seo enhancements
Aug 29 2025
How much does it cost to build a website?

Table of contents

Thinking about building a website? Whether you are a small business owner, a freelancer, or launching a side project, one of the first questions you will want answered is: how much does it cost to build a website? This is not just about curiosity, understanding your website costs early on can help you budget effectively and avoid any unpleasant surprises.

The truth is that the answer is rarely simple. Ask ten business owners about their website building costs and you will probably get ten completely different answers. That is because website costs can range from almost nothing to tens of thousands of euros. The variation comes down to what you need your website to do. A small brochure site with a few pages can be built on a modest budget, whereas an ecommerce store with thousands of products and secure payment facilities will always cost more. The good news is that once you understand where the costs lie, you can make better decisions. And while Yoast SEO will not directly reduce your build costs, it will help you avoid expensive SEO mistakes, improve site performance, and keep your long-term marketing budget under control.

What are you actually paying for when building a website?

Design and user experience: This sets the tone for how visitors feel about your site. Good design is more than colors and fonts, it is about navigation, site structure, and encouraging visitors to stay and explore. Read more about user experience. 

Development: Turns your designs into a working website. A simple build will cost less, but advanced features or integrations push the price up. 

Domain and hosting: These two are essential and unavoidable. Your domain name generally costs between €10 and €50 per year and hosting keeps your site live. Shared hosting is cheapest, but dedicated hosting provides better performance and enhanced security. As a recommendation, Bluehost is a great choice for both domain registration and hosting. On top of that, it also works extremely well with WordPress. 

Read more: Yoast SEO. 

Content: A blank page isn’t going to keep visitors on your site for very long, so you’re going to need to have something to show them. You can of course do your own content, but professional content creators can be useful in getting more conversions. 

Read more: writing great website copy.

SEO: This ensures your site gets found. You can do it yourself, but Yoast SEO helps simplify the process and can reduce costs by guiding you on how to optimize pages as you write. 

Read more: how to use the Yoast SEO plugin.

Here’s a chart to explain the above in a quick-check guide: 

Area  Description 
Design  Custom visuals, layout, user interface (UI), mobile responsiveness 
User experience (UX)   Navigation logic, site structure, call-to-action placement 
Development   Code, content management system (CMS), plug-ins or features 
Domain and hosting   Your website’s address and where it lives online 
Content and SEO   Written pages, blog posts, metadata, and optimizations 
Ongoing maintenance  Plugin updates, security, backups, fixes 

Upfront costs:

Of course, none of this comes for free, unless there are some things you can do yourself like copywriting or photography. This will still cost you in terms of time though, so it may be worth considering hiring a professional if there are other areas of your business that you would rather focus on. With that in mind, let’s take a quick look at some upfront costs that you will only have to pay for once at the very start.

Type of cost Low estimate High estimate
Domain name €10/year €50/year
Design & UX €0 (DIY template) €10,000+
Development (CMS setup, features, integrations) €0 (DIY) €40,000+
Initial content (copywriting, images, product setup) €200 €5,000+

Ongoing and variable costs:

Obviously, once your website is up and running, that’s not the end of the story. You are presumably here for the long-term and that means there are going to be recurring costs. These cover things like hosting, so your site can stay live, maintenance, to keep everything secure and updated, and you’ll need to continually post new content to engage with your site’s visitors.

Ongoing costs (billed monthly or yearly):

Type of cost Low estimate High estimate
Hosting €50/year €300+/year
Maintenance & security (updates, backups, SSL, fixes) €100/month €500+/month
Ongoing content & SEO €200/year €5,000+/year

Variable costs:

Most people spend their time focusing on the look and feel of their site and while that is important, it’s not the only thing to consider. It’s understandable that things like legal technicalities and CDNs are not front-of-mind when you’re excited about growing your business but it is necessary. That means you’ll need to complete these, often overlooked, tasks to make sure that you remain on track for growth and stay compliant.

Type of cost Low estimate High estimate
Marketing & ads €100/month €10,000+/month
Accessibility & legal compliance €200 €5,000+
Scaling & performance upgrades (plugins, CDN, extra development work) €100 €10,000+

Website building options 

There are three main ways to build a site, and your choice here will have an impact on the final cost.  

1. DIY builders (like Wix or Squarespace)  

These platforms, as well as some others, will let you build a site from scratch without the need for any technical skills. They’re affordable, quick to set up and ideal for portfolio sites, hobby sites, or small businesses. If you are using these site builders for business, you might find them limiting when you need to scale or want more advanced SEO.   

2. WordPress + Yoast  

For most successful small and medium sized businesses, WordPress is an excellent solution as it’s flexible, scalable, and widely supported. What’s more, when you pair it with Yoast SEO for WooCommerce you can start publishing optimized content from day one, making your online store more visible instantly. This makes it more affordable in the long run as there’s no need for an agency, and you can add features as you grow rather than having to rebuild every time.  

3. Custom-built website via an agency 

For complex businesses like advanced ecommerce or security services, a custom-built site is their best option. It’s the most expensive option but gives you complete control, giving you everything you want without having to compromise on anything. However, you may find that tailored code and features will cost a lot more.     

Watch out for these hidden costs 

One common misconception is that the costs end when your site goes live. That’s just not true, in fact, some of the most expensive problems show up after launch. These can include:  

Non-converting content: You can have the most beautiful website in the world but if it’s not pulling in paying customers, there’s a problem. Try investing in professional copywriting and SEO-friendly content that will ensure visitors take action.   

Dropped traffic: Starting off with bad SEO can really hamper your traffic. Without help, it’s easy to make errors that could take months to fix. This is very much a case of prevention is better than cure.  

Technical debt: Sites built on outdated technology or poorly coded templates may work at first but become costly to maintain or upgrade after a while.   

Accessibility cost: It’s important that you make sure your site caters to all, especially those who may have visual or audio impairments. 

Legal costs: There are certain legal requirements to take care of. These aren’t just there to protect the customer; they protect you too. So, don’t forget that you’ll need things like a cookie consent tool and a term of service policy. 

How Yoast saves you money (over time) 

Yoast isn’t about saving you money on upfront costs; what it does is prevent expensive mistakes. It will save you money over time though as you’ll benefit from reduced costs of ongoing SEO and content marketing. 

To get more specific though, Yoast’s real-time SEO guidance helps you write better, optimized content without needing to hire a writer. In addition, the Readability analysis and Internal linking suggestions are two features that help to reduce bounce rates by making your content perform better, which literally translates into more conversions. On top of this, adding structured data manually is time consuming and costly. Yoast automates much of this, giving you rich search results without developer costs. And if that’s not enough to whet your appetite, there are free and premium options.  

Feature  How it saves you money  
Real-time SEO guidance   Write better content, faster, without hiring an SEO expert  
Readability analysis  Engaged readers means more conversions 
Schema & structured data   Get results without coding knowledge 
Internal linking suggestions   Boost traffic to key pages without external help 

Budgeting tips for small business owners 

By spending smart, you can get big results for less. Here are a few things to keep in mind: 

  1. Start with clarity, not complexity: 
    Fancy animations might look nice, but if they confuse your visitors, they’re not worth the price. 
  1. Spend more on content than code: 
    Great content = better SEO = better ROI.   
  1. Invest in tools that scale with you: 
    WordPress and Yoast both grow with your business. 
  1. Plan for the long game: 
    Don’t treat launch as the finish line. Content updates and SEO tweaks are ongoing.

Read more: How to optimize your crawl budget

Ecommerce vs. general website: does it change the cost? 

Yes, dramatically. Ecommerce sites need: 

  • Payment gateways. 
  • Product listings. 
  • Inventory management. 
  • Legal disclaimers. 
  • Stronger performance and security. 

Expect to pay more, sometimes a lot more, for development, plugins, and maintenance. But again, tools like Yoast SEO help make your product pages more visible and your content more persuasive.   

Platforms like WooCommerce give you a practical and flexible way to run your online store without having to reinvent the wheel. But the real key to success is visibility, after all, if people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. And this is what Yoast SEO for WooCommerce does best.  

Read more: See how Yoast helps ecommerce sites

Final thoughts 

Ultimately, what matters about your site most is what it does for your business. With WordPress and Yoast, you can create a professional site that looks great, enhances your online visibility, and grows with your business, without breaking the bank. One of the best things you can do to really set the wheels in motion now though is to go to this guide WordPress for beginners training course and learn how to put yourself and your company first.

Good SEO isn’t a luxury; it’s a smart investment, so start today. Good luck!

Avatar of Brendan Reid
Brendan Reid

Brendan is a seasoned writer with a particular interest in SMEs. What he really enjoys is being able to provide real, actionable steps that can be taken today to start making business better for everyone.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 12 2025
LLM SEO Optimization Techniques: (including llms.txt)

Table of Contents

  1. How to Make Your Content Visible in the Age of AI Search
  2. What Are LLMs and Why Should You Care?
  3. The New Way of Searching
  4. SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO vs. LLMO: Are We Just Rebranding SEO?
  5. Key LLM SEO Optimization Techniques
  6. Bonus Strategies for LLM Optimization
  7. The Role of llms.txt: Giving AI Search All the Right Signals
  8. LLM Optimization vs. Traditional SEO
  9. Common Mistakes to Avoid
  10. Tools and Resources to Get Started
  11. Conclusion

How to make your content visible in the age of AI search 

So, what exactly is LLM Optimization? Well, the answer to that question depends on who you ask. For example, if you ask a machine learning engineer, they’ll tell you it’s all about tweaking prompts and token limits to get better performance from a large language model. In fact, Iguazio actually defines LLM optimization as improving the way models respond, which means smarter, faster, and with more contextual recognition.    

If, on the other hand, you are a content strategist or SEO enthusiast, LLM optimization will mean something completely different to you and that is making sure that your content shows up in AI-generated search results. And, that needs to be true no matter whether you’re talking to ChatGPT, searching with Perplexity, or scanning Google’s new AI Mode for answers. Some call this ChatGPT SEO or Generative Engine Optimization. 

So, if you fall into the latter of those two groups, ie: the people who want their content and product pages to be seen and clicked, then this article is for you. And, if you’d like to read on, we’ll show you why LLM optimization in an AI-search landscape isn’t some sort of luxury option; it’s an absolute necessity. 

What are LLMs and why should you care? 

AI engineers train Large Language models on huge amounts of text and data to generate answers, summaries, code, and human-like language. They’ve read everything (not just the Classics) and that includes blogs, news articles and your website.   

The reason that’s important is that LLMs don’t crawl your website in real time like Search Engines do. What they do is read it, learn from it and when someone asks them a question, they try to recall what they saw and rephrase it into an answer. If your site shows up as the answer, “Great” but if not, you’ve got a visibility problem. 

The new way of searching 

Search is not just about Google anymore. Also, it’s not as if just one other thing has come to dominate which means we’re left with a rather messy mix of Perplexity answers, Chat GPT chats, Gemini summaries and voice assistants reading out answers while we try to do two tasks at once. 

In short, people aren’t just searching, they’re conversing and if your content can’t hold its own in this environment then you’re missing out on visibility, traffic, and the ability to build trust.  We’ll walk you through exactly how to fix that.   

Read more: How to optimize content for AI LLM comprehension using Yoast’s tools 

SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO vs. LLMO: Are we just rebranding SEO? 

If you’ve been wondering whether you now need four different strategies for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization), relax, it’s not as big a deal as you might think. You see, despite all the buzzwords, the core of optimization hasn’t changed much. 

