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Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced writer, editor & content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

You can find Edwin on: Twitter

In 2006, after working full time in a bookstore for many years, I made a bold decision: I went back to school. I wanted to combine my love for writing with the lure of the internet and picked Digital Communication at the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem to achieve that. Four years later, I graduated with honors.

In the meantime, I started working for The Netherlands’ largest monthly magazine on web design and web development. In my role as a managing editor, I wrote, edited and translated hundreds of articles on this fascinating subject. In addition to that, I made sure the day-to-day operations of the magazine went all according to plan.

At Yoast, I do much of the same work, except on a bigger scale. As a content specialist, I am responsible for delivering quality content in an engaging and optimal way.

In my spare time, I love rocking my 1972 Fender Precision bass with my band (Every Other Me), fiddling about with synthesizers, listening to music, watching an endless stream of – classic – movies, taking long hikes and enjoying life with my sons and girlfriend.

Edwin


Yoast SEO 5.3: The community edition

22 August 2017 | 3 Comments Edwin Toonen

At Yoast, we greatly value our brilliant community. Hundreds of people voluntarily help us to improve our products by giving valuable feedback and insights into their usage of Yoast SEO. Contributors fix issues and suggest enhancements to make our work increasingly better. Today, with the release of Yoast SEO 5.3, we add another chapter to […]

Read: "Yoast SEO 5.3: The community edition"
Yoast SEO 5.3: The community edition

Yoast SEO 5.1: Internal linking suggestions in Italian

Our development team is steadily chugging along and today provides you with a new and improved edition of Yoast SEO. This release features mainly enhancements and fixes, plus a slew of updates to our language support. Let us walk you through the new version we know as Yoast SEO 5.1, starting with our main focus […]

Read: "Yoast SEO 5.1: Internal linking suggestions in Italian"
Yoast SEO 5.1: Internal linking suggestions in Italian


Yoast SEO 4.8: Cornerstone content analysis

In this release, we’re fine tuning our algorithms to give cornerstone content articles the analysis they deserve. Articles you’ve marked as cornerstone content will now be judged on a different level, so we can make sure they have the quality and authority an article like that should have. Yoast SEO 4.8 helps you write better […]

Read: "Yoast SEO 4.8: Cornerstone content analysis"
Yoast SEO 4.8: Cornerstone content analysis

Page speed as a ranking factor: what you need to know

It’s official: Google announced that page speed will be a ranking factor in its mobile-first index. But what does that mean? There’s no beating around the bush anymore: you should work on making your site as fast and accessible as possible. Don’t wait, do it now. I mean it. Work on your mobile SEO. For […]

Read: "Page speed as a ranking factor: what you need to know"
Page speed as a ranking factor: what you need to know

The sense and nonsense of XML sitemaps

17 January 2017 | 2 Comments Edwin Toonen

Fact: if your website is set up the right way, you shouldn’t need an XML sitemap at all. You shouldn’t need to think about your category’s XML sitemaps or about including images in your post’s XML sitemap. But why do we keep talking about them like it’s the most important thing ever for SEO? It’s an almost daily […]

Read: "The sense and nonsense of XML sitemaps"
The sense and nonsense of XML sitemaps

Optimizing the searcher’s journey – Interview with Maile Ohye (Google)

18 November 2016 | 4 Comments Edwin Toonen

According to Maile Ohye of Google, “SEO is evolving into what Loren George McKechnie described as ‘search experience optimization’. It’s less about top ranking, and more about optimizing the searcher’s journey. It’s the intersection of content, UX, and as always, staying smart about search engines.” We had the chance to ask Maile a couple of questions, […]

Read: "Optimizing the searcher’s journey – Interview with Maile Ohye (Google)"
Optimizing the searcher’s journey – Interview with Maile Ohye (Google)