General Settings

When I make changes with WordPress SEO by Yoast, is it updating and sending the changes automatically to google?

Usually you have to wait for Google to come and visit your site, I don’t think Yoast communicates with Google directly.

Not as such. Changes are never sent to Google. What happens is that your site is updated immediately and then, when Google next visits (tomorrow? next week?), the Googlebot checks your site again, sends what it find back to Google and then Google updates its own index.

Wow, now that makes sense. I see now how that works. So, I just need to do what ever on my site and google will check it out.

I have another thing to talk about. I set my home page to be my post page (blog page) and google search writes the first lines of the top post in the description. Where can I write a permanent description for my home page?

This is what google search shows: https://snag.gy/NWWPh.jpg

Of course I don’t want that ??

So, I just need to do what ever on my site and google will check it out.

Yep! And one way to ensure that Googlebot visits regularly is to add new, quality, content on a pretty regular basis. The more new content that the bot finds on each visit, the more frequently it will return and the higher the position it will apply to your site in its rankings.

I don’t use SEO plugins myself but I’m pretty sure that you can set a description for the front page of your site using WordPress SEO.

Ok, I will look it up and I will try to check the carrot for googlebot to come eat in my hand. Come here little bot ??

Is there a good website that explains how search engines work etc? I need to learn more about all this stuff.

have a look at the resources listed near the bottom of Search_Engine_Optimization_for_WordPress.

SEO experts advise to write lengthy content. I don’t think it is always true. Personnaly if a content is too long I stop reading and never come back. Quality and straight to the point is what I like. I read many bloggers writing endless pages for something that could be said in 10 lines. I avoid those blogs.

I don’t think it is always true.

I agree. I think if you write to suit your human audience, you’ll also write to suit Google (which is, after all, trying to emulate human categorising behaviour).

I do however think that text front-loading is a good idea across the board. Using this technique, the opening paragraph on every page should always contain the conclusion of that page. It’s the same way that newspapers craft their articles as opposed to way you were taught to write stories at school (ie End – Beginning – Middle as opposed to Beginning – Middle – End).

Like for example you start mentioning your point then you develop to demonstrate your point and you conclude that your point makes sense and is correct?

A debate blog would be cool. I think I should make one in the future.

Sort of. Take a look at any newspaper article about (say) a new amendment to a current law. The article doesn’t open with:

Today, the legislature met at 10am to discuss a number of issues including… (blah blah)

It usually opens with something like:

The long-awaited amendment to the Foobar Act that allows everyone to finally buy their own tribble was passed overwhelmingly earlier today.

Only then does the article start to go into details of the how, why and when. So, unlike a “Once upon a time…” story, you get the ending first. ??

I see what you are saying. Yes, the second example is better because it drives people’s curiosity. I should think about that and try to write my posts this way.