Are you aiming for that number 1 position in the search results? And do you madly chase traffic and clicks? It’s not easy to achieve all these things on your own. Luckily, Yoast is here to help. In this post, we’ll talk you through optimizing your post in the best possible way. We’ll explain the five steps on how to Yoast your post.
Writing comes first, Yoast comes second
Optimizing your post is important, but it should never come first. Writing has three phases:
Prepare your content
Write!
Edit your content (and Yoast it!)
It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a blog post, an article, or novel. The steps are all the same.
Preparation is key
Before you start writing an article, you should be able to answer the following questions:
In other words, you should take some time to think about what you want to tell your audience and what the structure of your text will look like. You need to know who you’re writing for and what their goal or search intent is. And what keywords does your audience use, so your content can be found in the search engines?
If you do not think about these questions long and hard, you’ll make mistakes like addressing the wrong audience, focusing on the wrong keywords or writing an article that’s badly structured and unfocused.
Write!
After thoroughly preparing your blog post or article, you can start writing. Make sure to start by filling out your focus keyphrases and their synonyms. What are the terms you want to be found for?
Since you’ve thought about what you’ll write in the preparation phase, you should go with the flow when you’re writing. Don’t overthink. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You’ll have the third – and most important phase- to correct and Yoast your post.
Editing: let’s Yoast it!
In the final editing phase, you can Yoast your post. So, let’s look at the five steps you should take to optimize your post to the max.
Make sure your text is readable
The first step in optimizing your post is checking the readability analysis. If your overall readability score is green, you’re good to go. But that’s not always the case! Perhaps you used too many long sentences. Maybe you’ve used the passive voice too often. Correct those readability issues and make your text nice and easy to read. Check out our article about the readability analysis for more tips!
Check out your snippet preview
You want people to click on your site in the search result pages. You need to write a kickass meta description to make your result stand out. Because a good meta description lets people know they’ll find what they’re looking for on your site! That’s why you should choose a title and a meta description that stands out. Read our article on how to use Yoast SEO to write an awesome meta description if you want more practical tips.
If you need more help writing awesome meta descriptions, try the meta description generator. Our AI-powered generator crafts unique descriptions and titles for you! This feature is currently available if you have our premium Yoast SEO plugin.
Check your SEO score
The third step is to check out the SEO analysis. Which aspects of your SEO need improvement? Perhaps you should use your keyword or its synonym more often. Or maybe you’re overdoing it. And what about headings and images?
Check out which problems and improvements the Yoast SEO analysis indicates. Usually, you can easily make some tweaks that’ll make your copy better optimized for search engines. But don’t overdo it! You do not need all green traffic lights. You’re good to go if your overall SEO traffic light is green!
Add those internal links
Another thing you need before your content can rank is links. Google finds your posts and pages best when linked to from somewhere on the web. Internal links also connect your content and give Google an idea of the structure of your website. So, using the right internal linking strategy can boost your SEO!
Are you linking to your most important articles? Are you linking to articles that are closely related to the article you’re currently writing? Make sure your site structure is tip-top. Read more about the power of internal linking and why you should use Yoast internal linking.
Read and reread!
Yoast SEO is a tool that aims to help you optimize your content. It gives practical tips on what you can do to improve your content. Think of it as your personal SEO assistant! But that being said, it’s also just a tool. Make sure to re-read your content once you’ve optimized it to make sure you’re happy with the end result!
Yoast your post
Writing is hard. Optimizing your post all by yourself is hard. That’s why Yoast SEO tries to make it easier for you! We’ll check your posts for readability, paragraph length, word complexity, your use of inclusive language, and make suggestions for improvements. We’ll help you to Yoast your post. But in the end, it will also remain some work from your side.
Writing high-quality content that ranks in search engines is a difficult job. And how do you know that it’s a job well done? In this post, we’ll give you a handy SEO copywriting checklist with some quick checks you should do before you publish your article.
Do the hard work first!
Before using this SEO copywriting checklist, you should’ve done much work. Before you start to write, you should’ve done your keyword research, decided upon the exact topic, then set up the structure of your article. It’s a lot of work, but… nobody said SEO copywriting was easy! To help you out, however, we’ve written an ultimate guide on SEO copywriting. Good luck!
Before you hit the publish button, you should ask yourself the following eight questions. We created this SEO copywriting checklist to ensure you thought of everything before posting new content.
When scanning through your text, check if the topic of your article is immediately evident to your audience. Your readers will probably read your subheading first, so make sure those fit the topic of your post. Next, most people read the first sentence of every paragraph. That’s why it’s wise to have these core sentences cover the topic of each paragraph as much as you can.
Another tip is to look at the word complexity of your post. If you’ve used too many complex words, it will be hard for people to understand your message. However, if you use easier words, people will breeze through your content!
People generally prefer to read only a short piece of text. So, check whether you need to shorten any lengthy paragraphs. Five or six sentences per paragraph are ideal.
4. Have you added internal links?
Before publishing your article, think about linking to similar articles. If you have a cornerstone content article on a similar topic, make sure you link to it. And if your new article is the best piece you’ve written in a long time, you should add links to this new piece.
What do you want people to do after they’ve read your article? Should people buy something? Or do you want them to read another article? Make sure your call to action is clear, and that it’s easy for your audience to click from your article to other places on your website.
6. Could you optimize for related keyphrases?
You’ve probably considered which keyphrase you’d like your new post to rank for. And if your article is lengthy, it also makes sense to optimize for related keyphrases. So, if your keyword is [games for children’s birthday parties] you could also optimize for [hide and seek] or [musical chairs], for example.
A text is more readable with the proper use of transition words (or signal words, same thing). Transition words include ‘most important’, ‘because’, ‘thus’, or ‘besides that’. They give direction to your readers. Make sure every paragraph has some of these transition words.
This check is all about site structure! Because if you choose the right category and tag (or tags) for your article, you clarify your site’s structure to search engines. This helps search engines understand what your site is about. In addition, it will also help visitors to your site to find this article or related articles.
You might be thinking: Why should I care about inclusive language? But it’s good for your users and your SEO. Because Google’s (and other search engines’) goal is to provide people with the best result for their queries. People who feel included because of your language will probably stay on your site longer!
Conclusion
Writing articles that rank in search engines takes time and effort, but it will pay off! So, besides checking the Yoast SEO plugin, please look at this SEO copywriting checklist. Remember to ask yourself these eight questions before hitting the publish button. If you’ve covered these, you can confidently publish well-optimized quality content!
SEO has always been vital in making your website visible and getting organic traffic. Content creation is at the heart of SEO success. Yet, creating relevant, high-quality content can be a difficult task. Enter generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), a technology that mimics human-like creativity. Today, generative AI is on everyone’s lips and is poised to change the SEO landscape. This article delves into the fusion of generative AI and SEO, examining how it can revolutionize content creation and enhance user experiences.
Generative AI is artificial intelligence focused on generating original and creative content. It uses advanced algorithms, vast amounts of data, and machine-learning techniques to generate output to emulate human creativity. Understanding what happens in generative AI can provide valuable insights into its application in various industries, including content creation for SEO purposes.
Deep learning and neural networks
At the heart of generative AI lies deep learning, a subfield of machine learning that uses neural networks to learn and produce complex patterns. Neural networks consist of layers of artificial neurons that process and analyze data, altering their internal parameters to optimize performance over time. This architecture enables the network to make new output based on the patterns it has learned from training data.
OpenAI started an AI hype with the release of ChatGPT
You’ve heard about large language models (LLMs)
Large language models, such as ChatGPT, are advanced AI models trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like text. These models use refined techniques like transformers to capture the relationships between words and making contextually relevant responses. Read this in-depth explanation by Stephen Wolfram if you want to know exactly what happens inside ChatGPT.
Large language models like ChatGPT have many applications, including natural language understanding, text generation, translation, and content creation. They can write coherent and contextually appropriate text reacting to given prompts, making them useful for chatbots, virtual assistants, automated content creation, and other interactive language-based tasks. They’re even great developers!
Training a large language model exposes it to diverse and vast text datasets, including books, articles, sites, and other sources. The model learns the statistical patterns, grammar rules, and contextual associations from this training data to generate text that reads like a person could have written.
These large language models can capture complex language structures, understand context, and produce coherent and meaningful text. However, they also come with challenges, such as potential biases in training data, susceptibility to generating incorrect or misleading information, and the need for ongoing supervision to ensure quality and ethical usage.
Balancing creativity and realism
A key challenge in generative AI is to balance creativity and realism. While making unique and inspiring content is crucial, it should align with audience needs and adhere to best practices. Achieving this balance involves fine-tuning the model and including rules guiding the output.
Now that you understand the basics of generative AI let’s dive deeper into the applications of generative AI.
Applications of generative AI
Generative AI has entered numerous industries, changing organizations’ operations and creating innovations. Across various domains, generative AI applications enable you to automate tasks, generate creative outputs, and simplify operations.
Art and creative works
Generative AI has significantly affected the world of art and creative expression. Artists can use AI to generate unique artworks, explore new styles, and push the limits of creativity. From algorithmic paintings to computer-generated music compositions, generative AI offers endless options for artists to experiment with and produce stunning pieces.
Virtual assistants and chatbots
Chatbots have been around for a while, but generative AI has become vital to creating next-level virtual assistants and chatbots. By training AI models to understand and generate human-like responses, virtual assistants and chatbots can engage in meaningful conversations with users and provide personalized support. Through AI, these intelligent systems can generate natural language responses that are contextually relevant and enhance user satisfaction.
Content generation and curation
It’s the understatement of the year to say that generative AI has altered the content creation landscape. With the ability to learn patterns from vast amounts of data, AI models can create written content for specific topics or industries. This technology is beneficial for creating product descriptions, blog posts, and social media posts at scale, helping you to maintain your online presence and meet content demands.
Video and image generation
We’ve all seen the results of generative AI for images and videos. The technology has opened up new options for video and image generation. AI models can make images or videos based on text input parameters, making them useful in advertising, gaming, and virtual reality. This power allows anyone, skill or no skill, to create beautiful content in every style imaginable.
Midjourney lets you generate beautiful images from text prompts
Recommendation systems
Generative AI powers recommendation systems that suggest products, movies, music, or content for individual preferences. Understanding user preferences and generating recommendations for their tastes can enhance user engagement, improve customer satisfaction, and increase conversion rates. AI algorithms enable recommendation systems to constantly learn and adapt to users’ changing interests, giving good recommendations.
