Enhancements:

• Only calculates internal link suggestions when the internal links sidebar (or metabox in the classic editor) is opened. This should improve performance in all editors, especially for large sites.
• Makes the internal linking suggestions load faster by improving query performance.
• Improves word form recognition for irregular stem-changing verbs in Italian (e.g., fare, dire, piacere, scegliere, produrre).

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the weights of prominent words in your post would always be updated in the database, even when their weights were unchanged. This should improve performance when updating a post.
• Fixes a bug which caused additional loading time for admin pages, when multiple languages and plugins were installed.
• Fixes a bug where we incorrectly labeled a related keyphrase as the focus keyphrase in the keyphrase length assessment on cornerstone pages.

Enhancements:

• Speeds up load times of admin pages by preventing unnecessary counts of unindexed posts and terms related to our internal linking suggestions.
• Improves word form recognition for stem-changing verbs in Spanish.
• Cleans up items from the database that are not used anymore, thereby reducing the size of many sites’ database.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Zapier settings were not visible and available when the site interface was in another language than English.
• Fixes a bug where noindexed posts would show up in the orphaned content workout.

Other:

• Deprecates the Yoast\WP\SEO\Routes\Link_Suggestions_Route class in favor of the Yoast\WP\SEO\Premium\Repositories\Link_Suggestions_Route class.
• Deprecates the Yoast\WP\SEO\Routes\Prominent_Words_Route class in favor of the Yoast\WP\SEO\Premium\Repositories\Prominent_Words_Route class.
• Deprecates the Yoast\WP\SEO\Routes\Zapier_Route class in favor of the Yoast\WP\SEO\Premium\Repositories\Zapier_Route class.

Enhancements:

• Introduces a new SEO workout: the Orphaned content workout. This workout will take you through a step-by-step process of deciding what to do with content with very few links, potentially updating it and adding links to it. It will help you to clean up your site and to make your content more findable by linking to it.
• Reduces the load time of admin pages, by reducing the number of database queries and optimizing the queries themselves.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a compatibility issue with WordPress 5.6 in the workouts feature.

Other:

• Deprecates the Yoast\WP\SEO\Repositories\Prominent_Words_Repository class in favor of the Yoast\WP\SEO\Premium\Repositories\Prominent_Words_Repository class.
• Bumps the minimum required Yoast SEO Free version to 16.9.