YOAST SEO PLUGIN
SEO PLUGINS BY YOAST
Features List – Standard (Free)
• Title and Meta Description
• Robots Meta Configuration
• Canonical
• Breadcrumbs
• Permalink Cleanup
• XML Sitemaps
• RSS Enhancements
• Edit robots.txt and .htaccess
• Clean up head section
Features – Premium ($69 annually)
• Redirects Manager
• Multiple Focus Keywords
Migrate from another SEO Plugin
THE SETUP
SEO Friendly URL:
Friendly
• http://dwc.com/yoast-seo-plugin-tips/
Unfriendly
• http://dwc.com/yoast-seo-plugin-tips/?p=10467
Fixed with WordPress 4.2
Verify in Settings=> Permalinks
/%postname%/
/%category%/%postname%/
Remove Stop Words
Friendly
http://dwc.com/5-timely-tips-yoast-plugin/
http://dwc.com/yoast-plugin-5-timely-tips/
Unfriendly
http://dwc.com/5-timely-tips-about-the-yoast-plugin/
OPTIMIZING POSTS
The Search Result
WHY WON’T GOOGLE DISPLAY THE RIGHT
PAGE TITLE?
Google can generate “improved” titles if:
• Page title is not descriptive and concise
• Keyword stuffing is detected
• Repeated or Boilerplate titles DWC for Analytics, Conversion, Landing Page Optimization – Better to have page for each
• Wordy branding message in every title Setting Up your First Goal: DWC Google Analytics and Conversion Consulting for Small Business - better just use your company name or name and VERY short branding message
• You’ve indicated that the page should not be crawled but not that it shouldn’t be indexed and someone links to the page.
WWW OR NON-WWWHTTP OR HTTPS
WordPress Settings match Google Search Console Settings
ROBOTS.TXT FILE
Google Fully Renders your Site
• To check if your site is fully rendered – Use the Robots Testing Tool in Google Search Console (Google Webmaster Tools)
• Blocking a URL with your site’s robots.txt means the page is not crawled - if any links are pointing to that page the search engines cannot distribute the link value pointing to those URLs
• Best practice – use the robots meta tag with a value “no index, follow” - link value for the pages will be distributed across your site and the URL will not be indexed.
• According to latest from Google “allow all site assets that would significantly affect page rendering to be crawled: for example, CSS and JavaScript files that affect the understanding of the pages. The Google indexing system renders a web page as the user would see it, including images, CSS and JavaScript files.”
BULK EDITOR
FINAL THOUGHTS
• Check page speed and tweak to keep your pages as fast as possible
• Have a “User Friendly” sitemap
• Disable unnecessary archives (author if you’re a single author site, date)
• Pagination – make sure bots landing on category page can reach all the underlying pages without difficulty (Genesis Theme – enable numeric navigation)
• Canonical – Automatic canonical link elements for every page with Yoast SEO
• Pages instead of Posts – Comments destroy keyword density so turn your most important posts into pages
• Have a clear site hierarchy
• Useful content, lots of pictures, good design/easy on the eyes, no broken links
• Design for multiple devices and browsers
• Design for visitors with visual impairments (test with screen reader)