SEO for beginners training – Module 1.3 

Yoast SEO for WordPress 

In this lesson, we’ll give you a brief overview of what the Yoast SEO 
plugin does. We’ll talk to you about the functionalities of the free version 
of the plugin, and after that, we’ll discuss the features of Yoast SEO 
Premium. We’ll also explain what the plugin can’t do, and therefore, you 
should do yourself. Finally, we’ll give you a few possible reasons why 
your site may not rank, even though you have optimized it with Yoast 
SEO. 
 

What does Yoast SEO do? 

Suppose you know nothing about SEO, but you have heard about this 
little gem called Yoast SEO. People have told you that it is a very 
convenient tool to optimize your site and its pages for Google, Bing, and 
Yandex. It’s effortless. You want to use it. You install the Yoast SEO 
plugin and simply follow the advice given in that plugin. Within a week, 
your website will be topping the charts in Google. Or not? No, to be 
honest. It’s not that simple. Our plugin helps you to optimize your 
website for search engines. And it does that well, but it needs your input. 
 

Key features of the Yoast SEO plugin 

Yoast SEO makes working on your SEO easy. We aim to help you with it, 
step by step. Let’s discuss the essential features of the Yoast SEO plugin: 
 
● Keyphrase optimization 
Keyphrase optimization is our most important feature. It enables 
you to optimize a post or a page for a specific keyphrase (or 
keyword). You can insert the focus keyphrase you want to 
optimize for, and the plugin tells you if you have used that focus 
keyphrase the right way in that specific post. Keep in mind that 
the focus keyphrase does not give any information to Google. It’s 
just meant to help you create a post that is well-written and 
optimized for search engines. 

 
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Image 1: Focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO 
 
● Get related keyphrases 
In Image 1, there is a button below the Focus keyphrase input 
field that says - Get related keyphrases. What is that? It’s a 
fantastic feature we built together with SEMrush! To use it, you 
will need a SEmrush account that you connect to Yoast SEO in a 
few simple steps. Then, you will get a wealth of information on 
related keyphrases to your focus keyphrase right from the post 
editor (Image 2)! For example, you can see the average number of 
monthly searches for the related keyphrase over the last 12 
months (Volume). Or the interest of searchers in the related 
keyphrase over the previous 12 months (Trends). And, you can 
even choose the country and the language you want to see results 
for.  
 

 
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Image 2: The related keyphrases overlay window in the post editor 
 
● Readability analysis 
Writing ​readable blog posts​ is an essential part of every SEO 
strategy, so we also provide a convenient readability analysis for 
you. The readability analysis gives you advice on how to make 
your copy not only easily readable for your audience, but for 
Google as well. 

Image 3: Readability analysis 

 
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● Google preview 
The Yoast SEO plugin comes with a handy Google preview, which 
will show you what your page will look like in the Google search 
results. It shows you a preview of the page title and meta 
description and allows you to optimize them per individual page 
or post.  
 

Image 4: Google preview 

 
● Structured data 
Schema structured data drives many of the rich results you see in 
search results. With structured data, you give search engines 
insights into how your pages are built and how you describe your 
content. Since the 11.0 release, Yoast SEO builds a full structured 
data graph for every post or page on your site! A graph is a 
complete piece of structured data with well-defined connections 

 
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to all the different parts. Search engines now not only know what 
all the parts mean but also how they fit together. As a result, you 
have more chances to get rich results for your content! 
 
● Structured data blocks 
The block editor in WordPress lets us develop awesome tools that 
help you improve content with ease. One of our innovations is the 
structured data content block. These blocks do two things: they 
help you build specific pieces of content without breaking a sweat. 
In addition, they automatically add the structured data that you 
need to get rich results in search engines. Currently, you can 
create How-to pages, as well as FAQ pages easily, by using the 
Yoast SEO How-to or FAQ structured data blocks! 
 
● Speed boost 
Thanks to an approach we call indexables, Yoast SEO brings you a 
much faster experience. The first notable ‘feature’ of indexables 
is a speed boost of 5-10%. Your entire site will load faster. Of 
course, this depends on various elements, like the type of site, the 
number of plugins installed, the hosting provider, et cetera. This 
kind of speed boost is not only good for you, your visitors, and 
your site in general, but also for search engines. Search engines 
have been advocating faster sites for a while now, and with Yoast 
SEO can help you speed up your site as well. 
 
