PublishPress Checklists Now Supports Yoast SEO, Internal Links and More

PublishPress Checklists is the plugin if you want to control the quality of your WordPress content.

You can define tasks that authors must complete before content is published. These tasks are things like writing a minimum number of words, or adding a featured image.

This week, we've added a whole bunch of new features to PublishPress Checklists and there are more to come. Here's a rundown of what's new in the Checklists plugin …


Number of characters in the title

You can now require a minimum and maximum number of words in your post title:

Title
Title

This feature was a suggestion from a PublishPress customer. She found that her users were sometimes leaving the title blank, and other times they were writing far too much:

Long Title
Long Title

For search engine optimization, it's really important to link to other pages on your site. However, it's also really easy to forget to do this.

This new feature will prevent a post from being published unless there are a certain number of links to other sites:

Internal Links
Internal Links

Yoast SEO analysis

Yoast SEO is just about the most popular plugin in WordPress. You can now force your authors to pass the SEO and Readability analysis in Yoast SEO.

Yoast
Yoast

If these two settings are “Required”, the only way you can publish content is by making sure that both smiley faces are green in Yoast SEO:

Yoast Green Boxes 1
Yoast Green Boxes 1

What comes next for Checklists?

We have several more requirements scheduled for release in the next few weeks, including these:

  • Require ALT tags on all images.
  • Choose the acceptable minimum score in Yoast SEO. There are three options: Good (green), OK (yellow), Needs Improvement (red).
  • Choose a specific height and width for featured images.
  • Require that certain categories and tags are selected.
  • A special checklist item that can only be completed by users in a specific role. This allows you to choose a group of people such as Administrators who can give the final approval for content before it's published.

Do you have any requests for new PublishPress Checklists tasks?

What tasks are essential for you before you publish content?

Let us know in the comments below, or by opening a support ticket. We'll do our very best to turn your requests into new PublishPress Checklists features.


Video introduction to the PublishPress Checklists plugin

10 Comments

  1. Would love to have control of number of characters entered into the Excerpt rather than just if it does or doesn’t have text
    In line with Yoast SEO updates, would be good to have a check to make sure the SEO Snippet has been filled in again with max and min characters
    Can you check that the first paragraph is less than 200 max charters and has been correctly formatted at “heading 4” for example

    1. Thanks Mark.

      Good news: Max and Min should be active for the Excerpt now.

      For the SEO Snippet, is that the “Google preview”?

      The first paragraph idea is an interesting idea. We’ll think through how to approach that.

  2. Awesome job – this is one of the most valuable plugins we use, but could you possibly consider for your roadmap enabling compatibility for other SEO plugin besides Yoast? There are several that are considered primary competitors, specifically AIO SEO and RankMath, plus a few others….we don’t (and won’t) use Yoast for a number of reasons (we use RankMath), so it would be great to choose which SEO plugin to link with Checklists. Thanks!

  3. Well, since you asked 🙂 …… I use RankMath right now and really like it, I’ve tried all of the top 3 (Yoast, AIO, and RankMath) and so far RM wins hands down, by far. SO if Checklists could support that one, then I really don’t care about anyone else….HA! Just kidding, but LOL you did ask.

  4. Hi Steve, please forgive if this reply is duplicated, having a little internet troubles today….

    So yes, BUT as long as it could be toggle on/off as a ‘requirement’ and/or the % set to zero (by an Admin/Editor) because the one thing we hated most about Yoast was that in order to get a ‘green’ one had to write crappy, keyword-stuffed content (regardless of what Yoast says about natural writing, their plugin would never give a green for good writing)…..this drove all of our writers totally bonkers, frustrated Editors, and delayed publication of content. We gave up on Yoast before we found a replacement, nothing was better than using Yoast…..but we are very happy with RM…..AND thank you for being open to including other SEO plugins……we LOVE all of the PublishPress plugins – so easy to use!! – and are very happy to have this feature.

    1. Thanks Trisha. This is very helpful feedback.

      Checklists does now have a feature where you can allow Administrators (or other groups) to skip requirements.

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