The Essential Starter How-To for SEO Writing in WordPress

The number one goal when creating a blog post is getting people to find it.  If no one can find it, then your voice is not heard, and your point is defeated.  Luckily, with WordPress and the Yoast SEO plug in, there are certain steps you can take to ensure that your content isn’t overlooked.

For this article, we will look top to bottom, at some of the most helpful tools when creating a post in WordPress.

Title

When you begin a new post, the first thing you see is the title section. This is the post title that readers see when they open the article on your website. You must be specific with this title as it plays a major role in getting your content to the top of a search.  That means it should be between 50 and 60 characters and should contain your main keyword.

Permalink/Slug and Stop Words

Directly below the title is the option to edit the permalink.  This is one of two places that you can adjust this.  The other, in the Yoast SEO plugin, called “slug.”  The permalink is how the article name will appear in the address bar.  The slug is specifically how the article title will show within the URL.

The slug should be like your title, but without stop words.  Stop words are extremely common words that most search engines skip over to save space in their databases, and to speed up the process of crawling/indexing.  Basically, you want the slug to be the shorthand version of your actual title. Here is a list of stop words to avoid when making a slug.

Body

I recommended that you write your blog post in a program like Word and then paste it to WordPress. This gives you the chance to save a copy outside of WordPress itself and it is nice for cutting down on page distractions.

The blog should be no less than 300 words and should contain some form of visual aid.  What you use depends on the content of your article, but it is helpful to the reader when they can see an image that expands on what they’re reading.  Just make sure it is relevant and helpful.  You don’t want to just add a picture because you can.

To add an image, choose the spot in the post where you want to insert, and click on “add media” at the top of the body.

Alternative Text for Images

Once you’ve picked an image, it is important to know how to enter the “Alternative Text” (or Alt Text).  This tells search engines what your image is about and gives users a better chance of stumbling across your blog when doing an image search.  You should give a clear and concise description of what the image is and include the keyword.

This applies to both images within the text and the featured image, which you can add in a tab on the bottom right of the page.  Your featured image is the image that is shown on the articles or blog page of the website.  One common mistake is using the image title as the alt text.  This means that whatever the image is saved as in your computer is used.  Usually it looks something like “image001.jpg.”  This gives search engines no way to differentiate your image from any other picture on the internet.

Headings

Just below the “add media” button, you’ll see a drop down which says “paragraph.”  This is where you differentiate between paragraph text and headings.  Anything in the actual body will use paragraph.  The title of the post automatically uses the H1 (Heading 1) setting so within the post you should use H2 and H3 and so on for other headings.  Using correct headings is an important part of blogging and should be used for effective SEO writing, especially in longer posts.

Links

It is important to make good use of links within your article.  There are internal and external.  Internal links bring the reader to another place on your page and increase the amount of time that they spend on your website.  External links can go wherever you want to take them.  However, if you’re writing about sports and take them to something about computers, you won’t keep their attention.  So, keep it relevant and make it something that adds value to your piece.

Yoast SEO Plug In

Below the body, you should see a section with the label “Yoast SEO.”  This is one of the most helpful tools on the page.  It gives a preview of what your post will look like on a search engine and gives advice on how to optimize based on keywords and readability of the text itself.  You can click back and forth between the readability and focus keyword tabs to receive advice on how to improve the different aspects.

Next, click on edit snippet and you can edit all the components of your preview.

SEO Title

This is your post title followed by branding.  For this article, this would be “The Essential Starter How-To for SEO Writing in WordPress– PixelRocket.”  It should be 40-65 characters and should include the main keyword.

Below the SEO title is the slug which we covered with the permalink earlier.

Meta Description

This should be 156 characters or less, it should include your keywords, and it should entice the user to click on it.  This is where you want to tell them why they should take the time to read what you have to say.  Think of it as the sales pitch for your article.  There are countless articles and website that are trying to give them similar information.

Focus Keywords and Analysis

Below the meta description is where you enter the focus keywords.  The analysis portion helps with each aspect of including those words in the article and titles.  This section will give you advice and tell you when your post is fully optimized.

Conclusion

With the amount of information on the internet, it can be challenging to direct attention to content.  However, if you combine good content with the steps here to optimize blog posts, it can be done.  Below is a checklist of items that give a basic review of the topics discussed in this post.  We wish you luck with your future blogging and hope you have enjoyed this article.

Checklist

Title:

• 50-60 characters
• Includes main keyword

Permalink/Slug:

• NO STOP WORDS

Body:

• More than 300 words
• Image(s) for visual aid
  • Alt Text- contains keyword and describes image
    • Not “img001.jpg”
  • Headings
    • Title (H1) vs Subtitles (H2, H3, etc)
    • Contain keywords
  • Links
    • Internal – keep readers on site
    • External – give helpful info to support article

Yoast SEO:

• Readability
• Focus Keywords
• SEO Title
  • 40-65 characters
  • Includes main keyword
• Meta Description
  • 156 characters or less
  • Includes keywords
  • Entices reader to pick you over other posts