● Breadcrumbs 
Our plugin gives you full control over your breadcrumbs. 
Breadcrumbs are the links, usually above the title post, that look 
like this: ​Home » SEO blog » Content SEO​. They allow users to easily 
navigate your site and make it easier for search engines to 
determine your site’s structure. 
 

 
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Image 5: Breadcrumbs 

● Canonical URLs 
Another cool feature in Yoast SEO enables you to set canonical 
URLs. The same content on your site may be available on various 
URLs. To avoid confusing Google (and the user), you can tell 
search engines which URL you want Google to index. 
 
● Technical configuration 
Yoast SEO also handles the technical configuration of your site for 
search engines. For example, our plugin takes care of robots.txt, 
the .htaccess files, clean permalink URLs and XML sitemaps.  
 

Key features of the Yoast SEO Premium plugin 

We’ve seen that the free version of Yoast SEO is already awesome, so why 
should you buy Yoast SEO Premium? If you’re really serious about SEO, 
this is the plugin you should have. We’ll discuss the most important 
features you’ll get when you buy the premium version. 
 
 
● Word forms 
The premium plugin recognizes several types of word forms, like 
singulars, plurals, comparatives, and past tense. This makes the 
analysis that much stronger, as it now takes the different forms 
you use into account. For example, words like ‘books,’ ‘booking,’ 
‘booked, are all recognized as forms of ‘book’.Word forms 
recognition is available in English, Dutch, German, French, 
Russian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and Indonesian! 
 
● Synonyms 
There’s no more need to repeatedly use your keyphrase 
throughout the text too much, as you can now use synonyms. If 
you’re optimizing for ‘ballet shoes,’ just add ‘dancing shoes’ to 
its synonyms in Yoast SEO, and the plugin will consider those 
synonyms in ints analysis. The recognition of synonyms and word 
forms helps you write readable, understandable, and findable 

 
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texts! 
 
● Social previews 
With Yoast SEO Premium, you can check what your post will look 
like on Facebook or Twitter without even going to these 
platforms. While working on your post, you can just go to the 
Yoast SEO meta box or sidebar, upload the image you’d like to 
show, and preview it to make sure it looks like you want it to. 
 

Image 6: Social previews

 
● Related keyphrases 
With the free version of our plugin, you can choose one focus 
keyphrase to optimize your text for. However, it might help to 
make your post or page rank for that focus keyphrase by 
strengthening it with other, closely related topics. In, Yoast SEO 
Premium, you can add up to four related keyphrases. Use them, as 
Google is getting better at recognizing relationships between 

 
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words and topics. In addition, with the Get related keyphrase 

feature we developed with SEMrush, you can automatically add 
additional keyphrases to your analysis!  
 
● Internal linking tool 
With our internal linking tool, it’s super easy to link to related 
posts. The tool shows you which posts are related to the one 
you’re working on, so you can easily structure your content. This 
way, you can show both Google and your users which posts are 
related and which are most important. 
 

 
Image 7: Internal linking tool 
 
 
 

● Internal linking blocks  

Yoast SEO Premium features four Premium blocks that make 
internal linking even easier! Using your website’s hierarchical 
structure, you can link your pages together with the Subpages 
block, the Siblings block, and the Related links block. In addition, 

 
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you can add structure to your posts and pages with the Table of 
contents block. 
 
● Content insights 
Yoast SEO Premium tells you the words or word combinations 
that appear most often in your text. Use this feature to check if 
your text is optimized for the right keyphrases. You may get 
valuable insights when a different word keeps popping up or you 
could notice a new combination of words. 
 

 
Image 8: Content insights 

 
● Redirect manager  
When expanding your site, you’re bound to run into cases where 
you’re deleting pages, moving pages, changing URLs for 
categories, etc. All these changes can cause problems when you’re 
not properly redirecting the old URLs to new ones. Our redirect 
manager can help you solve all these issues and more. 
 

