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#39 – Marieke Van De Rakt & Taco Verdonschot on Yoast, the Past, Present and Future

On the podcast today we have Marieke Van De Rakt & Taco Verdonschot, and they’re both from Yoast SEO.

I think it’s quite likely that you’ve heard of Yoast SEO, but in case you have not, it’s a very popular WordPress SEO plugin, installed over 5 million times. They’ve been optimising websites for many years and make significant contributions to the WordPress project, committing to Core, sponsoring events and many other things.

I sat down with them both at WordCamp Europe and we talked about some of the recent changes that have taken place within the company.

Having worked hard to build and maintain their company’s reputation, they decided that it was time to steer the business in a new direction by selling it to Newfold Digital. We get into the reasons for this acquisition and the subsequent reshuffling of the management of the company. What were the details of that agreement, why did they join forces with Newfold Digital in particular, and how has the acquisition gone?

We also talk about their longstanding commitment to contributing back to the WordPress project. Why have they done this and what benefits have they seen from this approach? Why do they bring so many of their team to WordCamps?

Although Yoast is well known in the WordPress space, they recently brought their product into an entirely new market, Shopify. This has led them to create a SaaS version of their SEO solution and has brought them into contact with a completely new market. How has this move gone and does it mean they’re moving away from WordPress?

Typically, when we record the podcast, there’s not a lot of background noise, but that’s not always the case with these WordCamp Europe interviews. We were competing against crowds and the air-conditioning. Whilst the podcasts are more than listenable, I hope that you understand that the vagaries of the real world were at play.

Useful links.

Kagi search engine

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast, which is dedicated to all things wordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, running a successful WordPress plugin business.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast, player of choice. Or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy and paste that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m very keen to hear from you and hopefully get you all your idea featured on the show. Head over to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox. And use the contact form there.

So on the podcast today, we have Marieke Van De Rakt & Taco Verdonschot. And they’re both from Yoast SEO.

I think it’s quite likely that you’ve heard of Yoast SEO, but in case you have not, it’s a very popular WordPress SEO plugin installed over 5 million times. They’ve been optimizing websites for many years and make significant contributions to the WordPress project, committing to Core, sponsoring events and many other things. I sat down with them both at WordCamp Europe, and we talked about some of the recent changes that have taken place within the company.

Having worked hard to build and maintain their company’s reputation, they decided that it was time to steer the business in a new direction by selling it to Newfold Digital. We get into the reasons for this acquisition and the subsequent reshuffling of the management of the company. What were the details of that agreement? Why did they join forces with Newfold Digital in particular? And how has the acquisition gone?

We also talk about their long standing commitment to contributing back to the WordPress project. Why have they done this? And what benefits have they seen from this approach? Why do they bring so many of their team to WordCamps?

Although Yost is well-known in the WordPress space they recently brought their product into an entirely new market, Shopify. This has led them to create a SaaS version of their SEO solution and has brought them into contact with a completely new market. How has this move gone? And does it mean they’re moving away from WordPress?

Typically when we record the podcast there’s not a lot of background noise, but that’s not always the case with these WordCamp Europe interviews. We were competing against crowds and the air conditioning. And whilst the podcasts are more than listable. I hope that you understand that the vagaries of the real world were at play.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you’ll find all of the other episodes as well. And so without further delay, I bring you. Marieke Van De Rakt & Taco Verdonschot.

I am joined on the podcast today by Marieke van de Rakt and Taco, go on.

[00:03:48] Taco Verdonschot: Verdonschot.

[00:03:49] Nathan Wrigley: I tried that many, many times in the past. How are you both doing?

[00:03:53] Taco Verdonschot: All good.

[00:03:53] Marieke van de Rakt: Yeah. Great, great, great being back at an in-person event.

[00:03:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. What are your thoughts about that. Genuinely, what are your thoughts about being back in in-person events? Because I know the Pavlovian response is, it’s great to be back. I think that, but is there any bit of you, which is mmm?

[00:04:08] Marieke van de Rakt: I have a hard time recognizing people because it’s been two years. I see now that everybody has that problem, so it’s like, I know you I’ve danced with you. I don’t know who you are.

[00:04:20] Taco Verdonschot: And especially when people are masked. You just see the eyes and, and if they like gained a lot of weight or became a bit grayer like me. Or lost a lot of weight, there’s definitely.

[00:04:33] Marieke van de Rakt: It’s harder.

[00:04:34] Taco Verdonschot: It’s a change and with a mask on it’s a lot harder to recognize people. So I’m really happy with the badges that have the names on both sides. Which means that it will at least always give a clue and not be turned the wrong way like sometimes happens at WordCamps. Yeah.

[00:04:50] Marieke van de Rakt: So I think it’s good being back, but it’s also, it’s different. It’s just, it’s been a while seeing people in such a way. We’ve talked online, but that’s really different.

[00:05:01] Nathan Wrigley: For me what’s strange, and I know this is gonna sound ridiculous, is that you are not this big and I’m making a gesture about six inches high, but also you both have entire bodies. It’s not just from the sort of waist up. We are on contributor today, so basically very little has happened so far. But what are your expectations of this event? What does Yoast bring when it comes to an event like this? What are you hoping to do? Do you have like a battle plan? Do you just bring the whole team and just see how it goes? I know you’ve got sponsorships and lots of things like that. So tell us what your agenda is.

[00:05:32] Taco Verdonschot: We’re sponsoring, as you said, and we brought a nice booth. There will be activities, and of course there will be stroopwafels, loads of them. So make sure that if you’re here you don’t miss out.

[00:05:43] Nathan Wrigley: I’m gonna pause you there because I don’t know what that is.

[00:05:46] Marieke van de Rakt: You don’t know what stroopwafels are?

[00:05:49] Nathan Wrigley: No

[00:05:50] Marieke van de Rakt:You can have like a lot of them because we don’t bring them back anymore. Right?

[00:05:52] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah. So stroopwafels are cookies, are waffles with sort of a caramel in between. And they are delicious. That’s that just says it.

[00:06:04] Nathan Wrigley: In the brief time that I’ve been around the auditorium, you win in terms of t-shirt density.

[00:06:11] Marieke van de Rakt: I saw the same thing. I think a lot of companies don’t give their employees, t-shirts to wear or different ones. We also, because I have a new one actually Taco but it’s exactly the same color, so it matches.

[00:06:23] Nathan Wrigley: And there’s nobody with the purple, so it genuinely stands out. But it also means, I think, that you bring a big team. Which also tells me that you’ve got a big team. 140, something like that? And I was looking earlier today at the stats for contributions in the version 6.0 of WordPress. Automattic, always the big circle and then there’s companies, which are vying for second, third. And it always seems like Yoast is number two by a long way. Is that a big part of the Yoast system? Do you encourage your team to contribute and all of that?

