SEO - Skilled Blogging

Yoast SEO Transition Words {Complete List!}

Yoast SEO uses transition words as a critical component of their readability scores. As of this writing, it is recommended that at least 30 percent of your sentences include a transition word or phrase. Why are transition words important? Well, as Yoast SEO says, “readability ranks.”

This can be frustrating, of course, when you don’t know exactly what transition words Yoast SEO is looking for. Instead of trying to come up with your own, I’ve found the exact list of transition words that the Yoast SEO plugin looks for when it is grading the readability of your posts.

Be sure to use these words as naturally as possible within the copy. The purpose of these words is to help your text flow smoothly and logically for the reader. If you’re including the words just to please the Yoast SEO bot, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. You’ll end up with damaged content that doesn’t perform nearly as well. Remember the purpose: to make your post easier for your readers (and the Internet bots) to understand.

Yoast SEO uses three types of transition words to grade your copy: two-part transition words, single words, and phrases.

Yoast SEO looks for both parts of two-part transition words when grading your readability.

Two-part transition words require both words to be in the sentence. However, these words are often spaced apart by other words and phrases. That’s exactly why they’re called two-part transition words!

These pairs constitute two-part transition words used by Yoast SEO.

both, and
if, then
not only, but also
neither, nor
either, or
not, but
whether, or
no sooner, than

A few examples of sentences using these two-part transition words include:

Both food stamps recipients and Medicaid recipients qualify for these programs.
Neither stealing nor murder is acceptable behaviors.
Whether you are happy or sad is completely up to you!

The easiest Yoast SEO transition words are single words.

Each of these single words will count as a transition word by the Yoast SEO system.

Accordingly
Additionally
Afterward
Afterwards
Albeit
Also
Although
Altogether
Another
Basically
Because
Before
Besides
But
Certainly
Chiefly
Comparatively
Concurrently
Consequently
Contrarily
Conversely
Correspondingly
Despite
Doubtedly
During
Earlier
Emphatically
Equally
Especially
Eventually
Evidently
Explicitly
Finally
Firstly
Following
Formerly
Forthwith
Fourthly
Further
Furthermore
Generally
Hence
Henceforth
However
I.e.
Identically
Indeed
Instead
Last
Lastly
Later
Lest
Likewise
Markedly
Meanwhile
Moreover
Nevertheless
Nonetheless
Nor
Notwithstanding
Obviously
Occasionally
Otherwise
Overall
Particularly
Presently
Previously
Rather
Regardless
Secondly
Shortly
Significantly
Similarly
Simultaneously
SInce
So
Soon
Specifically
Still
Straightaway
Subsequently
Surely
Surprisingly
Than
Then
Thereafter
Therefore
Thereupon
Thirdly
Through
Thus
Til
Undeniably
Undoubtedly
Unless
Unlike
Unquestionably
Until
When
Whenever
Whereas
While

Yoast SEO also considers these phrases to be transition words.

There are many phrases of transition words that Yoast SEO will consider when rating the readability of your content. These phrases must be written exactly as listed here, except for capitalization. If you insert words between the words in these phrases, they will no longer count as a transitional phrase.

