=== WordPress SEO by Yoast ===
Contributors: joostdevalk
Donate link: https://yoast.com/
License: GPLv3
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Tags: seo, SEO, Yoast SEO, google, meta, meta description, search engine optimization, xml sitemap, xml sitemaps, google sitemap, sitemap, sitemaps, robots meta, rss, rss footer, yahoo, bing, news sitemaps, XML News Sitemaps, WordPress SEO, WordPress SEO by Yoast, yoast, multisite, canonical, nofollow, noindex, keywords, meta keywords, description, webmaster tools, google webmaster tools, seo pack
Requires at least: 3.9
Tested up to: 4.2
Stable tag: 2.2.1

Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin.

== Description ==

WordPress out of the box is already technically quite a good platform for SEO, this was true when Joost wrote his original [WordPress SEO](https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/) article in 2008 (and updated every few months) and it's still true today, but that doesn't mean you can't improve it further! This plugin is written from the ground up by Joost de Valk and his team at [Yoast](https://yoast.com/) to improve your site's SEO on *all* needed aspects. While this [WordPress SEO plugin](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/) goes the extra mile to take care of all the technical optimization, more on that below, it first and foremost helps you write better content.  WordPress SEO forces you to choose a focus keyword when you're writing your articles, and then makes sure you use that focus keyword everywhere.

> <strong>Premium Support</strong><br>
> The Yoast team does not provide support for the WordPress SEO plugin on the WordPress.org forums. One on one email support is available to people who bought the [Premium WordPress SEO plugin](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo-premium/) only.
> Note that the Premium SEO plugin has several extra features too so it might be well worth your investment!
>
> You should also check out the [Local SEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/local-seo/), [News SEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/news-seo/) and [Video SEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/video-seo/) extensions to WordPress SEO, these of course come with support too.

Take a look at the explanation of the General tab in WordPress SEO, this is one of the 13 tutorial videos included in the [Premium version of WordPress SEO](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo-premium/):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co5TjUwqWIQ&w=532&rel=0

> <strong>Bug Reports</strong><br>
> Bug reports for WordPress SEO are [welcomed on GitHub](https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo). Please note GitHub is _not_ a support forum and issues that aren't properly qualified as bugs will be closed.

= Write better content with WordPress SEO =
Using the snippet preview you can see a rendering of what your post or page will look like in the search results, whether your title is too long or too short and your meta description makes sense in the context of a search result. This way the plugin will help you not only increase rankings but also increase the click through for organic search results.

= Page Analysis =
The WordPress SEO plugins [Page Analysis](https://yoast.com/content-seo-wordpress-linkdex/) functionality checks simple things you're bound to forget. It checks, for instance, if you have images in your post and whether they have an alt tag containing the focus keyword for that post. It also checks whether your posts are long enough, if you've written a meta description and if that meta description contains your focus keyword, if you've used any subheadings within your post, etc. etc.

The plugin also allows you to write meta titles and descriptions for all your category, tag and custom taxonomy archives, giving you the option to further optimize those pages.

Combined, this plugin makes sure that your content is the type of content search engines will love!

= Technical WordPress Search Engine Optimization =
While out of the box WordPress is pretty good for SEO, it needs some tweaks here and there. This WordPress SEO plugin guides you through some of the settings needed, for instance by reminding you to enable pretty permalinks. But it also goes beyond that, by automatically optimizing and inserting the meta tags and link elements that Google and other search engines like so much:

= Meta & Link Elements =
With the WordPress SEO plugin you can control which pages Google shows in its search results and which pages it doesn't show. By default, it will tell search engines to index all of your pages, including category and tag archives, but only show the first pages in the search results. It's not very useful for a user to end up on the third page of your "personal" category, right?

WordPress itself only shows canonical link elements on single pages, WordPress SEO makes it output canonical link elements everywhere. Google has recently announced they would also use `rel="next"` and `rel="prev"` link elements in the `head` section of your paginated archives, this plugin adds those automatically, see [this post](https://yoast.com/rel-next-prev-paginated-archives/ title="rel=next & rel=prev for paginated archives") for more info.

= XML Sitemaps =
Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin has the most advanced XML Sitemaps functionality in any WordPress plugin. Once you check the box, it automatically creates XML sitemaps and notifies Google & Bing of the sitemaps existence. These XML sitemaps include the images in your posts & pages too, so that your images may be found better in the search engines too.

