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Microsoft Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges

  • Article
  • 06/29/2023

In this article

  1. Exchange Online
  2. SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business
  3. Skype for Business Online and Microsoft Teams
  4. Microsoft 365 Common and Office Online
  5. Related Topics

Office 365 requires connectivity to the Internet. The endpoints below should be reachable for customers using Office 365 plans, including Government Community Cloud (GCC).

Office 365 Worldwide (+GCC) | Office 365 operated by 21 Vianet | Office 365 U.S. Government DoD | Office 365 U.S. Government GCC High |

NotesDownloadUse
Last updated: 06/29/2023 – RSS. Change Log subscriptionDownload: all required and optional destinations in one JSON formatted list.Use: our proxy PAC files

Start with Managing Office 365 endpoints to understand our recommendations for managing network connectivity using this data. Endpoints data is updated as needed at the beginning of each month with new IP Addresses and URLs published 30 days in advance of being active. This cadence allows for customers who don’t yet have automated updates to complete their processes before new connectivity is required. Endpoints may also be updated during the month if needed to address support escalations, security incidents, or other immediate operational requirements. The data shown on this page below is all generated from the REST-based web services. If you’re using a script or a network device to access this data, you should go to the Web service directly.

Endpoint data below lists requirements for connectivity from a user’s machine to Office 365. For detail on IP addresses used for network connections from Microsoft into a customer network, sometimes called hybrid or inbound network connections, see Additional endpoints for more information.

The endpoints are grouped into four service areas representing the three primary workloads and a set of common resources. The groups may be used to associate traffic flows with a particular application, however given that features often consume endpoints across multiple workloads, these groups can’t effectively be used to restrict access.

Data columns shown are:

  • ID: The ID number of the row, also known as an endpoint set. This ID is the same as is returned by the web service for the endpoint set.
  • Category: Shows whether the endpoint set is categorized as OptimizeAllow, or Default. This column also lists which endpoint sets are required to have network connectivity. For endpoint sets that aren’t required to have network connectivity, we provide notes in this field to indicate what functionality would be missing if the endpoint set is blocked. If you’re excluding an entire service area, the endpoint sets listed as required don’t require connectivity.You can read about these categories and guidance for their management in New Office 365 endpoint categories.
  • ER: This is Yes if the endpoint set is supported over Azure ExpressRoute with Office 365 route prefixes. The BGP community that includes the route prefixes shown aligns with the service area listed. When ER is No, this means that ExpressRoute is not supported for this endpoint set.Some routes may be advertised in more than one BGP community, making it possible for endpoints within a given IP range to traverse the ER circuit, but still be unsupported. In all cases, the value of a given endpoint set’s ER column should be respected.
  • Addresses: Lists the FQDNs or wildcard domain names and IP address ranges for the endpoint set. Note that an IP address range is in CIDR format and may include many individual IP addresses in the specified network.
  • Ports: Lists the TCP or UDP ports that are combined with listed IP addresses to form the network endpoint. You may notice some duplication in IP address ranges where there are different ports listed.

 Note

Microsoft has begun a long-term transition to providing services from the cloud.microsoft namespace to simplify the endpoints managed by our customers. If you are following existing guidance for allowing access to required endpoints as listed below, there’s no further action required from you.

Exchange Online

IDCategoryERAddressesPorts
1Optimize
Required
Yesoutlook.office.com, outlook.office365.com
13.107.6.152/31, 13.107.18.10/31, 13.107.128.0/22, 23.103.160.0/20, 40.96.0.0/13, 40.104.0.0/15, 52.96.0.0/14, 131.253.33.215/32, 132.245.0.0/16, 150.171.32.0/22, 204.79.197.215/32, 2603:1006::/40, 2603:1016::/36, 2603:1026::/36, 2603:1036::/36, 2603:1046::/36, 2603:1056::/36, 2620:1ec:4::152/128, 2620:1ec:4::153/128, 2620:1ec:c::10/128, 2620:1ec:c::11/128, 2620:1ec:d::10/128, 2620:1ec:d::11/128, 2620:1ec:8f0::/46, 2620:1ec:900::/46, 2620:1ec:a92::152/128, 2620:1ec:a92::153/128
TCP: 443, 80
UDP: 443
2Allow
Optional
Notes: POP3, IMAP4, SMTP Client traffic
Yes*.outlook.office.com, outlook.office365.com, smtp.office365.com
13.107.6.152/31, 13.107.18.10/31, 13.107.128.0/22, 23.103.160.0/20, 40.96.0.0/13, 40.104.0.0/15, 52.96.0.0/14, 131.253.33.215/32, 132.245.0.0/16, 150.171.32.0/22, 204.79.197.215/32, 2603:1006::/40, 2603:1016::/36, 2603:1026::/36, 2603:1036::/36, 2603:1046::/36, 2603:1056::/36, 2620:1ec:4::152/128, 2620:1ec:4::153/128, 2620:1ec:c::10/128, 2620:1ec:c::11/128, 2620:1ec:d::10/128, 2620:1ec:d::11/128, 2620:1ec:8f0::/46, 2620:1ec:900::/46, 2620:1ec:a92::152/128, 2620:1ec:a92::153/128
TCP: 587, 993, 995, 143
8Default
Required
No*.outlook.com, autodiscover.<tenant>.onmicrosoft.comTCP: 443, 80
9Allow
Required
Yes*.protection.outlook.com
40.92.0.0/15, 40.107.0.0/16, 52.100.0.0/14, 52.238.78.88/32, 104.47.0.0/17, 2a01:111:f400::/48, 2a01:111:f403::/48
TCP: 443
10Allow
Required
Yes*.mail.protection.outlook.com
40.92.0.0/15, 40.107.0.0/16, 52.100.0.0/14, 104.47.0.0/17, 2a01:111:f400::/48, 2a01:111:f403::/48
TCP: 25

SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

IDCategoryERAddressesPorts
31Optimize
Required
Yes*.sharepoint.com
13.107.136.0/22, 40.108.128.0/17, 52.104.0.0/14, 104.146.128.0/17, 150.171.40.0/22, 2603:1061:1300::/40, 2620:1ec:8f8::/46, 2620:1ec:908::/46, 2a01:111:f402::/48
TCP: 443, 80
32Default
Optional
Notes: OneDrive for Business: supportability, telemetry, APIs, and embedded email links
Nossw.live.com, storage.live.comTCP: 443
33Default
Optional
Notes: SharePoint Hybrid Search – Endpoint to SearchContentService where the hybrid crawler feeds documents
No*.search.production.apac.trafficmanager.net, *.search.production.emea.trafficmanager.net, *.search.production.us.trafficmanager.netTCP: 443
35Default
Required
No*.wns.windows.com, admin.onedrive.com, officeclient.microsoft.comTCP: 443, 80
36Default
Required
Nog.live.com, oneclient.sfx.msTCP: 443, 80
37Default
Required
No*.sharepointonline.com, spoprod-a.akamaihd.netTCP: 443, 80
39Default
Required
No*.svc.msTCP: 443, 80

Skype for Business Online and Microsoft Teams

IDCategoryERAddressesPorts
11Optimize
Required
Yes13.107.64.0/18, 52.112.0.0/14, 52.122.0.0/15, 2603:1063::/39UDP: 3478, 3479, 3480, 3481
12Allow
Required
Yes*.lync.com, *.teams.microsoft.com, teams.microsoft.com
13.107.64.0/18, 52.112.0.0/14, 52.122.0.0/15, 52.238.119.141/32, 52.244.160.207/32, 2603:1027::/48, 2603:1037::/48, 2603:1047::/48, 2603:1057::/48, 2603:1063::/39, 2620:1ec:6::/48, 2620:1ec:40::/42
TCP: 443, 80
13Allow
Required
Yes*.broadcast.skype.com, broadcast.skype.com
13.107.64.0/18, 52.112.0.0/14, 52.122.0.0/15, 52.238.119.141/32, 52.244.160.207/32, 2603:1027::/48, 2603:1037::/48, 2603:1047::/48, 2603:1057::/48, 2603:1063::/39, 2620:1ec:6::/48, 2620:1ec:40::/42
TCP: 443
15Default
Required
No*.sfbassets.comTCP: 443, 80
16Default
Required
No*.keydelivery.mediaservices.windows.net, *.streaming.mediaservices.windows.net, mlccdn.blob.core.windows.netTCP: 443
17Default
Required
Noaka.msTCP: 443
18Default
Optional
Notes: Federation with Skype and public IM connectivity: Contact picture retrieval
No*.users.storage.live.comTCP: 443
19Default
Optional
Notes: Applies only to those who deploy the Conference Room Systems
Noadl.windows.comTCP: 443, 80
22Allow
Optional
Notes: Teams: Messaging interop with Skype for Business
Yes*.skypeforbusiness.com
13.107.64.0/18, 52.112.0.0/14, 52.122.0.0/15, 52.238.119.141/32, 52.244.160.207/32, 2603:1027::/48, 2603:1037::/48, 2603:1047::/48, 2603:1057::/48, 2603:1063::/39, 2620:1ec:6::/48, 2620:1ec:40::/42
TCP: 443
27Default
Required
No*.mstea.ms, *.secure.skypeassets.com, mlccdnprod.azureedge.netTCP: 443
127Default
Required
No*.skype.comTCP: 443, 80
167Default
Required
No*.ecdn.microsoft.comTCP: 443
180Default
Required
Nocompass-ssl.microsoft.comTCP: 443

