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Yoast SEO 4.0: lightning fast internal linking

Joost de Valk 13 December 2016 83 , , ,

After months of hard work, we are ready to show Yoast SEO 4.0 to the world. In this version, we’re shipping an awesome Premium feature that many of you will find very, very helpful. We’ve figured out how to make the search for related posts to link to, fast and faultless. In this post, we’ll explain what you can expect.

Historically, related links plugins did one thing well: add unnecessary overhead to your site. The performance was less than stellar and the search results subpar. In addition to that, related posts were often presented in a separate box, instead of directly in the post, where they belong. It’s hard to solve this complex issue, but we’ve managed to do itPremium customers of Yoast SEO will now find a new box on the right-hand side of your site, called Yoast Internal Linking. This box shows a couple of links that are proven to be relevant to the text you are working on. It uses the most prominent words from the previously introduced Yoast SEO Insights tool to find posts that use the same words.

We all know the best links in your posts are the ones you pick out yourself. So now, after you’ve written a couple of hundred words, the related post tool will automatically kick in and give you linking suggestions. You can easily visit the link to check out the article or directly copy the link by clicking on the icon next to it. Or, if your browser supports it, drag and drop the link in your post. To use the internal linking tool, you need WordPress 4.7 or the REST API plugin.

Lightning fast, faultless linking

Every calculation is done in the browser, using the words in Yoast Insights. After figuring out the twenty most prominent words in your post, the tool sends a request to the server to get the best fitting articles. It presents the returned posts in a list, where the number one result fits the best with the article you are writing. The more matching words are found in an article, the higher it appears on the list.

To get the most out of the internal linking tool, you need to calculate the most prominent words for your complete site. To help you with that, you can now find a feature in the General settings tab called Internal linking, where you can turn on the analysis it needs to do its work. The initial indexing process may take a while, depending on the size of your site. You can see the progress in the tab. In the future, we will be making it even faster. In addition to that, we will also introduce a CLI that large scale sites can use to trigger the indexing process.

We’ve been using Yoast SEO 4.0 Premium on yoast.com for some time, and we’re madly in love with it. We are sure you will value it as much as we do. Don’t use Yoast SEO Premium yet? Well, now is a great time to buy a license!

Yoast Insights and Internal Linking
Left: prominent words for a certain post. Right: the suggestions Yoast Internal Linking gives

Updates in Yoast SEO 4.0

Besides the very useful Internal Linking feature in Yoast SEO 4.0 Premium, there are also some nice additions to the regular version. It’s now fully compatible with WordPress 4.7, including support for the user selectable language in the dashboard. We’ve also been working hard on improving the support in the content analysis for French and German. We understand transition words in French better. Manuel Augustin helped us add support for the recognition of passive voice in German.

We hope you are as excited as we are! Download the new version now and let us know what you think. We love to hear from you.

You can find the complete changelog on WordPress.org.

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 (83)

  1. I have been using free version of your plugin, it was helping me a lot. But now I think I need to upgrade because the new feature of internal linking will save our lot of time. Thanks for this idea.

  • Trying to figure out how to work with the new feature – but it is not calculating prominent words. We have thousands of posts – many of which are in “Private” (we’re working to clear them out). Is there a way to limit the analysis to just our “Published” posts which would make things much faster, hopefully?

  • Hi, sounds useful, however all our sites use custom post types, so looking forward to these being included!

  • Thanks for adding support for Pages! We’ve already started taking advantage of this new feature. Can’t wait till you add support for Custom Post Types.

  • Hi,
    First of all: love your plugin but I don’t see the the internal linking windows anywhere? Do I need to do something extra?

  • Hi,
    Thanks for adding the internal linking option. I’m in the process of making the sitewide analysis and it’s long, very long as I have thousands of posts.
    The problem is that if I shut down the computer or lose my internet connection (which happen not far than one hour before), I need to restart the process from the beginning. It could be nice to have an option to restart from where it stop?
    Thanks for the great job!

  • I installed SEO 4.0 Premium, but I sure don’t see the above date as describe per the article above. it would be nice to learn how to turn it on. All I see is a Yoast box with three icons. Not to informative. Looks like I will have to hire someone to figure this out.

  • Well-done yoast team. Really good work :)

  • Hello, I installed 4.0, but found support my language yet. When You’re trying to add support for the Russian language for Yoast SEO Insights tool and internal linking?

  • There is also a conflict with the hyperlink feature in wordpress. The “link options” button does not work.
    Also, when I want to switch to the “text” editor it does not work either.
    All above problems are corrected when I deactivate the yoast premium plugin.

