Understanding the basic concepts of SEO and how to make sure your website content is fully optimised using the Yoast SEO plugin

Updated October 2026: We’ve refreshed this guide to reflect changes in Yoast, Google search and AI-powered search, while keeping it focused on the SEO basics you actually need when editing your website.

Introduction

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is all about helping search engines understand your website and giving your pages the best chance of appearing for relevant searches.

There are lots of things which contribute to good SEO, including:

• Is your website fast and mobile friendly?
• Can search engines easily find and understand your pages?
• Are your images properly optimised, including useful alt text where appropriate?
• Do other relevant and trustworthy websites link to yours?
• Does your website use HTTPS and work securely?
• Most importantly, does your content clearly answer the questions your potential customers are searching for?

We’ll have set up the SEO foundations for your site when we build it. But if you’re adding or editing pages yourself, it’s useful to understand how to keep your content well optimised.

This guide talks you through the Yoast SEO plugin and some of the basic things to think about when adding new content. This is what we call “on-page SEO” – the content and structure of the pages on your website.

SEO goes beyond what you do on the page too. Your Google Business Profile, reviews, links from other websites and your wider online presence can all play a part. We’ve covered some simple things you can do yourself in our guide: 3 Simple Steps to Improve your SEO as a New Website. We also offer SEO reporting and consultancy, including keyword research and rank tracking. But enough about that – let’s get down to business and have a look at Yoast.

Page Summary and Yoast Traffic Lights

Once the Yoast Plugin is installed (we will do this for you), when you go to your pages in the admin console you’ll see some new columns and traffic lights.

The traffic lights are a useful guide, but don’t get too hung up on making every one green. They show how well your page matches Yoast’s recommendations – they are not a Google ranking score. Sometimes there will be a perfectly good reason to leave something amber, or even red. What matters most is that the page is useful, easy to understand and properly targeted at the people you want to find it.

When you edit a page, the Yoast SEO Plugin will also show its analysis in the editor. More on this to follow!

Key SEO Concepts

Yoast Help

Disclaimer: parts of this guide are based on Yoast’s own help documentation. Because it’s really good. If you see a question mark or help link anywhere in the Yoast plugin, click on it to find out more. Their blog is also a useful source of help – and some bedtime reading! https://yoast.com/seo-blog/

Focus Keyphrase

Your focus keyphrase is the main search term you want that page to appear for. So if somebody searches for that phrase, ideally your page should be relevant to what they’re looking for. Your focus keyphrase should usually be different for different pages on your website. A service page, product page and blog article will normally be targeting different searches. Don’t choose a phrase just because it sounds good – think about what your customers are actually likely to type into Google.

SEO Title

The SEO title helps search engines and potential visitors understand what your page is about. It will usually be used as the clickable title shown in search results, although Google can sometimes choose to display something different. Keep it clear, relevant and descriptive, and include your main search phrase naturally where it makes sense.

Meta Description

The Meta Description is a short summary of the page. Google may use it underneath your page title in search results, although it can sometimes choose a different piece of text from the page instead. A good meta description should clearly explain what the page offers and encourage the right person to click through to your website.

Slug

The Slug is the final part of the webpage address. For instance, our contact page has the slug contact: https://www.greystokewebdesign.co.uk/contact/

Keep slugs short, clear and descriptive. Where it makes sense, include the main subject or keyphrase of the page. WordPress will normally create the slug automatically from your page title. So a page called: A Quick Guide to the Yoast SEO Plugin might automatically become: /a-quick-guide-to-the-yoast-seo-plugin/. That’s unnecessarily long, so we might shorten it to: /yoast-seo-quick-guide/

Hopefully it’s clear that all these fields should describe the same basic thing: what the page is about. So there will naturally be some overlap between them.

Explaining the key Yoast Plugin blocks

At the bottom of any WordPress page you’ll see some Yoast SEO configuration

When you edit a WordPress page or post, you can open Yoast SEO from the sidebar. Depending on your editor setup, you may also see the Yoast panel below the page content.

The main things you’ll use are:

1. Focus keyphrase – enter the main search phrase you’re targeting for that page.
2. Search appearance – this is where you can edit the SEO title and meta description, and preview how the page may appear in search results.
3. SEO analysis – Yoast checks the page and gives you suggestions for things you may want to improve.
4. Readability – this looks at how easy your content is to read.
5. Social appearance – lets you control how the page may appear when it is shared on social media.

Remember that Yoast is a guide, not a set of rules. You don’t need to fix every suggestion just to turn every traffic light green.

The SEO Score

Yoast will give your page an SEO score based on a number of checks. It looks at things such as your focus keyphrase, SEO title, meta description, page content, links and images.

Use the analysis as a guide rather than a target. You do not need to make every traffic light green, and sometimes Yoast will suggest changes which don’t make sense for that particular page. For example, a contact page may have very little text and no need for lots of images or outbound links. That doesn’t mean it is a bad page.

The important thing is that your page is useful, clear and properly describes what it is about.

Now lets look at the analysis …

My overall SEO status is amber, and I have 3 red lights, and 1 amber one. But a lot of green. It’s all self explanatory and each bullet point has links back to the very helpful Yoast website.

You’ll notice that the analysis is not confined to the SEO key fields we’ve just covered though. Content is king. Outbound and inbound links matter. Images matter, with relevant alt tags. And what you write, how much you write, and the way you write it also matters …

Readability Score

Once you’ve optimised your SEO title, meta description and keyphrase, it’s time to look at your content.

Yoast also gives each page or post a readability score. It looks at things such as sentence and paragraph length, use of headings, passive voice and how easy the content is to read.

As with the SEO score, use this as a guide rather than trying to make every traffic light green. The important thing is that your content is clear and easy for your visitors to understand. Yoast will also check how you’ve used your focus keyphrase within the content. Make sure it appears naturally where appropriate, but don’t repeat it simply to improve the Yoast score.

Once you’ve decided on your keyphrase, it’s worth reading through the page again and making sure the content really does match what somebody searching for that phrase would expect to find.

Remember, the Yoast website itself is a great source of support. We’ll also have set up a lot of this when building the initial website, but it’s worth keeping under review.

Hiding Pages from Search Engines

Sometimes you might not want a page to appear in Google or other search results. If that’s the case, open the Advanced section in Yoast SEO and change: Allow search engines to show this content in search results? to No. This is called “noindexing” the page. Use it with care – most pages on your website should normally remain visible to search engines.

Case Study – Nicky Richards Racing

We recently did some SEO consultancy work for Nicky Richards Racing. The first thing we did was add a relevant site description. After just that one change, the site moved from page 10 on the search rankings for ‘national hunt trainer’ to page 2 and position 15. One simple change.

Further reading

It’s really important to take search engine optimisation into account for images as well as text. This article explains what you need to so:

• https://www.greystokewebdesign.co.uk/help/editing-media/