![\"Yoast](\"https:\/\/2019.nijmegen.wordcamp.org\/files\/2019\/07\/yoast-team-img.jpg\")
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Do you want to know more about our gold sponsor Yoast Academy<\/strong>? We asked the people of Yoast Academy a few questions!<\/em><\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The founder of Yoast, Joost de Valk, had always been interested in computers. As soon as the internet became a thing, he started blogging about web development. This eventually lead to a job as an SEO consultant, an important milestone in his career.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Before 2006, Joost never had any interest in SEO, but that was about to change! Joost: \u201cAs I was able to write code and develop websites, I immediately understood all technical aspects of SEO.\u201d This technical background combined with his ability to write appealing copy and to speak in public were the perfect ingredients to become an SEO expert.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Between 2006 and 2009 Joost went to a lot of conferences (first as an attendee, later as a speaker) and began writing about SEO on his blog. Joost spoke at conferences like SMX and gradually became a well-known SEO expert. In 2007, at SMX Stockholm, Joost tried to explain to Rand Fishkin how to pronounce his first name. That\u2019s when Rand said: \u201cO, that\u2019s easy, just toast with a Y.\u201d Yoast was born.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n At around the same time, Joost began to work with WordPress. Joost created his first WordPress site in April 2006. \u201cI was searching for a CMS, as that made it easier to use and maintain websites. I looked into a few and chose WordPress.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In 2010, Joost decided to give up his job as an SEO consultant. He took a leap of faith and started a company. Back then, he was pretty sure he would never hire any employees. So he named his one-man-company after himself and his blog: Yoast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Joost made money by doing site reviews and providing SEO consultancy at major companies like eBay. Besides that, he was developing his SEO plugins for WordPress. In October 2010, Joost finally made one plugin of all these little ones: WordPress SEO (now Yoast SEO) was born.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n At the end of 2011, Joost met Michiel Heijmans, who had just started his own business as well. \u201cThe site reviews were going well,\u201d Joost explains. \u201cI couldn\u2019t do them all. Michiel stepped in and did some site reviews.\u201d That cooperation turned out to be another turning point in Joost\u2019s career. They became close friends. Michiel\u2019s knowledge of SEO and UX combined with his outstanding people skills was a perfect match with Joost\u2019s ambition and drive. Joost decided to bring Michiel on board. In 2012, Michiel became the first Yoast employee.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In 2011, Yoast was Joost. At the end of 2012, Yoast consisted of Joost and another four employees. At the end of 2013, Yoast consisted of ten employees. And at the end of 2014, Yoast employed a total of fifteen people. In 2015, another nine people joined the company, which made a total of 25. At the end of 2016, there were about 40 people and at the end of 2017 more than 50 people worked in the Wijchen offices. Also, more than a dozen people are working in countries around the world.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n On January 25th, 2019, Marieke took on the role as CEO and Joost, former CEO, became the new CPO at Yoast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Today, Yoast employs over 100 employees worldwide, the far majority of them at Yoast HQ in Wijchen.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Diversity is a very important topic at Yoast. Not only are we trying our best to diversify our own company, but we\u2019re also actively working on the diversity of speaker lineups at WordCamps and other tech events through the Yoast Diversity Fund. Speakers that are from a traditionally underrepresented group and who do not have enough means to travel to a tech event and can apply for funding by our diversity fund.<\/p>\r\n At WordCamp Nijmegen, Marieke van de Rakt (CEO) will be talking about diversity, feminism, and prejudices.<\/p>\r\n Yoast lives and breathes WordPress. It\u2019s the platform most of our customers use, the platform we\u2019re most invested in and the platform that we think plays a significant role in the future of the web.<\/p>\r\n And when contributing to WordPress, our developers have their code reviewed by some of the very best programmers on the planet. They then share those learnings with their colleagues, thus improving the overall quality of all Yoast products in the process.<\/p>\r\n In short, Yoast wouldn\u2019t be where it is today without WordPress.<\/p>\r\n We are currently doing a product focus project. The aim of this project is to decide what features to add and to improve in Yoast SEO. The awesome thing about this project is that more than ever, we\u2019re doing so based on customer research, user testing, and the expertise of different departments within the company. We\u2019re in the middle of this project now, and it\u2019s been great fun already. A lot of different people are involved and we\u2019ve collected so many amazing ideas already. Now we\u2019re prioritizing and estimating the scope of those ideas, so we can start improving our plugin even more.<\/p>\r\n That\u2019s a hard question! We\u2019re working on all kinds of cool stuff. We hope to make our product more actionable. We hope our user base will grow (inside as well as outside of WordPress). We would love to contribute even more to open source and the open web. We are passionate about making the web better for everyone.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yoast. A well-known name in WordPress because of their Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin. With over 9 million active installs, it\u2019s one of the most-used plugins for WordPress. Yoast SEO doesn\u2019t just help you improve the technical optimization of your … Lees verder Meet our sponsors: Yoast Academy<\/span> How did the company get started?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
How diverse is your company? What do you do to improve it?<\/h2>\r\n
How does WordPress benefit your company?<\/h2>\r\n
What’s your favorite thing you are working on right now inside your company?<\/h2>\r\n
How do you see your company evolving in the next 5 years?<\/h2>\r\n