Yoast SEO 5.8

For us, these last few weeks were mostly about our SEO conference YoastCon, but work on Yoast SEO went on as well. Today, we’re proud to present Yoast SEO 5.8. In this release, you’ll find a truckload of fixes and enhancements. I’ll share some of them in this release post and I’ll shine a light on all those smart community members who helped enhance this release.

Thanks to our community

If you read the full changelog, one thing becomes instantly clear: this is a community effort. And that is something we’re grateful for. In Yoast SEO 5.8, we’ve got fixes and enhancements from no less than ten GitHub developers. Let’s go over some of these additions, shall we?

Shane GreySaša Todorović and Damian Luszczymak all made suggestions to fix the layout of the Yoast SEO metabox. These fixes make sure that everything in the readability section now performs better on all screens.

Both Chris Wilcoxson and Eivin Landa suggested introducing the wpseo_breadcrumb_single_link_info filter for modifying breadcrumb data. Soulseekah introduced the wpseo_redirect_orphan_attachment action to allow unattached attachment pages to be redirected in tune with the relevant setting.

Tim Nolte suggested removing the max-width on alerts which leads to a better UI. Thanks to William Patton the default Twitter Card option in the social sharing settings of Yoast SEO is now set to ‘Summary with large image.’

SEO roles and capabilities

In Yoast SEO 5.5, we introduced SEO roles. These make it possible to give certain editors access to particular features of Yoast SEO, like the redirect manager. This gives site managers a more fine-grained way of access management. In Yoast SEO 5.8, we’ve enhanced this features, thanks in large part to Jory Hogeveen.

We now integrate better with most role/capability manager plugins using the `members_get_capabilities` filter. We’ve also added a Yoast group to the Members and User Role Editor plugins to find the Yoast SEO capabilities easily. This makes picking and setting the roles even easier.

Cleaning up

This release not only fixes some bugs, but it also contains an extensive clean up of the code base. We’ve removed the old Knowledge Base Search code and now solely rely on the new search feature that was added to the revamped Help Center. Also, we’ve improved the codebase to make it comply with the latest WordPress Coding Standards.

Checking Gutenberg content

While a full integration into Gutenberg is still months away, we did add the possibility to check the content you made in Gutenberg. If you use the Gutenberg plugin to create your content, you can now switch to the regular editor and fine-tune your content with Yoast SEO’s readability and SEO analyses. As you might know, we’re actively working on integrating Yoast SEO in Gutenberg and improving the new editor where we can.

Update!

Yoast SEO 5.8 is a great release chock-full of fixes and enhancements. In this release, we’re both cleaning up after us and looking forward to the future. We’d like to thank our community members that contributed to this and many other releases. We love your input. Now, update!

Read more: Why every website needs Yoast SEO »

Coming up next!


18 Responses to Yoast SEO 5.8

  1. Jaxer
    Jaxer  • 6 years ago

    I had been using Yoast SEO for a while and recently moved to the Premium Version 5.8. Very pleased with all the additional functionality. Thanks to everyone involved!

  2. Datafilehost
    Datafilehost  • 6 years ago

    Thanks a lot for the update! Yoast has always been my number one plugin when it comes to fundamental on-page seo.
    great job guys!

  3. Victor
    Victor  • 6 years ago

    Hello,
    Iam new to yoast seo premium, the update to 5.8 will not work, do I something wrong or do we have any problem here ?
    I get this error message: “Download fehlgeschlagen. cURL error 51: SSL: certificate subject name ‘*.sucuri.net’ does not match target host name ‘yoast.com” so whats to do ? I use wordpress 4.9 …
    thanks

  4. Aline
    Aline  • 6 years ago

    I used the YOAST seo and i loved! but, after the update on WordPress 4.9 the Yoast don’t it worked out more. it is very sad.

  5. Abdul
    Abdul  • 6 years ago

    Waiting for Gutenberg integration!

  6. Jason Konker
    Jason Konker  • 6 years ago

    Love yoast will update sites to 5.8 and would love to make the next yoastcon.

    Jason K.

  7. Mikael Soerensen
    Mikael Soerensen  • 6 years ago

    Yoast is really my goto when doing SEO on clients, it still need a few tweaks in my opinion, but it hard to fix, since Google change their algoritme all the time (damn you Google). The meta title and description, can sometimes be to long eventhough the bar is Green.

    Pro tip, when making Meta titles and description, allways let the bar be 0.5 cm from the end, then you are sure that your titles wont dott in SERPS.

    Great read!

    • Edwin Toonen

      Thanks for the tips, Mikael!

  8. Glenn
    Glenn  • 6 years ago

    Novice or at least mid level useability is the key….make it even easier to use and KNOW what one is doing….maybe more automated stuff would be great. I have 20 years in web yet still get stuck on your UI. Updating plugins to find they stuff my site GUI etc etc. Then I have to work out HOW to get it back to the way it was etc.

    hope it helps Glenn Perth Australia

  9. Adrian
    Adrian  • 6 years ago

    It broke my site!

    • Edwin Toonen

      Are you using the Remove Yoast SEO Comments plugin? If so, there’s a conflict. Deactivate that plugin and you should be ready to go.

  10. Mark
    Mark  • 6 years ago

    I use siteorigin pagebuilder and as far as I can tell Yoast cannot read the page, because it often tells me I don’t have the keyword in my first paragraph or their is too few words. Do this update address any of that.

  11. Nick
    Nick  • 6 years ago

    Yoast SEO 5.8 – after upgrading to 5.8, a blank page.

    • Edwin Toonen

      Are you using the Remove Yoast SEO Comments plugin? If so, there’s a conflict. Deactivate that plugin and you should be ready to go.

  12. NogenTech
    NogenTech  • 6 years ago

    Wow, its mean SEO made more easy for beginners as well as for experts. Personally, I am also using Yoast for my tech blog and going to replace the old version.

  13. Gavin
    Gavin  • 6 years ago

    Very informative, it helps a lot

  14. charlotte bell
    charlotte bell  • 6 years ago

    I’m finding this frustrating. Now you have this RYTE which is like learning a entire new thing. I do not want this.
    Google is now asking me to install the optimize plug in and I can’t figure this out either.
    Help

    • desert safari deals
      desert safari deals  • 6 years ago

      This plugin is fantastic. And yeah thanks for the update.