BEST PRACTICES

Yoast’s small SEO guide


About this book

What to expect?This book will cover the most important topics that will help you to optimize your WordPress site. We’ll teach you the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and explain the importance of User Experience (UX). Also, we will give the most important insights on improving your copywriting. The chapters are written by our very own experts in the feld of SEO, Navigation, Conversion and Analytics. Learn More?

If you would like to read more about certain topics, you can read one of our other eBooks. We have written an eBook about SEO for WordPress and one about content SEO. Our latest release is an eBook about user experience and conversion rate optimization, and we’re currently working on an eBook about shop SEO.You can also follow one of our new online SEO courses. We currently

offer four courses: Basic SEO, Yoast SEO for WordPress, SEO Copywriting and Keyword research. In these courses, we will teach you how to do SEO in a set of videos, texts and exercises.

Need advice? If you would like practical tips on how to improve your site specifcally, you could order a Website review. In our reviews, we do an in-depth analysis of your website, checking more than 300 important SEO and Usability issues. The results is a clear overview of all the things you are doing wrong (and of the things you are doing right) and tips on how to improve.

The very basics of SEO

What does a search engine do?Before you can start optimizing your site, it is very important that you understand what search engines exactly do. In this chapter, we explain how search engines fnd your site and what the basics of SEO are. Search engine - terminology In this book, we will often write ‘Google’ when we refer to a search engine. Of course, there are many other search engines, like Bing and Yahoo. But since Google pretty much dominates the search engine market, we will only refer to Google in our texts.

What does Google do?How does Google fnd your site?Search engines like Google follow links. They follow links from one web page to another web page. A search engine like Google consists of a crawler, an index and an algorithm. A crawler follows the links on the web. It goes around the internet 24 /7 and saves the HTMLversion of a page in a gigantic database, called the index. This index is updated if Google has come around your website and found a new or revised version of it. Depending on the trafc on your site and the amount of changes you make on your website, Google comes around more or less often. For Google to know of the existence of your website, there frst has to be a link from another site in the index - one it already knows - 
to your site. Following that link will lead to the frst crawlersession and the frst save in the index.Google’s secret algorithm After indexing your website, Google can show your website in the
search results. Google has a specifc algorithm that decides which pages are shown in which order. How this algorithm works is a secret. Nobody knows exactly which factors decide the ordering of the search results. Moreover, factors and their importance change very often. Testing  and experimenting gives us a relatively good feel for the important factors and the changes in these factors. Google’s results page Google’s results page shows 7 or 10 links to sites which ft your search the best. We refer to these results as the organic search results. If you click to the second page, more results are shown.
Above these 10 blue links are two or three paid links, most of the time. These links are ads; people have paid Google to put these links at the top of the site when people search for a specifc term.
Prices for these ads vary greatly, depending on the competitiveness of the search term. Similar ads could appear on the right of Google’s search result pages as well. 

The value of links for search engines It’s very important to have a basic understanding of how Google and most other search engines use links: they use the number of links pointing to a page to determine how important that page is. Both internal links (from your own website) as well as external links
(from other websites) could help in the ranking of a website in Google. Some links are more important than others: links from websites that have a lot of links themselves are generally more
important than links from small websites with little external links. 

Yoast TipThere are different ways how links help you rank. Read about the
most important ways in our eBook SEO for WordPress.Universal searchNext to the organic and paid results, Google also embeds news
items, pictures and videos in its search results. This embedment
is called universal search.What is Search Engine Optimization?High ranking in organic search resultsSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is the profession that attempts to
optimize sites to make them appear in a high position in the organic
search results. In order to do so, SEO tries to ft a website to Google’s
algorithm. Although Google’s algorithm remains secret, almost a
10decade of experience in SEO has resulted in a pretty good idea about
the important factors. In our view, the factors in Google’s algorithm
can be divided into two categories:1 There are on-page factors which decide the ranking of your
website. These factors include technical issues (e.g. the quality
of your code) and more textual issues (e.g. structure of your site
and text, use of words). The textual issues will receive in depth
attention in this book. For more information about technical
issues, check out our blogs about (technical) SEO.2 There are the off-page factors. These factors include the links to
your site. The more other (relevant) sites link to your website,
the higher your ranking in Google will be. We will not go intooff-page factors in this book.Yoast TipNeed help with Search Engine Optimization on your WordPress site?
