Tag: keyword research

What is search intent?

Marieke van de Rakt

SEO is a way to get more traffic to your website. By ranking high in Google, you attract more people to your site. Eventually, your goal probably is to sell your stuff or to attract more regular visitors. To get more traffic to your site, you optimize your content for words people use. However, to increase your chances to rank and to really convince people to buy your stuff, subscribe to your newsletter or to come back to your website another time, you should take search intent into account. Here, I will tell you what search intent is and how to optimize your articles for search intent.

What is search intent?

Search intent (or user intent, audience intent) is the term used to describe the purpose of an online search. It’s the reason why someone conducts a specific search. After all, everyone who does an online search is hoping to find something. Is someone searching because they have a question and want an answer to that question? Are they looking to visit a specific website? Or, are they searching because they want to buy something? Many of these different types of searches form parts of the user journey.

Over the years, Google has worked hard to improve its algorithm to be able to determine people’s search intent. And, Google wants to rank pages that best fit the search term, as well as the search intent behind a specific search query. That’s why it’s essential to make sure your post or page fits the search intent of your audience.

4 types of search intent

There are a few distinct types of search intent, these four are most commonly used:

Informational intent

First, there is informational intent. Lots of searches on the internet are done by people looking for information. That could be information about the weather, information about educating children, information about SEO, you name it. People with informational intent have a specific question or want to know more about a certain topic.

You should be aware that Google’s understanding of intent goes much further than simply showing results that give information about a specific term. It knows, for instance, that people looking for [tomato sauce] are looking for recipes, not for the sauce’s culinary history. It understands that most people typing in [Mercury] are looking for the planet, not the element. Google even understands that for some terms, like [how to build a bird feeder], it’s handy to include videos and images.

Navigational intent

The second type of search intent is called navigational intent. People with this intent want to visit a specific website. For example, people who search for [Facebook] are usually on their way to the Facebook website.

Keep in mind that ranking high for a navigational term is only beneficial for your organic traffic if your site is the site people are looking for. For example, a few years ago, Yoast had a Google Analytics plugin, and we ranked pretty well for the term [Google Analytics]. But that didn’t drive any traffic to our site. People searching for [Google Analytics] were looking for the Google Analytics website and were hardly ever interested in our plugin.

Transactional intent

The third type of search intent is transactional intent. Lots of people buy stuff on the internet and browse the web to find the best purchase. People are searching with transactional intent when their purpose is to buy something.

Commercial investigation

Some people have the intention to buy in the (near) future, and use the web to do their research. What washing machine would be best? Which SEO plugin is the most helpful? These people also have transactional intent but need some more time and convincing. These types of search intents are usually called commercial investigating intents.

Keyword intent

The words people use in their search queries will give insight into user intent. This works the other way around, too, when you formulate keywords with intent-specific words.

Keywords with transactional intent will often contain words like:

  • buy
  • deal
  • discount
  • product names

Informational searches can (but don’t necessarily have to) contain words like:

  • information
  • how to
  • best way to
  • why

How to optimize your content for search intent

You want to make sure that a landing page fits the search intent of your audience. If people search for information, you don’t want to show them a product page. At least, not immediately. You’d probably scare them away. If people want to buy your product, do not bore them with long articles. Lead them to your shop.

Optimizing your product pages for more commercial driven keywords is a good idea. If you sell dog vitamins, you could, for instance, optimize a product (category) page for [buy dog vitamins]. Perhaps you also have an article about administering vitamins. You could, for example, optimize that article for the search term [how to give vitamins to my dog].

It can be quite hard to determine the search intent of a query. And, perhaps different users will have a (slightly) different user intent, but still land on the same page. Luckily, there is a direct source to look at if you want to know which intent fits your keywords: the search results pages. Find out how you can use the results pages to create intent-based content.

If you want to know more about the search intent of your audience, another way is to ask them. You could make a small survey, containing questions about what people were searching for and make that survey pop up if people enter your website. That’ll probably give you many valuable insights into your audience.

Conclusion

It’s crucial to ensure that the content you’re writing fits both the terms people are searching for, as well as the search intent of your audience. Make sure your post or page is informational, when people are searching for information. But lead people to your sales pages if they are looking to buy one of your products.

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

The post What is search intent? appeared first on Yoast.

Why and how to use the search results to create intent-based content

Melina Reintjens

Search intent is becoming more and more important. Google is getting better and better at guessing exactly what searchers are looking for when they type in their – sometimes cryptic – search terms. That’s why you need to focus on it as well! What is search intent, again? How do search engines approach user intent? And how can you assess if you target the right type of intent with your content? This post is all about that!

Search intent?

Let’s start with a quick refresher on the term ‘search intent’. You’ll recognize from your own online behavior that each search term is entered with a particular intent in mind. Sometimes, you want to find information. Other times, you’re looking to research or buy a certain product. And don’t forget all those times you enter a brand name because you don’t want to type out the site’s entire URL. We generally distinguish four types of searcher intent: informational, commercial, transactional and navigational. If this is new to you, head over to our SEO basics article on search intent, that’ll make understanding this post a bit easier.

Search engines try to predict user intent

Of course, for each of these four categories of user intent, there can still be a lot of variation in what exactly a user is looking for. Search engines use data to interpret what the dominant intent of a query is. They want to present results that match user intent exactly. Before we can use the search results to create our intent based content, we need to understand how search intent works for different queries. 

Search terms with dominant intent

Sometimes, a search term has one dominant interpretation. Those terms can be very straightforward, like [buy King Louie Betty dress] or [symptoms of diabetes]. For the first term, results will mainly show pages offering that particular model of dress for sale, or similar dresses by that brand. For the second, results are filled with answer boxes and websites offering medical information. 

Google also understands the intent behind terms that aren’t as literal. For example, whenever people all over the world enter [white house] as a search term, they’re not looking for information on painting their house white. They want to know something about the residence of the president of the United States, and search engines show results accordingly. 

Search terms referring to several entities 

In many cases, the same term can be used to look for very different things. Let’s take the search term [Mercury]. Some people will be looking for the planet, others for the element, even others for the Roman god of commerce, and a few might actually be looking for the lead singer of the band Queen. The reason for that is that this one word can be used to describe several distinctly different things – also described as entities. The context makes clear which entity a word is referring to. It’s important to be aware of how this works in search engines, so read up on the topic in Edwin’s post about entities and semantics.

All these searches probably have informational intent, but they’re not looking for the same thing. While it’s difficult – especially from one word, like in this example – search engines still try to figure out what their users really want when typing in their search term. So, if, for example, less people click to the ‘mercury-element’ results, than to the ‘mercury-planet’ results, they’ll deduce that more people want information about the planet Mercury, and alter the results pages accordingly. If we take a look at the search results for the term [Mercury], we’ll indeed see that most results relate to the planet. From that, we can conclude from that it’s the dominant intent: most people who type in this term are looking for the planet. 

Google tries to satisfy multiple intents for the search term [mercury]

Search terms without dominant intent

Some search terms don’t have one clear-cut intent, which leaves search engines guessing at what to show. You can recognize these searches when the results pages show many different results. Take the query [tree house], for example. Depending on your exact location, the search results show images of tree houses, information and videos on how to build one, advertisements for buying one, and businesses called ‘Tree house’, including a brewery, restaurants, holiday homes, and a code learning web platform. This variety means that Google has most types of intent behind this query covered. But it may make ranking more difficult.

