Of all the WordPress SEO plugins, one of the most successful and user friendly ones is WordPress SEO by Yoast. Although it is user friendly, there are some things which require a fair bit of getting used to and interpretation. Which is why it’s important to read a WordPress SEO by Yoast tutorial. Here are two tutorials based on your level of expertise.
WordPress SEO by Yoast Tutorial for Beginners
As a beginner, the first thing you should fiddle around with is keywords. You can enter a keyword (or, as I believe is more appropriate, a key phrase) into the box. A keyword is a word or phrase a user searches into their search engine to find you site. Several suggestions are given based on likely searches. While these can be handy, they are likely incredibly competitive. But don’t worry too much about that yet as a beginner.
A small analysis appears under your chosen keyword. This tells you how frequently the keyword appears in your page. The more frequently you can get your focus keyword to appear in your page, the better. So try fit it in the article heading, page title, page URL, content and meta description.
Although Google released in a statement back in 2009 that meta descriptions have no impact on a site’s ranking, they still are important. Experts in SEO Hallam claim, “Populating the meta descriptions for your web pages provides the best chance of search engines displaying the snippet of text you require below your listing in the search result – descriptive and well written meta descriptions are more likely to be displayed, and this has been proven to lead to significantly improved click through rates.”
When creating an SEO title, you need be relevant without rambling. Try and contain your SEO keyword in the title to make being found easier. While you want to attract viewers and inform them, you don’t want to write too much in the title. Because the title display in Google is limited to a fixed width, if your title is too long it will break. This looks sloppy and is difficult to read.
WordPress SEO by Yoast Tutorial for Intermediates
Once you have mastered the WordPress SEO by Yoast Tutorial for beginners, you are ready to advance up a stage. The first thing you should re-consider is updating your keywords. While “WordPress seo” is an easy keyword to weave into text, it’s incredibly competitive. This means many people are interested in using in it and your webpage likely won’t be one of the top results. By making your keyword more specific, such as “WordPress SEO By Yoast Tutorial” you will likely stand a better chance for ranking higher.
You are now ready to analyse your page. Save your page as a draft, then click on “Page Analysis” to see how your page is stacking up. You will be faced with a series or traffic light dots with statements.
Now you get introduced to a few more concepts. Instead of just considering your keyword, you need to consider whether there are “stop words,” the Flesch Reading Ease test, number of outbound links, image alt tags, words in copy, and page title length. The aim is to fiddle around with these until you have as many green lights as possible. If possible, you should first try and eliminate any red lights. Then get through the oranges, and then your yellows. If there’s absolutely nothing you can do for those, consider making your greens even better.
Don’t Just Write for Robots
You can see it all over the web.You’ve made a search and click on one of the first results expecting greatness. Only you find it makes no sense because it’s just cluttered with keywords. So while it’s great to rank well, don’t just write for algorithms. Make your piece witty, creative or enlightening! Don’t sacrifice readability for ranking.
If you’re ready to branch off into the big wide world of SEO, then check out these 17 SEO myths to debunk in 2015.
