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The road to the top of the infamous Google rankings is one of fits and starts, but the Yoast SEO guide will help you move in the right direction.
Every business wants to reach the top of Google rankings to become more visible. If you follow 2manydots’ content and blogs closely, you know that SEO is vital in this. In this, the Yoast SEO plugin is a useful tool for applying relevant keywords.
SEO is aimed at improving the organic findability of your website, based on several criteria. This is different from Search Engine Advertising (SEA), which focuses on placing ads in Google. SEO is all about getting your website, organically, to appear as high as possible in search results for relevant searches. Thus, more quality visitors arrive at the website via Google (or another search engine).
Yoast SEO is a plugin you can install on your WordPress website to easily optimize your on-site SEO. The functionality of the WordPress plugin is further explained under the heading “How the plugin works.
Yoast SEO has made a free version available but to get the most out of it, there is also a Yoast SEO Premium version. Of course, this premium version offers the necessary features. During your start-up phase with Yoast SEO, you may still run into something. Then it’s nice to have 24/7 assistance from the Yoast SEO support help desk. These are “real” people who will help you as best they can in your quest for an optimized website. Also, the Yoast SEO Premium version provides suggestions for internal linking, increasing the spider web within your website and allowing visitors to view multiple pages of your website. Another useful benefit of the Yoast SEO Premium version is that the WordPress SEO plugin checks if your text is optimized for multiple keywords. This way you don’t limit yourself in the possibilities of this search engine optimization.
Now that you have an idea why Yoast SEO was developed, let’s look at the functionality of one of the most popular WordPress plugins. In fact, the popularity of this WordPress plugin does not come out of the blue. With numerous features, Yoast SEO can visibly optimize your website.
Yoast SEO allows you to enter a keyword and link it to a specific page or blog post to increase the page’s findability in search engines. The Yoast SEO plugin then performs a check to find out if the keyword is optimized for the page. For example, Yoast SEO checks where and how often the keyword appears on the page. This then rolls out recommendations to improve the page based on the specified keyword.
The symbol of search engine optimization is the well-known traffic light. While you are working on your texts, the traffic light jumps from red to green or from orange to red. The pitfall of this traffic light is that you stare blindly at it. The illusion that with a green bullet the way is open to the top spot in Google rankings is a farce. The extreme end of the spectrum is that you can also get high in Google rankings with an orange bullet. Be especially careful in following the steps of Yoast SEO, which will yield more results along the way than the state of the traffic light.
Now that you’ve been updated on the feature and what it adds to search engine optimization, let’s move on to how to use Yoast SEO. Start by writing your chosen text. Use the SEO Content Checklist for this purpose. By following the steps, you will build an on page SEO friendly text from the beginning, with optimized images. After you have gone through all the steps of the SEO content checklist, start entering the data into the Yoast SEO plugin using the guide below.
Before you can really get started you will need to download and install the Yoast SEO plugin. You do this through the WordPress Dashboard. There on the left side of the menu is the option plugins. Then click on new plugins (add new) at the top of the screen, and several WordPress plugins will pop up. Using the search window, you can search for the Yoast SEO plugin. Have you found the Yoast plugin? Then install it and don’t forget to click ‘Activate Plugin’.
Once you have installed and activated the Yoast SEO plug-in, you will see a new item in WordPress, in the left column. This item is called “SEO” and this will take you, through the “general” section, to the Yoast SEO dashboard. This is the overview page where you can change general settings and list any problems and notifications. In addition, you can also upgrade to Yoast Premium here.
In the backend, there will be a Yoast SEO window at the bottom of each page, where you can set and control different content elements for each page. The window is divided into four categories to optimize your text.
We first dive into the settings you can enter per page with respect to SEO. The “SEO” tab is the first tab visible by default when you get to the window. The settings you can enter here is the main reason for many to use this plugin. So we like to go over them below so that you set everything up properly for the search engine.
In the “focus keyphrase” section, enter the keyword associated with the page. This is the keyword on which the page should be found in Google. It’s important to note that Yoast’s focus keyphrase doesn’t help rank in Google: it’s just advice to check and optimize content. After entering the focus keyphrase, you will be shown what is going well and what could be better on the page in relation to your chosen focus keyphrase (focus keyword).