[00:06:58] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah, so we have a Core team. That’s four people working full time on WordPress Core. And that’s a big part. We also host internal contributor days. Well, actually we’ve opened them up to the community. So everyone can join remotely, or at the office nowadays. One of the reasons why you’re seeing so many of the purple shirts today is because our entire team is signed up for contributor day, and everyone is contributing to WordPress today. So probably you’ll see more brands and, and more colors tomorrow, but bringing people to contributor day is definitely a part of who we are.

[00:07:35] Marieke van de Rakt: It’s what got us started. So we are really invested in making WordPress better, because that’s just what we’ve been doing from even before Yoast was a company.

[00:07:44] Nathan Wrigley: It’s been an exceptional commitment though. It’s not an ordinary commitment.

[00:07:48] Marieke van de Rakt: I think so, too. So I, I’m really glad you’re saying that. We have an exceptional commitment to making that better. And I think more companies should follow that lead because that way we can really make it better together. So we can bitch with each other about what should be better, or we can just sit down and make sure the work gets done.

[00:08:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. It’s been a busy couple of years for Yoast. Obviously there’s been the pandemic. Presumably you had to figure out what the office looked like or didn’t look like and what zoom calls you were gonna foist on people and so on and so forth. You mentioned that you’re back to the office a bit. But apart from all of that, there’s been quite a lot of personnel change, especially recently. Joost as in Joost, the man not the product, has changed roles. You’ve changed roles. Taco has got a new role. I saw a photo the other day with several people who’ve got new roles. Tell us a little bit about that. What brought that about, and then maybe we’ll get into the acquisition piece.

[00:08:42] Marieke van de Rakt: Yeah. Well, because that was the trigger. I think about a year before we had the acquisition, we started the process. I already knew that I wouldn’t want to be the CEO of the company anymore. I think that role is really, it’s a really heavy one, and it’s also a very public one, and it’s just been tough. And COVID was tough. So, when we decided to sell, I already knew that I wouldn’t want to be the CEO of the company anymore, but I still wanted to work there. But go back to a role I had before I was the CEO.

So I think the acquisition got us all into that change process. So the first thing was that I announced that I wasn’t going to be the CEO. Now, Joost is an advisor. Omar left. Our CTO, well, I just texted him that I really miss him. But I also understand we’ve been doing this for quite some time.

Joost himself got a bit bored, not with WordPress though, but with SEO, and wants to do other things as well. And is currently experienced a lot of FOMO he said. But he’ll be here tomorrow. So he’ll be on Friday. He said to me, oh, you’re all contributing and I’m just writing a blog post.

So, yeah, those things changed, and I’m really excited because we, um, we now have room for new people to grow because you could see Yoast as this big old oak, and that’s good and that’s solid. But it also takes away the sun for other trees to grow. So now it’s the time for at least within Yoast, to have new talent and new leadership.

[00:10:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Okay, so just sticking to the top tier management, just run us through the changes. Who’s now in? Who’s got those key top tier jobs?

[00:10:25] Taco Verdonschot: So I think that list should always start with Thijs, our CEO. He took over that role from Marieke, I think last year, October.

[00:10:34] Marieke van de Rakt: Somewhere like that.

[00:10:35] Taco Verdonschot: Around that time, and then as of April this year we had the bigger change, that we introduced a seven people leadership team. So that’s obviously Marieke as head of strategy. That’s Chaya as chief operations officer.

[00:10:51] Marieke van de Rakt: She was already also in the old board. She came in COVID time. So this is her first WordCamp. She was with us for quite some time.

[00:10:58] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah, and then there’s four new names, and that’s Irene on the R and D side. Inge on the marketing side. Herre for all the technical stuff. And me as a head of relations.

[00:11:12] Marieke van de Rakt: And those four have been working with us for more than five years. All of them. Yeah.

[00:11:16] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah. All of those.

[00:11:17] Nathan Wrigley: So if we rewind the clock about five years, it feels like nobody was being acquired in WordPress. It was all very quiet. And then about four years ago it began. And then two years ago it was really, there was a daily news cycle of somebody’s been bought in the WordPress space. And then you came in and I must admit I follow the WordPress news pretty closely. I didn’t see that one coming. Tell us how that came about. How far do we need to go back before the dates that it was announced, when all the negotiations started, and why you mentioned that Yoast himself was getting a bit bored. But for other reasons, I’m sure as well, why did that process begin? And how long was that process?

[00:11:54] Marieke van de Rakt: So we talked to parties before just because you get a lot of questions. So it’s not that we never thought about a possible acquisition or funding before. But we’re totally bootstraped, and I think Christmas 2020, so the first COVID Christmas, that was when Joost and I decided we should sell or get major funding. And the major reason was that COVID got us scared. We were doing great but it was so much work. We sell in dollars, so we make money in dollars, but all of our costs are in euros. And that makes you very vulnerable for the exchange rate of the dollar.

And that’s something you can’t control. And with a hundred, I don’t know 125 people on your payroll, the responsibility was weighing heavily on both of us, and that’s just something that we didn’t want to do anymore. So then we hired, we hired a banker actually. Someone who helps you to sell your company. And we’ve talked to a lot of, well, the usual suspects. Then decided eventually to sell to Newfold.

[00:13:03] Nathan Wrigley: So what was it about the offer that they presented, which said, okay, that’s it, the green light over there. Was there something in particular? Were there any red lines that you presented to them? Right, this cannot happen, if we’re gonna sell to anybody. Yeah, just that kind of idea. What were the things that gave the green light to them and not to others?

[00:13:19] Marieke van de Rakt: So when we were selling, we thought about three things. We thought about ourselves. What’s good for us. And then we thought about what’s good for Yoast the company, and what’s good for WordPress. So we wouldn’t sell to a company that would just do things that would be bad for WordPress. And we won’t sell to a company that would say you have fire half of your staff or something like that. So would be good for our employees. It would be a good fit for WordPress. And I think the offer of Newfold, Newfold wanted to buy us because of our commitments in WordPress.

So they were impressed with our WordPress Core team. They wanted to do more in WordPress and, so them inquiring us was part of their mission to show we love WordPress, which is the best reason to buy us, I think. And I thought their leadership was really diverse. And I’ve talked to a lot of boards and they’re mostly male and white and a bit gray, and there’s nothing wrong with people that are male and white and gray. But it’s nice to see some diversity in that. Well Newfold Digital is led by a woman. I’m really impressed by her. So that was at least, for me personally, a big reason to choose for them as well.

