Yoast SEO is one of the well-known WordPress search engine optimization plugins. It has reached 5 million active installs and has been downloaded over 350 million times. So, how can Yoast SEO work to optimize your articles?
Yoast SEO optimizes your articles from two perspectives: readability analysis and SEO analysis.
1* Readability Analysis
There are 7 features in the readability analysis.
1- Consecutive Sentences
Using the same word to begin consecutive sentences almost always results in poor and repetitive writing. It disrupts the pace of your work and turns readers off. Some words are more likely to be repeated than others. When using transition words (and, but, so, etc.), relative pronouns (this, that, these, those), and personal pronouns, you should use caution (I, you, it, etc.). Articles (the, a, and an) are obviously frequently used to begin sentences.
2- Subheading Distribution
Headings serve as landmarks that direct readers through an article. As a result, they should identify the topic of a section or paragraph. People will be confused if they don’t know what to expect.
Readers prefer to scan content in order to acquire a sense of what the text is about and to determine which portions of the text to read. Headings assist them in doing so. When there are no headers in the content, it is much more difficult for your readers to scan it. It’s much worse when extensive spans of text follow a header. You don’t want to frighten folks away with the dreaded wall of text.
3- Paragraph Length
Properly sized paragraphs are critical to making your writing readable and scannable. So let’s begin with the readability. Large walls of text are unreadable and will turn off your readers. Consider this entire essay to be one long paragraph! You’d probably clicked away before even reading the introduction. Paragraphs assist in breaking down your material into bite-size and easy-to-understand pieces, putting your viewers at rest. Every time you conclude a paragraph, you offer your readers a chance to breathe and reflect on what they’ve just read. This greatly aids their comprehension of the entire book.
4- Sentence Length
Shorter sentences make it simpler to read your article. Readability is very vital for SEO. When you think about it, it makes logic. Google wants to present (and people just prefer to discover and share) high-quality content that is informative, enjoyable to read, and easy to understand. Long sentences are more harder to absorb, as demonstrated by the sample you just read. If a lengthy sentence is followed by another long sentence, the reader may not fully get the meaning of the text. That is not the impression you want to make on your guests. Neither does Google!
5- Transition Words
Transition words make a paragraph simpler to read and comprehend. And readability is critical for SEO. Although they have no direct impact on SEO, they are an important aspect of readability.
However, transition words are also important in text structure. This results in your readers having a better grasp of your work. A well-structured text attracts viewers to your site and helps with SEO!
6- Flesch Reading Ease
Writing language that is easy to read is also consistent with holistic SEO. As Google’s algorithm becomes more human-like, and voice search becomes more popular, readable words indirectly contribute to higher ranks.
While writing legible messages is crucial, it may sometimes be difficult. This is due to the fact that readability is determined by a variety of variables. The readability part of the Yoast SEO content analysis conducts a variety of checks, including the Flesch reading ease score, to assist you in writing that is simple to read and comprehend.
7- Passive Voice
The Yoast SEO for WordPress readability analyses includes a passive voice evaluation, which determines if the number of sentences using passive voice exceeds the suggested maximum. If less than 10% of your sentences use passive voice, you will earn a green bullet. If you are over 15%, it will turn red. Passive speech distances your work and obscures your point. So, try writing in an active voice – it will strengthen your writing!
2* SEO Analysis
Also, there are 7 features in SEO analysis to optimize
1- Outbound Links
Outbound links or External links are quite important for SEO. They are vital for your perceived E-A-T as well as, more critically, for SEO in general. Your link benefits your neighbor, supplier, customer, and, of course, visitor. And the more individuals who contribute to SEO in general, the more you will profit. So we feel there is a reason we have a checkbox for them in Yoast SEO.
2- Images
The best advantage is to use appropriate images in your blog postings. Because Google’s visual search is becoming increasingly crucial and cannot be disregarded if you want to remain prominent in search results. When you have high-quality, optimized photographs, they may rank top when users conduct a Google (image) search. This helps you drive more traffic to your website, and you don’t even have to have a photography website to appear in these results.
3- Internal Links
As you the website owner, you have control over internal linking. You may direct your visitors and Google to your most essential pages by using the right internal links. The internal linking function in Yoast SEO may help you propose relevant posts to connect to.
4- Keyphrase ( Keyword )
There are several techniques for selecting a keyword for your articles or pages. You have the option of optimizing your content for a short, generic keyword. These are the most popular terms, with a high volume of search traffic. They do, however, face stiff competition. Consider the term snacks.’ This keyword will be searched for by a large number of individuals. However, many businesses will be optimizing for it. The body of the mouse in the illustration below depicts these less specific keywords.
5- Meta Description
Adding a meta description is a piece of cake. To begin, enter it in the Google preview box in Yoast SEO. However, Yoast SEO provides comments on it as part of the SEO analysis. The plugin looks at two things: the length of your meta description and if you utilized your focus keyword in it.
6- Text Length
Yoast SEO assists you by determining the length of your content. This check is part of the SEO analysis and can be found on the SEO tab of the Yoast SEO meta box or in the sidebar if you use the WordPress block editor. It figures out how many words you’ve contributed to a page and if you have enough to rank.
7- SEO Title
When optimizing for a high-competition term, the keyword will appear at the beginning of the page title. In such a situation, you may try to make it stand out by inserting one or two words in front of your emphasis term, so “indenting” your result significantly. If you begin your SEO title with “the,” “a,” “who,” or any function word, followed by your keyword, Yoast SEO will still show a green bullet.
Also, you can watch this video which about how to rank your articles #1 on Google using the Yoast SEO plugin
Conclusion
To sum up, Yoast SEO is more than an important WordPress plugin that you should definitely use and rely on to optimize your articles. However, those 7 readability and SEO analysis features are based on the free version.
You can also read and check the Best 7 performing plugins that you should install.
I hope this blog post was useful. If you have any questions related to SEO, just post them in the comment section.
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