There are many options related to implementing SEO on a WordPress site. Here at Firestarter we unequivocally suggest Yoast SEO as many of the features are easy to understand and keeps you out of the weeds when you are looking to implement an SEO campaign.
INITIAL INSTALLATION
When you look to set up your plugins in WordPress, some can be pretty complicated to setup. You may have to have an API integration detected, change your .htaccess files, or manually input most of the data for full functionality. Yoast SEO offers a simple installation without all of these complications. You can load into the WordPress backend, go to your plugins, add the new plugin, and activate. That is quite literally it. Now, once you look to implement, things get to be a little more hands-on, but Yoast makes it easy and understandable for the average user and serves as a powerhouse tool for SEO providers like us.
IMPLEMENTATION
Our SEO project management team lives within the Yoast dashboard when we are looking to implement campaign strategies. One of the most time-consuming processes in SEO implementation is changing the meta titles. Your meta titles are among the first factors Google sees when it goes to crawl the HTML on your page. On a Google search results page, your titles display in the manner shown here:
And on your physical pages (Firestarter’s home page shown as an example), your meta title shows up here:
Once you get down into the code, it is one of the first items on the page (found on row 10):
When considering Google as a robot that crawls through the code on your site, these items at the top of the code set the stage for what the robots are going to be looking for as they spread throughout your site and report back. Without title optimization, you are making Google’s job much harder to pick out what you should be ranking for. Many folks who haven’t done SEO in the past have titles like “Home – FirestarterSEO”. In a way, you are looking to rank for the keyword “Home” when someone is searching for you. Having something like “Denver SEO Company” instead points Google in the right direction from the start to understand the types of words it should be looking for as ranking indicators.
To execute these changes, Yoast has implemented what they call a “Bulk Editor” where you can have an alphabetical list of every page on your site with the current meta information and a field to add something new. Having the ability to implement the ever-important titles in this manner allows an implementer to jump in and quickly change the titles, top to bottom. This saves us a large headache and allows results to start populating quickly.
RELEVANT SEO INTEGRATIONS
Most SEO companies have a pretty extensive list of the data sources they are looking to collect from. Some of the core options include Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Rank Trackers, and more. Attempting to unify these items can be daunting, but Yoast makes it easy. They have links to request the needed information and easy to follow instructions to connect most of your tools to the system for seamless tracking. Connecting all of these different avenues ensures nothing falls through the cracks and all of your SEO bases are covered.
CONTINUED SUGGESTIONS & SUPPORT
Yoast also does an excellent job of alerting you to potential opportunities in your SEO efforts. From suggested keywords to interlinking your pages, Yoast has you covered. We have also had a few implementations where things were thrown off as they tried to communicate with outdated systems in the backend, or previous SEO plugins. Yoast has always been massively supportive when we have had errors, no matter how small. This kind of hands-on, timely support has led to us being fully committed to using this software, and even writing a blog about it!
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us whenever you’d like. We are always interested in discussing new strategies and potential time savers as they relate to SEO and beyond!
