yoast seo plugin - meetupfiles.meetup.com/16942642/yoast seo plugin feb 2016.pdf · •check page...

YOAST SEO PLUGIN

SEO PLUGINS BY YOAST

Features List – Standard (Free)

• Title and Meta Description

• Robots Meta Configuration

• Canonical

• Breadcrumbs

• Permalink Cleanup

• XML Sitemaps

• RSS Enhancements

• Edit robots.txt and .htaccess

• Clean up head section

Features – Premium ($69 annually)

• Redirects Manager

• Multiple Focus Keywords

Migrate from another SEO Plugin

THE SETUP

SEO Friendly URL:

Friendly

• http://dwc.com/yoast-seo-plugin-tips/

Unfriendly

• http://dwc.com/yoast-seo-plugin-tips/?p=10467

Fixed with WordPress 4.2

Verify in Settings=> Permalinks

/%postname%/

/%category%/%postname%/

Remove Stop Words

Friendly

http://dwc.com/5-timely-tips-yoast-plugin/

http://dwc.com/yoast-plugin-5-timely-tips/

Unfriendly

http://dwc.com/5-timely-tips-about-the-yoast-plugin/

OPTIMIZING POSTS

The Search Result

WHY WON’T GOOGLE DISPLAY THE RIGHT

PAGE TITLE?

Google can generate “improved” titles if:

• Page title is not descriptive and concise

• Keyword stuffing is detected

• Repeated or Boilerplate titles DWC for Analytics, Conversion, Landing Page Optimization – Better to have page for each

• Wordy branding message in every title Setting Up your First Goal: DWC Google Analytics and Conversion Consulting for Small Business - better just use your company name or name and VERY short branding message

• You’ve indicated that the page should not be crawled but not that it shouldn’t be indexed and someone links to the page.

WWW OR NON-WWWHTTP OR HTTPS

WordPress Settings match Google Search Console Settings

ROBOTS.TXT FILE

Google Fully Renders your Site

• To check if your site is fully rendered – Use the Robots Testing Tool in Google Search Console (Google Webmaster Tools)

• Blocking a URL with your site’s robots.txt means the page is not crawled - if any links are pointing to that page the search engines cannot distribute the link value pointing to those URLs

• Best practice – use the robots meta tag with a value “no index, follow” - link value for the pages will be distributed across your site and the URL will not be indexed.

• According to latest from Google “allow all site assets that would significantly affect page rendering to be crawled: for example, CSS and JavaScript files that affect the understanding of the pages. The Google indexing system renders a web page as the user would see it, including images, CSS and JavaScript files.”

BULK EDITOR

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Check page speed and tweak to keep your pages as fast as possible

• Have a “User Friendly” sitemap

• Disable unnecessary archives (author if you’re a single author site, date)

• Pagination – make sure bots landing on category page can reach all the underlying pages without difficulty (Genesis Theme – enable numeric navigation)

• Canonical – Automatic canonical link elements for every page with Yoast SEO

• Pages instead of Posts – Comments destroy keyword density so turn your most important posts into pages

• Have a clear site hierarchy

• Useful content, lots of pictures, good design/easy on the eyes, no broken links

• Design for multiple devices and browsers

• Design for visitors with visual impairments (test with screen reader)