Why should you use the search results to create intent-based content?

Simply put: because the search results give direct insight into what people are looking for when they’re typing in your keywords. You can easily lose sight of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as your most direct source of information. But if you focus on your site alone, or only look at things through the eyes of tools, you miss invaluable information about what your audience is looking for. Search results pages not only show you how you and your competitors are doing, but also where new opportunities are and whether you need to adjust your SEO strategy. For instance, if you see a lot of images in the results pages for your keyphrase, and you don’t have any, that’s an opportunity! 

To get the most objective idea of the search results for a query, make sure you use a private browser window. A local SERP-checker, such as https://valentin.app/ can also help you get even more objective results, and find out what the results look like in other cities. 

Creating intent-based content yourself

There are a few steps you can take to attune your content better to user search intent and work towards creating intent-based content.

  1. Choose keywords from your keyword research and enter them in a private browser window or SERP-checker.
  2. Analyze what you see on the results pages. Which type of intent is most common? (informational, commercial, etc?) Is there one dominant interpretation and if so, what is it? Do you see videos? Images? Related searches?
  3. Evaluate whether the content you have – or plan to publish – is in line with the things you found on the results pages. Do the types of intent match? Is your content in the right form?
    1. If yes, great! Perhaps you can find ranking ideas in related searches. And, have a quick peek at the competition, to see what you’re up against.
    2. Do you notice that things don’t match up, and the SERPs show intent that doesn’t align with what you offer in your content? Depending on what you find in the SERPs, you might still be able to rank. For example, perhaps there isn’t a dominant type of intent, in which case your content could still make the cut. However, if you find intent that unanimously doesn’t match what you have to offer at all, ranking will be difficult, unless you’re having a high authority site. In that case, consider whether it’s worth the effort to create your content, or if you need to adjust your strategy a little. A solution could be to target a slightly different related keyword, with better matching user intent, or to adjust your content. 

This all still sounds a bit abstract. So, let’s look at a few examples to give you a better idea of this process in practice!

Examples of research to create intent-based content

Using the right terminology in informational content

Results page for the search term [website maintenance]

Here at Yoast, we write about all aspects of SEO. One of those aspects is keeping your website in good shape. We had an article planned on this topic, and one of the most important terms we used in this article was ‘Website maintenance’. Our article was about keeping your site content fresh and your site’s structure well-maintained in the process. However, when we started looking at the SERPs, we noticed that wasn’t what people were looking for at all when they used that term. The content in the answer box wasn’t really related, and the other results almost exclusively consisted of companies offering services to work on technical site maintenance and hosting, with some results stressing the importance of this.

So, from analyzing the SERPs, we got two important insights. Firstly, many people using the search term [website maintenance] have commercial intent, rather than informational. Secondly, they were actually looking for something completely different. So, while we could write an article about website maintenance, to rank, it needed to be a completely different article. It should discuss things like hosting, technical site performance, etc, as that’s what searchers are looking for. 

We realized we had to make changes to the article, adapt our strategy and target a keyword with better matching intent. We changed some of the wording in this article (and related ones as well) from ‘maintenance’ to ‘keep old content’, ‘update or delete’ and ‘cannibalization’. Of course, you could argue that we didn’t pick the right words here in the first place. The reason for that might’ve been that we got a bit stuck in our own content bubble, and forgot about the user. Looking at the SERPs helped change perspective in this case.

Business case: selling recycled jewelry

Let’s look at another example, one that small business owners might relate to. Say, you run an online shop that sells jewelry made with recycled materials. One of your product groups is jewelry made of recycled nespresso pods. So, you’re thinking of trying to rank for [recycled nespresso pods] with a product page or category page. Is that a good idea? Time to look at the search results pages!

Of course, it somewhat depends on location, but prominent on the results page for [recycled nespresso pods] are results about how the pods are recycled. A few are from Nespresso itself, and you could also find some of their videos on recycling. Other results cover the process of recycling and how consumers can get their pods recycled. There is nothing on using recycled pods as a crafting material. So, now you know that this phrase will be difficult to rank for, as it’s not what users are looking for. 

the search results pages for the term recycled nespresso pods jewelry.
Results page for [recycled nespresso pods jewelry].

What about [recycled nespresso pods jewelry], then? As can be expected, the results align a lot better with what you have to offer. However, most results are geared towards informational intent. While the top result is Etsy -which would be difficult to compete with- other results show lists of ideas and tutorials. This means, again, it would be hard to get your commercial or transactional product (category) pages on this list. However, you could still rank if you’d change your strategy, and wrote a tutorial on crafting a basic piece of nespresso jewelry. In such a tutorial, you could easily refer people to your products if they’re looking for more intricate pieces. It might even be worthwhile to make a video tutorial, as there are video results on the results pages.

Conclusion

This post covers a lot of different aspects of search intent in this post. It deals with which types there are, whether or not there is a dominant interpretation and looking at the SERPs to gauge a query’s intent. The exact steps to take will differ on a case to case basis. A good takeaway, in any case, is to always take a good look at the results pages for keyphrases you’re targeting. Analyze what you see, as it’s valuable, first-hand information. Be realistic and be prepared to put in the work if you find you need to change your strategy. We’ve said it time and again: SEO is a lot of work, and you need to work hard to be the best result – for the right query.

Read more: On-SERP SEO can help you battle zero-click results »

The post Why and how to use the search results to create intent-based content appeared first on Yoast.

Semantically link entities to your content with Yoast SEO

Edwin Toonen

Search engines love entities. Entities can be people, places, things, concepts, or ideas and they will often appear in the Knowledge Graph. Lots of search terms can be an entity, but specific search terms can also have different meanings and thus, be different entities. Take [Mars] for example; are you talking about the planet entity or the candy bar entity? The context you give these entities in your content determines how search engines see and file your content. Find out how to link entities to your content using Yoast SEO.

Let’s talk semantics

Semantics is the search for meaning in words. In theory, you could write an article about Mars without ever mentioning it directly. People would understand it if you provide enough context in the form of commonly used terms and phrases. To illustrate this, we’ll take the keyword [Mars]. Mars is a so-called entity, and search engines use these to determine the semantics of a search. You can use structured data to support the discovery of entities on your page.

According to Google’s definition, an entity is:

“a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. For example, an entity may be a person, place, item, idea, abstract concept, concrete element, other suitable thing, or any combination thereof. Generally, entities include things or concepts represented linguistically by nouns.”

If you search for Mars on Google, you’ll most likely get results about the planet Mars. But why? Why isn’t the Mars candy bar in the top listings? Or Mars the chocolate company? Or the discovery district MaRS in Toronto? Maybe the Japanese movie called Mars? Or one of the many Mars-related movies made over the years? This is because Google makes an educated guess using search intent and your search history. Also, it uses co-occurring synonyms, keywords, and phrases to determine which page is about one of these specific search variations and which ones to show.

Co-occurring terms and phrases

Co-occurring terms and phrases are those that are commonly used to describe an entity. These are the terms that are most likely to pop up in content about that entity. Content about the planet Mars will probably contain mentions of the following terms:

  • ‘red planet’
  • ‘northern hemisphere’
  • ‘low atmospheric pressure’
  • ‘martian craters’
  • ‘red-orange appearance’
  • ‘terrestrial planet’
  • ‘olympus mons’
  • ‘second-smallest planet in the Solar System’
  • Etc.