All four terms point to the same central goal: making your content more findable, quotable, and credible in machine-generated output regardless of whether that comes from Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or an answer box on Bing. 

So, should you overhaul your entire content strategy to ‘do LLMO’? 

Not really. At least, not yet. 

Most of what boosts your presence in LLMs is already what SEO professionals have been doing for years. Structured content, semantic clarity, topical authority, entity association, clean internal linking, it’s all classic SEO.  

Where they slightly diverge: 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  Relies on backlinks and site architecture to establish authority 
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization  Puts extra emphasis on unlinked brand mentions and semantic association 
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)  Focuses on being the single best, most concise, and sourceable response to a specific query 
LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization)  Leans into optimizing content not just for people or search crawlers but for LLMs reading in chunks, skipping JavaScript, and relying on embeddings and grounding datasets  

But the thing is: you don’t need four different playbooks. All you need is one solid SEO foundation. In fact, this point is backed up by Google’s Gary Illyes who confirmed that AI Search does not require specialized optimization, saying that “AI SEO” is not necessary and that standard SEO is all that is needed for both AI Overviews and AI Mode. 

  • Focus more on entity mentions, not just links 
  • Treat your core site pages (home, pricing, about) and PDFs as important LLM fuel.
  • Remember that AI crawlers don’t render JavaScript, so client-side content might be invisible   
  • Think about how LLMs process structure (chunking, context, citations), not just how humans skim it 

So, if you’ve already been investing in foundational SEO, you’re already doing most of what GEO, AEO, and LLMO ae all about. That’s why not every new acronym needs you to have a whole rethink on your efforts. Sometimes, it’s just like SEO. 

Key LLM SEO optimization techniques 

Now that we know LLMs aren’t crawling our site but are understanding it, we need to think a little differently about how we create and construct content and for more on this, you may find this article extremely insightful. This is not about cramming in keywords or trying to play the algorithm, it’s about clarity, structure and credibility because these are the things LLMs care about when deciding what to quote, summarize or ignore. Below are some techniques that will help your content stay visible now that people are using generative search.   

The bar has been raised on the quality of content  

LLMs love clarity. The more natural and specific your language is, the easier it is for them to understand and reuse your content. That means not using jargon, avoiding ambiguity and instead, focusing on writing like you’re explaining something to a colleague. 

To give an exact example: 

Don’t Say: 

“Our innovative tool revolutionizes the digital landscape for modern businesses.” 

Instead Say: 

“The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress helps businesses to improve their website’s visibility and appear inn search results 

Use Structure, Chunked Formatting

Chunked formatting means breaking your content into small pieces (chunks) of informatin that are easy to understand and remember. LLMs tend to prioritize the most easily digestible content construction – which means your headings, bullet points, and clearly defined sections must do a lot of heavy lifting. Not only does organizing your content like this help people to skim read, but it also helps machines understand what each section is about.  

Structuring your content like this will help: 

  • Write clear, descriptive H2s and 3s 
  • Use bullet points that can provide standalone value 
  • Include summaries and tables to give quick overviews 

Be Factual, Transparent, and Authoritative 

Just like Google, LLMs need to trust that your content is reliable before they start taking you seriously. This means you need to show your working out, quote sources, reveal authors, and follow the principles of E-E-A-T. Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. 

Follow these E-E-A-T principles 

To do this: 

  • Include an author bio and credentials if possible (include a link to actual author bios and social profiles) 
  • Name your sources when you use claims or statistics 
  • Share real experiences if possible “As a small business owner…” 

The more real, relatable and trustworthy your content looks, the more AI will like it.  

Optimize for Summarization 

LLMs won’t quote your entire blog post; they’ll only use snippets. Your job is to make those snippets irresistible. Start with strong lead sentences so that each paragraph begins with a clear point followed by context. Also, it’s a good idea to front-load your content. Don’t save your best bits for the end.  

As a reminder: 

  • Start each section with what you want the key takeaway to be 
  • Keep paragraphs short and self-contained 
  • Create standalone summary paragraphs as these often get quoted in AI generated answers 

Use Schema 

Behind every great summary is a structured content model. That’s where Schema markup comes in and to help the AI understand your content, you need to speak in a certain way.   

Read more about schema markup 

To make things clear, use: 

  • Article for blog content 
  • FAQPage for questions and answers 
  • HowTo for instructions 
  • Author and Person for writer’s bio
  • WebPage for generic content 

Bonus strategies for LLM optimization

Once you’ve got the basics completed, like clear writing, structure and trust signals, there’s still more you can do to give your content the best shot at visibility. These bonus strategies focus on how to make your site even more AI-friendly by anticipating how LLMs interpret and reuse information. 

Use Explicit Context and Clear language 

Humans have an incredible ability to be able to ‘fill in the blanks’ and still ‘get the message’ even if the information they got was vague or unclear. One of the biggest differences between humans and LLMs? Humans can infer meaning from vague references. LLMs on the other hand… well, let’s just say that it doesn’t come naturally to them. 

In any case, the point is that if your article mentions “this tool” or “our product” without any context, an LLM might miss the connection entirely. The result? You’re left out of the answer, even if you’re the best source. 

So, to give your content the clarity it deserves: 

  • Use the full product or brand name, like “Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress,” not just “Yoast” 
  • Define technical or niche terms before using them 
  • Avoid vague language (“this page,” “the above section,” “click here”) 

You don’t need to be repetitive, but you do need to be explicit rather than implicit.  

Leverage FAQs and Conversational Formats 

LLMs love FAQs because they’re direct, predictable, and easy to quote. They closely match real user intent and provide high-value snippets that tools like Perplexity and Gemini can pull from without much guesswork. 

How to use the FAQ block in WordPress 

That said, there’s an important limitation to keep in mind if you’re using the Yoast SEO FAQ block in Gutenberg: 

You cannot use H2 or H3 heading tags inside the FAQ block. 
The block creates its own question-answer formatting using custom HTML, which is great for structured data (FAQ Page schema), but it doesn’t support native heading tags which limits your ability to optimize AI readability and skimmability. 

So, if your goal is to appear in AI-generated summaries or answer boxes, where headings like “What is LLM SEO?” make it easy for AI to quote your content, you might be better off using manual formatting. 

Here’s how to get the best of both worlds: 

  • STEP 1: Use H2 or H3 tags for each question (e.g., “What is llms.txt?”) and write a clear, short answer beneath it. This improves LLM visibility but doesn’t generate structured FAQ schema. 
  • Step 2: Use the Yoast FAQ block for schema support but know that it won’t give you a proper heading structure. 

 Ultimately, the more your FAQs resemble natural, searchable questions — and are structured in a way that both humans and AI can easily parse — the more likely they are to be featured in answers. 

Enhance Trust with Freshness Signals  

Just like search engines, some LLMs give preference to newer content, but remember that we need to talk to them in a certain way to get the best out of them. 

Older content can be overlooked. Worse, it can be quoted incorrectly if something has changed since you last hit publish. 

Make sure your pages include: 

  • A clear “last updated” timestamp (can we get a picture of what one would look like for clarification?) 
  • Regular reviews for accuracy 
  • Changelogs or update notes if applicable (especially for software or plugin content) 

It doesn’t have to be complicated, even a simple “Last updated: June 2025” can help both readers and AI systems trust that your content is current.  

How to keep content fresh 

Prioritize Author Visibility and Credibility 

Today, we’re entering a phase where who wrote your content is just as important as what it says. That means you need to highlight author visibility and put effort into signaling real-world experience. 

Here’s how: 

  • Include author bios in WordPress with credentials and links to their professional profiles 
  • Use Person schema to formally associate the content with a specific individual 
  • Weave in relevant experience (“As an SEO consultant who works with SaaS brands…”) 

Remember, LLMs are more likely to trust, quote, and amplify expert-authored content. 

Use Internal Linking Strategically 

Think of internal linking as your site’s nervous system. It helps both humans and LLMs understand what’s important, how topics relate, and where to go next. 

But internal linking isn’t just about SEO hygiene anymore — it’s also a way to establish topic authority and help LLMs build a map of your expertise. 

Do: 

  • Cluster related articles together (e.g., link from “LLM Optimization” to “Schema Markup for SEO”) 
  • Use descriptive anchor text like “read our full guide to Schema markup,” not just “click here” 
  • Ensure every piece of content supports a broader narrative 

Our internal linking feature is available for free with a Yoast SEO Premium plugin. 

The role of llms.txt. Giving AI search all the right signals 

Now let’s talk about one of the most recent developments in LLM visibility; a little file called llms.txt. 

Think of it as a sibling to robots.txt, but instead of guiding search engines, it tells AI tools how they’re allowed to interact with your content. Note: llms.txt is still an evolving standard, and support across AI tools may vary, but it’s a smart step toward asserting control 

With llms.txt, you can: 

  • Define how your content may be reused or summarized 
  • Set clear expectations around attribution, licensing 

It’s not just about protection, it’s about being proactive as AI usage accelerates. 

Even better: Yoast now offers llms.txt integration right inside the plugin, so you don’t need to mess around with code or server settings. If you want to future-proof your site’s visibility (and your IP), this is where you start. 

The llms.txt feature is available for both free and premium customers.   

LLM Optimization vs Traditional SEO: 

LLM Optimization and SEO are part of the same family, but they serve different functions and require slightly different thinking. 

Let’s compare: 

Traditional SEO  LLM Optimization 
Crawled and ranked by bots  Read, remembered, and reused by AIs 
Emphasizes keywords  Emphasizes context and clarity 
   
Optimizes for SERPs  Optimizes for AI-generated summaries and answers 

The takeaway? You can’t ignore either. One brings traffic; the other boosts brand visibility within AI responses. 

And considering that 42% of users now start their research with an LLM (not Google), you’ll want to be found in both places. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid 

Even well-meaning content creators fall into holes. So, take a look at the tips below to avoid any mishaps that could damage your LLM visibility: 

  • Writing like a robot or allowing a robot to write for you (ironically, not appreciated by robots) 
  • Leaving your content undated and unchanged for years 
  • Publishing posts without any author information or editorial standards 
  • Ignoring internal links or leaving orphaned pages 
  • Using vague headings or anchor text like “read more” or “this article” 

If your content looks generic, outdated, or anonymous, it won’t earn any trust. And, without trust, it won’t get quoted. 

 Tools and Resources to Get Started 

Search used to be about visibility within SERPs. But now, it’s also about being seen in summaries, answers, snippets, and chats. LLMs aren’t just shaping the future of search; they’re shaping how your brand is perceived to both humans and robots alike. 

To stand out: 

  • Write with clarity and context 
  • Structure for humans and machines 
  • Cite your expertise and show your authors 
  • Use tools like Yoast and llms.txt to signal your intent 

Future-proof your visibility with Yoast SEO. From llms.txt integration to schema support, Yoast gives you all the tools you need to speak AI’s language and dominate both generative answers and search engines. Get started with Yoast SEO Premium now and make it easy for AI to say something accurate, useful, and… ideally, about you. 

Brendan Reid

Brendan is a seasoned writer with a particular interest in SMEs. What he really enjoys is being able to provide real, actionable steps that can be taken today to start making business better for everyone.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 27 2025
10 tips to streamline your blog content workflow

Content production seems quite simple, in principle. You develop an idea, write about it, do SEO checks, and click publish. Simple, right? It never turns out that way, especially when working with a team. Miscommunications, last-minute changes, and confusion about what needs to happen when. We’ve all been there! Try these ten tips to streamline your digital content workflow and eliminate much stress.