Microsoft 365 Common and Office Online

IDCategoryERAddressesPorts
41Default
Optional
Notes: Microsoft Stream
No*.microsoftstream.comTCP: 443
43Default
Optional
Notes: Microsoft Stream 3rd party integration (including CDNs)
Nonps.onyx.azure.netTCP: 443
44Default
Optional
Notes: Microsoft Stream – unauthenticated
No*.azureedge.net, *.media.azure.net, *.streaming.mediaservices.windows.netTCP: 443
45Default
Optional
Notes: Microsoft Stream
No*.keydelivery.mediaservices.windows.netTCP: 443
46Allow
Required
Yes*.officeapps.live.com, *.online.office.com, office.live.com
13.107.6.171/32, 13.107.18.15/32, 13.107.140.6/32, 52.108.0.0/14, 52.244.37.168/32, 2603:1063:2000::/38, 2620:1ec:c::15/128, 2620:1ec:8fc::6/128, 2620:1ec:a92::171/128, 2a01:111:f100:2000::a83e:3019/128, 2a01:111:f100:2002::8975:2d79/128, 2a01:111:f100:2002::8975:2da8/128, 2a01:111:f100:7000::6fdd:6cd5/128, 2a01:111:f100:a004::bfeb:88cf/128
TCP: 443, 80
47Default
Required
No*.office.netTCP: 443, 80
49Default
Required
No*.onenote.comTCP: 443
50Default
Optional
Notes: OneNote notebooks (wildcards)
No*.microsoft.comTCP: 443
51Default
Required
No*cdn.onenote.netTCP: 443
53Default
Required
Noajax.aspnetcdn.com, apis.live.net, officeapps.live.com, www.onedrive.comTCP: 443
56Allow
Required
Yes*.auth.microsoft.com, *.msftidentity.com, *.msidentity.com, account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com, accounts.accesscontrol.windows.net, adminwebservice.microsoftonline.com, api.passwordreset.microsoftonline.com, autologon.microsoftazuread-sso.com, becws.microsoftonline.com, ccs.login.microsoftonline.com, clientconfig.microsoftonline-p.net, companymanager.microsoftonline.com, device.login.microsoftonline.com, graph.microsoft.com, graph.windows.net, login.microsoft.com, login.microsoftonline.com, login.microsoftonline-p.com, login.windows.net, logincert.microsoftonline.com, loginex.microsoftonline.com, login-us.microsoftonline.com, nexus.microsoftonline-p.com, passwordreset.microsoftonline.com, provisioningapi.microsoftonline.com
20.20.32.0/19, 20.190.128.0/18, 20.231.128.0/19, 40.126.0.0/18, 2603:1006:2000::/48, 2603:1007:200::/48, 2603:1016:1400::/48, 2603:1017::/48, 2603:1026:3000::/48, 2603:1027:1::/48, 2603:1036:3000::/48, 2603:1037:1::/48, 2603:1046:2000::/48, 2603:1047:1::/48, 2603:1056:2000::/48, 2603:1057:2::/48
TCP: 443, 80
59Default
Required
No*.hip.live.com, *.microsoftonline.com, *.microsoftonline-p.com, *.msauth.net, *.msauthimages.net, *.msecnd.net, *.msftauth.net, *.msftauthimages.net, *.phonefactor.net, enterpriseregistration.windows.net, policykeyservice.dc.ad.msft.netTCP: 443, 80
64Allow
Required
Yes*.compliance.microsoft.com, *.protection.office.com, *.security.microsoft.com, compliance.microsoft.com, defender.microsoft.com, protection.office.com, security.microsoft.com
13.107.6.192/32, 13.107.9.192/32, 52.108.0.0/14, 2620:1ec:4::192/128, 2620:1ec:a92::192/128
TCP: 443
66Default
Required
No*.portal.cloudappsecurity.comTCP: 443
67Default
Optional
Notes: Security and Compliance Center eDiscovery export
No*.blob.core.windows.netTCP: 443
68Default
Optional
Notes: Portal and shared: 3rd party office integration. (including CDNs)
Nofirstpartyapps.oaspapps.com, prod.firstpartyapps.oaspapps.com.akadns.net, telemetryservice.firstpartyapps.oaspapps.com, wus-firstpartyapps.oaspapps.comTCP: 443
69Default
Required
No*.aria.microsoft.com, *.events.data.microsoft.comTCP: 443
70Default
Required
No*.o365weve.com, amp.azure.net, appsforoffice.microsoft.com, assets.onestore.ms, auth.gfx.ms, c1.microsoft.com, dgps.support.microsoft.com, docs.microsoft.com, msdn.microsoft.com, platform.linkedin.com, prod.msocdn.com, shellprod.msocdn.com, support.microsoft.com, technet.microsoft.comTCP: 443
71Default
Required
No*.office365.comTCP: 443, 80
72Default
Optional
Notes: Azure Rights Management (RMS) with Office 2010 clients
No*.cloudapp.netTCP: 443
73Default
Required
No*.aadrm.com, *.azurerms.com, *.informationprotection.azure.com, ecn.dev.virtualearth.net, informationprotection.hosting.portal.azure.netTCP: 443
75Default
Optional
Notes: Graph.windows.net, Office 365 Management Pack for Operations Manager, SecureScore, Azure AD Device Registration, Forms, StaffHub, Application Insights, captcha services
No*.sharepointonline.com, dc.services.visualstudio.com, mem.gfx.ms, staffhub.msTCP: 443
78Default
Optional
Notes: Some Office 365 features require endpoints within these domains (including CDNs). Many specific FQDNs within these wildcards have been published recently as we work to either remove or better explain our guidance relating to these wildcards.
No*.microsoft.com, *.msocdn.com, *.onmicrosoft.comTCP: 443, 80
79Default
Required
Noo15.officeredir.microsoft.com, officepreviewredir.microsoft.com, officeredir.microsoft.com, r.office.microsoft.comTCP: 443, 80
83Default
Required
Noactivation.sls.microsoft.comTCP: 443
84Default
Required
Nocrl.microsoft.comTCP: 443, 80
86Default
Required
Nooffice15client.microsoft.com, officeclient.microsoft.comTCP: 443
89Default
Required
Nogo.microsoft.comTCP: 443, 80
91Default
Required
Noajax.aspnetcdn.com, cdn.odc.officeapps.live.comTCP: 443, 80
92Default
Required
Noofficecdn.microsoft.com, officecdn.microsoft.com.edgesuite.netTCP: 443, 80
93Default
Optional
Notes: ProPlus: auxiliary URLs
No*.virtualearth.net, c.bing.net, excelbingmap.firstpartyapps.oaspapps.com, ocos-office365-s2s.msedge.net, peoplegraph.firstpartyapps.oaspapps.com, tse1.mm.bing.net, wikipedia.firstpartyapps.oaspapps.com, www.bing.comTCP: 443, 80
95Default
Optional
Notes: Outlook for Android and iOS
No*.acompli.net, *.outlookmobile.comTCP: 443
96Default
Optional
Notes: Outlook for Android and iOS: Authentication
Nologin.windows-ppe.netTCP: 443
97Default
Optional
Notes: Outlook for Android and iOS: Consumer Outlook.com and OneDrive integration
Noaccount.live.com, login.live.comTCP: 443
105Default
Optional
Notes: Outlook for Android and iOS: Outlook Privacy
Nowww.acompli.comTCP: 443
114Default
Optional
Notes: Office Mobile URLs
No*.appex.bing.com, *.appex-rf.msn.com, c.bing.com, c.live.com, d.docs.live.net, directory.services.live.com, docs.live.net, partnerservices.getmicrosoftkey.com, signup.live.comTCP: 443, 80
116Default
Optional
Notes: Office for iPad URLs
Noaccount.live.com, auth.gfx.ms, login.live.comTCP: 443, 80
117Default
Optional
Notes: Yammer
No*.yammer.com, *.yammerusercontent.comTCP: 443
118Default
Optional
Notes: Yammer CDN
No*.assets-yammer.comTCP: 443
121Default
Optional
Notes: Planner: auxiliary URLs
Nowww.outlook.comTCP: 443, 80
122Default
Optional
Notes: Sway CDNs
Noeus-www.sway-cdn.com, eus-www.sway-extensions.com, wus-www.sway-cdn.com, wus-www.sway-extensions.comTCP: 443
124Default
Optional
Notes: Sway
Nosway.com, www.sway.comTCP: 443
125Default
Required
No*.entrust.net, *.geotrust.com, *.omniroot.com, *.public-trust.com, *.symcb.com, *.symcd.com, *.verisign.com, *.verisign.net, apps.identrust.com, cacerts.digicert.com, cert.int-x3.letsencrypt.org, crl.globalsign.com, crl.globalsign.net, crl.identrust.com, crl3.digicert.com, crl4.digicert.com, isrg.trustid.ocsp.identrust.com, mscrl.microsoft.com, ocsp.digicert.com, ocsp.globalsign.com, ocsp.msocsp.com, ocsp2.globalsign.com, ocspx.digicert.com, secure.globalsign.com, www.digicert.com, www.microsoft.comTCP: 443, 80
126Default
Optional
Notes: Connection to the speech service is required for Office Dictation features. If connectivity is not allowed, Dictation will be disabled.
Noofficespeech.platform.bing.comTCP: 443
147Default
Required
No*.office.com, www.microsoft365.comTCP: 443, 80
152Default
Optional
Notes: These endpoints enables the Office Scripts functionality in Office clients available through the Automate tab. This feature can also be disabled through the Office 365 Admin portal.
No*.microsoftusercontent.comTCP: 443
153Default
Required
No*.azure-apim.net, *.flow.microsoft.com, *.powerapps.com, *.powerautomate.comTCP: 443
156Default
Required
No*.activity.windows.com, activity.windows.comTCP: 443
158Default
Required
No*.cortana.aiTCP: 443
159Default
Required
Noadmin.microsoft.comTCP: 443, 80
160Default
Required
Nocdn.odc.officeapps.live.com, cdn.uci.officeapps.live.comTCP: 443, 80
184Default
Required
No*.cloud.microsoft, *.static.microsoftTCP: 443, 80

 Note

For recommendations on Yammer IP addresses and URLs, see Using hard-coded IP addresses for Yammer is not recommended on the Yammer blog.

Additional endpoints not included in the Office 365 IP Address and URL Web service

Managing Office 365 endpoints

General Microsoft Stream endpoints

Monitor Microsoft 365 connectivity

Root CA and the Intermediate CA bundle on the third-party application system

Client connectivity

Content delivery networks

Microsoft Azure IP Ranges and Service Tags – Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure IP Ranges and Service Tags – US Government Cloud

Microsoft Azure IP Ranges and Service Tags – China Cloud

Microsoft Public IP Space

Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry

Source :
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/enterprise/urls-and-ip-address-ranges

All about the TeamViewer company profile

By JeanK

Last Updated: 

A TeamViewer company profile allows the ability within the TeamViewer Management Console to manage user permissions and access centrally.

Company admins can add existing users to the license and create new TeamViewer accounts. Both will allow users to log into any TeamViewer application and license the device so they may make connections.

Before starting

It is highly recommended to utilize a Master Account for a company profile, which will be the account that manages all licenses and users.

Please see the following article: Using a Master Account for the TeamViewer Management Console

This article applies to TeamViewer customers with a Premium, Corporate, or Tensor plan.

Benefits of a company profile

Managing users as the company administrator of a company profile also gives access to:

Licensing

Each company profile must have one TeamViewer Core multi-user license activated; this license can be combined with other licenses of the TeamViewer product family (e.g., Assist AR, Remote Management, IoT, etc. ), but cannot be combined with another TeamViewer Core license.

