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How To Use Yoast SEO – Get Green Circles On All Your Pages!

By April 7, 2016January 7th, 2020SEO

 
If you are a WordPress user you probably know that Yoast SEO is one of the best plugins to optimize your website for search engines.

In this post I will be focusing on how to use the plugin to create SEO friendly content and how to obtain a green SEO score on all of your Posts and Pages.

 

How To Use Yoast SEO – SEO Score

After installing Yoast SEO, you will notice that in the publish box of your posts and pages you have an SEO score.
Yoast SEO Score

Your SEO score consists of 5 different colors.

Grey – An SEO score has not yet been calculated or the page/post does not contain enough information to be able to calculate a score.

Green – The page/post is very well optimized for search engines.

Yellow – The SEO score of your page/post is OK but can be improved.
Keep in mind that you need to ensure that you write your content for people and not just for search engines.
This means your content needs to make sense and be easy to read, for this reason you may need to sometimes sacrifice a green circle for a yellow one.

Orange – The SEO score for the page/post is poor.

Red – The SEO score for the page/post is horrible and definitely needs to be changed.

 

Yoast SEO – Content Analysis

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see a Content Analysis area.

Snippet Preview shows you an example of how your page will look like in Google.

Focus Keyword is the word you are aiming to rank for.
For example, my Focus Keyword for this blog post is Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO - Content Analysis

 
It is important that you mention your Focus Keyword in all of the locations listed below so that your page receives a green SEO score.

  1. 1. In the Yoast SEO Title.
  2. Yoast SEO - Title

     

  3. 2. In the Yoast Meta Description.
  4. Yoast SEO - Meta Description

     

  5. 3. In the Page/Post Title.
  6. Yoast SEO - Page or Post Title

     

  7. 4. In the URL Address.
  8. Yoast SEO - URL Address

     

  9. 5. Multiple times within the content.
  10. Yoast SEO - Multiple Times Within The Content

     

  11. 6. Within one or two of your Header Tags (H1, H2).
  12. Yoast SEO - Header Tags

     

  13. 7. Within your Alt Text.

Yoast SEO - Alt Text

If your content does not contain an image then you can add your Focus Keyword inside the Alt Text of your Featured Image (as shown in the screenshot above).

Just for your information, the Alt Text is shown when an image cannot be found (broken link).
You can also sometimes see it in a little yellow box when you hover your mouse over an image.
In terms of SEO, crawlers cannot actually see images so they use the Alt Text to determine what the images about.

When you take a look at the Yoast Content Analysis you will probably see that there are things that you can improve on but as long as you get an overall green SEO score then you don’t really have to worry about them.

 

How To Use Yoast SEO – Conclusion

It is important to remember that you are writing for humans and not only for search engines so sometimes you will need to sacrifice an overall green SEO score for a yellow one. However, if your content is readable, nicely structured and if you have your Focus Keyword in all 7 places I listed above then you should end up with a green SEO score.

It is worth noting that SEO plugins (including Yoast SEO) are merely guides and just because you have an overall green SEO score on every page, it doesn’t mean that you will rank on the first page of Google. The guides these plugins provide will help you create a SEO friendly content so it is possible for you to rank on the first page of Google if you combine it with the other SEO ranking factors.

 
Do you have any questions about Yoast SEO?

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