A focus keyphrase can be 1 word or it can consist of multiple words. So spaces are possible. It is recommended that the focus keyphrase consist of no more than 3 words. The keyphrase is not intended to form a sentence. Ideally, the focus keyphrase comes from a keyword research. That way you know where search volume is on it and what will bring you the most visitors…. Some points that are important when using the focus keyphrase are:
1. Let the keyword recur frequently in the text, but not too often. It should still be enjoyable to read. Of course, it also depends on how long a text is. Keep a guideline between 1.5% and 3.5% of the word count in the text.
2. Make sure you only use the keyword as a focus keyphrase in one text and not in multiple texts. After all, your own texts are not meant to compete with each other.
3. Also use synonyms of the focus keyphrase. You don’t necessarily have to stick to the main keyword, but alternate if you don’t want to create your own page for this keyword. Google’s algorithm continues to optimize and recognize synonyms better and better.
To optimize the page, it is then important to reflect the focus keyphrase in specific places. Put the keyword at least in the URL of the page, in the title, in the meta-description and in the first paragraph.
Make sure each page has a unique SEO title, keeping in mind SEO optimizations that can be applied to it. Some tips:
The title is a clickable headline on the search results page. It should provide an accurate and concise description of the content of the page. In addition, the title is also displayed at the top of the web browser. A good SEO title can contribute positively to the CTR (Click Through Rate) of a search result.
Another word you may not know the meaning of right away. Still, the so-called slug is an essential component in the Yoast SEO checklist for improving search engine optimization. The slug is part of your URL. The slug often describes very succinctly what your written text is about. Frequently, you see that a one URL of a web page contains the entire blog title. Try to avoid this by using only the blog article’s focus keyword in the URL. See the example below.
Instead of ‘yoast-seo-manual;-learn-fast-how-the-plugin-works-with-this-explanation’ choose ‘yoast-seo-manual’. The first URL is too long, making it difficult for Google to rank this properly. The second URL is concise yet clear what the text will be about. Here’s where Google wēl get to work.
It is important for search engine optimization to write a unique meta description for each page. Keep in mind SEO optimizations can be applied to this:
Once you have entered the focus keyphrase, SEO title and meta description, the Google preview will appear. To optimize the Google preview, it is important to think about the SEO title and meta description. A properly set SEO title and meta description will make your page look more attractive to click on and rank better.
Use the SEO analysis provided by the plugin as support for your SEO efforts but above all, pay attention to the quality of your texts and proper content yourself. In the SEO analysis, red, orange and green dots will appear. Points such as internal links, alt text and the length of the title and meta description are checked and reflected in the analysis. Optimize as many points as possible, but as mentioned above, these are not sacred. So above all, check the content yourself.
If you are not yet completely at home with the Yoast SEO plugin, our tip is to change as little as possible in the advanced settings. In fact, this can come at the expense of on page SEO on your WordPress site. If you do feel at home with this WordPress plugin, you can specify the canonical URL here or set the page to no-idex if it should not be indexed in Google.
In the “readability” tab, the tool provides readability recommendations. It looks at the page through the eyes of the target audience, so to speak, to see how readable the content is to visitors. Under this tab are some suggestions on how you can improve the content on the page. Follow the suggestions the analysis displays under this tab, such as “Try shorter sentences” and “Use more signal words.
Your website contains much-needed content. From articles to an information page about your business. All this content leads to a different goal. With the Yoast SEO plugin, you specify which category each page belongs to. This recently added functionality adds value to the structured data of the page. Thus, you provide additional information for Google to index the page. An example of using structured data is being displayed in Google for Jobs.
Social media is a vital link within your company’s marketing. The Yoast plugin has a tab for this as well. In this tab, you get to see examples of how your texts will look on different social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram when you share the page on them. You can also add images. For all images that are added, don’t forget to optimize the filename and alt text.
You would think that one day there would be an end to all the functionality of the WordPress plugin Yoast SEO, but basic technical settings are also too important not to be named. You can find this on the left side of the dashboard under SEO. Be sure to take a look to get the most out of Yoast SEO.
We fully understand that all this information about the WordPress SEO plugin’s functionalities scares you a bit. It is indeed a lot of actions that take time but, on the other hand, we are convinced that it has absolute added value. Still, to give you a little help, 2manydots has developed the Resultsmatter track. This course does a full preliminary investigation of your website so you know ahead of time where improvements lie on your website.