📌Note: If a company admin attempts to activate a second TeamViewer license, they will need to choose between keeping the existing license or replacing it with the new license.

image.png

📌Note: In some cases (with older company profiles and an active perpetual license), multiple core TeamViewer licenses may be activated to one company profile. One subscription license may be added to an existing perpetual license for such company profiles.

License management

Through the TeamViewer Management Console, company admins can manage the licensing of their users directly, including:

  • Assign/un-assign the license to various members of the company profile.
  • Reserve one or more channels for specific teams or persons via Channel Groups.

💡Hint: To ensure the license on your company profile best matches your use case, we highly recommend reaching out to our TeamViewer licensing experts. You may find local numbers here.

 

How to create a company profile

To create a company profile, please follow the instructions below:

  1. Log into the Management Console
  2. On the left-hand side, under the Company header, select User management
  3. In the text box provided, enter the desired company name and click Create.
    • 📌Note: The name of a company profile must be unique and cannot be re-used. If another company profile already uses a name, an error will appear, requesting another name be used instead. 
  4. Once the company profile is created, User management will load with the user that created the company profile as a company administrator.

How to add a new user

To add a new user, please follow the instructions below:

  1. Under User management, click the icon of a person with a + sign. Click on Add user.
  2. On the General tab, add the user’s name and email address and enter a password for the user and click Add user.
    • 💡Hint: Other settings for the user can be adjusted under Advanced, Licenses, and Permissions.
  3. The user will now appear under the User management tab. An email is sent to the user with instructions on activating their account.
    • 📌Note: If the user does not activate their account via email, they will receive an error that the account has not yet been activated when trying to sign in.

How to add an existing user

Users that already have an existing TeamViewer account can request to join a company profile using a few simple steps:

  1. Under User management, click the icon of a person with a + sign. Select Add existing account.
  2. A pop-up will appear, including a URL. Please send this URL to the user you want to add: https://login.teamviewer.com/cmd/joincompany
  3. Once the user opens the link within a browser, they must sign in with their TeamViewer account. Once logged in, they will be prompted to enter the email address of the company administrator. Once completed, they must tick the box I allow to transfer my account and click Join Company.
  4. The company admin will receive a join request via email. The user will appear in user management, where the company admin can approve or decline the addition of the user to the company profile

📌Notes:

  • Every user that joins a company profile will be informed that the company admin will take over full management of their account, including the ability to connect to and control all their devices. It is recommended never to join a company profile the user does not know or fully trust.
  • A user can only be part of one company profile.

How to set user permissions

Users of a company profile have multiple options that can be set by the current company admin, including promoting other users to administrator or company administrator. Permissions are set for each user individually. To access user permissions:

  1. In the User management tab, hovering the cursor over the desired user’s account will produce a three-dots menu (⋮) to the far right of the account. Click this menu and select Edit user from the drop-down.
  2. Once in Edit user, select the Permissions tab. Overall permissions for the account can be changed using the drop-down under the Role header.
image.png

Four options are available:

  • Company administrator: Can make changes to company settings, other administrator accounts, and user accounts.
  • User administrator: Can make changes to other user accounts but cannot change company settings or company administrator accounts.
  • Member: Cannot change the company profile or other users.
  • Customized permissions: The company admin sets permissions for each aspect of the account.

Once the appropriate role is selected, click Save in the window’s upper-left corner.

📌Note: Changes to user permissions are automatic once saved.

How to remove/deactivate/delete users

Along with adding new or existing accounts, company admins can remove, deactivate, or even delete users from the company profile.

📌Note: A current company admin of that license can only remove a TeamViewer account currently connected to a company profile. TeamViewer Customer Support is unable to remove any account from a company profile.

To remove, deactivate or delete an account, please follow the instructions below:

  1. In the User management tab, hovering the cursor over the desired user’s account will produce a three-dots menu (⋮) to the far right of the account. In the drop-down menu that appears are the three options
  2. Select Delete accountRemove user or Deactivate user.
image.png

Consequences of deleting an account

When an account is deleted, the account is not only removed from the company profile but deleted from TeamViewer altogether. The user can no longer use the account or access any information associated with it as it no longer exists.

📌Note: When an account is deleted, the email address associated with the account can be re-used to create a new TeamViewer account.

image.png

When a TeamViewer account is deleted from a company profile:

  • Connection reports, custom modules, and TeamViewer/Remote management policies will be transferred to the current company admin.
  • Web API Tokens for the deleted user are logged out, and their company functionality is removed
  • License activations are removed from the deleted user’s account
  • Shared groups from the deleted user’s account are deleted.

Once the company admin checks the box to confirm that this process cannot be undone, the Delete account button becomes available. Once pressed, the account is deleted.

📌Note: Deletion of any TeamViewer account deletion is irreversible. Only a new account can be created after deletion. All user data will be lost.

Remove user

When an account is removed, the account is removed from the company profile and reverted to a free TeamViewer account. The account is reverted to a free account, and the user is still able to log in with the account. All information associated with the account is still accessible.

When an account is removed from a company profile:

  • Connection reports, custom modules, and TeamViewer /Remote management policies will be transferred to the current company admin.
  • Contacts in the contact book are transferred to the current company admin
  • Web API Tokens for the user’s account are logged out and their company functionality is removed
  • License activations are removed from the user’s account

📌Note: Groups & devices in the Computers & Contacts of the removed user’s account are not affected. Any groups shared also will remain shared.

Once the company admin checks the box to confirm that this process cannot be undone, the Remove user button becomes available. Once pressed, the account is removed from the company profile and reverted to a free TeamViewer account.

📌Note: Once a user account is removed from the current company profile, it can request to join another company profile.

Deactivate user

When an account is deactivated, the account is reverted to inactive. The deactivated account is still associated with the company profile but cannot be used to log into TeamViewer on a free or licensed device. The account is rendered completely unusable.

📌Note: When an account is deactivated, the email address associated with the account cannot be used to create a new free TeamViewer account.

💡Hint: To view inactivated users within the company profile, select the drop-down menu under User Status and check the box for Inactive. All inactive users will now appear in user management.

How to reactivate inactive users

When Deactivate user is selected, the account disappears from user management. They are, however, still a part of the Company Profile and can be reactivated back to the license instantly at any time.

image.png
  1. To view inactivated users within the company profile, select the menu under User Status and check the box for Inactive. All inactive users will now appear in user management.
  2. Once the user is located, hover the cursor over the account. Select the three-dots menu (⋮) to the right of the user’s account and select Activate user
  3. The user’s original permissions status is reverted, and the account can again be used with any TeamViewer device.
image.png

Troubleshooting

Below you will find answers to some common issues encountered when interacting with a company profile.

▹User(s) on a company profile show a free license

In some cases, older users on a company profile may appear as ‘free’ users, especially after upgrading or changing a license. The company admin can resolve this:

  1. Log in to the TeamViewer Management Console under https://login.teamviewer.com
  2. Click Company administration on the left-hand side:
  3. Select the Licenses tab and locate the license. Hovering the cursor over the license will produce a three-dots menu (⋮). Click the menu and select Assign from the drop-down.
  4. The users who show ‘free’ will appear in Unassigned. Select the desired users and click the Add button at the bottom of the page.
image.png

📌Note: Affected users should log out and then back in to see the licensing changes.

▹Your account is already associated with a company 

If a user who is already associated with one company profile attempts to join another company profile, the following pop-up will appear:

image.png

The user’s account must be removed from the current company profile to resolve this. The steps required vary depending on whether it is their active or expired company profile or if they are associated with a company profile created by another account.

SCENARIO 1: As company administrator of an active company profile

If a user who created a company profile wishes to delete the company profile associated with their account, they will need to perform the following steps:

  1. Log in to the TeamViewer Management Console under https://login.teamviewer.com
  2. Click User Management in the upper left corner 
  3. Remove all other accounts: Before deleting a company profile, the company admin must remove all other accounts. Perform these steps for each user on the company profile
  4. Remove the company admin account: Once all other accounts have been removed, the company admin will remove their account. This will delete the company profile altogether
  5. The user is immediately logged out and can now follow the process to add their account to an existing company profile

SCENARIO 2: As company administrator of an expired company profile

In some cases, the user may have created a company profile on an older license that is no longer used or active. In such cases, the company profile will appear as expired in the Management Console.

In such cases, it is still possible to delete the company profile:

  1. Log in to the TeamViewer Management Console under https://login.teamviewer.com
  2. Click Company administration on the left-hand side.
  3. On the General tab, select Delete company.
  4. A pop-up will appear confirming the request to delete the company profile. Check the box at the bottom to validate, and select Delete company.

SCENARIO 3: The account is a member of a company profile

📌Note: Only a company administrator can remove a user from their company profile – not even TeamViewer can remove a user from a company profile, regardless of the request’s origin.

If the user is a member of another company profile, they will need to contact the company admin of that license to request removal.

Once removed, they can then request to join the correct company profile.

Source :
https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/3573-all-about-the-teamviewer-company-profile

Teamviewer Block and allowlist

By .Carol.fg.

Last Updated: 

You have the possibility to restrict remote access to your device by using the Block and Allowlist feature in the TeamViewer full version and the TeamViewer Host.

You can find the feature easily by clicking in your TeamViewer full version on the Gear icon (⚙) in the upper right corner of the TeamViewer (Classic) application, then Security ➜ Block and Allowlist.

Let´s begin with the difference between a blocklist and an allowlist.

This article applies to all TeamViewer (Classic) users.

What is a Blocklist?

The Blocklist generally lets you prevent certain partners or devices from establishing a connection to your computer. TeamViewer accounts or TeamViewer IDs on the blocklist cannot connect to your computer.

📌Note: You will still be able to set up outgoing TeamViewer sessions with partners on the blocklist.

What is an Allowlist?

If you add TeamViewer accounts to the Allowlist, only these accounts will be able to connect to your computer. The possibility of a connection to your computer through other TeamViewer accounts or TeamViewer IDs will be denied

If you have joined a company profile with your TeamViewer account, you can also place the entire company profile on the Allowlist. Thus only the TeamViewer accounts that are part of the company profile can access this device.

📌Note: To work with a company profile you will need a TeamViewer Premium or Corporate license

 

How to set up a Blocklist?

If you would like to deny remote access to your device to specific persons or TeamViewer IDs, we recommend setting up a Blocklist.

