Publishing content on The Creative Exiles makes it available to our readers, but search engines also give your work the opportunity to reach people who have never visited the site before. Yoast SEO is installed to help you give search engines a better understanding of what you have written and help potential readers recognize your work when it appears in search results.
You do not need to be an SEO expert to use Yoast. A few minutes spent completing the most important Yoast settings can make a substantial difference.
There is also one important rule to remember: write for people first and search engines second. Many people make the mistake of changing their original work just to satisfy SEO. Yoast was designed to analyze many different types of online content, however, poetry and creative writing do not always fit neatly into its recommendations. Do not rewrite a poem, ruin a title, add unnecessary paragraphs, or repeat awkward phrases simply to turn every Yoast indicator green.
Bottom line: Use Yoast as a guide, not as an editor.
Finding Yoast SEO
When editing your post in WordPress, look for the Yoast SEO section. Depending on the editor and screen layout you are using, Yoast may appear below the main editing area or in the SEO sidebar.
Yoast analyzes your post and provides recommendations for improving its search visibility. Its familiar-colored indicators provide a quick assessment of areas that are doing well and areas that could use improvement. Green generally means the item is in good shape. Orange means there may be room for improvement. Red identifies something Yoast believes needs attention. A red or orange result does not automatically mean there is something wrong with your poem or story.
Start With the Focus Key Word or Phrase
Before worrying about the color of Yoast traffic lights, SEO titles, or descriptions, you must first choose your focus key word or phrase. This is the search term that you would like someone to use when finding your work.
Think about the subject of your piece rather than simply its title. Suppose you wrote a poem called Cat Come Home about searching for a missing cat. The title might be meaningful to a reader after finding the poem, but someone who has never heard of it is unlikely to search Google for “Cat Come Home.”
They might however search for any of the following:
poem about a lost cat, missing cat poem, poem about losing a pet, etc.
Those are potential focus key phrases because they describe what someone might actually be searching for.
Ask yourself the question: If someone who has never heard of my poem or story wanted to find something like it, what might they search for?
That is the idea behind your focus word or phrase.
Don’t Choose Just to Please Yoast
One of the easiest mistakes is choosing a phrase simply because it already appears several times in your writing. In some cases, that reverses the purpose of SEO. The goal isn’t to find a phrase that gives Yoast the best score. The goal is to identify a search phrase that accurately represents your work and could realistically be used by someone looking for that type of writing. A beautiful green Yoast score for a phrase nobody searches for isn’t particularly useful. Likewise, broad terms such as love, death, cats, poetry, or short story are usually too general to tell a search engine much about an individual piece. A more specific phrase often provides better context.
Instead of love poem, you might use poem about lost love. Instead of ghost story, you might use short story about a haunted house. Instead of nature poem, you might use poem about an autumn forest. Specificity helps both the search engine and the reader understand what they are about to encounter.
Write Your SEO Title
Your SEO title is the title Yoast recommends to search engines for your page. It does not have to be identical to the artistic title displayed above your work. That distinction is especially useful for creative writing.
A poem titled: The Empty Chair might use an SEO title such as: The Empty Chair – A Poem About Grief and Loss
Your original title remains The Empty Chair. You are not changing the poem. The SEO title simply gives search engines and potential readers more information about it. Whenever it works naturally, include your focus key word or phrase or a very close variation in the SEO title.
Keep the title descriptive rather than stuffing it with keywords. Yoast will indicate whether the SEO title is becoming too long.
Write a Useful Meta Description
The meta description is a short description associated with your piece in search results. Search engines may sometimes choose different text from the page, but writing a good description gives them a strong option and gives potential readers a reason to choose your work.
Do not simply copy the first sentence of your poem or story. Describe the piece. For The Empty Chair, you might write: A poem about grief and loss told through the empty chair left behind and the memories that remain after someone is gone. That tells a potential reader exactly what kind of work they are about to read while naturally incorporating the subject of the poem.
Yoast monitors the length of your meta description. Aim for a concise description that accurately represents the work rather than trying to fill every available character.
Check the URL Slug
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the exact address you type or click to reach something on the internet — a webpage, an image, a file, an API endpoint, anything that lives online. The slug is the portion of the web address assigned specifically to your post.
For example, a post might have a URL ending in: /empty-chair/
WordPress normally creates the slug from your post title, and in many cases, there is no reason to change it. If you create a post before entering the title, Yoast may assign a number instead of text, so you will need to correct it.
Keep your slugs short, readable, and relevant to the piece. Avoid unnecessarily long URLs.
One key thing to know: If a post has already been published and shared, do not casually change its slug. Changing the URL can break existing links unless a redirect is created.
