Yoast SEO Focus Keyword Paragraph

Many WordPress users have the Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin installed on their sites to help optimize their posts and pages for search engines. A fairly common error or red light in the SEO recommendations is the “Focus Keyword is Not in the First Paragraph”. This is easily corrected by adding the focus keyword to the first paragraph or changing the focus keyword to something that is already in the first paragraph.

But what if you are getting the error and the keyword IS in the first paragraph? Do you ignore it? Or are you like me and obsess about making the error go away?

Fix the Focus Keyword is Not in First Paragraph Error

98% of the time I use the WordPress text editor rather than the visual one. I don’t always add the paragraph tags <p></p> and they aren’t added automatically the way they are when using the visual editor. By simply adding the paragraph tags around the first paragraph (and now all of them to stay in the habit) the focus keyword not in first paragraph error goes away.

Unfortunately, the error will continue if the paragraph tag has any styling in it such as

<p style=”text-align: justify;”>my text</p> or if the first paragraph is in a different tag such as <h2></h2>

Of course, the warning isn’t affecting the actual SEO of your page – it’s just an incorrect warning. Clients, however, can be bothered by it and the only option to make it go away is to use the paragraph tags without any styling in the first paragraph.

And it seems that this has been an issue for quite some time …