SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process that enhances the chances your content is found on search engines such as Google or Bing organically.
The biggest component of SEO is keyword and keyword placement within the headline and in the content of your post.
Keywords are important subjects that your content is about. Bottom line, it is what users of search engines are looking for and they are what will end up drawing new readers to the site.
We have installed a SEO package on all of the pages that allows you to optimize your content in order to get it in front of the most eyes as possible without having to pay for promotion.
Here is a brief guide on how to use the package:
The article we will be using as an example is Adam Hernandez’s piece titled “Pete Rose gets a minute and a half standing ovation at the All-Star Game” published on July 14th, 2015. We will walk through step by step on how to best use the SEO package to maximize exposure of the content.
Title
As you all know, if you don’t have an interesting headline to your piece, nobody gets to read the content on the inside. At TMSNX, we don’t have a traditional editor structure where the headlines are done for you, you will have to come up with them yourself. It will be very important to include the major keyword(s) in the headline to maximize the SEO score, getting your content in front of the eyes of more readers.
Adam’s keywords (tags) for this article are:
- All-Star Game
- Cincinnati Reds
- Pete Rose
- MLB
Within the title of his article, he has included half of these keywords. People using search engines to find out information about Pete Rose and the All-Star Game would likely be interested in the article because what they entered into the search engine appears in the headline presented to them by the S.E.
The WordPress SEO by Yoast Tool
Above is a screenshot of Adam’s Pete Rose article we discussed in step one.
Snippet Preview: This is what potential readers will see on their search engine results. This will be different for each article depending on how you manipulate the options below.
Focus Keyword: This is the single, most important keyword for the whole article. This is what the SEO tool will try and get our content in front of the eyes of people searching about that keyword. For example, Adam’s article is about the warm reception Pete Rose received at the 2015 MLB All-Star game, which got a lot of publicity. If searchers missed the standing ovation live but want to see what happened, they are likely to search for “Pete Rose” in their search engine, and then we would be matched to them with a relevant headline.
Below your Focus Keyword you will see some metrics related to the word you have chosen. The more occurrences of the Focus Keyword within the Heading, Title, and Content the better. However, don’t go crazy and just drop the Focus Keyword everywhere nonchalantly to improve this score, as it will affect the quality of the content.
SEO Title: This is the bold text in the snippet. It doesn’t have to be word for word the headline of your piece, but should be very similar. The two might not be the same because the SEO Title has a 75 character limit whereas your regular title does not. The SEO tool will let you know if your SEO Title is too long. However if you’re title is too long it’s not the end of the world, just make sure all of your relevant keywords are located towards the front so they do show up within the visible title.
*Notice how the Focus Keyword you used in the step above is bolded, drawing attention of a searcher to our content, making it seem more relevant to what they are looking for.
Meta Description: This is a max 156 character subheadline from your piece. The best practice for creating a Meta Description is to pull a one sentence quote from your piece that highlights what it is mostly about. If you cannot find anything profound, your first sentence is usually a good place to start.
Knocking this Meta Description out of the ballpark is very important because it is the hook that gets searchers to click the link to your content.. If the Meta description is half-assed but your content is gold, this will cost you potential readers, costing you and TMSNX revenue.
Page Analysis
Above is a screenshot from the previously mentioned article on Pete Rose by Adam Hernandez from July 14th, 2015.
This is the next tab in the SEO Tool that allows you to see how well your content is set up for Search Engine Optimization.
Bottom line, the more green circles the better. If it is full of red circles, go through your content and improve it until more of the.
For example:
- This article doesn’t have enough keyword density, but it isn’t the end of the world considering the keyword was a proper noun, and inserting it into the content more frequently would ruin the article.
- He doesn’t have enough words to meet the minimum recommendations. This article was just a news blip with an embedded Twitter video, so that’s nothing to worry about. Still, if you can get the article within the 300-500 word range which news and opinion that would be the most ideal.
If you had these issues with your content, re-work your piece to improve these scores. The better the scores, the more likely your content shows up in the organic listings of the Search Engines.
