Writing Good SEO Content

How to Create Good SEO Content in WordPress with Yoast

Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank

Want to get more attention in sites like Google? It’s going to rely on how well you create good SEO content in WordPress. But it goes beyond just simply knowing a few excellent keywords. Today, I’ll break down readability and what it means for attracting and keeping visitors.

I cannot guarantee that you’ll reach the top of the search results. But I can tell you how much of a positive impact this will make on your site. This is based on both my personal experience as well as those of my clients.

In this WordPress SEO tutorial, I’m demonstrating using Yoast SEO. It’s an incredibly beneficial plugin that will help straighten out your content while giving you tips to improve.

It’s one of the first things I install on any WordPress website I create.

Creating Good SEO Content with Yoast

Search engine optimization strategies mean very little if the content you create is poor. And I’m not just talking about keywords and phrases, either. Yes, keywords will help. But there’s far more involved in writing good articles.

It relies mostly on your ability to write readable content that engages the audience. Because if people don’t like to read your material, they’re not going to stick around.

Now, I use Yoast SEO as it’s helped me create a vast array of content. Not only do I use it for myself, but most of my clients do as well. I’ve also used Yoast to write articles for clients on Textbroker.

Something you need to keep in mind, though, is that Yoast wants you to have a 300-word blog post minimum. This is almost a universal requirement for most experts to get content ranking in Google.

So, let’s see how to add SEO to WordPress content.

Finding Keywords and Keyphrases

OK, the first thing you want to do is find some good keywords. After all, you want people to find your content in search results. This means you need to figure out how they will search to find your article.

And the more focused the article is, the greater are your chances of attracting a niche audience. These people are often more likely to read the entire post, explore the site, and leave comments.

What topic are you going to write about today, and how will you structure it so readers enjoy the material? It’s all about figuring out searcher intent and meeting his or her needs.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public

I’ve been using Answer the Public since it was first created years ago. By entering a single word or phrase, the system will go through its database and find you the most common questions people ask search engines for the topic.

Answer the Public can give you a slew of ideas for both articles and things you can add to the post to make it stand out.

Google’s Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads shows you the most searched terms during any specific time frame. It also shows you the value range advertisers pay for those terms.

This can help you find semantic indexing words and help you discover new ways to write the piece you’re working on.

Google’s People Also Ask Section

People Also Ask

Any time you search a term in Google, you’ll often see the “People also ask” section on the results page. This is an invaluable tool for creating good SEO content.

Not only will it help you identify what searchers are looking for, but it also gives you something to strive for inclusion. Can you answer one of those questions better than what’s there?

Using Ahrefs

Ahrefs Tools

Normally, I don’t promote paid services that do not have a free version. But in this case, I can’t state how effective Ahrefs is at identifying keywords and phrases.

Just copy and paste the URL of a page you want to emulate or compete with, and Ahrefs will show you the volume, estimated monthly traffic, and what position the article hits in Google search results.

It’s an incredibly useful recon tool when competing with larger websites.

Writing for Your Audience

With your primary keyword or phrase ready and secondary terms written down somewhere, it’s time to create some content.

For many, this is perhaps the most difficult part of creating good SEO content. This is because it relies on how you write, how informative you are, and whether someone can sit and read the post without getting bored.

Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do to help you with this particular process. I can, however, give you a few tips to help you along.

  • Know who you want to target with the article.
    Are you writing a science paper, medical report, or legal document? If not, keep it simple. The average person on the Internet have an 8th-grade reading level.
  • What are you sharing?
    The type and style of content you create is going to weigh heavily on how you create the blog in general.
  • Are you willing to learn and grow as a writer?
    You don’t need to have a degree to become a writer. But, the more you learn about the process of putting together comprehensible sentences, the better.

The bottom line is that you have to create the content. You have to engage your audience. And you have to put together a website people will want to visit again and again.

Knowing Header Formats for Good SEO Content

Understanding how header formats work helps you in a myriad of ways. First of all, they help break up the content while letting visitors know where to find specific snippets of content.

Secondly, they’re often used in Google Featured Snippets. This is the segment that shows a website’s content at the top of the search results regarding your search term.

And it’s a proven fact that getting into a featured snippet boosts recognition and clicks to that particular page.

Featured Article Snippet
Lists often appear as Featured Snippets

Luckily, it’s not all that difficult to learn how to properly set up your headers.

Checking the SEO Tab of Yoast

When creating good SEO content, you want to keep an eye on Yoast’s SEO tab. This will analyze all the different segments that make for a great article for both humans and search engine crawlers.

Yoast SEO Analysis

One of the great things about this plugin is that it provides tips and links to resources about each point in the analysis. You’re also able to highlight many of the sections in content to see what needs fixing.

If you can turn the SEO color to green, you’ll have a much better chance at getting seen in search engines.

Another element of Yoast SEO that I want to point out is only available in the premium version of the tool. It’s the “Insights” option.

Yoast Insights

By taking a look at your word usage throughout the article, you can see if you’re focused on the topic. If one of your words doesn’t make sense in the list, then you need to restructure the text.

Personally, I liked how Yoast used to show long-tail keyphrases as opposed to single words. But, here we are.

My point is that even the free version of the plugin can help guide you to writing good SEO content for appeasing search engines.

Analyzing Yoast’s Readability Results

The second half of using Yoast is going over the Readability analysis. This is more important in terms of building an audience. While the SEO tab is great for search engines, Readability is what matters to people.

Yoast Readability Analysis

In this section, you’ll find things like the use of passive voice, subheading distribution, sentence length, and using transition words.

One of the more important aspects, though, is the Flesch Reading Ease score. This tells you how easy it is for someone to read your content, and often signifies if your audience will ever come back.

This is Because you don’t want your content to be too difficult. That is unless you’re writing something with heavy and advanced terminology, such as a research paper or legal documents.

The higher the number, the easier it is to read the content. Usually, I strive to keep scores over 70…depending on the article I’m writing.

Like the SEO tab, Readability is full of links to Yoast’s resources regarding why each point is important. It’ll also give you tips and tricks to improve your scores.

From a professional standpoint, I have yet to have a revision request from a Textbroker client by making sure all elements in Readability are green.

Creating Good SEO Content Relies On You!

Even though Yoast is probably one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress, writing stellar posts is completely up to you. It won’t matter what tools or tips you use if you’re not creating good SEO content.

Spend time working on your skills to engage an audience. Give them what they want to read and many of your search engine optimization techniques will fall into place.

Michael Brockbank
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