In the fast-paced and ever-growing world that is the internet, it’s easy for us to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options and obligations we have as users and business owners to ensure that we get the most out of the online world as possible. Today there are over 1 billion websites on the internet – so it’s easy for you to see, once I put things in perspective, how difficult it can be to have your website stick out among all the competition out there.

On one hand, the internet can easily be called one of the most important technological leaps of the 20th and 21st centuries respectively.  It has allowed us to connect with people across the world instantaneously and has created a platform that makes businesses easier to operate, monitor and more adaptable to the ever-changing market without as much of the time-consuming, logistical issues that we would have had to deal with in the past.

Buying something online is as easy as entering a few numbers and letters into a website, selecting the items you want and waiting for them to arrive at your door – and online service delivery has radically changed how many industries work altogether.

It’s important to make use of whatever tools and knowledge you have to ensure that your website garners as much traffic as possible. Think of it as owning a traditional brick and mortar store. If no one comes into your store, you’re not going to be likely to make any sales.  However, if your store is situated in a good location, is well-marketed and is easy to access or locate – the chances are that you’re likely to garner a bit more traffic and ultimately sales as well. SEO basically revolves around ensuring that your business (website) ticks off as many of the criteria as it can to ensure more ‘walk-in’ traffic or attention is drawn to it.

It’s essential not only to becoming successful today, but to simply surviving in the heated, ever-growing, fast-changing and often flourishing world that is the internet. Not making use of SEO analytical software is a bit like hiking without a tent. You can enjoy the hike for some time, but you won’t last long without it.

Why Your WordPress Website Needs SEO in 2018

WordPress Logo

There are always a few drawbacks that come with any technological adaptation. In this case, it’s the sheer volume of people mostly trying to do the same thing (or something similar) all grouped together on the same platform.

So if you’re trying to start an online floral shop, for instance, the first thing you have to consider is how many other people offer the same service and how many of them could be considered viable competition?

Then comes the tricky part – and this is where SEO analytical software such as Yoast really comes in handy.

In order to succeed in online business, you have to ensure that your website garners as much traffic as possible. This will help to generate more sales and can help you generate a secondary income through advertising.

Yoast (or SEO in general) is basically a tool or industry that helps to give you the ideas and guidelines to setup a website, or create content that will ultimately give your website higher ranking on search result lists and ensure that it’s connected to the appropriate websites, keywords or products searches that may be linked to your business or service in some way or another.

SEO is the best way to maximise the potential that your website has to succeed. You’ll only realize how important it is once you start to see the results.

However, SEO tips and guidelines aren’t fixed – they change over time (sometimes they don’t), but there are a lot of factors that influence them. So having software that helps keep you up to date with these changes is the best way to stay on the ball in the fast-paced world of the internet.

If this still doesn’t make sense – don’t worry, I’ll explain everything as simply as possible. So if you’re planning to succeed online, or in business at all these days, just know that tools like Yoast (or any SEO analytical tools for that matter) will be indispensable to your journey.

What Is The Yoast SEO Plugin Tool?

Yoast SEO Plugin

Yoast is one of, if not the most popular SEO analytics plug-ins available on the web today. But what exactly does that mean? Basically, the team down at Yoast have years of experience in SEO (that is Search Engine Optimization) which means that they know exactly what a website or piece of content needs in order to rank well on any given search engine – but in most cases, it’s Google.

So, instead of manually giving their advice to a series of different clients one at a time, which is kind of how it worked not too long ago, they decided to compile and design this awesome ‘all-in-one’ tool that analyses your WordPress website as well as any content you create for that website.

The aim of the tool is to guide you towards making the correct decisions for that site and any individual pieces of content that you may be creating to ensure that you get a better ranking on search engine results pages and that your website is correctly placed within its relevant category or industry.

Yoast is essentially pre-packed with all the SEO guidelines that professionals use (based on professional experience and changes that may occur within Google’s automated systems) and helps to structure your content appropriately by cross-checking it with these criteria.

It’s easily accessible and gives you the help you need (and would otherwise pay a large sum of money for) in language that is jargon-free and easy to understand – even if you’re not an IT kind of person. The idea is that Yoast is meant to be a sort-of plug-and-play app that gives you professional SEO advice for free and is so easy to use that anyone could optimize their websites by themselves. It’s as easy as toast!

