The most common way for finding new information on the web is through search engines. For web marketers, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), optimizing the content of your website in order to receive higher standing on search engine results, is common practice but not necessarily an intuitive one. One WordPress plugin, Yoast SEO, was developed to make that process of optimization more manageable and guide website managers in creating SEO-friendly posts.
So whether you are new to Yoast SEO or have been using it for a while, here are some of the main factors that are highlighted for optimization:
- Meta Descriptions – Short paragraphs that advertise content to potential visitors, here you can add a brief description that entices the user to click-through on a search engine. It’s the sentence underneath the google link.
- Flesch Reading Ease – A readability test designed to indicate the difficulty of a piece of English content in a post. The lower the score, the more difficult the text is to understand. Keep it simple for more SEO-friendly posts.
- Keywords -The basis for all search engines is found in keyword indexes, millions of smaller databases focused on one keyword term or phrase. Thus, if your post is about the best cupcake recipes, you’d want to ensure that you use the words, “cupcake” and “recipe” for easy access on search engines.
- Links and Images – Link to sources and to your own posts/pages. This will help generate outbound traffic to partner sites and inbound traffic to your site.
- Number of words – Anywhere between 300-700 words. Google likes longer articles but more than 700 words could disinterest potential visitors.
- Check with other pages – New content is always better than recycling older material. Keep your content fresh and creative.
