Are you a WordPress user? If your answer is yes, probably you already know about Yoast SEO plugin. It's one of the most popular SEO plugins on the market and it gets updated every time Google creates a new change in its algorithm. Recently, Yoast team have upgraded their plugin to version 18.6, which brought many interesting and useful functions to WordPress owners who want to improve their SEO performance.
Yoast SEO is a lightweight, user friendly and powerful WordPress plugin to improve your blog's search engine optimization. It will help you write better content and easily optimize it for search engines. Yoast SEO is the most popular SEO plugin with more than 350 million downloads and 5 million active installation.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING YOAST SEO?
YOAST SEO MAKES YOUR JOB EASIER WITH THESE GREAT FEATURES:
1. It analyzes your content for readability, so you can make sure that it's easy to read and understand for your readers
2. It helps you optimize your page for a specific keyword, and gives you the feedback you need to improve your post
3. It optimizes the technical side of SEO for you so that search engines will be able to index your pages and posts
4. It even makes sure that all the technical aspects of your site are in order, so there's nothing holding you back from ranking well in search engine result pages (SERPs)
How to install Yoast SEO?
Installing Yoast SEO is a very simple process.
First of all, you need to go to the “Plugins” section inside your WordPress admin panel and click on the “Add New” button.
Then, in the right-hand side of the screen, search for “Yoast SEO”.
You should see it at the top of the results page. Click on the “Install Now” button to begin and then activate the plugin.
That’s it! Yoast SEO is now installed and ready to use!
HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOG WITH YOAST?
Allow multiple focus keywords:
Yoast SEO has a feature called Focus Keywords, which allows you to optimize your content for multiple keywords. You can set up to five focus keywords per page.
It’s important to use the primary keyword and secondary keywords as your focus keywords. For example, this post has “Yoast SEO” as the primary keyword and “Focus Keywords” as the secondary keyword.
You can also use Focus Keywords to analyze the readability of your post.
Log into your WordPress site, click on Plugins and select the Add New option on the left-hand side.
In the search field enter Yoast SEO and click Search Plugins. Once you’ve found it you can view details about it such as the point release, rating and description. Most importantly of course, you can install it by simply clicking Install Now.
Go to Settings > General in your WordPress admin area and click the dropdown for Membership in order to select Anyone Can Register.
The next step is to set up a sitemap, which is what search engines use to find all of your pages. Go to SEO > XML Sitemaps and make sure that XML sitemap functionality is enabled by checking the box next to this option. Then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
To setup a focus keyword for any post go to that post’s page in your WordPress admin area, scroll down below where you enter content and beneath the heading Yoast SEO you’ll see Focus Keyword section with an empty text field where you can enter a keyword or phrase that you want that particular post to rank for in search engines.
Use related keywords
Before we get started, it's important to note that this guide is for the WordPress plugin version of Yoast SEO.
It's also worth mentioning that using this plugin does not automatically guarantee you'll get traffic from the search engines. It simply helps you optimize your blog for search engines in order to improve your chances of ranking highly (or at least make it easier for Google to find and index your site).
Keywords are the foundation of your content strategy, and every piece of content on your blog should have at least one specific keyword it's trying to rank for.
When you create a post in WordPress, you'll see an area to enter a keyword below the text editor. This is very important!
You don't have to use this area, but it's best practice to do so. If you don't, Yoast can't tell you if the keyword is being used properly in the post. It will display a warning telling you that the keyword is missing.
Tip:
Make sure to select a focus keyword that you want to rank for and use it frequently in your blog post. You should aim for at least one occurrence of the focus keyword per 100 words of text, as well as an occurrence in the first paragraph. The more times you mention the keyword, the more likely it is that you'll be able to rank for it.
Optimize your content for long tail keywords
What is long tail SEO?
Long tail keywords are search terms that contain several words, or phrases, that are very specific. For example, “WordPress SEO” is a rather broad keyword, while “How to optimize your WordPress blog for SEO” is much more specific.
Long tail keywords usually have lower competition and higher conversion rates as users don’t need to do as much filtering to find what they want.
Write meta descriptions that sell
Writing meta descriptions that sell is a real art form. So if you want your website to actually generate leads or sales, then you don't want to leave it to chance!
You want your meta descriptions to be around 155 characters. This is because the search engines cut off anything longer than that and the rest of your description just won't show up in the search results.
Your meta description is the ad that shows up in Google Search Results. It's what entices people to click on your website when they're looking for information on a particular topic. The crucial thing here is that you need to write for humans and not Google. You need to make sure that you write compelling copy that will get people excited about visiting your site without resorting to spammy tactics like overusing keywords.
A great way to approach this task is by thinking about what makes you want to click on an article or link when it pops up in your Facebook feed or Google search results page:
- Does it give away the whole story? If so, I probably won't bother clicking; I'll just move onto something else.
- Does it sound interesting enough? If not, same thing as above; I'm going straight past this one and looking for something else instead!
Use compelling images to boost CTR
You can increase your CTR by using compelling images in your articles. Images are very useful in breaking up the text and making it more readable, but they also have a much higher CTR than text links.
If you're not sure which image to use, or don't have time to create one yourself, there are a lot of free stock photo sites out there that might have what you need. If you want premium quality photos, look into sites like Shutterstock and iStockphoto.
Make sure that your WordPress Blog Is Connected with Google Webmasters Tool
Again!! In order to use WordPress SEO by Yoast, you’ll first need to install the Yoast SEO plugin. To do this, go to the plugins section of your dashboard and click on the Add New button at the top.
In the search box, type in “Yoast SEO” and click Search Plugins. The first item in the list should be WordPress SEO by Yoast:
Once you find it, just click Install Now and then activate the plugin.
The next step is to verify your site with Google Webmasters Tools. To do this, you must log into your Google Account (if you don’t have one, you’ll have to create one) and click on Webmaster Tools. Then add a new site by clicking on Add A Property:
Once you enter your blog URL and click Continue, Google will give you some options for verifying your site. One of them is through a plugin such as WordPress SEO by Yoast. Click on Alternate Methods:
In the Alternate Methods box, choose HTML tag from the drop-down menu and copy the code that appears in the box below:
Next, go back to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to SEO > Dashboard. Under Webmaster Tools, paste that code
Internal linking is key!
This feature shows you when you're using the right keywords in your posts and reminds you to link to other pages on your site. One of the most important elements of SEO is internal linking — linking one page on your site to another. It helps Google understand what your content is about and improves your ranking.
Conclusion:
Yoast SEO is the best WordPress plugin if you want to get more traffic, improve your rankings and increase your blog's audience. If you want more info about how to improve your search engine optimization, how to make your site more visible on Google and how to write useful content for human visitors - we highly recommend using Yoast SEO.