Yoast Keyword Optimization Explained

Yoast Keyword Optimization

A lot of what SEO is about is actually a lot more simple than many tend to realize. While things may become really complicated when you delve in a bit deeper, the truth is that SEO is really about what words you use and how you use them in relation to all the words that are being searched for at any given moment through various search engines such as Google.

For instance, when you type in the word ‘water,’ you’ll get a series of different results based on your previous search history, the country, city and town you’re located in and the other words you type in along with the word ‘water.’

So in this case, ‘water’ is a keyword – it’s what you’re trying to get results for. In order to get more specific results, you add in more keywords to help better define your search and bring up more specific results.

For instance, you may be looking for bottled water suppliers in your area. Therefore, you wouldn’t only type the word ‘water’ into Google, but rather something like ‘bottled water suppliers Indiana’ or whatever it is you’re looking for.

This will ensure that Google’s bots and algorithms have better defined parameters for your search and can bring up results that will hopefully be what you’re looking for – if not closer to what you’re looking for.

Yoast has a feature that is specifically designed to help you as a website owner, better define your content so that when people search for things that are relative or directly related to your website, your site has a better chance at popping up in the results and ideally, closer to that highly coveted first page or first-result status. It’s like spell-checker for SEO – simple no?

Yoast Readability Check Explained

Yoast Readibility Check

Due to the fact that so much of the internet is largely ‘word-based’, it’s easier for us to think of it as one, incredibly long book (even though this isn’t the best metaphor for the internet) and SEO as the index.

But like any form of reading material, there are different grades or difficulties that we are likely to encounter throughout our lifetime.

Certain documents (like legal documents) are simply going to be more difficult to read off-hand than say, a simple brochure for a holiday or an advertisement.  Each document is trying to convey different information in a different way and will therefore differ in it’s ease of readability.

However, due to the fast-paced nature of our lifestyles today and given that we’ve largely become more visual in our nature, people don’t tend to enjoy reading long paragraphs or articles with loads of information and details all crammed into one thing.

In general, most people want short, quick and informative articles (or videos/animations) that give them the info they need in a short, summative manner. So when you’re compiling content for your website – you need to take this into account as it could mean all the difference between a good ranking, and a bad ranking.

Thankfully, Yoast has incorporated a universal readability system into their analytical tools which helps to ensure that your sentences are structured correctly and that your article contains all the right keywords (and enough of them) to become relevant to the main keyword in the search, but also ensures that your article is easy to read.

This is based on the Flesch-Kincaid reading test which was created for military use at first, to ensure that training manuals and instruction guides were easy enough to read in a short space of time. It works on a rating system out of 120, with 120 being the easiest to read and anything in the 30s or below 30 being very difficult to read.

This helps you create content that is both engaging and relevant to your website, yet structured correctly so that it can be useful for both SEO purposes and user readability. It’s a highly effective tool and one that no content should be created without.

Yoast Internal Linking System Explained

Yoast Internal Linking

One of the best ways to build up a search-relevant website or to create content that will help your page rank higher in search results is through the continual use of internal linking.  But what does this mean? Well, there are two types of links namely internal and external links. External links are links that you use to connect to other websites.  These are generally used to help give people more information about a topic or to help create a stronger network of interlinked websites.

These will help to bolster both sites chances of popping up during searches as their website is now linked directly to yours and so vice versa. It’s a bit like weaving an extra layer of cloth into your clothing.

However, internal links are links that connect to other pieces of content or sections of your own website. Say you’re referring to a specific product or service or want to list a price etc. You can use an internal link to help direct people to that page in specific and ultimately boost your own sites chances of getting a higher ranking, by connecting different sections of your site to various pieces of content.

This is a highly effective and incredibly simple way of ensuring that your content is geared towards good search results.  Yoast offers a built-in system that helps to identify other articles or pages on your website that may be relevant to the content you’re creating in order to give you a list of suitable things to link to in your article or content in general.

So instead of having to go through your website or blog to find that one piece of information that you think may be relevant to the article you’re working on at the moment, Yoast lists a series of top articles or topics that may be relevant to your content making it easier to build a well-connected piece of content and ultimately a better functioning site.

Yoast Meta Description Explained

Yoast Meta Desciption To

An article or websites meta description is something that people who are not aware of SEO tools and categories often tend to overlook. Sometimes, even those who are aware of them may underestimate how important a meta description is for ranking and so it gets left by the wayside. Nothing could be more detrimental to your websites ranking abilities than that!

