In episode 48, we talk with Joost de Valk from Yoast.com about how to get the most from his SEO plugin that has 1 million plus active installs on WordPress sites throughout the world. As a long-time user of this plugin, I wanted to dive into how store owners can get the most out of it on their eCommerce site. Listen in as we hear some great tips straight from Yoast, as well as some interesting news around WooCommerce and Yoast.com.

We chatted about:

* The top three benefits of using Yoast SEO plugin with your online store

* How important AMP is and how it works with his plugin

* What redirect rules you should follow when removing products from your site

* The most common mistake store owners make— and the solution

* The future of the WooCommerce extension

Thanks To Our Podcast Sponsor: Mode Effect

Transcript

You can download the transcript of this show at: The WP eCommerce Show Transcript Februrary 1 2017

Bob Dunn: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the WP eCommerce Show. Bob Dunn here. Also known as BobWP on the web. Today we are lucky to have the founder of the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress on the show and, yes, I’m talking about Joost and his Yoast SEO plugin. Chances are if you have a WordPress site, you are using his plugin. I’ve been using it myself for as long as I can remember. Today we are going to talk more about the eCommerce aspect of the plugin, but before we dive into it, I would let to tell you a bit about today’s sponsor

Joost de Valk: Well, thank you.

Bob Dunn: You are coming from across the pond. Way across. Actually across the United States for me and the pond.

Joost de Valk: Yeah, no, I am. I’m in lovely Europe where it’s not sunny or warm. I hail from the Netherlands, as does most of our team.

Bob Dunn: Yeah. We’re in the Pacific Northwest. Washington State. We’re rainy and not sunny and warm either.

Joost de Valk: Okay.

Bob Dunn: So I can relate.

Joost de Valk: Good.

Yoast in a nutshell

Bob Dunn: Well, I’m excited to hear about the nitty-gritty around your plugin and eCommerce, but first for those who don’t know what you do beyond the plugin, can you give us that in a nutshell?

Joost de Valk: We do a lot of things. The plugin by now has become the biggest part of our business, but we have services around that and some other plugins like a local SEO plugin and a new SEO plugin, etc., that sit on top of Yoast SEO or Yoast SEO Premium. We have an SEO care service that’s actually sold out at the moment so I can promo it, but you can’t buy it, where we help you … Give you monthly advice on how to improve your site. Then I still do some consulting on the side as an SEO consultant for some of the bigger brands in the world.

Bob Dunn: It’s all SEO all the time, right?

Joost de Valk: Well, yeah. To be honest, the type of consulting I do becomes more digital strategy than just SEO because it’s usually at board level for pretty high … Large companies. Stuff I did, for instance, the migration of The Guardian from theguardian.co.uk to the theguardian.com. Those kinds of projects are what I like to do and what I get asked for a lot.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, boy, I bet that was a huge undertaking.

Joost de Valk: That was ridiculous. It took us a year and a half and it was … Yeah. Some of the best team I’ve ever worked with and it was a gigantic piece of work.

Bob Dunn: I can imagine. Well, I’m going to dive right into these questions and hopefully they won’t take us a year and a half to answer.

Joost de Valk: No.