Would you like to learn more about the WordPress SEO plugin from Yoast? Then just read this post and we will give you the most important information.
What is Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin and what does it offer?
Ranking in Google and Bing search results is one of the easiest forms of internet marketing . The so-called search engine optimization mainly consists of two large fields: on- page and off-page . Offpage are, for example, other websites that link to your site and thus “recommend” you. OnPage is all that you can do on your own site to a keyword in the index to appear. An SEO plugin helps with these SEO measures .
You have to consider a few things when writing your posts and every article has the chance to rank well in search engines for the appropriate focus keyword . It also gets more clicks. More clicks on your entry on Google means more readers on the website. That in turn brings you more conversion . Depending on the intention, more conversion can mean higher advertising income through more reach or more sales. What exactly do you have to pay attention to when optimizing your own website for a search engine? The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress will help you with this .
The plugin shows you additional fields such as meta description , meta title, page title and focus keyword under each article . These are necessary so that Google and other search engines can understand what your page is about. This information is also used for your entry in the index. You can also get more conversion if you are already ranking, but your meta description or the page title in the search results is not appealing enough.
installation
In the WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins and enter Yoast SEO in the search bar. With one click you download the plugin and install it on your WordPress. After the installation, if you want, the configuration wizard will guide you through the basic settings and functions in ten simple steps. If you have already installed other SEO tools such as wpSEO or All-in-One SEO, you can import the settings into the installation of the Yoast SEO and do not have to create everything from scratch. To do this, go to the Tools tab on Import and Export and “Import from other SEO plugins”. Tick the box, click import and the settings will be transferred.
The SEO plugin with the traffic light can also help you here.
If you already have a relatively large page and are installing the plugin for the first time, you can see in a clear dashboard which posts need optimization. With a simple traffic light system, each of your pages is marked in green, yellow or red. With every field that you have optimized, more traffic lights jump to green. Of course, nobody wants to edit more than 100 pages individually and optimize them for one focus keyword . Therefore, the Yoast SEO plugin offers so-called templates. Simply create a rule like: The “title” field should always be composed of “Category: Page title” or the meta description should always be the first 120 characters of the post. And you’ve optimized hundreds of pages in five minutes. But that is only the beginning.
All functions of Yoast SEO at a glance
Yoast SEO – advantages and disadvantages for your optimizationBoth versions of the Yoast SEO plugin (Premium and Free) have the following functions in addition to the additional fields required for SEO in WordPress:
Keyword check
The SEO plug-in automatically calculates how often your focus keyword appears in the text and uses the traffic light to show you whether it is too little or too often. It also checks whether the keyword is set in the right places. This is possible, for example, in the page title and in the first paragraph of the text. This is a good start for your SEO measures .
Readability
The Flesh Reading Ease Score is determined automatically. This tells you how simple or how complicated your text is. The calculation is based on a simple formula. A score of 60-70 is easy to read for an eighth grader, a score between 0 and 30 is only understandable for university graduates. An important factor here is short sentences and the use of connecting words such as before, after, nonetheless. The Flesch Index is probably the best-known indicator of good readability of texts. There are, however, other indices for legibility, such as the Viennese factual formula and the Gunning Fox index.
Breadcrumbs
With the plugin you can easily define the first category and the subsequent taxonomy without having to work long in the backend. If you have not yet created any breadcrumbs on your site, you should be aware of such measures in SEOponder. They are very helpful for good online marketing of your website. Google partially adopts the breadcrumbs in the entry. So instead of the URL www.meinehomepage.de/neuerartikel under the blue heading in the snippet in small letters www.meinehomepage.de> Category> Subcategory> Third level. So the search engine knows better whether your page fits a keyword. The searcher also knows quickly and clearly that he wants to read your page.
Technical SEO
You have no idea what robots.txt, .htaccess files, clean permalink URL and sitemaps are or how you access the backend of your site? You don’t have to know that either. The Yoast SEO plugin is easy to install and automatically configures a few basic technical SEO aids in the backend. This will make your site more visible. The clear dashboard is helpful for changing things in the backend in an easily understandable way. If you are already familiar with .htaccess, Permalink and robots.txt, you can easily optimize them using the SEO plugin. In addition, you do not need an additional plugin for creating an xml sitemap.
noindex and nofollow
Most of the time, you want your posts to have a Google entry, but not to rank the many archive pages on the keyword. Then you should set the permalink to noindex here. This is also easier to change with Yoast SEO than in the normal WordPress dashboard or backend.
Image SEO
An often neglected field of search engine optimization is the image SEO. First of all, of course, you have to consider whether you would like your images to appear in the Google image search. If so, then Google needs to know what can be seen in the images. You can communicate this to the search engine on the one hand with an image title and on the other hand with the alt attribute. The alt attribute is the meta description for images. If someone searches for squirrels in the image search, they will find your image as an entry for this keyword.
Linking
The Google algorithm was originally based on not simply listing all search results that match a keyword. Above all, it was important to enter the pages particularly high in the index that have many links from other pages. This type of recommendation mechanism made Google better than other search engines. Hence, it is part of good search engine optimization . It’s kind of like a code of honor for online marketing. So if you find something good on the net, don’t just write about it, but link it. Make sure to link a page with a permalink. This is a page where the link won’t change. If you are looking for a product in the search engine, the link to the search will no longer be active approx. 20 minutes later.
Topicality
Ever heard of panda or penguin? In the world of online marketing, these are not just animals, but also major changes in the Google algorithm, which often lead to a sudden sharp drop in visibility in the index. This can also affect pages that are well optimized. Google even makes small changes about 500 to 600 times a year. The Yoast SEO plugin is updated every two weeks. So if Google spontaneously changes something in the algorithm again, your site is quickly up to date.
preview
What does your entry actually look like in the search results? And what if a potential customer or reader searches for you on their mobile phone? Sometimes this is good to know before the text goes online. Therefore, the Yoast SEO plugin shows your Google snippet directly under each article. Snippet is the English word for snippet. You see, as it were, an excerpt / snippet from the search results or what they will potentially look like. In addition, Google uses so-called “rich snippets”. This means that your Google “snippet” is enriched with further functions, depending on the article type and keyword. Rich snippets are, for example, the sights carousel when you are looking for a place or the box on the right-hand side by adding images, names, excerpts from Wikipedia,