Above all
After all
After that
All in all
All of a sudden
All things considered
Analogous to
Although this may be true
Analogous to
Another key point
As a matter of fact
As a result
As an illustration
As can be seen
As has been noted
As I have noted
As I have said
As I have shown
As an illustration
As can be seen
As has been noted
As I have noted
As I have said
As I have shown
As long as
As much as
As shown above
As soon as
As well as
At any rate
At first
At last
At least
At length
At the present time
At the same time
At this instant
At this point
At this time
Balanced against
Being that
By all means
By and large
By comparison
By the same token
By the time
Compared to
Be that as it may
Coupled with
Different from
Due to
Equally important
Even if
Even more
Even so
Even though
First thing to remember
For example
For fear that
For instance
For one thing
For that reason
For The most part
For the purpose of
For the same reason
For this purpose
For this reason
From time to time
Given that
Given these points
Important to realize
In a word
In addition
In another case
In any case
In any event
In brief
In case
In conclusion
In contrast
In detail
In due time
In effect
In either case
In essence
In fact
In general
In light of
In like fashion
In like manner
In order that
In order to
In other words
In particular
In reality
In short
In a similar fashion
In spite of
In sum
In summary
In that case
In the event that
In the final analysis
In the first place
In the fourth place
In the hope that
In light of
In the long run
In the meantime
In the same fashion
In the same way
In the second place
In the third place
In this case
In this situation
In time
In truth
In view of
Inasmuch as
Most compelling evidence
Most important
Must be remembered
Not to mention
Now that
Of course
On account of
On balance
On condition that
On one hand
On the condition that
On the contrary
On The negative side
On the other hand
On the positive side
On the whole
On this occasion
Once
Once in a while
Only if
Owing to
Point often overlooked
Prior to
Provided that
Seeing that
So as to
So far
So long as
So that
Sooner or later
Such as
Summing up
Take the case of
That is
That is to say
Then again
This time
To be sure
To begin with
To clarify
To conclude
To demonstrate
To emphasize
To enumerate
To explain
To illustrate
To list
To point out
To put it another way
Toi put it differently
To repeat
To rephrase it
To say nothing of
To sum up
To summarize
To that end
To the end that
To this end
Together with
Under those circumstances
Until now
Up against
Up to the present time
Vis a Vis
What’s more
While it may be true
While this may be true
With attention to
With the result that
With this in mind
With this intention
With this purpose in mind
Without a doubt
Without delay
Without doubt
Without reservation

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How to Improve SEO Ranking for Each Post

Content, SEO

If Content is King, SEO is his Queen… and she is a fickle mistress. If you’re looking to find out how to improve your SEO ranking for each and every post you publish, you need to focus on keywords, quality writing and links.

Although the Google algorithms that determine your search rank are constantly adapting and evolving, these time-tested techniques that will always work.

Here’s how to improve your SEO ranking for each blog post.

Keywords are critical. Search engine spiders crawl your content and determine its relevancy by the type and frequency of keywords you include.

You need to know exactly what your audience is searching for so you can target your content to the perfect keyword. That’s why there are so many excellent free SEO ranking tools available for you to use… but don’t get overwhelmed. We narrowed it down to the top three free SEO tools here.

Once you’ve identified the perfect keyword, it’s time to put it to work. It’s not enough to use it a few times and hope for the best. You need to put that keyword in the right places and use it at the right frequencies to maximize your SEO ranking.

At the very minimum, you should work that keyword into your URL, headline, meta description, subheadings and image alt tags. You should also aim for a reasonable keyword density within the content of the post itself.

In my experience, it’s best to write the content as a draft and then fit the keyword into the content wherever it sounds natural.

Great writing is also important. Keywords alone aren’t enough. Your articles also need to be written well.

Remember to structure your posts with an introduction, body and conclusion. Use paragraphs and subheadings to make your article easy to read and skim. Use transitions and varied sentence structure. You know, all those things that everyone hated in English class? They’re super important if you want to be a successful blogger.

Include links to valuable content both on your website and on other websites. In addition to boosting SEO, creating inbound links in my Low Income Relief posts has tremendously improved my reader retention and reduced my bounce rates.

In addition to your own site, be sure to link to quality, trustworthy websites. Linking to less-reputable sites may damage your SEO.

Use Yoast SEO. If you’ve been following my tutorial on how to start a WordPress blog, you’ve already installed the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin is a powerful partner in optimizing your website for SEO. Simply insert your keyword into the focus keyword box and Yoast will give you clear instructions on how to improve your content.

Yoast SEO also allows you to customize your meta titles and meta descriptions, which show up in Google searches and social media shares. Without editing, the description will simply be a snippet of text from your content and may not include your keywords. You will need to edit the meta description for each and every post you publish.