Pages with Mars candy bar content might feature phrases like:

  • ‘chocolate candy bar’
  • ‘nougat and caramel covered in milk chocolate’
  • ‘limited-edition variants’
  • ‘ingredients’
  • ‘nutritional information’
  • Etc

While content about the 2016 Mars movie will probably mention its main protagonists Rei Kashino and Makio Kirishima.

All these words are co-occurring keywords and phrases. It’s a type of content that is semantically related to the main keyword, but that doesn’t contain the keyword itself. This might include synonyms but often expands on that because they clarify the knowledge of the term, instead of saying the same thing differently. Search engine spiders scan your content for these related terms to paint a picture about the nature of your page. This way, it can correctly index the page, ie. file under [planet Mars], not [Mars the candy bar].

Optimize for phrase-based indexing

Over the years, Google was awarded several patents that suggested the development of a phrase-based indexing system and systems using word co-occurrence to improve the clustering of topics. This information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe content. By analyzing the context surrounding an entity – meaning all the phrases that are commonly connected to an entity – Google can truly understand what a piece of content is about.

That might sound complex, but it is something you can optimize for. And you are probably already doing that – to a certain extent. First, do keyword research to uncover the terms people generally search for and keep search intent in your mind at all times. After that, provide context in your articles.

When writing about an entity in your content, it makes a lot of sense to give search engines – and readers for that matter – as much context as possible. Use every meaningful sentence you can think of. This way, you can take away any doubt about the meaning of your content.

If your subject is the planet Mars, you need to take a look at the Knowledge Graph in Google. Scour Wikipedia. Find out what kind of common terms and phrases co-occur in search results and incorporate them into your content so you can give your term the right context. Also, run a search and open the sites of competitors that rank high for your search terms. What are they writing about and how do they describe the entity? What terms and phrases can you use in your content? By doing this, you’ll find out that there will be much overlap with what you had in mind, but there will be many new – and maybe better – nuggets for you to use.

Feed the Topic Layer

Topics are groups of terms that share the same concept. Google’s obsession with entities and knowledge graphs comes to a head in something called the Topic Layer. This Topic Layer is built on top of the knowledge graph and works as the glue that connects entities to topics making it easier for them to surface the correct content once needed. Because the Topic Layer knows a topic inside out — or it should —, it can adapt whatever it shows based on knowledge and need.

Google uses the Topic Layer to power Discover, the mobile app with an endless stream of cool stuff you are bound to like. It is meant as a tool to give you content you weren’t even looking for, so to say. To make your content stand out in this new world, you need to connect your topic to all entities and make sure that this matches what people are looking for as well.

Helpful tools to find topics, entities and concepts

Knowing your topic inside out is key in producing a piece of content that incorporates all essential terms naturally. This is why you should do research. Not just keyword research, but research your topic in general. Leave no stone unturned.

Luckily, there are a lot of tools that can help you fill in those topics, phrases and entities. Try the following to get a good idea of what you are looking for:

How to use Yoast SEO to improve your entity 

After you’ve found concepts related to your topic and entities, you can use Yoast SEO to write awesome content. The various analyses help you keep on topic and guide you to producing quality content that not only fits what users want but search engines as well. Yoast SEO Premium lets you do even more.

One of the things you can do with Yoast SEO Premium, is analyze and improve your text for synonyms and related keyphrases. Filling these in, makes sure that your content fully utilizes the power of relatedness.

In short, here’s how to do that:

  1. Research your subject
  2. Structure the topic (mind mapping rules!)
  3. Pick your main focus keyphrase for this post
  4. Collect synonyms
  5. Find related keyphrases or concepts
  6. Find synonyms for these terms
  7. Enter your focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO 
  8. Enter the synonyms of the focus keyphrase
  9. Fill in the first related keyphrase
  10. Include all the synonyms for that term
  11. And another related keyphrase, if necessary
  12. Including synonyms
  13. Write an epic post!
  14. Check the feedback you get from Yoast SEO and adjust accordingly (remember, not everything has to be green)

With enough research you know your topic inside out so you should be able to write a post that naturally encompasses all important concepts, entities and phrases. Yoast SEO Premium will now help you describe your topic as well as possible. 

Don’t forget to optimize your post with related keyphrases and synonyms, available in Yoast SEO Premium
Synonyms let you add a lot more context to your articles

One more thing: no LSI keywords

Over the years, the term “LSI keywords” started to pop up again and again as a magical way to play into one of Google’s ranking factors. They are not. Yes, you have to provide search engines context. No, latent semantic indexing has nothing to do with it. There’s no evidence whatsoever that search engines have ever used latent semantic indexing to determine rankings. Latent semantic indexing was a document analysis patent from the 90’s that only seemed to work on a limited set of documents, and it has no place in SEO.

The post Semantically link entities to your content with Yoast SEO appeared first on Yoast.

Beyond exact keyword matching: optimize your text naturally

Marieke van de Rakt

Our green bullets are addictive. We get that. While these green bullets help people to optimize their texts for the search engines, we don’t want people chasing only our bullets and losing track of their texts. We do want to nudge them and help them get that text as SEO-friendly as possible. In this blog post, I’ll tell you about the most pressing frustration that our customers experience and the solution we developed for that problem.

“Yoast SEO does not recognize my focus keyphrase”

Imagine this: You’re trying to optimize your post for the term [guinea pig]. In your text, you’ll probably use guinea pig (singular) and guinea pigs (plural). However, if your focus keyword is the singular [guinea pig], the keyword density check does not recognize your plurals and will punish you with a red bullet! That’s so annoying and unfair!  

In this text snippet, I use guinea pigs three times and guinea pig only one time. That means I get a red bullet…

Yoast SEO Premium analysis

In the premium analysis, plurals and past tense are recognized as the same keyword and treated as such in our analysis. Also, when you use your keywords in a different order, like ballet shoes and shoes for ballet, our analysis still recognizes them as well. In the premium analysis, both guinea pigs and guinea pigs are highlighted:

The premium analysis recognizes both the singular and plural versions of my keyword: no red bullet!

What does the premium analysis do? 

Our SEO analysis -in the premium version – automatically detects whether or not you use different word forms of your focus keyphrase. It’ll recognize singular and plurals, but also different tenses of verbs, and adjusts your keyword optimization scores accordingly. What’s more, it’ll find your keywords, even if a few function words separate them.

Let’s look at yet another example. If your focus keyphrase is [playing with your cats], it will recognize that keyphrase in the sentence ‘You can use toy mice to play with your cat‘. Or, if you want to optimize for [games for cats] it will recognize it the sentence, ‘Another game your cat will love …’ as well.

At Yoast, we have a team of linguists working on this functionality. As you can imagine, recognizing past tenses and plurals works very differently in different languages. The word form functionality is currently available in English and German. But we are working on Dutch and Spanish, too.

What about synonyms and related keywords?

Focusing on exact matching keyword feels a bit outdated. Google is able to recognize different word forms and synonyms too. We know that Google even understands related concepts. If you add synonyms and related keywords to your focus keyphrases, the Yoast premium analysis will take these into account as well. Read more about this in our post about how to use synonyms and related keywords.

