What I've Learned by Using Yoast SEO Premium

bymartycanaday

860 followers

Updated 7 years ago

Humm . . . how should I write this post?

Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Premium have guidelines for improving page rankings. Every post that you write is analyzed by these guidelines and placed at the bottom of your page in the WordPress backoffice. It places a green, orange, or red dot besides each guideline to let you know how your page measures up to their standards. Green is great! Orange means ok, but you need to work a bit more on the issue. Red is poor.

I find this very helpful. It has improved my writing and aids in page ranking.

I’m listing the guidelines that Yoast recommends:

• The Flesch Reading Ease score uses the length of sentence, number of words in a sentence, and number of syllables per word in an equation to calculate the reading ease. Shorter sentences improve readability. Most people read on an eighth grade level. Short sentences will make sentences easier to read. A score of 90-100 is easily understood by an average 11-year old student. A score of 60-70 is understood by 13-15 year old students. A score of 0-30 is best understood by university graduates. Therefore, your page should at least score a 60 to have a good score.
• Sentences should not be more than 20 words long.
• Posts need to be at least 300 words long. Longer posts are ok.
• Posts shouldn’t have any consecutive sentences that begin with the same word.
• Paragraphs need to be limited to 150 words.
• Information in paragraphs should be related to the topic of the paragraph.
• At least one subheading needs to be used in every post. And, words following each subheading should not be more than 300 words long. Use another subheading if the words under a subheading is more than 300 words.
• Use a lot of the following transition words:

Type of relation -- Examples of transition words

Enumerate -- and, first of all, also, another, furthermore, finally, in addition.

Cause -- because, so, due to, while, since, therefore.

Comparison/contrast -- same, less, rather, while, yet, opposite, much as, either.

Conclusion -- as a result, hence, consequently, therefore, in conclusion.

Fuzzy signals -- seems like, maybe, probably, almost.

Emphasis -- most of all, most noteworthy, especially relevant.

• Limit sentences that contain passive voice to no more than 10%.
• The focus keyword needs to be in the title of your post.
• The focus keyword should appear in the URL for the page.
• The focus keyword should be placed in the first paragraph, and last paragraph of the post.
• The focus keyword should be used 3-5 times in the post.
• Make sure the focus keyword is in at least one of the sub-topics.
• Include at least one image on every post.
• The images on the page need to contain alt attributes with the focus keyword.
• Make sure every post has at least one link. More are ok.
• Meta Description - if you don’t specify a meta description that’s ok because search engines will display copy from the page instead. However, you can provide a meta description.

Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Premium evaluate all of these guidelines for you automatically as you edit your posts. So, you can see how your edits are improving your posts.

I find this extremely helpful because I have learned what is required in posts. This has saved me time and has made the writing of posts easier, quicker, and more enjoyable.

Happy writing!

Gee, writing posts is fun!