Why I should boast about Yoast SEO

My son recently directed me to a plugin, which is Yoast SEO, and it looks very helpful. I just started a website a little over a month ago and have about 6 posts. I thought I was doing everything correctly with regards to using Key Word Phrases, but my google analytics is telling me otherwise.

Well, the good news is my bounce rate is zero. There's always a bright side, right? ;o}

Instead of getting all hysterical, and concluding this biz is not for me, I need to analyze what is going on. After all, I use Jaaxy. I thought I was using keywords correctly in my posts. I think I am writing interesting, insightful and easy to understand essays.

It turns out, with the help of Yoast, I can see that I might be doing just the opposite.

According to the Yoast Overview Screen, I have only 1 post with a focus keyword, out of 6, and only that SEO Keyword is just OK (not even Good)! If I go to my All Posts section, this is what I see:

On the All Posts Page, Yoast has added a few more columns. One column is labeled Yoast SEO score (column with the traffic light), and this has mostly to do with the use of keywords. As you can see, I am failing miserably in this department - when I thought I was using keywords correctly. In fact, it is only giving a green light to one of my writings, and that is not even a real post but is currently just a draft that I just started.

Another column has to do with Readability (the column with the feather icon) and Yoast is complaining that a number of my posts are not even very readable. For example, I have a tendency to write with passive voice, rather than active voice. Also, my sentence structure tends to be a bit complex and I use long sentences, and Yoast complains to me about that too. How dare it!

The other two columns have to do with internal linking within your own website, and it looks like I need help in that department as well.

Well, that's nice general information to have, but what am I supposed to fix???

If you go to edit one of your posts, Yoast will provide you detailed information on what issues need addressing. For example, If I am going to the bottom of my post "Pure Water Filtration Systems - What You Look For", this is what I see under the Yoast SEO tab:

Yoast tells me what is bad and what is good about my post submission. For example, as for the bad, I am lacking the keyword in the first paragraph, and my keyword density is very low in general.

If I look under the Yoast SEO readability score tab, this is what I see:

Yup,this confirms it. I like using long sentences, big words and passive voice. Hey, I like my writing style, but that doesn't mean others will and they may even become confused by it.

Moral: When you think you are done with a post, you might not be done with your post.

Yoast provides you with critical feedback, and if I didn't have any such tool, I might be wondering with a month or two more of post submissions under my belt, why I was not getting any traffic to my site, and I might even be getting hysterical or defeatist about it.

I will make the proper changes to my posts, and report back to let you know if there has been any improvement to my google analytics stats (can't get any worse, can it?).

Till later

Jim