Yoast Focus Keywords have been the core SEO keyword optimization plugin since 2010 till date, using Yoast to achieve your Goal of ranking on the first page of Google is never as easy as we think, writing content and not sending it to the right search audience is substandard!

Ranking on Google as never been easy, it requires a lot of hard work and fidelity to win the race, when I was starting out as a blogger in 2016 I didn’t know what Focus keywords were all about I either just write my blog content and leave the keyword space blank or maybe I will just put any keyword I like.

This was hurting my SEO effort badly but poor me little did I know that SEO was far beyond my own scope of implementation and that is the same mistake most bloggers are facing today, most bloggers get focus keywords implementation all wrong, and they end up doing keyword misleads which is a bad penalty for Google search engine ranking Aka Google (RankBrain).

The only truth an influencing blogger would tell you is Quality content is king !!! But king without no throne is a slave in King’s crown, Quality content is Cool but helping Google understand the content and ranking it to bring result is Cooler, you won’t like Google to automatically rank your content for an irrelevant keyword which is going to mess with your visitors Bounce rate and decrease your SERP crawl rate.

Before I proceed let me tell you something, I do not know where or which country you are reading this post from but I know you are here because you want to gain more insight on how to focus your content on a particular keyword to enable you to rank on Google SERP, please try as much as possible to stay with me throughout this article reading cause I don’t just write what I see I write what works.

What is a focus keyword Yoast SEO?

Focus keywords in Yoast consider it to be keyword terms that describe what topic your post is all about and how Google should rank your keyphrase in its search engine for that keyword.

How to utilize focus keywords in WordPress SEO by Yoast?

There is a total difference between Focus keywords and Keyphrase, don’t get the scenario all wrong, it took me 3month and some days of my blogging journey to understand what am about telling you now and as a listening and actionable blogger, this is going to work for you if you start implementing it.

A focus keyword is like dedicating a full content to a keyphrase when you are writing an article there is a certain amount of words you mention continually within that article for example if you are writing on a digital marketing topics if you will notice that in the article you would have mention digital marketing words 100 times because most of the words you would be emphasizing on are digital marketing and some other marketing fields.

If Google couldn’t find a keyphrase around the articles then Google would rank the article to the focus keyword that is if you have a high domain authority and a good page rank.

Example:
Digital marketing can be a focus keyword of a post then
Marketing is the keyphrase
Digital is the keyphrase
Instagram is the keyphrase

See this image

shows the focus keywords I am using for this post, this post you are reading is telling Google to rank the post for this keywords “Yoast” “focus” “keywords” why I am telling you this is because you will sometimes find it difficult to rank for a focus keyword with 1000 less of words, there are a lot of ways to rank for particular topics even if it’s as competitive as showing on page 1, let me tell you how.

Mix the keywords

Within an article yoast premium gives you the freedom to check keywords density based on your content analysis, this analysis will return each word on your text that was repeatedly mentioned, see an image, but if you are a yoast freemium user you can use wordcounter.net to analyze your keyword density.

The image above is said to be “keywords density” and for an average blogger the first keyword above is the main keywords they would consider ranking for, But that keyword is going to be for a short-tail-keyword.

So for better practice always do keyword compilation, for example, see ” yoast” “focus” keyword” this is calculated by density I could still do ” Google” focus” keywords”, one thing you should know is that after knowing your keywords density, use the density to produce a post title like this below.

How to use “Yoast” “focus” “keywords“ the right way

Now see that title hope you understood something, the title I produced for my post is also calculated by my keyword density, what you want to rank for should be found within the article spirit which are the title, the images, and the description. we would get to that keep reading.

Now as for the keyphrase try to make up to 3 keyphrases aligned in accordance, see below

a. keyphrase 1. yoast
b. keyphrase 2. focus
c. keyphrase 3. keywords

sometimes keyphrase might not declare appropriately but always try to make your keyphrase match accordingly

This way Google would definitely understand that this page build authority by providing where it needs to belong on its desired search engine query.

2. Attribute keywords to all properties of the content.

If you write an article that also contains illustrations and images always use your post topic “Yoast” “focus” “keywords” as the image alt tag and the title also, this is also calculated by keyword density and use by a search engine to express your content to it searchers with clarity.

