How to do On-Page

Search Engine Optimization

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Step 1. Having installed and activated Yoast, you would see a Menu Item called ‘SEO’ in your WP Admin Area. That’s where all the cool Features of Yoast are. (We’ll go over most of these features in another Post).

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Step 2. Today, let us just concern ourselves with the Titles and Meta Feature.

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Step 3. On clicking ‘Titles and Metas’, and choosing ‘Post Types’ option, this is where you land. Here, you have default templates for the optimizing different kinds of posts. You can customize them.

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Step 4 – Individual Blog Post Optimization

On Yoast’s activation, this section gets placed on all of your individual posts and pages (In the admin area, below the editor). First, set a focus keyword, to get started.

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Example. This is how an optimized post would appear.

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Step 5. Let us take all the features one-by-one.

1. Snippet Preview: Yoast shows how the post would appear in the Search Engines.

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2. Focus Keyword: This is the essence of the post - You would optimize all the on-page elements for this focus keyword.

The plugin shows the number of times the keyword was

found in all the page elements.

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3. Article Heading: This is the main heading of your post; the relevance of article for a particular key-phrase increases with the presence of focus key-phrase in the heading.

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4. SEO Title: SEO Title, (if you set it), is the one that appears in search results. For good SEO, it should have the focus keyword. You can set a default one, using the templates shown in Step 2.

a) Focus key-phrase should be closer to the beginning of the SEO Title.

b) The SEO Title must be 70 characters long (or less), as that is the maximum display limit in search engines.

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5. Meta Description:

a) Must have focus key-phrase.

b) Should ideally not exceed 156 characters, because that is the limit used by search engines. In this instance, there are 7 more characters left as shown by the green counter.

c) This is sometimes displayed as post snippet in search results. Some say that it is not relevant anymore, because Google now displays any random part of the article as post snippet. However, it is still relevant, because if you have the focus keyword in the Description, and someone does a search using that exact keyword, there is a chance that the description would show up in the search results. If you don’t write the meta-description, or don’t add the focus key-phrase in the description, there is no chance for it to appear in search results at all. So, prepare for this probability by writing a description with the focus keyword.

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6. URL:

a) Having the focus keyword in the URL is good for the SEO of the post

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7. Content (Keyword Density):

a) A standard keyword density of 1 to 2 % is preferable in the content. However, beware of just stuffing the keyword in an irrelevant post; you cannot outsmart Google’s bots.

8. Sub-Headings

a) Have the focus key-phrase in the sub-headings (H2/H3 tags).

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9. Image SEO:

This is an often overlooked aspect of SEO. When you upload an image, you have an option to add the alt text and descriptions. Make use of it.

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Step 6. Before you publish your post, you have an option to analyze the SEO of your post. For this, you have to go to the Page Analysis section of Yoast.

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That’s it! You now know how to fix basic on-page SEO with Yoast

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