Write naturally

The whole idea behind our premium analysis is that you can write naturally and still optimize for the search engines. Our plugin will give you little nudges to optimize your text a bit more, without tempting you to chase the green bullets with exact keyword matching. This means: no more awkwardly rewriting your sentences, so the SEO analysis picks up on your keyword. No more wondering if you really didn’t use your keyword often enough, or if the plugin simply doesn’t recognize every instance. 

I want to optimize my text naturally!

Why is this a premium feature?

Recognizing plurals and past tense isn’t easy. And it’s different for all languages. It is a lot of work. That’s why we have an entire team of linguists working on it, making sure we’re adding more and more languages.

This does not mean that the free version is ‘wrong’ in any way. It’ll help you to focus on the correct focus keyphrases. However, it is not able to recognize the different word forms. Luckily, you are. So, if you’re using the free version, feel free to ignore the keyword density check if you’re mixing plurals and singulars of your keyword.

Read more: “Yoast SEO hates my writing style!”- 6 common misconceptions about Yoast SEO »

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How to start with SEO?

Marieke van de Rakt

You’ve had this great idea. You’ve built this amazing website. And then, you want that website to attract visitors! You want to be found! What to do? How do you get started with SEO? How do you start with SEO on a brand new site? In this blog post, I’ll talk you through the 7 steps you need to take in order to get your SEO strategy up and running. 

So, you’ve started your first site and you want it to be found, so you can share your thoughts and views with the world. What to do? Let’s go through the steps of starting with SEO!

  1. Install Yoast SEO

    Provided that your website is on WordPress, installing Yoast SEO should be the first step in your SEO strategy. Our Yoast SEO plugin will help you to make sure your website is crawlable and findable. Yoast SEO will immediately take care of some technical SEO issues, just by being installed on your website. Besides that, our plugin will help you to construct your website in such a way that Google will understand and rank it. We offer a free and a premium plugin. If you’re just starting out, you’ll probably won’t need our premium version yet, although it can already save you some valuable time.

  2. Get that first link

    Google needs to know your website exists. And, in order for Google to know about your awesome new site, you need at least one external link towards your site. The reason for this: Google crawls the web. It follows links and saves all the webpages it finds in a very large database called the index. So, if you want to get into that index, you need (at least) one external link. So make sure to get that link from an external website!

  3. What do you want to rank for?

    Make sure to attract the right audience to your website. Who are your customers? For whom did you build this website? What terms do your customers use when searching on Google? And what’s their search intent, what kind of content are they looking for? Find out as much as you can about your audience.

    SEOs refer to this stage as doing your keyword research. This is a hard and important phase. There are a lot of helpful tools that make doing keyword research easier. Some of these tools are free, others are rather expensive. While these tools will make the difficult phase of keyword research easier, you should remember that you can’t outsource your keyword research to a tool. You really need to think about your audience and about the search terms they are using. It’s also important to analyze what you’re seeing in the search results pages when entering your keywords. Take your time for this phase. It is crucial. If you do your keyword research correctly, you’ll come up with a long list of keywords you want to rank for.

  4. Set realistic goals

    For a new site, it is rather hard to rank high in the beginning. Older sites already have a history, established their authority and a lot of links pointing towards them. That means that Google’s crawlers come by more often at older sites. For a new site to rank, you’ll always need to be a little patient. And remember: some search terms will be out of reach for a new site because there’s too much competition. Trying to rank for [WordPress SEO] will be rather hard for any new blog, because of some fierce competition on that term from Yoast.com.

    If you’re just starting with your site, try to aim at ranking for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are keywords that are longer and more specific and have far less competition than the popular head keywords. After a while, when your site starts to rank for the long-tail keywords, you could try and go after the more head keywords.

  5. Internal linking

    As I already mentioned in step 2, Google follows links. Google also follows the links on your website, your internal linking structure. It crawls through your website following the internal linking structure of your site. That structure is like a guide to Google. Make sure your internal linking structure is flawless. That’ll help with your ranking. 

    If you start with a brand new website, you’ll probably don’t have much content yet. This is the perfect time to think about structure. Now it is relatively easy. It’s like having a new closet and you haven’t started buying clothes. Now is the time to think about the things you want to put on the top shelf and which items you want to hide in the back of your closet. So, decide which pages are most important to you. What are the pages you want to rank with? Make sure that these pages have the most internal links pointing towards them.

  6. Start writing

    In order to get ranked, you need to have content. A very important step in how to start with your SEO is to write amazing content for all these search terms you want to be found for. The content analysis in the Yoast SEO plugin will help you to write that content. Our analysis will help you to write a text that is both readable and SEO friendly.

    While you’re writing, make sure to use the words you want to be found for. Use them in headings and in the introduction and conclusion of your text. After writing your text, you should optimize your SEO title and your meta description. The Yoast SEO plugin will help you to do all these things.

  7. Get those links!

    External links are important to get your site in high positions in those search engines. But gathering those external links can be a hard process. Make sure to write content people want to share and link to. Original ideas and great, valuable content will make the chance that people would want to share that much bigger.

    Of course, reaching out to people and making them aware of your awesome website and product can be a good strategy to get those external links too. Read more about a successful link building strategy or find out what link building is first.

And then what?

The truth is that SEO is more than these 7 steps. This is only the very beginning, the steps you take to start with SEO. In order to get longterm high rankings in the search engines, you need to do hard work. Your content has to be amazing, your site structure has to remain flawless (and that’s challenging when your site is growing) and you’ll have to keep earning those external links. The only way to really do that, in the long run, is to make sure that your audience enjoys visiting your website. If you want to rank the highest, make sure your site is the very best. Good luck!

Read more: WordPress SEO the definitive guide »

The post How to start with SEO? appeared first on Yoast.

Yoast SEO: don’t just set it and forget it!

Marieke van de Rakt

Some of the things Yoast SEO does are pure magic. Lots of things are just taken care of after you’ve installed the plugin. You don’t have to do anything about that. Simply installing Yoast SEO will fix a lot of important technical SEO things for you. The content side of SEO, though, is something you should always do yourself. Yoast SEO will help you, but you’ll need to make an effort. So there’s a lot of work in it for you. In this post, I’m going to tell you about the things you need to do yourself, in order to make your SEO strategy successful.

Configure Yoast SEO properly

First of all, you need to configure Yoast SEO correctly. You should be aware that the plugin can’t perform to its full potential if the settings of Yoast SEO aren’t optimal for your specific website. So, make sure that the configuration of Yoast SEO is, in fact, in line with your website. The configuration wizard helps you take care of a lot of these settings.

Keyword research – always

The second thing you need to make sure of is doing your keyword research right. You need to know that you’re focusing on the words that people actually search for. If you’re optimizing for a term nobody uses, you can rank number one, but you still won’t have any traffic. And, if you’re optimizing for a term that’s so competitive that you won’t ever be able to rank for it, then you won’t get any traffic as well.

Doing your keyword research means that you need to get inside the heads of your audience. It also means that you should know your competition and estimate your chances to rank for a certain keyword. Yoast SEO will help you optimize your content for your keywords, but figuring out what the right keywords are, is your job.

