With over 5 million active users, chances are if you have a WordPress website, you have already installed Yoast SEO. The trouble is, lots of users don’t know how to use it to benefit their website. We are going to take a look at how you can practically use it to optimise your website and improve your rankings in search engines by optimising your site content.

If you are a beginner in SEO, why not check out my Beginners Guide to SEO.

What is Yoast SEO?

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that helps you improve your site’s performance in search engines like Google and Bing. It operates in two ways: firstly, overall technical SEO, and secondly, it helps you optimise your content to the highest possible standards of SEO as well as overall readability. In this article, we will focus on how Yoast SEO can help optimise your page content.

What Does Yoast SEO Look for?

Yoast SEO will analyse your page based on several key metrics:

• Keyphrase distribution
• Keyphrase in the introduction
• Keyphrase density
• Keyphrase length
• Previously used keyphrase
• Keyphrase in slug
• Meta description length
• Keyphrase in subheading
• Keyphrase in SEO title
• Outbound links
• Image Keyphrase
• Images
• Internal links
• Text length
• SEO title width

Interpreting Yoast SEO Metrics:

Yoast SEO categorises the metrics into three distinct categories:

Problems: Indicating areas that necessitate immediate attention and rectification.

Improvements: Highlighting aspects with room for enhancement to further optimise your content.

Good: Acknowledging elements that meet or exceed the desired standards of optimisation.

Next to each metric, there will be a description so that you know how well you are getting on and hints and tips to improve your results.

Keyword Focus:

The first thing is to identify the words that you will be using as your keyword focus. A keyword is a word or phrase that users type into search engines to find information on a particular topic. Your phrase should not exceed 4 words. Do not include any special text such as commas or hyphens. For this article, for example, I have used “Yoast SEO” as my Keyword focus. This will help Yoast SEO to understand what you are targeting and how to improve the page based on it.

Keyphrase Coverage:

The following elements are focusing on how well you are using your keyphrase throughout the page:

• Keyphrase distribution
• Keyphrase in the introduction
• Keyphrase density
• Keyphrase length
• Previously used keyphrase
• Keyphrase in slug
• Keyphrase in subheading
• Keyphrase in SEO title
• Image Keyphrase

SEO Yoast will tell you if you have enough references to your keyphrase on your page but also if you are using too many references, which will be considered as over-optimising which will negatively impact your rankings. There are a couple of elements from this section that I will pull out and explain further.

Previously Used Keyphrase:

Ideally, each page should have its own targeted keyword. If it is used on multiple pages, search engines will get confused about which page to rank for that particular word. This can result in multiple pages ranking for the same keyphrase at a lower position than if you had 1 page ranking for the term. This is called keyword cannibalisation.

Keyphrase in SEO Title:

This one can seem a little confusing but it is simple. Within the Yoast plug-in section at the bottom of the page is a section for you to add this information. This is the information that gets shown to users in search engines. Yoast gives you a nice little preview of what it will look like in the results page.

Exploring Further Metrics:

While Yoast SEO provides comprehensive insights, certain metrics warrant additional explanation:

Outbound Links:

It is best practice to have a link from your page to another site that is relevant. This is about sharing the love, it shows that it isn’t all about you and that you. It will enhance the credibility of your content. This isn’t always relevant, for example, on a product page as you don’t want to distract users from their journey of making the purchase. So although it is a factor to consider, it isn’t always appropriate, so only use it where it is relevant to you.

Internal Links:

Internal links are links to other pages within your website. This is a useful one to include where it makes sense to your content and the customers. Internal links pass equity onto other pages on your site as you are flagging to search engines that these pages are important.

Text Length:

Yoast SEO advises that your content should be at least 300 words. If it has any less, it will be considered to be thin content and unlikely to rank. When looking at your content length, you need to compare yourself to other people ranking for the term you would like to rank for. If their content is 800 words long, you are unlikely to rank for that term with only 300 words.

In conclusion, harnessing the power of Yoast SEO can significantly improve your WordPress website’s visibility in search engines. By strategically implementing the recommendations, you can optimise your content to resonate with both search engines and your target audience, ultimately improving your site’s performance.

If you have any questions or anything that other people will find useful, then please drop a comment below.

We all know that Pay Per Click advertising on search engines is a great way of driving traffic to your website. According to Google it is simple and going to give you a fabulous return on investment. 

Or is it?

Yes when set up properly, within the right market, with the right products, it is going to work for your business.

