What is the Secret to

Perfect WordPress SEO?

Have you ever wondered what was the secret to perfect WordPress SEO? or is it possible to actually optimize WordPress in such a way that your blog and content will be search engine friendly or Search engine optimized (SEO). Well to put it in a concise manner, yes its totally possible to optimize your WordPress SEO and greatly benefit from the extra effort.

This is possible through a simple and invaluable plugin know as WordPress SEO by Yoast.

Why optimize My WordPress SEO at all?

Well funny you should ask, when you optimize your content for search engines, this means the Search engines are better able to analyse and index your content. Also potential readers of your blog are able to tell exactly what information you have to offer when previewing results in search.

So that translates to more organic or natural traffic from search engines and a big smile on the potential WordPress blog owners face.

What is the secret?

How to Use WordPress SEO by Yoast for Perfect WordPress SEO Every Time?

Well at the end of this article you will be able to use WordPress SEO by Yoast perfectly to optimize every article you will write from this point on and forever more.

1. First you will need to download WordPress SEO by Yoast here or go to plugins and add new plugin in dash board and search for: “WordPress SEO by Yoast” without the quotation marks.

2. Install and activate the plugin. Go to the add new post screen and I will show you how to optimize your Articles so as to have perfect WordPress SEO.

The WordPress SEO optimization panel:

New Post Optimization panel beneath post edit window.

You will notice several field in the above diagram, After deciding on the focus keyword of your article you should place it in the above named field. This is where keyword research comes into play, after all you do not want to target a keyword that’s totally rubbish, next you should create a title for your article and make sure the keyword appears in the title of the article.

Example: -Focus Keyword: “Best new toys”

Title of the Article: “The Best new toys that will blow your mind in 2014

Next be sure to put a short and sweet meta description and include the Focus keyword inside the meta description, also pay attention to the character limit and see the snippet preview to see what it would look like. If you have not noticed by now the meta description is what will appear in search engines like Google and you can control the exact look and feel of how your results will appear.

To see how well you are doing pay attention  beneath the focus keyword field and you will see all the key areas with a yes and number beside them for each time you have performed the correct SEO optimization procedure in a article:

As you can see from the above pic Yoast SEO plugin analyses your content and checks to see if your keyword that was defined before appears in the most critical part of your article, this includes: The Title of the article, the page URL or permalink, the body of the content and the meta description from before, also be sure to use the keyword in the opening or topic sentence of your article.

You will also do well if its naturally place in the subheadings and main headings of your article, note that you should never spam your article with your keyword and it should appear naturally and should not seem out of place. Once you have these key points locked down simply write your article as you would and make it a good one,that is engaging and fun to read.

How well did I do on WordPress SEO?

Well Yoast has the answer, when you save your draft Yoast SEO plugin will analyse your article and give you an overall score, you can see the results on the second tab or page Analysis and will look like this:

Page Analysis

You should aim for all green or majority of the results being green, simply notice the low scoring or poor areas and make changes to your article likewise. If you look in the right panel you will also see a single icon with check beside it that has one of the following colors:

Black or Grey: Indicating the post is Not optimized

Red: indicating very bad optimization

Orange: Poor optimization

Yellow: The article is OK

Green: Good optimization (You want to be here always)

Now simply put if you are doing things correctly when you see a green indicator on the right and for further optimization go to the page analysis to see where you should focus to squeeze extra juice from your article. Only Yellow and Green overall scores are acceptable enough to publish. Not that you can publish with the other scores but you would be at a great disadvantage for SEO.

Other Tips to get you to a perfect WordPress SEO Score:

1. Aim to make your article at least 700 words or more.

2. Keep your Focus keywords unique throughout your website and do not use a exact keyword too much or over use it between articles as a focus keyword.

3. Create outbound links to reputable websites and articles.

4. Add pictures and optimize them by Filling out the ALT Tag with your focus keyword, you can also fill out the description to help search engines index your pictures seeing they are unable to read pictures without this info.

5. Include keyword in the subheading as much as possible.

6. Place the focus keyword as close as possible to the beginning of the page title.

7. Also include internal links to past articles that are relevant to your current article.

I hope that our tips have been helpful in helping you optimize your website, it’s my hope that you will improve your rankings and organic traffic from the search engines with these tips, if you have a view or additional info on WordPress SEO please feel free to share in the comments below. Also if you would like to learn more about optimizing your SEO and WordPress click here for more great articles.