SEO BASICS
How to optimize your content
To drive traffic to your site, you’ll need content. And not just content: SEO-friendly content. Learn how to optimize your content to make it SEO-proof!
Without content, it’s impossible for your site to rank in search engines. That’s why you need to create well-optimized, quality content. Let’s have a look at how you can optimize your content so that it drives traffic to your site!
STEP 1
Prepare
Before you start writing, you should ask yourself some questions: What will be the main message of your post? What do you want to tell people? And: who are my readers? What search terms do I want to be found for?
You need to know who you are writing for and what their goal or search intent is. What does that mean for the keywords you should use to be found in the search engines? 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.
STEP 2
Write!
Now on to the actual writing! Don’t forget to fill out your focus keyphrases and synonyms, aka the terms you want to be found for. In the writing phase, you should just go with the flow. Don’t overthink. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Just write!
STEP 3
Check your readability score
Readable content is essential — both visitors and search engines love it! The Yoast SEO readability analysis helps you create easy-to-read content. It features several checks that will give you advice when you write your page. In other words, by following this advice, you can make your text easier to read and understand.
If your overall readability analysis is green, you’re good to go! But, perhaps, you use sentences that are a bit too long. Or, you have been using the passive voice too often. Correct those readability issues and make your text nice and easy to read. Want more tips to make your text more readable? Check out the article about using the readability analysis!
STEP 4
Check your SEO score
You’ve now written a well-structured and readable blog post. Now what? Now you want it to rank in the search engines and attract traffic to your site, right? So, you want to optimize your blog post for your focus keyword or keyphrase!
The SEO analysis gives you practical feedback on which areas of SEO you need to improve. Perhaps you should use your keyword or its synonym a bit more often? Or maybe you’re already overdoing it? What about headings and images?
Check out the problems and improvements the Yoast SEO analysis indicates. Usually, you can easily make some tweaks that’ll make your copy a little better optimized for the search engines. But don’t overdo it! You don’t need all green bullets. If your overall SEO bullet is green, you’re good to go!
STEP 5
Add 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. They can establish a hierarchy on your site, allowing you to provide the most important pages and posts with more link value than other, less valuable pages. So using the right internal linking strategy can boost your SEO!
So, are you linking to your most important articles? Are you linking to the articles that are most closely related to the article you’re currently writing? Make sure to add them!
STEP 6
Double check
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!
Bonus step
Become an SEO-copywriting wizard
Learn more vital SEO skills that you can apply immediately. In the FREE Yoast SEO academy, you learn about SEO basics, WordPress, and the Yoast SEO plugin.
Sign up to get accress to the FREE Yoast SEO academy
Make SEO even easier with Yoast SEO Premium
Get the Yoast AI title & meta description generator, extra keywords and more advanced analysis, access to all online courses, 24/7 support, and much more!