For most Creative Exiles contributors, the best practice is simple: check the slug before publishing and then leave it alone.
Look at the SEO Analysis
Once you have entered your focus key word or phrase, SEO title, and meta description, look through Yoast’s SEO analysis.
Yoast may check whether your key word or phrase or related wording appears in places such as the SEO title, introduction, meta description, URL, headings, image information, and body of the post. It may also provide recommendations involving links and other aspects of the page.
Some of these suggestions are extremely useful. Some may not make sense for a poem or short story.
Use judgment. If you can make an improvement without hurting the work, make it. If satisfying Yoast would require awkwardly inserting the same phrase into a poem several times, don’t do it. The poem always wins.
Be Careful With Your Introduction
An introductory paragraph can be useful for SEO because it gives you an opportunity to explain what the work is about using ordinary language. It can also ruin the opening of a creative piece. Nobody wants to work through three paragraphs explaining a poem before finally being allowed to read the poem. If an introduction genuinely adds something, keep it brief. Another option is an author’s note after the work, where additional context can be provided without interfering with the reader’s first experience of the piece. This is a common practice on The Creative Exiles as it provides a place to add links about you, the author, and other places online where you publish.
Do not add unnecessary text solely to satisfy an SEO recommendation.
Use Images Properly
Images are an important part of The Creative Exiles as they support the overall site structure and help to capture readers. When you add an image to your post, complete its alternative text when appropriate. Alternative text, usually called alt text, primarily exists to describe meaningful images for people who cannot see them or who use assistive technology. It can also help search engines understand an image. All posts should have at least a main image (size should be 840 x 840 pixels).
Describe the image naturally and accurately. Do not cram your focus key word or phrase into an image description when it does not actually describe the image.
Links Can Help
Yoast may recommend internal or external links. An internal link points to another relevant page on The Creative Exiles. If you mention another poem, story, author page, series, or related piece, linking to it can help readers explore more of the site and helps search engines understand relationships between pages. An external link points to another website. These can be useful when your post references a historical event, source, author, location, concept, or other information that deserves additional context.
Do not add random links merely because Yoast wants to see one. A link should be useful to the reader.
What About the Readability Score?
Yoast also analyzes readability. For articles and ordinary web content, many of its recommendations can be helpful. Creative writing is different. Sentence fragments, unusual punctuation, repeated words, unconventional sentence lengths, and deliberate structural choices may all be part of your writing style. Poetry in particular can trigger readability warnings even when the writing is doing exactly what the author intended. Do not rewrite creative work simply to improve a readability score. Use the readability analysis to catch something you may genuinely want to change, but retain control over your writing.
You Do Not Need Every Light to Be Green
This is probably the most important thing to understand about Yoast. A green indicator means your page satisfied a particular test in the plugin. It does not mean Google will rank your work highly, and a red or orange indicator does not mean Google will ignore it. Yoast is an analysis tool.
For Creative Exiles, your priorities should be: Choose a meaningful focus key word or phrase. Write a useful SEO title. Write an accurate and interesting meta description. Check your URL before publishing. Follow Yoast recommendations when they make sense. Never damage the creative work just to improve a traffic light.
A Simple Yoast Routine Before You Publish
You don’t need to spend half an hour optimizing every poem or story. Before publishing, take a couple of minutes to check the essentials:
Decide what someone might search for to find writing like yours.
Enter that phrase as your focus key word or phrase.
Write an SEO title that explains the piece more clearly than the creative title alone.
Write a short meta description that tells readers what the piece is about.
Check that the URL slug is clean and sensible.
Review Yoast’s SEO recommendations and fix the ones that genuinely improve the page.
Review the readability recommendations, but ignore those that conflict with deliberate creative choices.
Preview the result and publish.
That is enough for most Creative Exiles posts.
SEO Helps People Discover What You’ve Written
Search engine optimization sounds far more technical than it needs to be. For a Creative Exiles contributor, SEO is largely about giving search engines a little additional information that may not be obvious from a creative title or from the opening lines of a poem or story. Your title might be mysterious. Your poem might intentionally avoid explaining itself. Your short story may take several paragraphs before revealing its subject. That is perfectly good creative writing.
Your SEO title, focus key word or phrase, meta description, URL, and other page information give search engines the context that the creative work itself may deliberately withhold.
Yoast helps you provide that context. Use it to make your work easier to discover. Use its recommendations where they are useful. Ignore them when they interfere with the writing. The goal isn’t a green light. The goal is helping the right reader find your work.
SEO and WordPress training courses are available online. Start with a free course, go at your own pace, and earn a certificate when you finish