In addition to SEO, Yoast SEO will also grade your writing based on the Flesch Readability Score. This is a great way to ensure that your writing is accessible to all your readers!

These critical mistakes will DESTROY your SEO ranking!

Do not overuse your keywords! Keyword stuffing is overenthusiastic and will damage your SEO ranking. Google bots associate keyword stuffing with spam. Be sure to include variety and synonyms to prevent you from overusing the keywords you are targeting.

Edit your permalinks to avoid using numbers. Even when you publish a list, like 50+ Blog Post Ideas, remove the number from the permalink. This will ensure that your permalinks are always accurate and relevant even if you update the article later with more tips.

Do not wander off-topic! Use the keywords as a guide to frame your content. Be sure to keep your writing tight, concise and on-topic at all times.

Do not scrape, duplicate, self-plagiarize or use content spinners. Ensure that your content is all unique, original and valuable to your audience.

Many bloggers create tags that are excessively similar to one another, which creates pages that are essentially duplicates. You can get penalized for this, so make sure you don’t create new tags that are essentially the same as existing tags.

How to Choose the Keywords to Target for SEO

Content, SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is built on keywords. When Google and other search engines rank websites according to relevancy, a lot of their criteria focuses on the presence of keywords and keyword synonyms. If you target, or focus on, the same keywords that your readers are searching for, you have a greater chance of showing up in their search results.

Fortunately, choosing the right keywords isn’t a mystery. We’ve found three excellent free SEO tools that will help you choose the right keywords for each blog post.

What is SEO?

In our introduction to SEO, we explained how Google and other search engines crawl the web with bots known as spiders. These bots search web pages and index them according to relevancy using complex algorithms. Keywords (including keyword synonyms) are one of the most important things that the Google spiders are looking for.

How do you know which Google keywords you should target?

The great thing about blogging is that each post can target a different keyword. If you’re really ambitious, you can even target multiple keywords in the same blog post! However, I recommend focusing on one keyword or phrase per post to avoid keyword stuffing.

When I started blogging, everyone recommended using the Google Adwords Keyword Planner to figure out your SEO keywords. However, that’s no longer considered a best practice for several reasons. First, Google completely redesigned the tool and secured it in such a way that you have to pay for ads in order to access it. Worse still, some expert content marketers have found that the information in the Adwords Planner is inconsistent with data shown in Google Trends and other tools. So it’s probably best to avoid using the Google Adwords Keyword Planner for SEO research.

We’ve found the three best free SEO tools.

Instead of using the Google keywords tool, there are a few other proven free SEO tools you can use.

Google Trends is a free tool that can be used to help identify Google keywords. Simply search your topic on Google Trends and the system will show you a history of interest over time, interest by region and related topics and queries. Although Google Trends is helpful for analyzing when a certain keyword is popular and identifying a list of related keywords, it does not show you how many times that particular term is searched for.

Moz Keyword Explorer is my favorite keyword tool. Search a keyword you are writing about and the system will reveal the monthly search volume for that keyword as well as alternative keyword suggestions. The system also shows the anticipated difficulty of ranking for that keyword and the organic click-through rate. Those two metrics are factored into the priority score, which is a visual representation of how desirable that keyword is. A keyword with a low level of difficulty and a high click-through rate will receive a high priority score. The closer the priority is to 100, the better it is to use!

The free version will give you 10 free queries per month. This definitely doesn’t seem like much but it’s the best keyword search tool I’ve found. For $99, you can sign up for a Premium Plan that allows you up to 150 keyword searches. I highly recommend it!

KW Finder is another one of my favorites. This tool identifies long tail keywords, which are several words long and usually easier to rank for than short phrases. For example, “dairy-free chocolate recipes” has less competition than just “recipes.” Makes sense, right?

KW Finder will help you identify how frequently a certain keyword is searched, the approximate difficulty for ranking for that word and a long list of alternate suggestions. The interface will also show you which sites are currently showing on the search engine results page for this particular keyword.

