SEO is widely celebrated as the cornerstone of online marketing – and that’s mostly because it works.
SEO jargons, abbreviations, and all the technical SEO terms you’ve probably heard of aside – SEO may be way simpler than you actually think. Come to think of it, if your site is relatively new, or in deep waters in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) because you’re outperformed by your competition, then SEO is all about using your content to gain an edge over them.
But there will come a time when your ranking hits a plateau or even takes a downward trajectory, whether or NOT you’ve diligently followed all the SEO guidelines, rules, and advice to a T.
No one can explain why this sometimes occurs, but with SEO one thing is clear – a single slip-up in the SEO strategy you implement could cost you years of pumped in effort.
Fortunately for those running their sites on WordPress, there exist a number of plugins that are specifically designed to offer the much-needed SEO structure and direction. A classic example of such a plugin is YOAST.
SEO is simple, but not as simple as flicking a succession of switches and hoping for things to work out. However, for web owners, the same fundamental pieces of SEO advice apply to almost everyone looking to leverage the power of SEO for organic traffic.
And yes, YOAST kind of makes SEO a cinch to profit from.
Why Yoast
Running your website on WordPress alone gives you a head start over anyone else running their website on a different Content Management System (CMS) including a customized one. And that’s because you have YOAST to guide you through everything SEO. It doesn’t matter if you’re completely clueless on the subject; YOAST is designed to offer you the necessary SEO guidance in the most simplified way possible.
Gone were the days when SEO was all about spiders and bots. Keyword stuffing could work the magic. But with advancement of Google algorithm and the technology used, it’s safe to say that Google ranking has improved to an extent of only ranking useful and interesting content.
Yoast happens to be among the few SEO plugins that takes this into consideration. Instead of focusing on Keywords as with many plugins in circulation, Yoast has a long host of well advanced readability metrics that it’ll be using to test out how useful and friendly your content is to an average human reader.
Among the things Yoast checks is redundancy, excessive use of long sentences, paragraph sizes, and wording to name a few.
Yoast also allows you to view a snippet preview of how your article will look like in the SERPs, which is important in editing your meta-tags.
Worth noting is that the plugin will also be advising you accordingly if your title happens to be too long or too short. And besides doing all these to increase your ranking, you can also trust the plugin to help you increase your click through rate for even better organic search results.
Yoast and Local SEO
Yoast is designed to also help with local SEO. Singapore is NOT an exception in this.
As one of the leading digital marketing agency in Singapore, MediaOne happens to be among the few companies that have closely been working with business from all corners of the country in solidifying their local SEO. And granted, Yoast falls among the few marketing tools the company has been using to facilitate local SEO.
If your plan is to improve your ranking in the search engine result pages, then it’s important that you make Yoast your friend. You might also want to consult MediaOne for further guidance on how best you can use the plugin.
How to Install Yoast
Now that we’ve already established that Yoast is a must-have SEO plugin for any WordPress user concerned about their Google ranking, so why NOT get our hands dirty and get it installed?
The process itself is relatively simple and straightforward, considering all you’ll be doing is following the steps below as they come.
Installing the Plugin
This should be even simpler if you’ve ever installed any WordPress plugin before. Even with this, there’s nothing to fret about for those who haven’t. The process should be simple enough to be even understood by a third grader.
To install the plugin, navigate to your WordPress dashboard and click on Plugins before navigating to New.
The next step should be to search for the Yoast plugin. Just key in the word YOAST SEO and press enter. The first plugin that pops up in the search results is the plugin to install.
You can thereafter click on install followed by activateand you’d have successfully installed the plugin.
The next step of the installation process is configuration. The plugin may be installed, but until you get to play around with the settings and calibrate them accordingly to match your SEO needs, then you’re far from getting done.
Configuring Yoast
Configuring the Yoast plugin shouldn’t be that much of a brainer, as well.
Start by clicking on the new SEOtab on your WordPress side bar. This should open the Yoast plugin and all that comes with it.
General
You can navigate to General where you’ll be required to select your environment. You’ll be given two options. But unless your website is still a working progress and NOT yet ready for launching, just go with option A and you’re good to go.
Site Type
The next step will involve selecting the category you best feel matches your website or blog. Your options include blog, online shop, news channel, portfolio, corporation, or something else. Depending on the nature of your website, you should by first glance be able to know what to select.
Company or Person
Is your site personal or an online representation of your company? The answer you give should lead you on the right box to check before you can go ahead and proceed to the next step.
This section allows you to link your Yoast account with your social network accounts. Read this keeping in mind that the accounts you’ll be linking are your business accounts and NOT your personal accounts. Just enter corresponding urls of each social network page and you’re good to go.
Do you want your site to appear in the search engines?
Of course, yes.
You can go ahead and complete the rest. For instance, you’ll be asked to choose whether you’re planning to have multiple authors or NOT. You should know what to pick depending on the nature of your blog or website.
Page and Post Optimization
Yoast allows you to optimize your pages and posts all exclusively instead of lumping everything up together.
All you have to do is open the page or post you want to optimize and navigate to the bottom. You should be able to see a box with YOAST SEO as the title.
Use this box to edit your meta-description and everything else shown.
There will also be a score indicated with directions on how to improve the score for a better ranking.
The point is to make sure that the box shows a green indicator for Readability and Keyword.
The Wrap Up
There goes your ultimate guide to both understanding and installing Yoast plugin. The step by step guidelines should be simple to understand, but should you find yourself stuck at any given point, don’t hesitate to contact MediaOne for the assistance you deserve. We can also provide solid web design services which have Yoast and all other elements of SEO integrated prior to launch.