Use our Yoast SEO Premium plugin! Most of the technical aspects of
SEO you should do are also covered by our free Yoast SEO plugin.
Installing this plugin and using the default settings already improves
quite a lot. It even fxes some minor issues WordPress has. Our Yoast
SEO plugin also helps in writing SEO-friendly content. Our advice is to
download and install either the free or the premium Yoast SEO plugin
on your website. In the premium plugin extra functionality is added
and customers of this premium plugin can ask our team for support.
11Make an awesome website!At Yoast, we give SEO advice
to (small) website owners
and large consultancy clients
(the Guardian, Facebook). Joost
de Valk began his career in SEO
over 10 years ago. And although
Google has changed its algorithm
quite a few times, most of the advice we give at Yoast has remained
the same over the years. And this advice is very simple: you just
have to make sure your site is very good. Do not use any ‘tricks’,
because they usually don’t work in the long run, and might even
backfre. Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that
helps people fnd what they are looking for. Making your website
and your marketing strategy ft this goal is always the way to go. You
can read more about making and maintaining a great website in our
eBook SEO for WordPress. You can learn more about optimizing your
content in our eBook Content SEO.Photo: punkmedia.nl
12Chapter 3Keyword Strategy
13What’s keyword research?Keyword research can be defned as the activity you undertake in
order to come up with an extensive list of keywords you would like
to rank for. Keyword strategy can be defned as all the decisions you
make on the base of that keyword research.
Keyword research is the basis of all search marketing. It starts
with explaining what you do in the language your audience uses.
Keyword research furthermore helps you to discover what you
should be ranking for, or aiming to rank for.Why is keyword research important?Proper keyword research will make clear what search terms are
used by your audience. And this is of great importance. At Yoast,
we regularly encounter clients that have a specifc set of words
they use when referencing their products, while their users use
a completely different set of words. Optimizing for words that
people don’t use of course doesn’t make any sense. Doing good
keyword research makes sure that you use the words your target
audience uses, and therefore makes the whole effort of optimizing
your website worthwhile.Keywords and keyphrasesWe tend to use the word keyword all the time, but we
don’t necessarily mean it’s only one word. ‘WordPress SEO’
14is a keyword, as is ‘Google Analytics plugin’. You can
thus have keywords containing multiple words!
We will refer to these keyphrases as keywords
throughout this chapter.Yoast TipIn our eBook Content SEO, we take you through the process of
executing your own keyword research step by step, provide concrete
examples of keyword research and introduce handy tools you can
use! You can also enroll in our Keyword research training courses to
learn more about keyword research.To consider: make sure keywords ft your siteBe aware that you should be found for terms that ft your site. If we
get crazy and do our very best to let yoast.com rank for ballet shoes,
people would be rather disappointed to fnd our site. They will
probably instantly go back to Google. Ranking on ballet shoes will,
in our case, lead to a massive bounce rate. And a high bounce rate
tells Google that people do not fnd what they are looking for based
on that search term. This will inevitably lead to a lower ranking on
ballet shoes for our site (and totally justifed, we know nothing
about ballet or about shoes for that matter).
15Repeat keyword research regularly!Keyword research is an activity you undertake every now and then.
If you have a clear defnition about the product or service you want
to ‘sell’ with your website, you should be able to come up with
keywords, related keywords en even more related keywords to
make your awesome website (more) fndable. As your product and
the market will evolve, your keyword strategy should do the same.Yoast TipKeyword research is the basis of all search marketing. Read more
about that in this post!Resemble the vocabulary of your audienceThe keywords you want to focus your SEO on, should closely
resemble the vocabulary of your audience. In order to come up with
the proper keywords you really have to get inside the heads of the
people who search for your website. What terms will people use?
How do people search? Which question does your website answer?
You should create a list of all search terms people could use and
think of combinations and nuances within these search terms.
16Keyword research tools to useMaking a list remains hard. And up until a few years ago, doing
your keyword research was much easier. You could simply check
Google Analytics to see on which terms people found your website.
