WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast

Millions of WordPress users trust the SEO Plugin by Yoast. Lets understand how this plugin approaches optimization and delivers on the key SEO parameters. The entire plugin is centered around a primary keyword and its placement. While a keyword is very important, its placement is also very critical.

 

Yoast’s SEO plugin raises flags when the keyword is not found in the following page elements:

• URL
• Title
• Heading
• Comment
• Image (alt text)
• Meta-Description

URL

A URL should ideally be relevant and semantically meaningful.

Using a  keyword in the URL can make it both relevant and meaningful. The placement of a keyword in the URL helps the search engine in understanding the relevance of you site or content with respect to the search query of the user. Such a match between a keyword from a user’s query and the URL of a page is a very good plus for the overall SEO. A descriptive and keyword rich URL acts as its own anchor tag too.

The SEO plugin by Yoast warns if the URL of your page does not contain a Focus Keyword.

TITLE

A search engine relies heavily on the title of a page. Including a keyword in the page title helps in upping the relevance quotient of your page as well as in increasing the users’s likelihood of clicking at your link. In case your title is missing the keyword, this plugin prompts you to add one. Further SEO experts stress on the practice of placing a  keyword early  in the title. Yoast’s SEO plugin takes care of this too. It shares with you if you haven’t placed your keyword early in the page title.

HEADING

Once a user clicks on your link and visits your web page, you can treat him with a relevant heading and assure him that he has reached a proper page. A heading is a great way of conveying to a visitor that you offer what he is looking for. Practices like pogosticking can be checked with the effective usage of heading tags (pogosticking is when a user bounces back to the search engine result page after clicking on a result)

You can retain a visitor by using suitable headings. Containing a keyword in the heading is an ideal way of achieving this. The SEO plugin by Yoast helps in analyzing the heading for the presence of a keyword. In case the keyword is not present, you are prompted to rework on the heading. Like in the case of a title, not only should a keyword be included in the heading, but  it must be placed early too.

Judicial use of the keyword is the core of the SEO plugin by Yoast.
Depending upon the length of your write-up, the keyword must be placed an appropriate number of times. Yoast’s SEO plugin checks if the keyword density in your content is healthy from the SEO point of view. This plugin also informs if the content is lesser than its recommended length of 300 words.

IMAGE

Inclusion of an image in a write-up adds a great amount of visual appeal to a write-up. Adding an image to a post adds SEO value too.
An image by itself means nothing for a search engine. However it does understand the alt text tag. A search engine acknowledges and highly values the alt text. Besides if your image does not show due to whatever reasons, the text specified in the alt text field will be displayed in its place. Thus an alt text field is important from the user’s as well as the search engine’s point of view.
Using images and alt tags effectively could also help you in showing up in Google’s image search results.

META-DESCRIPTION

A lot of importance is attached to the meta-description for a page. A search engine result page shows a snippet below each search result. This snippet by itself acts as a mini-pitch for your products or services.
Making the best use of this meta-description can reflect almost immediately in your click-through.

It is important to note that even if you do not provide a meta-description for your post or page, search engines pick and display some snippet that appears relevant to them. And you end up losing a really nice marketing opportunity.

This WordPress SEO Plugin, even in its basic version offers premium Search Engine Optimization.