In my post, Five Free WordPress Tips for Slick Searchable SEO we started the discussion of easy tweaks you could do to your WordPress site or blog to make it found on search engines more efficiently. In this post, we will discuss the Yoast plugin and how to create meaty meaningful metadata for slick searchable SEO!

Yoast Helps Create Meaty Meaningful MetaData

While WordPress comes standard with boxes for your Title Tag, Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords, I still highly recommend you add an SEO plugin to aid in your SEO. After using several, I highly recommend Joost De Valk and his team at Yoast. Download and install the Yoast SEO Plugin.

Click for Yoast SEO

With Yoast installed, it is time to start using the plugin inside your post for meaty meaningful metadata. Write your next post or page.

  • Create a meaningful title,
  • Add in some H2 sub-titles, and
  • Repeat your keyword phrase in a sentence or two in your writing.

Then scroll down and fill out some entries in Yoast. See below.

Yoast SEO Example

1. Type in your Focus Keyword

How do you want your post or page found on Google? That phrase or keywords need to be your Focus keyword on Yoast. In the previous post on the subject, I typed, “slick searchable seo”. For this post, I typed, “meaty meaningful metadata”.

2. Edit and Change Your Permalink, If Necessary

Although not completely obvious, you can edit the permalink directly. Take your cursor and place it over the permalink and edit it to match your title and/or your focus keywords you setup in Step 1.

3. Edit and Change Your Meta Description

Again, this took me a while to find but you can take your cursor and type over or add in a meta description. You will want to include your focus keyword usually in the first sentence. Yoast highlights the words to make it easier to recognize. Personally, I always start with my name, my twitter feed and then a description of the post that includes the focus keyword and the title.

4. Study Your Yoast SEO Content Analysis

Using a simple red light, green light system, look at the notes in the Content Analysis to see that the majority of the lights are green. Your goal is to get as many of these recommendation green as possible.

5. Check that Your Post or Page Gets a Final Green Light

If you have filled out and done all of the above correctly, you should receive a Content green light. You may have to update or save the page or post for it to take effect. Your goal by using this tool is to make sure all of your content has green lights.

Taking the time to use a plugin like Yoast, or add meaty meaningful metadata into your page or post will cause your page to receive better results from SEO. Continue to use these ideas for both new content as well as going back and filling out old. Doing so will give you slick searchable SEO. (See how I worked in the focus keywords again. LOL)

Image courtesy of tiverylucky at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What additional tips would you recommend for making your site found easily through SEO?