Yoast SEO 15.1: Keyword research with SEMrush

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get keyword data while working on your content in Yoast SEO? Well, we asked ourselves that same question and now we have an answer! Yes, you can now find related keyphrases inside the post editor. And it’s not any old data — no, it’s powered by our good friends at SEMrush, a world-class provider of SEO and internet marketing tools! Here’s what’s new in Yoast SEO 15.1.

In Yoast SEO 15.1, you’ll find a number of improvements:

Find related keyphrases with SEMrush data

Keyword research is hard and we are going to help you with that. In Yoast SEO 15.1, you’ll find a new integration with one of the leading SEO and internet marketing software companies in the world: SEMrush. Together, we’ve built an integration that helps you find related keyphrases for your focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO. The SEMrush integration will make it easier to find the right keywords that will help you with your rankings!

Find related keyphrases right where you need them — with Yoast SEO Premium, you can add them to your analysis with one click

The tool is very easy to use. Find the Get related keyphrases button underneath the Focus keyphrase field and click it. The first time you do that a screen opens asking you to connect your SEMrush account, or make a new one and authorize Yoast SEO to use that. After that, you can find related keyphrases right from within the post editor. You even get insights on search volume and trends! Plus, you can select the country where you want so search. How cool is that.

This feature is available for free, but Premium users get the added benefit of using it in the related keyphrase feature. This feature of Yoast SEO Premium gives you the chance to optimize your content for multiple keyphrases and synonyms. The new related keyphrase tool lets you add the relevant ones you find with a simple click of the button. After that, you can simply optimize your text for these keyphrases in the post editor sidebar.

Get Yoast SEO Premium, not just for the related keyphrase features, but also for the redirect manager, advanced text analysis that recognizes word forms, social previews and much more.

This is just the beginning

This new feature is the first part of what will be unique collaboration between two of the biggest SEO companies in the world. We have many ideas about how to integrate Yoast and SEMrush, and finding related keyphrase is only the beginning. Read what Joost has to say about partnering up with SEMrush.

Farsi keyphrase recognition

Recently, we’ve started adding language support for right-to-left languages. Now, we support Hebrew and Arabic, with the latter already having full language support including word forms. Today, we’re taking the first steps to support Farsi (Persian). We can now better recognize and understand sentences for this RTL-language. This helps us find and recognize keyphrases for the Farsi language.

To get this to work properly, we’ve improved all keyphrase-based assessments for Farsi by filtering function words. Yoast SEO can now check whether you’ve used your Farsi focus keyphrase in all the right places. This helps you optimize your text in a way that makes sense for search engines, without overdoing it for your users.

Improved internal linking suggestions

Improved internal linking

In Yoast SEO 14.7, we launched a new version of our internal linking suggestions tool. This tool helps you improve your site structure by linking to relevant content. It analyzes your text and automatically suggests relevant content on your site to link to. In Yoast SEO 14.7, we made it a lot smarter and made it look at your metadata and other post types as well.

Today, the tool works better than ever and in Yoast SEO 15.1, we’ve improved the visual aspect of the internal linking suggestions. Of course, visuals matter and these can make or break a tool. The updated interface for the internal linking suggestions still follows the same Gutenberg styling, but we made more some subtle improvements, most notably in the way we distinguish between cornerstone content, regular posts and other post types.

Improved optimization of SEO data

Behind the scenes, Yoast SEO uses a lot of complex processes to get important data about your site. For instance, we need to build our indexables so we can speed up your site and we need to get an overview of your content to feed our internal linking suggestions. For this to work, you need to press a magic button.

Much easier to understand, right?

This used to be separate processes, but we tied these together so they can run in the proper order. Only then, will it give the best results. So, if you haven’t yet — hit that button. Of course, the time this process takes depends on the size and set up of your size.

Performance improvements and other enhancements

Many site owners and developers run a staging environment to test stuff and to improve their sites. While working on a staging environment, Yoast SEO doesn’t have to do some of the stuff it does on live sites. And with WordPress 5.5’s new wp_get_environment_type() function retrieving a site’s current environment type, we had to prevent several processes from happening on non-production environments. As of now, we won’t index the indexables, ping search engines about XML sitemaps, send tracking information or check the indexing of the site with Ryte on these kinds of environments. This prevents this data from appearing on your real site once you push your site into the real world.

Also, we now flush all permalinks from the indexables tables when the value of the permalink_structure or the home_url option changes. We’ve also introduced a notification to ask for a reindex in those cases. Also, whether the home_url was changed manually and resets the permalinks accordingly. We do all of this to keep the tables occupied with the most recent version of your permalinks.

That’s Yoast SEO 15.1 for you!

In Yoast SEO 15.1, we’ve introduced a really cool new feature and a new partnership with SEMrush. You get related keyphrases right where you need them. If you have Premium, you can even quickly add them as related keyphrases in a jiffy. Awesome, right? Don’t have Premium? Now is a good time to get it!