[00:14:33] Nathan Wrigley: It’s a name which doesn’t roll off the tongue. What I mean by that is, you know, everybody’s heard of Yoast, everybody’s heard of Automattic, but maybe not so much Newfold Digital. Can you just tell the listeners which bits of Newfold Digital may we have heard of before? Because I know they’re a company which are behind other companies.

[00:14:48] Marieke van de Rakt: They only exist for like a year and a half now and they’ve been combined. So the Endurance group, which Blue Host is the biggest brand. And then you have the web dot com side, but that’s not a WordPress side. And those two companies were combined into Newfold Digital, and they only existed like a half year and then they acquired Yoast. So it’s a really new brand.

[00:15:09] Nathan Wrigley: In terms of job stability and all of those kind of things, you mentioned that that was an important part. How’s that going,? Have roles changed? Has the company still got the same focus that it had a year ago? Well, let’s not say a year, six months ago, or have you noticed any changes and I’m firing this one at Taco.

[00:15:27] Taco Verdonschot: So yes, there have been changes due to what we just described in, in changing in leadership, but in terms of direction of the company, it’s not that Newfold comes in and says, Hey, you need to go left or you need to go right. For exactly what Marieke just told, is they bought us for what we do and who we are. That’s still true today. So they kept their word from that whole process and are still supporting us in being Yoast and offering SEO for everyone.

Have there been changes in the company in the last six months? Yes, we, we are slowly changing. The workforce landscape is changing, and we’re changing with it. But nothing forced by the acquisition. This would’ve happened anyway if we weren’t sold.

[00:16:14] Marieke van de Rakt: Ah, and nobody left after the acquisition for a few months.

[00:16:17] Taco Verdonschot: No.

[00:16:18] Marieke van de Rakt: So that wasn’t related to that.

[00:16:20] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah.

[00:16:20] Marieke van de Rakt: I think the biggest change was just that the office is opened up again. And so everything’s different.

[00:16:26] Nathan Wrigley: In terms of how the company can behave, the inflow of money I presume, you mentioned payroll and how concerning that was. Does that kind of thing evaporate a little bit more? Do you need to worry it a little bit less about payroll, because that’s now worried about somewhere further up the food chain?

[00:16:42] Marieke van de Rakt: For me that’s changed dramatically. So I used to look at the sales every day. I think Joost would look at it every hour, and see if it’s all going well and that changed, and that gave us a lot of… I was talking to Joshua Strebel, who of course also sold and to like, taking a coat off, that’s what it is. It’s taking a coat off, and I still feel a huge responsibility of getting that company with new leadership into a stable, good new path, but it’s different.

[00:17:11] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah. The funny thing is for me, it’s quite the opposite.

[00:17:14] Marieke van de Rakt: Yes.

[00:17:14] Taco Verdonschot: Because before, Marieke and the rest of the board would take away all those financial concerns from even the highest management level.

[00:17:25] Marieke van de Rakt: That wasn’t the best idea though.

[00:17:26] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah.

[00:17:26] Marieke van de Rakt: We did that. We never told anybody about our financial stress. We were doing great, but we were experiencing, oh, we have to grow, and…

[00:17:34] Taco Verdonschot: That was really something that was kept away, and now with, my new role, I’m suddenly seeing all the numbers and seeing what the numbers mean and how they influence decisions that we’re making in the company and vice versa, how decisions are influencing our, our revenue stream or our cost. And that’s a whole new world. So, for me, I’m looking more at numbers and for you, it’s obviously with less worry than before. Yeah, we, we found common ground now.

[00:18:05] Nathan Wrigley: Two years ago, or whenever it was 2019, if we’d have had this same interview, we would’ve been talking about Yoast SEO and nothing more. But now we can talk about Shopify. That’s a big change. A giant of a platform. Just give us the theory behind why Shopify? Why not, I don’t know something else like Drupal, or some other thing like Squarespace? Is that product receiving the same care and attention, shall we say as the WordPress side? Do you have any plans to go into other CMSs, maybe SaaS products, like I said, Wix and Squarespace and so on.

You don’t have to release any of that valuable information if you don’t want to of course. But tell us about the Shopify thing first. Whoever wants to take that.

[00:18:43] Marieke van de Rakt: We have a TYPO3 extension, of course.

[00:18:45] Taco Verdonschot: Yes and Neos as well.

[00:18:47] Marieke van de Rakt: So we, we had some before, but we, as a pact internally would say that we wouldn’t do any non open source CMSs, but still we are doing Shopify. So we made the decision, partly because we wanted to be less dependent on WordPress, because although we love WordPress, it’s very scary if you bet all your money on one thing. So it could be a wise business decision to go into Shopify.

They asked us to come. So Shopify wanted to improve their SEO so they worked together with us. They asked us can you build Yoast SEO for Shopify? So that was a big reason, and their core values are pretty aligned with us. So that was the thing. Okay, we’re going to let go of the open source part because they’re really for the small businesses.

So it’s either Amazon because that’s how people sell, but at least on Shopify, you have your own website, your own store, and that’s really important. So that’s why I think why we decided Shopify.

[00:19:44] Taco Verdonschot: And I think it’s the close source system or SaaS that comes closest to the open source mindset, because it really supports the small businesses, and you can get started super easily on Shopify and anyone and everyone can start a shop. And that is different for a lot of other systems.

[00:20:06] Marieke van de Rakt: And it’s growing like crazy. So it’s also a really good business opportunity.

[00:20:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah I have no insight into how that’s going. So it is growing.

[00:20:15] Marieke van de Rakt: Yes.

[00:20:16] Nathan Wrigley: Are you growing with it? Is it taking you along for the ride? Basically, has it been a good move?

[00:20:18] Marieke van de Rakt: Well, We’ve built the thing ourselves, which is a lot of work because Shopify isn’t WordPress. we’ve launched it. We had a successful launch, but we’re not as well known in the Shopify world yet. So we’re growing gradually and that sounds like bad news, but I love that because that’s what we want to do.

It’s so much fun. We’re celebrating every five star review we get. So we have a dedicated Shopify team and they’re so excited to get people to like our product, but Shopify just works a little differently and you can’t paste your WordPress product over it. So we’re tweaking it and it gets better every day.

[00:20:55] Taco Verdonschot: Every single day. So the good thing about our Shopify app is that it fully is a SaaS which means that were not bound to releases that people then have to install. And if we decide to push something, it’s live right now. That’s a very big difference compared to WordPress, where you’re relying on people to install your updates and to actually keep their site up to date, et cetera. So it’s a really different way of developing.

[00:21:25] Marieke van de Rakt: Yeah.

[00:21:26] Nathan Wrigley: Marika. You’ve got a, I was gonna say a talk, but it’s not. You’ve got a panel. Just tell us what this panel’s about.