You can find the feature easily by clicking in your TeamViewer full version on the Gear icon (⚙) in the upper right corner of the TeamViewer (Classic) application, then Security ➜ Block and Allowlist ➜ Click on Configure…

A new window will open. Activate the first option Deny access for the following partners and click on Add 

Blocklist_01.png

📌Note: If you activate the Also apply for meetings check box, these settings will also be applied to meetings. Contacts from your blocklist are excluded from being able to join your meetings.

After clicking on Add, you can either choose partners saved on your Computers & Contacts list or add TeamViewer IDs/contacts manually to your blocklist.

Blocklist_02.png
Blocklist_03.PNG

How to set up an Allowlist?

If you would like to allow only specific TeamViewer accounts or TeamViewer IDs remote access to your device, we recommend setting up an Allowlist.

You can find the feature easily by clicking in your TeamViewer full version on the Gear icon (⚙) in the upper right corner of the TeamViewer (Classic) application, then Security ➜ Block and Allowlist ➜ Click on Configure…

A new window will open. Activate the second option Allow access only for the following partners and click on Add 

image.png

📌Note: If you activate the Also apply for meetings check box, these settings will also be applied to meetings. Only contacts from your allowlist will then be able to join your meetings.

After clicking on Add, you can either choose partners saved on your Computers & Contacts list, add TeamViewer IDs/contacts manually to your blocklist, or add the whole company you are part of (only visible if you are part of a company profile). 

image.png
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How to delete blocklisted/allowlisted partners?

If you no longer wish to have certain partners block or allowlisted, you can easily remove them from the list.

To do so navigate in your TeamViewer full version to the Gear icon (⚙) in the upper right corner of the TeamViewer (Classic) application, then Security ➜ Block and Allowlist ➜ Click on Configure… and choose whether you would like to remove partners from the Blocklist or from the Allowlist by choosing either Deny access for the following partners (Blocklist) or Allow access only for the following partner (Allowlist). Now click on the partners you would like to remove and finally click Remove  OK

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📌Note: You can choose multiple partners at once by pressing CTRG when clicking on the different partners.

Learn more about how you can benefit from a Master Allowlist: Why Master Allowlists are So Effective to Secure Customers

Source :
https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/29739-block-and-allowlist

Teamviewer Two-Factor Authentication for connections

By .Carol.fg.

Last Updated: 

This article provides a step-by-step guide to activating Two-factor authentication for connections (also known as TFA for connections). This feature enables you to allow or deny connections via push notifications on a mobile device.

This article applies to all Windows users using TeamViewer (Classic) 15.17 (and newer) and macOS and Linux users in version 15.22 (and newer).

What is Two-factor authentication for connections?

TFA for connections offers an extra layer of protection to desktop computers.

When enabled, connections to that computer need to be approved using a push notification sent to specific mobile devices. 

Enabling Two-factor authentication for connections and adding approval devices

Windows and Linux:

1. In the TeamViewer (Classic) application, click the gear icon at the top right menu.

2. Click on the Security tab on the left.

3. You will find the Two-factor authentication for connections section at the bottom.

4. Click on Configure… to open the list of approval devices.

5. To add a new mobile device to receive the push notifications, click Add.

6. You will now see a QR code that needs to be scanned by your mobile device.

Below please find a step-by-step gif for Windows, Linux, and macOS:

Windows

TFA for connections.gif

Linux

Linux add new device.gif

macOS

MAC1_community.gif

7. On the mobile device, download and install the TeamViewer Remote Control app:

a. Android

📌Note: This feature is only available on Android 6.0 or higher.

b. iOS

8. In the TeamViewer Remote Control app, go to Settings → TFA for connections.

9. You will see a short explanation and the option to open the camera to scan the QR code.

image.png

10. Tap on Scan QR code and you will be asked to give the TeamViewer app permission to access the camera.

11. After permission is given, the camera will open. Point the camera at the QR code on the desktop computer (see Step 6 above).

12. The activation will happen automatically, and a success message will be displayed. 

image.png

13. The new device is now included in the list of approval devices.

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14. From now on, any connection to this desktop computer will need to be approved using a push notification.

📌 Note: TFA for connections cannot be remotely disabled if the approval device is not accessible. Due to this, we recommend setting up an additional approval device as a backup.

Removing approval devices

1. Select an approval device from the list and click Remove or the X.

2. You will be asked to confirm the action.

3. By clicking Remove again, the mobile device will be removed from the list of approval devices and won’t receive any further push notifications.

4. If the Approval devices list is empty, Two-factor authentication for connections will be completely disabled.

Below please find a step by step gif for Windows, Linux and macOS:

▹ Windows:

Removing approval devices[1).gif

▹ Linux:

linux remove device.gif

▹ macOS:

MAC2_community.gif

Remote connections when Two-factor authentication for connections is enabled

TFA for connections does not replace any existing authentication method. When enabled, it adds an extra security layer against unauthorized access.

When connecting to a desktop computer protected by TFA for connections, a push notification will be sent to all of the approval devices.

You can either:

  • accept/deny the connection request via the system notification:
image.png
  • accept/deny the connection request by tapping the TeamViewer notification. It will lead to you the following screen within the TeamViewer application to accept/deny the connection:
image.png

Multiple approval devices

All approval devices in the list will receive a push notification. 

The first notification that is answered on any of the devices will be used to allow or deny the connection.

Source :
https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/108791-two-factor-authentication-for-connections

Teamviewer Zero Knowledge Account Recovery

By .Carol.fg.

Last Updated: 

TeamViewer offers the possibility to activate Account Recovery based on the zero-trust principle.  

This is a major security enhancement for your TeamViewer account and a unique offering on the market. 

This article applies to all users.

What is Zero Knowledge Account Recovery 

In cases where you cannot remember your TeamViewer Account credentials, you click on I forgot my password, which triggers an email with a clickable link that leads you to the option of resetting your password.  

The regular reset process leads you to a page where you can set a new password for your account.

The Zero Knowledge Account Recovery acts as another layer of security for this process as the reset process requires you to enter the unique 64 characters Zero Knowledge Account Recovery Code for your account to prove your identity. Important to note is that this happens without any intervention and knowledge of the TeamViewer infrastructure. 

Activate Zero Knowledge Account Recover

To activate Zero Knowledge Account Recovery please follow the steps below: 

1. Log in with your TeamViewer account at login.teamviewer.com

2. Click Edit profile under your profile name (upper right corner). 

3. Go to Security in the left menu 

4. Click the Activate Zero knowledge account recovery button

image.png

📌 Note: The password recovery code is a unique 64 characters code that allows you to regain access if you forgot your password. It is absolutely essential that you print/download your recovery code and keep this in a secure place.

⚠ IMPORTANT: Without the recovery code you won’t be able to recover your account. Access to your account will be irreversibly lost. The data is encrypted with the key and you are the only owner of this key. TeamViewer has no access to it.

5. A PopUp window appears sharing the above information. Click on Generate Recovery Code to proceed. 

6. The Recovery Code is shown. You have to download or print the code as well as you tick the check box confirming that you acknowledge and understand that if you lose your zero knowledge account recovery code, you won’t be able to recover your password and you will lose access to your account forever

image.png

⚠ Do not tick the box unless you understand the meaning.

7. Once you either downloaded or printed the recovery code and ticked the acknowledge box, you can activate the Zero knowledge account recovery by clicking Activate.

Deactivate Zero Knowledge Account Recovery 

To deactivate Zero Knowledge Account Recovery please follow the steps below: 

1. Log in with your TeamViewer account at login.teamviewer.com

2. Click Edit profile under your profile name (upper right corner). 

3. Go to Security in the left menu 

4. Click the Deactivate Zero knowledge account recovery button

image.png

5. A PopUp appears. You have to tick the check box confirming that you acknowledge and understand that if you will be deactivating your zero knowledge account recovery

image.png

6. Click Deactivate to deactivate the Zero Knowledge Account recovery for your TeamViewer Account.

Reset your password

To reset your password for your TeamViewer account, please follow the steps below: (More info here: Reset account password)

1. Go to https://login.teamviewer.com/LogOn#lost-password 

2. Type in your email to the form, confirm you´re not a robot and click Change password

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3. You´ll get the following notification:

image.png

4. Check your email inbox for an email from TeamViewer and click the button within the email

5. You´ll get to a page where you are asked to fill in your Zero Knowledge Account Recovery Code and a new password:

image.png

6. Confirm the chosen password by inserting it again and finish the process by clicking OK

Source :
https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/108862-zero-knowledge-account-recovery

Ports used by TeamViewer

By Ying_Q

Last Updated: 

TeamViewer is designed to connect easily to remote computers without any special firewall configurations being necessary.

This article applies to all users in all licenses.

In the vast majority of cases, TeamViewer will always work if surfing on the internet is possible. TeamViewer makes outbound connections to the internet, which are usually not blocked by firewalls.

However, in some situations, for example in a corporate environment with strict security policies, a firewall might be set up to block all unknown outbound connections, and in this case, you will need to configure the firewall to allow TeamViewer to connect out through it.

TeamViewer ‘s Ports

These are the ports that TeamViewer needs to use.

TCP/UDP Port 5938

TeamViewer prefers to make outbound TCP and UDP connections over port 5938 – this is the primary port it uses, and TeamViewer performs best using this port. Your firewall should allow this at a minimum.

TCP Port 443

If TeamViewer can’t connect over port 5938, it will next try to connect over TCP port 443.

However, our mobile apps running on iOS and Windows Mobile don’t use port 443.

📌Note: port 443 is also used by our custom modules which are created in the Management Console. If you’re deploying a custom module, eg. through Group Policy, then you need to ensure that port 443 is open on the computers to which you’re deploying. Port 443 is also used for a few other things, including TeamViewer (Classic) update checks.

TCP Port 80

If TeamViewer can’t connect over port 5938 or 443, then it will try on TCP port 80. The connection speed over this port is slower and less reliable than ports 5938 or 443, due to the additional overhead it uses, and there is no automatic reconnection if the connection is temporarily lost. For this reason port 80 is only used as a last resort.

Our mobile apps running on Windows Mobile don’t use port 80. However, our iOS and Android apps can use port 80 if necessary.

Windows Mobile

Our mobile apps running on Windows Mobile can only connect out over port 5938. If the TeamViewer app on your mobile device won’t connect and tells you to “check your internet connection”, it’s probably because this port is being blocked by your mobile data provider or your WiFi router/firewall.

