How to Yoast your post

10 July 2019 | 34 Comments | Tags Content SEO, Internal linking, Readability, SEO copywriting, Yoast SEO

Do you want your articles to be as well optimized as possible? Do you aim for that number 1 position in the search results? And do you madly chase traffic and clicks? It’s not easy to achieve all these things entirely on your own, but luckily, Yoast is here to help. In this post, we’ll talk you to the process of optimizing your post in the best possible way. We’ll explain the five steps on how to Yoast your post.

Writing comes first, Yoast comes second

Optimizing your post is important, but should never come first. Writing has three phases. It doesn’t really matter if you’re writing a blog post or an article, or a novel even. First, you prepare, then you write and finally you edit. In that final editing phase, you will be able to Yoast your post.

Preparation is key

Before you start writing an article you should ask yourself some questions: What will be the main message of your post? What do you want to tell people? And: who are my readers? What search terms do I want to be found for?

You need to know who you are writing for and what their goal, or search intent is. What does that mean for the keywords you should use to be found in the search engines? You should take some time to think about what you want to tell your audience and what the structure of your text will look like. Preparing your blog post is crucial. If you do not think about these questions long and hard, you’ll make mistakes like addressing the wrong audience, focusing on the wrong keywords or writing an article that’s badly structured and unfocused.

Write your content

After you’ve thoroughly prepared your blog post or article, you can start the writing phase. Make sure to start with filling out your focus key phrases and synonyms. What are the terms you want to be found for?

Writing should be something you just do. In the preparing-phase you have thought about what you’re going to write, so, in the writing phase, you should just go with the flow. Don’t overthink. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You’ll have the third – and most important phase- to correct and Yoast your post.

Editing: let’s Yoast it!

In the final phase, the editing phase, you’ll be able to really Yoast your post. So, let’s look at the five steps you should take in order to optimize your post to the max.

Make sure your text is readable
The first step on how to Yoast your post is to check out our readability analysis. You could keep an eye on our readability analysis during your writing phase too, if you like. If your overall readability analysis is green, you’re good to go. But, perhaps, you use sentences that are a little bit too long. Or, you have been using the passive voice too often. Correct those readability issues and make your text nice and easy to read. Check out our article about the readability analysis for more tips.
Check out your snippet preview
You want people to click on your results in the search result pages. In order to make your result stand out, you need to write a kickass meta description. Let people know they’ll find what they’re looking for on your site! So make an effort and choose a title and a meta description that stand out. Read our article on how to use Yoast SEO to write an awesome meta description if you want more practical tips.
Which SEO bullets need improvement?
The third step on how to Yoast your post is to check out the SEO analysis. Which aspects of your SEO need improvement? Perhaps you should use your keyword or its synonym a bit more often? Or maybe you’re already overdoing it? What about headings and images?

Check out the problems and improvements the Yoast SEO analysis indicates. Usually, you can easily make some tweaks that’ll make your copy a little better optimized for the search engines. But don’t overdo it! You do not need all green bullets. If your overall SEO bullet is green, you’re good to go!
Add those internal links
To really Yoast your post, we would advise you to take some time to think about your internal linking structure and to work on improving it. Are you linking to your most important articles? Are you linking to the articles that are most closely related to the article you’re currently writing? Make sure your site structure is tip-top. This will pay off in terms of rankings. Read more about the power of internal linking in our article about why you should use Yoast internal linking.
Read and reread!
Our SEO analysis is a tool. It is not just any tool, we’ve thoroughly evaluated all of the checks in a recent recalibration project. That being said, it remains a tool. You should always think for yourself. Read your blog post after you’re done editing and optimizing. Reread it. Let other people read it. That’s the final step to get your blog post to that next level.

Yoast your post

Writing is hard. Optimizing your post is hard. Yoast tries to make it a bit more easy for you. We’ll check things and make suggestions for improvements. We’ll help you to Yoast your post. But in the end, it’ll always remain hard work.

Good luck! Let’s Yoast it!

Marieke van de Rakt

Marieke was head of strategy and former CEO at Yoast. After the sale of Yoast to Newfold Digital in 2021 she is no longer active at Yoast in 2023. Marieke, together with her husband Joost, actively invests in and advises several startups through their company Emilia Capital.

Become a Yoast SEO pro series

« Previous post “Yoast SEO hates my writing style!” Next post » Yoast SEO's hidden features that secretly level up our SEO

Coming up next!

Event
WordCamp Europe
June 08 - 10, 2023 Team Yoast is Attending, Organizing, Speaking, Sponsoring WordCamp Europe. Click through to see who we'll be there, what we'll do there and more! See where you can find us next »
SEO webinar
Yoast SEO news webinar - June 20, 2023
20 June 2023 Our head of SEO, Jono Alderson, will keep you up-to-date about everything that happens in the world of SEO and WordPress. All Yoast SEO webinars »

34 Responses to How to Yoast your post

hello1989 • 4 years ago

I do not know why I do not appear in the searches for real village or even the name of my company.

Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong?
- Hanneke • 4 years ago
  
  Hi there!
  
  If your post doesn’t rank, but your bullets are green you could take a look at this post.
  Good luck!
  