Read more: How to choose keywords that’ll attract traffic »

Write awesome content

The third thing you need to do yourself is to write awesome content. And that’s something you have to do manually. Of course, you can outsource this, but it’s something somebody has to do. Yoast SEO actually helps you to write both SEO-friendly, as well as readable texts with the content and SEO analysis. So, make sure you use this feature in order to make your text well-optimized for the search engines. But adding great content is still something you need to do yourself; it won’t happen magically.

Internal linking

Another thing you’ll need to do yourself is to take care of your internal linking structure. This is very important because a proper internal linking structure will make sure that Google understands your website. And, you want Google to understand your website. Otherwise, you will be competing with your own content for a place in the search results.

Yoast SEO (Premium) will help you to do that, with our internal linking feature. But it’s still something you need to be actually doing yourself. Yoast SEO will make suggestions for articles you could link to, but you still have to put them in your article.

Social previews and redirects

Social previews and redirects are features in Yoast SEO that’ll help you improve your SEO. Your effort is needed in order to gain an SEO advantage from these features. Part of your SEO strategy will be a strategy on social media, so Facebook and Twitter. And Yoast SEO can help you make those posts on Facebook, but you still have to hit that button and write the content. Same goes for the redirects. If a page is outdated, you want to redirect it to another page. But it won’t happen just magically; you have to create those redirects yourself.

Don’t forget your competition

Even if they’ve done all the things I talked about, some people are unable to rank for a specific term. Why is that? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with competition. Some search terms are so competitive and dominated by high-authority brands that it’s terribly hard for a starting out blog to rank between them. If you want to rank for ‘holiday home Florida’ and you’re just starting out as a blog, you’re probably not going to rank right away. You need to have a whole strategy, in which you focus on long-tail search terms first. So, part of why you’re not ranking has to do with the competition.

On top of that, SEO sometimes takes a long time. Don’t despair if you’re not ranking overnight. It can take a little while before you start ranking for specific search terms. It’s a process that requires a strategy, and it takes some time before you see the results.

Conclusion

SEO is a lot of work. Yoast SEO takes care of most of the technical SEO stuff. The content side of SEO is a different story, though. You’ll need to make an effort to set up a successful content SEO strategy. There are a lot of things you should work on, in which Yoast SEO can actually help you and take you by the hand. And don’t forget: whether or not you rank for specific terms also depends on your competition in your specific niche. 

Keep reading: What does Yoast SEO do? »

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Don’t make your focus keywords too long

Marieke van de Rakt

It can be a great strategy to focus on long-tail keywords. But don’t go overboard! If you make your keyphrase too long and use it often in your copy, the quality of your copy might suffer. That’s why Yoast SEO checks if your focus keyword isn’t too long. How does that work? And, what should be your strategy for those long keywords? Let me tell you all about long focus keywords here.

Focus keywords and focus keyphrases

If you’re using our Yoast SEO plugin to optimize your posts and pages, you’re probably used to filling out your focus keyword or phrase: the word(s) you want that specific post to be found for. A focus keyword hardly ever is a single word though; It usually consists of a few words. Therefore, we renamed it focus keyphrase a while ago.

For instance, if you want your blog post to rank for the term [raspberry flavored green tea], you should enter these words in the focus keyphrase field. The plugin will then give you pointers on how to optimize your post for that term. Choosing what terms you want to be found for is hard – the competition is fierce! – so you’ll need to do some proper keyword research to come up with the right terms.

Read more: How to choose the perfect focus keyphrase »

Why long keyphrases?

Using long keyphrases can be a good SEO strategy. A longer keyphrase means more specificity and less competition in the search engines. That’s why focusing on very specific, long-tail keywords might get you higher rankings and more, high-quality traffic to your website. Combining such a strategy with cornerstone content and a great internal linking structure is very smart.

But why then, do we throw off a warning when your focus keyphrase is too long?

What’s too long?

To answer this question we’ll have to explain a bit what Yoast SEO does with your keyphrase, and which words in the keyphrase we count when assessing your keyphrase length.

Yoast SEO mimics Google

Google is capable of recognizing the separate words from longer search terms, even if the words are not in the exact same order as the query. For instance, if you Google [easy to use and short site structure guide] you’ll get these results:

Google highlights the words (and word forms) of your keyphrase in the search results

You can see that Google highlights the words (and different word forms) of this search term in the search results, even though they’re not in the exact same order as the original query.

Yoast SEO tries to mimic Google’s behavior. It chops your keyphrase into pieces and then uses these words in various SEO assessments. For instance, in our keyphrase density check, we’ll check whether these words appear close to each other somewhere in your copy. We won’t look for an exact match of the focus keyphrase in this check, because if you write naturally you’d probably variate the order of those words in your sentences.

In particular languages, we’re even able to filter out function words like “the” or “and” or “if”. We’ll just keep the so-called “content words“, which carry the most meaning. And, in Yoast SEO Premium, we’re also able to check for different word forms and synonyms of the words in your keyphrase.

The keyphrase length assessment

Back to the length of your keyphrase. In Yoast SEO, we’ll check how long your keyphrase is. And we’ll provide you with feedback if it’s too long. If it’s too long this might jeopardize the readability of your copy. Imagine using [easy to use and short site structure guide] more often in your copy. Even if you don’t have to write those exact words in the same order, this will probably result in a strange and unnatural text.

The boundaries we use for this assessment depend on whether we can take out the function words for your language or not. If we can, the boundary is four words. If we can’t take them out, the boundary is six words. If your keyphrase is longer than that, you’ll find an orange or red bullet in the SEO assessment of your post!

What should you do with those extra words?

If you’re on Yoast SEO you should reduce your focus keyphrase to the most important words you want this post to rank for. Of course, you can use the other words in your copy as well. But in order to be able to see if you use them often enough (and if you could rank for them!), you should use the related keyphrase functionality in Yoast SEO premium.

For example, if you want to rank for the keyphrase [easy to use and short site structure guide], I would advise optimizing your post for [easy site structure guide] and use the related keyphrase field for [short site structure guide]. Of course, you can use this field for more topical keyphrases too. In this case, [internal linking] would be a nice, on-topic example. If you optimize your posts this way, you’ll make sure you’re optimizing for all the specifics of your long-tail focus keyword.

This functionality of Yoast SEO Premium enables you to focus on multiple aspects of a long-tail keyword. The readability of your text will not suffer, and you’ll still make sure you cover all the aspects of a long search term in your writing. Plus, you’ll be able to enter synonyms of your keyphrase too! Read here why you should use synonyms in your text.

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Why you should use synonyms and related keywords

Marieke van de Rakt

Using the right keywords is essential in SEO. Because using the words your audience searches with, will help your posts and pages rank. That’s why we tell you to put some effort into finding the perfect keywords to optimize your articles for. So, after finding that perfect keyword, why shouldn’t you use it over and over again? Why would you use synonyms and related keywords? Well, it might seem contradictory, but using synonyms and related keywords the right way will definitely improve your rankings. In this post, I’ll explain why. 

Variation is key

The main reason to use synonyms and related keywords in your text is that they will make your text much easier to read. If you write a text about ‘candy’ and use the word ‘candy’ in every other sentence, your text will not flow naturally and become unreadable. Your readers will most likely stop reading and leave your page or post. You’ll lose your audience. That’s why you should aim for variation in your writing. For example, words like ‘sweets’ and ‘delicacy’ could serve as synonyms for ‘candy’. And related keywords could be ‘chocolate’ and ‘sugar,’ which aren’t synonyms for ‘candy’, but are related to it and can therefore still be relevant for your text. We’ll go into that later on in this post.

