You might have heard Digital Marketers talking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but do you really know what exactly they are talking about? It is basically a vital digital marketing tool that entails quite complex and multifaceted processes. If you are a beginner then this treatise can help you understand all about SEO from the base and we will also be talking about how to use Yoast SEO which is one of the best SEO tool for WordPress websites.
What is SEO?
As mentioned above that SEO is a complex thing and is made up of multiple elements. Knowing about all these elements and their functionalities is the key to understanding why SEO is so important for the digital industry. If we cut it to short, SEO is crucial as it make your virtual appearance more visible that bring more traffic and hence more opportunities to convert all your prospects into customers.
Other than that, what does SEO brings to the table? Of course brand awareness, building relationships with your prospects and current customers, and marking you as an authentic and trustworthy expert in the market industry you are working.
Crucial Elements Of SEO Marketing
SEO has a long list of important elements but lets just discuss the most prominent one here just for your understanding.
1. Keywords
Keywords are the words or phrases used to find the related content from any online resource like Google. There were times when keywords were the only thing that mattered the most in digital marketing techniques. Previously, keywords were randomly suggested on the basis of the topic. But now the search engine algorithms have changed a lot and today they are carefully chosen, well-researched, and judiciously used in the content to make it effective. People may use different words and phrases to find a single brand. So it is important for the brand to use those keywords that are mostly searched and have low competition. And its recommended to use short-tail keywords (means keywords containing two – three words).
2. Content
Content serves as the engine to move the digital marketing cycle and help businesses reach the audience and engage. To better get the right audience and effective engagement, it is necessary to create a focused content crafted as to fulfil the needs of people. Whatever industry you are working in, make sure your content must be educational, interesting, relevant, and sharable. There are various forms of content like web page content, videos, blogs, infographics, podcasts, listicles, guides, social media posts, etc. Each form of content should be created carefully.
3. Backlinks
Building backlinks is one of the important techniques used for off-page SEO. The backlinks are the links coming from external sites that tell search engines the site is valuable and high-quality and so the site authority increases. There are different ways to get backlinks and the best way is through guest blogging, infographic, and via influencer marketing.
4. Local SEO
As per the study, 60% of the searches are done through mobile devices and nearly half of those searches have local intent. For example, if any person is looking for restaurants in town, he will come across your restaurant as well. To make sure that you appear in their searches it is important for you to use local keywords, must have directory listings, create location-specific pages for business on Google Business directories and Google Map.
5. Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the paid marketing that includes native ads, Google AdWords, social media ads, PPC (pay-per-click), Google ads display, and much more. Though SEM is not a very important component of SEO strategy but it does have its value and if planned well can help you reach new heights and hits new audience.
Importance Of SEO For Modern Business
SEO is actually one of the basic fundamentals of business marketing strategies and holds the huge importance and value.
1. Visibility and Ranking
It is important that people can see your business on and off so that an image is formed in their minds. So when next time they think of a specific product or service, they know the name of your business. To have that effective visibility, SEO can help you get more prospects. Your business visibility is directly related to your ranking on the search engines. The higher the visibility is, chances are high that you appear on the top of Google page. And so more likely to be seen by people searching for specific things that your business is dealing with.
2. Building Trust & Credibility
SEO help build trust and credibility. The main goal of SEO is to establish the foundations of a business website that has a clean and effective user experience. Due to these digital properties, websites gain trust and so the business credibility increases. There are a lot of things that contribute to the establishment of authority regarding search engines like Google. Other than all discussed factors, the website authority also increases as a result of other aspects like:
- Natural links
- Positive user behavior
- Machine Learning signals
- Optimized on-page elements and content
3. Understanding Voice Of The Customer
From macro marketing to understanding consumer intent, SEO make us learn everything about customers. It tell us what does the customer want and how we can fulfill their needs. From the SEO data we can understand the user behavior and so can better cater with customer demands. We can use the data of SEO for our understanding. Like the following data can be of great use in understanding the voice of customers:
- Search query data
- SERP analysis
- Analytics data and AI insights
4. Increased Engagement, Traffic & Conversions
The study says that the more advanced the world is getting, the more mobile traffic is being produced, becoming a fundamental part of small to medium-sized businesses’ growth.
All the digital properties of your business website are optimized by local SEO that aims to make your business more visible, putting it one step closer to a transaction. Local optimization focuses on specific regions and establishes a viable medium for businesses to spread their message.
Well, How important SEO is for business growth is a long debate. It’s like a powerful engine that drives the business and helps it reach the peak point depending how much the owner puts in the effort.
SEO Is Improving Constantly And Always Being Updated
We appreciate it when businesses implement SEO tactics for both short-term and long-term engagements. However, the business need to keep the track so that it is re-evaluated consistently. If there isn’t any re-evaluation, all the efforts may end as threshold and can cost you a lot.
