The Yoast SEO Plugin is one of the most recommended SEO plugin which is widely used these days, as it is very easy to use and extremely helpful. Personally I think it is the most user friendly plugin which is available today. Now, if you start to use it, it is important to make the best use of the plugin and so, I would like to share my views how this can be done.

The green bullets are important in WP SEO by Yoast
The WordPress SEO Plugin comes with the page analysis tool that is awesome. This tool helps to improve your content and make it more SEO friendly. The more green bullets the better… So, the aim should be to get maximum green bullets. There is a likelihood that one can cheat his own search engine to get more green bullets, but this should not be the approach. Try and get more bullets, without any unwanted manipulations.

Misapplication of the Page Analysis Tool
People who will start using the Page Analysis tool can also cheat to get more green bullets. Now, here I would like to share an example with you. I started writing blogs for BjornWallman.com and also for OnceInteractive.com. I wrote a blog about a WordPress plug in that I liked. I did a lot of research about the keywords to be used and I wanted this post to have a good rank and visibility on the internet. When I started with this task of optimization, I figured out that my post did not have the keyword “WordPress plug in”. It was not present anywhere in the title, the headings and also nowhere in the description.

I was focusing on the wrong keywords… When I used the SEO tool, there were no green bullets. By tweaking some of the content as well as the article name (super important!) I was able to get much better results and the Yoast SEO Plug in really helped me out.

Keyword research
When talking about SEO, we all know the importance of relevant keywords. One can read Basics of Keyword Research by Joost or The Focus Keyword in WordPress SEO.  Google Trends is a wonderful tool which can be used for keyword research. It tells us about the words which people frequently use while searching for a product or service on Google. So, picking the appropriate keywords can make a lot of difference.

Do not change the focus keyword to get green bullets
Never indulge into something like this. Changing the focus keyword is not a good idea. Like the example I shared above, people search for “WordPress plug in” on Google but my text was not optimized for that. Changing the focus keyword for my post as per my will not change the behavior of people. A green bullet is not the ultimate goal. If you do not focus on optimizing the content as per the trend followed by people, the green bullet will not lead to more relevant traffic.

Using the page analysis tool effectively
Keyword research is important and it should be done extensively. You have to think how people should find you on all the major search engines.

Without altering the quality of the content of the blog or ruining its readability and structure, you can make your blog fulfill the SEO requirements using the page analysis tool. The SEO strategy should never be given priority over the structure and content of the existing blog. But yes, we can always make minor changes in the headings and sub headings to make it SEO compliant.

Now, back to my blog, I had to make some alterations there. This all was done so that the blog can fit into the search engine strategy of the major search engines. I made some minor tweaks that improved my article greatly without making it confusing to the reader… Now, the bullets turned green…. and yes, I did not change the goal of my blog.