So for your text to be attractive and engaging, it should be varied. This can be done in different ways. For instance, you can try to alternate long sentences with shorter ones. Longer sentences are often more difficult to process and by also using shorter sentences, your text becomes easier to read. You can also try to alternate the sequence of words to avoid too much repetition in your sentences.

But the most important thing is to vary with the exact words you use. Especially if you’re trying to rank for a long-tail keyphrase which consists of several words, such as ‘candy store New York’. Using that exact keyphrase in a lot of your sentences will make your text awful to read. Using synonyms and related keywords, on the other hand, allows you to make a text much more attractive while still being able to focus on your chosen keyphrase.

But wait, what about keyword density?

Of course, it’s important to use your focus keyword regularly and be aware of your keyword density, but you shouldn’t overdo it. In the old days, SEOs tended to stuff their texts with their keyword as much as they could. That way, Google would understand what the text was about and rank it accordingly. But Google has come a long way since then. It can read and understand texts and is on a continuous quest to better this understanding.

I’ll give you an example. If you type in ‘candy store New York’ on Google, the results will show pages about ‘candy stores’ as well as ‘candy shops’. Google understands that ‘store’ and ‘shop’ are synonyms, and treats them as such. 

Snippets from the search result page for the search ‘candy store New York’

This doesn’t take away from the fact that you should still use your focus keyword a few times throughout your post. After all, the focus keyword is still the word or phrase your audience was searching for. These are the words your audience uses and will expect to find in your text. That exact match remains important. But, to avoid using your keyword too many times – also called keyword stuffing – you can use synonyms and related keywords. That way you’re able to rank on these keywords while keeping your text attractive and readable.

How often should you use synonyms and related keywords?

The usage of synonyms versus the use of focus keywords is no exact science. The most important criterion is the way readers will experience your text. So, read and re-read it. Is it engaging and easy to read? Or are you getting annoyed by the constant use of a certain term? Be critical of your own writing and ask others for feedback on your text. 

If you’d like more guidance, the Yoast SEO plugin can help you balance the use of your keyword, synonyms, and related keywords by recognizing word forms in different languages.

If you use our Premium SEO analysis you will be able to add synonyms of your focus keyword. The plugin checks if you’ve used these synonyms in your text, but also in your meta description, introduction, subheadings, or image alt text. Moreover, our keyphrase distribution check (added in Yoast SEO 7.8) will reward you for alternately using your keyphrase and its synonyms throughout your text.

You can add multiple synonyms for your focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO Premium

You can also add related keywords in Yoast SEO Premium. By adding these the plugin is able to check whether you’re using them in your text. Your focus keyword remains the most important keyword though, and that’s why the plugin is less strict in its analysis of your related keyphrases.

related keyphrases yoast seo premium 2
You can also keyphrases that are related to your focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO Premium

One step further: make those synonyms work for you

As I said earlier, Google has come a long way since the early days of SEO. It’s now able to understand texts and take related concepts and synonyms into account. It can recognize related entities. All this to be able to serve its users the best result. And part of being the best result, is making sure your texts are easy to read. Google wants to serve readable texts.

So make sure you deliver! Think of synonyms for your keyword or keyphrase and use them to your advantage. Take a moment to come up with a few alternatives for your keyword. But also think of topics that are strongly related to your keyword. Enter these words in our SEO Premium analysis and make sure to use them in your text. You’ll notice that it becomes much easier to write a naturally flowing text when you don’t have to use your focus keyword in every other sentence. And the use of synonyms and related keyphrases helps Google understand the context of your text which increases your chances to rank!

Conclusion

Focus keywords remain essential. These are the words your audience is searching for. People searching for ‘candy’ will probably not click on a result with ‘delicacy’ in the text. If you search for ‘candy’ you’ll expect to see that exact word in the search results. So, exactly matching the keywords of your audience remains essential.

That being said, you can use synonyms and related concepts to write a readable text. Repeating the same keyword over and over again hurts the readability of your text, especially if you’re optimizing for a long-tail keyword. Furthermore, using synonyms and related keywords may create ranking opportunities you’d otherwise have missed. If you need help with that, Yoast SEO Premium offers different features to make sure your content is both readable and rankable.

Read more: Does readability rank? On ease of reading and SEO »

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The ultimate guide to content SEO

Marieke van de Rakt

Content SEO is a key part of any SEO strategy. Without content, it’s impossible for your site to rank in search engines. It’s, therefore, crucial to write and structure quality content! This ultimate guide covers the most important areas of content SEO. Read on if you want to learn how to create content that ranks.

What is content SEO?

Content SEO refers to creating content that helps your web pages to rank high in the search engines. It includes everything to do with the writing and structuring of content on your website. There are three major elements you need to consider to produce content that will make your website rank well: keyword strategy, site structure and copywriting.

Content SEO is important because search engines, such as Google, read your website, so the words you use on your site determine whether or not your site will rank in their results pages. Of course, your website should be well-designed, with a great user interface, and all the technical stuff that makes your site rank in Google should also be covered. But without good quality content, your site does not stand a chance in the search engines.

1. Keyword research

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is basically the steps you take to create an extensive list of keywords you would like to rank for. Every content SEO strategy should begin with keyword research, because you have to know what your audience is searching for if you want to generate traffic. Keyword research helps you to discover the terms you should be aiming to rank for.

Keyword research has four steps:

  • First, you write down the mission of your business;
  • Next, you make a list of all the keywords you want to be found for;
  • Look at search intent
  • Finally, you create landing pages for all these keywords.

If you do your keyword research right, you should have a clear overview of the terms people use and the terms for which you want the pages on your site to be found. This overview will serve as a guide for writing content on your website.

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

Why is keyword research so important for SEO content?

Proper keyword research will make clear which search terms your audience uses. This is crucial. At Yoast, we regularly encounter clients who use particular words when talking about their products, while their customers use entirely different words. Optimizing SEO content for words that people do not use doesn’t make any sense. Doing proper keyword research makes sure that you are using the same words as your target audience and therefore makes the whole effort of optimizing your website worthwhile.

Some terms we use in keyword research

Keywords and keyphrases

We tend to use the word ‘keyword‘ all the time, but we don’t necessarily mean it has to be just one word. ‘WordPress SEO’ is a keyword, as is ‘Google Analytics plugin.’ So you can have keywords containing multiple words!

Long tail keywords

The longer (and more specific) a search term is, the easier it will be to rank for that term. Keywords that are more specific (and usually longer) are usually referred to as long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are more specific and focus more on a niche.

How many keywords?

It is very hard to give an exact number of keywords you should focus on. And then again, it’s very simple: You just need to have a lot – as many as you can come up with. More than 1,000 keywords is probably too many though!

Even if you’re a reasonably small business, you’ll probably end up with a couple of hundred keywords. But you don’t have to create pages for all of these immediately. The great thing about having a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress is that you can gradually add content. Think about what keywords you would like to rank for right away, and which ones aren’t immediately important. Determine what your priorities are and plan the creation of your content.

Head or tail?