Destination IP addresses

The TeamViewer software makes connections to our master servers located around the world. These servers use a number of different IP address ranges, which are also frequently changing. As such, we are unable to provide a list of our server IPs. However, all of our IP addresses have PTR records that resolve to *.teamviewer.com. You can use this to restrict the destination IP addresses that you allow through your firewall or proxy server.

 Having said that, from a security point-of-view this should not really be necessary – TeamViewer only ever initiates outgoing data connections through a firewall, so it is sufficient to simply block all incoming connections on your firewall and only allow outgoing connections over port 5938, regardless of the destination IP address.

Ports Used per Operating System

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Source :
https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/4139-ports-used-by-teamviewer

Site structure: the ultimate guide

3 May 2023

Your site needs to have a defined structure because, without it, it’ll just be a random collection of pages and blog posts. Your users need this structure to navigate on your site, to click from one page to another. Google also uses the structure of your site to determine what content is important and what is less relevant. This guide tells you everything you need to know about site structure.

Table of contents

What is site structure, and why is it important?

Site structure refers to organizing and arranging a website’s pages and content. It defines the information hierarchy within the site and serves as a roadmap for search engine crawlers. A well-structured site facilitates easy navigation, enhances user experience, and helps search engines like Google understand and effectively index the site’s content. This, in turn, can improve the site’s performance by making it easier for users to find and engage with the content. Ultimately, an optimized site structure helps achieve higher rankings, more traffic, and better conversion rates.

Importance for usability

The structure of your website significantly impacts the experience for your visitors (UX). If visitors can’t find the products and information they’re looking for, they’ll not likely become regular visitors or customers. In other words, you should help them navigate your site. A good site structure will help with this.

Navigating should be easy. You need to categorize and link your posts and products so they are easy to find. New visitors should be able to grasp what you’re writing about or selling instantly.

Importance of your site structure for SEO

A solid site structure vastly improves your chances of ranking in search engines. There are three main reasons for this:

a. It helps Google ‘understand’ your site

The way you structure your site will give Google vital clues about where to find the most valuable content on your site. It helps search engines understand what your site is mainly about or what you’re selling. A decent site structure also enables search engines to find and index content quickly. A good structure should, therefore, lead to a higher ranking in Google.

b. It prevents you from competing with yourself

On your site, you might have blog posts that are quite similar. If, for example, you write a lot about SEO, you could have multiple blog posts about site structure, each covering a different aspect. Consequently, Google won’t be able to tell which of these pages is the most important, so you’ll be competing with your content for high rankings. You should let Google know which page you think is most important. You need a good internal linking and taxonomy structure to do this, so all those pages can work for you instead of against you.

c. It deals with changes on your website

The products you sell in your shop will likely evolve. So does the content you’re writing. You probably add new product lines as old stock sells out. Or you write new articles that make old ones redundant. You don’t want Google to show outdated products or deleted blog posts, so you need to deal with these kinds of changes in the structure of your site.

Are you struggling with setting up your site’s structure? Don’t know the best strategy to link from one post to another? Check out our Site structure training, part of the Yoast SEO academy. Access to Yoast SEO academy is included in the price of Yoast SEO Premium. Before you know it, you’ll be able to improve your rankings by creating the best structure for your site!

How to set up the structure of your site

So, how do you construct a solid site structure? First, we’ll look at an ideal site structure and then explain how to achieve this for your site.

What’s an ideal site structure?

Let’s start by looking at an ideal situation: How should you organize your site if you’re starting from scratch? We think a well-organized website looks like a pyramid with several levels:

  1. Homepage
  2. Categories (or sections)
  3. Subcategories (only for larger sites)
  4. Individual pages and posts

The homepage should be at the top. Then, you have some sections or category pages beneath it. You should be able to file your content under one of these categories. You can divide these sections or categories into subcategories if your site is larger. Beneath your categories or subcategories are your pages and posts.

ideal site structure
An ideal site structure looks like a pyramid. On top, you’ll find the homepage and, right below, the main sections or categories, possibly followed by subcategories. On the ground, you’ll find all the individual posts and pages.

Your homepage

On top of the pyramid is the homepage. Your homepage should act as a navigation hub for your visitors. This means, amongst others, that you should link to your most important pages from your homepage. By doing this:

  1. Your visitors are more likely to end up on the pages you want them to end up on;
  2. You show Google that these pages are important.

Further down this article, we’ll help you determine which pages are essential to your business.

Beware not to link too many pages from your homepage, which will cause clutter. And a cluttered homepage doesn’t guide your visitors anywhere. If you want to optimize your homepage further, you can do many other things. Read our article on homepage SEO to find out what.

In addition to having a well-structured homepage, it’s also important to create a clear navigation path on your site. Your site-wide navigation consists of two main elements: the menu and the breadcrumbs.

The menu

First, let’s take a look at the menu. The website menu is the most common aid for navigation on your website, and you want to make the best possible use of it. Visitors use your menu to find things on your website. It helps them understand the structure of your website. That’s why the main categories on your site should all have a place in the menu on your homepage.

Furthermore, putting everything in just one menu is not always necessary. If you have a big site with lots of categories, this may clutter your website and makes your main menu a poor reflection of the rest of your site. Where it makes sense, creating a second menu is perfectly fine.

For instance, eBay has one menu at the top of the page – also called the top bar menu – and, in addition to that, a main menu. This top bar menu links to important pages that aren’t categories in the shop, like pages that relate to the visitor’s account on the site. The main menu reflects the most important product categories on eBay.

ebay's top menu with a colorful logo, links to various sections on the site and a big search bar
eBay has multiple ways to start navigating from the homepage

Finally, just like on your homepage, you shouldn’t add too many links to your menu. They will become less valuable for your users and search engines if you do.

Read about optimizing your website’s menu here, or enroll in our site structure training that includes many examples!

Adding breadcrumbs to your pages can make your site’s structure even clearer. Breadcrumbs are clickable links, usually at the top of a page or post. Breadcrumbs reflect the structure of your site. They help visitors determine where they are on your site. They improve your site’s user experience and SEO, as you can read in our guide on breadcrumbs.

You can use one of the many breadcrumb plugins for your WordPress site. You can also use our Yoast SEO plugin, as we’ve implemented a breadcrumb functionality in our plugin as well.

Taxonomies

WordPress uses so-called taxonomies to group content; other CMSs have similar systems. The word ‘taxonomy’ is a fancy term for a group of things — website pages, in this case — that have something in common. This is convenient because people looking for more information on the same topic can find similar articles more easily. You can group content in different ways. The default taxonomies in WordPress are categories and tags.

Categories

You should divide your site’s blog posts or products into several categories. If these categories grow too big, you should divide these categories into subcategories to clear things up again. For example, if you have a clothing store and sell shoes, you can divide this category into subcategories: ‘boots’, ‘heels’, and ‘flats’. These subcategories contain products, in this case, shoes, of that specific type.

Adding this hierarchy and categorizing your pages helps your user and Google make sense of every page you write. Add your main categories to your site’s menu when implementing your category structure.

Read more: Using category and tag pages for SEO »

Tags

Your site’s structure will also benefit from adding tags. The difference between a category and a tag mostly concerns structure. Categories are hierarchical: you can have subcategories and even sub-subcategories. Tags, however, don’t have that hierarchy. Tags say: “Hey, this article or product has a certain property that might interest a visitor.” Think of it like this: categories are the table of contents of your website, and tags are the index. A tag for the online clothing store mentioned above could be a brand, for instance, Timberlands.

Keep reading: What is the difference between tags and categories? »

Try not to create too many tags. You’re not structuring anything if you add a new unique tag to every post or article. Ensure each tag is used at least twice, and your tags group articles that genuinely belong together.

Some WordPress themes display tags with each post, but some don’t. Ensure your tags are available to visitors somewhere, preferably at the bottom of your article or in the sidebar. Google isn’t the only one that likes tags: they are useful for visitors wanting to read more about the same topic.

Read on: Tagging post properly for users and SEO »

Contextual internal linking

Site structure is all about grouping and linking the content on your site. Until now, we mostly discussed so-called classifying links: links on your homepage, navigation, and taxonomies. On the other hand, contextual links are internal links within the copy on your pages that refer to other pages within your site. For a link to be contextual, the page you link to should be relevant for someone reading the current page. If you look at the previous paragraph, for instance, we link to a post about tagging, so people can learn more about it if they’re interested.

Your most important pages are often very relevant to mention on several pages across your site, so you’ll link to them most often. Just remember that not only the page you’re linking to is relevant, the context of the link is important as well.

Google uses the context of your links to gather information about the page you’re linking to. It always uses the anchor text (or link text) to understand what the page you’re linking to is about. But the anchor text isn’t the only thing Google looks at. Nowadays, it also considers the content around the link to gather extra information. Google is becoming better at recognizing related words and concepts. Adding links from a meaningful context allows Google to value and rank your pages properly. Yoast SEO Premium makes internal linking a breeze by automatically suggesting relevant content from your site to link to.

Contextual linking for blogs

For blogs, you should write extensively on the topics you want to rank for. You should write some main articles — your cornerstone articles — and write various posts about subtopics of that topic. Then link from these related posts to your cornerstone articles and from the cornerstone articles back to related posts. In this way, you’ll ensure that your most important pages have both the most and most relevant links.

The following metaphor might help you understand this principle:

Imagine you’re looking at a map of a state or country. You’ll probably see many small towns and some bigger cities. All towns and cities will be interconnected somehow. You’ll notice that small towns often have roads leading to the big cities. Those cities are your cornerstones, receiving the most links. The small towns are your posts on more specific topics. Some roads (links) lead to these smaller towns, but not as much as the big cities.

internal links metaphor roads

Keep on reading: Internal linking why and how »

Contextual linking opportunities for online shops

Contextual internal linking works differently on an online store with very few to no pages that are exclusively meant to inform. You don’t explore a specific topic on your product pages: you’re selling a product. Therefore, on product pages, you mostly want to keep people on a page and convince them to buy the product. Consequently, contextual linking is far less prominent in this context. You generally shouldn’t add contextual links to your product descriptions because it could lead to people clicking away from the page.

There are just a couple of meaningful ways of adding contextual links to the product pages for your ecommerce SEO:

  1. link from a product bundle page to the individual products
  2. a ‘related items’ or ‘compare with similar items’ section
  3. a ‘customers also bought’ section
  4. a ‘product bundles’ or ‘frequently bought together’ section.

Learn all about setting up a great (internal linking) structure for your online store with our Site structure training, part of our Yoast SEO academy training subscription. We’ve included lots of examples from real websites!