These XML Sitemaps will even work on large sites, because of how they're created, using one index sitemap that links to sub-sitemaps for each 1,000 posts. They will also work with custom post types and custom taxonomies automatically, while giving you the option to remove those from the XML sitemap should you wish to.

Because of using [XSL stylesheets for these XML Sitemaps](https://yoast.com/xsl-stylesheet-xml-sitemap/), the XML sitemaps are easily readable for the human eye too, so you can spot things that shouldn't be in there.

= RSS Optimization =
Are you being outranked by scrapers? Instead of cursing at them, use them to your advantage! By automatically adding a link to your RSS feed pointing back to the original article, you're telling the search engine where they should be looking for the original. This way, the WordPress SEO plugin increases your own chance of ranking for your chosen keywords and gets rid of scrapers in one go!

= Breadcrumbs =
If your theme is compatible, and themes based on Genesis or by WooThemes for instance often are, you can use the built-in Breadcrumbs functionality. This allows you to create an easy navigation that is great for both users and search engines and will support the search engines in understanding the structure of your site.

Making your theme compatible isn't hard either, check [these instructions](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/breadcrumbs/).

= Edit your .htaccess and robots.txt file =
Using the built-in file editor you can edit your WordPress blogs .htaccess and robots.txt file, giving you direct access to the two most powerful files, from an SEO perspective, in your WordPress install.

= Social Integration =
SEO and Social Media are heavily intertwined, that's why this plugin also comes with a Facebook OpenGraph implementation and will soon also support Google+ sharing tags.

= Multi-Site Compatible =
The Yoast SEO plugin, unlike some others, is fully Multi-Site compatible. The XML Sitemaps work fine in all setups and you even have the option, in the Network settings, to copy the settings from one blog to another, or make blogs default to the settings for a specific blog.

= Import & Export functionality =
If you have multiple blogs, setting up plugins like this one on all of them might seem like a daunting task. Except that it's not, because what you can do is simple: you set up the plugin once. You then export your settings and simply import them on all your other sites. It's that simple!

= Import functionality for other WordPress SEO plugins =
If you've used All In One SEO Pack or HeadSpace2 before using this plugin, you might want to import all your old titles and descriptions. You can do that easily using the built-in import functionality. There's also import functionality for some of the older Yoast plugins like Robots Meta and RSS footer.

Should you have a need to import from another SEO plugin to Yoast SEO or from a theme like Genesis or Thesis, you can use the [SEO Data Transporter](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-data-transporter/) plugin, that'll easily convert your SEO meta data from and to a whole set of plugins like Platinum SEO, SEO Ultimate, Greg's High Performance SEO and themes like Headway, Hybrid, WooFramework, Catalyst etc.

Read [this migration guide](https://yoast.com/all-in-one-seo-pack-migration/) if you still have questions about migrating from another SEO plugin to WordPress SEO.

= WordPress SEO Plugin in your Language! =
Currently a huge translation project is underway, translating WordPress SEO in as much as 24 languages. So far, the translations for French and Dutch are complete, but we still need help on a lot of other languages, so if you're good at translating, please join us at [translate.yoast.com](http://translate.yoast.com).

= News SEO =
Be sure to also check out the premium [News SEO module](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/news-seo/) if you need Google News Sitemaps. It tightly integrates with WordPress SEO to give you the combined power of News Sitemaps and full Search Engine Optimization.

= Further Reading =
For more info, check out the following articles:

* The [WordPress SEO Knowledgebase](http://kb.yoast.com/category/42-wordpress-seo).
* [WordPress SEO - The definitive Guide by Yoast](https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/).
* Once you have great SEO, you'll need the [best WordPress Hosting](https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-hosting/).
* The [WordPress SEO Plugin](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/) official homepage.
* Other [WordPress Plugins](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/) by the same author.
* Follow Yoast on [Facebook](https://facebook.com/yoast) & [Twitter](http://twitter.com/yoast).

