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Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a web design magazine, where he learned how to create great content.

You can find Edwin on: Twitter

In 2006, after working full time in a bookstore for many years, I boldly decided to return to school. I wanted to combine my love for writing with the lure of the internet, so I picked Digital Communication at the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem. Four years later, I graduated with honors.

In the meantime, I started working for The Netherlands’ largest monthly magazine on web design and development. As a managing editor, I wrote, edited, and translated hundreds of articles on this fascinating subject. I also made sure the magazine’s day-to-day operations went according to plan.

At Yoast, I do much of the same work, except on a bigger scale. As a content specialist, I am responsible for delivering quality content that is engaging and optimal.

In my spare time, I love rocking my 1972 Fender Precision bass with my band (Every Other Me), fiddling about with synthesizers, listening to music, watching an endless stream of – classic – movies, taking long cycling trips, and enjoying life with my sons and girlfriend.

Edwin

First things first: writing content with the inverted pyramid style

7 September 2018 | 33 Comments Edwin Toonen

Journalists have been using the inverted pyramid writing style for ages. Using it, you put your most important information upfront. Don’t hedge. Don’t bury your key point halfway down the third paragraph. And don’t hold back; tell the complete story in the first paragraph. Even online, this writing style holds up pretty well for some […]

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First things first: writing content with the inverted pyramid style

Yoast SEO 8.1: Gutenberg part 2, introducing the snippet preview

28 August 2018 | 22 Comments Edwin Toonen

Two weeks ago, we launched Yoast SEO 8.0. In it, we shipped the first part of our integration with Gutenberg: the sidebar. That release was the foundation on which we are building the next parts of our integration with the new WordPress editor. In Yoast SEO 8.1, we introduce part 2: a Gutenberg-proof snippet preview. […]

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Yoast SEO 8.1: Gutenberg part 2, introducing the snippet preview


Yoast SEO 7.8: Synonyms and keyword distribution

Semantics is hard. What does a certain word mean in a specific situation? Which ‘mars’ are you talking about? Have you ever tried to discover all definitions of ‘run’? In most cases, context is everything. You can help humans and machines understand a text better by adding context. This is one of the reasons Yoast […]

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Yoast SEO 7.8: Synonyms and keyword distribution

Yoast SEO 7.7: New snippet editor & better snippet variables

The snippet editor is one of the core pieces of technology in Yoast SEO. It helps you build snippets that truly stand out in the search results to get you traffic. To make this vital piece future-proof and to update it with new features, we needed to rebuild it. In Yoast SEO 7.7, you’ll find […]

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Yoast SEO 7.7: New snippet editor & better snippet variables

Yoast SEO 7.6: Shorter meta descriptions are back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, it was fun while it lasted. In Yoast SEO 7.6, we’re reverting the snippet length for meta descriptions in the snippet editor to follow Google’s latest change. That’s not all though, we’ve also updated our support for the Russian language, added transition words for Catalan, redirect support for WP-CLI and fixed several bugs. Find […]

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Yoast SEO 7.6: Shorter meta descriptions are back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Structured data for recipes: getting content read out loud

Do you have a recipe site? If so, you might already be using structured data to mark up your recipes so they can get highlighted in the search results. Good work! But, Google recently made some changes that might make your implementation incomplete. It also expanded the possibilities of structured data for recipes by bringing […]

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Structured data for recipes: getting content read out loud

Yoast SEO 7.5: Привет, Россия

The Russian language is huge; 265 million people have Russian as their first or second language, making it the world’s eighth most used language. What’s more, according to W3Techs Russian is the second most used language online — following English by a huge margin. As of today, all of the Russian language WordPress users can […]

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Yoast SEO 7.5: Привет, Россия

Yoast SEO 7.4: Enhanced image support

Please welcome to the stage: Yoast SEO 7.4! In this release, we’ve squashed a number of bugs and focused on enhancing the way Yoast SEO works with Open Graph images. We also made some other enhancements that improve the way the plugin functions. Happy updating! Improved handling of images Images are very important for several […]

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Yoast SEO 7.4: Enhanced image support