintain, making life simpler for developers and creating fewer opportunities for bugs.

Internationalization improvements

With WordPress powering sites across the globe, internationalization is always a priority. This release ensures that error messages generated by PHPMailer (WordPress’s email handling system) are properly localized, so users see helpful and understandable messages in their language. Additionally, any plugin update notifications sent via email will now respect the site administrator’s selected language, making routine updates more user-friendly for non-English speakers.

Accessibility enhancements

WordPress 6.8 continues the platform’s commitment to making websites more inclusive by improving accessibility across the board. One of the key changes in this release is the removal of redundant title attributes, which were often unnecessary and could cause confusion for users relying on screen readers.

This small but meaningful update helps streamline the browsing experience for people using assistive technology, ensuring that WordPress websites are more welcoming and accessible to all visitors. Other than that, there are over 100+ accessibility fixes and enhancements in this release.

Update your site to WordPress 6.8

Those are a few of the features that you’ll find in this latest release. There’s a lot of focus on enhancing the overall user experience and refining existing functionalities. Whether you’re a developer or website manager, this update is meant to make your life a bit easier and your website more secure and performant. Read the official WordPress release post for more information on this newest version of WordPress. Or, if you’re curious to see these features in action, update to the newest version and try them out yourself!

Read more: Learn how to use WordPress without touching any code »

The post WordPress 6.8: The highlights you should know about appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

How to create a 301 redirect in WordPress

/0 Comments/in , /by

Do you need to create a 301 redirect in your WordPress site? You’ve come to the right place! We’ll show you how to set up 301 redirects using three methods. Do you know if you need to use a redirect or whether a 301 redirect is right? No worries, we’ll explain that, too.

Redirects in a nutshell

The name ‘redirect’ says it all: It sends visitors traveling from a specific page to an alternative one instead. Or, if there’s no alternative, an HTTP header (similar to redirects) can make that clear to users and search engines. It’s like registering a change of address when you move house. What if an old friend visits your old home to visit you? A redirect is like a front door note telling your visitors where you live now. Any time you change a URL or delete a page, you should think about redirects.

Different redirects serve different purposes. Since this post is all about 301 redirects, let’s look at some situations where you might need to use one.

When should you use a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect should be used when:

  • You’ve permanently deleted a page on your site, but you have another similar page you want to send users to instead
  • You’ve changed the URL of a page that was already published
  • You’re moving your site to a new domain
  • You’re changing your URL structure, e.g. changing from HTTP to HTTPS, or removing ‘www’ from the start of your URL

These are some of the more common reasons for using a 301 redirect, but other situations require redirecting, too. And besides that, there are other redirects and HTTP headers you can use in other situations. For instance, if you permanently delete a page and there is no suitable replacement or substitute you can send users to, then a 410 redirect is what you need to use. We have another post where you can read more about which redirects to use in which situations.

Option 1: Create a 301 redirect on the server

To set up a 301 redirect using .htaccess for the given example URLs, you need to add a specific line to your site’s .htaccess file, which is located in the root directory of your WordPress installation. Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Access your server. Access your site’s files using an FTP client or your web host’s file manager. You can also access and edit your .htaccess file from inside the Yoast SEO tools section.
  2. Locate the .htaccess file: The .htaccess file is usually in the root directory of your WordPress installation.
  3. Edit the .htaccess file: Open the .htaccess file with a text editor.
  4. Add the redirect rule: Insert the following line at the end of the file to create the redirect. This rule indicates that requests to /page-1 should be permanently redirected to /page-2.
Redirect 301 /page-1 /page-2
  1. Save changes: If you use an FTP client, save your changes to the .htaccess file and upload them back to your server.

Using this rule, any request to https://example.com/page-1 will be permanently redirected to https://example.com/page-2. The 301 status code indicates to search engines and browsers that the redirect is permanent. Note that this approach assumes the URLs follow the format /page-1 and /page-2 without additional subdirectories. You can adjust the path if your URLs are different.