[00:21:31] Marieke van de Rakt: This panel is about acquisitions and WordPress. I’m just going to sit there and if they ask me a question then they’ll answer. I think a lot of people want to know, the ins and outs of what happens and what does this mean for WordPress?

[00:21:43] Nathan Wrigley: SEO in general. What is going on in the future? I’ve been seeing quite a lot coming out of the Google verse. Awful lot of people talking about things like AI content and whether or not that’s gonna be squashed. What do we need to be mindful of in the next 12 months in terms of SEO?

[00:21:58] Marieke van de Rakt: I think the main thing Google does is wanting to present the best result to the user. So if you’re stable in SEO and just create good content, AI or not AI because it just has to be good. And there are really good AI tools out there, but it should be something your reader will want to read.

And not just something you, nobody wants to read. That’s not serving anyone. That’s the thing you need to do. But at the same time on the technical side, we are really looking at what Google is doing. So then you need to just install Yoast SEO, because we’ll make sure to get the latest technical stuff in there. So the way Google crawls and stuff, we’re really mindful of that. But I think a normal user wouldn’t be able to adapt that in a website settings.

[00:22:42] Nathan Wrigley: I have this concern that we’re gonna be creating content with AI, which is then in turn, the sole purpose of that is to be consumed by Google’s AI. And it’s like this cyclical effect where…

[00:22:55] Marieke van de Rakt: But then you’re doing it wrong way because you should always create content for a user. Yeah. And I am a writer. So I am not particularly fan of AI created content, but I have to be honest, sometimes it’s pretty good. But it should be original content.

So, you should at least insert enough information in your AI that it’s an original thought, because an artificial intelligence can never come up with something new. It’s always something that’s already out there. So make sure you write something that people want to read. That’s the only advice that I can give you. Maybe Google won’t be the only search engine out there.

There are all kinds of rumors that Apple is doing stuff and rolling out his own search engine. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s something that could happen as well. Google doesn’t have to be the only, Yoast SEO isn’t the only SEO plugin. Google doesn’t have to necessarily be the only search engine.

[00:23:50] Nathan Wrigley: Is that what you focus most of your energy though, because presumably if there is an Apple SEO search page, your work then sort of doubles because you’ve got to try and figure out their algorithm as well as the Google algorithm.

[00:24:02] Marieke van de Rakt: They’re probably doing the same thing. It’s the same with Bing and…

[00:24:05] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah, in the end they have the same goal. They want to answer a user’s question. So in order to do that, you need that good content. If you want to rank first, you need to be the best result. That’s basically it. Regardless of which search engine you use to find that.

[00:24:23] Marieke van de Rakt: Wouldn’t it be fun though? I would get excited again with SEO, if there would be a different kind. Maybe a privacy more minded kind, because that would be awesome.

[00:24:32] Nathan Wrigley: Have you heard of a search engine called Kagi? K A G I.

[00:24:36] Marieke van de Rakt: I haven’t.

[00:24:38] Nathan Wrigley: Do you remember ManageWP? It is created by him. It’s in beta only at the moment. And it’s gonna be a paid for search engine and you’ll pay them a hundred dollars a year, something along those lines, for no tracking. So the gamble is that you pay. It’s actually really interesting. K A G I.

Yeah. So what are you gonna do over the next couple of days, the pair of you? What are you hoping to get out of this specific event? Who are you gonna go and see? What things are you excited about?

[00:25:03] Taco Verdonschot: So we made a great start yesterday evening. There was a party by Pagely, and it was on a, on a boat, with so many people and a lot of familiar faces that we hadn’t seen in three years. And that’s going to continue because over the course of this event, we’ll see our old friends and meet a lot of new friends.

[00:25:23] Marieke van de Rakt: Interesting conversations with possible partners. It’s exciting to meet our Bluehost new colleagues and our Yith colleagues who are all part of the Newfold family, so that’s something I’m looking forward to as well.

And I am looking forward to talking to actual customers because I use WordCamps to talk to customers and ask them why they like our product and what they dislike. And, well, I haven’t done that for ages, so only with people in our local community.

[00:25:51] Nathan Wrigley: I’ve got a feeling I know what the answer to this question is. In 2023 WordCamp Europe, wherever that may be, will you be back?

[00:25:57] Taco Verdonschot: Yes.

[00:25:58] Marieke van de Rakt: Yes.

[00:25:59] Nathan Wrigley: Taco, Marieke, thanks for talking to me today.

[00:26:01] Taco Verdonschot: Thank you so much for us.

[00:26:03] Marieke van de Rakt: Thank you.

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Yoast Moves Outside of Open Source Platforms to Launch SEO App for Shopify

After 10 years in the WordPress ecosystem as one of the most popular plugin businesses, Yoast is branching out with a new SEO app for the Shopify market. The app will offer Shopify merchants a set of optimizations for search results and Google Shopping, automatically add structured data, and allows users to optimize for desired keyphrases. It will launch in the Shopify app store on January 18, 2022.

“An app on the Shopify platform is a huge business opportunity,” Yoast CEO Thijs de Valk said. “Shopify is growing fast. It makes sense to build an app and profit from the growth of that specific platform.”

Shopify is the second-fastest growing CMS, according to W3Techs’ 2021 data, used on 4.4% of websites, up from 3.2% last year. The next closest contender, Wix, passed up Joomla and Drupal in 2021, furthering a trend of hosted, closed source software platforms burying open source CMS’s.

In his biannual CMS market share analysis, Yoast founder Joost de Valk observed WordPress’ slowed growth as compared to earlier in the pandemic and commented that the platform does not appear to be heading towards 50% market share as he would have projected based on the numbers a year ago.

“Shopify continues to show amazing growth, in some months in the last 6 months it even managed to match the growth of WordPress in absolute numbers,” de Valk said. “Similarly, Wix has stepped up the pace and is growing rapidly.” He projects Shopify’s market share will be over 5% within the next six months.

Joost de Valk’s CMS market share analysis – December 2021

“The growth of Yoast (up until now) has been highly dependent on WordPress,” Thijs de Valk said. “That makes us a bit vulnerable. When deciding to build the Shopify app, we were not acquired by Newfold Digital yet. The decision to build that app was also one of risk-diversification. Having an app or plugin on multiple platforms just makes sure that our company can grow sustainably.”

Breaking into a new market, de Valk said the experience so far is very different.

“Shopify is a different ecosystem, much more commercialized than WordPress,” he said. Product pricing for the hosted platform is higher than what users might pay monthly for a plugin in the WordPress ecosystem. The Yoast SEO app is starting out on the Shopify App Store at $29/month, which de Valk says is competitively priced.

