Yoast SEO 21.2: An updated sidebar

Hot on the heels of our AI release comes Yoast SEO 21.2. Always committed to helping businesses grow and attract more traffic, this new release is packed with enhancements and fixes to improve your experience and site’s SEO. Find out more!

What’s new?

The update to our sidebar is particularly interesting in the 21.2 release of Yoast SEO. We’re always looking for ways to make our SEO plugins more intuitive and easy to use. This led us to rethink how we organize our sidebar.

Firstly, we’ve renamed the ‘Google preview’ section to ‘Search appearance.’ This new title better reflects the function of this section. Namely, giving you an accurate depiction of how your post or page will appear in the search engine results.

Similarly, what you previously knew as ‘Social previews’ — i.e., X, the app formerly known as Twitter and Facebook previews — is now appropriately titled ‘Social media appearance. This gives you a clearer idea of how your content will display across various social media platforms. Checking your social media appearance is a Yoast SEO Premium feature.

Additionally, not only have we renamed these sections, but they also now come with new, distinctive icons. These changes make spotting these sections more straightforward, making your SEO process more efficient and effective.

How your content appears to users, whether on search engines or social media, can significantly affect click-through rates. These updates provide a superior ability to manage and optimize how your content will look, thereby enhancing your potential visibility and traffic.

New and improved Yoast SEO sidebar in the block editor

Dropping support for WordPress 6.1

We’ll drop support for WordPress 6.1 in Yoast SEO 21.2 to stay ahead with technology and provide optimal performance. This change will allow us to utilize advanced features and improvements to the newer WordPress versions. Thus, we highly recommend users of WordPress 6.1 upgrade to enjoy enhanced performance, security, and features offered in newer versions alongside the best Yoast SEO.

Update and optimize!

We want to keep Yoast SEO as the best tool for all your SEO needs. We’re confident you’ll find this updated version helpful. As always, we remain committed to helping you optimize your site, attract more organic traffic, and earn higher visibility!

Update now to the latest version of Yoast SEO and enjoy an optimized, user-friendly, and results-driven SEO experience! Effective SEO is a continuous process, so stay tuned for future updates and enhancements as we refine Yoast SEO to serve you better.

Coming up next!


4 Responses to Yoast SEO 21.2: An updated sidebar

  1. Sports Therapy
    Sports Therapy  • 11 months ago

    Hello Yoast team,

    Since the new update (19/9) I have problem with Facebook post preview. When I am in the post editor, almost ready to publish it, I can see the image preview. But since I press publish, image preview is gone and my post seems just gray/transparent on Facebook. How can I fix it?

    I haven’t changed anything in the plugin settings, I have a free version(not Premium), I have also tried to change 2-3 featured images and images formats, also I tried Facebook Link Debugger so many times and still nothing. Twitter seems to work fine to me.

    Thank you in advance

    • Cindy Paul
      Cindy Paul  • 11 months ago

      Hi! Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, Facebook is having issues. But the good news is that it’s not because of our newest release!

      • Maria Lizeth
        Maria Lizeth  • 11 months ago

        Hello, I am having the same problem, I also work with the free version, and I have already tried on two different domains and it is not pulling the images of the urls on Facebook, I also tried with the Facebook Debugger and nothing, even the urls that before If they showed me an image, I have debugged them again and it has removed the image. Are you sure it’s Facebook?

        • Cindy Paul
          Cindy Paul  • 11 months ago

          Hi, Maria! Our support team has looked further into this matter. Because websites like Amazon and Wikipedia are also affected while checking via the Facebook debugger, it’s a strong indication that the issue is not caused by us but by Facebook. Hope that helps!