Yoast SEO Plugin for Your WordPress Business Website

Business Building TipsClient AcquisitionOnline Marketing
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First, let’s all calm down. Just because we put the acronym “SEO” in the title of this blog post about the Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress, screaming and crying will help no one! (Not even us!) No, today we’re going to keep it short and simple, as well as clear and concise. (Hey, isn’t that the same thing as “short”?)

So, SEO is something that many fear for a number of reasons, none of them grounded in reality. For these folks, they also love to hear that “SEO is dead” from a bunch of so-called “experts.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

After all, SEO simply stands for “Search Engine Optimization” which is simply about making your business website more attractive to those very same search engines. And YES, there are more than one SE that people use besides Google. (Huh, who knew?)

To simplify things even further for you, there is a fantastic FREE WordPress plugin available that tells you how to best optimize your content, from your pages to your posts! The tagline for this wonderful product is, “Yoast, SEO for everyone.” And that means YOU!

Yoast and WordPress are Made for Each Other

Now, this only works if you’re using WordPress as your content management system (and who isn’t, right?) plus, there are two versions of the plugin available. “Yoast SEO Free contains everything that you need to manage your SEO, and the Yoast SEO Premium plugin and its extensions unlock even more tools and functionality.”

The premium version is just $99 a year but the free version is usually more than adequate for most website owners. It’s also pretty easy to install and start using it. As Yoast explains the installation and activation process for the free plugin:

Yoast SEO Plugin Installation

Starting with Yoast SEO consists of just two steps: installing and setting up the plugin. Yoast SEO is designed to work with your site’s specific needs, so don’t forget to go through the Yoast SEO configuration workout as explained in the ‘after activation’ step!

INSTALL YOAST SEO FROM WITHIN WORDPRESS

  1. Visit the plugins page within your dashboard and select ‘Add New.’

  2. Search for ‘Yoast SEO.’

  3. Activate Yoast SEO from your Plugins page.

  4. Go to ‘after activation’ below.

INSTALL YOAST SEO MANUALLY

  1. Upload the ‘wordpress-seo’ folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.

  2. Activate the Yoast SEO plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.

  3. Go to ‘after activation’ below.

AFTER ACTIVATION

  1. You should see (a notice to start) the Yoast SEO configuration workout.

  2. Go through the configuration workout and set up the plugin for your site.

  3. You’re done!

And that’s it! You’re now ready to optimize every piece of content on your website, which only takes about 10-15 minutes once you get rolling.

Using Yoast SEO is Easy

How easy is it to use the plugin? Really easy, because Yoast places a small window in your editing dashboard with simple instructions on how to improve the optimization of your content.it will look something like this:

As you can see, Yoast is giving you clues to improve the SEO of your blog post.

  1. Yoast recommends a minimum of three hundred words for any copy, to better catch the attention of the search engines. The thinking seems to be, that if you can’t say three hundred words about something, it will have less value to Google.

  2. The meta description is that bit you see just below the URL in the search results. It’s best to craft a description that contains your focus keyword, as well as a fully expressed concept but fits within a 156-character limit.

  3. The focus keyword should also be in the title, preferably the opening of the title, e.g., “Customer Service – 5 Tips to Do It Better”.

  4. It should also be in the first fifty words of the post, as well as the last one hundred words. (You can use a variation of the focus keyword throughout, to prevent Google from thinking you are “keyword stuffing” your post.)

  5. Try to use a heading or two in the copy, as section separators, and designate them H2 and H3. (WordPress will use the title as an H1 automatically.)

These five steps should get you the green light from Yoast, no problem. (Instead of the bright red sad face!) The Yoast tutorials will tell you where all of the Metadata can be entered. If you drag your cursor over the items at the top of the Yoast SEO box in the dashboard, you’ll see the little pencil to the right, which indicates you can edit the text in each of those areas.

We hope this helps reduce the fear of SEO and that, installing and using the free Yoast SEO Plugin, will enable you to improve your website for the search engines. (Without hiring some expensive “expert”!)

As always, of course, Ted is available for business consulting to the industry and as a guide for improving your online marketing efforts. For more… Contact TD Fall today.