seo tips and tricks - look good when sharing:
Have a new blog post, article, or just web page that you want to share? Of course you do! Sharing new and exciting content is a great way to get the word out about your company. Using social media to get the conversation going can lead to more sharing by those that read your articles and web pages and lead to better traffic and lead generation on your site. Needless to say, social media is a big part of the equation and you want to make sure you're looking good when people are sharing your content across the various social media platforms. In this edition of SEO Tips and Tricks we explore how to use the Yoast tool to make your posts shine.
Looking for other great SEO tips and tricks? Check out these other blog articles in the series!
yoast seo plugin for wordpress - your best friend
We've written fairly extensively about how awesome the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress is and all the great tools that it comes with. For the sake of this article we'll assume that you've downloaded and installed the tool into your WordPress platform. If you don't, find the Plugin here and make sure to get it installed. If you'd like find out more about the tool and the different features you can check out their website. Even if you don't use it for social media optimization, get it anyway as it is by far the most extensive and useful social media tool for WordPress.
Anyway let's get started:
Step 1: Log on to the wordpress admin, navigate to pages
The first step in the process is to log on to your WordPress Admin dashboard and navigate to the pages section. This section is where you'll see the various pages on your site and where you can modify them. Click on a page to bring up the settings for that individual page.
Step 2: Navigate to the yoast page tool on your admin
Once you're in the page admin page, navigate to the Yoast SEO plugin window usually found near or at the end of the page. This will look something like the picture below. If you haven't already optimized what this page will look like in Google search, do so before moving on to the social media. Then click on the social media button on the upper left corner of the window to bring up the social media optimization tool.
Step 3: Fill out the window for facebook + twitter
Fill out the window with the relevant information. If you've used the Yoast tool in the past and provided meta descriptions for all of your pages (IF NOT DO THIS NOW!!!!) then you don't need to fill out the social media description. However, it is nice to formulate a message specifically for this type of post. Think of something that your social media readers would like to read like an attention grabber or something along those lines.
When filling out the form remember to include an image (1200 x 630px is recommended as the optimal size) in the window as social media posts with images tend to perform significantly better than those without. Here is an example of what the form looks like filled out, for our example we optimized for our Growth Driven Design page:
Step 4: Test your post by sharing your page on twitter and facebook
It is seemingly always the last step in the process of SEO, testing! Make sure you grab the link from your URL bar on your browser exactly how someone else would and post that link into Facebook and Twitter to see what it looks like. If you need to make any adjustments to the feature image or text do so, and test again! Below is what our page looks like on both platforms.
Step 5: Monitor performance
Remember to monitor the performance of your social media posts and make adjustments as you go. If you don't have images, make sure to get them. If you're not posting regularly, use a scheduling tool to be posting on a regular basis. These habits are great to get into, and as your posts get shared and distributed across social media you can be sure they look great and deliver the right message.
THANKS FOR READING THIS ENTRY IN SEO TIPS AND TRICKS:
Thanks for visiting our blog and reading this installment in our SEO tips and tricks series! We hope that it helps you get your site running at peak performance and maximum visibility on search engines. If you're looking for more great SEO tips check out our full blog or subscribe in the footer at the bottom of this page. Also be sure to download our great PDF guide "10 SEO Mistakes to avoid in your next Website Redesign" by clicking the link below!
