Yoast SEO continues to add support for structured data with its 11.2 update. This latest version of the plugin lets webmasters insert their own pieces of schema into Yoast’s graph, filter out pieces they don’t want shown to search engines, as well as add or delete social profiles.
Why we should care. Structured data can help search engines make sense of your content and is used to generate rich results. Although it won’t improve your rankings, it may enhance how your listings appear in SERPs. Being able to dictate what structured data gets shown to search engines can provide additional flexibility that you can use to customize how searchers are presented with your content.
More on the update. This update enables webmasters to add to Yoast’s schema graph with the wpseo_schema_graph_pieces filter. Conversely, the new wpseo_schema_needs_<class_name> filter lets you disable or enable particular parts of the graph. And, the wpseo_schema_person_social_profiles filter can be used to add or remove social profiles.
The plugin also now automatically picks the first image in a piece of content to include in the schema output (if a featured image isn’t set), includes a filter for adding posts with custom post statuses to the sitemap as well as general bug fixes.
A lot can happen in a month. Released in mid-April, Yoast SEO 11.0 offered a revamped schema implementation that can help users display the correct information in Google Knowledge Panels and extended support to Pinterest’s Rich Pins. It also facilitated content showing up in Google News, products appearing in search results and improved local snippets (if the corresponding Yoast add-on was used).
About two weeks after, image and video schema were added with the 11.1 update.
About The Author
George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.