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Yoast for TYPO3 can help with optimizing your Web site for search machines. For WordPress users, this plug-in has been a household word for quite some time. Now Yoast has been available for TYPO3 for a while as well. In fact, it is not only remarkably handy but also fun to use so we will explain in detail how this SEO tool works in TYPO3.

What Yoast Can Do for TYPO3

It stands to reason that Yoast cannot replace professional search engine optimization, which also includes technical SEO. It can, however, optimize copy for Google and others and place your content on a solid SEO foundation. And best of all, this tool is easy to understand and only requires basic SEO skills. Any missing knowledge can be found as help right on the Yoast web site in easily intelligible English.

Yoast’s analyses within TYPO3 is divided into two main areas. On one hand, the tool checks the copy’s readability. On the other hand, it reviews classic SEO elements such as metadata and the use of key words.

How Yoast for TYPO3 Works

As soon as you open a page in the backend you will notice that something has changed above your page elements: Right on top you will see two coloured dots, called traffic lights, that, evaluating your search engine optimizing efforts, will hopefully change from red to green in the course of the SEO process. Below the “traffic lights” you will see a preview of your snippets, which are what is shown to users from your page in Google’s search results.

Now click “Edit page properties” to open the SEO tab. Here, you will be overwhelmed by loads of red and orange, and hopefully also some green dots. But do not lose faith: Yoast will take you by the hand and guide you step by step on your way to a document that will please any search engine.

Title and meta-Description

First, Yoast will show you how to optimize your title and meta description. You can overtype the actual page title with a SEO title in a special entry field. This prevents your page tree in TYPO3 from becoming cumbersome due to long page titles. Nevertheless, your page title has been optimized for search engines.

Incidentally, the perfect length of a page title for Google is 65 characters. If you use too few or too many characters then Yoast will indicate this fact by showing a red bar underneath the entry mask.

Yoast also indicates directly whether the meta description copy is of adequate length. The program defines that as being in the range of 140 to 155 characters, by the way. A little way further down it takes care of your snippets’ content.

Readability

Next, Yoast in TYPO3 evaluates the document’s readability. In many cases, the readability dot will not turn green and that is for a quite simple reason: The so-called Flesch Reading Ease Score is a measure of how easily your copy can be read. This dot only turns green after your copy has become so simple that an 11-year-old can easily read it. This is certainly not possible with many kinds of content. Nevertheless, it is particularly advisable to formulate online texts as readable as possible while always keeping your target group in mind. What is wrong with illustrating a complicated subject in a simple way?

• Length of sentences: Keep your sentences short. If you can shorten sentences in a meaningful way, you should do so, not only for the sake of search engine optimization. Users will be thankful as well.
• Transition words: Transition words: The so-called transition words or phrases add to the readability of documents. They connect sentences meaningfully and guide readers through the text. But, likewise, however, and besides are basic conjunctions or transition words. Go here to learn more about this extensive subject.
• Number of words: A text must have a certain length for Google to rate it as relevant. Yoast says a piece if copy should contain at least 300 Words.
• Paragraph length: Keep your individual paragraphs short to make your copy as well laid out as possible. Yoast rates paragraphs with less than 150 words positively.
• Subheadings: A piece of copy should not only contain a sufficient number of paragraphs, however. Subheadings are important as well. They guide readers through the text and enable them to skim over its content. Sections following a subheading should not be longer than 250 to 350 words.
• Length of sentences: At this point, TYPO3 calculates how many of your sentences are longer than 20 words. This percentage should be less than 25% for a text to be easily readable.
• Active/passive voice: The passive voice of verbs, which is used to denote the subject of a sentence as being the recipient of the verb’s action, should not be used more than occasionally and only in well justified cases. Excessively many passive voice wordings tend to disturb the text’s readability and they can easily be turned into active clauses.
• Repetitive sentences: In addition, Yoast in TYPO3 checks whether consecutive sentences start with the same word.

Keywords

The next section is dedicated to the focus keyword, that is, the primary key term, by which the user is supposed to find the text piece at hand. Enter your focus keyword into the corresponding input mask. Yoast will then present analysis results for your keyword in real time.

• Keyword density: Yoast in TYPO3 calculates this value to indicate whether you have used the given focus keyword frequently enough but then again not to frequently. The reason for this is that so-called keyword stuffing is not favoured any more.
• Keyword distribution: Furthermore, the plug-in analyses how well the keyword is distributed within the text. So make sure to distribute your keyword evenly across your copy.
• Keyword in heading, title, description, subheadings, preface: It is very important for Google to find you using your focus keyword at certain crucial places: These include main headings and subheadings, meta data (title, description) of course, and the document’s preface.
• Image alt attributes: You should also provide alt attributes for your your images where you use the keyword as well.

Links

Links, which also play an important role for search engine optimization, are the final elements that Yoast in TYPO3 checks. It does this separately for internal and external links.

• Internal links: One thing is to try and link the pages among each other in a meaningful way to guide web site visitors through your subjects prepared for them.
• External links: The other is to link to external web pages that correspond to the given subject and offer added value to your visitors.

Once most of the “traffic lights” are green, you have created a solidly SEO worthy document. Of course, your ranking will still depend on further factors, technical ones for example, but now it should not fail on account of your copy any more.

If you are interested in Yoast or TYPO3 and/or SEO in general, please contact us: Send us an email to office@pixel-ink.de

 

 

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