3. Descript your post to the keyword meaning

Especially this part most people do it the wrong way, if you write solely what your post is all about then you are losing it, this part of your SEO implementation is where Google is given you the freedom to speak and rank check out Description like this ” Yoast focus keywords is difficult when doing it wrong how about you try this step and see changes” don’t do like this ” Yoast is a WordPress plugin that helps Google rank your page in it search engine today I want to show you how to rank using yoast” this is a bad omen that the post is going nowhere because this is basically the same story everyone would say ” let me show you” adding a description to post is not for Google to see” Google already read every word on your post and definitely understood every meaning to it, Description are meant for human searchers, not robots so write with the focus keywords letting them know you know what they want.

4. Use tags that match the Focus keywords

You don’t need to have 20 different tags before you can proclaim that you have tags within your article, categories are showing people which section of your site the post is coming from, tags are telling people what the main focus of the topic is, the same as Seach engine, use focus keywords for tags it is translated by both human and robots, I see most people posts with 20 tags and that is really bad.

5. Be grammatically free

This one is actually for user experience and somewhat Google ranking, after doing all of the above four steps then just do proof-reading to be sure of what you wrote and try to change sentence grammar to understandable tense.

see how you can also rank your content to Google featured box to maximize your search traffic Organically

Summary.
Programmatically the main keyword of an article is what Yoast call focus keywords.

Here is how it works with Google bot.

1. Google Come to your post/page, analyze the page content, and collect the (parent keyword) which is the main keywords from Yoast bot.
2. Collect the (children keywords) from Yoast bot which is the Keyphrase
3. check the articles and collect the (grandchildren alternative) which is the topic, tags, categories, and image alt
4. Analyze the content length, values, and relevancy.
5. Take all to its search engine database for processing.

So one thing that is very vital in content optimization is if you find your focus keywords or keyphrase make it part of everything on that post Image Alt, It should be in the first paragraph of your Yoast meta description and most especially your topic title.

Let’s revise everything in detail.

Focus keywords: When you write an article on a particular topic the words you repeatedly use within the article is what is considered as the focus keywords, and all this are calculated with Keyword Density percentage before you publish your article head over to wordcounter.net to check your article lengths and grammatical errors while correcting them, you will also see keyword density from the left bar

showing you how many words within your article was mentioned more than one time, you can also see this on Yoast if you’re a premium member, So be cautious when writing articles on a particular topic make sure you write to a specific keyword, Sometimes Google might rank you for irrelevant keywords because Google didn’t know what that content is all about Now here is what to put in mind once you find those focus keywords.

Focus keywords are very competitive if your focus keyword is “Digital marketing” then you might likely not hit the first page if you have low domain authority, so rather analyze more of your post Keyword Density and take advantage of the Keyphrase that’s if you’re using Yoast SEO plugin.

Keyphrase: While the focus keyword is telling Google crawler to rank you for that keyword, keyphrase can do a lot better if the focus keywords as higher search volume and Google didn’t see you fit there, rather Google would try to rank you for your keyphrase.

How much length of focus keywords can I use in the Yoast SEO plugin?

Both focus keywords and keyphrase works closely the same and just like I have recommended above, the best can be analyzed using Keyword Density for wordcounter.net, then in your post/page you can see the density of your post/page in Yoast Insight, Basically, it is the words within an article you should be concern about when focusing on a keyword,

And the density, If you are writing content with a length of 1000 words make sure your keyword density for a particular keyword is 30% that is Good for Focus keywords and in some cases make sure your key phrase density does not above between 5% – 20% for better accordance purpose as written above.

Is a focus keyword necessary to use in the Yoast plugin in 2019-2020?

This question is generally asked by newbies just starting out, if you are using WordPress then you need a plugin to help you put your article under a right search engine query, If not your post will seat on the 76th page of Google, for any reason you don’t find yoast compatible then you can try other SEO plugins like Rankmaths and SEO profiler, they will do just fine, besides Focus keywords is very necessary to rank on Google.

So thank you guys for visiting me today, I am still writing an article wish I will still publish on my blog very soon please kindly help me share this one with friends and family in your niche of circles, I will be so glad to share more working resource with you, meanwhile if you would love to stay connected with us you can find us on Instagram, Facebook and twitter using Mss resource

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