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WordPress SEO by YoastTutorial for Beginners

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Written By Nico Julius (WPBrix.com)

WordPress SEO by Yoast Tutorial for Beginners 2

Introduction 2

What is SEO? 2

Goal of this Plugin 2

Configuration of WordPress SEO by Yoast 2

Choosing a title format for your posts / pages 3

XML Sitemaps 4

Permalink Settings: strip categories 5

Optimization when writing a new page or post 5

The "General" tab 6

The "Page Analysis" tab 7

10 basic tips for better search results 7

Result 7

Recommended articles 7

Conclusion 8

WordPress SEO by Yoast Tutorial for Beginners - Free whitepaper by WPBrix.com 1

WordPress SEO by YoastTutorial for Beginners

WordPress SEO by Yoast is one of the best plugins to get better SEO results. This means, when you configure this plugin the right way, your blog will rank higher in the (Google) search results. In this tutorial I'll show you the most important options so you can benefit from this free plugin.

IntroductionLet me first introduce Yoast. Yoast (Joost de Valk) is a Dutch WordPress / SEO expert. He also creates his own plugins, and WordPress SEO by Yoast is probably the most popular one. His plugins are powerful and user friendly at the same time. If you want to learn more about SEO, you really should check his site yoast.com.

I've used other SEO plugins before, but none was so effective AND user friendly as Yoast's. Even my clients (people without any technical knowledge) use it, after a short training by me. In this article I'm going to teach you the same things as I teach my clients!

What is SEO?SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Let me describe it as the art of ranking higher in search results. This is a contstant process, so SEO is not a set and forget configuration.

It's not an easy job because good SEO embraces so many things. But that's where this plugin comes in: it analyses your content and advises you how to optimize it.

Goal of this PluginWordPress SEO by Yoast helps you to rank higher in Google. To reach this goal, this plugin has several interesting features. It:

• helps you optimize the content• notifies Google and other search engines when you publish new content• generates xml-sitemaps (search engines love this!)• does also a lot more!

All the features will help you to rank higher in the search results.

Configuration of WordPress SEO by YoastAfter you installed and activated this plugin (learn how to install a WordPress plugin), there's an extra item in the left menu:

If you click on this item "SEO", a menu with more options will collapse. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you only those options which are simple and have a lot of effect!

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Choosing a title format for your posts / pagesIn the "Post Types" screen you can configure the title format of your posts and pages. This is important for Google, because Google reads this to know where a page is about.

You can find this screen via "SEO" > "Titles & Metas" > "Post Types" in the left menu:

In the screenshot above you'll see the following filled in for the posts title template:

%%title%% - WPBrix.com

This means that a title exists of the actual post title, with " - WPBrix.com" added on it. In most browsers, you'll see the title on top of your screen, and on the tabs.

Let's make this clear with an example:

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In the example above, you see that the actual title of my article is "NextGEN Gallery Tutorial For Beginners". But when you look at the top of the browser, you'll see the full title: "NextGEN Gallery Tutorial For Beginners - WPBrix.com".

This is very powerful, because you could use this to add some extra information (I do this for my clients all the time). For example:

%%title%% - Nico Julius - Webdesign New York

Why is this interesting? Well, in the last part I added a keyword "Webdesign New York". If someone is searching for "webdesign new york" in Google, Google knows my site / page is relevant. I'm not saying you'll see instant results, but you WILL rank higher when you do this.

A last thing, if you take a look at the first screenshot of this part, you'll notice that I wrote more information in the "Pages Title Template" field then in the "Posts Title Template" field. This is because only the 70 first characters are relevant for Google. Page titles are most of the time short: "Contact", "About", etc. So there is a bit space left for an extra description of your business. The title of a post however is in most cases much longer: "10 tips to sport more", "How to build your own house", "Tips for a cheaper vacation", etc. Because the actual titles are longer, there is less space left for a description.

XML SitemapsIn its simplest terms, a XML sitemap is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

Creation of a sitemap used to be a boring task, but thanks to WordPress SEO by Yoast this is a set and forget option!

To activate XML Sitemaps, go to "SEO" > "XML Sitemaps" in the left menu. Now enable the option "Check this box to enable XML site map functionality":

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Don't forget to enable the options "Ping Yahoo!" and "Ping Ask.com"!