So we educate businesses to stay proactive while working on any strategy and ask them to be consistent while monitoring for significant algorithm changes. As all those activities will benefit the brand in the end.
Google makes a lot of changes in its algorithm every year. If you fail to follow them on time, you may fall behind and so will be tough for you to catch up the success anytime soon. And so SEO is fairly a complex strategy and that’s where the SEO plugins come in. There are thousands of plugins available that help improve the website ranking on search engines and with the least efforts. In particular there more than one trustable and super-charging SEO plugins but we prefer Yoast SEO in the first hand.
How to use Yoast SEO Plugin For WordPress
Yoast SEO is like the Maserati of all SEO plugins. Whenever any marketer is thinking of using the most trusted SEO tool then Yoast SEO comes in their minds first. It is not only easy to use but also help optimize multiple aspects of WordPress website. Like it hones the website:
- URL
- Meta Description
- Tags
- Keyword Density
- Internal & External Links
- The Readability Of Your Content
The first thing that Yoast SEO plugin focuses on is the main keyword around which the whole strategy is being made. For a single strategy, the plugin can also cater as many keywords as issued. On the basis of the keywords, the plugin will analyze the SEO and provide recommendations and help where the improvements are required.
The Plugin is signed with different colors like Green, Orange, and Red to make SEO more understandable for the marketer. Green color identifies that the SEO strategy is going all good, Orange indicates that some more effort is required to rank the page, and Red means there’s a problem and so the page will not be able to rank on search engines.
The best thing about Yoast SEO plugin is that it not only identifies the problem but also provide solutions and recommendations for marketer’s consideration. Following the plugin’s solutions and then taking specific actions you can easily jump from red light to orange and then to green in a short span.
The plugin is quite easy to use and anyone with zero tech knowledge can use this plugin and can have SEO firing on search engine for your website. Yoast SEO makes sure that the site meets the highest standards of technical SEO. It provides all the tools that are required to optimize the site content and keywords for SEO and overall readability. The plugin automates website’s SEO and bare minimum requires the human planning.
1. How Does Yoast SEO Work?
Once installed, the plugin will start working for each of the website page and start showing up on each of page and posts you created on your website. On giving the commands, the plugin will start analyzing page/post content and also give suggestions on how to improve it.
To install Yoast SEO WordPress plugin check our tutorial how to install WordPress Plugin.
The plugin’s page statistics will appear like this:
The statistics will show up the overall SEO score, tells what are the problems on page and give solution to follow and improve the page/post content for best SEO ranking.
2. Where To Get Yoast SEO Installed?
Yoast SEO is a powerful WordPress plugin that is easily available in the WordPress plugin market. Go to the Plugin section, click on Add New button, type Yoast SEO in the search bar, and, press the Search button. The results will show you the plugin. Click on the Install button and then Activate it.
After installing the plugin successfully, you can have its access from the dashboard. If you are using the plugin for a website for the first time, you will get to see a message where the system will ask you to configure Yoast SEO. The configuration involves the few steps to make the settings.
Click on “Start first-time configuration” button and Yoast SEO will start to configure on your WordPress website and Google start understanding your page and post content from the very moment. As already said above that the configuration has a few steps. It starts with:
2.1. SEO Data Optimization
The SEO Data Optimization part help immediately identify any technical issues on your site. As the Google analyzes your website content, the plugin’s data optimization acts similarly and step by step go through each web page and analyze its content. If there is a lot of content on your website, the process may take a little longer time.
2.2. Site Representation
In this section, you choose the type of your website and show whether its a personal website or a company website. If its a personal website, select the specific user from the dropdown. If the site is a company portfolio then enter the name of the company and fill all other details to be more specific.
Once you have provided all required information, press “Save and Continue” button to move to the next step.
2.3. Social Profiles
In this part, you can enter the details of your company’s social media information. If your business has Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube account, you can enter the links of all those social accounts here. If the website is a personal portfolio, then the person can add his personal social media accounts. It is not necessary to add all social media account details. Only click and choose the selective social media accounts that you want to promote.
2.4. Personal Preferences
Some people, want to track their website data. And some people don’t prefer it. Well, Yoast SEO offers this deal to its users so that they can choose whether they want to track website information or not. You can also signup for Yoast SEO newsletter to have the knowledge about plugin’s best practices, updates, and guidance materials. Click on “Save and Continue” button to proceed to the finishing step.
2.5. Finish Configuration
In the last step of Yoast SEO configuration, you are notified about the finalization of your settings previously done. Click on “Visit your SEO dashboard” and land right in your new Yoast dashboard where you can start seeing the SEO analytic report of your website pages and post content. By clicking on “Register now!” button you can signup for Yoast’s free weekly webinar.