That is no longer possible. So you’re pretty much left in the dark
about the terms people use in search engines to end up at your
website. Luckily, there are some other tools which can make your
keyword research a bit easier:Google Adwords Keyword PlannerUse the Google Adwords Keyword Planner to fnd new and related
keywords, but ignore the search volume data! The search volume data
in the planner is really only useful for keywords that you’re actually
spending money to advertise on. Otherwise, these volumes are not
reliable. While not really helpful to decide which keyword is most
used by your potential audience, Google Adwords Keyword Planner
makes a useful tool in coming up with ideas for potential keywords!Yoast SuggestsJoost developed his own keyword research tool to come up
with keywords as well! Yoast Suggests uses the Google Suggest
functionality you know from searching in Google. It fnds the
keyword expansions Google gives and then requests more of
them. So if you type ‘example’, it’ll also give you the expansions
for ‘example a…’ till ‘example z…’ etc. Just go on and try it and fll
out some of your potential keywords. It’s a great way to quickly
fnd more long tail keywords you can focus on.
17Google TrendsGoogle Trends allows you to compare the trafc for sets of keywords.
You can even see the difference for numerous geographical regions.
It’s very important to check Google Trends if you expect that some
of your keywords are seasonal, for instance due to regulations,
holiday seasons etc.Figure 1: compare trafc for sets of keywords in Google TrendsYour internal search engineWhat are people looking for on your site? These terms are keywords
in the vocabulary of your actual audience and should defnitely be
added to your keyword list. Do not forget to look at the keywords
people flled in that didn’t get any results: this was stuff people
were expecting but didn’t fnd. You can look into the results of your
internal search engine with MonsterInsights Pro.
18ConclusionThese keyword research tools should make it easier to create a list
of relevant search terms. You should make sure to create awesome
landing pages for keywords you want to be found on. You should
also think about cornerstone content articles and a great internal
linking structure in order to make your SEO strategy complete.
In the next chapter we’ll tell you more about site structure.
19Chapter 4Site structure
20About this chapterIn this chapter we will give advice on how to set up or improve
the structure of your site. We will explain why it is important to
structure your website wisely. Subsequently, we will show you
how to setup an ideal site structure. And, we will provide tips on
how to (quickly) improve the structure of your site without totally
disrupting the core of your website. Want practical tips applied
to your website? Our Site review-team can help you optimize your
website even further!Why is site structure important?In the previous chapter of this book, we explained all about keyword
research. For a lot of people who want to improve their rankings, it
makes sense to think about keywords. But what does the structure
of your website have to do with your ranking in Google? For many
people, this remains unclear. In this chapter, we will therefore try
to explain the importance of having a good site structure. We will
explain what an ideal site structure looks like and how you can
improve upon your own site structure. For hands-on tips about optimizing your structure (like updating your internal link structure and
evaluating your sections), read chapter 9 of our eBook Content SEO!Yoast TipA good structure is well categorized, and pages within it only link to
other pages on the same topic. We explain it all in his post Intelligent
site structure for better SEO.
21Two reasons why site structure is importantIn our opinion, there are two main reasons why site structure
is an important ranking factor:1 A decent structure makes sure Google ‘understands’
your siteThe way your site is structured will give Google important clues
about where to fnd the most important content. Your site’s
structure determines whether a search engine understands what
your site is about, and how easily it will fnd and index content
relevant to your site’s purpose and intent. A good site structure
could thus lead to a higher ranking in Google.
By creating a good structure, you can use the content you’ve written
that has attracted links from others to help other pages to rank as
well. Your site’s structure can help spread some of that link juice
to the other pages on your site. On a commercial site, that means
that you can use the quality content you’ve written to boost the
search engine rankings of your sales pages too.2 A decent structure makes sure you do not compete with
your own contentOn your website or weblog, you will probably write multiple articles
about similar topics. At Yoast, we write a lot about SEO. If we would
write eight different articles about SEO, Google would not know
which of the articles is the most important one. If we didn’t solve
this with our site structure, we’d be competing with our own articles
22for a high ranking in Google. Solving this problem with a good
internal linking structure will thus result in higher rankings.Yoast TipClean up your site once in a while! Read this post on how to clean up
your site structure.The ideal site structureIn theory, you should build your site as a pyramid. On top of the
pyramid is your homepage and under the homepage are a number of
other pages (categories). These pages in turn refer to even more pages.Figure 2: the structure of your website should look like a pyramidFocus keyword and site structureUsing the Yoast SEO plugin allows you to choose a focus keyword
and to optimize your post using the features of the Content Analysis
tool. Some people seem to think that every post should focus on
23the same keyword. This is not the case. In fact, every post should
have a different focus keyword. Subsequently, posts about similar
topics should be linked to each other.Keyword strategy and site structureYour keyword strategy and the way you structure your site should
be related. In a proper keyword strategy, you would have thought
about common, competitive keywords as well as more long tail
niche search terms.
