Nothing can be more infuriating than trying to get your Yoast traffic lights from red to green. Sometimes it can feel like you’re wasting hours and still not getting anywhere.
Passive Voice: Red. Flesch Reading Ease: Red. Go stick it up your Yoast! What is a Flesch reading score anyway? Every time I saw it out loud I picture Swamp Thing or some other “fleshy” monster emerging from a bog to judge my writing as not being easy on the eyes. So judgy. You try writing about toilet brushes and hit all the marks there Mr. Fleschy.
One thing I’ve found is that it’s easier to write your content WITH Yoast, rather than write it and then hope and pray it checks off all of the SEO requirement boxes. (SPOILER ALERT: It RARELY does)
And to help that process along, I’m here with a handy little checklist and article to guide you through. Keep this handy. A lot of this you might already know, but it’s easy to forget all the steps when you’re working on a blog post. Ready? Let’s get them green lights flashing and your search ranking poppin.
Step 1: Keywords
Of course you know this. You probably obsess over this. But chill. Just get your keywords set using your favorite research tools and don’t obsess too much. Remember Google wants quality not just keyword quantity.
After you’ve chosen your keywords you’re going to want to make sure they appear in the right spots. Here’s a quick rundown on some of the spots not to miss throwing in those keywords:
- Put the keyword toward the beginning in your title.
- Add the keyword into some of your Headings but don’t go crazy. You’ll get flagged for including the same keyword in every header. Plus it’ll just look awful and keyword stuffy.
- Include it in your opening paragraph
- Sprinkle keywords within your paragraph like you’re throwing jimmies on a sundae
Please try to follow this organization of content:
Step 2: Title
- Begin with the Main Keyword
- Avoid catchy titles that don’t help a reader understand what the topic is about. Example: WRONG: “You Can Beat the Odds” RIGHT: “How a Plant-Based Diet Can Help You Lose Weight
- Use CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to provide an SEO-friendly title (We reserve the right to change the title, however, to be sure that it is optimized for search).
Step 3: Readability
Passive Voice
Flesch Reading Ease
- Don’t start three consecutive sentences with the same word.
- Subhead distribution
- Paragraph length
- Limit sentences to ideally no more than 20 words
- Use transition words at the start of sentences
Step 4: Links
Step 5: Subheads
Step 6: Meta description
Step 7: Image
- Please use secondary keywords in subheadings.
- Limit your content under each subheading to less than 300 words
- At least one subheading should have the main keyword in it.
Internal Links
Internal links are links to other pages on our site. We encourage you to become familiar with what we have already published on your topic. If you find an article on our site that relates to your article, please link to it.
- Make sure the linking word or phrase for internal links is relevant to your story’s keywords or phrases.
- If we have a story that is related to your topic, but it doesn’t work to link to it in the body of the story, please type in caps where you think we could include it as a related story link.
- We may also add additional related links to your article.
- These types of links help enhance TDWI’s Domain Authority and the Authority of your story. All of this helps with SEO.
- Here is an example of what a related story link looks like: Here are other stories about sleep on TDWI
External links (at least two, best case four)
Article Length
- Articles should be at least 1000 words, but we encourage longer articles when writers want to dive more deeply into a topic.
- A 1500-2500 word in-depth article will be even more desirable to Google. However, please do not pad your article with repetitive information just to reach a certain word length.
Cite Sources Properly
We prefer that you use references that are either in peer-reviewed literature (e.g., from PubMed) or come from high quality medical sites (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Medscape, etc.). We ask that you provide a link to the reference or use endnotes so that our readers can easily learn where the information was derived from. These types of links increase the Domain Authority of TDWI and the overall authority of your story.
- Make sure to always put concepts into your own words and avoid unintentionally copying sentences from research materials. Double-check your work for unintentional copying by using Plagiarism Checker.
- Please use endnotes if you have references that you haven’t provided a direct link to within your article, we prefer this style. Use a superscript to cite the content.
- We welcome you to include additional materials for readers. List any: books, articles, videos, social posts, tweets, or PDFs that can help strengthen your content.
Ensure Readability
All of our articles, even those about technical or complicated medical issues, need to be accessible to a wide variety of readers. Don’t “dumb down” or oversimplify your topic. Instead, use language that makes complicated topics easier to understand for the general health information consumers who are searching for answers to their health-related questions.
Use standard English conversational language. Explain or link to definitions of words or concepts that required further explanation. The goal is to make it easy for your readers to understand your content.
Snippet
Include a 150-200 word snippet that uses the keyword
Proofread
Please make sure grammar, spelling, structure are error-free. We suggest running your piece through Grammarly* to help with proofreading. Double-check the validity of your sources. It is a top priority to keep our information accurate and up-to-date.
Plug in your content here: