Yoast SEO is a plugin for WordPress that adds search engine optimization (SEO) tools to a website. A plugin is an add-on program that adds features to the WordPress content management system (CMS).
History of Yoast
Creator: Joost de Valk, search engine optimization consultant and founder of Yoast BV. Year: 2010.
Joost de Valk built Yoast SEO as a WordPress plugin. He was an SEO consultant. The plugin was then named WordPress SEO. The first version came out in 20101. De Valk founded the company Yoast BV that year. It started as a firm of consultants.
In 2012 the plugin was renamed Yoast SEO. A premium version came out too. The company also built a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. In April 2016 Yoast BV sold that plugin to another developer. Another developer renamed it MonsterInsights.
In 2015 Yoast held the first YoastCon conference in Nijmegen, Netherlands. That year, a security flaw was found in version 1.7.3.3 and earlier. The flaw could have exposed sites to attackers. A security consultant reported it.
In 2018 Yoast reported a turnover of 10 million euros. The company had almost 100 staff. Of them, 85 worked at its main office in Wijchen, Netherlands2. In June 2020 Yoast bought the Duplicate Post plugin. Wikipedia says the plugin had over 3 million users. Its original developer was Enrico Battocchi. He joined Yoast as a senior developer.
Newfold Digital bought Yoast in August 2021. Newfold Digital owns Bluehost, a hosting provider. In September 2024 Yoast added AI features to the plugin. AI stands for artificial intelligence. They change a site's SEO settings on their own. The Yoast about page says the plugin is active on over 13 million websites. It also says the company has about 110 people. Around 70 of them work in Wijchen.
Changelog and latest update
Yoast SEO releases appear on WordPress.org in a numbered series. Version 28.5 came out on 15 September 2026. Version 28.6 followed on 29 September 2026. The WordPress.org plugin page keeps the changelog for older versions on a separate page.
The changelog for version 28.6 lists bugfixes. The fixes cover the bulk editor. They also cover the settings notices for content types. It also lists two new Yoast Abilities. These let artificial intelligence (AI) agents get and update the search engine optimization (SEO) data of a post. Two new cards were added to the Integrations page. One is for the Schema aggregator. The other is for the WordPress Abilities API features.
Latest update: Yoast SEO 28.6, 2026-09-29
The WordPress.org changelog gives 29 September 2026 as the release date. That is the release date of version 28.6. The release lets the bulk editor hide post types. The SEO controls for those post types are turned off. The release adds a notice. It appears when no content types are available in the bulk editor. It fixes a console error. The error appeared when the bulk editor opened. The SEO controls were off for all post types then. The breadcrumbs toggle setting has a new name and a new description.
Usage examples
Yoast SEO runs inside WordPress. It writes its output to the page head and to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) sitemap. The examples below show four tasks. The first is a filter that changes the page title. The second is a robots.txt line that points to the sitemap. The third is a WP-CLI (WordPress command-line interface) command that updates the plugin. The fourth is a call that prints the search engine title from a PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) template. The examples assume a site with the plugin installed and active.
add_filter( 'wpseo_title',
'example_title' );
function example_title( $title ) {
return 'Our Services | ' . $title;
}The wpseo_title filter lets a developer change the title tag. Yoast SEO writes that tag into the page head. The function adds a prefix to the title that the plugin builds. The filter can go in the functions.php file of the active theme. It can also go in a site plugin.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Sitemap: https://ex.co/sitemap_index.xmlYoast SEO creates a sitemap index file named sitemap_index.xml. The Sitemap line in the robots file tells search engine crawlers where that index is. The Disallow line blocks crawlers from the WordPress admin folder.
cd /var/www/html
wp plugin update wordpress-seo
wp plugin status wordpress-seoWP-CLI is the command-line tool for WordPress. The update command installs the newest release of the wordpress-seo plugin from WordPress.org. The status command shows whether the installed version is active. Both commands run from the folder that holds the WordPress files, which the cd line sets.
<head>
<title><?php
echo esc_html(
wp_get_document_title() );
?></title>
</head>The wp_get_document_title function returns the title that WordPress builds for the current page. When Yoast SEO is active, the plugin filters that title. The esc_html function escapes the value. Escaping changes characters such as < and & so the browser shows them as text.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
Yoast SEO
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia article on the Yoast SEO plugin. It covers the first WordPress SEO release, the 2012 rename, the 2015 security flaw, the 2020 Duplicate Post acquisition and the 2021 sale to Newfold Digital.
Yoast SEO Plugin on WordPress.org
WordPress.org
The official plugin directory page. It lists the current version, the release date, the tested WordPress and PHP versions and the changelog for each release of the plugin.
Yoast SEO Plugin Information API
WordPress.org
The public data record for the plugin. It gives the current version number, the last updated date and the full changelog text in JSON format for the wordpress-seo plugin.
Yoast Home Page
Yoast BV
The official home page of the company that makes the plugin. It links to the Yoast SEO product pages, the academy courses and the blog about search engine optimization.
About Yoast
Yoast BV
The company page with the stated mission, the number of users and the number of employees. It also gives the office location in Wijchen, Netherlands, and the company culture statement.
Yoast Developer Portal
Yoast BV
The developer documentation for the plugin. It lists the filters, the hooks and the code references that developers use to change the output of Yoast SEO on a WordPress site.
What we skip, and what we set up
We do not promise a rank on Google, and we do not sell a fixed position. No honest firm can control search results. Yoast is a plugin that many WordPress owners use to set titles and descriptions. The plugin helps you check those tags. It does not decide what the words should say, and that decision is the real work.
Here is what we do instead. We write a title and a description for each page, based on what your customers search for. We check that each page has one main heading and clear links. We check the sitemap, so search engines find every page. We also confirm that the site loads well on a phone. Each step can be checked by you.
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Call 402-813-4034 to ask what we would check on your site. Tell us your goals, and we will explain each step before we start. Or see the $300 website below to begin a new build with these checks in place.