I’m a big fan of pursuing long tail keywords, so I highly recommend using KW Finder. The free version allows you to conduct five free searches per day. For $49 per month, you can upgrade to the Basic version which allows up to 100 searches per 24 hours.

How do I know which keyword is best?

Remember, the best keywords are the ones that are searched often and have little competition. Sometimes, a slight variation in word order or phrasing can make a tremendous difference. The goal is to rank high on Google to gather that search traffic, so meet your readers with the keywords they are using.

Now that you’ve identified the perfect keyword, let’s put it to work. Click here to find out exactly what you should do with that keyword now that you’ve found it.

Why Every WordPress Install Needs Yoast SEO

-Getting Started-, Plugins, Wordpress

We’ve already told you why SEO is so important – and how ranking well on Google is essentially free advertising. What we haven’t told you yet is that there’s a free WordPress plugin who will manage most of your SEO for you! Yoast SEO is simply the best SEO plugin in existence.

Yoast SEO will help you get free organic traffic from search engines.

Millions of people rely on Yoast SEO to opimize their websites. Why is it so popular? Because it works.

This plugin will help you check each and every post for optimization. It will give you every tool you need to land on Google’s coveted top spot. In addition to basic keyword toals, Yoast SEO also offers XML sitemaps, meta description editing and many other useful features.

The best part? The limited version of the best SEO plugin is completely FREE!

Even though I’ve worked as an SEO specialist for almost nine years, I learned a lot about how to properly optimize my own websites from Yoast. It’s essential to your success. Don’t even start without it.

How do I get started with Yoast SEO?

Once you install and activate Yoast SEO, you’ll need to configure it.

Simply choose the SEO settings from the left sidebar (on the bottom) and select General. Click the “configuration wizard” to get started. This prompt will guide you through the initial setup.

How do I use Yoast SEO?

Yoast SEO appears on each post and page as a small box underneath the text editor. This little box wraps several complex features into a deceptively simple interface. Click here for a clear, comprehensive tutorial on how to use Yoast SEO for beginners.

Is Yoast SEO Premium worth it?

Of course, I also recommend upgrading to Premium as soon as you can. For just $89, you can get the Yoast SEO Premium plugin with one year of free updates and support. The upgraded version includes the following features:

You can optimize for five keywords per page instead of just one.
You can preview your page in Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter to make sure it looks great.
You’ll get real-time suggestions for internal page links.
Redirects are seamless and automatic, which has been a lifesaver for me.
You’ll get 24/7 support from the Yoast team.
Ads are removed

Click here to discover more of the best free WordPress plugins!

Before You Buy that Domain, Consider This…

-Getting Started-, Domains

Choosing a domain name is a monumental decision. It is one of the most important decisions you will make. Not only can it dramatically impact the success of your website, it’s also a phrase you’re going to have to live with for a long time.

This is the hard part. It’s not very likely that the domain name you actually want is going to be available so it’s important to assemble a list of acceptable variations.

However, it’s not as simple as brainstorming a list of catchy names for websites. There are four essential factors you need to consider before you purchase that domain name.

When it comes to domains, there are five things you need to remember:

Choose a domain name that is intuitive and keyword-friendly.

Although it’s tempting to really dig in and think of a million catchy names for websites, it’s important to remember that this is a great opportunity to start building your SEO.

Incorporating a keyword or phrase that is related to the subject of your website can help improve your search results later on. Good keywords can include locations or simple words.

To get an idea of popular keywords related to your niche, use Google Trends and Wordstream’s Free Keyword Tool.

For example, I wanted to focus on “low income” so I purchased LowIncomeRelief.com even though it wasn’t the name I initially wanted. Sometimes, you will need to compromise and find the balance between a strong, optimized domain name and a name you actually like.

Choose a domain name that is brandable (and bearable).

I know you’ve been itching to use those catchy names for websites that are rattling around in your head. Now’s your chance.

Work your keyword into something brandable. Remember that you’re going to be saying this name a lot to a lot of different people. It’ll be on your social media. It’ll be in your email signature. It may even be the name that pops up on your caller ID. Be sure to choose a name you can live with.