The role of generative AI in SEO
Generative AI has emerged as a game-changer in SEO, offering new ways to improve websites, user experience, and content creation. Using generative AI, you can optimize your SEO strategies and stay ahead of your competitors.
Content generation and optimization
We’ve touched on this before, but generative AI is vital in content generation. It allows you to produce large-scale, relevant, and engaging content. It can help overcome the challenge of consistently creating content by generating unique blog posts, articles, and product descriptions that align with SEO best practices.
Keyword research and targeting
AI offers valuable support in keyword research and targeting. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data, AI algorithms can identify relevant and trending topics and uncover long-tail keyword opportunities. Using AI for keyword research, you can optimize your content, improve relevance, and enhance search engine visibility.
Design and user experience
AI can help with site design and UX optimizations. We’ve seen various AI-powered site builders appear in the last year. AI algorithms can recommend designs and suggest interfaces, layouts, and visual element improvements.
A/B testing and optimization
AI can automate A/B testing methods so that you can evaluate and optimize versions of your sites. By making multiple variations of landing pages or content, the AI can analyze user behavior and statistically determine the most effective options, which could lead to improved conversion rates.
Generating SEO-friendly content
Making SEO-friendly content is one of the most impactful applications of generative AI in SEO. Generative AI lets you simplify your content creation process, ensuring the generated content aligns with SEO best practices.
Craft your content with care
Crafting exceptional content with the help of generative AI while keeping SEO in mind requires a careful balance between creativity and optimization. Using AI models, you can make content that helps you include suitable keywords, optimize meta tags, and employ a reader-friendly tone and structure.
However, it is crucial to go beyond mere optimization and ensure the content remains engaging, informative, and tailored to the target audience. This is where human expertise and intervention come in, adding a personal touch, unique insights, and crafting authentic storytelling.
AI content tools like Jasper are getting better by the day
Tailoring content to target keywords
Generative AI can help write content for specific keywords. This enables you to create content that is not only engaging but also optimized for specific target keywords.
Maintaining content relevance and freshness
Search engines favor fresh and relevant content; generative AI can help you address this need. AI can also help you keep your evergreen content fresh and relevant by suggesting improvements.
Working SEO into content
You can get generative AI to include SEO-friendly elements in its content. This can consist of optimizing meta tags, headers, and subheadings with relevant keywords, ensuring proper usage of internal and external links, and structuring the content for easy readability. By automating this, AI saves time and effort for content creators while improving the content for better results.
Balancing creativity and optimization
While generating SEO-friendly content, it is crucial to maintain a balance between creativity and optimization. Generative AI algorithms can ensure the generated content is optimized for search engines and retains a creative and engaging tone. This prevents the content from sounding robotic or keyword-stuffed, providing a positive experience while sticking to SEO best practices.
Enhancing UX with generative AI
In SEO, user experience plays a crucial role in deciding the success of a website. With the advancements in generative AI, you can now use these technologies to enhance user experiences in several ways.
Personalized content recommendations
Generative AI models can analyze user behavior, preferences, and historical data to generate personalized content recommendations. The AI can suggest relevant articles, products, or services by understanding user patterns and interests, increasing engagement and satisfaction. This personalized approach also improves the chances of conversion and customer retention.
Interactive virtual assistants and chatbots
Chatbots are all the rage. Generative AI helped the development of interactive virtual assistants and chatbots that provide valuable support to users. With natural language processing abilities, these AI models can understand and respond to user queries, providing instant assistance and fixing common issues. This leads to a better user experience and less work for customer support teams.
Dynamic content generation
Generative AI models can dynamically make real-time content based on user inputs, making the user experience more immersive and interactive. For example, online stores can use AI-powered systems to generate personalized product descriptions or virtual showrooms based on user preferences or browsing history. By tailoring content this way, you can create a more engaging and user-centric experience.
Sentiment analysis and emotional responses
AI can discover sentiment. Generative AI models can analyze user sentiment and emotional cues from text or voice inputs. This information can be used to tailor responses to better match users’ emotional states and needs. By understanding user sentiment, websites and applications can adjust their tone, recommendations, or support accordingly, creating a more empathetic and engaging user experience.
Generative AI and keyword research
Keyword research is critical in SEO, as it helps you identify and target the most relevant and valuable keywords for your content. Leveraging the power of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) allows you to streamline and enhance your keyword research process for improved SEO performance.
Analyzing big data for keyword insights
AI models excel at analyzing vast amounts of data, making them invaluable for keyword research. You can gain insights into keyword trends, search volumes, and user intent by training AI algorithms on large search queries, website content, and user behavior datasets. These insights help organizations understand the preferences and requirements of their target audience, enabling them to create relevant and engaging content that aligns with user expectations.
Uncovering long-tail keywords
One of the advantages of generative AI in keyword research is its ability to uncover long-tail keyword options. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific search phrases with lower competition but higher conversion potential. Generative AI algorithms can analyze user search queries and identify patterns, allowing you to uncover long-tail keywords that align with your niche and target audience. By optimizing your content for these specific keywords, you can attract highly targeted organic traffic to increase conversion.
Improving keyword relevance and optimization
Keyword relevance and optimization are crucial elements of successful SEO strategies. Generative AI can help you create content that not only contains relevant keywords but also meets the conditions of search engines.
AI models can examine top-ranking content and identify patterns contributing to higher rankings. Incorporating these insights into the generation process allows you to improve content for targeted keywords while keeping a natural and engaging tone.
Enhancing local SEO with AI-generated keywords
Local businesses can also benefit from AI by finding more keywords for local SEO. These keywords can help local companies to optimize their content for optimal visibility in local search results. This enables them to attract local customers and drive foot traffic to their physical locations.
Addressing language and cultural variances
Generative AI is handy in handling language and cultural variances in keyword research. It can consider nuances in language, regional dialects, and cultural preferences to generate keywords that resonate with specific target audiences. By using AI, you can expand your reach and tailor your content to diverse linguistic and cultural groups.
AI-generated SEO titles and meta descriptions
In SEO, creating compelling titles and meta descriptions is vital to attract users and increase click-through rates. Traditionally, human writers have been responsible for writing these elements. However, with the rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), you can now use AI-generated SEO titles and meta descriptions to optimize your content for search engines.
Challenges and ethical considerations
As AI becomes integrated into SEO strategies, it is vital to recognize and address its use’s challenges and ethical considerations. While generative AI offers remarkable capabilities and benefits, it raises concerns about transparency, biases, and human supervision.
Lack of transparency
One significant challenge in using generative AI for SEO lies in transparency. Generative AI models often operate as black boxes, meaning the decision-making process behind their outputs can be difficult to understand. This lack of transparency raises concerns, as you may be unable to explain how and why specific choices were made based on AI recommendations.
Biases and unintended consequences
Generative AI models learn from large datasets that reflect the biases and preferences of the data they were trained on. Consequently, these models can perpetuate existing biases or introduce unintended consequences when making content or recommending SEO. Biases can appear in various ways, such as gender biases in image selection, favoring specific demographics over others, or reinforcing stereotypes in content creation.
Evaluating the outcome AI models generate is critical to make them clear of bias and unintended results. The Yoast SEO inclusive language analysis can help you find and correct these in the text.
Human supervision and decision making
While generative AI can automate and streamline many aspects of SEO, it should not replace human supervision and decision-making. Human oversight remains crucial to ensure ethical practices, maintain control, and make informed decisions. Relying solely on AI-driven optimizations may lead to unintended consequences, as AI models may not fully understand the business goals, cultural contexts, or nuances specific to a particular industry.
Human supervision concerns critically checking the AI models’ outputs, recommendations, and decisions. It entails validating AI-generated variations, evaluating the impact on user experience, and aligning the optimizations with the business objectives and ethical considerations. Human involvement helps maintain accountability, ensures that AI remains a tool rather than an independent decision-maker, and allows for intuitive adjustments that AI may not capture effectively.
Future directions in generative AI and SEO
As AI advances and changes various industries, including content creation and SEO, several exciting future directions emerge.
Integration of generative AI and user feedback
User feedback helps understand user preferences, improve content responses, and enhance user experiences. Future directions in AI involve incorporating user feedback loops within AI models. The AI can learn and adapt to growing user expectations by including user responses and making content more relevant, engaging, and user-centric.
Real-time content generation
Real-time content generation is an exciting direction with immense potential for creating dynamic and contextually aware content. By leveraging real-time data streams, AI models can make content using current events, trends, and user interactions.
Personalized content recommendations
Generative AI can significantly tailor personalized content to individual preferences and interests. This direction uses AI models to analyze user behavior, consumption patterns, and historical data to provide personalized content suggestions.
Improved content planning and strategy
AI can revolutionize content planning and strategy by giving data-driven insights and suggestions. Future directions in generative AI involve developing AI models that can analyze market trends, competitor strategies, and user preferences to assist in content planning.
Conclusion
The intersection of generative AI and SEO represents a significant content creation and optimization milestone. Generative AI lets anyone produce high-quality, engaging content at scale — which is also one of the most important flaws. It revolutionizes the content creation landscape by automating tasks, enhancing user experiences, and simplifying operations.
Generative AI presents numerous chances for content creators, marketers, and firms to excel online. However, handling ethical considerations and bias mitigation is crucial when implementing AI in content creation. Striking a balance between automation and human creativity is critical to creating content that engages, informs, and delights users while sticking to SEO best practices.
As generative AI evolves, integrating it into your SEO work could help you to thrive online. Using the power of GenAI, you can optimize your SEO strategies, improve visibility, drive traffic, and offer users excellent experiences.
Generative AI is a powerful tool but cannot replace human creativity and expertise. People must collaborate with AI to shape and refine the content, ensuring it meets audience expectations and aligns with brand values. Together, you can continue to create meaningful, relevant, and SEO-optimized content that captivates audiences and drives success.
In SEO, there are on-page factors and off-page factors. On-page SEO factors are aspects of your website that you can optimize for better search rankings. It’s about improving things like your technical set-up, your content, and how user-friendly your site is. In this post, we’ll explain all about on-page SEO and how it differs from off-page SEO, and we’ll talk about some on-page optimizations that can help you to rank better.
On-page and off-page SEO: what’s the difference?
