SEO Breakthrough

It seemed like I wasn’t getting anywhere with the first SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin I installed. Today I installed Yoast SEO and I could immediately see what was lacking in my SEO configuration. You could say I had an SEO Breakthrough!

100% Local SEO
Homebrew SEO

Yoast is light years ahead of their competition. I found their user interface genuinely intuitive. Interpretation of the Yoast interface  guided me to making the following improvements:

  • Added ‘tags’ to all posts
  • Added ‘focus keywords’ to all posts and pages
  • Fine tuned content for improved SEO ratings
  • Search Result ‘Appearance’ settings
  • Keyword Research

I spent approximately 3 hours inputting all the new SEO data. It was not difficult, just time consuming, since all my pages and posts required the updates. Of course, now that I know what each post and page requires in order to meet Yoast SEO standards, I will include that SEO data as I create new content. e.g. this post.

There has been significant progress made in driving traffic to the site. Before I installed WordPress my legacy website averaged 400 visits per month.

Since installing WordPress (and the limited SEO plugin I just replaced) on 12/10/17, web traffic has increased from the average 400 visits to (whats tracking to be) 4000 visits this month. Here is my AWStats data for the past 12 months. Go ahead and click, you can look through them if you like.



I’m finding Bing to be far more responsive than Google. I noticed that some subtle changes in “appearance” I had made, showed up quickly in Bing results, while not showing up at all on Google. Also the Google Search Console is virtually empty, while the Bing console is reporting everything. I’ve entered my “Google Verification Code” into Yoast, and I’m hoping this helps improve the results with Google. I’m certain both services crawls are allowed. Bing seems to be the “first to the party”.

The Bing Webmaster “Diagnostics and Tools” section includes a “Keyword Research” function. I used this tool to determine the most used search terms (keywords) as they relate to amateur radio, and more specifically, my website.

I’m hoping it will improve search results now that I’ve incorporated all the top rated keywords I found, into my content. I have no idea if this will improve placement in search results. However, it should cause my site to appear in search results it would not have appeared in prior to today’s enhancements.

It will certainly be interesting to see what affect, if any, the changes made today have on traffic and search results.

Back To The Front

Author: K6HR

Licensed since 1994. Active on HF / VHF / UHF / Satellite.

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