Joost de Valk

Last updated
Joost de Valk
Born (1982-02-16) February 16, 1982 (age 42)
NationalityDutch
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur, App developer
Years active2007-present
Known for Yoast SEO
Notable work WordPress SEO

Joost de Valk is an entrepreneur and application software developer from Wijchen, Netherlands who is best known for Yoast SEO. [1] [2] [3] De Valk started out as a consultant and blogger in 2004 before developing Yoast, one of the most successful plug-ins for WordPress. [4] [5]

Contents

Career

De Valk started out as a consultant for companies like: eBay, The Guardian, Disney, [6] and other major companies. Working on the plugin was a hobby in his spare time. De Valk started a blog in 2004, [4] and by 2005 his website for SEO was named "joostdevalk.nl". [7] After moving to and eventually selling the domain "css3.info," de Valk created the Yoast platform in 2007. [3] He launched the first version of WordPress SEO in 2010, and founded the company Yoast BV in 2010. [8] [9]

At first, the Yoast company was to consult before he developed both the Yoast SEO plugin and a Google Analytics plugin, both for WordPress. In 2012, De Valk released a premium version of Yoast SEO. In April 2016, Yoast BV sold the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin. In June 2020, Yoast acquired the Duplicate Post plugin, another very popular WordPress plugin. [10]

The software that De Valk created runs on more than nine million websites and on 11.4% of the top million sites in the world. [11] On WordPress, the De Valk SEO software has been downloaded five million times. Michael David, the author of WordPress Search Engine Optimization (2015), referred to it as "the granddaddy of all SEO plugins". [12]

In January 2019 De Valk stepped down as CEO to become Chief Product Officer for Yoast and began working for WordPress in marketing. [13] De Valk's wife Marieke van de Rakt, took over as director (CEO) of Yoast. [14] De Valk left his position with WordPress after six months citing a failure to see his place in the organization. [13] [15] De Valk and his wife are investors in blockchain startup WordProof. [16]

Personal

When De Valk was twelve years old he borrowed money from his parents for a computer; he then began building websites. He attended the University of Applied Sciences and continued in Internet Technology. At 24 years old he became a father. [6] De Valk married Marieke van de Rakt and together they had four children. Marieke was a professor with a Ph.D and she left her job in 2013 to support Yoast SEO. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WordPress</span> Content management system

WordPress is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, mailing lists, Internet forums, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems, and online stores. Available as free and open-source software, WordPress is among the most popular content management systems – it was used by 43.1% of the top 10 million websites as of December 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anil Dash</span> American technology executive and entrepreneur

Anil Dash is an American technology executive, entrepreneur, Prince scholar and writer. He is the Head of Glitch and VP of Developer Experience at Fastly.

Wemade Co., Ltd is a South Korean video game developer, based in Seongnam. They are the creators of the Legend of Mir series of MMORPGs, the two most successful being The Legend of Mir 2, and its sequel The Legend of Mir 3. Legend of Mir has attracted over 120 million users in Asia, and generated over $65 million a month in revenue during its height. Even today, in its ninth year of operation, Legend of Mir 2 still generates well over $20 million a month in China alone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Mullenweg</span> American entrepreneur and web developer

Matthew Charles Mullenweg is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is known as a co-founder of the free and open-source web publishing software WordPress and the founder of Automattic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Corporation</span> American software company

The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, some of whom are employed by the corporation itself. The corporation also distributes and promotes these products. Unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla open source project, founded by the now defunct Netscape Communications Corporation, the Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity. The Mozilla Corporation reinvests all of its profits back into the Mozilla projects. The Mozilla Corporation's stated aim is to work towards the Mozilla Foundation's public benefit to "promote choice and innovation on the Internet."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Cutts</span> American software engineer

Matthew Cutts is an American software engineer. Cutts is the former Administrator of the United States Digital Service. He was first appointed as acting administrator, to later be confirmed as full administrator in October 2018. Cutts previously worked with Google as part of the search quality team on search engine optimization issues. He is the former head of the web spam team at Google.

Automattic Inc. is an American global distributed company which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for WordPress.com, as well as its contributions to WordPress. The company's name is a play on founder Matt Mullenweg's first name and the word "automatic".

nofollow is a setting on a web page hyperlink that directs search engines not to use the link for page ranking calculations. It is specified in the page as a type of link relation; that is: <a rel="nofollow" ...>. Because search engines often calculate a site's importance according to the number of hyperlinks from other sites, the nofollow setting allows website authors to indicate that the presence of a link is not an endorsement of the target site's importance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joost</span> Internet TV service

Joost was an Internet TV service, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. During 2007–2008 Joost used peer-to-peer TV (P2PTV) technology to distribute content to their Mozilla-based desktop player; in late 2008 this was migrated to use a Flash-based Web player instead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opera (web browser)</span> Free web browser

Opera is a multi-platform web browser developed by its namesake company Opera. The current edition of the browser is based on Chromium. Opera is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Two mobile versions are still active, called Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. Opera also has a news aggregator app called Opera News with Aria, an AI-based search engine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vinny Lingham</span> South African Internet entrepreneur (born 1979)

Vinny Lingham is a South African-born American Internet entrepreneur who is the co-founder & CEO of an identity protection and management startup based in California called Civic. He was also previously the founder and CEO of Gyft & Yola, Inc. He is also the co-founder of SiliconCape, an NGO based in South Africa that aims to turn Cape Town into a technology hub.

