Working with Wordpress

Summary

This page is a short summary of how to effectively use the tools in WordPress to optimize your blog post's searchability and readability.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a tool which analyses blog pages and attempts to identify areas for improvement, both in terms of how the text is structured and how it is presented in search engines. If you want a more in-depth description of Yoast SEO and some of its main features, you may visit their online webpage [1].

The Yoast SEO tool has two tabs: Content and SEO. The Content tab focuses on analysis of trends within your content to check for basic readablity components. The SEO tab allows you to adjust your settings for how search engines find your post. In both tabs, the tool uses a color-coding system to indicate your performance for difference aspects of its analysis. If it is red, you should fix it. If it is yellow, you should probably try to fix it. If it is green, leave it be. However, not all points need to be green; we will survive!

To get to the Yoast SEO tool for any post in the McNair blog:

1. Go to the McNair Center dashboard by scrolling over the "The McNair Center" tab at the top of the McNair blog homepage and clicking "dashboard"
2. On the left side of the screen, click on "Posts"
3. Scroll over the title of your chosen blog post, then click the "Edit" button which appears
4. Scroll past the content box for the blog. Below the content box, you should find the "Yoast SEO" tool

SEO tab

This describes some of the more common features of the SEO tab. The link in the main summary contains more in-depth descriptions of all features.

Focus Keyword

Your focus keyword is the word or phrase that you would put into a search engine to find this post. Picking a good focus keyword requires strategy in order to increase your chances of having your post ranked higher in search results. See link [2] for more on how to choose an appropriate focus keyword. Please also note that your focus keyword must also be in your meta description, so it should be a word or phrase that could be used in a sentence (ex. "Egan dog" for a post about Ed's dog would not be a good focus keyword because the phrase would be hard to use in a sentence in your meta description).

Meta Description

The meta description is what is shown in the Google description when a link to your page comes up as a search result. If there is no meta description, Google will grab a random piece of text (usually the first sentence or two) from your blog and use that as the description. It is also important to use your focus keyword in your meta description, as that is the only way that the meta description will show up with a google search. To create the meta description, use the "Snippet Editor" feature in the SEO tab. See link [3] for tips on making a good meta description.

Alt Attributes

For images, the alt tag describes the picture and its purpose. See link for more details on how to create an alt tag and why it is important [4].