 
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● Ad-free 
Last but not least, the premium version of Yoast SEO is 
completely ad-free. 
 
● Support 
When you buy Yoast SEO Premium, you get access to our 
awesome support team. This means you can send us an email at 
any time with questions about the setup and basic use of the 
plugin. 
 

What can’t Yoast SEO do: what should I do? 

Our plugin helps you to optimize your website for search engines. And it 
does that well, but it needs your input. So, what are the things you should 
do yourself in order to optimize your site for search engines? 
 
1. The first thing you need to do is c
​ onfigure the plugin​ in the right 
way. The settings should be in line with your website. The 
configuration wizard helps you to easily configure your site, to 
have the optimal SEO settings. 
 
2. In addition, you should execute ​keyphrase research​. This is the 
most important part of your SEO strategy because you should 
optimize your site for the right words. You need to get inside your 
audience’s heads to find out which words people are searching 
for. Next, you should know your competition and estimate your 
chances to rank, because if you’re optimizing for a really 
competitive term, you won’t get any traffic. 
 
3. You should ​write awesome content​. This is not something we can 
do for you, this has to be done manually. However, the plugin 
helps you to write SEO-friendly and readable texts, by carrying 
out content and readability analyses. You can use the results of 
these analyses to make sure your text is well-optimized for 
search engines. In addition, we have also written a lot of b
​ log 
posts​ about content writing, and you can follow our S
​ EO 
copywriting training​. 
 

 
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4. It’s very important to establish your i​ nternal linking structure 

because this helps Google understand your website. Yoast SEO can 
help you with the internal linking feature, but you have to do this 
yourself. 
 
5. An important part of your SEO strategy should be your s
​ ocial 
strategy​. Yoast SEO can help you make those posts on Facebook 
look good, but you still have to write the content and hit that 
button. 
 
6. The same goes for the ​redirects​. Yoast SEO can help you detect 
errors and automatically presents you the most common options 
of solving them. It can even fix the easiest ones. However, in most 
cases, you still have to choose and select the one you prefer. 
 
As you have seen, most of the technical stuff in the background is taken 
care of automatically. However, there are a few things our plugin cannot 
do for you: it needs your input. But we still try to help you with that, with 
our courses and blog posts. 
 

I’ve optimized my site with Yoast SEO, so why am I not 

ranking? 
The Yoast SEO plugin helps you to optimize your site and its pages easily. 
This could definitely result in higher rankings. But unfortunately, green 
bullets do not magically put you on top of the search results. We’ll 
discuss two possible reasons why a post doesn’t rank, even though it has 
been optimized with Yoast SEO. 
 
Too much competition 

In most cases, the reason a post doesn’t rank on top is that there’s simply 
too much competition. If you optimize your blog post for Justin Bieber, 
chances are high you won’t rank for that term. Too many sites and blog 
posts have established themselves in this niche. Your site doesn’t have 
the authority that some other sites do have. And a large portion of the 
other sites in this niche is probably also capable of writing SEO-friendly 
texts. 

 
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If you really want to rank for those highly competitive terms, you should 
try a long tail keyphrase strategy. Blog about all the nuances and little 
variations around the competitive keyphrases. If these long tail articles 
start ranking, you’ll be able to rank for more competitive terms as well. 
Such a strategy requires long-term efforts, but in the end, it will pay off. 
 

A lack of patience 

At Yoast, we propose a holistic SEO strategy, in which you have to be the 

best result. When you’re just starting out, you’re probably not the best 
result yet. Unfortunately, SEO is a long-term strategy. You just need to 
have a little patience. Try to focus on all aspects of website optimization, 
try to ​be​ that best result. It will pay off eventually! 
 

Conclusion 
In this lesson, we’ve talked about the features of the Yoast SEO plugin for 
WordPress. You’ve seen that the free version features are already 
awesome, but when you buy Yoast SEO Premium, you get even more! If 
you’re serious about SEO, features like (multiple) focus keyphrase 
optimization, breadcrumbs, the internal linking tool, and the redirect 
manager will save you a lot of time. But remember: the plugin cannot do 
everything for you. It needs your input. 

 
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