Table of contents

Before we start

Before we start, remember that the ‘perfect’ content workflow probably doesn’t exist. After all, every piece of content is unique, so a one-size-fits-all process is unlikely to produce the highest quality results. If your high-quality, unique content is taking forever to finish, you might struggle to meet deadlines or keep to a schedule. If that sounds like you or your organization, take a look at our tips and see how you can improve.

1. Start the process with clear goals

Whether you’re working alone or as part of a bigger team, it’s important to have a clear idea of all the steps involved and how long each step might take. Not every digital content process is the same. For instance, social media posts don’t need to be optimized for search engines, while blog posts targeting organic traffic do. Regardless of your end goal, the first step is always to start with clear goals.

Want to cover all your bases? Try to answer as many of these questions as you can, as clearly as you can:

  • What topic are you focusing on? How in-depth will you go?
  • Who are you writing for? Who is your audience?
  • What are you trying to achieve? More website visits, increased sales, and more social shares?
  • How will people be able to find your content? Where will you share it, and when?

If you specify your ideas and plans clearly at the beginning, it can help you and your team align your plans. It also helps you to stay on track, which can save you a lot of back-and-forth later on!

Read more: Audience research: how to analyze your audience »

2. Identify contributors and stakeholders

If you’re working in a team, our next tip is as important as the first. Why? Even if you’re clear about your goals, does everyone involved agree with your action plan? That’s why you need to identify your essential contributors and key stakeholders.

Depending on how big your organization is and how well-developed your process is already, making a list of contributors and stakeholders could be a lot of hard work, or a total no-brainer. If you sometimes find that your digital content workflow reaches a bottleneck (or descends to total chaos) because blockers arise from unexpected sources, it could be a sign that you need to do more work in this area.

Once you’ve come up with your plan, it’s a good idea to share it with any essential colleagues who need to give approval in the end before you start doing the real work. If you can get these people to agree with your initial plan, you can refer back to this later to explain creative choices and decisions you might need to make. When you let key parties know what to expect, you can avoid a lot of “What is this? What were you thinking?” kind of conversations.

3. Visualize your content workflow

It can be beneficial to visualize your content workflow, even if it seems daunting. At a minimum, you should write out the basic steps. If you add boxes and arrows to link the steps together, this can help to make the journey through the steps clearer (especially if there are moments when you need to loop back and repeat an earlier step). You can create this however feels comfortable to you — you could choose basic office software like Microsoft Word or Google Docs (Yoast SEO has a handy Google Docs add-on), you could try more advanced software like Visio or Lucidchart, or you could sketch it out on paper. It’s up to you!

For instance, your workflow could look like the first example written out in steps, or like the image below if you use a visualization tool. If, like us, you’re working in WordPress or Google Docs with the Yoast SEO plugin enabled, you can incorporate the features that you use into your workflow too.

Use Yoast SEO in Google Docs

Optimize as you draft for SEO, inclusivity, and readability. The Yoast SEO Google Docs add-on lets you export content ready for WordPress, no reformatting required.

Content workflow example 1

  1. Create a content brief with the agreement of any necessary colleagues
  2. Carry out keyword research using Google Trends and the Semrush keyword data tool in Yoast SEO Premium
  3. Create an article outline using a title and headings that relate to your keywords and the expected search intent
  4. Check if your stakeholders agree with the article outline: If yes, then continue; If no, go back to steps 1-3
  5. Write your draft in WordPress or Google Docs, taking the readability and SEO optimization suggestions from the Yoast SEO plugin into account
  6. Add a featured image in the Post Settings tab and a social image in the Social media appearance tab
  7. Make sure the SEO title, meta description and slug are all a suitable length and describe the content well
  8. Use the Public Preview option in WordPress to share a preview of the post with everyone who needs to give feedback or approval
  9. If feedback needs to be implemented, then implement it! If you’ve made any important changes, go back to get feedback and approval again!
  10. Once everyone who needs to has approved it, your post is ready to publish.

Content workflow example 2

An example of a Jira workflow for tracking blog projects

Read more: How to optimize a blog post for search engines: a checklist! »

4. Assign activities and responsibilities to team members

Even if you have a solid content workflow on paper, it’s important to ensure that each time you go through it, everyone is clear about who is doing what. Not only that, but how and when will different team members communicate with each other to hand over tasks or ask questions? Clearing these kinds of things up in advance can save a lot of hassle for everyone involved.

If these tasks aren’t a regular part of your team’s working day, they’ll also need to manage their own schedule to accommodate the tasks. If so, make sure that they have time to work on your planned content. It’s also worth checking what other priorities your contributors are juggling, as these could prevent progress if they become too demanding. Maybe you have the authority to make your planned content a top priority. If that’s your intention, make sure everyone involved knows that this should be #1 on their to-do list!

Naturally, you’ll want to set a deadline for when your content is going to be published. But if you think you can just send out an initial set of instructions, with one final deadline for all the tasks, and nothing concrete in between… Then things are quite likely to go wrong.

To achieve a much more reliable plan of action, you should include sub-deadlines and contact moments at key points in the content process. These help to keep everyone’s work aligned as the piece of content is developed, and can help you to avoid process bottlenecks by identifying issues early on. It’s also wise to schedule your own internal deadlines to have your content ready at least a week before you intend to publish it. That way, you can avoid last-minute changes (and all the mistakes that are likely to come with them). We’ll come back to this point later.

6. Agree on standards and priorities

So at this point, if you’ve followed all of our tips, you might be planning in sub-deadlines like ‘rough draft is ready’ or ‘final draft for approval’. Before you build all your hopes and dreams around these mini-deliverables, you’ll need to clarify how rough this rough draft can be! After all, you don’t want to end up disappointed because you only received a basic article outline and a few bullet point lists when you were expecting something almost finished.

If you’re using tools like Yoast SEO, you’ll also want to make it clear what results are acceptable to you: for instance, do you expect the readability analysis to always be green, but the SEO analysis doesn’t have to be when it’s not written for ranking purposes? Do you expect the internal linking suggestions to be added as a requirement, or are these just to be used as suggestions? Make sure everyone agrees about how you use your tools and what the end goal is.

7. Allow time for final checks and changes

If you have a regular content publishing schedule that you want to keep to, it’s a good idea to prepare your drafts with a decent amount of time to spare. That way, you can avoid stressing about deadlines and last-minute changes. Here are a few things that really ought to be on your pre-publication checklist, especially if they’re not already incorporated in your content development process:

  • Check the SEO of your post using the Yoast SEO analysis. Is it good enough?
  • Check the readability of your post using the readability analysis. Is it good enough?
  • Have you added a featured image?
  • Have you added an OG image and title for optimized social sharing?
  • Is the slug short and descriptive?
  • Have you added internal links to and from other relevant pages on your site?
  • If you use tags/categories, have you selected all the right options?
  • Are comments enabled/disabled according to your preferences for this post?
  • Is the correct date/time set for your post?
Yoast SEO for Google Docs add-on
Using Yoast SEO in Google Docs makes it much easier to work across teams

As you can see, there’s quite a lot to do even after a post is written, so don’t underestimate how long these checks will take.

Got a good basic content process, but still having issues? This is what to check:

8. Do you create unnecessary work?

Sometimes tasks become more complicated than they really need to be. Are there times when one small change causes a cascade of new issues to deal with? This can be a sign that you need to rethink the order of your steps and who is involved. Small changes should be easy, right?

Often, it’s obvious who should be doing what and how the process should continue. But it’s not always. For instance, if you have a graphic design team, do they need to make every change themselves? Can you make things easier by enabling your writing team to change text and background colors themselves, for instance?

Another type of problem can arise if you don’t have a clear decision-maker in place. Sure, there might be lots of people who should have a say about the content in the end. But who makes the final decisions? If it’s not clear who is responsible for which decisions, you might end up with all your best experts trying to reach an agreement about every little thing. That can be tricky, and it can waste loads of time! Make it easier by giving specific individuals ownership of specific aspects of the process.

9. Are things not going according to plan?

Sometimes things go wrong, in spite of your best efforts. But if things are often going wrong in your content production process, you should investigate the cause of your problems. It’s always a good idea to reach out to the people involved in the steps that are going wrong. What challenges are they facing? Does the existing process make things easier for them or more difficult? And very importantly, ask if they have any ideas to improve the process!

Don’t be afraid to try something new if what you’re doing isn’t working. Even if your new idea doesn’t work out any better, you can always learn from it and try something different next time! Or put it this way: trying anything is better than burying your head in the sand and continuing with a broken content development process.

Last but not least: are you making life harder by adding in ‘nice-to-have’ extras that weren’t part of the plan? It’s an easy mistake to make! After all, when you really care about the content you’re creating, your natural instinct is to keep improving and make it the best that it can be. Even though that means making a whole new infographic. Even though that infographic wasn’t a part of the original plan. Your team can make it happen, right? Or else you can just push the deadline back…

It’s great to aim high when it comes to making quality content. But if you’re ambitious, late-arriving ideas become a burden to the process, you might want to start categorizing them into “must-have” and “nice-to-have” content elements. That way, everyone knows which parts to prioritize and which parts can be left out if they’re too difficult to achieve within the original plan. And don’t forget that one of the biggest advantages of publishing digital content is that you can continue to improve it and share it again whenever you want!

Streamline your content workflow, but don’t let it rule you!

Those are our ten tips! It can be really worthwhile to streamline your content workflow, especially if you’re experiencing issues and bottlenecks in the process. Naturally, every situation is different, and each piece of content comes with its own opportunities and challenges, too. So you need to think about what works for you and what doesn’t in order to adapt your content process.

Try to keep a balance and avoid making a content process that’s too strict or inflexible. You don’t want to set up a rigid process that dictates your editorial decisions and rules your creative output. It’s a creative process, after all! So it’s always good to keep some room for flexibility, but just how much is up to you.

Remember: whatever your content workflow looks like, WordPress, Google Docs, and the Yoast SEO plugin can help you! From your main topic and focus keyphrase, through to the final touches you add just before publishing, the tools can form checkpoints to easily align your team and your goals.

Read more: Adapting your content SEO strategy »

Avatar of Edwin Toonen


Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 23 2025
How to create a good meta description

The meta description summarizes a page’s content and presents it to users in the search results. It’s one of the first things people will likely see when searching for something, so optimizing it is crucial for SEO. It’s your chance to persuade users to click on your result! This post will show you the characteristics of a good meta description and how Yoast SEO can help you get it right.

Table of contents

Did you get a red traffic light for the keyphrase in the meta description check in Yoast SEO? Read what this check does, and how to turn this traffic light green. Yoast SEO also checks the length of your meta description. Read about how that check works and how to write a concise meta description.

The meta description is an HTML tag you can set for a post or page of your website. In it, you can use roughly 155 characters to describe what your page is about. If you’re lucky, Google will show it beneath your page’s title in the search results. It allows you to convince search engine users that your page will offer what they are looking for.

In Google’s search results, this is where it can be displayed:

A meta description from yoast.com as seen in the search results

And this is what it looks like in the HTML code of the page:

The purpose of a meta description is simple: it needs to get someone searching with a search term on Google to click your link. In other words, meta descriptions are there to generate click-throughs from search engines.

Search engines say there is no direct SEO benefit from the meta description – they don’t use it in their ranking algorithm. But there is an indirect benefit: Google uses click-through rate (CTR) to determine whether you’re a good result. If more people click on your result, Google considers you to be a good result and will, based on your position, move you up the rankings. This is why optimizing your meta description is important, as is optimizing your titles.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that Google will display the description that you’ve written. But, as there is a chance it will, adding it to your post or page is always worth the effort.

