Are you brand new to building a website business? Haven’t a clue? In fact, wondering what does SEO mean? I know how you feel and I’m going to make you feel a lot better about learning the ropes, in why use the free Yoast SEO plugin?
One of the reasons most people never get off the ground when creating their first website is a lack of knowledge of how the whole internet works. Pretty much all of us know about Google.
You’ve even researched for stuff on Google and how easy was that? Now think about how the information that you were looking for and how it arrived on the first page of Google.
Did you actually ever scroll past the first page of posts that met your search? I never bother because it usually contains the best choice of posts.
There is a reason for this! Algorithms that make up the Search Engines that classify every post and website on the internet. It’s very clever. Google, Bing, and Yahoo have a set of standards that must be met to be on the first page. Very tough to rate there and Google has been making it tougher. They follow very specific criteria.
Table of Contents
What is SEO?
SEO – Search Engine Optimization. So what does this have to do with the Yoast SEO Plugin?
Yoast is one of many free plugins that you can use on any website to help you rank on the first page. Even better, it will teach you how to write your content so that you are writing better and adding in SEO as you go.
WordPress created the Yoast Plugin in 2008 and has been perfecting it ever since. If you also add Grammarly free to your website you will be well covered in polishing your writing skills.
How can it help you get noticed by Google, Bing, and Yahoo?
If you are a total newbie this tool can really help you to get in the game. Once you load the Yoast SEO plugin on your website, it will spell out where you are going wrong in your Readability and your SEO Analysis and tell you how to fix it.
Obviously, I like being spoon-fed when it comes to the English language and any help will say me time. I have enough new things to learn about.
The Yoast SEO plugin makes it fun by using street light color warnings on your WordPress page.
Red, Orange, and Green. Getting both the Readability and SEO lights to turn green, makes it clear when you are getting the instructions correct.
What problems does Yoast SEO Plugin Warn You About?
Readability
- Flesch Reading Ease
- Passive Voice
- Consecutive Sentences
- Subheading Distribution
- Paragraph Length
- Sentence Length
- Transition words
If this sounds complicated to you, don’t run for the door yet because Yoast does all the hard work. It will analyze what you have written and give you hints on how to fix it. There is even an extra information button to their tutorials if you need to drill down in your learning.
SEO Analysis
- Outbound links
- Internal Links
- Keyphrase in Introduction (First paragraph)
- Key phrase Length
- Keyphrase in Meta description (You need to know this!)
- Meta Description Length
- Image Alt attributes (putting names on your pictures)
- Text Length
- Keyphrase in Title
- SEO Title Width
- Keyphrase in slug
These are a lot of areas that you need to be aware of if you want to be successful with your content. You will need to build backlinks, but that’s another story. Miss a couple of key ones and you will be wondering why you are on page 20 not on the first page.
For example;
Creating the best Meta description
You may be wondering what on earth this is? When you Google something and are given a list of posts to read from the first page, you will usually read the sentence below the title to see if it is what you wanted to know. This is your meta description.
The Yoast SEO plugin makes it very easy to create and see what you have written before you publish and slowly you will become more succinct in explaining in a few words what your post is about.
How do you create a great title? Is it too short? Too long? Will it rank? (for this you need to check out Jaaxy) Yoast SEO plugin will warn you if you are not following the rules that will help you to rank.
How Much Does It Cost?
Great news, it’s free! Everything I have outlined above comes in the free plugin. You can upgrade to premium for even more features but I haven’t needed to and at $89 a year it doesn’t really make any sense. It is very simple to install on any website with WordPress and you will be up and running very quickly.
Making the Most of Your Website
Deciding to join the online business world is a big decision but one that has to be made. It’s obvious that more people are shopping online and if you already own a brick-and-mortar business you will need to get online.
This can be expensive and inconvenient. Just consider, if your website is up and running and you have no idea how to change it then you will always have to wait for a technician to do the work. Consequently, not only is this expensive but you will always be paying out for skills that you can develop fairly easily.
Don’t do it alone Wealthy Affiliate is here to help and you start for free, and 10 free videos.
There is a lot of pleasure in creating your own website. Making decisions on how it will look and work for customers visiting.
Adding widgets to allow quick contact or for the customer to make an appointment. Have the ability to promote seasonal sales and discount products with a few clicks.
You will learn all these skills and more about free plugins (like the Yoast SEO plugin) with Wealthy Affiliate. The cheapest way to build and run a website while you learn the skills.
Looking for a solution
Writing content has always been a huge challenge for me. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write content but that I wasn’t sure what would get the attention of Google. Consequently, I was diligently following the lessons on the Wealthy Affiliate learning platform, as they are fantastic and explained in detail what SEO was and how to create it.
But I knew I would never remember every important detail when I was writing, so I went looking for a solution. I found the answer with the help of my mentor on the Wealthy Affiliate Learning Platform.
Amazingly, I kind of tripped over this learning and hosting company when I was searching for a way to make money online. For the price of hosting one site per month, I received the option to host 10 sites, do over 120 lessons on every aspect of building one, and write content.
Live lessons every week with an expert. As well as being part of a community of entrepreneurs who I could ask questions and connect with, it was a bit of a no-brainer when I could try it for free for 2 weeks.
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Check out my review.
