SEO analysis: what does Yoast SEO check? | Yoast SEO for WordPress
When you write a post, the Yoast SEO plugin will give you feedback
on how to optimize your text. For this, we provide you with two scores:
an SEO score and a readability score. In this video, we'll talk about
the first of these scores, the SEO score. In the next video, we'll take a closer look
at the readability score. The SEO score gives you a good indication
of how SEO-proof your post is.
It consists of various individual
assessments. Each of these assessments will give you
a feedback bullet, colored green, orange or red. Together they form the overall SEO score. The feedback from these checks will point you to the areas
still in need of improvement. Now, let me run you
through the various checks the plugin has. First of all, it's important that there is
some substance to your post. That's why we check
whether your text has a good length. Of course, the length of the text
depends on the topic you're writing about. That being said,
we advise a minimum of 300 words, to have enough room
to let your quality content shine. This minimum is raised to 900 words
if you mark your article as cornerstone content. Cornerstone articles are lengthy articles that provide a lot of information
about one broad topic.
Usually, this topic is essential
for your website's mission. For example, our own mission
is "SEO for everyone", so we create ultimate guides –
like this one here – that provide free information
on the major areas of SEO. The content on these pages
should be flawless. Therefore, the requirements
are generally stricter for articles marked
as cornerstone content. When your article is cornerstone content,
you'll get a red bullet in a lot of cases where you'd still get an orange bullet
if this were a regular article. This is because we really want you
to optimize these articles as well as you can. So you'll get a green score
only if the content is absolutely top-notch.
We've already told you that we run
various checks related to your keyphrase. Of course, we check whether you've set
a focus keyphrase in the first place. In addition,
we check the length of your keyphrase. We recommend a maximum
of four relevant keywords – and by that we mean content words, not function words such as "the" or "and" –
for your focus keyphrase. Longer keyphrases make it harder
to optimize your post. Simply because you need to repeatedly use
a large number of words close to each other, while still trying to create readable copy.
It's important that this keyphrase appears in
a number of important locations in your text. These include the title, the first paragraph,
the subheadings and the image descriptions. All of these locations
are important markers that give readers an idea
what the text is about. Including your focus keyphrase
in these places will make sure that visitors of your site can
immediately grasp the topic of your post. BUT, you don't need to worry about remembering
all of these spots for the keyphrase. Yoast SEO has an assessment
for each of them so that you'll always be reminded
to include the keyphrase in all key locations! In addition to checking
where the keyphrase is used, we also check how often it is used. To get the keyword density, we calculate how many times the keyphrase
has been used in relation to the length of the text.
Since the keyphrase indicates
what the text is about, it's natural that it should occur
a number of times throughout the text. If that's not the case, that might be an indication that your article
is straying away from the main focus. However, the keyphrase
also shouldn't be used too often. This makes your text sound unnatural
to your readers, and Google also doesn't like pages
that have been stuffed with keywords.
So we have set a keyword density margin. If you stay within this margin, you can be sure that your keyphrase is
neither mentioned too little, nor too often. To take this a step further, keyword density can't be separated
from keyword distribution. Let me illustrate this with an example. If you use your keyphrase four or five times
in your first paragraph and then never again, your keyword density if fine,
but your keyword distribution is not. Our keyword distribution check –
which is a Premium feature by the way – will make sure you stay
on topic throughout your text, which will increase your chance of ranking. Apart from looking at keyword usage
within a post, we also make sure that you're using
the right keywords across posts. It's crucial that you set a unique keyphrase
for each post that you write.
After all, you don't want to compete
with yourself in Google's search results. That's why it's important that you
don't optimize a post for a keyphrase you've already used before. To avoid this, we have a handy reminder that will warn you if you set
a keyword you've already used before. Let me quickly remind you that our Premium
plugin will also check for synonyms, related keyphrases,
and different word forms. These are taken into account
for all keyword-related assessments that are relevant. Let's now turn to links. We'd like to make sure that your post
contains at least one internal link. That's a link going to another page
on your site. It should also contain
at least one external link, which is a link going
to a different website than your own. We do this in order to avoid dead ends. Users shouldn't land on a page, read your article, and then not be able
to click through to new content.
When adding an internal link
to one of your other posts, we have a check that makes sure that link
doesn't contain your focus keyphrase. Linking with your focus keyphrase
to another page would tell Google that this other page
is important for that term. You don't want to do that – again – because
you don't want to compete with yourself. Last but not least, the SEO analysis also gives feedback
on all three elements of your snippet. It checks whether you've included
your focus keyphrase in both your SEO title, URL and meta description. In addition, it checks whether
the meta description has a good length. After all, you want to make sure that you've
made use of all the space that's available. You want to describe the content
of your page as best as you can because you want to entice visitors
to click through to your page. Finally, we'll let you know if the SEO title is too long to be fully displayed
in the search results page.
So this was a quick run-down
of our SEO analysis. I know, it's a lot of checks, but that's because the SEO analysis
actually does analyze lots of different factors to make sure
your content is optimized and ready to rank. Before we conclude this overview, I have one last important tip:
not every single bullet has to be green. What's actually important
is that the overall score is green. Good luck!.