A similar dichotomy should be made in your site structure. Pages
focusing on more common search terms should appear high in your
pyramid, while pages optimized for more long tail keywords should
appear in a lower part of your site structure. These long tail pages at
the bottom of the pyramid should then be linked correctly to the
pages higher in the pyramid. Read this post to learn more about long
tail keywords.Figure 3: long tail pages should be at the bottom of the pyramid
24Chapter 5Some technical SEO tips
25About this chapterIn the previous chapters, we have given information about keyword
research and site structure. The next step is making sure that Google
can index your website properly and rank your site when people use
these search terms. In this chapter, we will give the very basics of
the technical aspects of SEO. On yoast.com, you can fnd numerous
articles which dive much deeper into technical SEO.Yoast TipIf the technical stuff just isn’t your cup of tea, we can also check all
technical aspects of SEO for you in a Website review.Check your crawlabilityA condition for your website to rank in Google is that Google can
crawl through your site. No crawling, means no saving of your site
in the index and thus no ranking. A quick way of checking whether
a page on your site can be spidered is by doing a Quix SEO check.
Simply go to the Quix SEO check page, enter the URL and check
the results. If it’s not green, you’ve got stuff to fx!Wrong canonicalIf you have two pages holding the same content, that’s problematic
for your rankings. To fx this problem, Google introduced the
canonical link. Matt Cutts explains this in this video. The basics
are that a canonical link is used to indicate to Google which page
you would like Google to display in the search results.
26A canonical link should thus be used when two pages have the same
content. For instance, if you have two URLs that have the same (or
95% the same) content, it would be benefcial to use a canonical link
from the duplicate page to the main page (you can do this with theYoast SEO plugin). If you don’t know which one is the ‘canonical’ one:
pick one. Not doing anything is more hurtful than just picking one.
The problem comes when you’re setting the canonical wrong. This
could occur for instance by inserting a link to a 404 page or simply a
non-existing URL in that canonical link. Also, if your canonical link
refers to a page which is actually very different from the original
page, Google will get confused and your ranking may reduce as well.
So make sure you use the correct canonical links. It’s a powerful
tool, use it wisely.BreadcrumbsBreadcrumbs show the path people take when they click through
your site. They are often visualised on the top of a page so visitors
can see how they navigated. A breadcrumbs path could be Home »
Clothes » Dresses. Using breadcrumbs will allow Google to easily grasp
the structure of your site and this could well result in higher ranking.Yoast TipBreadcrumbs provide a way for the user to easily navigate up and
down your site. Our Yoast SEO plugin makes this even easier!
27Tools to check your site speedIn our Website reviews, we always check the speed of a website.
Obviously, site speed is different when checking it from different
locations. Just one reason why speed tools do not always provide
the same results. That is why we use all these tools in our site
reviews (and do not rely on just one):• Google PageSpeed Insights• Pingdom Tools• Yslow• WebPageTestGoogle Page Speed Insights splits mobile and desktop, Pingdom Toolsallows for multiple locations and Yslow has segmented the checks
nicely. WebPageTest has a few main checks it grades nicely. We
would recommend to use all of these tools to check your site speed.
Combined they give the most complete overview of the speed of
your website.
If you want to test your site speed, you can fll out the url of your
website in these tests. They review the speed of this site and give a
list of options on how to improve upon your site speed. Both Google
and YSlow have reasonably good, though slightly techy, explanations
on the various aspects that you can improve. The other tools show
somewhat less explanation and are a bit harder to interpret.