Still, I wanted a daily system that would alert me to SEO tips that I had left out and remind me of structure, etc, that would help me rank. Now that I use the Yoast SEO plugin to get indexed faster and to the first page in Google, consequently, I’ve recently made several sales commissions.
As a Baby Boomer, it takes me a lot of repeats to remember anything new and I need to be prompted every time I write until it sinks in.
My Wealthy Affiliate mentor came to the rescue again and loaded Yoast SEO plugin Free onto my website and as the saying goes, ‘the rest is history’.
Features that work every time
I really enjoy writing content in word press, now that I have my Yoast traffic lights to guide me. It has become a game trying to get the lights to turn from red to orange and then to Green. Two Green lights and you’re ready to publish.
This rating is in two key areas, Readability and SEO. It has become second nature for me to look at the lights on the right hand of the screen and register their color.
Then I scroll down the page to find a detailed account of what needs to be changed, to make it read better or register better in SEO.
There is even a prompt to write a great meta description that shows below your title on the Google listing.
It has taught me about slugs and keywords, Internal and external links, heaps!
Not that all these top ten points aren’t covered by our training at Wealthy Affiliate but having it in my face as I write content has helped it to sink in, it’s also a fun game.
In conclusion, I can’t recommend Yoast more highly. Having something to prompt you to be better at SEO and Readability will help your productivity. Content is the key to your success.
I hope that you have enjoyed this review and it has helped to clarify what you may need to do to be more successful in your online business website. Please leave me a comment and share it.
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Happy to help.
hello there!
what a beautiful site you have got there, the theme is well laid out and the content is super informative. your content “why use SEO plugin has helped me know more about it, my WA platform always notified me of the SEO plugin but I wasn’t sure if it was safe since having many plugins can bring some harm to your site. as far as it has helped, I’m precisely that it will also help many people who were facing this similar problem as mine.
Thanks for sharing
Stephen.
Hi Steven, I’m so pleased that my post helped you. It’s nice to promote a product that really works. Once you’ve installed it make sure you uninstall whatever other SEO you had before. You can’t run two at a time. Nothing bad will happen and you can always reinstall your original SEO later if you wish.
Let me know how you go.
Lily 😊
It seems this SEO Yeost is a plugin I will enjoy using. Thankfully, my website also runs in WordPress and you seem to have used the plugin extensively. I will give it a try. One of my biggest challenges is getting the meta descriptions right, shortening sentences and paragraphs. Your article addresses exactly what I needed. I thank you for that.
Hi Sipheni,
I know what you mean, it can all be so confusing. You will find that Yoast has a great section at the bottom of your post to write and polish your metadescription and you can see how it will look when you publish.
Good luck and enjoy.
Lily 😊
I didn’t know that Yoast SEO plugin is free, I wonder what are the features of the free version. Guess I’ll check it out then.
Although I use All-In-SEO and so far, it does it job (I have posts that get ranked in Google, Bing and Yahoo), I’m still curious about Yoast SEO. I think there are great numbers of bloggers who are using Yoast as well. Probably that’s why I’m still looking into it.
Have you tried using other SEO plugin aside from Yoast? What does Yoast SEO have done for you, for your articles? How did it help you? Your answers will be a great help for me on deciding if I’m going to get Yoast and replace my All-In-SEO.
Anyway, thanks for the review.
Hi Mina, I’ve actually listed what the free version has to offer in my post and how it’s helped me. I’ve been so delighted with getting all my content for two websites indexed using Yoast that I haven’t tried any others. My website came with All in One SEO and although it’s great it couldn’t help me with knowing the rules for writing or SEO. Yoast really helped. I would encourage you to research further.
Let me know if I can help.
Lily
This is something I am looking forward to utilize in my website. It’s not enough to own a website; getting enough traffic to our offers is actually what makes the difference. This is equal to money and it is what motivates the entrepreneur to improve and even do more. On creating some pages in my website I made use of some writing tools and they actually covered some stuffs you have listed (like passive voice) that Yoast SEO plugin warns about. Such an excellent plugin to create the best experience so we can show up in searches.
So pleased that Yoast will give you all these tips in one place. Enjoy!
Very useful information for a beginner like me.
Excellently explained how Seo works and what it offers.
This is very useful information for anyone who wants to learn
And a very nice review of the site to make it easier for us
Thank you very much..
Keep going for more pages
Thanks for the feedback, I’m so pleased that you found it useful. I use Yoast every time I write and it really has improved the technical aspects of my writing. The little reminders help me to structure my text and fill in the important SEO. I’ve linked it with Grammarly and that constantly reminds me to correct any spelling and punctuation mistakes. A great free system to improve your writing.
In all honesty, what has been shared here is the single most important information shared. I value all of these and the idea of trying it out makes sense to me. God bless you for sharing this offer with us and for me personally. Great post shared with usable information. Thanks
Thank you for your blessing and kind remarks. I hope this is a great tool for your business.
It is very thoughtful of you to share this interesting and very resourceful information if is very helpful to make and it’s been really useful. There is a lot of seo plug-ins but only a few are good, this is a nice product. I look forward to having more and more infomercial that are very resourceful and useful like this, thanks for sharing.
Give it a try Uncle Bolt and I think you will be surprised at how it will help your writing and finding keywords.