Every SEO strategy is focused on ranking as high as possible in the search engines. To do this, we all try to design and develop a website that Google’s algorithm — and people! — will love. That’s basically what SEO is about. The factors in Google’s algorithm can be divided into two categories that will determine the ranking of your website: on-page factors and off-page factors.
On-page SEO factors all have to do with elements on your website. For instance, things you work on to improve your E-E-A-T also fall in this category. Some of the most important on-page SEO factors are:
Your site set-up and technical features, site speed in particular
The quality of your content and use of keywords
How do you use additional media, such as images and videos
Your site structure and internal linking
Structured data and search appearance
Your URL structure
User experience
Meanwhile, off-page SEO looks at what happens away from your website. Some off-page SEO factors include:
Relevant links from other websites leading to your site
Social media activity
Business and map listings
External marketing activities
Pro tip: Find out more about on-page SEO with our front-end SEO inspector! You can use the front-end inspector tool in Yoast SEO Premium to explore the SEO data, metadata and schema output for pages on your site. It’s a great way to get to grips with your on-page SEO.
Importance of on-page SEO
On-page SEO consists of all the elements of SEO that you have control over. If you own a website, you can control the technical issues and the quality of your content. We believe you should be able to tackle all of these factors as they’re in your own hands. Remember: if you create an excellent website, it will start ranking.
Focusing on on-page SEO will also increase the chance that your off-page SEO strategy will be successful. Link building with a crappy site is very tough. Nobody wants to link to poorly written articles or sites that don’t work correctly.
How to optimize on-page SEO factors
1. Make sure search engines can crawl and index your site
If you’re unfamiliar with crawlability and indexing, here’s a quick explanation of what it is and what it has to do with Google. To show your page in the search results, Google must first know about that page. It has to be indexed by Google, meaning that this page has been stored in their index. And for that to be possible, you must ensure you’re not blocking Google from indexing your post or your whole site. So check if you’re not unintentionally doing that (we still see this happening!), and ensure your site is indexed.
Although this isn’t technically a ranking factor, getting your site into the search results requires it, so we thought it should be included here.
2. Invest time in creating quality content based on solid keyword research
Why do you think people visit your site? Most likely because it contains the information they’re looking for. Therefore it’s essential to write excellent content that corresponds with their needs. Search engines like Google also read your text. Which site ranks highest for a specific search term is primarily based on a website’s content. That’s why your content should be informative, easy to read, and focused on the right keywords that your audience uses.
Aside from creating quality content, you must remove or remedy low-quality pages. So-called thin content can harm your SEO. Take time to find these pages and do something with them occasionally to keep your content in good shape.
A significant on-page ranking factor is site speed. Users don’t want to wait for pages to load, so Google tends to rank fast-loading sites higher. If you’re unsure how fast (or slow) your site is, check out your Core Web Vital scores using the report in Google Search Console. This helpful tool will point out areas where your site speed can be improved so you know what to work on.
If you’re tech-savvy, you can probably handle this on your own. If you’re unsure where to start, our Technical SEO training can help you.
4. Get your site structure and internal linking right
A good site structure helps Google (and users) understand your site and navigate your content. And when it comes to making that site structure, internal linking is the way to do it. Firstly, you must channel many internal links to your most important content. We call those pages cornerstone content. Secondly, you should tidy up pages that aren’t getting many (if any) internal links. Those pages are what we refer to as orphaned content. It would be best if you decided whether to improve those pages and add more internal links pointing to them or remove them altogether.
Yoast SEO Premium has two SEO workouts to help you improve your site structure and internal linking. Using the workouts can help you to make big improvements quickly, so give them a go!
5. Optimize your use of images and videos
You’ll want to include images on your site to make it attractive, and maybe some videos too. Doing that wrong can harm your SEO, but doing it correctly comes with some SEO benefits.
High-quality images are usually large files that can slow your site down, and that’s a problem. Using smaller image files and giving them descriptive names, captions, and alt tags will favor your SEO. Plus, there are additional benefits. For one, you’ll make your site more accessible, so it’s helpful for a wider audience. And for another thing, you’ll have a chance of your images ranking in the Google Image search results. Read more about these topics in our posts about image SEO and alt tags.
Adding videos to your site is a bit more complicated than images. And ranking your videos on Google (or YouTube) comes with its own set of challenges. We’ve got a great series of posts all about video SEO, if you’d like to learn more about optimizing in this area. There’s also a dedicated Yoast Video SEO plugin, if you’re serious about getting your videos ranking.
6. Create a persuasive search appearance
How your site looks in the search results is vital for SEO. While the search results aren’t part of your site, the things you do to optimize your search appearance are. Therefore, we consider SEO titles, meta descriptions, and structured data part of on-page SEO.
Optimize your SEO title and meta description, and then add structured data for results that stand out
Optimizing the text for your search snippets is fairly straightforward. Adding structured data can be trickier. Good to know: Yoast SEO can help with all these tasks. With checks and previews to help you, getting your SEO titles and meta descriptions right couldn’t be easier. And when it comes to structured data, Yoast does all the hard work for you — all you need to do is select the content type and fill in the blanks.
7. Make your URLs SEO-friendly
A well-crafted URL structure helps your on-page SEO — it’s like giving your web pages a good road map. Think of it as a friendly address that guides search engines and invites users to explore your content. Creating SEO-friendly URLs makes it easier for humans and search engines to understand what your page is all about. Opt for concise and descriptive URLs that include relevant keywords, as they provide a clear signpost. A clean and organized URL structure enhances navigation, making it easier for everyone to understand your website. Don’t forget to keep it short and readable.
8. Design an excellent user experience
The last thing we want to mention is user experience. Simply put, users need to understand your website easily. They should be able to find what they want in a heartbeat. They should know where to click and how to navigate through your site. And your site should be fast! A beautifully designed website is nice, but you should make it your top priority to create a user-friendly website first.
If you want to learn more about combining SEO and UX to get more people to your site, we’d advise you to look at our other articles on user experience. Or check out our all-around SEO training course.
To conclude
We’ve talked about the most important on-page SEO factors. First, ensure that your website works correctly and that your technical SEO is up to par. Secondly, create content that is user-centered and focused on the right keywords. Thirdly, work on the usability and speed of your site to help users and search engines around your website.
As these factors are all a part of your site, you can work on them to ensure your on-page SEO is top-notch! That being said, do remember to also work on your off-page SEO. Although you may not have total control over these factors, you can still put some effort into creating that exposure on other sites too!
Writing quality content should be a key aspect of every SEO strategy. But when is your content considered high-quality? And does high-quality mean the same for your users as it does for Google? In this article, we’ll discuss what quality content is and how you can make sure your content hits the mark. It will require some creative writing skills. But don’t worry, you don’t have to become the next Hemingway! By focusing on the right things, you can create high ranking quality content that your users will happily read.
What is quality content?
That is the million-dollar question. Knowing how to write good content helps you get more visitors, higher conversions, and lower bounce rates. But who determines the quality of your content? The easy answer: your users. However, this also makes creating the right content more difficult. Because every user is different and has a different search intent. But they have one thing in common: every user knows what they want. Meanwhile, you’re still figuring out what your audience wants to read about!
That’s not how you would expect an article about writing quality content to start, is it? Don’t worry, we’re not done yet! Although the quality of your content is eventually determined by your users, there are a few steps you can take to make sure you end up with well thought-out, readable, and attractive content. In other words: content that’s eligible to be considered as high-quality by your users and search engines. And yes, this will take some time. But it’s time well spent.
Yoast SEO helps you create quality content!
The content analysis in Yoast SEO Premium is designed to help you create quality content:
Optimize your text for related keyphrases and synonyms
It recognizes different forms of your keyphrase, so you can focus on writing naturally
It recognizes singular and plurals, and also tenses of verbs
Check if your keyphrases are well distributed through the text
Yoast SEO Premium also gives you access to all the Yoast SEO academy courses, including our expert SEO copywriting training! Want to know more? Take an in-depth look the Yoast SEO Premium analysis.
Why is quality content important?
First and foremost, you should make good content for your users. People are unlikely to stick around for long if your website is full of bad content. But that’s not the only reason; low-quality content is bad for SEO too.
Google is getting smarter all the time. Recently, they said they’ve figured out a way to detect low-quality content. With the ‘helpful content update‘, Google wants to start measuring the amount of low-quality pages on your site. If the overall quality is not good enough, all of your pages could end up ranking lower. So you need to focus on making quality content now more than ever.
How to create quality content
1. Write for your readers, not yourself
If you have an ecommerce site, you want readers to know about the products or services you offer. If you’re a blogger, you want readers to get to know you and the topics that interest you. However, it’s also important to take into consideration what your users actually want to read about. What interests do they have? What events or news do they follow that you can relate to your business? And what ‘problems’ are they trying to fix that have led them to your site?
The first step in creating high-quality content is to make sure that it contains the information your audience is looking for. To find out what information your users are looking for, you have to conduct proper keyword research. This will help you determine what subjects to write about and what words your audience uses. Keyword research also helps your rankings, as more visitors and lower bounce rates tell Google that your page is a good result to show in their search results.
2. Make your content readable and engaging
Do you want to get your message across? And do you want people to read your entire blog post or page? Then make your content easy to read. This means that you should:
Think about the structure of your text and the words you use. Too much text without any headings or paragraphs tends to scare people off, so make sure you use them. It will give your readers some air while reading.
Try to limit the use of difficult words and be cautious of the length of your sentences. Both can make your content harder to understand, which in turn will slow down your reader.
Use variation in your text to make it engaging. Use synonyms, and alternate longer sentences with shorter ones.
Another important thing to focus on: Have fun! And be personal in your writing. This helps you write quality content that’s different from your competitor’s, and it helps users get to know you and your brand. Want to know more? In this article, we dive deeper into these tips for writing readable blog posts.
3. Think about search intent and your goal
Let’s start with the basics. What does search intent mean? Search intent is the reason why someone conducts a specific search. It’s the term used to describe their purpose. For example, do they have a question they need answered? Or do they want to buy something online? Someone’s search intent makes a difference in how they consider the quality of your content. If it fits their need at that moment, then they will stay on your page longer. But if they need an answer to a question and the page they land on only tries to sell them products, they’ll be gone before you know it.
