I love Yoast SEO.  I admit it, it makes my job a whole lot easier and turns the difficult task of improving SEO on a page into something that pretty much anyone can do.  Simply write the post with content that is targeted for the desired phrases or keywords with around 300 words in each major section, add images with alt tags that reinforce the keywords, sprinkle in some relevant links, fill in the required fields in Yoast SEO, and voila! your post is ready to go. Save your work with fingers crossed and the post is . . . red? What? It is not the lovely green light which means that the post is optimized well for good page rank. How could this happen?

It happens to everyone.  It isn’t easy to turn red lights to green.  Many of my clients feel that all of their posts must have green bullets. They feel they have somehow failed if a post is amber or red.  This isn’t true. There are some posts that will never get a green light.

Luckily, Yoast SEO gives us tips to improve our writing.  If you are able to apply their hints, you can usually get posts with substance to rank well.  Try as you might, posts such as a contact page or a short announcement will probably never get the green light and that is perfectly fine. Yoast is a terrific tool, but you still have to write in a way that communicates best with your particular audience.

Yoast recently wrote a great article about why this happens.  They tell us that they actually do NOT personally hate our writing style, despite how it feels when we work so hard for that glittering green bullet.  It’s ok.  Keep writing. Keep optimizing.  Use common sense and your site will grow.