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SEO For Bloggers: Get A Green Light In The SEO by Yoast Plugin

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SEO. No, not “see-o.” It stands for Search Engine Optimization, or “how to make it easier for Google to find your stuff.” This tutorial is called SEO for Bloggers because I’m not going to give you an entire SEO class right now–I’m going to tell you how to use Yoast to get a “green light” for your posts and help them get seen by more people. Simple.

First step is to install the plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast.

As bloggers, we want people to see our posts – we want Google to see our keywords and add our posts to Google search results pages, right?

Right.

Here we go.

Confused about the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast? I'll tell you what you need to know about SEO for bloggers and how to get that "green light."

WordPress SEO Plugin By Yoast: SEO For Bloggers

The big picture (I need this to understand anything, so bear with me):

Google has spiders (also called crawlers or bots) that scour the internet all the time. Every time you post something new, the bots are signaled to go through your site to see what you posted. They look for keywords – words that are found multiple times in that one post. They look in different parts of your post to see if the article you posted is quality content. They think they’ve figured out how to tell that through these key things: using keywords within your text and using enough text (your article can’t be too informative if it’s made up of mostly pictures), the presentation/layout of your post (is it one big paragraph, or do you break it up for ease of reading?), and links you have within the post (photos or web links). WordPress SEO by Yoast helps give you a visual reminder (red, yellow, and green lights) to add these things to your blog post.

Now, I don’t always try to get a “green light” for my posts. My Wordless Wednesday posts, for example, aren’t going to be very searchable. They’re for me and my readers, and I’m ok with that. Your goals for green lights depend on your blog content and your goals.

Note: These images are outdated, but due to the nature of the post, with tons of images, I haven’t had time to rewrite it. The information in this post is still good–the images are just a bit outdated, and I think that’s ok for explaining the concept of Yoast. 

Ok, that’s out of the way. Here’s what you’ll find in the plugin:

You installed the WordPress SEO plugin, and now you should see this box under your post box (where you write your blog post):

green light for yoast

This is where we start. Let’s take this post for example.

1. My keywords are “SEO for bloggers.” I decided on these words because I want people to find this post when they type “SEO for bloggers” into the Google search bar.

You can tell Google that those are your keywords by adding them in the “Focus Keyword” box. Adding keywords to this box will do a couple of things.

First, you’ll see a few lines pop up about where your keyword was found in your post:

Green light for SEO

My keyword -or phrase- was found in my article heading (the first paragraph of my post), page title, page URL (permalink), and content, but not my meta description. That’s ok – we’ll get there in a minute.

Another thing you’ll see is your light turn red, yellow, or green:

Wordpress SEO

2. Next, let’s add an easy to read (for bots) title in the space set aside for “SEO Title:”

SEO for bloggers

You’re good to just copy and paste here from the “focus keyword” area, but if you want to have the best shot at being SEO friendly, go ahead and take your capital letters out and add dashes for the bots. Not adding dashes is a-ok too.

3. Meta-description:

USing meta tags for SEO

This is the description of your post. It might be easier to remember if you think about when you add a post to facebook – you know the description that pulls in, right? Down here it’s “Getting that perfect holiday photo doesn’t get easier…”

Wordpress SEO by Yoast

That is your meta-description. It tells people what your post is about. I love that you can decide what gets previewed. If you don’t enter anything in this box, Google will choose some of your first paragraph for you – it may or may not help you get clicks.

4. Now that we have filled out the SEO box, this is what my “checklist” looks like:

Wordpress Search Engine Optimization

Though my title contains the words “SEO for bloggers,” I’m still getting an error in that area. You can check to see what the plugin is thinking by clicking on the “Page Analysis” at the top of the box:

Blogging SEO

So frustrating. “SEO For Bloggers” is in my title.

Wordpress SEO plugin

I’m going to try and remove everything in my title but my keywords and see what happens:

Seo for bloggers

Nope.

I’m letting it go and writing my post.

Green light check = Save your draft and your light status will update:

Search engine optimization blog

5. Yay! We have a green light, but looking at the Page Analysis, it could still get a little better. We can make it better by adding “alt” tags and titles to our photos.

This is what the backend of one of my photos look like:

blogging

Let’s add our keywords into the title and alternate text:

alt tags for photos

Do not add the exact same title and alternate text to every photo – it’ll look like you’re “stuffing” keywords into your post. I find it best to vary the titles and keywords slightly. From the beginning to the end of the post, my keywords and alternate text will look something like this:

Green light SEO for bloggers

Interesting note: I had to make the above graphic because when I added those keywords to my post content, my light went from green to yellow. Google doesn’t like “keyword stuffing” or “keyword linking” and you’ll hurt your SEO by doing it.

In summary, these are the things you should concentrate on for good SEO in your blog posts:

  • Title, URL, and first paragraph contain the keywords.
  • Fill in your Yoast plugin box with your keywords and meta description.
  • Check for (and attempt to fix) red warnings in the Yoast box.
  • Write your post.
  • Check the “Page Analysis” in the Yoast box and follow through on some of the suggestions.
  • Add “alt tags” and titles (including the keyword) to your photos.