What does a good meta description contain?

Here’s a list of elements you need to write a good meta description:

  1. Keep it up to 155 characters
  2. Use an active voice and make it actionable
  3. Include a call to action
  4. Use your focus keyphrase
  5. Show specifications when needed
  6. Make sure it matches the content of the page
  7. Make it unique

Let’s go over them in detail!

1. Keep it up to 155 characters 

The right length doesn’t exist; it depends on the message you want to convey. You should take enough space to convey the message, but keep it short and snappy. However, if you check the search results in Google, you’ll mostly see snippets of 120 to 156 characters, like in the example below. Google says you can make your meta descriptions as long as you want, but there is a limit to what we can see in the SERPs — and that’s around 155 characters; anything longer will get truncated.

an example of a meta description showing one on puppy training, including review ratings
This search result from a Yoast SEO user shows a succinct meta description in Google

Unfortunately, you can’t fully control what Google displays in the search results. Sometimes, it shows the meta description, and sometimes, it just grabs some sentences of your copy or generates something itself. Either way, your best bet is to keep it short. That way, if Google does decide to show the description you’ve written, it won’t be cut short. 

2. Use active voice and make it actionable 

If you see the meta description as an invitation to visit your page, you have to think about your user and their (possible) motivation to visit your page. Ensure your description isn’t dull, difficult, or too cryptic. People need to know what they can expect to find on your page.

The example in the image below is the description you should strive to write. It’s active, speaks to you, and addresses you directly. You know what you’ll get if you click on the link!

an example of a meta description with an attractive writing style
Make people want to click your search result

3. Include a call-to-action

“Hello, we have a new product, and you want it. Find out more!” This overlaps with what we said about the active voice, but we wanted to emphasize it again. The meta description is your sales text. In this case, the “product” you are trying to sell is the linked page. Invitations like Learn more, Get it now, Try for free come in handy, and we use them too.

an example of a meta description with a call to action
Get people to click on your link

4. Use your focus keyword

If the search keyword matches a part of the text in the meta description, Google will be more inclined to use it and highlight it in the search results. This will make the link to your site even more inviting. Google sometimes even highlights synonyms. In the example below, both the Academy Awards and Oscars are highlighted. Getting your results emphasized like that makes them stand out even more.

The image shows a meta description for the Wikipedia page about the Academy Awards. The words 'Academy Awards' and 'Oscars' are shown in bold text.
A listing for the Academy Awards on Google

5. Show specifications, where possible 

If you have a product in your Shopify or WooCommerce store aimed at the tech-savvy, it can be a good idea to focus on the technical specs. For example, you can include the manufacturer, SKU, price, etc. If the visitor specifically seeks that product, you won’t have to convince them. Can the watch help us stay fit? Sign us up; that’s all we need to know. Note that to optimize your result in this manner, you should work on getting rich snippets.

Google search result describe the Apple Watch SE
Make it spark

6. Make sure it matches the content of the page

This is an important one. Google will find out if you use meta descriptions to trick visitors into clicking on your results. They might even penalize you if you do it. But besides that, misleading descriptions will also increase your bounce rate. Which will also lower people’s trust in your company. It’s a bad idea for that reason alone. That is why you want the meta description to match the content on the page.

7. Make it unique 

Adding the date to the snippet preview

People often ask questions about the date shown in the Google preview of our Yoast SEO plugin. We’ve added this because search engines may display a date with your snippet. So it’s important to factor it in when you decide on the right length of your meta description. Unfortunately, there’s no way to directly control whether this date is shown or not, but you can try to manage the dates they use in the search results.

If your meta description is the same as those for other pages, the user experience in Google will be hampered. Although your page titles might vary, all pages will appear the same because all the descriptions are identical. Instead of creating duplicate meta descriptions, you’d better leave them blank. Google will pick a snippet from the page containing the keyword used in the query. That being said, writing a unique meta description for every page you want to rank is always the best practice.

Adding a meta description is easy if you’re on WordPress or Shopify and using Yoast SEO. Firstly, you can write it in the Search appearance preview section of Yoast SEO. But Yoast SEO also gives you feedback on it in the SEO analysis. The plugin checks the meta description length and whether you’ve used your focus keyphrase. So, let’s see how the plugin helps you and what you can do with it. 

Using AI to generate meta descriptions in Yoast SEO Premium

Yoast SEO Premium has our Yoast AI Generate features, which include AI-powered meta description generation. This meta description generator brings the power of generative AI to your fingertips, producing engaging and SEO-optimized meta descriptions with just one click. Using advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques, it generates creative and appealing meta descriptions, captivating your audience while meeting search engine standards.

yoast seo's ai tool can generate relevant titles and meta descriptions for you
Creating meta descriptions with a little help from generative AI in Yoast SEO Premium

This feature simplifies your meta description optimization process and fully complies with best SEO practices. It enhances user experience, amplifies your website’s visibility, and effortlessly directs high-quality, organic traffic to your site. With this outstanding AI generator, effortlessly elevate your SEO performance and generate outstanding meta descriptions that set you apart.

You can edit your meta description in Yoast SEO
You can edit your meta description in Yoast SEO for Shopify

What does the keyphrase in meta description assessment in Yoast SEO do?

This check is all about using the keyphrase in the meta description. A focus keyphrase is the search term you want a page to rank for. When people use that term, you want them to find your page. You base your keyphrase on keyword research. After your research, you should end up with a combination of words that most of your audience will likely search for. We’ve already discussed that when you use your keyphrase in the meta description, Google will likely highlight it. That makes it easier for people to see they’ve found what they are looking for. 

Yoast SEO checks if and how often you use the words from your focus keyphrase in the meta description text. In addition, if you use Yoast SEO Premium, it also considers the synonyms you enter. If you overdo it, the plugin advises you to limit the use of your focus keyphrase.

What a green bullet looks like in Yoast SEO
What a green bullet looks like in Yoast SEO for Shopify

How to get a green traffic light for the keyphrase in meta description

You’ll get a red traffic light if you don’t mention the keyphrase in the meta description. So, make sure to write one. But don’t stuff your meta description with your keyphrase because that will also get you a red traffic light. And make sure to mention all the words from your keyphrase near each other. Search engines are pretty smart nowadays, but you must clarify what your page is about. 

Yoast SEO Premium plugin considers the synonyms you’ve added when it performs its analysis. This allows you to write more naturally, resulting in a more pleasant text. Moreover, it’s easier to score a green traffic light this way. Use it to your advantage!

Unlock all features in Yoast SEO Premium

Save time on your SEO and get access to all of our SEO courses.

What does the meta description length assessment do?

This meta description length assessment measures whether your description is too short (less than 120 characters) or too long (more than 156 characters).  You’ll get a green traffic light when your meta description has the right length. If it’s too long or too short, you’ll get an orange traffic light in the SEO analysis of Yoast SEO (or red if you’ve marked your article as cornerstone content).

What the check looks like in the Yoast SEO sidebar
A green bullet in the Yoast SEO for Shopify app

How to write a concise meta description

A good meta description convinces people that your page offers the best result for their query. But, to be the best result, you must know what people seek. What is their search intent? Are they looking for an answer to a question? If they are, try to give them the most complete answer. Are they looking for a product? Write down what makes your product stand out and why they would best buy it in your store. Be concise and convincing!

You get real-time feedback on the meta description length in the Search appearance section in the Yoast SEO sidebar or meta box. Click “Search appearance” in the Yoast SEO sidebar to write a meta description. This will open the snippet editor, and you’ll see input fields for editing the SEO title, the slug, and the meta description. When you start typing in the meta description input field, the snippet preview at the top of the Search appearance editor will immediately show your new text. Underneath the input field, there is a bar. It’s orange when you start typing and will become green when you’ve added enough information. When you add too much text, it will turn orange again.

The bar will change color when your go over the limit
Checking the Google preview in Yoast SEO for Shopify

Writing or editing your meta description in the Yoast SEO meta box underneath your post editor is also possible. Go to the SEO tab in the meta box (if it’s not on this tab by default), and you can start typing in the field under Meta description immediately.

What to do if you need meta descriptions for a lot of pages?

After reading this, do you need to change all your meta descriptions? But are you not sure how to fit that into your schedule? Google has the answer:

“If you don’t have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.“

Advice from Google Search Central documentation

You can check which of your pages ranks highest with Google Search Console. Take it from there. It’s also possible to optimize your meta descriptions with variables in Yoast SEO. This allows you to speed up this process without worrying about duplicate descriptions.

If you prefer to write a unique description for each page and have much to get through, you can use the Bulk editor tool in Yoast SEO for WordPress. Head to the Tools page, click ‘Bulk editor’, then select the ‘Description’ tab. You’ll be able to see any meta descriptions already set for your pages, and you can quickly add new ones without opening each page individually. However, with this tool, you won’t get warnings if your description is too short/long, or if the focus keyword is missing.

Preventing snippets with Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO provides an easy way to control search result snippets using the nosnippet meta tag feature. This setting lets you prevent Google from displaying any snippet for particular pages, giving you control over what appears in search results. It’s especially useful when you want to prioritize privacy or ensure that content is not shown without its full context. With the nosnippet tag, you have another way to manage snippet creation and to align everything with your content strategy.

in the advanced section of yoast seo, you can prevent snippets from appearing by activating no snippet
Yoast SEO lets you easily add the nosnippets robots tag in the Advanced settings

Do you have Yoast SEO? Check the Social media appearance in the Yoast SEO sidebar or social tab in the Yoast SEO meta box below your post or page. You can add a separate description for your social media channels there. In Yoast SEO Premium, you even have social previews that show you what your post or page will look like when shared on social media.

Conclusion to meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are a crucial yet often underestimated component of SEO — even if these are not fully in your control. It serves as a brief advertisement for your content in search results, influencing click-through rates and user engagement. Crafting clear, compelling, and keyword-rich meta descriptions can significantly enhance your online visibility. In return, it could attract more targeted traffic to your website. While they may not directly impact rankings, their role in driving clicks and conversions is undeniable.

A well-crafted meta description is not just about SEO; it’s about creating a better user experience by providing searchers with a clear, concise preview of what to expect on your page. Of course, Google might think it knows better than you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put your best foot forward!

Read more: How to use the Google preview in Yoast SEO »

Avatar of Edwin Toonen


Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jun 2 2025
Yoast AI Optimize is now available for Classic Editor

We’re excited to announce that Yoast AI Optimize is now also available when using the Classic Editor in WordPress!

You’ve finished your copy, great! But those pesky Yoast SEO Analysis lights aren’t all green and you have to make manual changes. That’s where Yoast AI Optimize comes in. With Yoast SEO Premium, you can now get AI-powered suggestions right inside your Classic Editor to help fine-tune your content.

What is Yoast AI Optimize?

Yoast AI Optimize brings smart, targeted SEO support into your writing flow. It gives AI-powered suggestions for specific assessments in the Yoast SEO analysis, such as length, structure, and keyphrase distribution.  You’ll see exactly where improvements can be made and get quick, editable suggestions to help you fix them. You can quickly apply or dismiss them; the final decision always remains yours.

Benefits:

  • Get real-time AI suggestions that help improve SEO and readability
  • Edit suggestions to match your style and tone of voice
  • Apply or dismiss suggestions easily without breaking your writing flow
  • Use it in both the Classic and Block editors with Yoast SEO Premium
  • Supports optimization for:
    • Keyphrase in introduction
    • Keyphrase distribution
    • Keyphrase density
    • Sentence length
    • Paragraph length

Whether you’re using the Classic Editor or sticking with the Block Editor, Yoast AI Optimize helps you improve your SEO score faster, without losing the personal touch.

