WordPress SEO- You Need This Plugin if You Are Serious

BOTHELL, Wash. - Aug. 28, 2013 - PRLog -- WordPress SEO:  You Need This Plugin if You Are Serious
(originally posted 7/17/2011 – updated 8/27/2013)

If you have a WordPress Blog you probably chose that platform because you were interested in WordPress SEO (http://www.jasonfox.me/seo-services-seattle/), at least indirectly. Just blogging consistently with a strategy over time will get you some good SEO, this is called Content Marketing (http://www.jasonfox.me/content-marketing-is-the-new-seo/).  But there are a bunch of WordPress Plugins (http://www.jasonfox.me/wordpress-blog-intro-wordpress-plugins/) that will help you to make that process more efficient and faster.

I have personally tried most of them and there is no doubt in my mind that there is one that you should be using…

The WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast: (http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/) This plugin is by far and away, not only my favorite WordPress SEO plugin, but my favorite plugin.

WordPress SEO Plugin
Creates Your .XML Sitemap… Automagically, so Google, Bing, and Yahoo can index you better – Replaces Google XML Sitemaps Plugin
Helps you Manage Titles and Meta Description – Replaces ALL IN ONE SEO plugin
Helps you set your Robots Indexing (http://www.jasonfox.me/what-is-a-robots-txt-file/) so you don’t waste your Google Juice
Helps you clean up some of the unneeded links in your Header – Replaces HeadSpace Plugin
Helps you fix your Permalinks for better indexing
Helps you clean up your RSS Feed
Creates Navigation Breadcrumbs, interlinking your site for maximum content indexing – Replaces Breadcrumb NAV XT Plugin
Provides a Tool to guide and analyze the content of each post or page, incorporating.  Optimizing Your Blog Post (http://www.jasonfox.me/blog-post-seo/) is as easy as Red, Yellow, Green.
Helps you create your Google Authorship (http://www.jasonfox.me/google-plus-profile-link-post/) markup
Easily verify your webmasters tools with Google, Bing, and Alexa.
You can add your Facebook Open Graph, and the Twitter Card Meta Data to connect your site to your Facebook (http://www.jasonfox.me/do-social-signals-matter-for-better-search-rankings/) and Twitter (http://www.jasonfox.me/do-social-signals-matter-for-better-search-rankings/).

My Favorite WordPress SEO Feature
The Red, Yellow, and Green Light to highly SEO optimized blog posts and pages.

1.  Scroll down to the bottom of your blog post or page and find the “WordPress SEO by Yoast” box.  Enter your desired Focus Keyword in the tool (it will show you related keywords so you can decide if there is a keyword that might be better suited… ie: More Traffic or Less Competition)

2.  Click the generate SEO title button

3.   Enter your meta description… 139 character snippet from the post

The tool will then give you the initial green Yes or Red No’s

When you have all “Green Yes” you can save the post as a draft.  Chances are on your first couple try’s you are going to get a “Red Light (Your SEO is Bad)” or “Yellow Light (Your SEO is OK)” of course we want a “Green Light (Your SEO is Good)”

Yo can then run the Page analyzer, by clicking the “Check” link.

You can then follow the simple directions to make some tweaks to ensure that you get all green lights.

In the case above you would:

Add more content (25 words is not enough) with a goal of 300+ words
Add a meta description with the keyword and a call to action as to why someone should read this post
Add an <h2>Title</h2> to the post

Once you have made the tweaks and Re Save as a Draft.

Your ultimate WordPress SEO goal is to get the “Green Light” in the upper right hand corner of “Publish Box”

Once you have this Green Light than you can feel confident that your blog post or page is highly SEO Optimized.