Yoast SEO 15.8: A free block for your breadcrumbs

Yoast SEO 15.8 is out and it comes with a cool new gift: a breadcrumbs block for the WordPress editor. This makes it easy to just drop your breadcrumb in a page, without having to touch any code. Now available for everyone! We also have a cool new update for our Video SEO add-on that loads your videos in a much smarter way. Read all about it!

Free breadcrumbs block for the block editor

Blocks are the future. We’ve been big fans of the new block editor — a.k.a. Gutenberg — for a long time and we’re excited about what’s ahead! We loved using and building blocks that help us improve not only our own site, but yours as well. We built several blocks, like the table of contents block, the internal linking blocks and the structured data blocks for FAQ and how-to content. Today, we’re adding another one: a breadcrumb block.

With full-site editing (FSE) coming to the WordPress block editor soonish, we were looking for a way to simplify adding breadcrumbs. In addition, we also wanted to change the behaviour around breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs can help both Google and site visitors to more easily understand the way a site is structured.

One of the ways Google discovers breadcrumbs is by “reading” the Schema.org structured data on your site. After consulting with Google, Yoast SEO will start to output breadcrumb structured data by default — even if you haven’t activated the breadcrumb feature. This another way to make your site more understandable to Google.

Adding breadcrumbs via blocks

Adding breadcrumbs to your site was always a chore. Of course, Yoast SEO can generate breadcrumbs for you and we have had a shortcode for use with the classic editor for some time. What’s more, there’s even a widget for adding breadcrumbs in Elementor. Plus, many themes support Yoast Breadcrumbs out of the box, so for some it’s just a matter of activating the breadcrumbs feature.

But if your theme doesn’t support it, you need to add a bit of code to it to get it to work. We wanted to simplify that with a new breadcrumbs block that works without having to add code. As said, full-site editing in WordPress will make it possible to use this block to add those breadcrumbs where you want.

Even today, with a recent version of the Gutenberg plugin, you can drop the breadcrumbs block in the widget area to be more flexible in where you want it to appear. Simply go to Appearance > Widgets and add the block in your widget area of choice.

Of course, you add the block also simply add the breadcrumbs block to individual posts and pages. You can find the Yoast Breadcrumbs block in the list of blocks by typing Yoast or breadcrumbs. Simply pick a spot to drop in the block and select it from the list. Et voila, you have breadcrumbs on your page!

Yoast Video SEO 13.6: now in the sidebar, plus smarter video loading

The past couple of months, we’ve been giving our Yoast SEO add-ons special attention. We’re working on improving the user experience of the plugins and making it easier to use these inside the block editor. Among these, is an add-on that helps you make your videos appear in the search results: Yoast Video SEO.

For this release of the plugin, we had to rebuild the meta box to make the settings and features available in the sidebar of the block editor. In addition, we also improved the UX and interface. This makes the features more sensible for you and using it more self-explanatory.

Preventing your video page from slowing down

Last but not least, in Yoast Video SEO 13.6, we’ve changed the way we load the code necessary to embed videos. We now only load the thumbnail image for the video and, after that, we’ll only load the necessary JavaScript code when a user interacts with the video. This will keep pages with embedded videos from becoming slow to load — enhancing the user experience. Plus, it will keep your pages from performing badly in site speed tests because embedding YouTube videos in a post will immediately decrease that post’s Core Web Vitals scores. You can turn this feature on in the Embed settings.

Yoast SEO 15.8 is out today

Yoast SEO 15.8 is not a huge release, but it does bring a nice goodie: the Yoast Breadcrumb block. Simply drop this on any post or page and a fully-formed breadcrumbs will appear. Easy peasy!