“That makes the Shopify market attractive to extend to,” de Valk said. “We have big dreams to grow our company further (in and outside of WordPress) and success in Shopify would make that a lot easier.”

Unlike the WordPress plugin repository, the Shopify App Store doesn’t publish numbers of users for each app, so it’s not easy to see who Yoast SEO’s main competitors will be. SEO apps for Shopify are already a someone crowded space and many apps, such as SEO King, have more features, a free plan, more competitive pricing, and hundreds of positive reviews already. Yoast SEO will have a challenge ahead, entering a market with many established competitors.

de Valk said Yoast has not hired any Shopify developers but is relying on the current employees’ skills.

“Most of what was needed we already knew, or learned on the job, as we do,” he said. The company has had internal discussions about the fact that employees are now asked to write closed source software.

“We’re breaking with our tradition to only release Yoast SEO software to open-source platforms,” de Valk said. “Shopify is closed source. We had a lot of conversations about that because at Yoast we’re open-source fanboys and girls. At the same time, making the web better is also something very dear to our heart. And we think that Shopify is making the web better.”

de Valk confirmed that all Yoast employees were on board with developing closed source software and none of them moved on as a result of the change. The company’s more nebulous “making the web better” mission trumped its commitment to open source software in this case.

In 2021, Yoast was one of the biggest contributors to WordPress core through its Five for the Future pledge. The company plans to continue its commitments to WordPress and will be expanding its charitable giving from the expected Shopify profits. Yoast is calling this new initiative “Five for the web.” This strikes me as an odd choice, as the intention of the Five for the Future program is to avoid the “tragedy of the commons” scenario, which affects open access resource systems like open source software. This is clearly outlined on Yoast’s website in the section on open source where it states, “At Yoast, it’s at the heart of what we do.”

“With the money we make in Shopify, we want to give back as well,” de Valk said. “We’re going to give that money back to initiatives that make the entire web better. We’re already doing some things there. Yoast is a member of the W3C, and our very own Jono Alderson is in the AMP advisory board. We’re planning to grow our efforts and initiatives to make the web better and give 5% of our Shopify revenue back to the web.”

Yoast’s intention to support the controversial AMP project with a portion of its 5% profits is a curious choice, as the initiative is already heavily financially backed by Google and doesn’t appear to be soliciting donations. When asked what kind of influence or accountability the company is bringing to the AMP Advisory Board, de Valk said their primary goal is to offer advice.

“AMP is just one of the things we do, we also support w3c, we make tools for PHP testing, and we’ll be supporting a lot more,” he said. “We put time into the AMP advisory committee with the goal to provide advice to the Technical Steering Committee. And in that way we try, as I said, to make the open web as strong as possible.”

Yoast will be hosting an Online Yoastcon – Shopify Edition on January 20, which will kick off with a product demo. The event is free and attendees can expect to hear from SEO industry experts and learn how to improve their online stores.

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Yoast Joins Newfold Digital, Team To Stay in Place

Earlier today, Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt announced the company had been acquired by NewFold Digital. Yoast and its SEO-related business are expected to continue operating as usual with its current team and maintaining its product line.

Newfold Digital is a global web solutions provider that serves small-to-medium businesses. The company has many brands under its umbrella, such as Network Solutions, Bluehost, and more.

“Yoast never had any funding before, it grew organically into a company with 140 employees maintaining a plugin with over 12 million active installs,” wrote van de Rakt in the announcement. “We don’t want to stop there! We’re planning to grow and improve even further! Joining Newfold Digital provides us with the freedom to build and iterate on ideas to further our mission.”

There are no plans to change the team or the culture around Yoast. One of the goals during the acquisition was to keep everyone in place, continuing work on their product line.

“Of course, some things change,” said Yoast founder and CPO Joost de Valk. “We’ll integrate into their systems (HR and finance). We’ll work on special offers for customers from Newfold. Our company changed so much over the five years, so it will change no matter what. I do feel that this opens up more security for growth and for developing new ideas.”

While Yoast does not plan to change its 140-person team, it is still bringing in fresh talent. The company has been hiring a lot lately and expects that trend to continue with 19 current job openings.

As host Nathan Wrigley and guest Cory Miller discussed on the latest episode of the Jukebox, acquisitions can be a welcome change for all parties. It can provide more financial stability and backing for the acquired company. It may allow the team to explore new features or new products that were not possible before. This can also work in the user’s favor in the long term.

“Marieke and I felt ever since this Covid pandemic hit that we needed a partner or some more financial backing,” said Joost de Valk. “Being totally bootstrapped was getting to us. We worried about the exchange rate of the dollar, for instance. We got risk-averse, and all around us other companies got financial injections.”

The husband-and-wife duo thought about selling part of their stock for additional funding but was worried about potential consequences. One such downside may have been the need to grow fast to keep investors happy.

“We wanted to find a place to keep Yoast SEO growing and to keep working on WordPress,” said de Valk. “We had help from RBC, a company that helps with these types of acquisitions. They introduced us to Newfold, and we had a really good connection right from the start.”

He remained tight-lipped about any new products or features in the pipeline, only saying that a lot is coming and things will speed up.

Newfold is the owner of several high-profile hosting brands, including Bluehost and HostGator — both offer a managed WordPress service. It would not be unheard of to see a company mix and match its various products to draw in more customers. Nor would it be surprising to eventually see Yoast SEO or even some of the commercial Yoast offerings as part of packaged hosting deals. WP Engine fully integrates StudioPress products, for example, into its packages. However, de Valk said they have yet to discuss anything on that front.

“You’re absolutely right that the things you’re proposing here make perfect sense,” he said. “So, I think we’ll work on those deals and, at the same time, team Yoast will work independently on their products.”

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Yoast Acquires Duplicate Post, Brings on Creator Enrico Battocchi as a Senior Developer

Yoast, the company behind the popular Yoast SEO plugin, announced it had acquired the Duplicate Post plugin earlier today. Along with the acquisition of the project, the company brought on its creator, Enrico Battocchi, as a senior developer. He will continue in a lead role with the future development of the plugin.

Duplicate Post currently has over three million active installations and is translated into 46 languages. Of its 451 reviews, it has almost a near-perfect 429 five-star ratings. Few plugins, especially when they garner such a large user base, can pull off the feat of an average 4.9 user rating. Battocchi has put in over a decade of work into building the community around the plugin.

The plugin does exactly what its name implies. It allows end-users to duplicate posts. “Post” in this sense means any type of content, including pages and post types from other plugins. It also allows users to choose which fields are copied in the duplicated post.