Google Quick Search Box (GQSB) is an application launcher and desktop search tool developed by Google for Mac OS X computers. It allows users to search files, URLs, and contacts on their computer, as well as performing actions on the results.

OnlyOffice, stylized as ONLYOFFICE, is a free software office suite and ecosystem of collaborative applications. It consists of online editors for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms and PDFs, and the room-based collaborative platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orange and Bronze Software Labs</span> Software developer

Orange and Bronze (O&B) is a privately owned computer software development company based in the Philippines. The company delivers software consulting, product engineering, and IT training services with a focus on Java software development. O&B specializes in developing and deploying web applications using Java-based frameworks and technologies such as Spring (framework), Grails (framework), Hibernate (Java), Google Maps API, Google App Engine, and Android.

Covario, Inc. was an American search marketing agency and technology firm based in San Diego, California. The company specialized in international search engine marketing services and provided software tools for SEO, paid search, social media marketing, analytics, and local search optimization. Its customer base included technology, consumer electronics, financial services, retail, ecommerce, media, entertainment, publishing, and consumer packaged goods organizations. Covario was acquired by the Dentsu Aegis Network in September 2014, and combined with iProspect, the network's performance marketing arm, in early 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WooCommerce</span> Open source plugin for WordPress

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. Launched on September 27, 2011, the plugin quickly became popular for its simplicity to install and customize and for the market position of the base product as freeware. WooCommerce is developed and supported by Woo and includes contributions from a global community of developers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yoast SEO</span> Search engine optimization plugin for WordPress

Yoast SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) tool plug-in for WordPress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tron (blockchain)</span> Blockchain computing platform

Tron is a decentralized, proof-of-stake blockchain with smart contract functionality. The cryptocurrency native to the blockchain is known as Tronix (TRX). It was founded in March 2014 by Justin Sun and since 2017 has been overseen and supervised by the TRON Foundation, a non-profit organization in Singapore, established in the same year. It is open-source software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uniswap</span> Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange

Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that uses a set of smart contracts to create liquidity pools for the execution of trades. It is an open source project and falls into the category of a DeFi product because it uses smart contracts to facilitate trades instead of a centralized exchange. The protocol facilitates automated transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts. As of December 2024, Uniswap is estimated to be the second largest decentralized exchange and the seven-largest cryptocurrency exchange overall by daily trading volume.

WP Engine is an American hosting company that provides hosting services for websites built on the open-source content management system WordPress. It was founded by Jason Cohen in 2010 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

References

  1. ↑ Constantin, Lucian (21 April 2015). "Poor WordPress documentation trips developers, yields plug-ins with XSS flaw". PCWorld . IDG Communications, Inc. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  2. ↑ "The History of Yoast". Yoast.com. Yoast. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  3. 1 2 "Yoast SEO And All in One SEO Pack — What to Choose?". PC Tech Group Ltd. 26 June 2020. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
  4. 1 2 Dunlop, Michael. "Joost De Valk – Why I'm Successful Mr Yoast SEO". incomediary.com. IncomeDiary. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  5. ↑ Ward, Eric; French, Garrett (April 5, 2013). Ultimate Guide to Link Building: How to Build Backlinks, Authority and Credibility for Your Website, and Increase Click Traffic and Search Ranking (Paperback). Irvine, California: McGraw-Hill Companies, Incorporated. p. 179. ISBN   978-1599184425.
  6. 1 2 Kats, Carin (1 June 2018). "This Dutch Google specialist converts € 10 million per year with his internet company and is deliberately not in the Randstad - this is the reason". Business Insider . Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  7. ↑ Dunlop, Michael. "How Joost de Valk became a successful internet entrepreneur". incomediary.com. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  8. ↑ "Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast, shares his success story". First Web Designer. March 15, 2016. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  9. ↑ Eisenberg, Bryan (October 7, 2014). "37 SEO Experts Those in the Know Follow". ClickZ. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  10. ↑ "Yoast Acquires Duplicate Post, Brings on Creator Enrico Battocchi as a Senior Developer". 16 June 2020.
  11. ↑ "Yoast Plugin Usage Statistics". BuiltWith. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
  12. ↑ David, Michael (2015). WordPress Search Engine Optimization: a complete guide to dominating search engines with your WordPress site. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing Ltd. p. 264. ISBN   978-1-78588-764-2 – via Google Books.
  13. 1 2 Boogert, Erwin (7 June 2019). "Joost de Valk has left WordPress". Emerce. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  14. ↑ "Marieke van de Rakt new CEO Yoast". Emerce. 25 January 2019.
  15. ↑ Chandler, Jeff (5 June 2019). "Joost de Valk Steps Down as WordPress Marketing Lead". WorldPress Tavern. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  16. ↑ "Founders of Yoast SEO take a stake in Amsterdam-based blockchain startup WordProof". 31 August 2020.
  17. ↑ "EP. 5: How the Founders of Yoast SEO Are Managing Happiness". Davidhenzel.com. David Henzel. 2 September 2017. Retrieved 4 August 2020.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.