28Chapter 6User experience best practices
29The user comes frstWhen optimizing your website for search engines, people often forget
that even for Google, the user comes frst. If a user or visitor can’t
fnd what he or she is looking for, they will hit the ‘Back’ button
(bounce) to go back to Google and pick one of the other results. If
this happens more than once, Google will value (read: rank) your
website less for the keyword used to fnd your website. For that
very reason, you want your website to be the best usable website
possible. To achieve this, you can use a number of best practices,
which we will clarify in this chapter. Our team of experts reviews
hundreds of websites a year. If you would like an expert review on
the User eXperience (UX) of your website, you are welcome to order
a Website review.ClarityWhen a visitor fnds your homepage for the frst time, it should
be immediately clear what your website is about, and what your
products and / or services can do for the visitor. If possible, you even
want to communicate your values and standards so the visitor can
immediately bond with your company.
If you want your visitor to immediately bond with your company,
you should have a killer homepage or a killer landing page. The
main difference between the two is that a landing page is designed
to convert the visitor into a customer on that page, where a homepage
is much more like a warm welcome and a guide to different parts of
your website.
30Both a landing page as well as a homepage should include a clear
introduction. In that introductory content, you will explain what
your business is about, and what you can do for the visitors. Use
layman’s language. This is really important. Let me use our business
as an example. Our pitfall is, since we are selling software products
(plugins), we tend to go into technical details too quickly. Instead
of focusing on all the brilliant technical stuff that’s in our plugins,
we need to explain how the plugins will make the business of our
customer better, easier or more proftable. ‘User frst’ is a popular
saying, and in case of the introduction, this is very true.
Some website have an immediate focus on product images instead.
While we strongly advise against using a slider, a lot of websites still
use these. That doesn’t mean that you can’t add that introduction!
If you would write an awesome tagline or slogan, and add that in
the header of your website right above that slider, you could already
trigger people to dig a bit deeper in your website.Content focused designContent is king, right? That also goes for the content placement
in your design. If your sidebar screams ‘Sale!’ or ‘Subscribe!’ or is
crammed with banners, chances are the user is distracted by these
elements instead of being able to focus on the main part of that
page: the content.
31Figure 4: focus on your contentUnfortunately, you can’t control content placement within your
business model all of the time. Some websites simply ‘need’ that
focus on these banners, as these banners are their main source of
income. The dilemma in this is that more focus on the content will
probably give you more visitors, which equals more banner revenue.
But one can only assume that. You would have to test that somehow.
As the effects of content focused design will only become visible
after a certain period of time, this will be very hard to A / B test
(more on tests later); you’ll probably need to run the content focused
variation for a couple of months, and your current revenue will need
to allow for such a test.
32Bottom line is that content focused design will at least reduce bounce
rate. There will be no surplus of banners or other sales items scaring
your visitor away, and it will be immediately clear by focusing on the
actual content if your website is going to provide the answers your
visitor is looking for. The right title and paragraph headers, and an
image about the subject at hand will of course strengthen that belief.Call-to-actionWe can’t ignore calls-to-action, when talking about user experience
and conversion. A call-to-action is an element on a page, that
triggers the user into an action. Oftentimes people think this has
to be a button, but a text link or banner might be used as well.
The call-to-action of a page triggers the user to click to the next
page, order your product or subscribe to your newsletter, just to
name a few. There are a number of best practices for setting up a
good call-to-action.• No clutter. If you add a call-to-action, there shouldn’t be other
elements demanding the visitors attention. No social share
buttons right below your call-to-action button.• Add urgency. Why act now? Because there are ‘only three slots
available’ or ‘just one left’. Webshops use this a lot these days.• Size does matter. Make sure people are able to view the button
without any trouble. Don’t go overboard; there has to be a balance
so you won’t become too aggressive.
33• Add trust. A money-back guarantee will make it ‘easier’ for the
visitor to click your order button. A great testimonial below your
contact form will lower barriers to contact you.• Be clear about the benefits. Mention them near your
call-to-action. For instance, a short bulleted list naming
the main advantages of your product or service can convince
visitors to click the buy button..• Right below your price. Adding the call-to-action right below
your price will entice visitors to click the call-to-action (if they
like your price). No time to hesitate.• Color is important. If your entire design is using blue and orange,
your call-to-action will stand out a lot more if it’s green, for
example. Using blue or orange will make the call-to-action
blend in too much.• Be brief. If your call-to-action is a button, don’t use ‘Buy this
product now and get a 20% discount’ as the main button text.
