Our WordPress SEO plugin has been getting more and more downloads, bringing it to the top of the most downloaded plugin chart on WordPress.org fairly regularly. With that comes more interest from other developers as well, which is something we absolutely love, but is kind of impossible to manage properly on WordPress.org. Which is why we’ve now decided to fully move to Github. New developer Recently there were some unfortunate events in the US which caused BlueGlass, a company lots of my … [Read more...]
April 17, 2013 By
Why we moved to all email support
When we started doing premium WordPress plugins, we also added a support forum to yoast.com. Many people liked this but I was, to be honest, skeptic. My experience with the WordPress.org forums are … Poor, at best. I just don’t think forums work very well, in large part because there is an ever continuing tendency for people to comment on someone else’s thread, saying they have the same issue, when in fact the two are entirely unrelated. We gave it our best shot though, we used … [Read more...]
April 8, 2013 By
The future of SEO plugins for WordPress
I find myself becoming more and more defensive of WordPress SEO plugins, my own in particular. When people make jokes about them I tend to get angry, which is perhaps a stupid reaction, but it made me think: why would people make jokes about them, are they that stupid? What does the future hold for those plugins and what do they really do? So I went and installed and played with a ton of SEO plugins. My conclusion: hardly any of the new ones are original or truly add value, but they all promise … [Read more...]
March 26, 2013 By
Why Google won’t display the right page title
Lately we’ve been inundated, literally, with support requests for WordPress SEO and its premium add-ons, all asking one “simple” thing: why isn’t Google picking up my page title? People who changed their page title and see that the search results still show their old title are bound to think Google didn’t “get” the new title yet and of course they blame their SEO plugin (sigh). Well, this time, it’s not our fault… Google does all sorts of … [Read more...]
March 25, 2013 By
Why I Switched to Copyblogger’s Synthesis Managed WordPress Hosting
Last thursday, I migrated Yoast.com to Synthesis, the managed WordPress hosting platform operated by Copyblogger Media. Previously this site had been hosted on a VPS.net Cloud Server, which was rock solid as this site grew to almost a million pageviews per month. VPS.net is fast, affordable, provides good support, and I continue to recommend them. But there are features of Synthesis that I realized I could no longer live without. Optimized WordPress Performance First, I don’t want to do my … [Read more...]
March 22, 2013 By
On focus, and how we’re slowly changing our business model
Warning: this isn’t the usual SEO / WordPress related post, but more of a “personal” post about how I’ve gone about building and changing my / our business. When I started Yoast, then called Altha, it was just me, doing web development for a few clients here and there. It was a side job to my consulting jobs at online marketing agencies. My WordPress plugins were just a hobby and not something I thought I could ever make a living from. In 2010 I decided I was going to go … [Read more...]
November 1, 2012 By
Video not showing in search results: why?
In helping out people who are using my Video SEO plugin, I’m finding that some sites get “hit” by what I now call the “Not really a video page” effect. While it’s a pretty rare phenomenon I thought it was a good idea to share with the wider community and see what one can do about it.After installing my video SEO plugin there are a few things that can happen, usually after having waited for about a week / two weeks:It works, and the video thumbnails start … [Read more...]
October 10, 2012 By
Video SEO plugin video
I’ve been very hard at work with the Video SEO plugin, adding support for the most used video embed plugins for WordPress. See the changelog for specifics. The plugin is, I’m proud to say, selling well and people seem to be loving it. I’m also working on another project with the guys from Video User Manuals and they, very kindly, made a video for the Video SEO plugin that I just had to share with you as it shows just how easy the plugin is to use:Click here to view the … [Read more...]
