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Yoast SEO 9.4

Content analysis recalibration (beta):

  • Adds a toggle feature for subscribing to the recalibration beta under SEO -> General -> Features.

  • When the recalibration feature is enabled:

  • The single title assessment is added. This assessment makes sure that you don't use superfluous H1s in your text.

  • Assessments changes:

  • Keyphrase density: changes scoring schema to account for the length of the keyphrase and changes feedback strings so that we give feedback about the number of occurrences rather than a percentage.

  • Outbound links assessment: changes the scoring schema so that red bullet instead of an orange bullet is shown when you have no outbound links.

  • Image alt attributes: if there are at least 5 images, checks whether the alt tags contain the keyphrase or synoynyms in 30-70% of all images. If there are less than 5 images, 1 image with the keyphrase or synonym in the alt tag is still scored as good.

  • Keyphrase in title: function words preceding the exact match keyphrase are ignored when determining the position of the keyphrase in the title.

  • Keyphrase length: makes the scoring scheme less strict for languages that don't have function word support, so that for these languages keyphrases with 1-6 words are scored as green, 7-9 as orange, and more than 9 as red.

  • Keyphrase in subheading: only takes H2 and H3 level subheadings into account and changes the scoring schema so that 30%-75% of these subheadings need to include the keyphrase or its synonyms. In languages without function word support, a match is only counted if all the words from the keyphrase/synonym appear in the subheading.

  • Text length: on taxonomy pages, the recommended minimum text length is increased from 150 to 250 words.

  • Assessment removals:

  • The assessment checking the length or your URL.

  • The assessment checking whether your URL contains stopwords.

Enhancements​

  • Improve accessibility of the analysis results.
  • Improve accessibility of the Title Separator setting.
  • Adds a new filter for adjacent-rel links: wpseo_adjacent_rel_url.

Bugfixes​

  • Fixes a bug where special characters from certain word lists weren't correctly escaped when matched with a regex. This resulted in eggs being incorrectly matched as the transition word e.g., for example.
  • Fixes a bug where the search appearance setting for a custom content type named profile would have a broken layout.
  • Fixes a bug where pagination elements were not shown in the Genesis theme.

Other​

  • Uses method is_simple_page instead of is_singular in method robots. Props to: stodorovic
  • Adds method is_woocommerce_active and check is woocommerce activate before registering hooks. Props to stodorovic
  • Adds static variables to "cache" results of functions is_shop and wc_get_page_id. Props to stodorovic
  • Verifies that variable post is an instance of WP_Post in WPSEO_Admin_Bar_Menu get_singular_post(). Props to @yingles.
  • Improves strings to be more easily translated. Props to pedro-mendonca
  • The browser console now shows more descriptive error messages when something went wrong during analyses in the web worker.
  • Avoids irrelevant warning and error in the WPEngine PHP Compatibility plugin.