Use ‘20% OFF’. You get the drift.Mobile designResponsive design is a website design that adjusts to the viewport
of the device you are using to visit that website. Most site templates
can be made responsive by adding extra settings in the CSS or stylesheet of a website. We explained a bit more about this in a post on
our website.
34Designing your website for both desktop and mobile visitors is even
more important since Google rolled out ‘Mobilegeddon’, as we tend
to call it. It’s an update in the way Google ranks websites in their
mobile search results that takes into account if the website is ‘ft’
for a mobile device. Google even created a Mobile-Friendly test
to help you fnd out if your website is mobile friendly.
As your mobile screen is much smaller, most responsive websites
consist of just one column and a lot of scroll distance. This means
that the setup of your mobile website probably needs to be just a tad
bit different from your desktop site setup. You need to decide what
details your mobile visitor is most likely to be looking for. If you
have an actual shop location, people probably need address details
or a phone number. List these in the frst mobile view, so visitors
don’t have to look for them.
In order to decide on the information your visitors need, you might
require some testing and /or a survey. Ask your (mobile) visitors
what their primary tasks on your mobile website are and design
your pages accordingly.
Now besides this so-called task based design, you need an escape.
Just in case someone is really looking for something else. That
escape should be provided by the addition of a search option in
for instance a sticky menu (a menu that is always visible, even
when scrolling down).
35One more thing about mobile websites. Make sure these are blazing
fast. As not all your mobile visitors will have Wi-Fi access, chances
are they need to download all the MBs of your website while trying
not to exceed their carrier data limit. Although mobile internet is
getting faster and faster, if your site loads in less than a second,
that will for sure improve user experience. Common problems
that slow your site down are:• the use of large images on your website, obviously;• too much CSS and JS fles being loaded in the head section of
your website, before the content;• slow loading share buttons, which is the case for a lot of social
WordPress plugins, by the way;• not compressing your website, for instance using Gzip.
There is much more to say about mobile UX, which we also mention
in our article on improving mobile UX on our website.A / B testingA / B testing means you test your original page (A) versus a variation
page (B), to see which version performs better. 50% of your visitors
will be shown version A, and 50% will be shown version B. You will
test for a certain amount of time (usually a week or two), and see
what the differences are between the two versions. In general,
the variation that made you more money or subscribers will be the
variation you will go for.
36However, you do have to actually think about what you’re going
to test. If you’re testing wildly in hope of finding a gold nugget,
A / B testing can be a real waste of time. That’s why you need to
use A / B testing to address important issues on your site. Before
starting any A / B test, make sure you follow, or at least think
about, these steps:1 Use your analytics. You can use your analytics to fnd pages
that have issues. Are you seeing pages that get (a lot of) trafc,
but no sales for instance?2 Find your Intensive Care Pages. You’ll probably fnd more
than one issue in your analytics. That’s why you need to focus
on your Intensive Care Pages. Intensive Care Pages are the
pages that are the most important. These are usually your
sales pages.3 Ideas of improvement. Come up with a way to improve these
pages for your visitors. You can do this by using surveys, or in
some cases just common sense.4 Hypothesize. You need to use hypotheses. This basically means
you write down what you think will change and why this change
will occur, according to you.5 Test the big changes frst. There’s no need to get lost right
away in testing every single small change you can think of.
Combine most of your ideas (to go) into one big change. If this
variation works better, you can then start optimizing for the
smaller things.
376 Double check your fndings. Some A / B testing tools, which we’ll
go into next, are known to have some issues. So always double
check the fndings of your tools to the actual hard data from
your business.
You can read more about planning and hypothesizing your A / B test
on yoast.com.A / B testing toolsThere are a few tools specifcally for A / B testing out there, most of
which are pretty similar. At Yoast we use convert.com, but there are
other tools such as Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely. It’s up
to you to choose whichever you prefer most, but our preference is
clearly Convert Experiments (convert.com).
Apart from the tools performing the actual A / B tests, there are also
a lot of tools that can help you fnd out where your problem areas
lie. Here’s a list of tools you might fnd handy to use:• Google Analytics• CrazyEgg• HotJarData pollutionWhen running tests, you should always keep in mind that data
pollution is a factor. It’s always hard to know whether the result of
your test is actually the result of your test. While running tests on
a website, especially big sites, there are a lot of things ‘polluting’
38your data. This is because there are always things going on on and
around your website; you’re changing and tweaking things, you’re
blogging, you’re being active on social media and so forth. These
are things that can and probably will influence your data.