Landing pages

Landing pages are the pages you want your audience to find when they search for specific keywords you’ve optimized for. For instance, we want people who search for ‘free SEO training’ to end up on the page about our free training called ‘SEO for beginners’. You need to approach the content of your most important landing pages differently than your regular pages.

Here, we’ll discuss two types of landing pages: cornerstone pages and product landing pages. They’re both pages you’d like people to land on from the search engines, but they require quite a different approach. But first, we’ll shortly go into search intent because you have to know what your audience is really looking for.

Search intent

When setting up your site structure, you must consider search intent. It’s about what you think people are looking for when they enter a query into a search engine. What do people want to find? And: what do they expect to find?

Consider different possibilities in search intent, as you might want to cater to different types on your site. Are people just looking for an answer to a question or a definition? Are they comparing products before purchase? Or are they intending to buy something right away? This is often reflected in the type of query they make. You can also use Google’s search results to create great content that fits someone’s needs.

When you have an idea of the search intent, ensuring your landing page fits your audience’s search intent is essential. Pages can answer multiple search intents, but you need a clear view of at least your most important pages.

Read all about search intent and why it’s important for SEO.

Cornerstone content pages

Cornerstone articles are the most important informational articles on your website. Their focus is to provide the best and most complete information on a particular topic; their main goal is not to sell products.

Because of this focus, we usually think of blogs when discussing cornerstone content. Of course, that doesn’t mean it can only be a blog post. All different kinds of websites have cornerstone articles! Rule of thumb: if an article brings everything you know about a broad topic together, it’s a cornerstone content article.

This article explains what cornerstone content is and how to create it. Want to set up your cornerstone content strategy? Our Internal linking SEO workout makes the cornerstone content approach easy to implement!

Product landing pages

Product landing pages significantly differ from cornerstone articles. The latter are lengthy, whereas product landing pages shouldn’t be that long. Rather than complete articles, they should be focused. These pages only need to show what your visitors need to know to be convinced. They don’t need to hold all the information.

You want to rank with these pages, meaning they need content. Enough content for Google to understand what the page is about and what keyword it should rank for. Where cornerstone articles could be made up of thousands of words, a couple of hundred could be enough for product landing pages. The main focus of the content should be on your products.

Michiel listed all the essentials of your product landing page here.

Maintaining your site structure

Structuring or restructuring your content doesn’t always have high priority in everything you have to do. Especially when you blog a lot or add other content regularly, it might feel like a chore. Although it isn’t always fun, you must do it, or your website might become messy. To prevent that from happening, you need to fix your site structure and keep an eye on it while adding new content. Site structure should be part of your long-term SEO strategy.

When your business goal or website changes, your menu must also change. Planning things visually will pay off when you start thinking about restructuring your site. Make a flowchart.

Start with your new menu one or two levels deep and see if you can fit in more pages you have created over the years. You’ll find that some pages are still valid but don’t seem relevant to your menu anymore. No problem, just be sure to link to them on related pages and in your sitemaps so that Google and your visitors can still find these pages. The flowchart will also show you any gaps in the site structure.

Read more: Optimizing your website menu »

Rethink your taxonomy

Creating an overview of your categories, subcategories, and products or posts will also help you to rethink your site’s taxonomy. This could be a simple spreadsheet, but you can use more visual tools like LucidChart or MindNode.

Do your product categories and subcategories provide a logical overview of your product range or your posts and pages? Perhaps you’ve noticed somewhere down the line that one category has been far more successful than others, or you wrote many blog posts on one subject and very few on others.

If one category grows much larger than others, your site’s pyramid could be thrown off balance. Think about splitting this category into different categories. But, if some product lines end up much smaller than others, you might want to merge them. Don’t forget to redirect the ones you delete.

If you have built your HTML sitemap manually, update that sitemap after changing your site structure. In the far more likely event you have an XML sitemapre-submit it to Google Search Console.

Keep reading: The structure of a growing blog »

Clean up outdated content

You might be able to update and republish some outdated articles to make them relevant again. If an article is outdated, but no one reads it anyway, you might delete it. This could clean up your site nicely.

What you should know, in that case, is that you should never delete a page or article without thinking. If Google cannot find the page, it serves your user a 404 error page. Both the search engine and your visitor will see this error message saying the page doesn’t exist, and that is a bad experience and, thus, bad for your SEO.

Be smart about this! You need to redirect the URL of the page you’re deleting properly so your user (and Google) lands on a different page that is relevant to them. That could even improve your SEO!

Got some old content to clean up on your site? Sort out hidden pages and dead ends in four easy steps with our orphaned content SEO workout, available in Yoast SEO Premium.

Avoid keyword cannibalization

Your website is about a specific topic, which could be quite broad or rather specific. While adding content, you should be aware of keyword cannibalization. If you optimize your articles for keywords that are all too similar, you’ll be devouring your chances of ranking in Google. If you optimize different articles for similar key terms, you’ll be competing with yourself, making both pages rank lower.

You’ll have some work to do if you suffer from keyword cannibalization. In short, you should research the performance of your content and probably merge and redirect some of it. When merging posts, we recommend creating a new draft by cloning one of the original posts with the free Yoast Duplicate Post plugin. This allows you to work on your merged post without making these changes to a live post. Read the guide by Joost to learn more about keyword cannibalization and how to fix it.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all this advice? Yoast SEO has some handy tools to make internal linking so much easier.

Yoast SEO’s text link counter visualizes your links so you can optimize them. It shows the internal links in a post and the internal links to a post. This tool can enhance your site structure by improving the links between your related posts. Make sure your cornerstones get the most (relevant) links! You can identify your cornerstones by finding them in the column with the pyramid icon.

Quickly see which posts have internal links pointing to them with the text link counter in Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO Premium helps you with your internal linking as well. Our internal linking suggestions tool will show you which articles are related to the one you’re writing, so you can easily link to them: just by dragging the link into your editor!

internal linking suggestions in Yoast SEO sidebar
The internal linking suggestions even include other content types

Moreover, our tool allows you to indicate which articles you consider cornerstone content on your site. Those articles will be shown at the top of the internal linking suggestions. You’ll never forget to link to them again.

Read on: How to use Yoast SEO for your cornerstone content strategy »

The importance of site structure

As we have seen, there are several reasons why site structure is important. A good site structure helps both your visitors and Google navigate your site. It makes it easier to implement changes and prevents competing with your content. So use the tips and pointers in this guide to check and improve your site structure. That way, you’ll stay on top and keep your website from growing out of control!

Want to improve your site structure but don’t know where to start? Get Yoast SEO Premium and get loads of helpful tools and guidance, including free access to Yoast SEO Academy, our Site structure training, and our SEO workouts!

Keep on reading: WordPress SEO: The definitive guide to higher rankings for WordPress sites »

Marieke van de Rakt

Marieke was head of strategy and former CEO at Yoast. After the sale of Yoast to Newfold Digital in 2021 she is no longer active at Yoast in 2023. Marieke, together with her husband Joost, actively invests in and advises several startups through their company Emilia Capital.

Source :
https://yoast.com/site-structure-the-ultimate-guide/

What is on-page SEO?

28 June 2023

In SEO, there are on-page factors and off-page factors. On-page SEO factors are aspects of your website that you can optimize for better search rankings. It’s about improving things like your technical set-up, your content, and how user-friendly your site is. In this post, we’ll explain all about on-page SEO and how it differs from off-page SEO, and we’ll talk about some on-page optimizations that can help you to rank better.

On-page and off-page SEO: what’s the difference?

Every SEO strategy is focused on ranking as high as possible in the search engines. To do this, we all try to design and develop a website that Google’s algorithm — and people! — will love. That’s basically what SEO is about. The factors in Google’s algorithm can be divided into two categories that will determine the ranking of your website: on-page factors and off-page factors.

On-page SEO factors all have to do with elements on your website. For instance, things you work on to improve your E-E-A-T also fall in this category. Some of the most important on-page SEO factors are:

  • Your site set-up and technical features, site speed in particular
  • The quality of your content and use of keywords
  • How do you use additional media, such as images and videos
  • Your site structure and internal linking
  • Structured data and search appearance
  • Your URL structure
  • User experience

Meanwhile, off-page SEO looks at what happens away from your website. Some off-page SEO factors include:

  • Relevant links from other websites leading to your site
  • Social media activity
  • Business and map listings
  • External marketing activities

Pro tip: Find out more about on-page SEO with our front-end SEO inspector! You can use the front-end inspector tool in Yoast SEO Premium to explore the SEO data, metadata and schema output for pages on your site. It’s a great way to get to grips with your on-page SEO.

Importance of on-page SEO

On-page SEO consists of all the elements of SEO that you have control over. If you own a website, you can control the technical issues and the quality of your content. We believe you should be able to tackle all of these factors as they’re in your own hands. Remember: if you create an excellent website, it will start ranking.

Focusing on on-page SEO will also increase the chance that your off-page SEO strategy will be successful. Link building with a crappy site is very tough. Nobody wants to link to poorly written articles or sites that don’t work correctly.

How to optimize on-page SEO factors

1. Make sure search engines can crawl and index your site

If you’re unfamiliar with crawlability and indexing, here’s a quick explanation of what it is and what it has to do with Google. To show your page in the search results, Google must first know about that page. It has to be indexed by Google, meaning that this page has been stored in their index. And for that to be possible, you must ensure you’re not blocking Google from indexing your post or your whole site. So check if you’re not unintentionally doing that (we still see this happening!), and ensure your site is indexed.

Although this isn’t technically a ranking factor, getting your site into the search results requires it, so we thought it should be included here.

2. Invest time in creating quality content based on solid keyword research

Why do you think people visit your site? Most likely because it contains the information they’re looking for. Therefore it’s essential to write excellent content that corresponds with their needs. Search engines like Google also read your text. Which site ranks highest for a specific search term is primarily based on a website’s content. That’s why your content should be informative, easy to read, and focused on the right keywords that your audience uses.

Aside from creating quality content, you must remove or remedy low-quality pages. So-called thin content can harm your SEO. Take time to find these pages and do something with them occasionally to keep your content in good shape.

Learn about writing high-quality content in our Ultimate guide to SEO copywriting, or take our SEO copywriting training course.

3. Improve your site speed

A significant on-page ranking factor is site speed. Users don’t want to wait for pages to load, so Google tends to rank fast-loading sites higher. If you’re unsure how fast (or slow) your site is, check out your Core Web Vital scores using the report in Google Search Console. This helpful tool will point out areas where your site speed can be improved so you know what to work on.