Classifying your keywords is essential. Some keywords are very common and competitive (head), while others are long-tail. Decide which are your most critical, high-level keywords – the ones that generate sufficient traffic for your website and best fit your business. You will probably only have a few of these general keywords for your business, the rest of them will be more down the tail. In the next section, we will give more in-depth information on long tail keywords (and the importance of these keywords).

SEO content focusing on the most common keywords should be on the top level pages on your website (homepage and the pages one level beneath your homepage), whereas content focusing on long tail keywords should be more on the tail end of your site.

Keyword intent and search intent

As you’re doing keyword research, it really pays off to think about the search intent of users. Would they be looking for information when they enter your keyword as a search term? Or is their goal to buy something? Keyword intent is clear in keywords like [buy leather sofa], or [how to train your puppy]. But it’s not always that simple.

There are four types of intent:

  • Navigational intent: People want to visit a specific website, but rather than entering the URL, they’re entering a term into a search engine.
  • Informational intent: People are trying to find an answer to a particular question or information on a specific topic.
  • Commercial intent: People want to buy something in the near future and are doing research before making a purchase.
  • Transactional intent: People are looking to buy something after doing their commercial intent searches.

Search engines are always trying to answer to the exact needs people have, and they’re getting better and better at guessing people’s intent. So, put simply, if 95% of the people searching for ‘change car tire’ have informational intent, and you’re optimizing for transactional intent to sell tires, you’re probably not going to rank most of the time.

You can get a wealth of information from the results pages when you’re doing keyword research. If you want to find out what the intent is of people using your keywords, simply google those keywords and take a good look at the search results. Try to create your content so that it answers the specific need that you distill from the results for each keyword.

Keep reading: What is search intent? »

Tools you can use

There are multiple free tools available to help you with your keyword research. Check out our article about keyword research tools if you want to find out more about practical tools.

Adapting your keyword strategy

Your keyword strategy isn’t static. It should change and evolve alongside your company and your website. It should evolve and grow with you. If it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong.

You should be on top of the changes in your company and adapt your strategy simultaneously. If your online shop starts selling new products, extend your list with more keywords. If you’re aiming for new markets, it’s vital that your keywords are aimed at these new markets as well.

There are several keyword strategies to adopt. One of them is to start off trying to rank for long tail keywords and then aim at more general keywords afterwards, but you could also start by focusing on general ones then aim for more long tail keywords after. You can zoom in and pursue more niche activities, broaden your approach, adding more content on different things, or you can do both simultaneously.

2. Site structure

The second important aspect of content SEO is the structure of your site. First I will explain why site structure is critical, then I’ll show you what an ideal site structure looks like. I will also give tips on how to (quickly) improve your site structure without completely disrupting the core of your website.

Why is site structure important for content SEO?

There are two main reasons why site structure is an important ranking factor and therefore imparative for SEO content:

a. Good structure helps Google to ‘understand’ your site

The way your site is structured gives Google significant clues about where to find the most important content. Your site’s structure determines whether a search engine understands what your site is about, and how easily it will find and index content relevant to your site’s purpose and intent. A good site structure will, therefore, lead to a higher ranking in Google.

By creating such a structure, you can use existing content that has attracted links from others to help other pages rank as well. Your site’s structure will help spread some of that link juice to the other pages on your site. On a commercial site, that means that you can use quality content you’ve written to boost the search engine rankings of your sales pages too.

b. Good structure makes sure you are not competing with your own SEO content

On your website, you will probably have multiple articles about similar topics. At Yoast, for example, we write about SEO. If we wrote eight articles about SEO, Google wouldn’t know which of these is most important. If we didn’t clarify this with our site structure, we’d be competing with our own articles for Google’s top spot. So, solving problems like this using a sound internal linking structure will result in higher rankings overall.

The ideal structure of a site

Ideally, you should structure your site like a pyramid. On top of the pyramid is your homepage and on the homepage are links to some other pages (such as category pages). These pages, in turn, link to even more pages.

In an effective content SEO strategy, your keyword strategy and the way you structure your site work together. In a proper keyword strategy, you’ll have thought about common, competitive keywords as well as more long tail niche search terms. You should make a similar dichotomy 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 must link correctly to the pages higher in the pyramid.

Read on: The ultimate guide to site structure »

Practical tips on improving your site structure

If you’re serious about content SEO, you’ll most likely already have a live website. So it may be a bit late to set up your site’s structure in an ideal pyramid-like way. Don’t despair – there are still plenty of things you can do to improve your site’s structure and your SEO content.

Decide upon cornerstone content

You should focus your efforts on cornerstone articles. These are the articles you’re most proud of, that fit the mission of your website best. This ultimate guide is, in fact, one of our cornerstones. You want to rank for these articles the most. If you haven’t decided which of your articles are the most important yet, start thinking about that now. Make these articles the best ones on your site. Give them extra TLC and update them regularly.

Keep on reading: What is cornerstone content »

Link from tail to head

Once you’ve decided upon your precious cornerstones, make sure you link from all your ‘tail’ articles to those cornerstones. That way, Google will know which articles to rank highest. Read all about this in our article about incorporating cornerstones into your site structure.

Use tags (but not too many)

Your site will also benefit from adding tags. Tags and taxonomies will give your site more structure – or at least, Google will understand it better. They group your articles about similar topics. Don’t overdo it, though. Some people have more tags than articles. Using too many tags will lead to a confusing, poorly-structured website.

Avoid duplicate content

The same SEO content can turn up at multiple places on your site. As a reader, you don’t mind: you still get the content you came for. But a search engine has to choose something to show in the search results, as it doesn’t want to show the same content twice.

Moreover, when other websites link to your product, chances are some of them link to the first URL, while others link to the second URL. But if these duplicates all link to the same URL, your chance of ranking top 10 for the relevant keyword would be much higher. Canonicalization is the solution to duplicate content. You can configure the canonical URL in the advanced tab of Yoast SEO.

Remove old SEO content

If the content on a page is outdated, remove it! However, you may have had some valuable links to that page. You want to make sure you still benefit from these links, even though the page doesn’t exist any longer, so you should redirect the URL.

Redirecting pages is not difficult if you have our Yoast SEO Premium plugin, which can help you to take care of redirects. Preferably, you redirect the old URL (301) to the page or product that replaced the old page or product, or a related page if there is no replacement. That could be the category page of the specific product, or, as a very last resort, your homepage. This way the (outdated) page won’t interfere with your site structure anymore.

Deal with orphaned content

The term ‘orphaned content’ refers to articles that don’t have any links from your other articles or posts. Because of that, these articles are hard to find, both by Google and by users of your site. Google will consider this type of content less important. So, if an article is important to you, make that clear to Google (and your visitors) by linking to that particular article from other (related) content. Read more about solving the problem of orphaned articles in our article about orphaned content.

Check out our article on how to improve your site structure in 4 simple steps for more tips and practical input.

3. Copywriting

The third and final aspect of a successful content SEO strategy is copywriting. You should write articles that are attractive to read, and that makes your audience want to stay on your website. At the same time, you want to make your SEO content attractive for Google. But some people go too far and optimize their content so overtly that they become terrible to read. At Yoast, we suggest optimizing your text for search without adversely affecting the originality of your idea or the readability of your text.

Read more: The ultimate guide to SEO copywriting »

Copywriting starts with an original idea

The first requirement for high-quality copywriting is to write original content. Your blog post or your article should be ‘fresh,’ new and original. It has to be different from all the other blog posts and articles that are already on the internet. It should be content that people will want to read.

