Key Post Highlights
> The Yoast SEO WordPress plug-in is a tool that helps you optimize content for SEO.
>Yoast supports your efforts in improving your focus keyphrase, SEO, readability, and Google preview.
>Yoast is a helpful tool — but quality writing is still key.
Disclaimer: CareContent is not affiliated with nor being compensated by Yoast SEO.
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is an essential part of any good content strategy. It increases the amount of traffic to your website — and therefore leads — using organic (or not paid) search results.
However, SEO can also be fairly complicated.
There are a lot of components to optimizing your content for SEO, from keywords (how much to use them and where to put them) to meta descriptions (how long they should be and what they should include) to headers that help readers and search engines understand your site.
If this sounds overwhelming, you’re in luck if your site is hosted on WordPress. The Yoast SEO plug-in is a tool that helps you optimize your pages for SEO. While it can also be used on other platforms, like Shopify, TYPO3, and Neos CMS, Yoast SEO for WordPress is particularly helpful for boosting your SEO practices. Its free version is fairly extensive, but you can pay an additional fee for Yoast SEO Premium and gain access to more features.
Like any tool, Yoast SEO doesn’t function on its own. It needs your input and expertise as a writer.
Fortunately, Yoast SEO is easy to use — even if you don’t consider yourself to be tech-savvy. Here’s an overview of how to use Yoast SEO.
Using Yoast To Optimize A Page Or Post For SEO
To use Yoast SEO, you’ll need to set up and configure the plug-in. Yoast will guide you through this process, and you can always adjust settings later, if necessary. You’ll also have access to more advanced options within Yoast once you do this.
Then, using Yoast SEO within the page or post editor in WordPress is simple and user-friendly. Everything you need is in one convenient place — the Yoast SEO meta box. This is located in the sidebar or below the post editor.
Hint — if you don’t see the Yoast SEO sidebar and you’re using block editor, make sure you click the Yoast SEO sidebar icon located at the top right of your screen.
1. Focus Keyphrase
Yoast will provide you with feedback on how well your content is optimized for that specific keyphrase. While you can add this phrase at any time before or even after you publish, earlier is usually more helpful to get useful feedback.
Keep in mind — Google and other search engines aren’t aware you’re trying to optimize your content for this keyphrase. Rather, this is simply Yoast’s way of telling you you’re on the right track (or not).
With Yoast SEO premium, you can also get related keyphrases to help optimize your content even further. However, other free tools, like Ubersuggest, provide similar results.
2. SEO Analysis
Using the keyphrase along with your content, the SEO analysis will review factors like:
- How much you use your keyphrase, keeping in mind you want to use it enough but not too much (called keyword stuffing)
- Where you’ve used your keyphrase, including throughout your content and in your SEO title, meta description, slug, subheadings, and images
- How many internal and external links you include
- How long your content is
- Whether or not you’ve used your keyphrase on another page
If the SEO analysis gives you an orange or red traffic light, look at Yoast’s list of feedback (organized into the categories “problems,” “improvements,” and “good results”), and make changes where you can.
If you can’t get your page to turn green, don’t panic. It’s okay to have a few orange or even red pages throughout your site. The goal is to make the majority of your pages green.
3. Readability
Like a built-in English teacher, your readability analysis will give you feedback on how easy your content is to read for the average user. While this might not seem like a key factor of SEO, it is. This is because well-written content leads to a good user experience, keeping users on the page, encouraging them to take action, and improving your ranking.
The readability score is also green, orange, or red and reviews aspects like:
- Active and passive voice
- Sentence and paragraph length
- Sentence variety
- Distribution of subheadings
- Transition words
- Word complexity
Just like the SEO analysis, if your content scores orange or red, check out the tips that Yoast provides. For instance, it might say “30% of the sentences contain more than 20 words, which is more than the recommended maximum of 25%. Try to shorten the sentences.”
4. Google Preview
Finally, Yoast SEO gives an editable snippet of what your page will look like on Google and other search engines, including the SEO title and the meta description.
Meta descriptions can be the reason a user clicks on your page or moves on to another. That’s why you want to write a title and meta description that accurately depict what’s on your page and entices them to visit. Yoast will let you know if your meta is too short or too long — along with any other problems, like missing the keyphrase — using a color-coding system (green for “good” and orange for “needs work”).
Using Yoast SEO as a Tool for Content Creation
Just like a skilled craftsman needs a hammer or a savvy videogamer needs a gaming controller, content creators can benefit from tools like Yoast SEO. But this tool can’t do anything without you — and it’s only as useful as you make it.
The guidance from Yoast SEO is great in helping you successfully optimize your content. But, your content still needs to be engaging and useful for readers. While Yoast can take away much of the SEO lift, it’s still up to you to understand your audience and create content they want to read.