If you’re curious to know how we built this feature, check out our developer blog post with all the behind the scenes.

Ready to optimize smarter?
Update to Yoast SEO Premium to try AI Optimize in the Classic Editor today!

Avatar of Beth Parker


Beth Parker

Beth is Product Marketing Manager at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 7 2025
How to optimize content for AI LLM comprehension using Yoast’s tools

As AI-driven search engines rewrite the rules of content visibility, one thing is clear: optimization isn’t dead — it’s evolving. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity AI don’t just retrieve web pages; they synthesize answers. And your content? It only gets included if it’s clear, relevant, and easy to extract. The good news? If you’re already using the Yoast SEO plugin, you have some of the most critical tools for this new era baked right into your workflow.

Table of contents

Learn how to structure content for AI

In this post, I’ll walk through how LLMs evaluate and extract content — and how Yoast SEO’s content analysis features, particularly the Flesch Reading Ease score and green light checks, can help you structure your writing for AI retrieval, not just human readers.

And more importantly, I want to clarify a common misconception: Yoast SEO isn’t about “chasing green lights.” It’s about helping you become a better, clearer communicator. Green lights aren’t the end goal—they’re indicators that you’re aligning your content with the kinds of clarity and structure that serve both readers and AI systems. In a world where LLMs decide what gets surfaced and summarized, being a better writer is your best competitive advantage.

Even if AI search doesn’t dominate your vertical today, it will. The best time to prepare was years ago. The second-best time is right now. Consider this your SEO shade tree: start planting.

What AI search wants from your content

Forget rankings — AI search is about retrievability and clarity. LLMs ingest and parse content based on:

  • Literal surface-level term matching (yes, keywords still matter)
  • Structural formatting cues like headings, lists, and bullet points
  • Clarity of ideas — one idea per paragraph, one purpose per section
  • Prompt alignment — using the same terminology your audience would use

Even the smartest LLM will skip your content if it’s overly complex, meandering, or fails to mention the query terms directly. That means no more hiding your key points in paragraph five. No more cute, clever intros that never get to the point. The models are pulling excerpts, not reading for nuance.

This is where Yoast SEO shines. Its features, often seen as basic hygiene, are perfectly aligned with what makes content usable by AI.

The Flesch Reading Ease score is more important than ever

In a world of AI Overviews and synthesized summaries, readability is a superpower.

The Flesch Reading Ease score — included in the Yoast SEO content analysis — doesn’t just help human readers skim your content. It helps machines parse and interpret it.

LLMs prefer:

  • Shorter sentences
  • Simple phrasing
  • One idea per paragraph

These are the exact factors the Flesch score evaluates. So when Yoast flags your content as difficult to read, it’s not nitpicking — it’s showing you what might keep your article out of an AI Overview.

Pro tip: When possible, aim for a Flesch score above 60, especially for top-of-funnel or FAQ-style content you want to be quoted or summarized.

And let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean your content has to be simplistic or dumbed down. It just needs to be accessible. Plainspoken, not generic. Direct, not dull. Think of it as writing for a global audience — or a machine that doesn’t have time for interpretive poetry.

You can find the Flesch reading score in Yoast SEO Insights in your sidebar — this is the score for the post you are reading now

Don’t ignore those green lights (Even when you think you know better)

I’ll be honest: I’ve been one of the worst offenders when it comes to ignoring those green lights. I like long sentences. I enjoy prose that meanders a little if it means delivering a point with style. And I’ve spent enough of my career writing professionally that being told how to write by a plugin occasionally rubbed me the wrong way.

But here’s the thing I’ve come to accept: it’s not that the plugin is trying to replace your voice or artistry. It’s that it’s trying to ensure your work can be understood, parsed, and surfaced—especially by machines.

It is absolutely still possible to create highly visible content that doesn’t earn a green light for sentence structure or reading ease. I’ve done it. But those pieces need to be intentional. They need to be structured so that the core ideas—the “meat” of the argument—aren’t buried in the longest paragraph of the article or expressed only in dense, lyrical blocks of text.

If you want to break the rules, fine. But make sure you know where the lines are before you step over them. The art is still welcome—it just has to be thoughtfully placed.

Yoast’s content checks aren’t arbitrary — they’re aligned with how both humans and machines understand text. In fact, many of the green-light criteria align shockingly well with what LLMs are known to favor:

  • Subheadings every 300 words = easier segmentation and extraction
  • Introductory paragraph present = good for AI frontloading
  • Paragraph length = one idea per chunk, which is LLM-friendly
  • Sentence length limits = fewer chances for parsing failure

In other words: the green light checklist is not just “SEO best practice.” It’s an LLM comprehension checklist in disguise.

And while experienced writers might feel tempted to override these warnings with “but this sounds better to me,” it’s worth considering how much clearer your writing becomes when you follow them. Especially when writing for an audience that might include an algorithm.

an example of the Yoast SEO sidebar showing three overall green traffic lights for a post
Not every traffic light for individual checks has to be green — just make sure the overall lights are

Structuring for LLMs: A Yoast-assisted framework

If you want your content to get pulled into AI-generated answers, try this simple structure — and let Yoast SEO help enforce it:

  1. Start with a TL;DR or definition: Use short, declarative sentences. Bonus if you can bold the key phrase or structure it as a definition. LLMs love to latch onto clear, answer-style content.
  2. Use subheadings to divide your points: Make sure each section answers one specific question or explains one concept. Headings serve as cues for both readers and models.
  3. Use bulleted or numbered lists: Yoast SEO will warn you if a list is too long without proper formatting. LLMs love well-structured lists because they can be directly extracted.
  4. Echo the query language: Use the exact phrases people search for. This helps the AI match your content to user prompts. Literal matching still matters.
  5. End with a clear summary or CTA: AI often pulls from intros or conclusions. Don’t waste them. Reinforce your main point and point readers toward next steps.

Even if you’re writing complex thought leadership content, this structure ensures your brilliance is actually understood and surfaced.

You don’t need Schema if your structure is clear — but it helps

Structured data is still valuable, especially for establishing context and disambiguating entities. But Yoast SEO users should remember: if your page is poorly written or confusing, schema won’t save it.

LLMs cite content that is:

  • Logically segmented
  • Written in plain, direct language
  • Free of interruptions, overlays, or unrelated diversions

Yoast SEO helps you get there — not just with schema tools, but with live readability feedback during writing.

It’s also worth noting that while structured data might support AI understanding, it’s the structure of the writing that matters most for inclusion in AI responses. LLMs pull paragraphs and list items, not rich snippets. If you want to be quoted, you have to be quotable.

TL;DR: Use Yoast SEO to make your content AI-ready

In the age of AI search, optimization means:

  • Writing like a human, formatting like a machine
  • Saying things plainly
  • Echoing how people phrase questions
  • Structuring content so it can be lifted and used

Yoast SEO’s content analysis isn’t just a checklist — it’s an AI visibility strategy. That little green light might be your ticket to being the source LLMs choose to summarize.

Don’t fall into the trap of writing for the plugin. Use the plugin to write better for people and machines. That shift in mindset makes all the difference.

And as LLMs continue to power more and more of the search experience, from Google AI Overviews to tools like ChatGPT Browse, that visibility is worth more than position #1 ever was. Start now. You’ll be glad you did.

Avatar of Carolyn Shelby


Carolyn Shelby

Carolyn Shelby is an expert in SEO and AI, specializing in enterprise and technical SEO and optimizing web architectures. She views SEO and AI as powerful tools to narrate a brand’s journey, aligning content with core values to engage and convert audiences. Her approach is both data-driven and distinctly human, using straightforward, innovative methods to achieve real results.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Apr 25 2025
Keyword and content cannibalization: how to identify and fix it

If you optimize your articles for similar terms, your rankings might suffer from keyword or content cannibalization: you’ll be ‘devouring’ your chances to rank in Google! Especially when your site is growing, your content could start competing with itself. Here, we’ll explain why keyword and content cannibalism can harm SEO, how to recognize it, and what to do about it.

Table of contents

What is keyword cannibalization?

Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages on your website target the same or very similar keywords. This often occurs unintentionally, especially as your site grows and more content accumulates. Pages that are too similar in focus might confuse search engines, which may struggle to decide which to rank higher. As a result, your pages compete with one another, and all of them can rank lower.

For example, if you publish two posts — one optimized for “does readability rank” and another for “readability ranking factor” — Google may see them competing for the same query. Instead of one strong result, both might hover around lower positions, weakening your site’s overall performance.

What is content cannibalization?

Content cannibalization is closely related but centers on the issue of multiple articles covering the same topic, regardless of whether they’re optimized for the same keyword. It’s a broader issue that affects thematic overlap more than exact keyword matching.

Where keyword cannibalization focuses on duplicating keywords, content cannibalization involves too many pages delivering overlapping value. This undermines user experience, spreads authority thin, and can make your content performance uneven.

Is cannibalization harmful?

Both keyword and content cannibalization can hurt SEO.

  • Lower rankings: Google often limits the number of results from a domain per query. When several of your pages try to rank for the same keyword, they could all underperform. This is especially true when neither page is clearly better in content depth, backlinks, or relevance.
  • Diluted backlinks: Instead of one strong page getting all the backlinks, multiple weaker ones split the attention. If many pages discuss a similar topic, other sites may link to each inconsistently. As a result, no one page accumulates strong authority. This fragmentation makes it harder for your content to rank competitively.
  • Confused crawlers: Search engines can’t always easily figure out which page they should prioritize. As a result, this could lead to inconsistent rankings. These days, Google is better at understanding topical relationships and can often see their differences. If content overlap is too high and intent is unclear, prioritization issues can still arise, especially on sites with thin or low-quality pages.
  • Reduced Click-Through Rate (CTR): Spreading clicks across several similar listings may lower the collective performance. If multiple similar titles from your domain show in results, users may split clicks between them. Worse, one strong CTA title might appear further down the page than a weaker or outdated one. This can impact user engagement and CTR for both pages, especially if they fall further down the SERPs.

In short, cannibalization limits your content’s potential by weakening each page’s authority and clarity.

How to identify cannibalization issues

As your site grows, you’ll have more and more content. Some of these articles are going to be about a similar topic. Even when you’ve always categorized it well, your content might compete with itself. You’re suffering from keyword or content cannibalization. Finding and fixing keyword cannibalization issues should be part of your content maintenance work to prevent all this.

Identifying keyword cannibalization

Start with a site search. Use site:yourdomain.com “keyword” in Google to surface all pages relevant to a particular term. If you see two or more of your URLs targeting the same term, they may be in conflict.

Next, use tools like Google Search Console. Look under the Performance tab. Filter by query to view keywords that bring in impressions and clicks, then see which pages receive traffic from those terms. Then, use SEO tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to track keyword rankings and expose overlapping URLs targeting the same terms.

Look especially for pages that rank beyond the top five positions for the same term. When two of your URLs rank closely together outside the top spots, it’s often a sign that neither is performing optimally.

A simple site search with your domain and keyword will show all the pages ranking for that term

Identifying content cannibalization

Content cannibalization is subtler. You might not see overlapping keywords, but you may notice thematic overlap.

Review URL structures and tags to catch duplicates

Start by scanning your site’s URLs and content categories to catch pages covering the same topic in different formats. Look for similar slugs, repeated folder structures, or articles under the same tag or category. This quick check often reveals duplicate coverage, especially on larger sites or those with multiple writers.

