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Yoast SEO 2.3

Joost de Valk 21 July 2015 98 , , ,
FB Yoast SEO 2 3 1200x628

We’ve just released a major release of Yoast SEO, bringing it up to version 2.3. This new version of Yoast SEO helps you optimize your site and keep it optimized. It shows errors straight from Google’s Search Console, and points you at posts that need work. But first of all, we’ve changed the name!

WordPress SEO by Yoast === Yoast SEO

Nearly everybody we know already called it “Yoast SEO”. We were stubborn enough not to do that. It used to be just “WordPress SEO”. It became “WordPress SEO by Yoast” somewhat later, now, we’ve finally caved. The plugin will henceforth be known as Yoast SEO. Somewhat in jest, we add “for WordPress” to that. We do that as we’re working on making our SEO plugin available for other platforms.

Google Search Console integration

This release brings a feature that used to be specific to Yoast SEO Premium to Yoast SEO free. Google released a new version of the API for their Webmaster Tools. It also recently renamed it to “Search Console”. This new API meant we had to rebuild things anyway and as we did that we decided to make this feature available to everyone.

The option to create redirects straight from this interface will remain premium. But if you can create redirects in another way, this is a great, free, way to make sure your site stays optimized.

See what it looks like:

Yoast SEO Google search console integration screenshot

Pointing you at posts that need work

This was actually a user submitted feature request. Brandon Hubbard suggested a widget in this GitHub issue, which we thought was a great idea. So now, when you login, you’ll see a widget like this:

Yoast SEO dashboard widget

Breadcrumbs in the customizer

If you use and like our breadcrumbs, you might like this even more. If your theme declares support for yoast-seo-breadcrumbs, we’ll automatically enable them and even add a panel to the Customizer so you can customize them:

breadcrumbs-customizer

Instructions on how to make this work with your theme(s) can be found here.

There are literally tons more small bugfixes in this release, so we’re certain we can say this is the best Yoast SEO ever. So, go update and tell us what you think!

Avatar of Joost de Valk
Joost de Valk

Joost is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Yoast. He has a long history in WordPress and digital marketing. On our blog, he has written a lot about SEO in general, technical SEO and important topics related to SEO.

Discussion (98)

  1. I got the premium plugin. Activated. Bud I do not see the “posts that need work” option. Recommendations on where I could find it? {SEO published post score}

  • Upgraded to 2.3.2 earlier this week. Getting WSOD. Have searched web and cannot find a definitive fix. I am using The Retailer theme. Would appreciate any help. I love the plugin. It’s helped me write better content. Thanks!

  • Great plugin, Joost! I’ve discovered recently and I can not stop using it! thanks

  • Hi, the new dashboard is great, but there’s one isse: currently everyone (any subscriber) can see it!. You should hide it for subscribers. You can keep it visible for administrators, editors and authors.

  • 301 redirects gone ^@%$#^%. thanks for that. just be honest , why lie about it, you do want to drag people in to buying the premium. why would you remove it and put it in the premium if not? very sneaky, but that’s the way the world works today, nothing is free. they drag you into something for free, and when the time is there, suck on this. I should not have updated the plugin. I was thinking about going premium before, but now for sure I will never do. I am going to install a 301 plugin and will continue installing other plugins if you delete other so called free functionalities indefinitely.

    bad bad yoast!

  • The widget is a huge Plus for me!
    Thanks for doing that. The fact that it is a user feedback makes it a lot more exciting!

  • Hi Guys,

    Very happy with your plugin so far!
    1) I was just looking for the 301 redirect field and it was gone :(. I use it when my products are out of stock and I set it to ‘draft’. So, I have many redirects but my questions is; where can I edit or remove them? When a product is back in stock again obviously I don’t want it to redirect anymore.
    It just seems I cannot change this? Very user unfriendly. Now I’ll have to make new posts(products) which is a lot of work?
    2) My sitename is at the beginning of EVERY post/page and I can’t get it to the end.. for SEO the keyword should come first? My settings in Yoast SEO are like they should: %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
    Any ideas how I get the sitename from the beginning to the end?

    Thanks for your time!

    Kindest,
    Kelly

  • I’m actually sad that the option to not include the post/page in the sitemap is gone, along with the redirect option. I actually used them a lot. Speed is better, I agree, but I definitely used these two options very often.

    I’m seeing mixed messages here. Are these options included in the premium version as they were, or not?

    I also agree with this hosting conversation. I’ve been super happy since moving everything to properly managed wordpress hosting.

  • I would like remove the new dashboard widget and i am using this code:

    remove_meta_box( ‘dashboard_quick_press’, ‘dashboard’, ‘side’ );

    how i can remove it?

    Thanks in advance

  • Hi, I uploaded your plugin yesterday but I was not able anymore to add new posts! When I clicked “add new” it just showed a blank page.

  • Nice update guys… really love the post overview feature! but agree Rich Snippet integration would be a great next step for the future.

  • Google Search Console integration is a great idea ! I’m going to update it today and I hope it will work for me :)

  • Having site wide NO ODP and NO YDR seems to stop Google being able to see my blog posts. I’m testing it using ‘Fetch as google’ in Google Webmaster tool and when I take off NO ODP and NO YDR it can crawl the blog post but can’t when it is. Is that right – I’m worried Google won’t pick up my blog posts.

  • Just upgraded, but Search Console isn’t working. Authentication appears to function properly, but then the Desktop, Smartphone, and Feature Phone tabs tell me:

    Fatal error: Access level to WPSEO_GSC_Table::get_bulk_actions() must be public (as in class WP_List_Table) in …plugins/wordpress-seo/admin/google_search_console/class-gsc-table.php on line 385

    Any idea what the problem is?