Get Yoast SEO Premium Only $99 USD / year (ex VAT)

Disclosure: this blog post contains sponsored links.

Coming up next!


74 Responses to Yoast SEO 15.1: Keyword research with SEMrush

  1. Luis Zarza
    Luis Zarza  • 3 years ago

    Would I have to pay a SEMRush subscription to be able to use this functionality? Or it works just a with a free registration at SEMRush?

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Luis, you can also use this feature when you have a free registration! Using a free SEMrush account will allow you to make up to 10 requests for related keyphrases per day. To get full access to the SEMrush tools, you can upgrade your SEMrush account. Hope this answers your question :)

  2. Fadi Taha
    Fadi Taha  • 3 years ago

    This is good news , I have the Yoast Premium on my website, So how do I integrate SEMRush for the keyword research.

  3. zakir khan
    zakir khan  • 3 years ago

    The button above to start the SEO data optimization won’t start. good for SEO
    Thanks

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi, Zakir. Sorry to hear that! Could you run a conflict check to see if there is something conflicting with Yoast SEO? You can find more info on how to do that on this page.

      If this doesn’t fix it, you can get help on our help forums. Of course, if you have Yoast SEO Premium, you can contact our support team and they’ll be happy to help you out. Good luck!

  4. Hunter
    Hunter  • 3 years ago

    I actually found this issue while working with my hosting provider on why the wrong canonical was showing up my production instance and saw that yoast support hadn’t identified it yet a while ago. I wrote a post about it here.

    tortoiseandharesoftware.com/blog/wrong-canonical-url-from-yoast-plugin/

    Interested to see if this has actually been fixed yet. Will test it out on my next deploy.

    • Willemien Hallebeek
      Willemien Hallebeek  • 3 years ago

      Hi Hunter, the issue should indeed be fixed now! Great if you could let us know if you see something unusual after your next deploy. And, if it works, perhaps you could add that to your blog post? That would really be awesome! Thanks a million!

  5. wotawomandiary@gmail.com
    wotawomandiary@gmail.com  • 3 years ago

    I love the sound of this, will be a really useful tool

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Thank you! Hope you enjoy using it :)

  6. Stanley Chauke
    Stanley Chauke  • 3 years ago

    Yoast SEO is what I recommend for everyone using WordPress. I love the improvement the new integration is awesome. Thank you Team Yoast for the great dedication and hard work.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Thank you so much, Stanley! That’s wonderful to hear :)

  7. info5905
    info5905  • 3 years ago

    There is a lot of Error in my Premium Account?! Could you please fix these bugs

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi there. I’m sorry you are running into this issue! Could you elaborate on what seems to be going wrong? You can always run a conflict check to see if there is something conflicting with our plugin. You can find more info on how to do that here.

      If this doesn’t fix it, you can get help on our help forums. Of course, if you have Yoast SEO Premium, you can contact our support team and they’ll be happy to help you out! Good luck :)

  8. Robert Garafalo
    Robert Garafalo  • 3 years ago

    Go away. Stop sending notifications. I’d pay Premium rates for that.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Robert, sorry to hear that you’re experiencing our notifications as annoying. That is definitely not our intention! You can hide it by clicking on the eye icon next to it.

  9. Will
    Will  • 3 years ago

    I received the notification, but I don’t have the option to update.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Will, that’s weird. Just to be sure, have a look at our page on how to update the Premium plugin or the free plugin. If you’re still not able to update following these steps, it might be a good idea to have a look at our support forum. Or, if you’re a Premium user, contact our support team to fix this issue :)

  10. Kevin
    Kevin  • 3 years ago

    How do you disconnect an account to connect another? I recently connected a free SEMrush account by mistake and I am looking to connect the proper account.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Kevin, you can disconnect your SEMrush account (and connect another account) by disabling and enabling the integration again.

      In your Dashboard go to SEO > Integrations and set your SEMrush integration to ‘Off’ and click ‘Save changes’ to disable the integration. Then set it to ‘On’ again and click ‘Save changes’ to enable it again. You’ll be able to connect to another SEMrush account now :)

  11. michelle-7978
    michelle-7978  • 3 years ago

    I’ve just upgraded to the Premium Yoast version for the use of extra keywords. I am trying to run the Start SEO Data Optimization Tool but it keeps failing. Any ideas?

    • Edwin Toonen

      Hi Michelle. I’m sorry you are experiencing this issue. I see you have upgraded to Premium — thanks! –, so you can contact our support team. The team is glad to be of service: https://yoast.com/help/support/#premium

  12. Yusuf
    Yusuf  • 3 years ago

    This will make life easier, I have the Yoast Premium on my website, how do I integrate SEMRush for the keyword research. I use Moz but I think it’s to switch

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Yusuf, if you already have Yoast SEO on your site you can activate the SEMrush integration by clicking the ‘Get related keyphrases’ button underneath the focus keyphrase field :) You can find all the steps on this page.

