Yoast SEO Overview

If you are a WordPress user, plugins likes Yoast SEO can assist you. SEO plugins work by applying optimizations for search engines. If you have a SEO plugin installed and activated, Congratulations. SEO plugins offers a setup for working on your sites ranking ability. Let’s jump right in.

Yoast SEO Dashboard Widget

Yoast SEO offers an amazing dashboard widget, where you can see how content on your site is doing. As you can see, of the 14 pieces of content on this site, 11 of them don't have a target keyword set. This does keep the content out of the search engine thoug. It simply means no keyword for checking with Yoast SEO was added. Believe it or not, this is how most sites using Yoast SEO are setup. Most sites have it installed and active, but have not gone any further with it than that7.

Publish Area Integration

Yoast SEO integrates into the publish area of content, to provide a quick glance at how a piece of content is doing. This same indicator is on the main "page" for pages, posts, and other content types. The default state is grey, meaning no keyword has been set.

The SEO Metabox

Underneath each post and page, you will find this SEO box. This explains some of the items search engines are looking for, called "indicators". Each of these "indicators" help to ensure that the basic requirements are met. Now don't go crazy reworking all of your content, as not getting a perfect green on everything is fine. Strive to at least get a green for Readability and SEO in the Publish area.