Match goals to different search intents
It’s important to take search intent into consideration while you’re creating the content for a specific page. That’s why we advise you to match your goals to the different search intents users might have. Is one of your goals to get more subscriptions to your newsletter? Then you should add that subscription button to pages where users with an informational intent land.
Does a visitor have a transactional intent (meaning: they want to buy something)? Make sure they land on the right page. If someone searches for the term “Product xâ€, you don’t want them to land on a blog post discussing a topic related to that product. Ideally, you want them to land on a page dedicated to “Product xâ€. However, a category page when you have multiple variations of “Product x†works too.
Of course, experience tells us it’s not always that black and white. Still, it’s good to consider the search intent your users might have. It will help you determine the focus of your content and what call-to-actions you want to add to a specific page or post. A great way to get started is by adopting a content design mindset. This mindset helps you produce user-centered content based on real needs. Also, for some input, we recommend having a look at the search results to create great content.
4. Be trustworthy
When people land on your page, it’s also important to build trust. Especially when they’re not familiar with your site yet. You have to show your audience that you’re trustworthy. How? By doing the following three things:
Write in a clear and user-oriented way.
Try to stay away from stock photos, as genuine photos create more trust and give your site a personal feel. The same is true for your ‘About us’ page. Try to use actual photos of your team.
Add ratings to Google, testimonials to the right pages, and set up HTTPS. This will help your users and Google to understand that your site belongs to an actual business or person, which allows them to happily and safely browse your site.
Another key element of writing quality content is making sure it’s up to date and relevant. This means you have to update your content from time to time to make sure people are able to find the right information. But why is this so important? Because it shows your users that you’re on top of recent developments and can always provide them with accurate information. In other words: it builds trust and keeps your audience coming back to your site.
Keeping your website and blog posts up to date is also important for SEO, as this shows Google that your site is ‘alive’ and relevant. So, make sure you schedule in a time to update your content regularly.
The five steps we’ve discussed so far will help you write content that is easy to read and user-centered. Next, we’d like to highlight an extra step that is equally important: working on your site structure. It’s important, because it will help users and search engines find your quality content.
Site structure refers to the way you organize your site’s content. It’s a vital part of any solid SEO strategy. When you structure your site well, search engines will be able to index your URLs better. It helps Google determine the importance of your individual pages and which pages are related to each other. Additionally, a good site structure will allow users to find their way around your site more easily. It will help them find your quality content in the search results and on your website. That’s why there’s quite a lot to gain from perfecting your site structure. Read more on how to work on your site structure and the importance of doing so.
A quick recap on quality content
Although well structured and readable content might not instantly take you to the top position in Google, it’ll definitely have a positive effect on your SEO in the long run. So, before you start publishing post after post (or page after page), it’s worth it to consider a few steps.
Make sure to write for your readers, make your content readable, match search intent with your goals, be trustworthy, keep your content up to date and work on your site structure. The end result? Attractive content that your readers will appreciate. This will have a positive effect on your number of visitors, bounce rates and conversions. If you want to find out if there are still areas of content SEO you can improve, you can take this short test. Or take a look at our guide to SEO copywriting for more tips and tricks!
SEO copywriting is a crucial component of any successful SEO strategy. Still, it can also present a significant challenge for anyone wanting to create high-quality content that ranks well in search engines. As search engines crawl web pages, the content of your website should be fine-tuned to the — ever-changing — algorithms of search engines. In addition to that, write clearly so that your audience both enjoys and understands your website. After all, we know that readability ranks.
This complete guide to SEO copywriting takes you through the process of keyword research and the different stages of the writing process. It will also help you write the readable and SEO-friendly articles your website needs! And last but not least, we’ll give you some insights into creating SEO content for international sites and the challenges that come with that.
This guide to writing SEO content covers the following:
At Yoast, we practice what we call ‘holistic SEO’. Our primary goal should be to build and maintain THE BEST possible website. Ranking in Google will come easier if your website is exceptionally high quality and your content is unique and helpful. The reason for that: Google wants to serve its customers what they want. Their mission is: to index all the world’s information and make it universally accessible.
In addition to this, Google, of course, wants to make money, but they’ll have to show people the results they are looking for – otherwise, people will stop using Google. We can agree that Google wants to show people the best results. If your website is the best in your niche market, Google wants to rank it high in the results.
What is SEO copywriting?
SEO copywriting is one of the most powerful tools people use to get ahead of their competition. By creating high-quality content that’s carefully optimized for search engines and tailored to the needs and interests of their target audience, people can increase their visibility, drive more organic traffic to their website, and ultimately grow their revenue.
It’s like the perfect blend of art and science, where a little creative flair and strategic optimization techniques can work wonders for your online presence. Whether you’re a small business just starting or a larger enterprise looking to dominate your industry, SEO copywriting can help you succeed in the search result pages.
Holistic SEO
Holistic SEO is an interdisciplinary marketing strategy to make the best website in a niche market. To do so, the technical design of your website should be excellent, the UX of your website flawless, and all security aspects covered. Most important, however, is that the content of your website should be well-written, appropriately marketed, and targeted at the audience your website serves. This approach requires relatively advanced SEO writing skills.
To ensure your website is the best in your sector, the text on your website should be easy to read. Without making any concessions to the quality of your SEO content, you should tweak and fine-tune your text to the specific demands of search engines. SEO copywriting is very much like the process of writing anything else, so it’s hard work, and inevitably, some of us have more writing talent than others. Unfortunately, we can’t all be Ernest Hemingway, but anyone can write better SEO copy with some training.
Generative AI is like a machine that can effortlessly create content for SEO purposes. It can be trained to analyze keywords and other factors to generate new and optimize existing content. However, we must remember that the human touch is still vital in ensuring that the generated content is of good quality, without factual errors, and relevant to a target audience.
Due to the design of its technology, you must also remember that generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard can not give you original writing yet — but it is very good at reusing stuff already out there. Still, it cannot come up with things itself.
Generative AI will be a handy tool for creating SEO content in the future. However, it’s essential to use it wisely and ensure the content meets brand guidelines and target audience needs. Please use generative AI responsibly. Use AI as a guide, not as a fully automated content factory.
Before writing: always start with keyword research
The very first step of SEO copywriting has little to do with writing. First, you need to decide what you’re going to write about. Which topics do you want to be found for? You’ll need to use the keywords you want to rank for in your copy, so keyword research is the first step of SEO copywriting. Keyword research is what you do to list the keywords and keyphrases for which you want to rank for.
Proper keyword research consists of these three steps:
1. Formulate a mission statement
Before starting the actual keyword research, think about your mission statement. This is what makes you stand out from the crowd. While formulating your mission statement, consider who you are and what your blog is about. What makes it unique? Take your time to develop and write down your mission statement. For more information on creating mission statements, read our post on how to write a mission statement for your website.
2. Make a list of relevant keywords
Once you have formulated a clear mission statement, you can start listing all the search terms (keywords) you want your website to be found for. If your mission is clear, you should be able to develop search terms that apply to your niche market and your unique selling points. These will be the keywords you’d like to be found for.
To come up with good terms, you have to get inside the heads of your audience. How are they most likely to find you? What would they search for on Google? At the end of your keyword research, you should have a list of all the relevant search terms people might use. Also, think of combinations and variations of these terms. You can also use tools to help you in the keyword research process. For example, Yoast SEO integrates with the Semrush related keywords research tool. After you’ve made a list, you may have trouble deciding which keyphrase to use. If so, read our post about choosing your perfect focus keyword.
Create an overview
Eventually, you should have a helpful overview, which will significantly help your SEO copywriting process. It helps to create a table of your keywords to summarize the information. Try to devise combinations of keywords, then order the keywords by some priority. Which keywords are essential to rank for and closest to your mission statement, and which are less so? When choosing which keywords to tackle, you should also consider how likely your pages will rank for that specific keyword. Focusing on less popular and less competitive keywords can be a good strategy at first. Please read our posts about why you should focus on long-tail keywords if you’d like to know more about the importance of less competitive keywords.
3. Look at search intent
Nowadays, SEO strategies should largely revolve around answering people’s questions. Whenever someone enters a search query into a search engine, they are on a quest for something. There are four kinds of intent searchers can have:
Informational intent: to find information on a specific topic.
Navigational intent: to access a specific website by entering the term in a search engine.
Commercial intent: to buy something sometime soon and research before purchasing.
Transactional intent: to buy something after doing their commercial intent searches.
In your keyword research, you need to find out which kinds of intent apply to your keywords and try to match these search intents. You can use the search results to determine which intent applies to your keywords and create great content matching this intent. Which intent you’re targetting should also affect your writing style; we’ll go into that later in this guide.
4. Create landing pages for searchers
The final step of keyword research is to create awesome posts or pages for the keywords you want to be found for. The SEO content should be tailored to attract visitors who found your blog through a specific keyword. This could be a dedicated page or a blog post optimized for a specific keyword. Ensure visitors can navigate your blog through the menu or internal links. And make sure you have a page for every relevant keyword you come up with.
If you’ve found an excellent format for these kinds of posts or pages, you can use Yoast Duplicate Post to use that format for similar pages. With it, you can clone a post and easily fill it with the content your page will be about.
Your keyword research will give you a good idea of what to blog about. Then, you’ll have to unlock content around a specific word. A word is not a topic, though. Next to a keyword (or keyphrase), you will need an angle, a specific story around that keyword. Read our tips on coming up with ideas for your blog if you want to know more.
Three phases of writing an article
Once you’ve decided upon a topic or a story you want to write, SEO copywriting begins! The SEO writing process consists of three stages: preparing, writing, and correcting (or editing).
Phase 1 of the writing process: Preparing your text
The first phase of the actual SEO copywriting process is planning your piece. Before you put pen to paper (or fingers on the keyboard), take some time and think about what you will write. You’ll have a topic in mind by now, but before you start writing, you should have clear answers to the following questions as well:
What’s the purpose of your article? Why are you writing? What do you want to achieve?
What will be the main message of your post? What’s the key question you want to answer?
In what order will you present your information? What will be the structure of your article?
In our post about preparing a blog post, you can read all about how to come up with proper and clear answers to these questions.
The purpose of your text and search intent
The first question in the list is: what’s the purpose of your article. Thinking about that beforehand is essential because it affects how you should write your article. Do you want to inform users? Amuse them? Or persuade them to do something on your site? The preparation step is also when you should consider your visitor’s intent. If your keyword research shows that the intent behind a particular query is informational, you would like to write a persuasive, sales-focused page for that keyword. In that case, that could be a better match. Of course, this will be fine if you’ve thought about your keyword strategy.