= Tags =
seo, SEO, Yoast SEO, google, meta, meta description, search engine optimization, xml sitemap, xml sitemaps, google sitemap, sitemap, sitemaps, robots meta, rss, rss footer, yahoo, bing, news sitemaps, XML News Sitemaps, WordPress SEO, WordPress SEO by Yoast, yoast, multisite, canonical, nofollow, noindex, keywords, meta keywords, description, webmaster tools, google webmaster tools, seo pack

== Installation ==

1. Upload the `wordpress-seo` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
1. Activate the WordPress SEO plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
1. Configure the plugin by going to the `SEO` menu that appears in your admin menu

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

You'll find the [FAQ on Yoast.com](https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/faq/).

== Screenshots ==

1. The WordPress SEO plugin general meta box. You'll see this on edit post pages, for posts, pages and custom post types.
2. Some of the sites using this WordPress SEO plugin.
3. The WordPress SEO settings for a taxonomy.
4. The fully configurable XML sitemap for WordPress SEO.
5. Easily import SEO data from All In One SEO pack and HeadSpace2 SEO.
6. Example of the Page Analysis functionality.
7. The advanced section of the WordPress SEO meta box.

== Changelog ==

= 2.2.1 =

Release Date: June 11th, 2015

* Makes sure users can close the tour by circumventing possible JavaScript caching issues that might occur.

= 2.2 =

Release Date: June 10th, 2015

* Enhancements:
	* Contains several accessibility improvements, including 'for' attributes for labels and several links to explanatory articles.
	* Adds support for creating partial sitemaps with WP CLI, props [Lars Schenk](https://github.com/larsschenk).
	* Add Google's mobile friendly test to the SEO toolbar, props [Brandon Hubbard](https://github.com/bhubbard).
	* Makes sure slugs are not being stripped if the remaining slug is less than 3 characters, props [andyexeter](https://github.com/andyexeter).
	* Shows an activation error when dependencies were not installed properly with composer.
	* Added a filter to allow the RSS footer to be dynamically shown/hidden, props [Hugh Lashbrooke](https://github.com/hlashbrooke).
	* Added many translator comments to help translators more easily get the context.
	* Made sure Open Graph article tags are added separately, following up on the Open Graph specification.
	* Adds recommended image sizes per Social network in the social tab of the 	SEO metabox.
	* Removes the tracking functionality.
	* Shows a dismissible notice with a link to the about page that is shown after every update. The user is no longer being redirected and only has to dismiss the notice once for all sites (in case of multisite).
	* Adds a link to the about page to the general tab of the settings dashboard.
	* Makes the tour dismissible on user level.
	* Adds Twitter profile to JSON LD output.
	* Twitter profile input field now also accepts full url and automatically strips it down to just the username.
	* Only adds the JSON LD output to the frontpage, since it's not needed on other pages.
	* Makes all WordPress SEO by Yoast notices dismissible.

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where the widgets were removed from every XML file. This is now only the case for the sitemaps.
	* Fixes a bug where validation errors were shown for the wrong variables in the titles and metas settings.
	* Fixes a bug where the SEO toolbar was broken.
	* Fixes a few typo's, props [Gary Jones](https://github.com/GaryJones).
	* Fixes a bug where links in tooltips were not impossible to click.
	* Fixes a broken link to the permalinks section of the advanced settings, props [Michael Nordmeyer](https://github.com/michaelnordmeyer).
	* Fixes settings import on multisite.
	* Fixes a bug where the sitemap could contain datetimes in the wrong timezone.
	* Fixes a bug where the wrong Facebook user ID was added to the fb:admins meta tag. Adding FB admin user id is now a manual process.
	* Fixed Open Graph and Twitter cards on static posts pages
	* Fixes a bug where sitemap cache was not always cleared after saving the WordPress SEO by Yoast settings.

* Security:
	* Fixes a possible XSS vulnerability in the snippet preview. Thanks [Charles Neill](https://twitter.com/ccneill) and [Mazen Gamal](https://twitter.com/mazengamal) for discovering and responsibly disclosing this issue.

= 2.1.1 =

Release Date: April 21st, 2015

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where the JSON+LD output was outputted twice when company or person info wasn't set.
	* Fixes a compatibility issue with Video SEO and WooCommerce SEO add-ons causing WSOD on the frontend for video's and WooCommerce products.
	* Fixes a compatibility issue with BBPress caused by hooking `current_user_can` too early.

= 2.1 =

Release Date: April 20th, 2015

* Features:
	* Added support for [website name JSON+LD markup](https://developers.google.com/structured-data/site-name).

