If you want to make money online, you have to pay attention to search engine optimization (SEO). You want to provide cues to search engines that you have the information that a specific market is looking for. Search is what drives people to your website, and without it, you are less likely to make money.
You can get help optimizing your website with help from WordPress SEO. This plugin from Yoast can help you optimize your blog or website, as well as optimize each post that you add to your blog. With the help of WordPress SEO, you can better target the keywords that are more likely to bring in more traffic.
Features of WordPress SEO
There are a number of helpful features with this plugin that can help you boost your position in the search engine results pages. Here are some of the features that come with WordPress SEO:
- Post titles and meta descriptions: You can set up a template for what works for you. This option allows you to enter a focus keyword, and then makes sure that the keyword is included in your SEO title, as well as the meta description. These items help you target a keyword and show that your post is relevant for the searcher. This part alone was so good I canceled my Scribe SEO subscription. It might depend on how you prefer to tackle your on page SEO, but I like that WordPress SEO lets you focus on the keyword you want, while Scribe SEO would attempt to guess what the keyword was supposed to be.
- Canonical: WordPress SEO makes sure that the “original” page is separate from its derivative pages, and it helps you avoid issues related to duplicate content.
- Robots meta configuration: Use this to decide which pages or posts you want hidden. If you wan’t want certain things findable, you can use this feature, which also allows you to noindex specific categories and tags.
- Breadcrumbs: Yoast has a cool code that allows you to show certain taxonomies, and provides complete control over your breadcrumbs, letting you leave the search engine trail you want.
- Permalink clean up: Instead of having links directed at you with strange numbers and additions to your original URL, you can choose to clean all of that up so that the proper URL is what shows up. It’s about keeping things neat and clean, and not diluting your search results.
- XML sitemaps: You need an XML sitemap in order to better direct search engines crawling your site. WordPress SEO creates a multiple page XML sitemap so that everything functions smoothly, and so that the items you want to be hidden from search are also hidden from the sitemap.
- Remove <head> section bloat: While WordPress has been bloating the <head> sections, many people want some of that bloat removed, since some is unnecessary code and can even reveal some of your blog secrets. This plugin makes it easy to erase that bloat.
- Edit specific files: You can easily edit certain files, such as robots.txt and .htaccess, quickly and easily. Use the Files menu in WordPress SEO, and keep everything up to date. I just need to remember this feature as it’s a habit for me to do these edits through FTP.
- RSS enhancements: Part of SEO is including syndication feeds. You want your RSS feed to be optimized as well. The WordPress SEO plugin allows you to decide how you want add content at the beginning or end of posts in your feed, as well as insert specific links.
- Google+ authorship: This plugin makes it very simple to link up authors to their Google+ accounts. Doing this can allow your Google+ profile image and link to show beside your posts in search results.
These are helpful features that can make it easy to enhance your site’s SEO. On top of that, WordPress SEO is free. You can also add modules to make your post more visible in certain areas. You can get the News SEO add-on for free, but you will have to pay if you want the Local SEO and Video SEO modules.
WordPress SEO makes it easier to optimize your website, ranking higher in the search engine results, and drawing more people to your site or blog. And, because you can be more targeted in your approach, it’s also possible to improve your conversions so that you make more money.
Superbly written Tom. I have been in a dilemma over the past 1 week about the SEO plugin I should use, I was confused between SEOpressor, this one and All in one SEO pack. I have been using Yoast and now your post comes in as a stamp of approval. Very neatly described and yes I have been really happy with this plugin and don’t intend to change to another one at all. Thanks for this post. Keep those reviews coming!
Aditya