WordPress and Yoast, a Marriage Made in Heaven

Without a doubt, WordPress is the world’s biggest and most renowned content management system (CMS). Exactly 26% of all the websites are created using WordPress and it holds 68% market share of all of the CMSs out there. The reason for these high figures lies in WP’s simplicity and at the same time its ability to run even the most demanding websites. Among other things, it allows users to take care of their website’s On-Page SEO parameters on their own and with the help of certain addons

On-Page SEO

It is a misguided thought that rankings come naturally. Without a carefully planned SEO strategy, chances for your website to rank high in the SERPs are equal to zero. This is because Google and other search engines have certain ways of “grading” websites and monitoring the their relevance. Precisely this is the reason why optimising keywords, titles, headings, images, content itself and other components of a page is a way of getting search engines to take notice of your website.

A recent study by Ahrefs showed that having keyword-rich domain is one of the best signals. That is if it is moderately rich, since an over-optimised one can do all the opposite and nail you to the last pages of search results. Luckily, today we have some awesome TLDs like .me domain that can help you hack a domain name and get the one that is well-optimised and not too long – drive.me, aweso.me, converti.co, etc.

Since WordPress has intuitive and easy-to-use GUI, it is easy to figure out why it is so popular. It rather resembles the interface of a well-known Microsoft Word. Only one click of a left mouse button separates you from adding titles and headings. However, analysing keyword density and optimising meta tags is something WordPress can’t do on its own. That is why there are 45,810 plugins available for download on wordpress.org at the very moment I’m writing this article. Plugins make up for all the shortcomings that this CMS might display. Probably the best SEO plugin out there is Yoast.

SEO by Yoast

Yoast is a comprehensive SEO tool that covers everything you need for on-page optimisation. From optimising pages to individual posts. It will help you create and position your XML sitemap, properly configure robots.txt so your website is clearly visible to search engines, as well as create templates for titles, tags, meta descriptions and url structure. These things are done just once and should be revised only when doing some greater changes on the website.

On the other hand, individual post optimisation is something you have to do each time you publish fresh content.

With the help from Yoast, optimising content is a child’s play. It will tell you the density of your keywords, how well they are placed, whether your meta tags are well-written and how does the post fare in terms of linking out. The best practice is to place your keyword among the first words in the title, in H1 tags, alt tags, meta description and among the first 100 words of the introductory paragraph. Recommended keyword density is around 2.5%.

Another important factor of on-page optimisation are links. Outbound links in the content signal Google that the post is relevant for the topic and it will prioritise your content over some other that has no outbound links. Also, internal links are quite important. These help optimise your internal site structure and distribute value.

Optimising on-page factors of your website is just the beginning and a foundation for the start of an off-page campaign. Certainly there are other SEO plugins than Yoast available for WordPress – all in One SEO Pack and Premium SEO Pack for example. But Yoast has proven again and again that it is the best, and for the price (it is free) gives the best value.