Now, scroll to the bottom of this page and click the "Save Settings" button. WordPress SEO by Yoast will now generate a XML sitemap and notify Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com every time you publish fresh content!

Permalink Settings: strip categoriesAnother small setting I always enable is the following:

You can find this option via "SEO" > "Permalinks" in the left menu.

This option removes "category" from the url. For example:

www.wpbrix.com/category/seo/wordpress-seo-yoast

becomes:

www.wpbrix.com/seo/wordpress-seo-yoast

This is just a small enhancement, but it makes your urls more beautiful and shorter (= better for search engines).

Optimization when writing a new page or postNote, this process is the same as when editing existing pages / posts.

It's not enough to just optimize your titles and urls. To get good results, you also have to optimize your content on every page / post. But don't worry, this isn't as hard as it sounds!

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When you install this plugin, a new panel "WordPress SEO by Yoast" is added below the WYSIWYG editor. This panel will guide you through the optimization process. In this tutorial, I'm going to focus on the "General" tab and the "Page Analysis" tab.

Now, open an existing page / post or create a new one.

Before going further, you first have to select your keyword. Simply said, think about the most important word or sentence of your post or page, the word you would fill in in Google to find your own article. Once you've selected your keyword, check if you used it in the title and content.

Now let's take a look at the "WordPress SEO by Yoast" panel.

The "General" tabThe "General" tab contains some basic options:

The "Snippet Preview" shows how your post will look like in the search results. This is important: it's the first thing your visitors see from your post, and it makes them decide to read the full post or not!

Fill in your most important keyword in the field "Focus Keyword"! The plugin will check if this keyword returns in the most important parts of your article.

By default, the Snippet Preview takes over the title of your article (in the same title format as seen in the beginning of this article). When this title is too long, you could fill another title in the field "SEO Title". When you do this, you'll see the title of the "Snippet Preview" also changes.

To convince possible readers, it's good to fill in a short introduction in the "Meta Description" field. When you don't do this, Google generates it's own text (text under the url of the Snippet Preview). Don't trust Google on this ;-) and fill in your own text (including your keyword)!

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The "Page Analysis" tabThis tab is a bit magic... it analyses your page and tells what's good and what's not:

• Items with a red sphere should be changed right away.• Items with a yellow sphere are ok, but you can do better!• Items with a green sphere are just fine!

This is great, it's like having a SEO specialist sitting right next to you, telling you what to do!

10 basic tips for better search resultsA couple of months ago I wrote the following article: "10 Essential WordPress SEO Tips". In that article I wrote down some simple SEO tips which could help you a lot getting better search results.

ResultRemember, SEO is a constant process. You won't see any instant success. But when you took the steps as I described in this article, you'll see some results in the following weeks (or even months). This depends on so much factors, so it varies a lot. I always tell my clients they will see results after 6 months, but most of the time they already see results after 1 or 2 months.

NEVER EVER buy traffic, or hire a "SEO company" that promises you "number 1 rankings" in a short time. First of all, nobody knows the Google algorithm, so nobody can guarantee a number 1 ranking. And second, real SEO takes time. This advice is very important, because if Google detects that you buy links, your site will be removed from the search engine results. And you really don't want this!

Recommended articlesWith this article I aim at WordPress users without technical knowledge. If you follow the steps in this tutorial, you'll get good results! However, if you want to fine tune this plugin even more, I recommend the following articles:

• The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For WordPress Sites by Joost de Valk: a very complete tutorial about WordPress SEO written by the creator of WordPress SEO by Yoast.

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• How to Install and Setup WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast at WPBeginner: this complete tutorial focuses on the settings of WordPress SEO by Yoast.

ConclusionBack to Yoast's plugin :-).

In the past years, I've used several SEO plugins and services. None of the free plugins and services was as good and complete as this plugin. Because it's free, I suggest you just install and use WordPress SEO by Yoast, even if you're not that familiar with SEO (that's why this plugin is for ;-) ). Don't expect that success will come in a couple of hours, but have some patience, fill in the fields as I described in this article, and let Google do the rest...

Do you want to react on this tutorial? You can always leave a comment at:

http://www.wpbrix.com/wordpress-seo/wordpress-seo-yoast-tutorial/

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