In any case, you need to think about your user’s intent before you start writing, simply because an informative text differs from a persuasive text. The language you’ll use when writing an informative text should be clear and focused, whereas persuasive language will usually be very positive, focusing more on the reader. And amusing texts use more informal language, wordplay, or exaggerations.
An important element of planning your article is setting up its structure. The structure of the text on your site is vital for SEO copywriting. If your content has a clear structure, you have a better chance of ranking well on Google. You can use mind-mapping techniques to help grasp topics and find connections between the different parts of your subject.
It pays off to think about the structure of your piece before you begin. Because the structure is the skeleton of your text, it will help the reader grasp the article’s main points.
Posts and pages with a clear structure will also increase conversions on your website. You have a better chance that your visitors will buy your products or return to your website if they understand your message correctly. For practical tips on how to set up the structure of a piece of writing, you should read our post on how to create a clear blog post structure.
Generative AI can help you structure content and describe topics
You shouldn’t use generative AI like ChatGPT to automatically generated full articles for you. You can use them to get a better grasp of a topic, to get more context, and to be inspired. Generative AI can also help with structuring text, like:
Automating content outlines: Generative AI can suggest content outlines based on the identified topic or keywords. This can help you create articles, posts, and other types of content by providing you with a text structure and writing guidance.
Identifying key phrases and topics: Generative AI can access large amounts of data to identify key phrases or topics that recur in a particular field. This can help you include important information in your content and structure it to follow a cohesive narrative or theme.
Providing content recommendations: Generative AI can suggest related content that you can use to structure your writing. It can analyze the content available and identify related information that would be relevant to the topic at hand.
Offering writing assistance: Generative AI can suggest sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation to help produce well-structured content. This can help you create high-quality, readable content that is easier for audiences to engage with.
Formatting and layout suggestions: This feature can help your content planning and optimize it for user engagement, providing the most effective structure based on the type of content that needs to be created.
These helpful features enable you to create high-quality, optimized content that drives more traffic and engagement, but be critical and remember the human touch.
Phase 2 of the writing process: Writing your text
Now you can start the actual SEO writing process! This only takes about 20% of your time on your article.
Just write!
The most important tip for this phase of SEO copywriting is to just write. People often have trouble formulating the first sentence (or the first paragraph). But, at this stage, you can skip writing that first paragraph altogether. Just write a few words referring to the content your first paragraph should contain and start writing the second paragraph. Beginnings and endings are easier to write once you’ve fleshed out the main body of your post.
If a sentence isn’t grammatically correct or sounds awkward, keep going, and don’t worry. You can rewrite these things in the next phase, which is editing. In the writing phase, staying in the flow of writing is crucial.
Stick to the structure of your text
While writing, use the structure you created in the preparation phase as an outline and write the paragraphs according to that plan. Make sure you write clear paragraphs. Start each paragraph with the most important sentence, then explain or elaborate. Your readers will be able to grasp the most important content from your article by just reading the first sentences of your paragraphs.
Make sure your text is readable
Reading from a screen is hard, so if you want your readers to read your entire blog post, you must make it easy to read. Posts that are easily read will result in more returning visitors and a higher conversion rate. Most importantly, make sure your text is pitched right for the audience you’re writing for.
Some people are natural writers and don’t need any tips for their SEO copywriting – they can write an attractive, fun, readable article in a few minutes. Others lack that skill. But while attractive writing is a matter of talent, practice surely helps! Let’s look at some tips to improve your writing style and two writing styles to experiment with.
Tip: Read a lot!
If you want to develop an attractive writing style, it helps to read a lot. Reading (novels, blogs, magazines, whatever) will inspire you to write excellent articles. It will teach you how other people form their sentences and build their paragraphs. It teaches you how to use humor and how to play with language. Plus, it allows you to develop a gut feeling about what makes a nicely readable article. If you want more tips on developing your writing style, read our blog post about achieving an attractive style.
The inverted pyramid style
A well-known writing style in journalism, the inverted pyramid means you put your most important information upfront. You don’t bury your key point halfway down the third paragraph but tell the complete story in the first paragraph. Of course, you can elaborate in the following paragraphs. But you get your main message across right away. This writing style holds up pretty well for some types of articles. It especially comes in handy now that web content is increasingly used to answer every question a searcher might have.
Everyone loves a good story, and most people can also tell a good story – especially from personal experience. Great news: you can use the power of stories in your SEO copy! Whether in blog posts or product pages, including a (relevant) story will go a long way in catching your reader’s interest. Stories can provide more clarity and help your readers remember you more easily.
SEO copywriting can be a fairly intense process. If you write for long periods, you’ll find that concentrating becomes harder. The exact time, however, will be different for every individual. If your mind has started to wander, that’ll be the time to take a break.
Many people find writing hard for more than twenty minutes at a time — attention spans can be quite short! At that point, people should step away from the computer to do something else. Even a minute-long break can be enough to return to your writing with fresh and renewed concentration and creativity.
Phase 3 of the SEO copywriting process: Editing your text
Once you’ve finished writing your piece, you’ll have the first draft of your article. You will improve upon this first draft in the final phase of writing. The last step will still take quite a lot of time.
The editing phase is the phase of the SEO copywriting process in which you should ‘kill your darlings’. Don’t be afraid to throw stuff out. You should read and re-read and re-re-read your post and correct any awkward sentences, unclear phrasing, and jumbled paragraph structures. Make your content marketing stand out.
Here are five steps to take to edit your article thoroughly.
Step 1: Read slowly (and out loud)
You can start this phase by reading your piece slowly (and even out loud, this can help). Each sentence should be grammatically correct, and the spelling must be flawless. You need to be very critical of your work. You can have your computer read the text out loud for you — make sure it doesn’t stumble.
Step 2: Focus on sentences
Start by making sure every sentence is correct. Focus on the spelling of words and rephrase awkward formulations. Ensure sentences are grammatically correct and check for readability: ensure your sentences aren’t too long.
Step 3: Focus on paragraphs
If all sentences in one paragraph are approved, look at the structure within a paragraph, focusing on that first sentence. Does that first core sentence capture what you wanted to say in that paragraph? Are the sentences within a paragraph presented in a logical order? Do you use transition words to make the connection between sentences clear?
Step 4: Check the text structure
Check whether the structure between paragraphs is clear. Are your article’s topics presented logically, or do you need to make changes?
You should also check your headings and subheadings. Make sure your focus keyword is in one of those headings and subheadings. But equally important, ensure the headings help your readers grasp your text’s structure. In the article on how to use headings on your site, we explain how to use them.
Step 5: Ask for feedback
The final step in your SEO copywriting process is getting feedback. After editing your text, you should ask people for feedback. At Yoast, all the posts we write are read by at least two of our colleagues before we publish them. Feedback allows for the perspective of someone other than the writer and almost always leads to vast improvements in the post.
It would also be useful to let someone from your audience proofread your post to test whether the message is communicated properly. Also, feedback from someone with professional writing and grammar skills, such as an editor, will help you improve your blog post even further.
Writing well is hard; writing your content marketing efforts in multiple languages is even more challenging! This is true if you own websites for multiple regions and languages. Translating content can be a tricky business because of the phenomenon of false friends in different languages. False friends refer to words that look alike in two languages but mean something different.
Creating content for your multilingual sites is not easy. It’s doable, though, and we think there are three ways to go about this:
translate the content;
create new content for that market;
transcreate content: a combination of both.
Getting translations probably is the easiest. But it’s also the most tricky one. Are you sure your translation sends the same message and has the same tone of voice as your original article? That’s hard to judge if you’re not a native speaker. Therefore: always have a native speaker check the copy. At least.
Creating new content by your local team is the safest choice, with probably the highest quality result. However, it is very time-consuming, and you’re not taking full advantage of the available content.
Therefore we’d advise to “transcreate”: take what you already have as a basis, but rework it to fit the local target group. Make sure native speakers that know the local market create this content. If you’d like to know more about this, read our article on creating great copy in multiple languages.
Conclusion: SEO copywriting is a process
SEO copywriting works best when you follow a defined process and ensure your text is as good as possible. While not everyone is a natural writer, SEO writing is something everyone can get better at with practice. Don’t forget to maintain your content over time to avoid it getting outdated and stale!
Content SEO is a key part of any SEO strategy. Without content, it’s impossible for your site to rank in search engines. It’s, therefore, crucial to write and structure quality content! This ultimate guide covers the most important areas of content SEO. Read on if you want to learn how to create content that ranks.
Have you heard about Google’s helpful content update? From now on, the quality of your content could have an even bigger impact on your rankings.
We know that creating high-quality content isn’t easy. But our Premium SEO analysis can help! It’s just as smart as Google, helping you create rich and helpful content in a natural way and improving your rankings!
Content SEO refers to creating content that helps your web pages to rank high in the search engines. It includes everything, from writing to structuring the content on your website. There are three major elements you need to consider that will make your website rank well: keyword strategy, site structure and copywriting.
Why is content SEO important in the first place? Because search engines like Google read your website, so the words you use determine whether or not your site will rank in their results pages. Of course, your website should be well-designed, with a great user interface, and all the technical stuff that makes your site rank in Google should also be covered. But without quality content your site doesn’t stand a chance in the search engines.
1. Keyword research
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is basically the steps you take to create an extensive list of keywords you would like to rank for. Every content SEO strategy should begin with keyword research, because you have to know what your audience is searching for if you want to generate traffic. Keyword research helps you to discover the terms you should be aiming to rank for.
Keyword research has four steps:
Write down the mission of your business;
Make a list of all the keywords you want to be found for;
Look at search intent;
Create landing pages for these keywords.
If you do your keyword research right, you should have a clear overview of the terms people use and the terms for which you want the pages on your site to be found. This overview will serve as a guide for writing content on your website.
Why is keyword research so important for SEO content?
Proper keyword research will make clear which search terms your audience uses. This is crucial. At Yoast, we regularly encounter clients who use particular words when talking about their products, while their customers use entirely different words. Writing and optimizing SEO content for words that people don’t use doesn’t make any sense. Doing proper keyword research makes sure that you are using the same words as your target audience, therefore making the effort of optimizing your website worthwhile.
