The Yoast SEO Plugin provides a quick and easy way to set the important meta data for your web pages and to analyse these for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Once you have the plugin installed and activated, follow these steps to begin:

1. Choose your keyword or phrase.

In its free version, Yoast allows for one keyword per page so choose the most likely search term that people will use to find your page.

Ensure the keyword isn't too broadly used. A common keyword will have a lot of competition from other websites. Try make one that is relevant to your website. In this example we are choosing we are choosing 'web design north yorkshire' rather than 'web design'.

2. Expand the Yoast options

Once you have chosen to edit the page, the Yoast options should appear at the top. If they are minimised, click on the short arrow on the right to see them.

3. Set the Focus Keyword

Set the focus keyword that you chose at the start, as below:

4. Edit the Snippet

The snippet contains the most important meta data: the SEO Title, Slug and Meta Description. Each should reflect the keyword as much as possible, ideally including the keyword itself. You'll see a preview of how this would look in search engines:

Click Edit Snippet to open these up for editing:

SEO Title
Create a short title for the page that includes the keyword

Slug
The slug is used as part of the page URL and ideally should the same as, or include, the keyword. This should be set just once, when the page is published. If you change it later, you'll need to create a redirect from the old ULR to the new one.

Meta Description
Create a longer description of the page. Include the keyword, variations of it and other, secondary keywords. Make sure the text makes sense and is readable.

You should be aiming to get both SEO Title and Meta Description to show green. This indicates that they are a good length:

5. Check Readability and SEO Performance

Update your page and then check the readability and SEO score, which will be read, amber or green. Ideally you want both to be green.

If they aren't, check the analysis shown below the snippet:

6. Modify your page content

It's now a case of following the recommendations in the analysis to add to and update your page text, and add images and other content that reflects the keyword.