How To Get Green For Yoast It Just Takes Practice

Green bullets on Yoast are the holy grail for some and the be all and end all. However Yoast is not a magic bullet, if both the bullets are green it does not guarantee that you will rank for that keyword. There are many other factors to be taken into consideration. But how do you get green for Yoast.

There are two parts to the plugin tool that ideally you need to get green for Yoast. Firstly there is the readability score. Secondly there is the green for the keyword in Yoast.

Let’s be clear, getting green in Yoast does not guarantee rankings. Any SEO plugin just directs you to best practices for SEO. SEO is so much more than installing plugin.
Karl Morley

Yoast Green Readability

The basic rules of getting green for Yoast are.

Keep 80% of your sentences either 20 words or below.
Keep the words simple and readable
Do not use to many words with multiple syllables
Each paragraph should be no more than 150 words
Subheadings, there should be no more than 300 words between them
Passive voice, always try to phrase your sentences in the postive
Transition words, ensure that you use enough of them

Yoast Sentence Length

I have come across many clients sites and the average sentence length is closer to 35 words. So if you are writing in this style it is not uncommon most people do. We often write best once the flow starts and the best advice I can give you carry on writing that way. However once you have written the article take a break from it. If your not on a deadline then I try and leave them until the next day.

The phrase ” a set of fresh eyes” is very good for editing. If you are on a tight deadline at least get up have a walk round the house or office. Take your face away from the screen go and make a cuppa at least. Once back to editing you have finished the creative part of the writing and now its tome to get technical. Re read the passage and then start breaking it down. With practice it does get easier get green for Yoast. It almost becomes second nature if your write within the WordPress editor on a regular basis.

Simple Words For Yoast

The simple word formula comes from the Flesch reading score. This was created back in 1948 by Rudolph Flesch and based on a mathematical formula, don’t worry I will not bore you with the details. Mr Flesh became a consultant to the Associated Press to help them sell more newspapers. The thinking behind this is that the newly educated journalists just after World War 2 were keen to show off their education.

However the common man in the street had not been educated to that level and consequently did not buy newspapers on a regular basis. If the reading becomes too difficult with multi syllable words and words you have never heard before the enjoyment stops. The idea is to lower the difficulty of the reading to appeal to the masses. This is probably the first time they researched their ideal target market. This was getting green for Yoast in the newspapers.

Syllables for Yoast

That very word has 3 syllables in it and embarrassingly yesterday I forgot the word completely. You may be forgiven for thinking that was acceptable to disremember the word syllables. Normally not a problem however it was whilst doing a screen share presentation on the usability of the Yoast Plugin to a major corporation with over 10 thousand employees. No I cannot mention who but they deal with journals. Their main sites gets over 20 million views a month, however their satellite site very little at the moment.

The above passage has given me an orange light. The passage became a little passive. It was from using the negative and multiple syllables. Did you find the above paragraph a little more difficult to read ?

The Ideal Paragraph Length For Yoast

To get green for Yoast you just need to follow these simple rules. You may be thinking that how does Mr Yoast (Joost) know this is correct for ranking. Or is he just simply making the rules up himself. No, after extensive research from him and the Yoast team they have analysed the data. Of course Google doesn’t tell anyone about their actual algorithms they use. The people who work for Google only know part of the puzzle

So from analysing the data the average paragraph length of articles that rank page 1 on google is 150 words. This data is of course partly guess work and implementation. Of course Mr Joost uses the same formula for strutting his posts. They are selling a premium product and if they didn’t write this way it wouldn’t give much confidence would it. Remember there are many other factors to rank such as backlinks. However follow the rules and good things will happen

Sub Titles Length
No More than 300 words between each Subtitle

Good Things From Yoast

I digress a little from the post but this is relevant. Of course I have been getting green for my personal sites for a long time. My foodie site has had its ups and downs along the way and I have broken it a few times and lost everything. Yes of course I get one of the developers from the team to do it now, yes burnt my fingers. Made other SEO mistakes along the way like disavowing a link that plummeted my traffic by 50%. No could not get it back.

On the 5th of January 2019 there was a suspected Google update and my traffic started to go up. I think it was at the end of 2018 as this is when my moment started. The other thing to remember is that I have hardly touched my own site in the last 3 months due to client work. I have only done 2 posts in that time. So my traffic increased by 100% in a matter of two days, it didn’t stop there. It carried on climbing and from 2018 to the end of January 2019 its Increased by 350%