  Hanneke
Lucy Lee • 4 years ago

Hey Marieke, Thanks for the great Yoast tips. Will definitely try it out in my next blog article. This was definitely very informative, especially for a beginner like me.
Ataur • 4 years ago

Hi, thanks a lot for your tips. I am using your free seo tools and getting benefits too for more than 6 months. But at early, seobility would be green but now it makes just orange where as only flesch word bullet shows red. Except this all are green. What can I do for getting seobility Green
Stijn Spijker • 4 years ago

Thank you for the tips! Is there a way how I can like the articles at Yoast? Like on Facebook (thumbs up).

Thank you!
- Willemien Hallebeek • 4 years ago
  
  Hi Stijn, thanks so much! If you follow us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you should see most of our new posts in your timeline. We’d love to see you like (or even share) them :-) Here’s our Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/yoast
Ghina • 4 years ago

Hi Marieke,
When I‘m writing a new blog post, could Yoast tell me which other posts should link to the new post in Free Plugin?
- Willemien Hallebeek • 4 years ago
  
  Hi Ghina, Thanks for your question. This isn’t possible in the free version of Yoast SEO, but it does work in Yoast SEO Premium: https://yoast.com/reasons-to-upgrade/
  - Lutfor Rahman • 4 years ago
    
    Thanks. It solves problems.
Zaky • 4 years ago

appreciated. I just started SEO by Yoast. but not available the keyword setting, only focus keyword supply. Might be better using the Premium one.
Thank you…
- Willemien Hallebeek • 4 years ago
  
  Hi Zaky, Great you’ve started using Yoast SEO! Not sure what you mean with the keyword setting? If you enter your keyphrase in the focus keyphrase field, the SEO checks should tell you what to improve. Here’s a detailed guide on choosing your focus keyword: https://yoast.com/focus-keyword/ Perhaps that helps?
Dr.Amrita Basu • 4 years ago

I liked the tips for better preparation of what to write and also the use of readability tips.Thanks for making life easier.
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  thank you!
Gerard • 4 years ago

I have been going through cleaning up an old site with the SEO Yoast free version. I have already seen improvement in the rankings. Including some page one rankings. Thanks for such a great product.
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  thank you! Keep up the good work!
Matt • 4 years ago

Much appreciated. I just started blogging a few weeks ago, and I always Yoast it until my readability and SEO are green and green! The rest will come with time. Thank you!
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  thank you! that’s nice to hear!
Jack • 4 years ago

Does Yoast offer a version of the app that works without using WordPress? Like a standalone app?

I do a lot of freelance writing for others and I am usually writing in Word. Right now I have to cut and paste into a new WordPress article in one of my blogs, then make the corrections for SEO and readability, then cut and paste back into Word.

Is there a faster, better way?
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  We have been working on such a tool and it’s still somewhere on our roadmap. It is a good idea for sure. Can’t promise you anything about when we’ll be rolling it out…. we have a lot of plans and limited development capacity.
David • 4 years ago

Hi Marieke,

What i really would appreciate is a reverse link building suggestion. What do i mean?

I‘m writing a new blog post. And it would Be great if yoast could Tell me, which other posts should link to the new post.

Have a nice day,
David
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  That’s our internal linking suggestions. We have that in our premium plugin. Read more about it: https://yoast.com/why-use-yoast-internal-linking/
Kris Grey • 4 years ago

One of the difficulties I have is with text length having to be 300 words which is often very difficult to achieve as I sell vintage items and you can only say so much about one product which I may only have a small amount of information about. I am a writer by trade and even I struggle!! Thanks
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  It is difficult with product pages! Do you have our Woo commerce extension? Our Woo Commerce Yoast SEO add-on allows for shorter texts.
Guddu • 4 years ago

Hi Marieke,
I am managing a blog in Urdu (Pakistan Language). Whenever i use yoast to optimize my blog post, it always shows red bullets. Plz, write a guidelines for the bloggers who are using eastern languages like me.
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  We are expanding our languages, but we’re not available in Urdu. Thanks for your feedback, we’re going to look into that!
- Dr.Amrita Basu • 4 years ago
  
  I think Yoast softwsre is not available yet for Urdu.
Christina • 4 years ago

Thanks for these amazing tips to improve the quality of your post. I will definitely implement these amazing tips for my next blog.
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  thank you
Prashant • 4 years ago

i am using free version of Yoast seo plugin and i am doing the same but, i haven’t seen any changes in my ranking yet. So is there any advantage of taking paid?
- Dr.Amrita Basu • 4 years ago
  
  Hi Prashant ,I used the free Yoast for three years and then shifted to the paid one.ThEd best part is with the paid one uou have option of targening multiplr keywords and synonyms unlike the free one with only one.
- Hanneke • 4 years ago
  
  Hi Prashant, maybe you could give Why you should buy Yoast SEO Premium a read!
  
  Hanneke
Liton Biswas • 4 years ago

Hi Marieke,

It’s sometimes not possible to add keyphrase in the first paragraph of the introduction.
But Yoast shows it as a red point.
Is it really hurt SEO?
Thanks in advance.
- ^ Post author
  Marieke van de Rakt • 4 years ago
  
  Totally get that! You should look at our suggestions as merely that suggestions. You don’t have to have all bullets green. In order to score an overall green bullet, you are allowed to miss a few. That’s totally fine. For more info: https://yoast.com/want-green-bullet-wp-seo/
- Marcin • 4 years ago
  
  I think that Liton makes a good point here. It is not always passible to put that keyphrase there, so I wonder if it is that bad for SEO that we should sacrifice the readability, or context, just to do that anyway.