131. WordPress SEO Deconstructed by the Master with Joost de Valk

Apr 25, 2018

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Today’s guest, Joost de Valk, is here to talk about how his plugin helps you assess the quality of your content, but also to take a deep dive into WordPress SEO. He’s the creator of the Yoast SEO plugin, which is currently active in over 8.5 million WordPress websites. It’s easy to say that the key to good SEO is quality content. But what exactly counts as quality content? How do you know whether your content is good enough to optimize your site? Listening to today's podcast is a step in the right direction.

Find Out More About Joost Here:

Joost de Valk on Twitter Joost de Valk on LinkedIn Yoast

In This Episode:

[01:30] - Joost starts things off by talking about the best ways to maximise Yoast’s potential for SEO. He then talks more about readability and what it means.
[04:00] - What are examples of some of the actionable feedback that Joost has been talking about?
[07:21] - As algorithms dive into our copy more and more, they have a hard time digesting text that is hard to read. This means that easy-to-read copy will generally rank better.
[08:26] - Joost discusses keyword density, which isn’t relevant except in edge cases. He and Stephan then dive into the subject of keyword prominence.
[10:44] - Are there red herrings that listeners should look out for, or false information that should be corrected?
[14:09] - Stephan suggests a feature that identifies how many clicks away each page (or post) is from an external link source.
[16:45] - We move into other types of settings in Yoast that optimize SEO.
[20:50] - Joost points out that Yoost tries to go with decisions, not options.
[22:19] - We hear more about tags on posts in WordPress, with Joost pointing out that you should never have more tags than posts. He and Stephan then talk about using tags and categories.
[27:05] - Stephan clarifies another important point about no-indexing content, and then gives an example of a bad site map.
[29:40] - What does Joost think of the spider bites page that Stephan has just been talking about?
[31:20] - Joost discusses whether he sees a benefit of creating an HTML sitemap page on a typical website.
[34:00] - Stephan’s extreme preference is not to include the dates in the URL. Joost agrees that it’s a bad idea.
[36:56] - Does Joost have any particular accessibility features that may not be important for SEO but that he highly recommends?
[38:50] - Joost talks about some of the capabilities of his plugin in terms of JSON-LD, Schema, and so on.
[41:21] - We hear Joost’s thoughts on whether his video plugin or local plugin are must-haves for website owners.
[43:12] - Stephan moves onto talking about RSS optimization, which he explains is important for podcasts.
[45:10] - What is Joost’s take on scrapers and pursuing copyright infringement issues?
[46:24] - Pagination is stupid and should never be done, Joost says.
[47:16] - How can people reach out to Joost to work with him?

Links and Resources: