Just like many humans, WordPress and its many plugins keep getting better with age and the most recent example is the Yoast snippet editor that came packaged in Yoast SEO 3.1 plugin.
We’ve been using Yoast SEO on Baker Marketing WordPress websites for some time now and the latest update has snuck a couple of new options your way that will help you with your SEO maintenance.
I refer to:
- Yoast snippet editor
- Primary category selection
Let’s take a quick look at both.
Using the Yoast snippet editor
When you upgrade to Yoast SEO 3.1, you’ll see at the bottom of each Post, Page and Category, an area for customising the ‘rich snippet’ of wording that is offered to Google for use in displaying the link to your site.
For example, in preparing this article, I have clicked the Edit snippet button and written my preferred ‘snippet’ or ‘description’ to entice searchers to click on through when this article appears in Google search results.
Once you’ve written your description, you have made it easy for Google to give searchers some actionable and clear context for deciding whether or not they want to click through to your article.
Of course, there are many situations in which Google might decide to display something else but if all goes to plan, Yoast snippet editor shows you a preview of how your listing can look in search results once you’ve clicked Close snippet editor.
So today your task is to look at blogs you craft and pay attention to what meaningful description would be the most appropriate wording for your target market to see when they’re search for a product or service like yours.
Just remember to keep your ‘snippets’ active and relevant; don’t try and stuff each one with a heap of keyords. Focus per article is best.
Why select a primary category for your blog posts?
Another one of the goodies wrapped up in Yoast 3.1 is the new option to select which of your blog posts categories should be considered the ‘primary’ category for each article you publish.
This is helpful and will one day be part of WordPress (I hope) because it gives you control over which category is most closely associated to an article and included in its web address, if you use categories in your permalink structure.
It’s simple to use, too. Just write your article and then click whichever blog category makes sense for your content.
Then you’ll see Make Primary appear next to the categories you’ve chosen. Choose one and then publish your article as usual. Job done, as you can see in this image (I clicked a few extra categories for the image as a demonstration).
Armed with these extra, easy-to-use features, Yoast SEO 3.1 will help you help your WordPress blog shine.
And if you’d like a hand with that, chat with us at Baker Marketing.
Finally, here’s the man behind Yoast SEO, giving his overview of the latest features.