We all know that as a start up budgets are often tight. If your budgets are tight and you want to spend your marketing budget in the right place this article will help make the right decision is right for your business to set up a PPC.

What is PPC?

PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, operates on a straightforward principle: you pay a fee each time a user clicks on your advertisement. In the world of PPC, businesses engage in competitive bidding for specific search terms they wish to target. These ads can appear alongside organic search results, typically at the top, side, or bottom of search engine page. The below image is an example of how a PPC ad may appear.

Factors to consider when setting up PPC for a start up

Competitiveness of your market

If you are operating in a highly competitive market where the cost per click is going to be expensive, which means that your budget won’t go very far. If you are operating in a competitive market then I would avoid using PPC.

Your business name

If your business name could be confused with something else the likelihood of you appearing in natural search is low. In this instance it would be worth setting up a campaign around your name to ensure that you aren’t missing people who are searching for your brand

Your businesses location

Do you offer a local or national service? If you offer a local service then setting up your ads to only target a local area is going to work better for you, often at a lower cost per click. I have found that this works very well for builders as they can target their adverts to the locations that they are prepared to travel.

Your marketing budget

Budget size – In this instance size does matter. In order to improve your campaign, you need to be able to see results, see what is working, what is not working and optimise accordingly. A small budget is going to give you limited insight. Most agencies monthly fees for running your campaign start at + £550 per month. Having said that you don’t need an agency to set up and run your campaign, you can do it yourself.

Strength of your offering

A weak range or service will impact your performance, make sure that you are presenting the right offering and are priced accordingly. If these elements are weak you are going to limit the performance of your PPC activity

Your website

If your website performs badly visitors aren’t going to convert into customers. As a result you will be spending budget and seeing a low return on investment. It would be worth investigating how to improve your website before you invest in PPC. Not only will it improve your chance of performing in PPC it will help improve your other marketing campaigns as well.

Where can a start up invest to drive online activity

If you have decided that PPC isn’t right for your new start up, there are plenty of other places to invest your money. Actually they are also a good place to look if you do set up a PPC campaign. 

Search Engine Optimisation

I would always recommend that a new website optimises their website for SEO as part of their set up. If you aren’t a new website it is still worth reviewing your performance. This will help to drive traffic through natural search. Although this is a longer game than PPC, more people click on an organic (SEO) link than a paid (PPC) link. Inadvertently by optimising your website you will also improve the experience of your PPC visitors.

Google Shopping

Alternatively, if you have an ecommerce site why not try Google shopping, getting people attention when they are ready to purchase. As with PPC you pay on a cost per click basis. What is lovely about the shopping feed is that people have been researching the product and know what they are looking for as a result they are more likely to convert your visitor to a customer.

Email Marketing

Start building your email database, with an ROI of 38% it is a channel not to be ignore, these are people that want to hear from you and are already engaged with you. Find out why email marketing is so important for start ups.

If you would like to chat through your options, give me a shout.

Optimised page titles are key to driving your SEO rankings, that will in turn improve your online visibility and attract potential customers.

This article will outline what a page title is, how to check your website titles and why they are important to search engines.

What is a website page title?

A websites page title is a piece of HTML code that search engines use to understand and rank your web page. Not only do the search engines use it to understand your website but also uses it as a main headline in the organic search results.

Why are page titles important for SEO

When assessing the relevancy of your website to a users search in a search engine, Google will assess 3 main areas –

Titles fit within the website content section of the review of your site, they are the second thing on your page that a search engine will encounter after your URL.

They are not seen by a user on your website. Instead search engines use them to show users in the search engine results page. The strength of your page title combined with your meta description will determine if a user will click through to your site.

Page titles also help search engines to understand what is on your page and how relevant it is to the term that the user has searched for.

Getting your titles right will increase the number of times your website shows up in search engines as well as increasing the likelihood of someone clicking through to your site.

How to check your page titles

There are a number of ways to check your titles. Here I have suggested a manual method for checking 1 or 2 pages or an automated method for when you need to check multiple pages.

Option 1 – Viewing page title in page source

If you only have a couple of titles to check you can check your pages source – it isn’t complicated.

Simply go the page you would like to review, right click and select “View page source” the easiest way to find the page title is to use the find control – ctrl plus the character f – <title>.

You can see my source code.