  • If I purchase the premium version but let it lapse after a year, will the internal links I’ve created go away?

  • Hi I am having the same problem with editing with Yoast SEO 4.0, has there been a fix done yet?

  • Just update to 4.0, After a long period of announcements about 4.0 is coming, Now i found all well till the moment,
    Good Work Team !

  • I have the same issue others have noted – I am unable to edit any of my pages or posts as my default editor and the Avada Fusion Editor are both missing unless I disable the Yoast plugin. This issue is new with 4.0 can’t see any files from the Dashboard
    sportstrips.com

  • I Confirm.
    Yoast 4.0 conflicts with Visual Composer 5.0.1.
    Does anyone have a workaround or how do I downgrade version?

  • I have the same issue others have noted – I am unable to edit any of my pages or posts as my default editor and the Avada Fusion Editor are both missing unless I disable the Yoast plugin. This issue is new with 4.0

  • I hope German will follow quickly to get the internal linking, so I can handcraft my related posts instead of the slow plugin that I use.

  • First, thanks for the best SEO plugin. i much appreciated.
    there is an issue with the new version! I have updated my Yoast SEO Premium plugin to version 4 just now, but it have a conflict with “WPBakery Visual Composer” plugin. After updating, i become can’t edit my site page with Visual Composer any more.
    in order to be sure about that, i deactivated the Yoast SEO Premium 4 and tested to edit my site pages again and I found Visual Composer back to work again. so please consider to fix this conflict very soon.

  • I have a big problem after updating, Visual Composer not appear in the backend, and if I disable YastSEO work correctly. Please fix ASAP this problem

  • so internal linking feature only work with posts? Can I call out the “Site Wide Analysis” tab as being a little disingenuous then. The feature should really work with Pages as well from the start. It should also work with WooCommerce products further down the line.

    Whilst I’m in a bitchin mode the prominent words feature doesn’t ignore [shortcode text] on pages either. If i use the [box] shortcode this is highlighted as the prominent phrase.

  • I have WP 4.7, english site and premium plugin 4.0 activated. The free yoast version is deactivated. In my posts I see the “Internal Linking” window and the yoast logo flashing in the window with no other content in it. What do I do wrong? Do I need to delete the free version of yoast?

  • I have had premium for quite a while. Since upgrading to 4.0 I can see the internal linking tool. However, Prominent words no longer show.

    using version 4.7

    Post word count 663 – Once you add a bit more copy, we’ll give you a list of words and word combination that occur the most in the content. These give an indication of what your content focuses on.

    This feature was working before 4.0

    Site wide analysis

    Prominent words
    717 total posts
    0 posts with prominent words
    717 posts without prominent words

  • It does not work if with the premiun version or with the REST API plugin

  • The video on internal linking isn’t working. If I have an active premium version, do I need to purchase it again or will all of the new features come with regular update?

  • Omar what REST API of all is?

  • You have launched the version 4.0, I have updated yoast and I do not see the site wide analysis

  • For me the same here. Just bought SEO 4.0. NO Site Wide Analysis. No linking box in the posts of pages.

    First Updated the free version
    Deactivated the free version
    Uploaded the Premium 4.0 version
    Activated the Premium 4.0 version

  • I just upgraded my Premium version to 4.0 but i can’t see the new feature. Can you help me?

  • Hello,

    I just upgraded to version 4.0 (I have WP 4.7) but I cannot see the “Site wide analysis” tab in the dashboard or the “Yoast Internal Linking”. Any thoughts ?

    Thank you in advance.

  • No, can´t find the new feature either.

  • Hi,

    just purchased Yoast SEO Premium 4.0 a few moments ago, but there is no “site wide analysis” tab in the settings. I am using WordPress 4.7.

  • Just downloaded but cant se the new features

  • Sounds great Yoast, the only thing is.. after the update to wordpress 4.7 and SEO Premium 4.0 i can’t find the internal linking tool??

    Thanks a lot for helping me out.

  • I’ve already update to WordPress 4.7 and Yoast SEO Premium 4.0, but I can’t see the new ‘Internal Linking’ suggesting box. It’s there are something more that I need to turn on or update?

  • Just downloaded on all websites and this looks very interesting indeed! Well done being and continuing to be innovative.

    Most of my websites have mostly Pages instead of Posts, as the content is “ever green”. Might you extend this to cover Pages as well in the future perhaps?

    Thanks again.

  • Great Joost!
    This plugin better with that features!
    i really love it!