Better SEO is possible! We all start somewhere when building our business. And usually that somewhere involves doing a lot of the leg work to get your company off the ground. Investing in better SEO is like building a solid foundation for your house. You want to do it right from the beginning. Pilot is here to help you build a smarter business. We know everyone doesn’t have the budget to hire an SEO expert so we’ve put together of the basics of what you can do.
What do we say to the one-person-army that is growing their small business from their dining room table? The same thing we say to clients that are brought on board to strategize on a complete online website presence audit.
USE YOAST SEO PLUGIN
Yoast provides three solid reasons to use their FREE plugin:
- Get more visitors from Google & Bing
- Attract more visitors from social media
- Increase your readers’ engagement
What’s the problem with the way I post articles now?
The short answer: Nothing is wrong with how you do it now, but you can do it better. You deserve all the advantages you can get to be relevant and ranking for your customers.
The long answer: Yoast can help take great articles, posts, pages, or forms and really hone in on what you want someone who uses Google or Bing to find. Yoast also ensures that your posts are really demanding Google to pay attention to them. If Google thinks an article or post is worthy of authority, it will be ranked higher. The higher you rank, the more customers and visitors you will have to your website. That is no joke.
So at the very least, having Yoast on your side is going to add a little bit of OOMPH! to your articles with intelligent suggestions on how you can attract Google and visitors!
Sound great, right? Yoast is the first plugin we recommend when we get your website up and going. Let’s dive in a little to what Yoast can really offer and clarify for you.
Features
Keyword and key phrase optimization
Key wording and key phrase optimization is essentially asking: “What is the purpose of this page or post?”
By telling Yoast your keyword or phrase, it will help ensure you’re using the keyword in the proper locations so that search results can see your article clearly. It is dually important for Google Search robots who will want to index your information to know where to rank you.
The premium version of Yoast offers more features for keywords by letting you optimize for more than one. In the premium version you may optimize for synonyms, related keywords, and all word forms of the main keyword. But you don’t need to premium version to get up and running. The free version has everything you need when you’re getting started out!
Duplication warnings
Yoast does a fantastic job of letting you know if you have used a keyword before on your site to avoid confusing Google on which page is the authority on a particular topic.
Readability check
Not everyone has a copy writer! That’s why Yoast is great. Yoast WILL tell you how readable your content is – if your sentences are too long, you’re using too many of the same word/phrase in a row or you’re just not writing enough. Grammarly is also a great resource to see real-time editing of your writing.
Constantly updating to be ready for all of Google’s changes
Maybe one of our favourite behind-the-scenes features. Google updates their ranking algorithms a lot. Thankfully, Yoast updates frequently to be on top of the changes to Google’s algorithm. That means you never have to even think (too much) about it.
Internal linking suggestions*
If you’re diving deep into optimizing your website structure, these next two premium features are super helpful. Internal linking is a premium only feature. Yoast will recommend other pages on your site that may be helpful for strong internal linking.
Content insights*
Another premium only feature. Content insights is a feature showing you five words or phrases that you use the most on your page to check if they’re a match with your chosen keywords. How does this help? It keeps your post focused on your keyword and polished for all that sweet, sweet SEO authority!
How can I install Yoast on my WordPress sight?
- From your dashboard, find the “Plugins” button sitting between appearance and users. Click here.
- At the top of the page that you’re taken to, select “Add New”
- From the Plugin search, use the search box in the top right and enter “Yoast”, then select “Yoast SEO” and hit “Install Now” — As you can see in ours, we were updating the plugin!
It really is THAT simple. Once you install the plugin you will need to activate it.
Pilot Solutions regularly host Intro to SEO workshops in Hamilton, if you’re interested, email us at hello at pilotsolutions. ca (format changed to protect from bots!).
If you’re struggling to rank on Google and want to take charge of your online presence yourself, this is the hands down best way to get moving forward and bring more visitors and customers to your site.
We also offer FREE SEO audits to provide a few quick and easy suggestions is you’re feeling stuck in the weeds. Contact us to learn more!