“Lots and lots of people use this, for several workflows,” said Joost de Valk, Chief Product Officer at Yoast. “They use plugins like this to be able to re-publish and have a publishing ‘workflow’ on existing posts, something we intend to make easier. They use this to copy a design made in a page builder like Elementor or Divi, a complex post setup with ACF blocks, or something like that, and just have to alter the content and not restructure the whole thing.”

For a plugin in such a seemingly small niche, many users have found a need for the ability to clone posts. “It surprised me as well that there was this large a group of users for a plugin like this,” said de Valk,” but it’s obviously there.”

It was not immediately apparent how a post cloning plugin would fit into the traditional Yoast brand. The company’s primary focus is on SEO tools. However, de Valk feels like it has a home at Yoast.

“What we want to do is twofold: the first of the workflows I mentioned, republishing content, is often done with SEO at least ‘in mind,'” he said. “We want to make that workflow easier. The second has an SEO ‘risk’: changing a post or page only slightly could lead to duplicate content problems. When we know that a post or page is a duplicate of another post or page, we can verify that it has, in fact, been changed enough, or give feedback to mitigate that potential SEO issue.”

“Yoast is also a key part of the wide WordPress community, supporting it in various ways (from Core development to WordCamp sponsoring),” wrote Battocchi in his own announcement. “I’m excited to join them because I’m confident that Yoast will be a great new home for Duplicate Post, and its users will benefit of all the advantages of an inventive company which can provide quality, support, vision for the future.”

What’s in Store for the Plugin?

Yoast plans to keep Duplicate Post free for the long haul and has no plans for commercial upgrades. This is not an empty promise, assures Battocchi. “One of the conditions for me to join was to be sure that Duplicate Post would stay free: there are no plans to switch to a premium/freemium scheme, and none of its current functionalities will be removed from it,” he said.

The team is remaining tight-lipped about any big features on the horizon. However, the most immediate goal is to improve the plugin’s accessibility.

It almost goes without saying that the team will look into how Yoast SEO and Duplicate Post can work together. “We’ll add some simple integrations between Yoast SEO and Duplicate Post,” said de Valk in the announcement post. “Such as making sure that the user roles that Yoast SEO adds, SEO Editor and SEO Manager, can duplicate posts.”

Beyond that, the company is awaiting feedback from end-users. “We have ideas,” said de Valk, “but we’re also very interested in hearing yours and your readers’ suggestions.”

He has also opened feedback requests on the Advanced WP Facebook group. Thus far, most of the feedback is centered on better integration with page builders and other plugins that build content.

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Yoast Publishes Free Online Training Course for the Block Editor

Yoast, the company behind the popular Yoast SEO plugin, launched its free block editor training course today. The course is available to anyone by signing up for Yoast Academy, which also includes multiple other free and paid courses. Users can learn everything from SEO and copy writing to basic WordPress skills. The Academy team’s latest course promises to get first-time users up to speed on using the block editor.

“At Yoast, we are huge fans of the block editor,” wrote Marieke van de Rakt, CEO of Yoast in the training course announcement. “Admittedly -not right from the start-, but we’re now block-editor fanboys and fangirls. That’s why we created an awesome free block editor course! We hope it will help everybody to use the block editor to the fullest!”

Currently, the course on block editor training has at least two or three hours of content to work through, depending on how quickly users digest the content. The course offers three major sections:

  • What is the block editor?
  • Using the block editor
  • Extras

Each of these is further broken down between one and three sub-sections. At the moment, there are seven lessons in total, which range between 7 and 49 minutes based on Yoast’s estimated time.

The courses are similar to taking a school class. The Academy team provides short videos that cover individual topics around the block editor. The team also provides a PDF version of the lesson for those who prefer text over video format. At the end of the lesson, users take a quiz and move on to the next lesson. A score of 80% or more is considered a passing grade.

The team keeps each lesson digestible enough to complete in a short bout. Even if watching the videos, the PDF version of the lessons, which are high quality and have loads of useful information with links to third-party resources, are recommended reading.

The team has provided a preview of the block editor course via YouTube:

Moving to the Block Editor and Building Training Courses

Joost de Valk, founder and CPO of Yoast, said the team would continue building on the training course over time as new features are added to the block editor. There are no plans to update it on a strict schedule, but the team wants to keep it current.

Yoast, as a company, focuses on SEO. Therefore, some of the advice offered through the course puts focus on creating content that is useful for people and friendly for search engines. One of the primary topics the course touches on is publishing “resources” and how this is made better by the block editor. “Resources are larger articles, evergreen content or in our SEO terminology ‘cornerstone content’: the stuff you want to rank within the search results,” said de Valk. “You can’t just throw some words on a page and expect to rank anymore. You’ll have to try a bit harder. Gutenberg makes that extremely easy.”

The Yoast team has been moving its massive site to the block editor over time. “The post types I deal with regularly are all written with the block editor, but we might have some areas of the site that aren’t there yet,” said de Valk. “It’s a rather large site, with e-commerce, training, jobs, etc. all built into one giant WordPress multi-site install, so that was a bit of an undertaking. We always try to dog-food stuff though, so we moved everything over quite quickly.”

Getting the 11 million users who are using Yoast’s products to make the switch is not quite as easy. Not everyone has embraced the block editor. “The usage of the block editor is definitely improving, but it’s not going as fast as we’d like to see,” said de Valk. “We honestly think a lot of people don’t understand the chances the block editor brings yet, one of the reasons for releasing this course and trying to help more people to start using it.”

The team’s latest SEO course had over 10,000 signups within a week. While that number is a drop in the bucket in comparison to their full user count, it is promising. With a similar turnout for the block editor training course, it may convert more users from the older classic editor.

Putting together full training courses is a large undertaking, but these are the types of resources the WordPress community needs moving forward. “It’s a lot of work,” said de Valk. “We have four people in our Academy team, a crew that records our videos, and our design team designs all the PDFs and slides within the videos. It’s a non-trivial investment, but we’re happy to make that if it helps make more people enthusiastic for the block editor.”

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WPWeekly Episode 355 – Food Poisoning Is No Joke

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss Joost de Valk’s decision to step down as WordPress’ Marketing Lead. I shared my recent encounter with food poisoning and some of the lifestyle changes I’m making to improve my health. We also talk about a new experimental plugin by Automattic that aims to provide full site editing and FreeCodeCamp’s decision to migrate away from Medium to Ghost.

Stories Discussed:

Joost de Valk Steps Down as WordPress Marketing Lead

FreeCodeCamp Moves Off of Medium after being Pressured to Put Articles Behind Paywalls

Automattic is Testing an Experimental Full Site Editing Plugin

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, June 12th 3:00 P.M. Eastern

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via Itunes

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Listen To Episode #355:

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Joost de Valk Steps Down as WordPress Marketing Lead

Joost de Valk has announced that he’s stepped down from the WordPress Marketing and Communications Lead role. The position was created and awarded to de Valk earlier this year. Not only was it a new position, but it also expanded the leadership roles in the WordPress project.