There’s nothing we can really change about this, but you do have to
keep it in mind. If you don’t want this to happen, you basically have
to run your test for at least a week and not do anything else to your
website. For anyone running a business, this is next to impossible.
The main takeaway here is that you shouldn’t fool yourself. While
the results are good guidelines and probably a good representation,
the results will probably not translate 100% to real life. Of course
this could work both ways. Maybe your winning variation performs
worse than the test showed, but it could also perform better.CheckoutWhile A / B testing is important, there are quite a few things that will
generally work. This section contains a few best practices that your
checkout should probably have. Obviously, don’t mindlessly copy
this, but it’s a good place to start.Progress barThe progress bar is actually feedback to the visitors. It shows them
how far along in the process they are and how much more to expect.
Along with giving the visitors insight, it also makes people want to
fnish the steps, a process called ‘gamifcation’. And to take this
39positive feedback one step further, you could make your progress
bar so you always enter in step 2 out of 4 of the checkout process.
The reason behind this is that the visitor has actually already taken
the biggest step: clicking the buy button. And a decision like this is
something that should be rewarded.Figure 5: progress bar, gamifcationContinue shoppingWhen people enter your checkout, you have to make sure this is not
just a closed off section of your website. Allow people the option to
keep shopping. A simple link to bring people back to the general
shop can be enough.CachingIt happens quite often that people add a product to a cart, but don’t
buy it right away. However, these people are likely to come back to
your website to fnish the transaction. To cater these people, it’s
important to increase the caching time of your shopping cart and
checkout. This basically means your website will remember what’s
in the cart / checkout for a visitor for a longer period of time.
Increase it to about 24 hours and you will have covered most of the
people likely to come back.
40Yoast TipWant to know more about user experience and conversion rate
optimization? Check out our eBook UX & Conversion from a holistic
SEO perspective!
41Chapter 7SEO content writing
42The basics of SEO copywritingThe text on your website is a very important factor in Google’s
algorithm. Google spiders your text and indexes the relevant words.
Your text should thus be written in such a way that your keywords
and search terms have a prominent place. However, using your
keywords too often severely damages the readability of your text.
In this chapter, we will give some practical tips and teach you the
basics of SEO copywriting.Writing your text:  Think before you writeCopywriting is a true profession. It can be quite hard. And copywriting in order to optimize your website for search engines makes
the job even harder. Make sure the mission of your product is crystal
clear. Write it down. Think hard about the message of your text. What
do you want to tell your readers? And what is the purpose of your
text? What do you want your readers to do at the end of the page?
Write down the answers to these questions before you start writing.SEO copywriting:  Use your keywords wiselyOf course, the keywords and search terms you want to be found
for will have a prominent place in your text. But make sure that
you don’t use these search terms too often. If you want to rank
for a certain term - say children’s clothes - and you write a text
which has the words children’s clothes in every sentence, chances
are that your audience will be pretty annoyed. Your text just isn’t
43readable anymore. Keep in mind that Google wants to facilitate its
users. Users want texts that are understandable, well structured
and easy to read.Yoast TipNot sure what keywords ft your audience? Check out this post about
keyword research tools!As a general rule of thumb: try to put down your search terms in
about 1 to 2 percent of your text. Make sure your articles have a
minimum of 300 words. So in an article of 300 words, you should
mention your search terms 3 to 6 times. The minimum of 300 words
isn’t an exact science, of course, nor is the amount of keyword
mentions, but 300 is a decent minimum number of words for an
article that needs to show authority.Yoast TipIn our eBook Content SEO, we explain how to write well structured,
high quality copy that has a clear objective.Use of subheadingsIf you write longer texts and want people to fnd their way in your
articles, you should use subheadings. Headings help Google to grasp
the main topics of a long post and thus can help in your ranking.
Use of subheadings will probably let you get away with using the
44keyword less. Subheadings will lead people, help them scan your
page, and make the structure of your articles that much clearer.
Make sure that your keywords are used in the subheadings, but
do not put your keyword in every subheading (as it will make the
text unreadable). You can read more about headings in one ofMichiel’s posts.