  13. Sam Evans
    Sam Evans  • 3 years ago

    Hi Edwin,
    I’ve been trying to find out about keywords for a long time. I’ve read a lot of articles but I didn’t know much. But your article was awesome.

  14. Chad
    Chad  • 3 years ago

    Thanks for a great addition to the SEO toolbox of Yoast SEO. I’ll be checking it out and am anticipating another great tool!

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      You’re welcome, Chad! Keep an eye on our blog and social media to stay on top of our latest features :)

  15. Roger
    Roger  • 3 years ago

    When is Swedish Language implemented in Yoast and in semrush? So it could find related keyphrases in Swedish

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Roger, thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you when exactly, but we’ll definitely add Swedish to the list!

  16. Richard Stock
    Richard Stock  • 3 years ago

    Wow .. a great addition. Finally, you guys are adding something that can challenge the RankMath SEO plugin.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Thanks, Richard :)

  17. Stephanie
    Stephanie  • 3 years ago

    Great info.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Thanks, Stephanie!

  18. Shima
    Shima  • 3 years ago

    Farsi keyphrase recognition! Finally Yessss :)
    Thank you & Love you guys

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      You’re welcome <3

  19. Glenda Vance
    Glenda Vance  • 3 years ago

    The button above to start the seo data optimization won’t start.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi, Glenda. I’m sorry you are running into this issue. Could you run a conflict check to see if there is something conflicting with Yoast SEO? You can find out how to do that here.

      If this doesn’t fix it, you can get help on our help forums. Of course, if you have Yoast SEO Premium, you can contact our support team and they’ll be happy to help you out!

  20. Mahmmadsakib
    Mahmmadsakib  • 3 years ago

    I have made blog posts using Elementor. But now I can’t give meta description because that particular page is not showing anything below it.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Mahmmadsakib, sorry to hear about your issue! To get the support you need, I would recommend going to our support-page. Good luck!

  21. Martin
    Martin  • 3 years ago

    So is this new nag/warning (‘Notification’) of what’s in the update you already updated going to appear and need removing for every single Yoast release now..? It’s an annoyance and makes it look like there’s a problem, when it’s just a note repeating what was already in the release notes before you applied the update. Please make it go away (or add an option to mute anything that is just information rather than important).

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Martin, sorry to hear that you’re experiencing the notification as annoying. This is definitely not our intention! It’s meant to keep you informed about the changes in the latest release. But you can hide it by clicking on the eye icon next to it.

  22. Pedro Matias
    Pedro Matias  • 3 years ago

    I do not see any button to connect to SEMrush only the link to Yoast premium. Two different sites up to date and no conflicts I can see.

    • Edwin Toonen

      Hi Pedro. That’s strange, have you updated everything?

      • Pedro Matias
        Pedro Matias  • 3 years ago

        HI Edwin, yes two sites running 2017 theme (they are almost identical), everything is up to date.

        https://share.getcloudapp.com/JrugD1Zj

        • Camille Cunningham
          Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

          Sorry to hear about your issue, Pedro! Could you run a conflict check to see if there is something conflicting with Yoast SEO? You can find out how to do that here.

          If this doesn’t fix it, you can get help on our help forums. Good luck!

  23. Susil Kumar
    Susil Kumar  • 3 years ago

    Great news. I have been using Yoast SEO for years now. Thanks

    • Edwin Toonen

      Great to hear, Susil. Hope you enjoy the new feature!

  24. JonH
    JonH  • 3 years ago

    This is really innovative!

    This plugin is in my opinion still better than the competition even if the competition has some more features, it does not matter. User experience and ease of use, security and speed is much more important than 900 features.

    But if you developers could implement Surfer SEO API in the Integration and that would work as great as on their site I will buy Premium without any hesitation at all.

    (No idea if links in your reply system is allowed but just Google Surfer SEO API)

    SEMrush is great! But can be expensive for beginners. So Surfer SEO, have a look if that would be possible to get in Yoast content analysis, if possible it would rock!

    Anyway, thanks for the hard work on version 15.1. THE BEST : )

    • Edwin Toonen

      Hi JonH. Thanks for the compliments, we hope you enjoy using the new feature. Of course, there are a million other things we’d like to implement, but unfortunately, our time and resources are limited. We’ll keep an eye on your suggestion.

  25. Metaflix.com
    Metaflix.com  • 3 years ago

    Since the latest update (Yoast SEO 15.0), users are unable to use the up or down arrow keys to jump lines of text that are inputted into the SEO–> Google Preview –> Meta Description box.

    Just a (new) little annoying bug that takes our hands off the keyboard and necessitates clicking around when that didn’t use to be the case. Can this be fixed? Thanks!