Despite making progress, de Valk didn’t feel as though he was fulfilling the leadership aspect of his role. “My experience over the last few months made me feel that while I was doing things and getting things done, I certainly wasn’t leadership. I don’t want to pretend I have a say in things I don’t have a say in,” he said.

Not having a clear definition of what marketing means and having people within the project on the same page contributed to his decision.

“There’s a stark difference between where I thought I would be in the organization in this role, and where I am actually finding myself now,” de Valk said.

“Even things that every outsider would consider marketing (release posts, about pages) are created without even so much as talking to me or others in the marketing team. Because I felt left out of all these decisions, I feel I can’t be a marketing lead.”

He also cited a lack of clarity surrounding his position, “I’ve been asked dozens of times on Twitter, Facebook and at WordCamps why I now work for Automattic, which of course I don’t but that is the perception for a lot of people,” he said. “On other occasions, I seem to be the token non-Automattician, which I’m also uncomfortable with.”

Due to taking a toll from failing to fulfill the position, de Valk plans to take an extended vacation during the Summer and when he returns, focus 100% of his efforts on Yoast and his Chief Product Officer role.

Matt Mullenweg commented on de Valk’s article thanking him for being willing to try new things and for his passion, impatience, and drive to improve WordPress.

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Pressing Topics – Episode 1

Pressing Topics is a daily podcast hosted by Malcom Peralty and myself. We discuss the news that’s making headlines in the WordPress ecosystem as well as related topics that catch our eyes. Generally speaking, if you listen to this show on a daily basis, you should have a good idea on what’s going on in the WordPress community.

Pressing Topics is different from WordPress Weekly as we’ll rarely interview guests, go in-depth on specific subjects, and the show’s length is greatly reduced. Today’s episode is 26 minutes long and most episodes will be shorter than that.

In our first episode, we discuss the balancing act of user self sufficiency, a new empowerwoment project at Yoast, why countdown timers on event sites are impractical, and WPMU Dev ending development for more than 90% of their plugins.

We also talk about the success of WordPress Translation day 4, and inform listeners of multiple security vulnerabilities discovered in the WordPress Ultimate Member plugin.

I’ll submit the podcast to iTunes in the next few days to provide more convenient options of subscribing. Please listen to episode one and let us know what you think.

Stories Discussed:

User Self Sufficiency

Empowerwoment project at Yoast

Conference Websites – Please don’t use countdown timers

WPMUDEV Shutting Down Development on Many Plugins

WPMU Pro Sites Plugin Migration Option with WP Ultimo

WordPress Translation Day 4 Successfully Hosts 77 Local Events in 35 Countries, Recruits 183 New Translators

Multiple Vulnerabilities in the WordPress Ultimate Member Plugin

The transcript is in Rich-Text format. You can download the show or listen to it via the embedded audio player below.

EPISODE 1 – Pressing Topics TranscriptDownload
Pressing Topics Episode 1Download
Listen to Pressing Topics Episode 1
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WPWeekly Episode 347 – Chair Buying, Pressing Issues, and Block Management

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I start off by discussing the office chair purchasing process. I recently needed to buy a new chair and was surprised by some of the features that were highlighted.

We talked about block managers and some of the pitfalls that will need to be overcome. For example, what should WordPress do if a user disables a block that’s already used in a post?

We wrap up the show by sharing some of the most pressing issues people are having with WordPress.

Stories Discussed:

Yoast CEO Responds to #YoastCon Twitter Controversy, Calls for Change in the SEO Industry

WordPress 5.1 Improves Editor Performance, Encourages Users to Update Outdated PHP Versions

Block Management Features Proposed for WordPress 5.2

5.2 Proposed Scope and Release Schedule

UI/UX Changes for the Site Health Check Plugin

Jeffrey Zeldman Promoted to Automattic Employee

The Most Pressing Issues People Have with WordPress These Days

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, March 6th 3:00 P.M. Eastern

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via Itunes

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via RSS

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via Stitcher Radio

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Listen To Episode #347:

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Yoast CEO Responds to #YoastCon Twitter Controversy, Calls for Change in the SEO Industry

Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt published a post yesterday, addressing the controversy that dominated the #YoastCon hashtag on Twitter in the days leading up the the event. Several parties from the SEO industry began circulating old tweets, along unsavory videos depicting Joost de Valk partying with promotional models. de Valk issued a public apology on Twitter before YoastCon officially kicked off.

In her post, titled “Let’s create a more female-friendly world!”, van de Rakt characterized the incident as an attack and cited examples of how Yoast is actively working to improve the position of women:

We were all hurt. We really don’t understand why the company Yoast is being attacked, why the #yoastcon is being used for something the person Joost did 10 years ago. Our company and our company culture is nothing like the tweets imply.

van de Rakt also referenced a post from Gisele Navarro, a woman who has been working in the SEO industry for 10 years.

“I totally agree with Gisele that the SEO industry was not welcoming to women ten years ago,” van de Rakt said. “And although some things may have changed, I still think that the SEO industry has a long way to go. I also think that the problem is much bigger than the SEO industry.”

After the tweets and videos began circulating on the #YoastCon hashtag, the @yoast Twitter account was quietly scrubbed of potentially offensive tweets. The total tweet count for the account was 44.1K on January 31, 2019.

On February 8, 2019, the account’s total tweets were slashed to 10.7K. Approximately 33,000 tweets have been deleted in the wake of this controversy.

Some of the tweets were still available via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine during the height of the controversy and screenshots were shared widely.

One recipient of the tweets, Lisa Barone, dismissed them as “friends being stupid,” but de Valk’s wife, Marieke van de Rakt, admitted in her recent post that the tweets and videos were hurtful to her. Since the tweets were public, many onlookers said they felt uncomfortable reading these types of interactions within a professional context.

Navarro’s post described how the tweets made her feel as an outside onlooker working in the male-dominated SEO industry:

I don’t know the story behind the ‘friendly and consensual sexual banter’ (as someone called it) of those tweets so I’ve got zero context on how the conversations led to Joost saying things like:

‘I bet you’d look good, even when pregnant ;-)’

‘Ahem, why are you not naked indeed?’

‘Nothing beats a yummy young mummy :)’

When I read those tweets, that was all I could think of – Decades of obscenities been pushed on me by men who thought that was normal, acceptable behavior.

I thought about how much it would have crushed me back then if someone I respected were to have said something like that to me. I wondered if I would still be part of the SEO community had that happened.