* Enhancements:
	* Makes sure Twitter cards are by default enabled since they don't need to be validated anymore by Twitter.
	* Removes the Twitter url meta tag, since Twitter no longer uses it.
	* Shows a validation error when a user selects a featured image for a post that is smaller than 200x200 pixels.
	* Shows a validation error when a user tries to use shortcodes in the titles and meta's settings page that are incompatible with the type of content those titles and meta's are associated with.
	* Makes sure no taxonomy metadata is lost with the upcoming 4.2 version of WordPress.
	* Upgraded to Facebook Graph API 3.0 for fetching Facebook user ID's straight from Facebook.
	* Made the plugin conflict notices more user friendly, explaining better which piece of functionality might be impacted, offering a link to the corresponding settings and a button to deactivate the conflicting plugin.

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where the sitemaps were no longer being served from WP transient cache.
	* Fixes a bug where breadcrumbs weren't nested properly.
	* Fixes a possible "headers already sent" error in the sitemaps.
	* Fixes a notice for the homepage URL in post type sitemaps.
	* Fixes an "undefined index" notice on the sitemaps.
	* Fixes an "undefined index" notice in the breadcrumbs.
	* Fixes a bug where translations were not loaded when used as MU-plugin.
	* Fixes a JS error that was raised when editing post-types without a TinyMCE editor.

* Security:
	* Fixes a possible XSS vulnerability. Thanks [Johannes Schmitt](https://github.com/schmittjoh) from [Scrutinizer CI](https://scrutinizer-ci.com/) for discovering and responsibly disclosing this issue.

= 2.0.1 =

Release Date: April 1st, 2015

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes an issue where (in rare cases) people upgrading to 2.0 got stuck in a redirect loop on their admin.
	* Fixes a broken link in the Dutch translation, causing the Pinterest tab on the Social settings page to overflow into the Google+ tab.
	* Fixes a small typo on the about page.

= 2.0 =

Release Date: March 26th, 2015

* Features:
	* Simplified and revised Admin menu's:
		* Moved all advanced functionality to one "Advanced" submenu page.
		* Moved the bulk editor, the export functionality and the file editor to one "Tools" submenu page.
		* Improved consistency and usability of settings pages by having them use exactly the same, tab-based, styling.
	* Made it easy to output structured data for social profiles, person and company profiles, for use in Google Knowledge Graph.

* Enhancements:
	* Makes sure the user is redirected to the last active settings tab after saving.

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where custom field variables were no longer working in the snippet preview.
	* Fixes a bug where the $post global was emptied by our Frontend class, causing conflicts with other plugins.
	* Fixes a bug where variables weren't replaced in the og:description meta tag.
	* Fixes a bug where the breadcrumbs caused an undefined variable notice.

* Under the hood:
	* Contains an incredible amount of code style improvements, making the code cleaner and more readable.
	* Makes sure every function in the plugin is documented using PHPDoc by having it checked automatically by the Codesniffer.
	* Refactored a lot of legacy code in the admin, mainly with regard to the way output is rendered. Provides for a better separation of concerns, making the code more comprehensible and re-usable.
	* Deprecated a large amount of form methods and moved them to the `Yoast_Form` class. Click [here](https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/blob/add975664d1f160eed262b02327a93bda5488f8b/admin/class-config.php#L172) for the list of deprecated methods.
	* Deprecated a large amount of utility functions and moved them to the `WPSEO_Utils` class. Click [here](https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/blob/add975664d1f160eed262b02327a93bda5488f8b/inc/wpseo-functions.php#L496) for the list of deprecated functions.

= 1.7.4 =

Release Date: March 11th, 2015

* Security fix: fixed possible CSRF and blind SQL injection vulnerabilities in bulk editor. Added strict sanitation to order_by and order params. Added extra nonce checks on requests sending additional parameters. Minimal capability needed to access the bulk editor is now Editor. Thanks [Ryan Dewhurst](https://github.com/ethicalhack3r) from WPScan for discovering and responsibly disclosing this issue.

= 1.7.3.3 =

Release Date: February 23rd, 2015

* Bugfixes:
	* Repair missing dependencies...

= 1.7.3.2 =

Release Date: February 23rd, 2015

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where the rel="next" and rel="prev" links were broken for all taxonomies.
	* Removes an obsolete quote from the html for the seo metabox.