Option 2 – Crawl your website to see all of your page titles

If you want to check multiple pages I would suggest that you use a website crawling tool. There are several tools out there. I have used Screaming Frog for years and am happy with how it works. The tool will crawl up to 500 pages as part of their free package.

The tool will crawl your website and collate key information. Page title, meta description, H1, H2s. into a spreadsheet so that you can play with the data.

As I use Screaming Frog I will show you how to crawl your website using Screaming Frog.

Download the app to your desktop.

Once the app opens you will be presented with a home screen. In the URL bar add your website address and hit crawl.

Once the crawl has been completed the “Export” button will be clickable, download as an excel file

The data downloaded can appear as overwhelming at first glance but don’t panic. To make your life easier filter or sort by the content type field. Focus on any pieces of content that reference html as these are your pages.

Focus on “Title 1” which can be found column G.

Title 1	Title 1 Length	Title 1 Pixel Width
Green Opal Digital Consultancy – Green Opal | Digital Consultancy	65	585

Once you have identified your titles we need to review them and see where you can improve them.

How to improve your page titles

There are a number of things that you can do to improve your titles.

• Populate missing titles
• Make sure all of your titles are below 65 characters
• Ensure all of your titles are unique
• Do they make sense and explain what will be on the page without having to visit the page

By improving your page titles search engines will have a better understanding of what is on website. This will enable them to rank you for the correct search terms, which in turn will improve your click through rate, engagement rate and conversion rate.

Improved customer interaction will in turn benefit your rankings as search engines will see you as relevant and show you more often.

If you would like to discuss anything in this article then do get in touch or find out more about SEO for beginners here.

NB. Screaming Frog hasn’t sponsored this post, I have referenced them as it is the tool I use.

One of the simplest SEO fixes is a check to see that your pages are all working and are
available to search engines to crawl and users to view.

Page status’ are referred to as codes; 200; 301; 302; 404.

• 200 – The page has been found
• 301 – The page has been redirected
• 302 – The page has been temporarily redirected
• 404 – Page not found

If you see a 200 or a 301 then the pages are all fine and will be found by search engines and by visitors.

If your page status is 404 then there is a problem and the page is missing.

If your page status is 302 the page has been temporarily redirected and you need to assess if this is the correct redirect.

There are a number of website crawling tools out there. I have used Screaming Frog for years and am happy with how it works. The tool will crawl 500 pages as part of their free package.

As I use Screaming Frog I will show you how to crawl your website using Screaming Frog.

Download the app to your desktop.

Once the app opens you will be presented with a home screen, in the URL bar add your website address and hit crawl.

Once the crawl has been completed the “Export” button will be clickable, download as an excel file

The data downloaded can appear as overwhelming at first glance but don’t panic.

Focus on “Status code” which can be found column c.

Once you have identified your 404 pages we need to decide how to fix it. There are usually 2 reasons for a 404 status –

● A page has been removed and a redirect hasn’t been put in place
● There is an error with the page

Once you have decided what the issue is then you can fix the problem. Oh no – I had 2 404 error pages 🙂

A 302 is a temporary redirect, which is a redirect from 1 page to another. Best practice is to use a permanent redirect a 301, unless it is only a temporary change.

If you would like to understand how you can improve your SEO then get in touch.

NB. Screaming Frog hasn’t sponsored this post, I have referenced them as it is the tool I use.

Recently I shared an article which talks about the three pillars of SEO, with content as one of the three pillars. I personally think content is one of the most important and the easiest element to get right but equally to get it wrong.

Properly optimised website content will increase your rankings in search engines, which in term will increase your website visitors, enquiries and orders.

Today, I am going to give you some simple tips to make sure that you optimise your web content properly, so that you can improve your rankings and drive more visits to your website.

Where to start when optimising website content for SEO

Website copy and content is important for search engines, as it gives them a clear understanding of what your site is about, they will then rank you for relevant search terms.

What you MUST always remember is that when you write copy it should be for users and not search engines. Because of this, this article is going to focus on your potential visitor.

• Match your content to customer needs
• Match your content to what customers are searching for in search engines
• Make sure your content is better than your competitors

Now I am going to break down how to do this for each area.

Tip 1: Match your content to customer needs

When writing your website content try and think about what customers need to know about your product or service.

Avoid using jargon, these may be industry specific terms that your potential customers don’t use and don’t understand.