Terms we use in keyword research
Keywords and keyphrases
We tend to use the word ‘keyword‘ all the time. However, it doesn’t have to be just one word. After all, ‘WordPress SEO’ is a keyword, as is ‘Google Analytics plugin.’ So you can have keywords containing multiple words!
Long-tail keywords
The longer (and more specific) a search term is, the easier it will be to rank for that term. Keywords that are more specific (and usually longer) are usually referred to as long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and focus more on a niche.
How many keywords?
It is very hard to give an exact number of keywords you should focus on. You just need to have a lot – as many as you can come up with. More than 1,000 keywords is probably too many though!
Even if you’re a reasonably small business, you’ll probably end up with a couple of hundred keywords. But you don’t have to create pages for all of these immediately. The great thing about having a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress is that you can gradually add content. Think about what keywords you would like to rank for right away, and which ones aren’t immediately important. Determine what your priorities are and plan the creation of your content.
Head or tail?
Classifying your keywords is essential. Some keywords are very common and competitive (head), while others are long-tail. Decide which are your most critical, high-level keywords – the ones that generate sufficient traffic for your website and best fit your business. You’ll probably only have a few of these general keywords for your business, the rest will be more down the tail. In the next section, we’ll give more in-depth information on long-tail keywords (and the importance of these keywords).
Tip: Make sure your homepage and the pages one level beneath that are optimized for the most common keywords! Content that’s focused on long-tail keywords (and therefore more niche) should be on the tail end of your site.
Keyword intent and search intent
As you’re doing keyword research, it really pays off to think about the search intent of users. Are they looking for information, or do they want to buy something? What is their goal when they enter your keyword as a search term? This goal is otherwise known as keyword intent. For some keywords, it’s pretty clear, like [buy leather sofa], or [how to train your puppy]. But it’s not always that simple.
Four types of intent
There are four types of intent:
Navigational intent: People want to visit a specific website, but rather than entering the URL, they’re entering a term into a search engine.
Informational intent: People are trying to find an answer to a particular question or information on a specific topic.
Commercial intent: People want to buy something in the near future and are doing research before making a purchase.
Transactional intent: People are looking to buy something after doing their commercial intent searches.
Search engines are always trying to answer the exact needs people have, and they’re getting better at it too. So, put simply, if 95% of the people searching for [change car tire] have informational intent, and you’re optimizing for transactional intent to sell tires, you’re probably not going to rank.
Check the SERPs
You can get a wealth of information from the results pages when you’re doing keyword research. If you want to find out what the intent is of people using your keywords, simply google those keywords and take a good look at the search results. Then, try to create content that answers the specific need that you distill from the results for each keyword. Tip: Read more about how to use the search results to create content for the right intent here.
There are multiple free and premium tools available to help you with your keyword research. Yoast SEO comes with a Semrush integration that gives suggestions for related keyphrases, including search volume trends. Of course, this is not a full keyword research tool. But it can help you gain valuable insights, and find high-performing keywords! For other tools, please check out our article about keyword research tools.
Adapting your keyword strategy
Your keyword strategy shouldn’t be static. It should change and evolve alongside your company and website. It should evolve and grow with you. If it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong.
Stay on top of the changes in your company, and adapt your strategy simultaneously. If your online shop starts selling new products, extend your list with more keywords. If you’re aiming for new markets, it’s vital that your keywords are aimed at these new markets as well.
There are several keyword strategies to adopt. One of them is to try and rank for long-tail keywords first, then aim at more general keywords. But you could also start by focusing on general keywords before aiming for more long-tail ones. You can zoom in and pursue more niche activities, broaden your approach, adding more content on different things, or you can do both simultaneously.
2. Site structure
The second important aspect of content SEO is the structure of your site. First, I’ll explain why site structure is critical, then I’ll show you what an ideal site structure looks like. I will also give you tips on how to (quickly) improve your site structure without completely disrupting the core of your website.
Why is site structure important for content SEO?
There are two main reasons why site structure is an important ranking factor and therefore imperative for building SEO content:
a. A good structure helps Google ‘understand’ your site
The way your site is structured gives Google significant clues about where to find the most important content. Your site’s structure determines whether a search engine understands what your site is about, and how easily it will find and index content relevant to your site’s purpose and intent. A good site structure will, therefore, lead to a higher ranking in Google.
By creating such a structure, you can use existing content that has attracted links from others to help your other pages rank too. Your site’s structure will help spread some of that link juice to the other pages on your site. On a commercial site, this means you can use high-quality content you’ve written to boost the search engine rankings of your sales pages too.
b. A good structure makes sure you aren’t competing with your own SEO content
You will probably have multiple articles about similar topics on your site. At Yoast, for example, we write about SEO. If we wrote eight articles about SEO, Google wouldn’t know which one is the most important. That’s why we used our site structure to clarify this. If we hadn’t, we’d be competing with our own articles for Google’s top spot. So if you solve problems like this by using a sound internal linking structure, the result will be higher rankings overall.
The ideal site structure
Ideally, you should structure your site like a pyramid. At the top is your homepage. On your homepage, you link to some other pages (such as category pages). These pages, in turn, link to even more pages.
In an effective content SEO strategy, your keyword strategy and the way you structure your site work together. In a proper keyword strategy, you’ll have thought about common, competitive keywords as well as long-tail (and niche) search terms. You should make a similar dichotomy in your site structure. Pages that focus on common search terms should appear high in your pyramid, while pages that are optimized for long-tail keywords should appear in a lower part of your structure. And don’t forget to let the long-tail pages at the bottom link to the pages higher in the pyramid!
If you’re serious about content SEO, you’ll most likely already have a live website. So it may be a bit late to set up your site’s structure in an ideal pyramid-like way. Don’t despair – there are still plenty of things you can do to improve your site’s structure and your SEO content.
Decide upon cornerstone content
You should focus your efforts on cornerstone articles. These are the articles that you’re most proud of, and that fit the mission of your website best. You want to rank for these articles the most. Fun fact: This ultimate guide is one of our cornerstones!
If you haven’t decided which of your articles are the most important yet, start thinking about that now. Make these articles the best ones on your site. Give them extra TLC and update them regularly.
Once you’ve decided upon your precious cornerstones, make sure you link from all your ‘tail’ articles to those cornerstones. That way, Google will know which articles to rank highest. You can read all about this in our article about incorporating cornerstones into your site structure. Good to know: Yoast SEO Premium has an advanced internal linking tool that automatically suggests relevant articles to link from.
Pro tip: You can use our cornerstone content SEO workout in Yoast SEO Premium to check on all your cornerstone content pages, see how many internal links they’re getting, and quickly add more if necessary.
Use tags (but not too many)
Your site will also benefit from adding tags. Tags and taxonomies will give your site more structure – at least, Google will understand it better. They group your articles about similar topics. Don’t overdo it, though. Some people have more tags than articles. Using too many tags will lead to a confusing and poorly-structured site.
Avoid duplicate content
The same SEO content can turn up at multiple places on your site. As a reader, you don’t mind: you still get the content you came for. But a search engine has to choose something to show in the search results, as it doesn’t want to show the same content twice. And what about other sites that want to link to your product? Chances are that some of them will link to the first URL, while others will link to the second.
However, if you make sure that all these duplicate posts link to the same URL, your chances of ranking top 10 for the relevant keyword would be much higher. In other words: Canonicalization is the solution to duplicate content. You can configure the canonical URL in the advanced tab of Yoast SEO.
Remove old SEO content
Should you keep old content? That depends. You have three options: update, redirect, or merge. If the content on a page is outdated, remove it! But what about the valuable links to that page? After all, you want to make sure that you still benefit from these links, even though the page doesn’t exist anymore. That’s where the second option comes in: redirect.
Redirecting pages is easy if you have our Yoast SEO Premium plugin, which can help you take care of redirects. Preferably, you redirect the old URL (301) to the new and updated page or product. You can also redirect to a related page if there is no replacement. For example, the category page of the specific product, or, as a very last resort, your homepage. This way, the (outdated) page won’t interfere with your site structure anymore.
Deal with orphaned content
The term ‘orphaned content’ refers to articles that don’t have any links from your other articles or posts. Because of that, these articles are hard to find, both by Google and by your users. What’s more, Google will consider this type of content to be less important! So if an article is important to you, you should make it clear to Google (and your visitors) by linking to that particular article from other (related) content. Read more about solving the problem of orphaned articles in our article about orphaned content.
Pro tip: Use our orphaned content SEO workout in Yoast SEO Premium to quickly find and fix pages with no incoming internal links.
Deal with content cannibalization
Once you’ve been writing content for a while, you might have dozens of articles on any given topic. If these articles are kind of saying the same thing, search engines and users might get confused. Not to mention the fact that your content might compete against itself in the search engines. This is called keyword cannibalization. It’s not inherently bad, but it’s something you need to take a look at. Are your articles performing as well as they should, or is the competition hurting the chances at a higher ranking? Luckily, it’s not hard to find and fix keyword cannibalization.
3. Copywriting for content SEO
The third and final aspect of a successful content SEO strategy is copywriting. Two very important things to remember: Write articles that are attractive to read, and that will make your audience want to stay on your site. However, you shouldn’t forget to make your SEO content attractive for Google. Just don’t go too far by optimizing your content so overtly that it becomes terrible to read. At Yoast, we suggest optimizing your text for search without adversely affecting the originality of your idea or the readability of your text.
The first requirement for high-quality copywriting is to write original content. Your post or article should be ‘fresh,’ new, and original. It has to be different from all the other posts and articles that are already on the internet. Plus, it should be content that people want to read.
If you did your keyword research well, you now have a long list of terms that you want to be found for. This list can be a guide for you to choose from. A keyword isn’t necessarily a topic, though. You should make sure to come up with an original idea for your blog post – an idea in which the desired focus keyword has a prominent place.
But don’t worry! Original SEO content doesn’t mean brand new content. Giving your (professional) opinion on a particular topic also counts as original content. Because your personal angle to a story will make your content unique and original. Of course, if your story is completely new, that automatically means it’s original.
Think about your audience
If you want to write original content, you should think about your audience and who they are. Also, ask yourself:
What do you want your audience to do after they’ve read your article? (Do you want them to engage, buy your products/service, or read more posts?)
Thinking about these questions will help you to come up with an original idea for your post or article.