Use keyword/topic mapping tools

Trace what each page is targeting. Create a list of your key pages and their target keywords or main topics. This helps you spot when multiple pages aim for the same term or cover the same subject. It doesn’t matter whether you use a tool or a spreadsheet, but keyword mapping helps explain the purpose of content. It also helps avoid overlap and ensures that all pages on your site have a place in your strategy.

Use the page filter

In Google Search Console, use the Page filter to see how each URL performs. The data gives insights into impressions, clicks, and average position. Look for pages that are getting traffic from similar queries. Multiple pages appearing for the same or closely related terms could signal content cannibalization. You can also use the Query filter to search by keyword and review which pages compete for it.

How to fix cannibalization issues

You should know your content, its performance, and where overlaps exist. Fixing keyword or content cannibalization means auditing, evaluating, and restructuring your pages. It doesn’t mean you should delete content blindly. Every page on your site should have a purpose and support your site’s overall SEO strategy. Below are practical ways to resolve both types of cannibalization.

Fixing keyword cannibalization

In many cases, solving keyword cannibalization means deleting and merging content. We will run you through some of that maintenance work as we did it at Yoast to show you how to do this. In particular, we’ll show you some thinking around a cluster of keywords related to keyword research.

Step 1: Audit your content

The first step is finding all the content on the keyword research topic. Most of that was simple: we have a keyword research tag, and most of the content was nicely tagged. This was also confronting, as we had many posts about the topic.

We searched for site:yoast.com "keyword research" and Google showed all the posts and pages on the site that mentioned the topic. We had dozens of articles devoted to keyword research or large sections mentioning it. Dozens or so mentioned it in passing and linked to other articles.

We started auditing the content for this particular group of keywords to improve our rankings around the cluster of keywords related to keyword research. So we needed to analyze which pages were ranking and which weren’t. This content maintenance turned out to be badly needed. It was surely time to find and fix possible cannibalization issues!

Step 2: Analyze the content performance

Go to Google Search Console and find the Performance section. In that section, click the filter bar. Click Query and type “keyword research” into the box like this:

A Google Search Console keyword query filter helping you find which articles rank for terms
Google Search Console helps you find which articles rank for certain terms

This makes Google Search Console match all queries containing keyword and research. This gives you two very important pieces of data. A list of the keywords your site has been shown in the search results for, and the clicks and click-through rate (CTR) for those keywords. A list of the pages that were receiving all that traffic, and how much traffic each of those pages received.

Start with the total number of clicks the content received for all those queries, then look at the individual pages. Something was clear: just a few posts were getting most of the traffic. But we knew we had loads of articles covering this topic. It was time to clean up. Of course, we didn’t want to throw away any posts that were getting traffic not included in this bucket of traffic, so we had to check each post individually. 

We removed the Query filter and used another option: the Page filter. This allows you to filter by a group of URLs or a specific URL. On larger sites, you might be able to filter by groups of URLs. In this case, we looked at the data for each post individually, which is best if you truly want to find and fix keyword cannibalization on your website.

Step 3: Decide on the next steps

After reviewing each post in this content maintenance process, we decided whether to keep it or delete it. If we deleted a post (which we did for most of them), we decided which post we should redirect it to.

For each of those posts, we evaluated whether they had sections to merge into another article. Some posts had paragraphs or sections that could be merged into another post. When merging posts entails more work (and time) than adding one paragraph or a few sentences, we recommend working in a new draft by cloning one of the original posts with Yoast Duplicate Post plugin. This way, you can work on your merged post without making live changes to one of your original posts.

Step 4: Take action

We had a list of action items: content to add to specific articles, after which each piece of content could be deleted from the articles it came from. Using Yoast SEO Premium, it’s easy to 301 redirect a post or page when you delete it, so that process was fairly painless.

With that, we’d removed the excess articles about the topic and retained only the most important ones. We still had a list of articles that mentioned the topic and linked to one of the other. We reviewed them and ensured each was linked to one or more of the remaining articles in the appropriate section.

Another example of fixing cannibalization by merging

Another example: We once had three separate articles covering how to do an SEO audit, split into parts 1, 2, and 3. Each post focused on a different section of the audit process, but none of them ranked well or brought in meaningful traffic. On their own, the articles felt incomplete, and splitting the topic likely made it harder for users (and search engines) to find everything they needed in one place. We decided to take a step back.

After reviewing performance data and gathering insights on what users were actually searching for, we merged the three posts into a single, more useful SEO audit guide. We rewrote outdated sections, expanded key points, added a practical checklist, included tool recommendations, and tightened up the structure. Since updating and combining the content, that article now ranks for more keywords than the separate posts ever did, draws more consistent traffic, and performs better overall. It’s a good example of how merging overlapping content, when done thoughtfully, can give users more value and improve SEO at the same time.

This shows three old seo audit articles that were merged in a much better, more comprehensive guide
Merging three simple posts into one big, much-improved SEO audit guide helped boost performance

Yoast Duplicate Post is a great free plugin

Ever wanted to quickly make a copy of a post in WordPress to work on some changes without the risk of ruining the published post?

You need Yoast Duplicate Post!

Fixing content cannibalization

Even if keywords differ slightly, topics may still overlap, and there are things you can do to improve that.

Create a cornerstone/pillar or landing page

Create a main page — a cornerstone article — that covers the broad topic in depth, then link to more specific articles that explore subtopics. This helps define a content hierarchy, improves internal linking, and signals which page should rank for the core topic to search engines. Supporting content can still rank independently, but will pass relevance and authority back to the pillar.

Consolidate underperforming content

If you have several pages covering similar ideas, but none are ranking well, combine them into one stronger, more complete resource. Prioritize the page with the most traffic or links, and bring valuable sections from the others. This helps reduce redundancy, improve content quality, and give search engines a clear page to index for that topic.

Use 301 redirects

Redirects are an important tool for your cannibalization actions. After deleting content, remember to use 301 redirects to send visitors from the old URLs to the updated one. Of course, you can also send them to the most relevant page as an alternative. This keeps existing rankings, backlinks, and traffic from the original pages intact. Plus, it also helps to avoid broken links or indexing issues. 

Preventive measures

Another way to avoid future keyword or content cannibalization issues is to prevent them, of course. 

Audit your content regularly

Analyze the content for your most important topics regularly. Look for overlapping pages, outdated posts, or content that doesn’t fit your keyword strategy. Regular audits will help you find issues early, which can help keep your site focused and maintain search visibility.

Assign a unique target keyword to each page

Before creating new content, please ensure no existing page targets the same keyword. Giving each page a clear, unique focus prevents internal competition and helps search engines understand which page to rank for a given query.

Write with a clear content brief

Start every piece with a brief that outlines the target keyword, search intent, key points to cover, and how it supports your existing content. Such a strategy helps your articles stay focused and avoids topic overlap. In addition, it ensures that the new content you add is truly unique to your site.

Keep a keyword and topic map

Maintain a simple record of which topics and keywords are already covered on your site. This makes it easier to spot gaps, avoid duplication, and plan new content that fits your overall strategy. A keyword map also helps when updating or pruning existing pages.

Also, if you’re running an e-commerce site with many similar product pages, make sure category pages are well-optimized and that your products clearly support them through internal linking.

Common mistakes in addressing cannibalization

Cannibalization happens, and many site owners have tried to address it in one way or another. Of course, there are right and wrong ways to do this.

Deleting pages without checking their value

Don’t delete content because you think it no longer serves a goal. Before you do that, look at traffic data, backlinks, and search performance before taking drastic measures. For instance, a page may look outdated, while in reality, it still drives traffic or has solid external links. Simply deleting it could lead to unwanted ranking losses.

Relying on canonical tags without checking content

Adding a canonical tag isn’t always the right fix. If two pages are too similar, merging or redirecting them may be better. Canonicals help when content overlap is minimal and both pages still serve a purpose, not as a quick workaround for duplication without analysis.

Merging pages that target different search intent

Just because two pages cover a similar topic doesn’t mean they should be combined. If each one is aimed at a very specific audience or answers a different question, merging them could hurt relevance and rankings. Always consider the intent behind each page before deciding to consolidate.

Overlooking internal linking opportunities

Internal links help search engines understand which pages are most important. If you skip this step, you may weaken page authority and miss chances to guide crawlers — and users — to your key content. Linking related pages strategically can reduce confusion and support stronger rankings.

Final thoughts on keyword and content cannibalization

A growing website means a growing risk of content overlapping. This could be a risk to the visibility of all that content. To prevent this, perform regular content audits and carefully plan and structure your content. 

Whether you’re fixing overlapping blog posts or aligning product pages under a clear hierarchy, regularly addressing cannibalization helps search engines — and users — find the most relevant, valuable pages on your site.

Avatar of Edwin Toonen


Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Mar 31 2025
7 tips to write good, high-quality content

Writing quality content should be a key aspect of every SEO strategy. But when is your content considered good or high-quality? And does quality mean the same for your users as for Google? In this article, we’ll discuss creating content and how you can make sure it hits the mark. It will require some creative writing skills. But don’t worry, you don’t have to become the next big author! By focusing on the right things, you can create high-ranking quality content that your users will happily read.

What is quality content?

That is the million-dollar question. Knowing how to write good content helps you get more visitors, higher conversions, and lower bounce rates. But who determines the quality of your content? The easy answer: your users. However, this also makes creating the right content more difficult. Because every user is different and has a different search intent. They have, however, one thing in common: every user knows what they want.

Although your users eventually determine the quality of your content, you can take a few steps to ensure you end up with well-thought-out, readable, and attractive content. In other words, content that’s eligible to be considered high-quality by your users and search engines. Luckily, a lot of the aspects that users will appreciate about your content are the same as the aspects search engines look for in quality content.

How search engines determine quality content

Search engines want to present their users with the exact content they seek. Content that is helpful, reliable and people-first and aligns with their current search intent. To help you create good content, Google has an acronym that you can consult: E-E-A-T. 

Search engines decide on what is content quality by assessing a number of things – relevance, clarity and helpfulness, credibility and uniqueness. This all ties into the importance of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) in any strategy around brand or topical authority.

Alex Moss – Principal SEO at Yoast

The acronym E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. In their ongoing search for the best content, Google has added this acronym to their search quality raters guidelines. They use this to assess and judge the quality of online content. Although it’s especially important for so-called YMYL websites (“Your Money Your Life” – sites that are related to well-being, health, finances or safety), these guidelines apply to all content out there.

Why is quality content important?

 Quality content is the foundation of a strong brand, helping you establish authority and expertise in your industry. Well-crafted content speaks directly to the needs of your audience, providing valuable insights that position your brand as a reliable source. Whether it’s through blog posts, social media, or in-depth guides, delivering high-quality content builds long-term relationships with customers, fosters engagement, and strengthens brand credibility.

Beyond its impact on branding, quality content plays a crucial role in SEO. As mentioned above, search engines prioritize helpful, well-structured, and informative content that truly benefits users. By focusing on producing valuable content that answers queries effectively, you can achieve higher rankings in the search results. This leads to increased visibility, organic traffic, and better engagement, which will help you grow your website sustainably. To scale content creation effectively, check out this guide on scaling content. Additionally, if you mainly write content for your clients’ website, make sure to check out our article on writing valuable content that your clients will love.

7 steps to start creating high-quality content

To ensure the quality of your content, there are 7 steps that you can follow. Let’s go into them in more detail.

1. Write for your readers, not yourself

If you have an ecommerce site, you want readers to know about the products or services you offer. If you’re a blogger, you want readers to get to know you and the topics that interest you. However, it’s also important to consider what your users want to read about. What interests do they have? What events or news do they follow that you can relate to your business?  And what ‘problems’ are they trying to fix that have led them to your site?