Always buy the .com domain extension even if it’s more expensive.

Although we live in the age of .everything, the .com extension is still considered the default. Generally, if you buy a domain with any other extension you will inevitably lose some traffic to the .com variant.

I recommend sticking with the trusty ol’ .com for several reasons.

First, if you can’t purchase the .com it’s because someone else already owns it. If you purchase a different extension, you may find your website encountering legal trouble if you are violating copyrights or trademarks.

Also, when you are verbally telling someone about your domain, you want them to be able to remember it and find it. Unfortunately, many people will still confuse mysuperawesomestudio.photography with mysuperawesomestudiophotography.com.

You should be able to score a .com for around $13 per year. If it costs more, it’s because someone has purchased it and is trying to resell it for profit. Keep searching until you find a relevant .com domain you can afford.

Make sure your domain name is easy to spell and remember.

Aim for something that is easy to remember and easy to type.

Imagine verbally telling someone about your website. Do you want to have to spell it out with dashes every time? What if they can’t write it down right at that moment? If you have to spell it out, you’re probably losing visitors.

Try to keep your domain name as short as possible without resorting to acronyms. Remember, you want people to be able to remember it in a conversation and type it in easily afterward!

Keep the keywords intact whenever possible but feel free to eliminate the stop words (such as and, or, but, of, the, a, etc) that Google filters out of searches automatically

Do not infringe on other people’s trademarks with your domain name!

To avoid trademark trouble, you can conduct a search on the US Patent and Trademark Office. You can also conduct a simple Google search to see if any related businesses pop up.

Got a list of domain name ideas? Good! It’s time for our next step…

How to Register a Domain

What is WordPress?

Blogging 101

What is WordPress? It’s simply the best platform for blogs and websites, of course! When you’re starting a new website, you have a lot of options but none of the others are as versatile and easy to use as WordPress is.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free open source website creation tool (also called a Content Mangement System or CMS).

It’s easy to use and easy to customize. Disney, BBC America, Sony, TechCrunch, and even Beyonce use WordPress. In fact, it’s estimated that WordPress powers up to 25% of all websites on the Internet!

Why should I use WordPress?

Here are three reasons you should absolutely use WordPress.

1. WordPress is easy to customize.

There are thousands of free WordPress themes and free WordPress plugins that can help you customize the look and functionality of your website. If the free stuff doesn’t interest you, there are thousands of companies developing premium themes and plugins for an extra cost!

Themes are what dictate the layout of your website. The theme is just a template that provides an overlay for the WordPress software. It doesn’t modify or overwrite the essential WordPress functionality at all. You can change themes as often as you want without messing up your existing work.

Plugins introduce new functionality to WordPress. You can use Plugins to improve your SEO, track page visits, create email subscriptions, insert related posts and more.

With the right theme and plugins, you can turn your WordPress website into basically whatever you want. Here are some popular options:

Information service (blog)
Portfolio (photo gallery)
eCommerce (online store)
Review website
Survey website
Classified ads website
Membership site

You can get WordPress to do pretty much whatever you want. If you can’t figure it out or find it, you can always hire someone to modify or develop the PHP code for you.

2. WordPress is SEO-friendly.

WordPress is built using high-quality, complaint code with semantic web markups. This makes it very attractive for search engines, including Google.

Design mistakes and coding errors can obliterate your search engine optimization. You can do everything else right and still suffer due to blemishes in the code that you can’t even see.

3. WordPress is easy to use and has great support.

The interface is stunningly easy to use. Everything you need in the interface is intuitively organized. When you can’t figure something out, it’s easy to get help! There are thousands of WordPress tutorials available (including this one) and a large, active support forum.

And if you need a fourth reason…

If you’re here because you’re following along with my step-by-step guide on how to blog for a living, you’ll want to set up WordPress. It’s the only platform I work with and I can’t advise you if you’re working with anything else!