The meta description basically pops up under your website’s search result and gives users a brief summary of what they can expect to find should they click on the link. This is the best way to let them know what to expect and will also help to bolster your site or that specific pages ranking ability. Remember, in SEO every word counts and the meta description is no exception.

Yoast makes it easier to create compelling and useful meta descriptions by giving you a word count which helps to ensure that you keep your meta description is brief and to the point. This is directly tied into the requirements from Google HQ – so you know that with Yoast, you’re getting the best advice, straight from the horse’s mouth.  No link would be complete without a good meta description and Yoast makes sure that you have the best meta descriptions possible.

Yoast Focus Keyword Tool Explained – How Does it Help?

Yoast Focus Keyword Tool

As I mentioned earlier in the article, a large amount of what SEO is focusing on keywords and ensuring that they pop-up in your articles and on your website as much as possible. The idea of the ‘keyword’ is that it must be directly related to the article or content you’re creating (as well as your website) and should be thought of as the thing you’d expect people to type into Google in the hopes that you cater for the search requirements as best as possible and get a higher ranking as a result.

Higher rankings mean more traffic and more relevant searches which means that the people who are most likely to buy your product, service or simply need the information you’re putting out will get it.

The Focus Keyword Tool helps to ensure that your article contains enough of the focus keyword(s) and in the right places.This helps to make it easier for Google’s scrapers and search algorithms to find your website based on the amount of times the relevant keyword pops up in your content based on what the search request was.  It’s a fantastic way to ensure that your content is up to scratch with Google’s technology and that you have a better chance of reaching the relevant people (clients or customers) more easily.

This is particularly important if you’re trying to generate money based on advertisements or if you’re website is directly linked to your business i.e. is your storefront.

We collected so much fun and interesting #data this year! For instance: did you know we're nearing the 8 million installs of #YoastSEO worldwide?! More in this #infographic! #2017 #WordPress pic.twitter.com/no9ReTQb6g

— Yoast (@yoast) December 31, 2017

Yoast Content Insights Explained

Besides having a list of well-tuned and more specific tools available for your use to help ensure that you have the best possible content and webpage you can in terms of search results, Yoast also offer a more generalized content analysis tool that helps to grade and correct your content based on all of the tools above.

It’s like a color-coded summary that gives you simple and easy pointers based on the requirements that Google has for what they consider ‘good content’ based on search engine requirements. The little box that will pop up at the bottom of your article gives you ideas, tips and pointers that you can fulfill or change to make sure that your content is of the highest possible score in terms of SEO ranking. This means that you can use these ideas or tips when creating content in future or simply follow the guidelines to ensure that you’re content makes the grade!

Yoast Premium Sale Prices

Yoast SEO Pricing Breakdown

So, a lot of people may be wondering why they should even consider paying for Yoast, when the free version already has so many awesome features.  The fact of the matter is that Yoast Premium contains more of the features we’ve already discussed, some of which don’t appear in the free version of the software.  For instance, Internal Linking Suggestions, Content Insights, Redirect Manager, 1-Year Free Access to online support and of course it’s Ad-free!

While it may be a little costly for some at $89 per website, the truth is that it’s still a lot cheaper than hiring a dedicated developer to work with you on a monthly basis (or even once off for that matter) and it’s a highly effective way of increasing your chances of getting a higher ranking.  Not only do you get access to these features, but you get a list of bonuses that come with each feature. This makes it a lot more appealing to pay a little extra and in turn, you’ll get a serious bounty of industry standard SEO tools and tips.

Conclusion

As far as SEO tools go, Yoast is the most popular out there – and it’s easy to see why. It’s easy to use, will make a noticeable difference in the quality of your site’s content and ranking ability and offers quite a lot as far as free-versions go. However, the premium version is really what you want to set your eyes on as it’s basically like having an entire SEO team dedicated to your website 24/7 at a fraction of the cost.

While it’s always still a good idea to have a developer or SEO specialist on board for more abstract ideas a strategy creation, Yoast will help you get an idea of how well-prepared or structured your website is for the demands of Google’s algorithms. So don’t waste anymore time or money – download Yoast’s free version today for a trial and if you like it as much as we do, get your hands on the Premium version. I promise you won’t regret using this software.

Read about SEMRush, Quick Sprout and FreshBooks while you’re here at EduMuch!