If you’re tech-savvy, you can probably handle this on your own. If you’re unsure where to start, our Technical SEO training can help you.

4. Get your site structure and internal linking right

A good site structure helps Google (and users) understand your site and navigate your content. And when it comes to making that site structure, internal linking is the way to do it. Firstly, you must channel many internal links to your most important content. We call those pages cornerstone content. Secondly, you should tidy up pages that aren’t getting many (if any) internal links. Those pages are what we refer to as orphaned content. It would be best if you decided whether to improve those pages and add more internal links pointing to them or remove them altogether.

Yoast SEO Premium has two SEO workouts to help you improve your site structure and internal linking. Using the workouts can help you to make big improvements quickly, so give them a go!

5. Optimize your use of images and videos

You’ll want to include images on your site to make it attractive, and maybe some videos too. Doing that wrong can harm your SEO, but doing it correctly comes with some SEO benefits.

High-quality images are usually large files that can slow your site down, and that’s a problem. Using smaller image files and giving them descriptive names, captions, and alt tags will favor your SEO. Plus, there are additional benefits. For one, you’ll make your site more accessible, so it’s helpful for a wider audience. And for another thing, you’ll have a chance of your images ranking in the Google Image search results. Read more about these topics in our posts about image SEO and alt tags.

Adding videos to your site is a bit more complicated than images. And ranking your videos on Google (or YouTube) comes with its own set of challenges. We’ve got a great series of posts all about video SEO, if you’d like to learn more about optimizing in this area. There’s also a dedicated Yoast Video SEO plugin, if you’re serious about getting your videos ranking.

6. Create a persuasive search appearance

How your site looks in the search results is vital for SEO. While the search results aren’t part of your site, the things you do to optimize your search appearance are. Therefore, we consider SEO titles, meta descriptions, and structured data part of on-page SEO.

Optimize your SEO title and meta description, and then add structured data for results that stand out

Optimizing the text for your search snippets is fairly straightforward. Adding structured data can be trickier. Good to know: Yoast SEO can help with all these tasks. With checks and previews to help you, getting your SEO titles and meta descriptions right couldn’t be easier. And when it comes to structured data, Yoast does all the hard work for you — all you need to do is select the content type and fill in the blanks.

7. Make your URLs SEO-friendly

A well-crafted URL structure helps your on-page SEO — it’s like giving your web pages a good road map. Think of it as a friendly address that guides search engines and invites users to explore your content. Creating SEO-friendly URLs makes it easier for humans and search engines to understand what your page is all about. Opt for concise and descriptive URLs that include relevant keywords, as they provide a clear signpost. A clean and organized URL structure enhances navigation, making it easier for everyone to understand your website. Don’t forget to keep it short and readable.

8. Design an excellent user experience

The last thing we want to mention is user experience. Simply put, users need to understand your website easily. They should be able to find what they want in a heartbeat. They should know where to click and how to navigate through your site. And your site should be fast! A beautifully designed website is nice, but you should make it your top priority to create a user-friendly website first.

If you want to learn more about combining SEO and UX to get more people to your site, we’d advise you to look at our other articles on user experience. Or check out our all-around SEO training course.

To conclude

We’ve talked about the most important on-page SEO factors. First, ensure that your website works correctly and that your technical SEO is up to par. Secondly, create content that is user-centered and focused on the right keywords. Thirdly, work on the usability and speed of your site to help users and search engines around your website.

As these factors are all a part of your site, you can work on them to ensure your on-page SEO is top-notch! That being said, do remember to also work on your off-page SEO. Although you may not have total control over these factors, you can still put some effort into creating that exposure on other sites too!

Read more: What is off-page SEO? »

Edwin Toonen

Edwin is a strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skill at The Netherlands’ leading web design magazine.

Source :
https://yoast.com/what-is-onpage-seo/

What is cornerstone content?

This post explains everything you need to know about cornerstone content – or evergreen content, as it’s also known. You’ll learn what it is, why it’s important for SEO, how to write this kind of content and how you should link from your posts to your cornerstone articles.

What is cornerstone content?

Cornerstone content is the core of your website. It consists of the best, most important articles on your site; the pages or posts you want to rank highest in the search engines. Cornerstone articles are usually relatively long, informative articles, combining insights from different blog posts and covering everything that’s important about a certain topic.

Their focus is to provide the best and most complete information on a particular topic, rather than to sell products. Still, they should reflect your business or communicate your mission perfectly.

Cornerstone content can be either a blog post or a page. But whichever they are, you should make sure they’re very well written, update them often, and aim to get them to rank for your most competitive keywords.

Why are cornerstone articles so important for SEO?

Cornerstone content plays a significant role in any SEO strategy. It can be hard to rank for search terms that are very popular, but a cornerstone approach can help you tackle those competitive search terms. If you write a lot of pages on similar subjects, you need to tell Google which of them is the most important. If you don’t, you’ll be eating away your own chances to rank well in the search results. Providing the correct internal link structure between your posts tells Google which article is the most important.

Cornerstone articles should have a prominent place on your website. Ideally, someone should be able to click straight from your homepage to your cornerstone articles. Also, all your other posts about similar topics should link back to their corresponding cornerstone article, so its importance is clear from your site structure. As your site develops, you will write tons of new blog posts approaching that topic from other angles, each one linking back to your cornerstone article. This internal linking structure will increase the chance of your cornerstone content pages ranking in Google searches.

The following metaphor might help you understand this principle: imagine you’re looking at a map of a state or country. Small towns and big cities will all be interconnected somehow. But the big cities will have many more roads leading towards them than the small towns. Those cities are your cornerstones, receiving the most links. The small towns are your posts on more specific topics. There are some roads (links) leading to them, but not as many as to the big cities.

A more concrete example: at Yoast, we write a lot of different posts about SEO copywriting, each looking at a different aspect of SEO copywriting. The cornerstone article for this topic is the ultimate guide to SEO Copywriting, and whenever we write a new post on SEO copywriting, we add a link to that cornerstone article. In doing so, I’ll make clear to Google that the ultimate guide is the most important article about SEO Copywriting on our site, thereby increasing its chances to rank.

Which articles are my cornerstones?

Choose your cornerstones carefully. Think of the four or five pages you would like someone to read when they first visit your website. These articles should be the cornerstones of your site. Which articles are most important to you? Which are the most complete and authoritative? Do these target the keywords you most want to rank for?

It might be tempting to think of your homepage as a cornerstone article, but that’s not really what your homepage does. Although it does have lots of links leading back to it, content-wise it doesn’t really do what a cornerstone should do. A cornerstone article should target a specific topic, with lots of in-depth content talking about that topic. Your homepage will be much more general than this, so it doesn’t give you the same opportunity to rank for your target keywords. That being said, of course, it is important to spend time optimizing your homepage.

If your website is enormous, you’ll have more cornerstones than if your website is small. You’ll probably write about more than one topic, so be sure to choose a cornerstone article from each category.

Give your cornerstones extra attention

The concept of cornerstone content is so important, that our Yoast SEO for WordPress plugins and Yoast SEO for Shopify app include an option to indicate whether or not a page is cornerstone content. If you mark pages as cornerstone content, Yoast SEO helps you write kick-ass content and build a solid internal linking structure.

In the classic editor, the Yoast meta box has a Cornerstone content toggle. The block editor has one in the sidebar

Marking your cornerstone articles means you can create a list of them in your post overview, so you can easily work on improving them. And, most importantly, the link suggestion tool in Yoast SEO Premium will give priority to the articles that you mark as cornerstone content, so you’ll never forget to link to your best article on a certain topic if you write about something related.

Optimizing your cornerstones with Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO offers a specific cornerstone content analysis that helps you optimize your cornerstone content. Yoast SEO for WordPress also includes a text link counter, and – in Premium – even internal linking suggestions, in which cornerstone articles get priority over other posts.

Read more: Set up cornerstone content and get it ranking in 6 steps »

Cornerstone analysis

If you really want to make your cornerstone articles great, you need specific content analysis for cornerstones. Content marked as cornerstone will be judged more strictly than usual on SEO and readability in the content analysis, as you want this article to be longer, have excellent content, keep the reader’s attention and rank high. Read how this analysis helps you optimize your cornerstones in Yoast SEO for WordPress and Yoast SEO for Shopify.

With Yoast SEO for WordPress you can filter your cornerstone articles in the post overview to see how many internal links a post has pointing to it and how many posts it links to. This text link counter is extremely useful because you can see at a glance if your cornerstone content has enough links from other, related posts:

Cornerstone articles

Internal linking suggestions

Yoast SEO Premium has an internal linking feature. We analyze what you write and use the most prominent words in your text to determine which articles are related – and therefore which you should link to. Cornerstone articles are treated differently in our calculation of internal linking suggestions because they are more important and have a higher value. To give these articles more prominence, we place the cornerstone articles at the top of the list of the internal linking suggestions. That makes it much easier for you to link to your critical articles.

internal linking suggestions in Yoast SEO sidebar

5 steps to a killer cornerstone approach

Ideally, you should do extensive keyword research, which will help you to produce really awesome, long, informative and beautifully written cornerstone articles. But what if you don’t have that much time? And what if you’ve already written tons of articles? Follow these five steps to make killer cornerstone content.

Step 1: Think about your keywords

You have to decide on the essential keywords you want to rank for. Your cornerstone articles should be optimized for the ‘head’ or most competitive keywords, so be sure to carry out some keyword research.

Step 2: Choose the best post

Go through the posts that are optimized for keywords surrounding the most important keywords. Which post do you think is the best? That’ll be your cornerstone from now on!

Step 3: Rewrite it

Rewrite your cornerstone article. Make it awesome and SEO-friendly. As cornerstone articles are usually lengthy, pay extra attention to readability. Make sure you use plenty of headings. An index at the beginning of a long cornerstone article is also a great idea. Expand your article and make sure it’s totally up to date. And don’t forget to rewrite and update that article regularly.

The other blog posts about similar topics as your cornerstone article should be optimized for long tail variants of the ‘head’ keyword you’re attacking in your cornerstone article.

Step 5: Linking from tail to head

You have to tell Google that your new cornerstone article is the most important article on that topic on your site. Don’t forget to link from all the long tail articles to your cornerstone article!

Quick wins!

In real life, perhaps you do not have the time to develop such an elaborate structure. Still, writing an article about a specific topic often leads to inspiration to write an article about a similar topic. You should then try to optimize this second post for a slightly different focus keyword and link these posts internally.