  • Just trying this new update and having a look around… interesting this Google Search Console integration. Thanks for giving us a better versions :)

  • Hi,

    Does this new update brings support for Thesis 2 framework?

  • Seo plugin by yoast very good during work, you should integrate google rich snippets

  • Love the new update with breadcrumb customization!

    However, I noticed an issue with my site after updating the plugin. For my paginated content, all of my pages had the canonical tag point to the base URL instead of a self-canonical (second page of blog would canonicalize to /blog/ instead of /blog/2) and the rel=next/prev tags were missing from my head section. This wasn’t an issue with the previous version.

    Any insight on this would be helpful, thanks!

  • Are there problems with the Arabic sites ?!

  • Shame on removing redirections and sitemap inclusion from advance tab…

  • I feel a bit crazy saying this, but I’ve never looked forward to plugin updates before Yoast SEO. Every time I see you’ve updated the plugin, I get a little excited to check out what’s new. You’re always adding handy stuff. You guys really go above and beyond with adding value.

    That said, if I was reallllly cheeky, I’d love to request that the new dashboard overview widget could show more than posts. I use a lot of CPTs and would be happy if the widget showed those too. I don’t think it currently does…? It’d be super handy.

    Carly.

  • I was really happy to see this update in my queue for plugins. It’s been so awesome being able to witness Yoast SEO develop itself both as a plugin and a WordPress business. I know you’ll have our business and many others’ for years to come!

  • Do you have a list of themes that support your breadcrumbs?

  • Really loved the new SEO post overview widget. Improved the SEO of posts with SEO status “OK” and “Poor”. Thanks Brandon for suggesting such a great idea.

    Also thanks for adding Google Search Console in WP Dashboard directly.

    Regards,
    Ryan

  • I would advise moving away from hostgator they caused me endless problems. Loving the new updates guys! keep up the good work.

  • After the update 18 hours ago, seo is isn’t working, it is not seen on admin page, when I tried to reinstall it is displaying plugin already exists

  • Updated yesterday and it crashed my whole site. Kept getting something like “Fatal error: Call to a member function get_queried_object() on a non-object in..”. Love this plugin, but can’t afford to have this happen – spent all day trying to fix the problem instead of doing things I should have been doing. Maybe it was something I did wrong, but I am reading now that others had this problem. Maybe it was an interaction with another plugin? Is there an easy fix if something like this happens again?

  • We’ve just pushed out a release that should prevent some of the upgrade issues people have been having.

  • Seems to be a bug preventing users from updating their passwords.

  • Just installed the update and looks really great.

    Fully integreated with google’s new search console and Yoast SEO posts overview nice features!!!!

  • Yoast -> Simple and elegant

    Just upgraded to the latest version, works perfect. I liked the Posts overview feature

    Thanks for the update.

  • Hi,
    my website just crashed after plugin update, I cannot even access to admin. I have white screen only.
    I deleted the plugin but it did not solve the problem.
    Which folder or file should I change back too?

    Thanks

  • Way to go! So now you have Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Pro. I like the way that sounds. But you know what would sound even better? Yoast SEO Enterprise. :)

  • just updated and THE hated “congratulations box” is still shownieuws up over my dashboard menu and for THE World of it I cannot close THE box.

    Support gave me an answer that requires me to go directly into THE files of THE plugin. I find that unacceptable. I did pay for THE premium version and I still have this annoying box that serves no purpose at all.

    Please Yoast can you remove this nuisance??

    Jos

  • This is a really great and useful features, I have updated my plugin.

  • Thanks for updating. It’s a life of wordpress sites. I couldn’t imagine my site ranking on google without it.

  • Just loved your update, and I appreciated the new name as well.
    Thanks a lot for your job guys, it’s really superb!

  • Just to be clear, since I’m a little confused & disappointed, are you saying there is no way to add a 301 to a post anymore, in the free version of Yoast SEO? What is your recommendation for adding 301 redirects to posts in the future?

  • hi i have a error in web master tools that’s under sitemap section
    issue – Some URLs in the Sitemap have a high response time.
    Description- Some URLs listed in this Sitemap have a high response time. This may indicate a problem with your server or with the content of the page.

    how to rectify that issue please help me out.

  • Posts overview is a great feature.
    Kudos!

  • I just updated the plugin and it broke my website. Fortunately my hosting company restored the plugin’s files specifically to a copy from yesterday morning and the site is now back up. Very unimpressed !

  • With 2.3 update:

    How can I find/edit existing 301 redirects?

    How can I find/edit existing priority settings?

    How can an editor role without access to settings edit the sitemap inclusion of a page/post?

  • Just installed the update and looks really good. Love the name change (finally) and the Search Console starting to be included.

    Really LOVE the SEO Posts Overview. Sweet feature!

  • Great update once again. Just updated the premium version but it threw out my license code. Should be an easy fix for you guys.

  • “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” said Leonardo, so conragulations for “Yoast SEO” which is an excellent name. (By the way I just upgraded. It works very well.)

  • Now redirects have been removed, what happens on sites that have redirect set up via Yoast SEO previously? I’m a little worried about updating if this will invalidate those (sometime crucial) redirects. It will also be incredibly painful to sift through every post/page on every site we manage to find if there is a redirect, then redirect them using another technique before being able to update the plugin. Also, is this removed just for posts or for posts and pages (the change log suggests just posts which I hope is true!)?

  • Looks like updating WordPress SEO Premium does not work; clicking ‘update now’ from within the plugin manager does not give any response. Tried on 3 major browsers, without success.
    I think it only affects the premium version as the free WordPress SEO is updating as normally!

  • Good idea the name change. Thumb up!