A recent client used the term SMP, I queried using this term, what does it mean? Statutory maternity pay? No scalp micropigmentation – what? Scalp hair replacement tattooing for hair loss. Oh that makes more sense 🙂

Even if there is a piece of information that is obvious to you, it won’t necessarily be obvious to your potential client.

The more customer focused your content is, the more confidence it will give your visitors in your product or service.

Tip 2: Match your content to what your customers are searching for

What are your customers actually searching for in search engines? If you don’t know, there are plenty of tools that you can use to find out.

Both Google and Bing have free tools that you can use to check search volume.

Simply log into Google adwords, in the top navigation you will see “Tools and Settings”. In the drop down click “Keyword Planner”.

It will tell you which search terms are used and roughly how many searches are made per month. These should be used as a benchmark and not exact figures.

One of the things I love about doing keyword research is that it can give you more content ideas.

Tip 3: Make sure your content is better than your competitors

When you have found the search terms that you would like to rank for, check out who is ranking for those terms. Make sure your content is better than theirs with information that meets your customers needs and matches the right search terms.

If your content is existing content that you would like to update, then before you start, check which search terms you are ranking for.

I have recently used these techniques for a client and increased the number of relevant search terms that the page is ranking for by 80% in just under 6 weeks.

If you would like help with your website content, I offer SEO content audits for small business owners who feel like they don’t know where to start with their SEO and want to grow their business.

I can help you to understand how well your content is performing and what you can do to improve your SEO content writing so that you can drive more traffic and enquiries to your website.

Unlike SEO I am not scary, you can book a chat with me here or just drop me an email at gemma@greenopal.co.uk

In this article I am going to cover what SEO is, how to improve it to drive more sales to your website.

What is SEO?

Simply put, SEO (search engine optimisation) is the techniques used to rank your website in natural search results in search engines such as Google.

On average, 53%* of a websites’ traffic comes from the natural search results in a search engine. Most importantly all this traffic is free, all you need to do is optimise your website.

What SEO is not?

When talking to clients, they often get confused between SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC). PPC relates to the paid ads within search engines, where you pay each time a user clicks on your advert. You can tell it is a paid ad because it has an “Ad” icon next to it.

How to improve your SEO?

Many small businesses are often confused, they are not sure where to start when it comes to improving their website in order to rank in Google within the natural search results.

There are three areas you can concentrate on: Website structure, content and links.

Structure

This element focuses on the technical structure of your website, a good structure allows search engines to move through and understand your site.

Things to think about is the hierarchy of your websites content, creating a site map, the number of clicks to purchase or contact. These are just some of the things to take into consideration.

The structure of your website is the foundation of your SEO.

Content

Content is my favourite element of SEO! This is where we look at the content on your website. I believe it is the most important element for an SME.

Your content needs to reflect to:
· Your products or services
· What users are searching for

There are plenty of tools out there to help you to understand what users are searching for.

My clients are the specialists in their area, they know their product or service, I help them to align their content to what users are searching for, which will ultimately help them to rank for relevant search terms which will lead to more sales.

Links

This element focuses on links into your website from other websites. This excludes links where you have paid to appear on a website.

All links are not equal. If you have a link from a poor-quality website, it will be disregarded. Links from a high-quality website will be considered more valuable.

For SMEs I advise on the structure and content first before you move onto links.

On Average 53%* of Websites Traffic Comes from SEO

Did you know, on average, 53%* of most people’s website traffic comes from SEO? So if you want to know whether yours is doing its job, a great place to start is to check how your SEO traffic stacks up against this average.

How long does it take to start seeing the results of SEO?

SEO is certainly a long game, it generally takes three months to start seeing an impact from your SEO activity. It can be sooner in some instances or longer depending on the competitiveness and size of the market that you are operating within.

Once I have optimised my site do I need to do any more SEO?

Apart from the work that you do on your site, SEO is impacted by:
· Competitor activity
· Search engine updates
· User behaviour

If any of these elements change, your search ranking may change. As a result, you need to monitor your search engine rankings, and make updates where necessary.

If you are still not sure where to start or your SEO traffic is less than 53% don’t worry, I can help you with an SEO audit to help you understand how you are currently performing and your opportunities.

As you can see, SEO is a long game, once you have a solid foundation in place, you start ranking for search terms and driving free traffic you will be pleased you put the effort in.

Any questions, call me on 07737156710 or book a coffee chat with me via Zoom

Source – *Organic vs. Paid Search: (66 Astonishing) Statistics for 2021 | HigherVisibility