Struggling with that green light? Try these tips:

1. Add a few (relevant) outbound links to your post. A list of websites to reference is a great way to do this.

2. Use the keywords in H2 format to break up your post.

3. Make sure your post has at least 300 words.

Mahalo.com has a great post about SEO that includes videos – definitely click over there if you still have questions aout SEO.

So, what do you think? Are you ready to improve the SEO for your blog posts?

Save

Comments

  1. Nice post! WordPress plugin by yoast is my favorite plugin for search engine optimization. you have explained all the features in a coherent flow, even a newbie can understand it very well. Good Work :)

    • Thank you, Chaitanya! That was my goal, and I appreciate your feedback! I usually don’t write many technical posts :)

    • You’ll love it, Tesa! I’ve noticed a difference in my posts, and it probably adds an extra 5 minutes onto my post time :)

  3. I’m really glad you wrote this because I didn’t really know what exactly the plug-in did. I guess I’m already doing this kind of thing on my own through my theme (probably badly) but at least I know the general idea. ;)

      • I’ve tried a few SEO plugins for word-press and none of them was good as the Yoast plugin. While Saying that I must note that it has issues – sometimes it says my keywords do not appear in the first paragraph although they appear, or sometimes it keep saying my title is too long, but overall – its great!

  7. Finally, a post that explains something technical in a way that I can easily understand. Thank you… awesome job!

  12. Nice article! Validates some of the work I’ve been doing on my own blog. I always go for the green myself, but am pretty new to blogging, though I guess you could say I did blogging before it was a thing about 7 or 8 years ago. Anyway, just wanted to add that if you’ve not given the breadcrumbs feature a try yet that you should. That was one of the pieces of Yoast’s plugin that took me the longest to figure out and setup, but definitely worth it I think.

  15. Hey Becca,
    Great write-up! I love the Yoast SEO plugin and use it on my client sites, too. Sometimes I try to explain how to them how to use the plugin, but I think from now on I’ll just send them to this page. :)

    Carrie

  18. I recently added this plugin. I didn’t know that I could add the SEO title myself. I always click on generate the title. This is one of my favorite plugins. I actually feel like I’m getting SEO, finally. Your description helped me out a lot.

    • Yay!! I’m so glad it helped you! Please let me know if you have any other questions, ConnIe!

  19. This was so helpful! I’ve never filled meta description and always wondered how to change the facebook snippet and here is the answer. Btw, a little off-topic from the greenlight – do you know how to set up which image will go to the facebook snippet the same way you write the meta description?

    • Yes, Sonia! You need to set a featured image. In my blog setup, it’s on the right side of the post screen under where you choose your tags and categories. Can you find it in yours?

  20. Thank you so much for this post! I just migrated to WP over the weekend so this is all very new to me. At the risk of sounding completely dumb……what is H2 format? I always get a yellow light on that and have no idea what they are looking for. Ahhh!!! lol Thanks again!!! XO

    • H2 is a second level heading. The H stands for heading. They go down from 1-6. One is reserved for your page’s title/main heading, and is outputted by the template.

      The others can be added by yourself, throughout your copy in the WordPress edit screen.

      You can add in h2s, h3s yourself: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_hn.asp

      OR, there is actually a button you can click to add headings in the editor screen. You need to unveil the ‘secret’ second row of formatting buttons in WordPRess – here’s how: http://www.bobwp.com/why-cant-i-find-the-button-to-let-me-underline-or-choose-heading-sizes/

      In this original post, the author could have “chunked” her content into sections using headings. (Think like sub chapters”) So “Meta Description” could have been one heading, for example before she went on to speak about how to optimise the meta description. This helps with both skim reading (so people can quickly find what they’re after quickly) and SEO. It’s a good idea to contain keywords and related phrases in H tags. So, “Optimising your blog’s meta description” would be a good thing for a H2.

      HTH,
      Carly

    • Diana, H2 format is in a dropdown on the top right of your posting screen. It stands for Heading 2 (there are different level headings).

  21. Thank you for this really helpful article! I’ve just installed SEO by Yoast on my blog and this post really helped me know how to use it and get started :)

  23. Great, great article about the plugin, and about SEO basics as well.

    Turns out I’m currently on a site redesign of one of my sites, where I’ll also start blogging on web design. I’ve already installed the plugin, and quite comfortable with it, but this article here just lets me know I made the right choice.

    I did have in mind to migrate my active blog to this plugin after testing it on this site I’m building. After this article, my mind is probably made up.

    Thanks again for a great post.

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    • Yes, Holly – Plugins are only available for self-hosted sites. You can still write your posts for SEO, though – still following the guidelines above, but there will be no prompting by the Yoast plugin. I definitely recommend writing for SEO, no matter what platform you use.

    • Judee,

      On Blogger, you’d still benefit from the SEO tips, but there isn’t a way to self-check. We WP users can get lazy with our plugin checklist, but you could just have a checklist sitting next to your computer: length of 300 words? keywords are in title, permalink, first paragraph, link, and image titles and alt tags? make good use of headings? Things like that :)

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  47. This has been so helpful – Thank you!!! Although I do have a quick question… I have just installed this, this afternoon and am wondering where do I find the part for the photos (I am such a novice). Thanks again xx

    • Hi Lydia,

      WordPress just changed the way their images look – I should update this post! Hovering over the top left corner of the image you’ll see a pencil. Click the pencil, and you’ll see your image settings. :)

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