3 What is Yoast SEO Meta Box?
Yoast SEO Meta Box is a place where the plugin will show up the page results. The results show:
- The quality and readability analysis of your page content
- The configuration of your content settings to function properly on Google and social media.
When you click on “Edit” button to make changes to the page, The WordPress editor page will open. Underneath the editor section, you will get to see this Yoast SEO meta box. Well the meta box location may varies depending on the theme we are using.
The meta box has different tabs. Each tab is for specific SEO statistic like:
- General SEO
- Readability
- Schema
- Socials
3.1. The SEO Tab
This tab shows how well the website content is performing on the Google Search engine. This section focuses on key phrases. Good keywords can be found with some basic research and look for those that people are searching for the most. After selecting the keyword, plug it into the meta box and Yoast SEO will analyze it to optimize the page/post content.
Remember that the Yoast SEO-focused keywords will not help you rank on Google but will help you optimize your content. On the SEO tab, you will also get to see the Google preview. There you can edit title and Meta description side by side. The green light indicates that whether the title or description is good to go or not. If not, keep editing it until the stats says that its all good.
You can also enter/edit the slug from the SEO tab. The slug is basically the URL that visitors can use to see your content page. Slugs are important as it will show up Google’s organic search results. On the SEO tab, you will also get to see the deep analysis by expanding the SEO analysis section.
There are other sections on the SEO tab for Cornerstone content and some other advanced tabs.
3.2. The Readability Tab
This tab shows how readable your content will be to humans. The section will help you make your content better than before. The tool also provides suggestions for how to improve your content. The suggestions may not be 100% promising but yes they are good enough to make it to the Google pages. The Readability tab show suggestions with the help of different colors like green, orange, or red. The Green points show that the content is good to go. Orange points show that some improvements are required. Whereas Red points indicate that the whole content needs to be improved.
3.3. The Social Tab
In the Social tab, you can see how your content is displaying on the social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. The Yoast SEO tool automatically align the text on social media based on:
- Your SEO title
- Your content featured image
However, make sure that you have premium Yoast account so that you can preview your social content directly from the tool.
3.4. The Schema Tab
The schema tab help you to make your content better so they get accepted by search engines. This tab is the new addition to the Yoast SEO tool and help you tell search engines that what type of page you want to create and then design the page as per the Google acceptable conditions. You can even select what type of content you want to create and then tool allows you to communicate with your audience in the form of blog post, report, news or any informational article.
4. Let’s Explore Yoast SEO Dashboard
From the above-provided information, we hope that you have got enough knowledge that how you can get started with the tool. Let’s take a look at the dashboard. From the dashboard you can resolve all potential SEO issues that you are facing for your site.
From the dashboard, you will get to see different tabs, each with different functionalities.
The first tab is of Dashboard that displays the problems that your site is facing in regards to SEO. If there are zero problems then dashboard will show a good sign otherwise it will ask you to optimize your data.
4.1. Features Tab
Yoast SEO offers many useful features like:
- SEO Analysis
- Readability Analysis
- Language Analysis
- Cornerstone Content
The advanced features of Yoast SEO help enable/disable security for authors so that you can easily allow only selected users to remove posts from search results or make changes to the post. You can also make the editors and administers in-charge in case you don’t want authors to make any changes.
4.2. Integrations Tab
This tab will take you to another page where you will get to see many integration options. Yoast SEO tool is able to integrate third-party products. You can enable or disable them anytime you want. Keep that in mind that not all products can be integrated with the tool’s free package. There are many products that you can integrate only if you are using Yoast SEO Premium account.
4.3. Webmaster Tools Tab
From this tab, you can verify your site with various search engine webmaster tools like Baidu, Bing, Google, and Yandex. On the text field you are required to enter the respective codes and then save the changes.
Next to the Webmaster Tools, there are Crawl Settings that make sure the site is more economically crawling. With this premium feature, you can remove API links, generate tags, post comments, and make changes to the feeds. The last tab is the First-time configuration tab from where you can configure your site with the Yoast SEO tool. You can go through the configuration process as we have discussed above.
Summary
SEO is one of the most important marketing strategies without which you cannot even think of getting ranked on search engines. However, SEO can be daunting if you are doing it without the help of any useful tool. That’s why experts recommend Yoast SEO tool to excel in SEO strategies. The tool offers “Set it and forget” option to its users, making it easy for them to configure it for once only. The other time you will only be watching at tool’s meta box where you can see how your page/ post is performing on the search engines.
If you are a beginner and still confuse at any point, leave us a comment so that we can help you get through your SEO queries. We also help you get Yoast SEO installed and get most of its benefits Contact Us. Or you may check our WordPress maintenance service for regular SEO compatibility checks and improvements.
