FAQ: The Yoast SEO workouts

Ultimately, the goal is to help you make your most important posts and pages easy to find by linking to them. But why is linking that important? Because search engines follow links to find new content. The more links there are to a page, the more important search engines will think it is.

Now, some pages on your site are more valuable than others. The ones that contain the essential information that you want to rank with are called cornerstone content. So, you need to make sure these cornerstones have a lot of links pointing to them. With the cornerstone approach workout, you’ll ensure your cornerstone content is well linked, making it more likely to rank!

Very often, people are eager to write new content. And, just as often, they forget to add enough links pointing to it. That is a pity because then it’s harder for search engines and people to find that content. By doing the workout, you ensure that the posts you want to rank with get enough links pointing to them to help them get found and ranked!

Did you mark your article as cornerstone in one tab while the workout was still open in another? Then, all you need to do is go to the tab with the workout and refresh the page. You should then see the cornerstone articles in the lists. If that doesn’t work, go back and make sure that the article you wanted to mark as cornerstone has the Mark as cornerstone content toggle switched “On”.

It’s the content that doesn’t have any links pointing to it. Content that gets no links is hard to find, both by visitors to your site and search engines. In Yoast SEO, we consider six months or older content with less than three links as orphaned content.

The goal of the workout is to motivate you to clean up your site. What does that mean, exactly? It means that Yoast SEO helps you find the posts and pages on your site that don’t receive any links. Then, it lets you decide what to do with those pages: improve them, remove them or hide them from the search engines.

Whatever you decide, the plugin will help you execute your decision. So, if you decide to delete some pages, it will help you redirect them properly. If you want to hide content from search engines, the plugin will automatically output the right code that gives instructions to search engines not to follow that page. Finally, if you decide to keep and improve some of your orphaned content, the plugin will help you find posts and pages from which you can link to the orphaned content. As a result, you will end up with fewer old and irrelevant pages, and you will improve the user experience on your site.

The workout can motivate you to do one of the most tedious tasks: cleaning up! We all dread it, but we have to do it from time to time. And it’s not only about motivation. The guidance through the workout can save you a lot of precious time while helping you clean up your site and make your orphaned content findable! It is a small effort with a big payoff!

Just like working out in real life, the effects may not be visible straight away. And when you work out for the first time in a while, it may seem overwhelming. But, if you consistently keep up the work, you will start seeing results. For example, linking your posts will improve your site structure and make your content easier to find. And content that is easy to find is content that gets read, engaged with, and, ultimately, content that ranks! And, getting rid of old content will make the overall experience on your site much better and prevent your visitors from ending up on dead-end pages.

The short answer is: yes. We tried to make it as easy and convenient as possible to get the best out of the Yoast SEO features by creating doable workouts. The workouts help you set up Yoast SEO, create a better site structure, and clean up your site, which is essential for SEO-fit sites.