Optimizing Posts for Search Engines with Yoast

Last Updated September 22, 2021/Raney Day Design/Comments Off

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Optimizing Posts for Search Engines with Yoast

In a crowded online world, getting your blog posts found on Google is crucial to your business success. Follow along with this week’s WordPress Wednesday Tip and start optimizing posts for search engines with Yoast today!

Let’s get started.

#WordPressWednesday Tip 19: Optimizing Posts for Search Engines with Yoast

1. Once you finish writing your blog post, you can optimize it for search engines by completing the Yoast Plugin fields below the post.

2. Add a focus keyword. This is a word or phrase that you want to rank for on Google searches.

3. Next, click the ‘Edit Snippet’ button. This will open additional fields you should complete to optimize your post.

4. Add the SEO Title. This is the headline that will show in a Google search.

5. Add the Meta Description. This is a summary of your blog that will show under the title in a Google search.

6. The slug (a piece of the URL) will prepopulate. We recommend editing it to include your keyword.

6. If you have a Yoast SEO Premium subscription, you can include additional keywords.

7. Yoast’s SEO analysis tools use a color system to guide you through the process of optimizing your post (Green, Orange, and Red). As you complete your blog and fill in the Yoast plugin fields, the Readability and Keyword Scores will change and give you suggestions for improving your SEO score. Click on either ‘Readability’ or ‘Keyword’ to view Yoast’s suggestions.

optimize blog posts for search engines using yoast

8. Clicking on the Sharing Icon will open up a new screen that allows you to customize how your post will show on Facebook. Here, you can add a title, description, and image that are unique to Facebook.

9. Clicking on the Gear icon will open up more options for optimizing your post.

10. Under ‘Meta robots index’, select ‘Index’ (or leave as ‘Default’ if already selected).

11. Click the ‘follow’ radial button under ‘Meta robots follow’.

12. Under ‘Meta robots advanced’, select ‘None’ (or leave as ‘Site-wide default’ if None is already selected).

13. Leave the Canonical URL blank.

14. Publish your post.

In Sum

As far as we’re concerned, the Yoast SEO plugin is the gold standard in search engine optimization. Not only is the free version highly functional, it’s also very user-friendly (and fun to boot! We love getting the green light on our pages and posts).

So, now that you know how to use it, it’s time to start optimizing your blog posts for Google!