green lights for serps

Get Green Lights For SERPs

One of the essential, and free, plugins you can use is Yoast SEO. There is a premium version but the free version gives you enough tools to get your pages search engine friendly. You can download this right from your WordPress dashboard.

This gives you a fighting chance of ending up on SERPs (search engine results pages). Additionally your site may not end up listed on the first page, but there are other opportunities. Snippets are those little boxes of questions. These are links to content people have written answering questions about a certain search term.

As a result, if your content is good, you may have a chance of getting on the snippets section of SERPs.

How Yoast Helps You With SERPs

Once to get your WordPress installation done, you are ready to add content. That content includes every page and post to make. Additionally it very important to create SEO friendly pages. That’s where Yoast SEO comes in.

Install Yoast SEO

  • In your WordPress dashboard click on “Plugin”, then click on “Add New”.
  • In the search field type in Yoast SEO, once loaded click on “Install”, then click on “Activate”

That’s as easy as it gets.

Where To Find The SEO Options

You will find the Yoast SEO options at the bottom of each page and post you create. This software will tell you exactly what you need to do to optimize your pages and posts for the search engines. Additionally there are two items you need to attend to. SEO and Readability. Furthermore each one of these has a list of tasks that will be either good to go (green light), or needs to be attended to (red light).

It’s Not Difficult

Even though you will a have an itemized list for each SEO and Readability, the instructions are quite clear. What I normally do is write my content, and then go back and attend to each list item until I get green lights for both.

Below is a SEO report for a page on my site. Just attend to each until you get a green light.

SEO Items

Red Light Items

  • Keyphrase distribution: Have you evenly distributed your focus keyphrase throughout the whole text? Yoast SEO Premium will tell you!
  • Keyphrase in introduction: Your keyphrase or its synonyms do not appear in the first paragraph. Make sure the topic is clear immediately.
  • Keyphrase density: The focus keyphrase was found 6 times. That’s less than the recommended minimum of 9 times for a text of this length. Focus on your keyphrase!
  • Single title: H1s should only be used as your main title. Find all H1s in your text that aren’t your main title and change them to a lower heading level!
  • Keyphrase in subheading: Use more keyphrases or synonyms in your H2 and H3 subheadings!

Green Light SEO Items For The Same page

  • Outbound links: There are both nofollowed and normal outbound links on this page. Good job!
  • Image Keyphrase: Good job!
  • Images: Good job!
  • Internal links: There are both nofollowed and normal internal links on this page. Good job!
  • Keyphrase in SEO title: The exact match of the focus keyphrase appears at the beginning of the SEO title. Good job!
  • Keyphrase length: Good job!
  • Keyphrase in meta description: Keyphrase or synonym appear in the meta description. Well done!
  • Meta description length: Well done!
  • Previously used keyphrase: You’ve not used this keyphrase before, very good.
  • Keyphrase in slug: Great work!
  • Text length: The text contains 2360 words. Good job!
  • SEO title width: Good job!

Readability Items

Green Light Items For The Same Page

  • Word complexity: Is your vocabulary suited for a larger audience? Yoast SEO Premium will tell you!

Improvements (1)

  • Transition words: Only 26.7% of the sentences contain transition words, which is not enough. Use more of them.

Good results (5)

  • Passive voice: You’re using enough active voice. That’s great!
  • Consecutive sentences: There is enough variety in your sentences. That’s great!
  • Subheading distribution: Great job!
  • Paragraph length: None of the paragraphs are too long. Great job!
  • Sentence length: Great!

As you can see that each item can be attended to according to the instructions given. My goal is get green lights on each and every page or post I publish. At least I have done my due diligence and have given myself a chance to get my content noticed.