Yoast WordPress SEO

WordPress website optimisation

This article is intended as a tutorial to help optimize the content that you add to your site using the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast (version 1.6.3)

Caveats!

1. The instructions here are a “quick & dirty”, use them to achieve the benefits of optimized content without any advanced SEO knowledge. The instructions do not explore any of the advanced functionality available in the plugin.
2. You will not be perfect with all the “traffic lights” – that is not critical it is more a case of having a well rounded set of keywords in the page.
3. Google is very very smart and the whilst technical SEO is important it is NOT going to get you ranked – it will merely make you “palatable’ to Google. Your aim should be to create value added customer facing content that generates happy readers and links THEN make it easy for Google to read via technical SEO (and the use of this plugin)

To start , there are several assumptions we are making when we use this plugin:

1. You have done keyword research and thus know what words you are writing for
2. You have written an article based around a specific keyword
3. You are writing content with the philosophy of “my content is for my customer” (Not for the search engines)

Optimising steps/Helping your content rank

1. Create and load your content into WordPress, ensuring you add your images
2. Add the keyword/phrase into the “keyword focus” box (The one the article is written for)
3. Adjust the 5 traffic light areas to ATTEMPT to get the keywords into those areas
   1. The Meta Title – Displays in browser tabs (“SEO Title or the Page Title” in Yoast)
      This is the single most important content – it defines the page in 65-70 characters, it should be unique to every page
   2. Page URL – computer address of the webpage
      https://www.imarketingonly.com/wordpress-seo/
   3. Meta Description – ONLY displays in the search listings
      Appears in the search results page underneath your page title – use this to “sell” your content to searchers so it should be punchy but informative. It must also describe the page and be unique to every page
   4. Article Heading – displays at the top of the content
      The is the heading on the page – or the Actual page title
   5. Content
      We try and get the keyword into the early stage of the article, in addition we look to place links in the article to other relevant pages with good anchor text. There is research that talks about keyword density etc – REMEMBER WE ARE WRITING FOR THE VISITOR so do not keyword stuff especially to the detriment of your visitor

Once the above has been manipulated you will see a analysis by reviewing the “green yes’ in the summary box. (See above)

Critical..!

1. The page elements – title/heading/description/content must ALWAYS be about the selected keyword (& CONSISTENT)
2. Do not write about a subject then try and FORCE a keyword against it
3. Do not force a blanket green light -THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE 100% of the time.
4. Do not go over the character limit in both title and description tags
5. Do not keyword stuff (Overload the page with unreadable text that has too many keywords in)

Instruction Gallery