Make sure you add pictures or illustrations to your text which ft
the content of your story. When you put a picture in your article,
always try to add an alt tag (containing your keyword) that is still
descriptive of the image.Beware of over-optimizationOver-optimization in your copywriting can result in Google thinking
you’re trying too hard. Google will then push your website down in
the search results. Always keep your audience in mind and write
texts that are aimed at your audience and easy to read.Yoast TipWriting great copy is a skill you can learn. In our SEO copywriting
training we will help you master this skill. You’ll fnd all our courses atYoast Academy.
45Content writing with the Yoast SEO pluginOur Yoast SEO plugin actually helps you to write a SEO-friendly text.
If you want the help of our plugin you should start by choosing your
focus keyword and entering it in the appropriate box. This is the
most important search term you want people to fnd this particular
page for. Our plugin actually measures many aspects of the text you
are writing and helps with making your text SEO-friendly. We will
describe the most important ones:1 The plugin allows you to formulate a meta description. This
description has to be a short text which indicates the main topic
of the page. If the meta description contains the search term
people use, the exact text will be shown by Google underneath
your URL in the search results.Figure 6: Yoast SEO Premium
462 The plugin analyzes the text you write. It calculates a Flesch
reading ease score, which indicates the readability of your article.
The Flesch reading ease score for example takes into account the
length of sentences. The plugin also checks the use of passive
voice, the length of sentences and paragraphs, and the use of
transition words. It’s a great tool to help you write excellent texts.3 The plugin does a pretty big number of checks.It checks whether
or not you used your keyword in important locations: the articleheading, the title of the page, the URL of the page, the content of
the article and the meta-description. The plugin also checks the
presence of links in your article and the presence of images in the
article. It calculates the number of words and the density of usage
of the focus keyword in the article. Above that, the plugin also
checks whether or not other pages on your website use the same
focus keyword, to prevent you from competing with yourself.
If you write a text which is relatively SEO friendly (based on the
aspects mentioned before) the plugin will indicate this with a green
bullet. Writing pages with green bullets will help you improve the
ranking of the pages on your website. Plus, your visitors will get to
read the quality content they came for.
47Figure 7: the (green) bullets in the Readability tabYoast TipThe gamifcation of the page analysis within our Yoast SEO pluginhelps you to upgrade the SEO-friendliness of your post. It can be a
fun game to get as many green bullets as possible! However, be
aware of The temptation of the green bullet!Keeping your site up to dateThere are many myths around having to keep your site updated
for Google. It’s not entirely clear whether regularly updating
your website leads to a higher ranking in Google. But our advice
is simple: make sure that you regularly work on your website.
Adding an article regularly to your website will do the trick, which is
why a blog is very useful. Adding actual and functional information
to your website will give Google the idea that your website is alive.
If it is not an active website, Google will crawl it less often and it
48might become less appealing to Google to include the page in the
search results. Next to that, make sure you keep your cornerstone
content up-to-date.Yoast TipCornerstone articles are the most important articles on your website.
Read more about this in chapter 11 of our eBook Content SEO!
49Chapter 8About Yoast
50It’s is all about improving the webYoast helps you optimize your website in many ways. With our
blogposts on yoast.com, we give lots of free advice on how to do
this optimization yourself. For those who’d rather have professional
advice for their website, we sell Website reviews. With a review like
this, we’ll go over your entire site to check every bit of it. Based on
our review-fndings, we give you some recommendations on how
to optimize your site’s SEO, user experience, conversion rate and
more! Yoast also offers several plugins, free and premium. These
plugins help to optimize your website in a very easy way. Our most
important plugin is the Yoast SEO plugin, but we also offer Video,Local, WooCommerce and News plugins. Besides that, we offereBooks and courses.
At Yoast we’re constantly evolving and sharing our knowledge. We
try to learn as much as we can and we’re eager to share our fndings
with the rest of the world. At the moment, there are more than
30 people working at the ofce in Wijchen. And we’ve got more
employees working for us from all around the world, to make sure
we’re able to give support on our plugins 24 /7.
In the future, we hope to keep on growing and developing our
company. The importance of a healthy and friendly work environment will stay our number one priority. With the enthusiasm of
our employees and our users, we’re looking forward to all the great
things we’ll be experiencing in the future.