Content design and content SEO
Content design is a process that helps you produce content based on actual user needs. It doesn’t just help you figure out what your user wants, but it also focuses on what the user actually needs. Thinking about your content in this way will help you create content in the language and format that your user needs.
However, content design isn’t just a technique to help you produce better content – it’s a new way of thinking about content. If you want to know more about content design, read our post on content design: a great way to make user-centered content.
Copywriting requires readable SEO content
A key requirement for writing high-quality content is to write content that’s easy to read. Readability is important both for your audience and for Google. After all, not only people read your articles but Google does too.
If your text is well structured and clearly written, readers will be able to clearly understand your message. And so will Google! If your main message is clear to Google, your post is far more likely to rank well in the search engines.
As Google is getting smarter, it starts to understand content on sites better — thanks to a lot of developments in the natural language processing sphere, like BERT. It’s no longer just about the number of times a keyword pops on a page. It also takes into account the context of those keywords, like co-occurring terms and phrases, related words and synonyms. On top of that, as mentioned before, Google is able to understand queries of users better: it tries to determine what the search intent of the user is. Are they looking for a product or just information? Which pages fit that intent best?
All these developments mean that you should focus on more than just using your keyword often enough. It means you should also think about the words you use around it: do they make clear what topic you’re discussing? And, do you have the purpose in mind of the post or page you’re creating? Does it just provide information or are you trying to sell something, and does that align with what your users are actually looking for? Yoast SEO Premium lets you optimize your SEO content with synonyms and related keyphrases, making it even easier to add context to your articles.
The final requirement for writing high-quality content is to make sure the content is optimized for search engines. You want your SEO content to be easily found. Findability has to do with increasing the likelihood Google will pick up your content for the result pages. It’s important that you take this final step after you’ve written an original and readable post.
Yoast SEO helps you tweak your text just a little bit more. If you’ve written your article, focused on that original idea, and optimized the readability of your post, you should take a look at the SEO analysis in Yoast SEO. Red and orange bullets indicate which aspects of your findability need a little bit more attention. You don’t need a green bullet for every aspect though, as long as your overall score is good.
Content SEO is such a huge part of SEO. It encompasses every aspect of writing and structuring content on your website. Content SEO is essential. No one will read your content if it’s crappy. Like visitors, Google reads and scans your website text. Google’s algorithm decides the ranking of your site largely based on the content you publish. And we all know content is king. So, you need to write awesome SEO content, focus on the right keywords and structure your website in such a way Google understands it. It’s a lot of work, but it will pay off in the long run.
As you’ve learned from this guide, there’s a lot you need to do to keep your site’s content SEO fit. Take this short test and find out if there are some aspects of content SEO you may need to improve!
If you optimize your articles for similar terms, your rankings might suffer from keyword cannibalization: you’ll be ‘devouring’ your own chances to rank in Google! Especially when your site is growing, chances are your content will start competing with itself. Here, I’ll explain why keyword cannibalism can be detrimental to SEO, how you can recognize it and what to do about it.
What is keyword cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization means that you have various blog posts or articles on your site that can rank for the same search query in Google. Either because the topic they cover is too similar or because you optimized them for the same keyphrase. If you optimize posts or articles for similar search queries, they’re eating away at each other’s chances to rank. Usually, Google will only show 1 or 2 results from the same domain in the search results for a specific query. If you’re a high authority domain, you might get 3.
An example of keyword cannibalization
Let’s look at an example of optimizing posts for a similar keyphrase. I wrote two posts about whether or not readability is a ranking factor. The post ‘Does readability rank?‘ was optimized for [does readability rank], while the post ‘Readability ranks!‘ was optimized for the focus keyword [readability ranking factor]. The posts had a different angle but were still very similar. For Google, it is hard to figure out which of the two articles is the most important.
Update: Did you see the same article? That’s correct, by now we’ve fixed this cannibalization issue, but we’ve kept this example for the sake of illustration.
Why is keyword cannibalism bad for SEO?
If you cannibalize your own keywords, you’re competing with yourself for ranking in Google. Let’s say you have two posts on the exact same topic. In that case, Google can’t distinguish which article should rank highest for a certain query. In addition, important factors like backlinks and CTR get diluted over several posts instead of one. As a result, they’ll probably both rank lower. Therefore, our SEO analysis will give a red bullet whenever you optimize a post for a focus keyword you’ve used before.
How to recognize it?
Checking whether or not your site suffers from keyword cannibalism is easy. You simply do a search for your site, for any specific keyword you suspect might have multiple results. In my case, I’ll google site:yoast.com readability ranks. The first two results are the articles I suspected to suffer from cannibalization.
Googling ‘site:domain.com “keyword” will give you an easy answer to the question if you’re suffering from keyword cannibalism or not. You can check your findings by typing the same keyword into Google (using a private browser or local search result checker like https://valentin.app/). Which of your pages do you see in the search results, and what position do they rank? Of course, if two of your pages for the same keyword are ranking #1 and #2, that’s not a problem. But do you see your articles, for example on positions 7 and 8? Then it’s time to sort things out!
The first two steps will help you decide which articles to keep and which ones to merge or delete. In many cases, step 4 will consist of combining and deleting articles, but also improving the internal linking on your site.
Merge or combine articles
If two articles attract the same audience and tell the same story, you should combine them. Rewrite the two posts into one amazing, kickass article. That’ll help your rankings (Google loves lengthy and well-written content), and solve your keyword cannibalization problem.
In fact, that’s exactly what we did with our two posts on readability being a ranking factor. You can use the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin to clone one of the posts and work from there. And don’t just press the delete button! Always make sure to redirect the post you delete to the one you keep. If that’s something you’re struggling with, Yoast SEO Premium can help: It makes creating redirects as easy as pie!
Improve internal linking
You can help Google figure out which article is most important by setting up a decent internal linking structure. This means that you should link from posts that are less important to posts that are the most important to you. That way, Google can figure out (by following links) which ones you want to pop up highest in the search engines.
Your internal linking structure could solve a part of your keyword cannibalism problems. You should think about which article is most important to you and link from the less important long-tail articles, to your most important article. Read more about how to do this in my article about ranking with cornerstone content.
Keyword cannibalization and online shops
Now, if you have an online shop, you might be worried about all those product pages targeting similar keywords. For online shops, it makes sense that there are multiple pages for products that are alike. If that’s the case for you, then it’s very important to give site structure some thought. A good strategy is to link back from every product page to your category page – the page you should optimize to rank. In addition, you should keep an eye on old product pages that could potentially cannibalize more important pages. If that’s the case, simply delete and redirect those. And don’t forget that Yoast SEO Premium can help make redirecting easier with its handy redirect manager!
Keyword cannibalism will affect growing websites
If your site gets bigger, your chances will increase that you face keyword cannibalism on your own website. You’ll be writing about your favorite subjects and without even knowing it, you’ll write articles that end up being rather similar. That’s what happened to me too. Once in a while, you should check the keywords you want to rank for the most. Make sure to check whether you’re suffering from keyword cannibalism. You’ll probably need to make some changes in your site structure or to rewrite some articles every now and then.
The meta description summarizes a page’s content and presents that to users in the search results. It’s one of the first things people will likely see when searching for something, so optimizing it is crucial for SEO. It’s your chance to persuade users to click on your result! This post will show you the characteristics of a good meta description and how Yoast SEO can help you get it right.
The meta description is an HTML tag you can set for a post or page of your website. In it, you can use roughly 155 characters to describe what your page is about. If you’re lucky, Google will show it beneath your page’s title in the search results. It allows you to convince search engine users that your page will offer what they are looking for.
In Google’s search results, this is where it can be displayed:
A meta description from yoast.com, as seen in the search results
And this is what it looks like in the HTML code of the page:
<meta name="description" content="Do you want people to click on your search result? Learn how to write the best meta description. Including 7 characteristics and examples!" />
Why set a meta description?
The purpose of a meta description is simple: it needs to get someone searching with a search term on Google to click your link. In other words, meta descriptions are there to generate click-throughs from search engines.
Search engines say there is no direct SEO benefit from the meta description – they don’t use it in their ranking algorithm. But there is an indirect benefit: Google uses click-through-rate (CTR) to determine whether you’re a good result. If more people click on your result, Google considers you to be a good result and will – based on your position – move you up the rankings. This is why optimizing your meta description is important, as is optimizing your titles.
In this Yoast SEO academy video, Fleur will explain how titles and meta description help increase your visibility on Google:
What does a good meta description contain?
Here’s a list of elements you need to write a good meta description:
Keep it up to 155 characters
Use an active voice and make it actionable
Include a call to action
Use your focus keyphrase
Show specifications when needed
Make sure it matches the content of the page
Make it unique
Let’s go over them in detail!
1. Keep it up to 155 characters
The right length doesn’t exist; it depends on the message you want to convey. You should take enough space to convey the message but keep it short and snappy. However, if you check the search results in Google, you’ll mostly see snippets of 120 to 156 characters, like in the example below. Google says you can make your meta descriptions as long as you want, but there is a limit to what we can see in the SERPs — and that’s around 155 characters; anything longer will get truncated.
This search result from a Yoast SEO user shows a succinct meta description in Google
Unfortunately, you can’t fully control what Google displays in the search results. Sometimes it shows the meta description, and sometimes it just grabs some sentences of your copy. Either way, your best bet is to keep it short. That way, if Google does decide to show the description you’ve written, it won’t be cut short.
2. Use active voice and make it actionable
If you see the meta description as an invitation to visit your page, you have to think about your user and their (possible) motivation to visit your page. Make sure that your description isn’t dull, difficult, or too cryptic. People need to know what they can expect to find on your page.
The example in the image below is the description you should strive to write. It’s active, it speaks to you and addresses you directly. You know what you’ll get if you click on the link!
Make people want to click your search result
3. Include a call-to-action
“Hello, we have such and such new product, and you want it. Find out more!†This overlaps with what we said about the active voice, but we wanted to emphasize it again. The meta description is your sales text. Except, in this case, the “product†you are trying to sell is the page that is linked. Invitations like Learn more, Get it now, Try for free come in handy, and we use them too.
Get people to click on your link
4. Use your focus keyword
If the search keyword matches a part of the text in the meta description, Google will be more inclined to use it and highlight it in the search results. This will make the link to your site even more inviting. Google sometimes even highlights synonyms. In the example below, both the Academy Awards and Oscars are highlighted. Getting your results emphasized like that makes them stand out even more.