    • Edwin Toonen

      Hi! We’re sorry you’re experiencing this issue. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, we’ll look into it and fix it in an upcoming release. As a workaround, you can close the Google preview in the metabox and reopen it. After that, you should be able to continu working as normal. Hope this helps relieve the pain a bit.

  26. George
    George  • 3 years ago

    So if I get Yoast Premium, do I still need to pay for Semrush?

    • Edwin Toonen

      Hi George, this feature works with both the free and Premium versions of Yoast SEO. Premium lets you add the related keyphrases to be analyzed in the post. You can use the feature with a free account of SEMrush, but you’ll be limited in the amount of requests you can make a day. That may or may not be enough for your usage. Over on the SEMrush site you can read what you get in their free account: https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-can-i-do-with-a-free-account-from-semrush/

  27. luce dalma
    luce dalma  • 3 years ago

    great!

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Thanks!

  28. arqsanchezmota
    arqsanchezmota  • 3 years ago

    I am getting this error when trying to use the new function, how can I fix it?

    Oops, something has gone wrong and we couldn’t complete the optimization of your SEO data. Please click the button again to re-start the process.

    • nktthang0108
      nktthang0108  • 3 years ago

      I have the same issue. Anyone have solution to fix?

      • Edwin Toonen

        Hi! I’m sorry to hear about the issues you have with the plugin. Could you check to see if there are any errors to be found in the console? Open your Developer Tools in the browser, click the Console tab and run the test again. See if there’s something blocking the indexing process.

    • Edwin Toonen

      Hi! I’m sorry you are running into this issue. Could you maybe run a conflict check to see if there is something conflicting with Yoast SEO and its processes? You can find out how to do that here: https://yoast.com/help/how-to-check-for-plugin-conflicts/. If this doesn’t work, you can get help in our help forums on WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wordpress-seo/. Of course, if you have Yoast SEO Premium, you can contact our support team and they’ll be happy to help you out.

    • Stephen
      Stephen  • 3 years ago

      I’m also getting same error.
      At first, When I clicked on the Start the Seo optimization button, after some hours, it got completed. Then I reloaded the page. I saw that same button “start the seo optimization “. I thought I needed to start the optimization over again. Then I clicked again, after like 1 min, I saw the error

      “Oops, something has gone wrong and we couldn’t complete the optimization of your SEO data. Please click the button again to re-start the process.”

      Does this means after the first completion, You dont need to click the button again eventhough its saying start the seo optimization?

      • Edwin Toonen

        Hi! I’m sorry you are running into this issue. Could you maybe run a conflict check to see if there is something conflicting with Yoast SEO and its processes? You can find out how to do that here: https://yoast.com/help/how-to-check-for-plugin-conflicts/. If this doesn’t work, you can get help in our help forums on WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wordpress-seo/. Of course, if you have Yoast SEO Premium, you can contact our support team and they’ll be happy to help you out.

    • Markus Domanski
      Markus Domanski  • 3 years ago

      Same here.

  29. Sim
    Sim  • 3 years ago

    Yes, you have to PAY to actually use anything that isn’t already provided by Google Trends and other tools from Google. What’s worse, you have to register at semrush and they don’t provide you a link to delete your account and information anywhere on their site, which is entirely designed to upsell you into a paid plan (almost everything has a “upgrade to use this feature”). I get the concept of freemium, and it’s ok, but you need to actually give enough value for the time we waste on your platform if you want a chance of us actually feeling like upgrading on a future ocasion.

    I tell you all to not fall for it. Just use FREE google trends.

  30. Gregorio
    Gregorio  • 3 years ago

    Quando verrà rilasciato l’aggiornamento?

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi Gregorio! Yoast SEO 15.1 has been released today, so you can update now to use the features mentioned above :)

  31. Galung
    Galung  • 3 years ago

    Bagaimana caranya memasang seo 15.1

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Hi there! If I understand correctly, you would like more info on how to install our plugin :) If you’re already a user, this page will help you upgrade to the latest version. If you’re not yet a user of our plugin, you can find more info on how to install our free plugin here and our Premium plugin here.

  32. Eby T
    Eby T  • 3 years ago

    Wow.. A cool Addition. Finally You guys are adding something that can challenge the RanKMath SEO Plugin.

    • Camille Cunningham
      Camille Cunningham  • 3 years ago

      Thank you!

  33. Charles
    Charles  • 3 years ago

    OK, this has really made me pick SEMRush over Moz – hopefully gives good results!

    • Edwin Toonen

      Cool! Hope you enjoy using it and find it helpful, Charles.

  34. Antonio
    Antonio  • 3 years ago

    Thats a nice integration… i ll think good and maybe come back to yoast… after 2 years!

    • Edwin Toonen

      That’s great to hear, Antonio!