What is Yoast SEO and how can it benefit me?

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular plug-ins for WordPress of all time. With over 5 million active installations, this fantastic tool is utilised to easily optimise sites and their related pages. The tool is quick to install and there are countless online guides so you have a wide platform of help, tips and advice. But what is Yoast SEO and what makes it so popular? We’ve picked out some of our favourite features of this fantastic tool.

What does Yoast SEO actually do?

Yoast SEO is a plugin that extends WordPress’s standard SEO features to allow you to optimise your page. Yoast will evaluate your content as you write it, for immediate action.

Format

One thing we love about Yoast SEO is its simple checklist method, which allows all amendments and recommendations to be viewed quickly and easily. From there the user can make changes and see how this affects the rankings. The simplicity yet effectiveness of this tool is what makes it so great. Literally anybody can learn to use it and benefit from its effects.

Focus keyphrase

Focusing on a keyword is a vital practise when working on SEO. Yoast gives you the option to add a key phrase and then evaluate how well your content utilises it. Although this doesn’t guarantee results, it’s a fantastic starting point.

Readability

With the Yoast plug-in, you can have an immediate evaluation of the content you’ve created. This tool will rate your readability based on a variety of factors so you can ensure it’s at the optimum level before it goes live. Your content will be rated on things such as sentence length, passive voice and how headings are used. As these are all split into different categories, it’s easy to go through and make changes to your content. This tool saves you second-guessing and provides an automatic proofreader which works as soon as create.

Meta Titles

Another great feature of the Yoast SEO plugin is the SEO title generator, which takes the title of your page and turns it into your meta title. You will be able to see in the preview whether or not this title is too long so you can edit it before it goes live. This title is intended to be seen by users who are using a search engine to find your website.

Meta Description

The meta description of a page is a vital aspect. It can attract the user from the SERP and can encourage them to click if the snippet is relevant enough. You have 160 characters to essentially advertise your page, so it’s important to choose wisely. The meta can affect the traffic of your site. The snippet preview shows you how your site will appear in the search results so you can optimise it accordingly.

If you need help with your website’s SEO, our experienced team at boxChilli are here to help. Not only can we provide you with comprehensive SEO which can boost traffic and conversions, but we also have bespoke design and development services in Portsmouth, Hampshire, Southampton, Bournemouth and many other local areas! For more information please don’t hesitate to get in contact with our team today.

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