Every time you write a post, you should think about similar posts you have written and link to these. Do you already have an important article about this, even though it is not entirely awesome yet? If you use Yoast SEO Premium, keep an eye on the internal linking tool to see what comes up.

Also, make sure you set up the right linking structure. This does not take a lot of your time and could really help to rank your most important article. Take a look at all the posts on the topic you have already written about and add links to your most important article from all of your (less awesome) posts about that specific topic. You can use the Yoast text link counter to regularly check if there are enough internal links to your important articles.

Do our SEO workout: the cornerstone content approach

Want to build a fantastic cornerstone content strategy in WordPress? Do our SEO workout: the cornerstone content approach to quickly power up your internal linking. With the workout, you’ll get all the guidance you need to make sure that your most important articles have enough internal links pointing to them. You can find the tools you need right there in the workout — all you need to do is follow the steps. Give it a go!

choose cornerstone articles in first step Yoast SEO workout
The first step in the cornerstone content SEO workout in Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast’s plans for cornerstone content

Site structure is important for SEO. Having a solid site structure means both search engines and visitors can easily navigate your site to find what they want. To help you achieve this, we are continually working on many more features in Yoast SEO that’ll improve the structure of your website.

Keep reading: SEO Copywriting: the complete guide »

Source :
https://yoast.com/what-is-cornerstone-content/

Set up cornerstone content and get it ranking in 6 steps

On your site, you’ll probably have a few articles that are most dear to your heart. Articles you desperately want people to read. Articles you want people to find in Google. At Yoast, we call these articles your cornerstone articles. How does the Yoast SEO plugin help you set up a cornerstone content strategy? We’ll tell you all about that in this blog post. Plus, find out how our new SEO workout can make the whole process much easier!

What is a cornerstone content strategy?

Cornerstone content consists of those articles that you’re most proud of, that are most important to you. The posts that make people come back to your site or buy your stuff. The articles that reflect the mission of your company perfectly, and the ones you definitely want to rank highest. In general, cornerstone articles are lengthy, and they tend to be informative.

In a nutshell, a cornerstone content strategy means choosing your best content and channeling the most internal links towards it from other relevant pages on your site.

What does Yoast SEO do with cornerstone content?

There are three aspects to a successful cornerstone content approach:

  • Cornerstone content should be lengthy, well-written, and well-optimized.
  • Cornerstone articles should have a prominent place in your site’s structure.
  • You should keep your cornerstones fresh and up to date.

With the free version of Yoast SEO, you can make use of the cornerstone content toggle, the text link counter, and the cornerstone content analysis to optimize your content and count the number of incoming internal links.

Upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium and you’ll get all of the above, as well as access to our amazing internal linking suggestions tool, the stale cornerstone content filter and our brand-new Internal linking SEO workout!

Why do you need cornerstone content?

Without a doubt, the most common question we are asked is: “how do I make my site rank for keyword X?”. What most people don’t realize, is that they’re asking the wrong question. You see, sites don’t rank: individual pages rank. If you want to rank for a particular keyword, you’ll need to determine which specific page you want to rank for that keyword.

Adding a keyword to the title of every page is not helpful; you should use a focus keyphrase only once. What also won’t work is writing 200 articles around variations of a keyphrase without giving these a proper linking structure. You need one page that is the center of the content about that topic – a “hub” page if you will. That’s where cornerstone content comes in. But how do you make sure your cornerstone content articles start ranking in the search engines?

To rank with these articles, you need to make sure they’re the best articles you can write. You also need a kickass internal linking structure. Luckily, Yoast is there to help! In this post, we’ll explain just what cornerstone content is and how to rank with these articles. Are you struggling with implementing cornerstone content? Check out our Internal linking SEO workout: the cornerstone approach!

How to set up a cornerstone content strategy with Yoast SEO

Step 1: Choose which pages will be your cornerstones

Your cornerstone content pages will need to be 100% awesome in every way. You need to think about keyword research, headlines, first-class content and more. This article just covers what to do with those pages once they’re created, so if your pages aren’t ready, go and make some now! Not sure where to begin? Check out our detailed post on what type of articles should be your cornerstone content.

Which keywords to target with cornerstone articles?

Your cornerstone articles should be optimized for your most ‘head’ or most competitive keywords. Of course, you should still be realistic when determining these head keywords. But, your internal linking structure will help your cornerstone pages rank (more on that below), which is why these articles should aim to rank for your most competitive keywords.

Positioning that new cornerstone content on your site

Now let’s talk about where to place that content on your site. Important content deserves a place within your core site structure, not a news item or blog post drifting around somewhere. It should be easily found in a few clicks.
This also means you should not create other pages within your site that target the exact same keyword! And you really don’t have to, as there are many ways to use keyword variations for these other pages and use these in your site structure.

Step 2: Mark those pages as cornerstone content using the toggle button

Once you’ve put together a list of the pages that will be your cornerstone content, you need to go to each of those pages and make sure this button is toggled to ‘On’:

Alternatively, you can head straight over to our SEO workout: the cornerstone content approach and take a look at the overview in the first step. If there are any missing that you want to add, just look them up using the search box and click to add them to the list.

Our SEO analysis will help you optimize your blog post for the search engines. For cornerstone content, you have to go the extra mile, so indicating that an article is cornerstone content will make the SEO analysis and the readability analysis a bit more strict. For example, if a post is cornerstone content, we urge you to write at least 900 words, instead of the 300 words for a normal post.

Make sure you use your focus keyphrase enough, mention it in a few headings, and optimize your images. Readability is equally important, though. Our readability analysis helps you to, for instance, use enough headings and to write in short, easy-to-read sentences and paragraphs.

Read more: How our cornerstone analysis helps you create your best articles »

Step 3: Check that all your cornerstone content pages are marked

You’ll want to make sure all of your chosen pages are marked as cornerstone content at this point (otherwise you might need to double back later and redo some steps). It can help you to keep track if you make a note next to each page on your list once you’ve toggled the cornerstone content button to ‘On’.

If you’re a Yoast SEO Premium user you can access our new Internal linking SEO workout and quickly check which pages are marked as ‘cornerstone content’ in the overview provided:

Again, if anything is missing from this overview, you can easily add it using the search box below the list.

You have to link to your cornerstone articles to make them rank high in the search engines. By linking to your favorite articles the most often, you’ll tell Google that these are the ones that are most important. Think of it as a map: big cities have considerably more roads leading towards them than small towns. Those cities are your cornerstones. They should receive the most links. The small towns are your posts on more specific topics. If you build your site structure like this, you won’t be competing with your own content for a place in the search engines.

The text link counter allows you to see all the internal links you’ve put in a post and all internal links to a post from your other pages. This tool provides you with a clear overview of the distribution of your internal links. Make sure to check (and keep checking) if your cornerstone articles receive enough internal links!

text links counter

If you’re using the Premium Internal linking SEO workout to set up your cornerstone content strategy, you can see all the incoming links of your posts and pages in one simple overview, instead. If any are lacking enough internal links, you can click to add them to the next step of the workout where you will add more.

When you’re adding links to your cornerstones, use the keyword you’re targeting as the anchor text for that link, if possible. But most importantly, link from within the content. Don’t just add some site-wide sidebar/footer links. The reason for this is simple: links from within content are way more valuable than links from sidebars.

In addition to that, you need to make sure that you’re linking to your cornerstones from pages that actually are about related topics. Contextual links are the ones that’ll help you rank. Adding hand-picked, relevant links that are useful for someone visiting your website is the best way of achieving this. Automation will not give you quality results. That means that building a decent linking strategy can be a lot of work, especially if your site is large.

If you use our Premium plugin, you can use our internal linking tool. This tool will make linking suggestions for other posts based on the words you’re using in your post. The posts you’ve marked as cornerstone content articles – as described previously – will always appear on top of our list of suggestions. That way, whenever you’re writing about a specific topic, you’ll find the right cornerstone article to link to.

internal linking suggestions in Yoast SEO sidebar

Using our internal linking tool will remind you to link to your cornerstones whenever you’re writing a new post. As a result, your cornerstones will stay on top of your linking structure. And that’s what they need to get ranking!

Read more: How to use the Yoast SEO internal linking tool »

Once again, the Internal linking SEO workout can make this step a whole lot easier. We’ve added a tool that shows you your cornerstone articles (with a link you can copy) as well as relevant pages from your site that you can visit to add that link right away!

This means you can manage the whole thing from one page — plus you can immediately see whether you’ve added enough links or not. If you still need more after you’ve added all the relevant suggested links, just refresh the SEO workout and you’ll get more suggestions to add!

Step 6: Monitor and maintain!

Don’t start neglecting your cornerstone content strategy once everything is set up — as you add more pages to your website, you’ll need to keep making sure your cornerstone content is getting enough links. You probably don’t need to check this weekly, but if you leave it for more than a year then your website could change a lot in that time. Keep on top of your links to keep your cornerstone content strategy healthy and effective.

Regularly updating your cornerstone content is important for your cornerstone strategy, too. After all, your cornerstones should be timeless, and therefore, always contain the latest insights. If you have Yoast SEO Premium installed, you’ll have an additional feature to help you keep your cornerstones up to date. The stale cornerstone content filter allows you to see at a glance which of your cornerstones need updating. It works in both your post overview, and your pages overview. Neat, right?

Of course, at Yoast, we practice what we preach, so you’ll find no stale content here 😉

Don’t forget to promote your cornerstone content

If well-written, your cornerstone content should be something to be proud of! Something that others willingly share and thereby also something that will attract links. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other people who have written about related topics: show them what you have created and that it might be worthwhile for their visitors to see. You might even want to offer to write a guest post for them on the topic, linking back to your article.

Cornerstone content strategy made simple with Yoast SEO

The cornerstone content approach is a powerful strategy that channels your internal links toward the content that matters. Your cornerstone articles deserve special attention. They need to be written carefully, to be the most complete and authoritative. They should also be easy to find on your site! Cornerstones need many contextual links pointing towards them to make Google see that they are the most important articles. That’ll make them rank in the search engines. That’ll get them the traffic they’re worthy of!

Our Yoast SEO plugin comes with an array of tools to help you set up and maintain your cornerstone content and your internal links. Upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium and the benefits get even better. Try our Internal linking SEO workout today and give your cornerstone content the treatment it deserves!

Keep reading: Why you should buy Yoast SEO Premium »



Source :
https://yoast.com/how-to-set-up-a-cornerstone-content-strategy-with-yoast-seo/