The first step in creating high-quality content is ensuring it contains the information your audience is looking for. To find out what your users are looking for, you have to conduct proper keyword research. This will help you determine what subjects to write about and what words your audience uses. Keyword research also helps your rankings, as more visitors and lower bounce rates tell Google that your page is a good result to show in their search results.

2. Think about search intent and your goal

Search intent is the reason why someone conducts a specific search. It’s the term used to describe their purpose. For example, do they have a question they need answered? Or do they want to buy something online? Someone’s search intent makes a difference in how they consider the quality of your content. If it fits their need at that moment, then they will stay on your page longer. But if they need an answer to a question and the page they land on only tries to sell them products, they’ll be gone before you know it.

Match goals to different search intents

It’s important to consider search intent while creating content for a specific page. That’s why we advise you to match your goals to users’ different search intents. Is one of your goals to increase newsletter subscriptions? Then, you should add that subscription button to pages where users with an informational intent land. Does a visitor have a transactional intent (meaning: they want to buy something)? Make sure they land on a product or category page dedicated to the product they are looking for. 

Of course, experience tells us it’s not always that black and white. Still, it’s good to consider your users’ search intent. It helps you determine the focus of your content and what call-to-actions you want to add. A great way to get started is by adopting a content design mindset. This mindset helps you produce user-centered content based on real needs. Also, we recommend looking at the search results for some input to create great content.

3. Make your content readable and engaging

Do you want to get your message across? And do you want people to read your entire blog post or page? Then, make your content easy to read. This means that you should:

  • Think about the structure of your text and the words you use. Too much text without any headings or paragraphs, also known as a wall of text,  tends to scare people off. Use headings and whitespace to give your readers some air while reading.
  • Try to limit the use of difficult words and be cautious of the length of your sentences. Both can make your content harder to understand, which will slow down and frustrate your reader.
  • Variation in your text will make it engaging. Use synonyms and alternate longer sentences with shorter ones to mix it up.

Another important thing to focus on: Have fun! And be conversational in your writing. This helps you write high-quality content that is different from your competitors’ and helps users get to know you and your brand.

Read more: 5 tips for writing readable blog posts »

4. Write with E-E-A-T in mind

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness can all be used to improve your content. So how can you make sure to include these in your writing? We’ll go through them one by one and give you some pointers.

Share your experience

Although the acronym started as E-A-T, they added another E shortly after. This newly added E stands for experience. They prefer content that showcases knowledge or skills gained through first-hand experience. This can be gained through personal involvement or observations related to the topic at hand. To give an example, someone who has worked as an optician for many years will be experienced in the topic of eyesight. Or someone who has a prescription themselves will also have experience on the topic.

Keep reading: The new E in E-E-A-T, or the importance of Experience »

Be the expert in your field

The second E in E-E-A-T stands for expertise. Although it makes sense that this would be an important factor in determining the quality of content, it is trickier to evaluate. So what Google does is find out what it can about the author itself. What is their reputation when it comes to the topic at hand? What is their background? And what other (reliable) sources are they referring to? When it comes to this criterion, it will pay off to be clear about your expertise and where it comes from online.

Read on: The E in E-A-T: What is expertise? And how to show it? »

Show your authority

Related to expertise, the next letter stands for authoritativeness. An authority can be defined as a person or organization having power or control in a particular area. When you’re an authority on a topic, you often have the proper knowledge on it. That’s why official websites often have a higher chance of being perceived as the authority on a topic. But also aspects like qualifications and being associated with well-known organizations count towards this. If this one is tricky for you, don’t worry. It’s just one of the aspects Google looks for when determining quality. If this one doesn’t fit your blog or business, just focus more on the other letters in the acronym.

Keep on reading: The A in E-A-T: What is authoritativeness? »

Be trustworthy

The last one probably doesn’t come as a surprise, as this is something we all look for when browsing online. The trustworthiness of the content before you. Whether it’s for a product you want to buy or information that you’re looking for, trust plays a big role in how serious you take online content. If it doesn’t feel right, a user will hesitate in the best case and leave your website in the worst. Google’s guidelines are quite clear on how they determine the trustworthiness of a website: “An unsatisfying amount of any of the following is a reason to give a page a low-quality rating: customer service information, contact information, information about who is responsible for the website or information about who created the content.” So make sure to be clear on these and look for other opportunities to show your trustworthiness.

Read more: The T in E-E-A-T: What is Trustworthiness? How can you achieve it? »

5. Keep your content up to date

Another key element of writing high-quality content is ensuring it’s up-to-date and relevant. This means you have to update your content occasionally to ensure people can find the right information. But why is this so important? It shows your users that you’re on top of recent developments and can always provide them with accurate information. In other words, it builds trust and keeps your audience returning to your site.

Keeping your website and blog posts updated is also important for SEO, as this shows Google that your site is ‘alive’ and relevant. So, make sure you schedule a time to update your content regularly.

Keep reading: 10 tips to improve the quality of your page »

6. Invest time in site structure

The five steps we’ve discussed so far will help you write content that is easy to read and user-centered. Now, we’d like to highlight an equally important step: working on your site structure. It’s important because it will help users and search engines find your content.

Site structure refers to the way you organize your site’s content. When you structure your site well, search engines can index your URLs better. It helps Google determine the importance of your pages and which ones are related to each other. A good site structure allows users to find their way around your site more easily. It will help them find quality content in the search results and on your website. That’s why there’s much to gain from perfecting your site structure.

7. Use Yoast SEO to perfect your content

The last tip I want to share is the content analysis in our very own Yoast SEO plugin. This feature gives you real-time feedback on your content while you’re editing your page in the backend. It monitors whether you use your chosen keyword often enough and in the right places, it looks at text length and gives you feedback on readability. For example, it tells you when you use the passive voice too much, whether you’re using enough subheadings, gives you feedback on word complexity and the use of transition words. All of this and more is available in the free version to help you improve the readability and quality of your content. 

The content analysis in Yoast SEO Premium goes a bit further and also does the following:

  • Allows you to optimize your text for related keyphrases and synonyms
  • Recognizes different forms of your keyphrase, so you can focus on writing naturally
  • Recognizes singular and plural, and also tenses of verbs
  • Gives access to our AI features, like Yoast AI Optimize, suggesting changes in your content
  • Gives you access to all the Yoast SEO academy courses, including our SEO copywriting training!

Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

A quick recap on high-quality content

Good, high-quality content will positively affect your SEO in the long run. So, before publishing post after post (or page after page), make sure to keep the following in mind. Make sure to write for your readers, make your content readable, match search intent with your goals, be trustworthy, keep your content up to date, and work on your site structure. 

The result? Good content that your readers will appreciate. This will positively affect your number of visitors, conversions and eventual revenue. If you want to learn more tips and tricks, make sure to read our guide to SEO copywriting!

Read on: SEO copywriting: the ultimate guide »

Avatar of Camille Cunningham


Camille Cunningham

Camille is a content specialist at Yoast. As part of the Search team, she enjoys creating content that helps you master SEO.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
seo enhancements
Mar 12 2025
How to write valuable content that your clients will love

As an agency owner, you need skills to write content that your clients and audiences will love. Luckily, you can learn how to do it with proper steps and helpful tools. Here, we’ll discuss how to plan, write, and optimize the content work for your clients. If you have your process down, you’ll easily create content that aligns with the client’s needs and brings in results. One of the tools we’ll use is the Yoast SEO plugin, which helps your content production. 

Table of contents

Understanding what makes content valuable

Good content always has a goal — it could answer questions, solve problems, or offer critical information. If readers find your clients’ content valuable, they will likely feel listened to. They will understand that the advice and ideas are meant for them, which helps you build a bond with them. Writing valuable, high-quality content isn’t just for filling your client’s websites but a way to help and inspire them to improve their business. 

There are many options to get results from the content you produce for your clients. So, what are some of the more popular goals you can target with your client’s content?

  • Building brand recognition: Share brand stories and values so people understand who your clients are.
  • Teaching the audience: Create articles and videos showing how products and services work.
  • Getting leads: Write content to get people to subscribe, download items, or contact your client. 
  • Driving traffic: If your client’s content is valuable, readers will likely click on their site.
  • Increasing engagement: Make content to spark conversations and get feedback. 

Keep writing focused and clear, with your eyes on the ball. You should focus intently on your clients’ current issues, challenges, and opportunities. Take the time to write well-researched pieces, as these can empower your readers. Once you do this, they will likely see your clients as subject matter experts they can trust. Straightforward, high-quality content can inspire readers and bring much value to you as an agency. 

Strategic planning is the foundation

Much of the writing process is about planning. Before you write for your clients, clearly define the goals for that content piece. Find out what questions your clients’ customers are struggling with and how your answers can help them. Research their target audience to understand their daily struggles. This way, you can make your content much more relevant to readers. 

It’s advisable to spend plenty of time doing keyword research. This process is very helpful, giving you many insights into your client’s audience and the words they use to find things. Ultimately, these findings will help you build content strategies for your clients.

The next step is to create a content plan. First, make a simple calendar or a list of topics your client wants to cover. Your plan will guide them and help them keep track of their audience’s themes and recurring concerns. 

Don’t forget to use tools that integrate directly into their content. For instance, the Yoast SEO plugin has integrated keyword research features — among many other great features. It can highlight keywords and trends related to current topics, which will help your clients plan the current piece of content but could also inform the next. 

Ideation and content planning

After researching, it’s time to start generating ideas for your client’s content. Don’t tie yourself up too much; brainstorm freely. Write down every topic that pops up and then organize these ideas to match the client’s needs. Mind mapping is a fantastic way to sort and visualize these ideas. Of course, you can always use a simple list or whatever works for you. Seeing these ideas together helps your client see the connection between them. 

Before starting to write, it’s a good idea to think about the structure of the content. Break down the article into introductions, main sections, and conclusions. This way, it’s easier to structure the content and keep the writing focused and readable. From there, write and edit the first draft — editing helps the content shine.

Optimize your writing for readability

Good writing is all about clarity. Use direct language and try to avoid passive voice. Vary your sentence length to keep the client’s articles engaging. Start with a bold statement or an inverted pyramid-style intro. In the rest of the article, use detailed explanations to build on and prove the main point. 

Read more: SEO copywriting: the ultimate guide 

Format your client’s text to improve readability. Always use headers to introduce new sections and short paragraphs to make it easier for readers to follow the ideas. The same goes for using lists and bullet points to break up walls of text. Make sure that every element of your client’s layout allows the reader to understand your writing quickly.

During this phase, you also need to consider on-page SEO optimizations. Watch how you use your focus keywords and logically structure your client’s content. As you might know, Yoast SEO is a fantastic tool for this. It gives you feedback on sentences, passive voice use, and keyword use and distribution. As a result, this feedback helps publish high-quality content, especially under a tight deadline.  

Read more: What is high-quality content and how do you create it? 

Using Yoast SEO in your content process

Yoast SEO is an SEO plugin/add-on for WordPress, Shopify, and WooCommerce. It’s designed with simplicity in mind while also offering a solid set of SEO features. It also lives within your post editor to give you feedback on your writing. For instance, it offers real-time suggestions on how you use keywords and the structure of your article. Thanks to this, you can focus on the writing part without sacrificing the SEO and technical aspects of making content your clients will love.