These configurations can become unmaintainable over time, especially if you’re an avid blogger trying to improve your posts’ SEO. You must also log in to your server over FTP, edit the files, and re-upload them whenever you add a new redirect. That’s why, generally speaking, this method is not considered the way to go.

Option 2: Create a 301 redirect with Cloudflare

Most of us already use Cloudflare in one form or another, so you know that it offers a wide array of tools to help our websites perform. For instance, it comes with a Rules feature where you can set various options related to your website cache. You can also find various redirect options here; this will help you guide up redirects for everything from HTTP to HTTPS to single redirects for individual pages.

It’s easy to set up redirects through Cloudflare. Here’s how that works:

  1. Log into your Cloudflare account: Go to the Cloudflare dashboard and select your account and domain. Then, select Rules and Overview.
  2. Create a redirect rule: Select Create rule and then choose Redirect Rule. In the Rule name field, you might name it something like Redirect Page 1 to Page 2.
  3. Define the matching criteria: Set a wildcard pattern and set the Request URL to https://example.com/page-1. This means any traffic to example.com/page-1 will be matched for redirection
  4. Set the redirect parameters:
    • Target URL: Enter https://example.com/page-2 as the redirect destination.
    • Status code: Select 301 to indicate a permanent redirect.
    • Preserve query string: Decide based on your preference; enable this option if the original URL’s query string should be retained. When you choose to preserve the query string in a redirect, you keep any additional parameters that may be included in the original URL when redirecting to the new URL. Preserving the query string is often useful for tracking purposes, like retaining analytics or advertising parameters, ensuring that useful data isn’t lost during redirection.
  5. Deploy the rule:
    Click Deploy to save and activate the redirect.

Now, whenever someone visits https://example.com/page-1, they will be redirected to https://example.com/page-2 with a 301 status code, indicating a permanent move.

You can efficiently manage traffic without touching your server configuration by setting up redirects via Cloudflare. It provides flexibility for using simple patterns or more complex URL structures.

Cloudflare offers essential tools to manage the performance of your website

Option 3: Create a 301 redirect the easy way with Yoast SEO

Our Yoast SEO Premium plugin offers you a helping hand when it comes to creating these redirects. Our built-in redirect manager assists you whenever you change the URL of a post, page, or any taxonomies that may result in a possible 404 if you don’t properly redirect visitors. In addition, we also offer you an interface to edit or remove these redirects at a later point in time. The plugin also tells you when you’re about to create a redirect that will result in a redirect loop. This looping is something you want to avoid at all costs.

Here’s how you can set up a 301 redirect using Yoast SEO Premium in WordPress:

  1. Access the Yoast SEO settings: Log into your WordPress admin area and navigate to the Yoast SEO section.
  2. Open the Redirect Manager: Go to the Redirects feature in Yoast SEO Premium.
  3. Add a new redirect: Follow the steps below to create a new rule.
    • In the Old URL field, enter /page-1 as the source path.
    • In the New URL field, enter the destination /page-2 as the complete new URL.
    • Choose a 301 (Moved Permanently) from the list of redirect types.
  4. Save the Redirect: Click Add redirect, and Yoast SEO will handle the redirection.

Yoast SEO Premium also offers an option to automatically redirect deleted content. When you delete a page or post, Yoast SEO prompts you to set up a redirect to avoid broken links. This ensures visitors and search engines won’t encounter 404 errors and are smoothly directed to a relevant page.

These features are part of Yoast SEO Premium, designed to make managing redirects straightforward without manually altering code or server settings. They keep your site user-friendly and help maintain SEO performance by preventing dead links.

Adding a redirect with Yoast SEO Premium is very easy

Conclusion

Understanding how to set up 301 redirects is essential for maintaining your website’s integrity and user experience. Whether you choose Cloudflare, Yoast SEO Premium, or the .htaccess method, each approach offers a simple solution to guide visitors to the right place, preventing 404 errors and keeping your SEO rankings intact. Smoothly transitioning traffic from old links to new ones enhances usability and search visibility. Choose the best method that suits your needs and keeps your website running smoothly.

Read more: How to properly delete pages from your site »

The post How to create a 301 redirect in WordPress appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More