= 1.7.3.1 =

Release Date: February 19th, 2015

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where the keyword analysis was broken.
	* Fixes a bug where our plugin raised a fatal error in the wpseo_admin bar when the $wpseo_front global was used.

= 1.7.3 =

Release Date: February 17th, 2015

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where the translations were corrupted due to an issue with out glotpress grunt task.

= 1.7.2 =

Release Date: February 17th, 2015

* Enhancements:
	* Contains lots of performance optimizations, including removal of unnecessary inclusion and defined checks for every classfile, refactoring of frontend logic, cutting unnecessary inheritance chains et. al.
	* Adds Twitter gallery cards.
	* Adds Twitter cards for non singular pages (including Homepage).
	* Allows archive titles & meta to be set on non public post types that do have a public archive, props [xeeeveee](https://github.com/xeeeveee).
	* Huge performance gain for `enrich_defaults()`, props [Koen Van den Wijngaert](https://github.com/vdwijngaert).
	* Nextscripts removed from the OG conflict list.
	* Added full Composer support, switched to Composer for dependency management and autoloading.

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where new posts weren't always added to the post sitemap properly in case of multiple sitemaps.
	* Fixes a grammatical error in the tutorial.
	* Fixes a bug where %%currentyear%% shortcode wasn't parsed well in the meta description.
	* Fixes an undefined index notice in the opengraph functionality.
	* Fixes a bug where variable placeholders were not always assigned the correct value, props [Andy Sozot](https://github.com/sozot) for reporting and [Juliette](https://github.com/jrfnl) for fixing.
	* Fixes a bug with SEO score on servers using international number formats.
	* Fixes broken backward compatibility / snippet preview, props [Juliette](https://github.com/jrfnl).
	* Fixes a bug where the %%page%% shortcode wasn't properly rendered in the titles and meta's.
	* Fixes a bug where custom replacement variables where not properly rendered when using them in multiple fields.
	* Fixes at least a large part of the keyword density 0% issues.
	* Corrected price on WooCommerce SEO banner.

= 1.7.1 =

* Security fix: fixed possible cross scripting issue with encoded entities in a post title. This could potentially allow an author on your site to execute JavaScript when you visit that posts edit page, allowing them to do rights expansion or otherwise. Thanks to [Joe Hoyle](http://www.joehoyle.co.uk/) for responsibly disclosing this issue.

= 1.7 =

* Features:
	* Adds Twitter inputs to the Social tab.
	* Tries to purge Facebook cache when OpenGraph settings are edited.
	* Added a new box promoting our translation site for non en_US users.
	* Added several new tools (Pinterest Rich Pins, HTML Validation, CSS Validation, Google PageSpeed), props [bhubbard](https://github.com/bhubbard)

* Enhancements:
	* Functionality change: when there's a featured image, output only that for both Twitter and FB, ignore other images in post.
	* UX change: rework logic for showing networks on Social tab, social network no longer shows on social tabs if not enabled in admin.
	* Always output a specific Twitter title and description, as otherwise we can't overwrite them from metabox.
    * Check for conflicts with other plugins doing XML sitemaps or OpenGraph.
    * Qtip library replaced with Qtip2.
    * Merged several similar translation strings, props [@ramiy](https://github.com/ramiy)
    * Several RTL improvements, props [@ramiy](https://github.com/ramiy)
    * Several Typo fixes, props [@ramiy](https://github.com/ramiy)
    * Updated Open Site Explorer Link, props [bhubbard](https://github.com/bhubbard)
    * Updated all links to use // instead of https:// and http://, props [bhubbard](https://github.com/bhubbard)
    * When importing from AIOSEO, on finding GA settings, advertise Yoast GA plugin.
    * Makes sure stopwords are only removed from slug on publication.
    * Updated translations.

* Bugfixes:
	* Fixes a bug where the wrong image was being displayed in twitter cards.
	* Fixes a bug where facebook would display the wrong image.
	* Fixes a bug where last modified in sitemap was broken.
	* Fixes a bug wher SEO-score heading made the table row jump on hover because there wasn't enough place left for the down arrow.
	* Removed a couple of languages that were not up to date.

= Earlier versions =

For the changelog of earlier versions, please refer to the separate changelog.txt file.


== Upgrade Notice ==

= 1.5.0 =
* Major overhaul of the way the plugin deals with option. Upgrade highly recommended. Please do verify your settings after the upgrade.