Yoast SEO is an industry standard for agencies. It’s a helpful tool that guides users in writing engaging, valuable content for all clients. As it’s aimed at ease of use, the feedback is practical and insightful. Also, Yoast SEO Premium comes with AI-powered suggestions that make this process even easier. Using this SEO plugin in your agency helps you build a consistent content process to write, review, and optimize high-quality content. 

Inspiring through actionable content

Help your readers out and show how little things can make a big difference. Don’t forget to give your clients the tools and processes needed to succeed. For instance, share your best practices and guidelines for writing content and creating the valuable material everyone seeks. Share stories of how your agency helped clients reach their content goals, as these insights help potential new clients choose you over the competition.

Inspiration can come from many places, but it’s not always a given. When you get inspired, your client’s content can reach a whole new level. Content can also reach new heights when writing with a clear purpose and using tools that support your writing process. This way, you can turn a simple set of ideas into content your clients will love. 

Wrapping up

Creating content your client loves depends on many things, especially having good plans, writing clearly, and regular improvements. As always, everything starts with research to build a solid plan. After that, start creating relevant content for your clients with clear writing and text structure. Finally, optimize your work with helpful tools like the Yoast SEO plugin, which gives relevant feedback and improvements. 

You should also treat it as a learning process and improve as you go. This way, your clients eventually have a solid foundation that gets more engagement and deeper connections with their audience. Try it out and see how it can change your client’s next project. Every article will strengthen your client relationship while showing your expertise and experience.

Avatar of Edwin Toonen


Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
seo enhancements
Feb 27 2025
Scaling content creation without compromising quality (with template)

SEO is, for a large part, all about getting the right content in front of the right audience. When you’ve been doing that for a while, there comes a time when you want to scale content production. Scaling content creation means you aim to make more content to reach new targets. While that’s a good idea, you need to find a way to scale while keeping the same level of quality you’ve always had. Let’s go over how to scale your content production step by step, showing common problems and solutions.

Table of contents

What is content scaling?

Content scaling is about making your content process more efficient. The goal should be to make more content without lowering the quality. First, you must examine every step of your content creation process — from brainstorming to research, editing, publishing, and reporting. Once you have the process detailed, you can find ways to do those tasks faster and predictably. 

A well-scaled process helps you create a lot of content. This approach helps you build a solid system rather than adding more articles. For instance, your content team could develop a checklist to help review articles, introduce a content calendar to improve planning and set up clear tone-of-voice guidelines. These steps help you stay consistent and true to your brand — whether you produce one weekly article or dozens. 

Why scaling content matters

Scaling content production can directly help your business. If you actively publish high-quality content on your site, search engines will understand that your site is active and reliable. By targeting the right audience with the right search intent and message, you could improve your search visibility and generate more traffic for your content. Search engines are likelier to see you as trustworthy when you publish high-quality content.

In addition, producing content more consistently and following a plan can help you reach a bigger audience. More articles mean more opportunities to write about topics that interest your different audience groups. In the end, this will broaden your brand’s presence. You’ll have a bigger chance of people seeing you as a trusted source if you offer helpful insights and solutions to their problems.

All your content can help potential customers make decisions. This content is another way to address their concerns and answer questions. By doing this strategically, you can continue to engage your audience and nudge them closer to making that final decision. Of course, whether that decision is a sale, information request, or newsletter signup doesn’t matter.

Scaling your content production also supports your branding. When you create well-organized content over a longer period, you can support your brand voice and recognition. That reliability helps build trust and strengthens your reputation. 

The biggest challenges in scaling content

If you want to scale your content production, you must overcome several hurdles, which, if you don’t consider, will impact the quality and consistency of your content. 

Quality control and consistency

When you produce more content, you need to make sure that every piece represents your brand well. However, catching errors or maintaining the proper tone becomes harder because you have more content to review. If you don’t do this well, there’s a risk that your articles will vary in tone or style. Without proper guidelines or a good editorial process, your content quality may suffer when you publish more and more.

For example, you can miss issues like tone, formatting, or factual errors without a standard editing checklist. If you do this for a while and people start to notice, they can form a different view of your brand. It would almost look like you don’t care about these issues. You need to set clear quality benchmarks and a solid review process. Consistent editing with fixed content rules helps everything you publish meet the same standards.

Handling different audience needs

In an ideal world, you write for different groups. You cannot target one group only. Every segment has its own interests, problems, and ideas. But if you scale your output, you risk writing mainly generic articles. No one will like that content.

If you haven’t yet sorted your audience, do so and focus your content on these specific groups. As a result, your content will be more useful for the people in those groups.

Process difficulty and extra management work

More content means more parts to manage. Each article needs research, writing, review, checking, and then publishing. This is fine if you publish a few posts a month because you can handle these steps by hand. But growing your output complicates things when you face many deadlines, writers, or quality checks.

Complexity leads to bottlenecks. If you struggle with one thing, that might eventually slow down everything. Think of it like this: when you don’t scale your editorial process, you will eventually have a pile of articles that need approval. This grinds your publication flow to a halt. Develop a system that divides tasks into repeatable steps. Use content calendars and checklists to track progress and make managing projects easier. 

Balancing speed and thoughtfulness

Scaling content production can lead to pressure to cut corners to meet deadlines. When the speed of publication comes into play, there’s a high chance that content will become less developed. This shouldn’t happen. Every piece of content should be carefully planned and produced. Rushing only leads to content that lacks depth, accuracy, or clarity. 

Of course, this is easier said than done. You have to find ways to increase efficiency without sacrificing the quality of your content. Start by streamlining your process, breaking it up into smaller tasks. Set up a system that monitors quality while giving you enough room to be flexible.  

Building a repeatable content creation process

Scaling your content production reliably requires setting up a solid content process. That process should be easily repeatable and have clear tasks, which will help keep your team on track. 

Map the entire content workflow

Describe each content task and work your way through the list of what has to be done. Write down a list of all phases, ranging from conception through publication. This will help you understand where delays or errors creep in. Consider drawing a flow diagram or another visual. This list will act as your directive.  

Create a content calendar

Use a content calendar to plan your publishing schedule. Proper planning helps you keep track of deadlines, even if they are for different outlets. Thanks to your content plan, your team can write content in advance and, hopefully, without stressing out about deadlines too much.

Develop detailed briefs and outlines

Content briefs are a great way to align writers — see below for an example. A brief like this should, at least,  include the subject, target audience, key messages, and keywords that the writer should target. Once approved, create an outline for the content and fill in the structure. A good content brief speeds up the writing process while ensuring that content is targeted well. 

Implement a style guide

A style guide can help you ground every piece of content in a consistent tone of voice and formatting. This guide should include rules for tone, punctuation, formatting, and whatever else makes sense to share. You can easily share this guide with anyone on your team; even freelancers enjoy using it. 

Use checklists for each stage

You’ll find it easier to manage once you break the process down into small tasks. Make a checklist for tasks such as researching, writing, and editing. Having a proper checklist helps you make sure that you don’t forget anything. This could be checking facts, improving readability, or using proper SEO tactics. Your lists will help you scale your content production while maintaining quality output.

Standardize tools and platforms

Use well-known tools to manage tasks in your team. Think of project management tools like Jira or Asana, shared calendars in CoSchedule, Canva for visual designs, and document templates in Microsoft Office. Many companies use Google Docs to collaborate on documents. In those cases, you can use one of the standardized Google Docs extensions, which are easier to scale.

Write a good manual or checklist for these tools so that anyone — from in-house writers to external freelancers — follows the same steps. Standardization makes this work and helps apply important SEO best practices properly.

All of these things help your team routinely produce quality content. Making the process repeatable reduces the chance of errors and wasted time, so you can scale without losing what makes your content awesome. 

Strategies to scale without losing quality

Careful planning is one of the best ways to scale your content without lowering its quality. Another great option is to use clear methods to make your work more effective. 

Develop a strong content strategy and workflow 

As always, start with a solid plan that includes your goals, topics, and the audience you want to reach. Creating content for your audience is much easier when everyone truly understands who those people are. A good workflow avoids delays and helps people move from one task to another.

Use a detailed content calendar

We’ve discussed the importance of content calendars, and you really have to see these as your roadmap. A calendar shows all upcoming publications, deadlines, and the status of various projects. A good calendar keeps everyone up to date at all times and makes sure the work is nicely spread out. Good planning prevents missed deadlines.

Use template structures

Templates help you standardize your work, as they offer a reusable structure for common types of content. Each type of content can have its own structure to fill in. These templates help writers speed up their work while maintaining consistency across articles. 

Repurpose content thoughtfully

Look at what you already have and see how it can be adapted into a different form. For example, you can split a long-form article into several videos or a series of shorter posts. This strategy saves time while also delivering fresh material in new formats. Make sure to adapt the new content to the correct audience. 

Assign clear roles within your team 

Find out your team members’ strengths and have them do what they do best. A  writer should handle the initial draft while an editor reviews the work. Your trusted subject matter expert should check the content for accuracy. Clear roles help people do what they do best, which helps preserve content quality.

Maintaining high-quality content at scale

It isn’t easy to maintain content quality when scaling content production. To make the process more manageable, you should establish habits and use tools that help you make sure that every piece of content meets your standards. 

Follow your style guide

Setting up a good style guide keeps your writing consistent. Your style guide should include information on your content’s tone of voice, the terminology you can and can’t use, and how you structure and format it. Share this guide with your team.

Schedule periodic audits

Similarly, regularly review your existing content to see if it’s outdated or needs to adapt to changes in your brand messaging. This helps keep your older content relevant and accurate. 

Use tools when appropriate

Tools can help scale your content production. Even a tool like our Yoast SEO plugin can help your content work. Good content tools can help with formatting, improving readability, checking for keyword placement, and some even help with on-page SEO.

Using Generative AI for scaling content output

Using AI to scale content production might seem like a good idea, but please be careful. Generative AI can definitely be a valuable tool for content processes. However, AI is not without issues and needs interaction from real people.

Human oversight makes sure that the output aligns with your brand’s voice and content standards. You can use generative AI as a starting point or a helpful assistant, but not as a complete replacement for your real writers. Your use of AI should have a clear process to bring the content up to your desired quality level.

Conclusion to scaling content production

Scaling up content production shouldn’t mean lower quality. Mostly, it’s about knowing the content process inside out. Once you have that, you can lay out the steps for everyone to follow. With a good process, you can meet your goals and still maintain the quality of the content. Be sure to set up content templates, calendars, and clear roles for your team. Make the adjustments and see how this can lead to better results. 

Bonus: Content brief template for SEO

Are you looking for a basic content brief template that helps scale your content production? Check out the one below:

Content brief section Details
Title/headline suggestion [Insert title]
Primary keyword [Main keyword]
Secondary keywords [Keyword 1], [Keyword 2]
Search intent [Informational, commercial, transactional, etc.]
Audience persona [If needed, description of audience persona]
Content objective [What is the content meant to achieve]
Benchmark content [URLs of best-in-class content about this topic]
Word count range [Word count]
Tone and style guidelines [Tone and style]
Outline/sections Introduction;
Main points/headings;
Subheadings;
Conclusion
SEO requirements Meta title: [Title];
Meta description: [Description];
Header tags: H1, H2, H3;
URL: [Proposed URL for content]
Call to action [What do you want people to do/click on?]
Internal and external links Internal: [Links]
External: [Links]
Visuals and multimedia [List of visuals]
Examples/references [Links to examples/references]
Deadline and submission details [Deadline and submission instructions]
Avatar of Edwin Toonen


Edwin Toonen

Edwin is an experienced strategic content specialist. Before joining Yoast, he worked for a top-tier web design magazine, where he developed a keen understanding of how to create great content.

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