Yoast SEO is one of the most widely used WordPress plugins for on-page SEO, and for travel websites managing large volumes of tour pages, destination guides, and blog content, it’s a genuinely useful tool. This guide covers what Yoast SEO does, how to use its features effectively, and — importantly — where its guidance should be treated as a starting point rather than a rigid prescription.
What features are available on Yoast SEO?
The focus keyphrase
The focus keyphrase field is where you enter the keyword or phrase you want a page to rank for. Yoast then analyses whether that term appears in your page title, meta description, headings, and body copy at an appropriate density. For travel pages, this is most useful for ensuring destination-specific terms and trip type keywords are properly represented in your on-page copy. What we’ve found is that the focus keyphrase check is helpful as a prompt to ensure keyword presence, but shouldn’t drive unnatural keyword insertion — Google’s quality assessment has moved well beyond keyword density as a ranking signal.
The readability analysis
Yoast’s readability analysis assesses how accessible your content is for general readers. It evaluates a range of factors and flags issues with orange or red bullets. For travel content targeting broad audiences — prospective customers who may be new to a destination or trip type — readability genuinely matters. Content that’s dense, uses long sentences throughout, or relies heavily on industry jargon will be harder to read and less likely to hold attention. In our experience, improving readability scores on travel destination pages and tour descriptions correlates with better engagement metrics and lower bounce rates.
Consecutive sentences
Yoast flags paragraphs where multiple consecutive sentences start with the same word, which can make copy feel repetitive. For travel content, this is a useful stylistic prompt — varied sentence structure makes destination guides and tour descriptions more engaging to read.
Flesch reading ease
The Flesch reading ease score measures how easy your content is to read based on sentence and word length. A higher score means simpler, more accessible text. For travel brands targeting broad audiences, aiming for a good readability score is sensible — but don’t sacrifice accuracy or specificity to achieve it. Some technical content (visa requirements, health precautions, tour terms) necessarily uses more complex language.
Passive voice
Yoast recommends limiting passive voice to less than 10% of sentences. Active voice is generally more direct and engaging — “our guides lead every departure” rather than “every departure is led by our guides.” For travel copy in particular, active voice tends to feel more confident and authoritative, which is the impression you want to create with prospective customers comparing specialist operators.
Subheading distribution
Yoast flags sections of text longer than 300 words that contain no subheading. For long-form travel content — detailed destination guides, itinerary pages, comprehensive trip planning resources — regular subheadings are essential both for readability and for helping Google understand your content structure. Breaking up long sections with descriptive H2 and H3 headings that include relevant keywords is a straightforward SEO and UX improvement.
Sentence and paragraph length
Yoast recommends keeping sentences under 20 words and paragraphs concise. For mobile readers — who make up a significant proportion of travel research traffic — short paragraphs that load quickly and are easy to scan are particularly important. On a small screen, a wall of text is a conversion killer. Clients often ask us why their well-written destination pages aren’t converting mobile visitors — paragraph length and structure is frequently part of the answer.
Transition words
Transition words (however, therefore, furthermore, additionally) help readers follow the flow of your argument and signal logical structure to Google. Yoast recommends that at least 30% of sentences use them. For travel content, transition words are most useful in analytical pieces — comparison guides, “why choose us” pages — where helping the reader follow your reasoning genuinely improves comprehension.
SEO analysis
The SEO analysis checks your page against a range of on-page optimisation criteria: whether your focus keyphrase appears in the title, meta description, URL, introduction paragraph, and at appropriate frequency throughout the body. For travel pages, these checks provide a useful systematic review — ensuring your target destination or trip type keyword is properly distributed across the page’s key SEO elements without being over-concentrated.
Should you aim for each bullet to be green?
Not necessarily. Yoast’s traffic light system is guidance, not a guarantee of rankings. What we’ve found is that pages with all green bullets but weak, thin, or generic content consistently underperform pages that are well-written and genuinely useful but don’t tick every Yoast box. Use the analysis as a quality checklist, but let good writing and genuine usefulness to the reader take priority over achieving a perfect score.
The Yoast Dashboard
Search Appearance
The Search Appearance settings control how your site appears in Google search results by default — title format, breadcrumb structure, and which content types are included in the sitemap. For travel websites with tour pages, destination guides, and blog content, configuring these settings correctly ensures that your most commercially important pages are indexed and presented well in search results.
Title Separator
The title separator is the character used between your page title and site name in the browser tab and search snippet — typically a dash, pipe, or arrow. It’s a minor setting but worth configuring to match your brand style for consistency across all page titles in search results.
Knowledge Graph & Schema
Yoast’s Knowledge Graph settings allow you to add structured data about your organisation — business type, name, logo, social profiles, and contact information. For tour operators, completing these settings correctly helps Google build an accurate understanding of your business and can contribute to Knowledge Panel eligibility. Marking up your business as a TouristInformationCenter or TravelAgency in the schema settings gives Google the clearest possible signal about what you do.
Get in touch
If you’d like help getting more from your travel website’s SEO, get in touch with the Summon team. We work exclusively with tour operators, ferry companies, airlines and activity providers.