A listing for the Academy Awards on Google
5. Show specifications, where possible
If you have a product in your Shopify or WooCommerce store aimed at the tech-savvy, it can be a good idea to focus on the technical specs. For example, you can include the manufacturer, SKU, price, etc. If the visitor is specifically looking for that product, you won’t have to convince them. Can the watch help us stay fit? Sign us up; that’s all we need to know. Note that to optimize your result in this manner, you should work on getting rich snippets.
Make it spark
6. Make sure it matches the content of the page
This is an important one. Google will find out if you use the meta descriptions to trick visitors into clicking on your result. They might even penalize you if you do it. But besides that, misleading descriptions will also increase your bounce rate. Which will also lower people’s trust in your company. It’s a bad idea for that reason alone. That is why you want the meta description to match the content on the page.
7. Make it unique
Adding the date to the snippet preview
People often ask questions about the date shown in the Google preview of our Yoast SEO plugin. We’ve added this because search engines may display a date with your snippet. So it’s important to factor it in when you decide on the right length of your meta description. Unfortunately, there’s no way to directly control whether this date is shown or not, but you can try to manage the dates they use in the search results.
If your meta description is the same as those for other pages, the user experience in Google will be hampered. Although your page titles might vary, all pages will appear to be the same because all the descriptions are the same. Instead of creating duplicate meta descriptions, you’d better leave them blank. Google will pick a snippet from the page containing the keyword used in the query. That being said, writing a unique meta description for every page you want to rank with is always the best practice.
How Yoast SEO helps you write meta descriptions
Adding a meta description is easy if you’re on WordPress or Shopify and using Yoast SEO. Firstly, you can write it in the Google preview section of Yoast SEO. But Yoast SEO also gives you feedback on it in the SEO analysis. The plugin checks the meta description length and whether you’ve used your focus keyphrase. So let’s see how the plugin helps you and what you can do with it.
You can edit your meta description in Yoast SEO
You can edit your meta description in Yoast SEO for Shopify
What does the keyphrase in meta description assessment in Yoast SEO do?
This check is all about using the keyphrase in the meta description. A focus keyphrase is the search term you want a page to rank with. When people use that term, you want them to find your page. You base your keyphrase on keyword research. After your research, you should end up with a combination of words that most of your audience is most likely to search for. We’ve already discussed that when you use your keyphrase in the meta description, Google will likely highlight it. That makes it easier for people to see that they’ve found what they are looking for.
Yoast SEO checks if and how often you use the words from your focus keyphrase in the meta description text. In addition, if you use Yoast SEO Premium, it also takes into account the synonyms you enter. If you overdo it, the plugin advises you to limit the use of your focus keyphrase.
What a green bullet looks like in Yoast SEO
What a green bullet looks like in Yoast SEO for Shopify
How to get a green traffic light for the keyphrase in meta description
If you don’t mention the keyphrase in the meta description at all, you’ll get a red traffic light. So, make sure to write one. But don’t stuff your meta description with your keyphrase, because that will also get you a red traffic light. And make sure to mention all the words from your keyphrase near to each other. Search engines are pretty smart nowadays, but you still need to make it clear what your page is about.
Yoast SEO Premium plugin takes the synonyms you’ve added into account when it performs its analysis. This allows you to write more naturally and will result in a text that’s a more pleasant read. Moreover, it’s easier to score a green traffic light this way. Use it to your advantage!
Unlock all features in Yoast SEO Premium
Save time on your SEO and get access to all of our SEO courses.
What does the meta description length assessment do?
This meta description length assessment measures whether your description is too short (less than 120 characters) or too long (more than 156 characters). When your meta description has the right length, you’ll get a green traffic light. If it’s too long, or too short, you’ll get an orange traffic light in the SEO analysis of Yoast SEO (or red, if you’ve marked your article as cornerstone content).
What the check looks like in the Yoast SEO meta box
A green bullet in the Yoast SEO for Shopify app
How to write a concise meta description
A good meta description convinces people that your page offers the best result to their query. But, to be the best result, you must know what people are looking for. What is their search intent? Are they looking for an answer to a question? If they are, try to give them the most complete answer. Are they looking for a product? Write down what makes your product stand out and why they would best buy it in your store. Be concise and convincing!
You get real-time feedback on the meta description length in the Google preview section in the Yoast SEO sidebar or meta box. If you want to write a meta description, click on “Google preview” in the Yoast SEO sidebar. This will open the snippet editor and you’ll see input fields to edit the SEO title, the slug and the meta description. When you start typing in the meta description input field, the snippet preview at the top of the Google preview editor will immediately show your new text. Underneath the input field, there is a bar. It’s orange when you start typing and will become green when you’ve added enough information. When you add too much text, it will turn orange again.
The bar will change color when your go over the limit
Checking the Google preview in Yoast SEO for Shopify
Writing or editing your meta description in the Yoast SEO meta box underneath your post editor is also possible. Just go to the SEO tab in the meta box (if it’s not on this tab by default), and you can start typing in the field under Meta description right away.
What to do if you need meta descriptions for a lot of pages?
Does it feel like you need to change all your meta descriptions after reading this? But not sure how to fit that into your schedule? Google has the answer:
“If you don’t have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.“
You can check which of your pages rank highest with Google Search Console. Take it from there. Additionally, it’s also possible to optimize your meta descriptions with variables in Yoast SEO. This allows you to speed up this process without having to worry about duplicate descriptions.
If you prefer to write a unique description for each page and have a lot to get through, you can use the Bulk editor tool in Yoast SEO for WordPress. Head to the Tools page, click on ‘Bulk editor’, and then select the ‘Description’ tab. You’ll be able to see any meta descriptions already set for your pages, and you can quickly add new ones without having to open each page individually. However, with this tool, you won’t get warnings if your description is too short/long, or if the focus keyword is missing.
Meta descriptions for social sharing
Do you have Yoast SEO? In that case: check the Facebook and Twitter preview in the Yoast SEO sidebar or social tab in the Yoast SEO meta box below your post or page. You can add a separate description for your social media channels there. In Yoast SEO Premium, you even have social previews that show you what your post or page will look like when shared on social media.
If you own a blog or a business, SEO is probably important to you. Then you also know that Google cares a lot about user experience. But there’s one aspect of user experience that’s often overlooked: inclusive language.
But why should you care?
Creating inclusive content is good for your users and your SEO. On the other hand, if you use language that isn’t inclusive, you can exclude people and reinforce systemic biases. Yikes, right? In short, your users definitely value inclusive language, but the big question is: Does Google care?
What is inclusive language?
Before we dive deeper into the topic, let’s look at what inclusive language means. Inclusive language aims to use words that don’t express or imply ideas that are derogatory or excluding towards marginalized groups. For example, using a racist or misogynistic slur.
Just like accessibility, inclusive language makes everyone feel welcome on your website. If you use non-inclusive words, you’re likely to exclude part of your audience. And in a worst-case scenario, you may even offend people. This, of course, can cause them to quickly leave your site and never come back, which is bad for your SEO and your business.
How could inclusive language affect your ranking?
As you know, Google and other search engines’ goal is to provide people with the best result for their query. That’s why, with a few exceptions, it’s usually not great if users leave your website quickly and never return — for example, if they feel excluded by your content, then they will think it’s not for them.
So, why is this bad? Well, Google sees these behavioral patterns and uses them to figure out how people are experiencing your site. If a number of people leave quickly, Google may think they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Meaning: Your site isn’t useful for the query you’re trying to rank for. As a result, your website’s ranking can decrease.
On the other hand, if your content is available to more people because you use inclusive language, the chances of people sharing your posts and linking to them will increase. Just think about it: If you write a funny post about “Things firemen do that just make sense“, you’re only referring to firefighters who are men. Which means only people who don’t notice or ignore that other genders weren’t included will share your post. You might think: So what? But you could be excluding a lot of people, and missing out on a lot of engagement. However, if you write “Things firefighters do that just make sense“, more people will read and share your post. So by taking advantage of our inclusive language analysis you open up your content to more people. Which in turn means more people can relate to it, like it, engage with it, share it, and link to it. Which is obviously great for your SEO!
Google cares about inclusive language
We are not the only ones that believe that inclusive language is important. Let’s see what Google says. On their website, they have the following statement: “Everyone should be able to access and enjoy the web. We’re committed to making that a reality.†In other words: Google cares about its users, and they also care about inclusive language. Recently, they also tweeted about inclusive language confirming this:
If you write anything for SEO […] please watch out for inclusive language. It doesn’t take much work, and you might not get it right all the time, but taking steps to get better matters too.
John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google
Stand out from the crowd
As with accessibility, inclusive language is widely overlooked by other websites and businesses. Did you know that a whopping 98% of websites in the United States aren’t built with accessibility in mind? That’s a ridiculous amount!
You’ll be one step ahead of the competition if you ensure your website is available to everyone. Plus, it sends a message to your audience that you value them. This could lead to great word-of-mouth advertising because you’re one of the few who actually focuses on inclusive language. Of course, more advertising can lead to more visitors, which can lead to more shares and likes, and… you get it. We firmly believe that using inclusive language is great for your SEO and can actually improve your rankings.
Inclusive language analysis
What is and isn’t inclusive can be hard to figure out. Especially since language is constantly evolving. Keeping up with all the changes can be very time-consuming, but we have good news: You don’t have to figure out how to write inclusive content all by yourself. Yoast SEO now has an inclusive language analysis, developed and maintained by linguists.
So, what does the analysis do? This new feature works similarly to our other analyses by giving you real-time feedback on your text with the use of traffic lights. It scans your text (and also looks at context), then highlights words or phrases that might not be inclusive. It also gives you an alternative word to use, so you don’t have to spend time searching for one. Easy, right?
Point to remember! This feature is opt-in! So, it will be turned off by default. This feature is available in our free and premium plugin, read more about the inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO.
In conclusion
As a business owner, inclusive language may not be part of your business goals. Especially in terms of SEO. However, inclusive language can have a positive impact on your SEO and your users’ experience. You’re less likely to offend anyone, and more likely to include everyone. As a result, more people feel engaged, so your content is more likely to be read and shared. That means your audience grows, which can also boost your rankings. Plus, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition.