If you did your keyword research well, you ended up with a long list of terms you want to be found for. This list can be a guide for you to choose from. A keyword is not yet a topic, though. You should make sure to come up with an original idea for your blog post – an idea in which the desired focus keyword has a prominent place.

Original SEO content doesn’t necessarily mean brand new content. Of course, if your story is completely new, that’ll automatically mean it’s original. However, giving your (professional) opinion on a particular topic also counts as original content. Your own personal angle to a story will make your content unique and original.

Think about your audience

If you want to write original content, you should think about your audience and who they are. Also, ask yourself:

  • What do you want to tell your audience?
  • What will be the main message of your article?
  • What is the purpose of your article?
  • What do you want your audience to do after they’ve read your article? (Do you want them to engage, to buy your stuff, to read more posts?)

Thinking about these questions will help you to come up with an original idea for your post or article.

Content design

Content design is a process that helps you produce content based on actual user needs. It doesn’t just help you figure out what your user wants, but it focuses more on what the user actually needs. Thinking about your content in this way will help your user to get that content when they need it, in the language and format they need it.

Content design isn’t just a technique to help you produce better content – it’s a new way of thinking about content. If you want to know more about content design, read our post on content design: a great way to make user-centered content.

Copywriting requires readable SEO content

A key requirement for writing high-quality content is to write content that’s easily readable. Readability is important both for your audience and for Google. After all, not only do people read your articles, but Google does too.

If your text is well structured and clearly written, readers will understand your message, but perhaps, more importantly, it will also help Google understand better too. If your main message is clearer to Google, your post is far more likely to rank well in the search engines.

Readability is about many factors, including text structure, sentence length and writing clear paragraphs. Read all about the importance of readability in this post. For more tips on readability, you can read our post on how to make an article more readable.

Content, context and search intent

As Google is getting smarter, it starts to understand content on sites better. It doesn’t just see if a keyword pops up a certain number of times on a page. It also takes into account the context of those keywords, like co-occurring terms and phrases, related words and synonyms. On top of that, as mentioned before, Google is able to understand queries of users better: it tries to determine what the search intent of the user is. Is he or she looking for a product or just information? Which pages fit that intent best?

All these developments mean that you should focus on more than just using your keyword often enough. It means you should also think about the words you use around it: do they make clear what topic you’re discussing? And, do you have the purpose in mind of the post or page you’re creating? Does it just provide information or are you trying to sell something, and does that align with what your users are actuall looking for? Yoast SEO Premium lets you optimize your SEO content with synonyms, making it even easier to add context to your articles.

Content should be optimized for search engines

The final requirement for writing high-quality content is to make sure the content is optimized for search engines. You want your SEO content to be easily found. Findability has to do with increasing the likelihood Google will pick up your content for the result pages. It’s important that you take this final step after you’ve written an original and readable post.

Yoast SEO helps you tweak your text just a little bit more. If you’ve written your article, focused on that original idea, and optimized the readability of your post, you should take a look at the SEO analysis in Yoast SEO. Red and orange bullets indicate which aspects of your findability need a little bit more attention. You don’t need a green bullet for every aspect though, as long as your overall score is good.

Yoast SEO will help you to optimize your snippet preview as well. These tweaks can vastly improve your chances to be picked up by the search engines. Read more about optimizing your post in our article on how to use the content and SEO analysis.

Conclusion on Content SEO

Content SEO is such a huge part of SEO. It encompasses all the aspects of writing and structuring content on your website. Content SEO is essential. Google reads and scans your website text. Google’s algorithm decides the ranking of your site largely based on the content you publish. And we all know content is king. So, you need to write awesome SEO content, focus on the right keywords and structure your website in such a way Google understands it. It’s a lot of work, but it will pay off in the long run.

Keep reading: Blogging: the ultimate guide »

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What is keyword stemming?

Marieke van de Rakt

Google can read and analyze texts very well. It understands that walk, walks and walking all boil down to the same thing. Also, Google knows that baby is basically the same as babies. How? By using something called keyword stemming. This gives you the freedom to alternate between different word forms while writing your text. And that’s why we introduced word form recognition in Yoast SEO Premium. So you can optimize your post and we’ll recognize the different word forms like walk, walks and walking. For longer tail keywords, we also recognize the words when you use them in a different order.

So, at Yoast, we talk about word forms, sometimes also about morphology recognition. At the same time, I hear the linguists at Yoast talking about keyword stemming too. And I noticed some SEOs talked about it as well. But what is keyword stemming? How does stemming relate to morphology recognition? And what does it have to do with SEO? I’ll explain all about it in this post.

What is keyword stemming?

Stemming or keyword stemming refers to Google’s ability to understand different word forms of a specific search query. It’s called stemming because it comes from the word stem, base or root form. To give an example: if you use the word ‘buy’ in a sentence, a stemming algorithm will recognize the words ‘buys’, ‘buying’ and ‘bought’ as variations of the word ‘buy’ as well. Some SEOs also differ between stemming and lemmatization.

Google has used keyword stemming in its algorithms for a long time now. The first blog posts about it from SEO experts like Rand Fishkin and Bill Slawski go as far back as 10 years ago. For languages other than English, Google began recognizing word forms much later. In recent years, Google’s algorithm became even more advanced, making exact match keyword optimization more and more outdated.

Help us improve word forms

The recent launch of French and Russian word forms consist of beta versions that we’re improving and expanding as we go. This might mean that we don’t recognize every word correctly. If you find anything that doesn’t seem right, let us know.

If you want to optimize your text for the term ballet shoes, for example, you should be able to use the term ballet shoe as well. Google understands that ballet shoes and ballet shoe are basically the same thing. Our Yoast SEO Premium plugin also recognizes these different word forms in the following languages: English, German, Dutch, Spanish, French and Russian. We’re working hard on adding new languages to this list, so let us know which one you’re missing!

Stemming and word forms

When people talk about keyword stemming or a stemming algorithm, they mean that the algorithm is able to recognize different word forms of a certain keyword. That’s exactly what the word forms functionality in Yoast SEO does. In regard to synonyms: we do not automatically detect these, but we do allow you to enter synonyms which will then be taken into account in our SEO analysis.

Maybe we should have called our word forms functionality stemming. But it’s a difficult word to explain to people. So, we’ll stick with word forms.

Keyword stemming and SEO

Google has become very smart. It understands text. It understands context. In order to stand a chance in the search engines, you need to write awesome texts that show your authority on a certain subject. Content stuffed with keywords does not rank anymore. Google hates that and your users hate that.

You need to use synonyms and related keywords in your content to make it pleasant to read and to make it rank! You also need to use different word forms in order to write a post that is easy to read. Thanks to stemming, we can tell that they belong together. Read more about it in our post on our word form analysis.

Conclusion

The SEO industry has been talking about stemming and lemmatization for over a decade. Our linguists talk about it too. For good reason, because keyword stemming allows them to recognize different word forms. This isn’t easy. At Yoast, we have an entire team of linguists working on our SEO and readability analyses. We’re now able to recognize different word forms properly in English, German, Dutch, Spanish, French (beta) and Russian (beta). And we’re already working on new languages, so tell me: which language should we tackle next?

Read more: SEO copywriting: the ultimate guide »

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