I imagined how would I have felt if before or after that tweet, I were to have been an attendee at SEOktoberfest surrounded by Playboy escorts who touched themselves looking at the camera while I was having a beer in a corner, trying to network my way to a job interview at an agency I loved.

After the tweets and videos began to get attention on the #YoastCon hashtag, many in the SEO industry dismissed the content as an attack orchestrated by trolls who they alleged are also guilty of harassment. Several spoke out against David Cohen in particular, who had originally started the controversy by unearthing the old content, describing him as the person behind other troll accounts known for sending harassing tweets.

Regardless of how the old content came to light on Twitter, both Joost de Valk and Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt have admitted that the tweets and videos are indefensible and not representative of their company’s current push to empower women.

Navarro’s post calls readers to look at the tweets and videos from the perspective of someone working in the SEO industry, wondering if they should attend conferences after seeing leaders and role models behaving in a way:

To those of you who are defending the SEO personality that is Joost: remove the so-called SEO trolls and #YoastCon from the picture, go through the tweets and ask yourself how would YOU feel if someone you look up to says those things to you on a public forum. Would you feel comfortable attending a conference knowing this person would be there? Would you want him to be your boss? Would you feel safe around this person? Would you have anybody to talk to about what happened and how you felt? Would you even bring it up?

The #YoastCon Twitter controversy has had the positive effect of highlighting behavior and public communication styles that need to be addressed in order to create a more welcoming and diverse SEO industry. In spite of the recent challenges, van de Rakt said she is hopeful that her company can continue working towards creating “an atmosphere at conferences that is friendly for all people, regardless of their gender.” On this Navarro and van de Rakt both agree – the conditions for women working in the SEO industry are ripe for improvement.

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YoastCon Overshadowed by Twitter Storm: Joost de Valk, SEO Industry Leaders Called Out for Objectifying Women

The third edition of YoastCon kicked off today in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, but for those following remotely the conference has been overshadowed by a discussion that erupted on the #yoastcon hashtag prior to the event. Several parties began circulating tweets and unsavory videos involving Joost de Valk, for which he has since publicly apologized.

The story was complicated and confusing to follow, as many of these decade-old tweets were deleted and the videos made private by the websites that are hosting them. The parties who were publishing screenshots from archive.org alleged that de Valk was sexually harassing women in the SEO industry.

One of the women to whom some of the tweets were directed has publicly stated that she did not perceive them as harassment and that the tweets were taken out of context.

de Valk responded yesterday with a public apology, acknowledging the tweets and videos.

He also provided a statement to the Tavern with more context on the after party videos.

“The videos are of an event I’ve attended over the last decade called SEOktoberfest, which is an SEO conference at Oktoberfest,” de Valk said. “I’m honestly ashamed of those videos when I see them now… It looks bad and I wouldn’t behave like that now, but I don’t think anything I did myself at those events was ever out of line.”

Marieke van de Rakt, who recently took on the role of CEO of Yoast, said she thought the tweets were brought to public attention in retaliation for the company announcing a project to empower women working at Yoast. de Valk left the CEO role to focus on product development at Yoast and his new role of Marketing and Communications Lead at WordPress.org.

I feel like it started after I was announced CEO and later on talked about a project to empower women working at Yoast. I got some really upsetting tweets. After that it started focusing on #yoastcon. It seems like they want to show the hypocrisy in our statements about women. I never spoke at SEO events before, though I have been to SEOktoberfest. It felt totally welcoming back then. That being said, the pictures and movies aren’t something I particularly enjoy watching. I do think they’re bad, but also a bit out of context. The environment at Yoast is nothing like that. And although my husband likes to party (as do I), I feel he’s always been a strong believer in equal rights and opportunities. I think we all make mistakes and learn from them. At Yoast, we’re really trying to improve inequality with both the diversity fund and my empowerment project.

For those watching the #yoastcon hashtag, the way the situation unfolded it almost seemed like a coordinated personal attack on de Valk, especially given how the SEOktoberfest videos were spliced together with the YoastCon promotional videos. David Cohen, a Philadelphia-based Digital Marketing Director who previously worked at a large SEO agency, started the conversation by publishing de Valk’s old tweets that he had found years ago when researching Yoast and its founder.

“As far as the tweets from Joost are concerned, I’ve known about them since 2014,” Cohen said. “I just never knew what to do with them or how to proceed questioning why that behavior was perfectly acceptable for him.

“As far as the harassment and abuse in the SEO industry, particularly at the SEO conferences, I’ve known about this since 2011 after seeing it firsthand while working at a large SEO agency in Philly, Seer Interactive.”

Cohen said that he began publicly criticizing people he calls “SEO celebs” in 2014, for “saying they are against the SEO harassment and abuse, claiming to be ‘male feminists,’ yet knowingly covering up the abuse and enabling the abusers who happen to also be their friends, peers, colleagues, etc.”

While the discussion on the #yoastcon hashtag seems centered around de Valk’s admitted indiscretions, Cohen said his objective in publicizing the old tweets goes beyond de Valk. He’s calling out other leaders in the industry who he alleges have harassed and abused women for years.

“This started a solo mission to take action as a messenger of questions for the group of SEOs most prominent figures who hold the power of influence over the industry about the 10+ year ongoing issue of alleged harassment and abuse of women in the SEO world, particularly at SEO conferences between 2009 and 2012 era.”

Cohen said the timing with YoastCon was “a mission looking for direct and public answers on this topic once and for all while they were all gathered together at the event.” He began tweeting about these issues well before the event and was using the #yoastcon hashtag to call out other SEO industry leaders for the past few months.

When asked about his motive, Cohen said he simply wants answers from de Valk, Rand Fishkin, his wife Geraldine, John Doherty, Martin MacDonald, Marcus Tandler, and others regarding what he perceives to be hypocrisy in the SEO industry.

“Why has it been totally cool for the SEO celebs, rock stars, ninjas, and conference speakers to be misogynists, to objectify and sexualize women, to hire Playmates for their SEO events, and to engage in behavior that would easily be classified as ‘toxic masculinity?'” Cohen said. He claims that industry leaders have been covering up harassment and abuse that they have known about and have refused to help the women who have been abused. Cohen and several others who have been circulating the tweets claim that victims of this abuse have been contacting them to share their stories but have not yet gone public with them.

“I chose to act on this now because I wanted answers to two questions from specific people: 1. Do you know of alleged harassment or abuse because someone went to you directly and told their story? And if so, did you refuse to use your power and influence to help them at the risk of your own professional and personal interests?” Cohen said.

“As for Joost, going with the ‘if I offended anyone’ apology approach is empty and lacks personal accountability for behaviors that are completely misaligned with words. He had to respond publicly. But the question remains open – why?”