Today we’re releasing Yoast SEO 3.4, a release mostly aimed at improving our accessibility. Which means you won’t see most of the changes, but they’ll make a world of difference to others. We’ve also improved our readability checks and how we deal with some languages, more on that below.
Before we dive in, if you want to learn more about accessibility and other essential SEO skills, you should check out our All-around SEO training! It doesn’t just tell you about SEO: it makes sure you know how to put these skills into actual practice!!
Accessibility changes
When we hired Andrea a while back (more on that here), we knew we were in for a treat. He’s one of the leading accessibility developers for WordPress, and he didn’t disappoint. This release is, in large part, his work. Improving accessibility means a ton of small changes, and we have the changelog to show for it.
Some simple highlights that show that where accessibility is concerned, the devil is in the details:
Improved the headings hierarchy on several admin pages.
Improved the knowledge base search and admin menu by making it focusable and operable with a keyboard.
Adding labels and titles to several fields.
Readability checks
We’ve added one readability check this release. The plugin now warns you if you start 3 or more consecutive sentences with the same word. We’ve also improved the wording on some checks. Yoast SEO can now deal with characters with diacritics correctly in 75 languages.
The choice is yours!
As of this release you can disable the SEO analysis. You can also disable the readability analysis. You can do this just for yourself, or an admin can do it for an entire site. If you disable both, you’ve got just our snippet preview left. We’d obviously recommend using both features, but if you don’t want to, the choice is now yours!
Update!
We’ve, of course, fixed bugs in Yoast SEO and quite a few of the Yoast SEO extensions too. So… Go update!
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.
February 20 - 22, 2025
Team Yoast is at Attending, Sponsoring, Yoast Booth Wordcamp Asia 2025! Click through to see who will be there, what we will do, and more!
See where you can find us next »
16 January 2025
Learn how to start your SEO journey the right way with our free webinar. Get practical tips and answers to all your questions in the live Q&A!
All Yoast SEO webinars »
10 Responses to Yoast SEO 3.4: accessibility first
Heather @MySweetMission.net • 8 years ago
Hello. First of all, I love the Yoast plugin. But, recently I updated to the 3.4 version and lost ALL my “Readability” markups! My page views were slightly decreasing, so I had to update over 400 posts to get my readability lights back! It was very time consuming and I don’t want this to happen again – please!
Question: Is there a way to update my Yoast plugin (free version) without this happening to my posts again?
Thank you in advance,
Heather
David • 8 years ago
I really enjoy reading your article. Thanks for Information about SEO Tips.
Cory SEO • 8 years ago
Good Post guys again!
I use yoast and always find it useful for clients and always reccomend it. I hardly ever have any issues with it!
Derek • 8 years ago
Are you sure the permission on the Yoast plugin folder in your hosting account didn’t get changed when updated? For some odd reason after upgrading my premium version, I had to reset permissions in my plugin folder. After that the whole plugin works as it should be working.
Marisa Franca @ All Our Way • 8 years ago
I just read John’s comment above and the quote of what you wrote. Is this what happened to my site? I can guarantee I didn’t disable anything and neither did anybody else. How can I get the readability and SEO analysis functioning again?
Marisa Franca @ All Our Way • 8 years ago
Since I updated yesterday I’ve lost all Yoast SEO information on my page. No snippet editor or analysis. I don’t have the little light that tells me when I’m on track. I’ve looked everywhere to see if there is a place to turn on but there isn’t. It says I’m up to date. What is going on? I really rely on this plugin.
John • 8 years ago
“As of this release you can disable the SEO analysis. You can also disable the readability analysis. You can do this just for yourself, or an admin can do it for an entire site.”
Great. How?
Terry • 8 years ago
updated today and all pages used to read good on flesch reading test now after update all read “0” !!!! ?????
^ Post author
Joost de Valk • 8 years ago
Hey Terry, do you get any JavaScript errors in your browser’s JS console?
If you don’t know how to see that check this guide:
Hello. First of all, I love the Yoast plugin. But, recently I updated to the 3.4 version and lost ALL my “Readability” markups! My page views were slightly decreasing, so I had to update over 400 posts to get my readability lights back! It was very time consuming and I don’t want this to happen again – please!
Question: Is there a way to update my Yoast plugin (free version) without this happening to my posts again?
Thank you in advance,
Heather
I really enjoy reading your article. Thanks for Information about SEO Tips.
Good Post guys again!
I use yoast and always find it useful for clients and always reccomend it. I hardly ever have any issues with it!
Are you sure the permission on the Yoast plugin folder in your hosting account didn’t get changed when updated? For some odd reason after upgrading my premium version, I had to reset permissions in my plugin folder. After that the whole plugin works as it should be working.
I just read John’s comment above and the quote of what you wrote. Is this what happened to my site? I can guarantee I didn’t disable anything and neither did anybody else. How can I get the readability and SEO analysis functioning again?
Since I updated yesterday I’ve lost all Yoast SEO information on my page. No snippet editor or analysis. I don’t have the little light that tells me when I’m on track. I’ve looked everywhere to see if there is a place to turn on but there isn’t. It says I’m up to date. What is going on? I really rely on this plugin.
“As of this release you can disable the SEO analysis. You can also disable the readability analysis. You can do this just for yourself, or an admin can do it for an entire site.”
Great. How?
updated today and all pages used to read good on flesch reading test now after update all read “0” !!!! ?????
Hey Terry, do you get any JavaScript errors in your browser’s JS console?
If you don’t know how to see that check this guide:
https://yoast.com/help/how-to-find-javascript-errors-with-your-browsers-console/
It’s good I visited this morning. I’m updating, thanks!