Yoast SEO 16.6: An internal linking workout for SEO fitness

SEO is just like staying healthy — you have to work at it regularly to keep it fit. So be sure to give your site the love it needs. SEO is never a one-time thing but rather a process that will keep you busy for a long time. At Yoast, we often think about how we can help you keep your site fit. In Yoast SEO 16.6, we’re introducing a new SEO workout that helps you get (and keep!) your internal linking structure in tip-top shape.

Build your site structure and rank the right content

SEO is hard work. As SEO can be a time-consuming process, it can be terribly frustrating to see the wrong content ranking in the search results. While you can’t control everything Google does, there is a way to improve its ranking of the right article for the right keywords and search intent: great internal linking. Getting your internal links back in shape is essential — it helps you rank with the content you want to rank.

With proper internal linking, you can tell Google: “Hey, this is my cornerstone article, and you see that because I have properly linked to it from all relevant other content I have.” 

Working on your site structure is crucial — as it makes your site much easier to understand for Google and your visitors. Luckily, Yoast SEO comes with many tools and features that help you build that internal linking structure. Still, we’re missing something. A little help — an SEO workflow, if you will — that makes this crucial process insightful for you, our dear users! All of this is part of something we like to call, SEO fitness.

New SEO workout in Yoast SEO Premium: internal linking

In version 16.6, we’re introducing something new in Yoast SEO Premium: SEO workouts. The first one is all about improving internal linking based on the cornerstone approach we advocate. In six steps, you learn how to find out where your cornerstones are, how many links they have, and where you add links pointing to the cornerstone. All to help you get — and stay, SEO fit!

We don’t just show you what you need to do to get your cornerstone articles ranking, but you’ll also learn why it’s important. Then, of course, you’ll get practical tools to get to work — sometimes, straight from the SEO workflow interface. 

The internal linking SEO workout is built to make the process of thoughtfully adding more top-of-mind for people. You should regularly check for your cornerstones, and this tool can surely help you do that quickly!

Of course, this is the first SEO workout, but it won’t be the last. We have many ideas on what to tackle next. Plus, you are welcome to let us know how you find this SEO workout in the comments below this post!

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Here’s what that SEO workout looks like

The new SEO workouts will live in the Workouts section in the SEO tab. From here, you can access all the future SEO workflows, but starting with the internal linking one. 

We’ve made it possible for you to fix your cornerstone articles in six easy steps:

1. Choose your cornerstones
2. Mark them as such in the post editor
3. Check the overview to see if they are correct
4. Check the number of links to the cornerstone article
5. Add new relevant internal links to the cornerstone
6. Done! Don’t forget to give your cornerstones a check-up regularly

The SEO workflow itself is a simple flow of six steps built to be easy to understand. In it, you get everything you need to know why you are doing something and where you can do that. Sometimes, you get interactive tools that help you get stuff done immediately. For other steps, you need to be in the post editor, for instance.

We hope this workflow will make internal linking easier to understand — and to act upon. What are you waiting for, go work on your SEO fitness!

Other new improvements in Yoast SEO 16.6

Yoast SEO 16.6 also comes with a new round of improvements and fixes. We’ve updated the analysis to excludes sentences inside tables and table captions from the consecutive sentences assessment. For Premium users, we’ve also excluded the Table of Contents block from the SEO and readability analysis.

We’ve updated the SearchAction Schema.org structured data to comply with Google’s updated specifications. Thanks to Saša Todorović, we’ve added adjacent relative links (rel="prev" and rel="next") for WooCommerce and Shopify shop pages. Plus, Joshua Reynolds helped us increase compatibility for LiteSpeed web servers.

Update now to Yoast SEO 16.6

Yoast SEO 16.6 is out today. This release comes with several improvements, plus a cool new feature for Yoast SEO Premium users. The new SEO workout helps you improve your internal linking to ensure that your cornerstone content is ready to rank in no time. Stay healthy, everyone!