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IQM Founders | Image credit: IQM

The European Investment Bank (EIB) announced on Friday that it has granted 35M to IQM Quantum Computers for the development and commercialisation of its quantum processors. The development follows IQMs announcement in November of the opening of its first fabrication facility in Espoo, Finland.

The funding is part of the European Guarantee Funds venture debt product introduced to provide liquidity to small and medium-sized companies affected by the pandemic.

Has the Dutch workforce mastered all digital skills? Find out

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is a long-term lending institution of the European Union owned by its Member States. It makes long-term finance available for sound investment in order to contribute toward EU policy goals.

Speaking on the development, EIB Vice-President Thomas Ostros, says, As we consider quantum computing as a sector of strategic importance, we are glad to support the Finland-based company IQM. With our financing, we not only sustain and create jobs within a highly innovative industry, but we also place ourselves squarely behind technological know-how. Europe has a strong tradition of quantum research, and funding IQM ensures that the results of this research will be put into practice in real-world innovations.

Founded in 2018 by Jan Goetz, Juha Vartiainen, Kuan Yen Tan, and Mikko Mottonen, IQM builds scalable hardware for universal quantum computers, focusing on superconducting technology.

The company provides on-premises quantum computers for supercomputing data centres and research labs, and offers full access to its hardware. For industrial customers, IQM delivers a quantum advantage through an application-specific, co-design approach.

As a spinoff of Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, IQMs core technology builds upon decades of research from the world-renowned Quantum Computing and Devices (QCD) lab. This know-how is combined with the experience of renowned quantum computing experts from Bilbao, Munich, Zurich, Delft, and several other locations.

Additionally, IQM is building Finlands first commercial 54-qubit quantum computer with VTT, and an IQM-led consortium (Q-Exa) is building a quantum computer in Germany. The computer will be integrated into an HPC supercomputer to create an accelerator for future scientific research. IQM has over 160 employees with offices in Paris, Bilbao, Munich and Espoo.

EIB President Werner Hoyer says, Quantum computing is still at an early stage. However, it has the potential to revolutionise many sectors, from drug and vaccine development to cybersecurity. Given the scale of the potential impact, global competition in quantum computing is fierce. Ensuring that companies such as IQM are well-funded is key to positioning Europe as a technological leader worldwide.

IQM says that the initial tranche of the EIB funds will be used for expanding the facility, accelerating material research and developing quantum processors.

IQMs Chief Executive Jan Goetz says, Todays chips shortage has exposed just how dependent the world is on semiconductor manufacturers in Asia. Quantum processors give us an opportunity to learn from this and become self-reliant first, and a global provider for quantum chips in the future.

This EIB loan supports us in building more balanced and resilient quantum development in Europe. We are already working on the most advanced quantum technology in Europe and this loan will also help us create the next-generation European quantum ecosystem, adds Goetz.

Recently, IQM announced its open-source processor design software, KQCircuits, the Q-Exa project for quantum acceleration for HPC centres, and the opening of the quantum fabrication facility. With this funding, the company says it will have full control over quantum processor development and strengthen its European leadership.

Catch our interview with Paul Down, Head of Sales at Intigriti.

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Finland-based quantum computing company IQM receives 35M grant from EIB for its Quantum Fabrication Facility - Silicon Canals

When it comes to technology, revolutionary is a word that gets overused. But if theres one thing in the world of 21st century computing that will deserve being described as such, its a fully functional quantum computer. It's no exaggeration to suggest that quantum computers have the potential to change the world as we know it.

Quantum computers are coming sooner than you might expect, in fact there are already functional, if rudimentary systems that have been developed by giants including IBM, Microsoft and Google along with many others. And you can be sure that the governments of the world are working behind the scenes in a quantum arms race. What we see in public is likely not at the bleeding edge of quantum computing research and development.

The power of a quantum computer, versus that of a classical computeror QC vs PCis they're set to dramatically advance fields as diverse as climate science, biology, and machine learning. But there's another application, and it's a somewhat shady one: espionage.

The governments of the world see quantum computers as a tool to break encryption standards. A fully functioning and stable high qubit quantum machine has the potential to wreak havoc across the internet. Previously secure networks would be vulnerable and public confidence in financial systems could collapse.

Forget Y2K, think Y2Q.

Then there are cryptocurrencies. Quantum computers could pose an existential threat to crypto, but I'll get to that a bit later. First, a crash course in quantum computing.

The functions of a classical computer are based around the use of bits, or binary digits, represented by 1s or 0s. A quantum bit, or a qubit as it's known, can exist as a 1 or 0, or both at the same time.This makes a QC much more adept at seeking answers to problems with a large number of outcomes or possible combinations than a classical computer.

A qubit harnesses the properties of quantum superposition. Via quantum entanglement, a qubit can be linked to other qubits to exponentially increase processing power. In simple terms, a QC is excellent at leveraging probabilities, which means that the answers to complex operations are exponentially faster with more qubits. A QC with enough qubits is capable of certain computations that a classical computer can never realistically solve. In certain cases, a calculation that a quantum computer could complete in mere minutes may take billions of years, or more to solve on even the world's most powerful supercomputer today.

The point at which a quantum computer can outperform a classical computer is called quantum supremacy. Some researchers already claim it has occurred, but any such claim is very specific, and completely impractical in a real world sense. There are also significant challenges to overcome before quantum computing becomes a commercial reality. Qubits are tricky things, to put it mildly, and maintaining coherence and scaling them is an area of ongoing research.

It's likely that we're many years away from practical quantum computers, but with enough stable qubits, there are some genuinely world-changing possibilities within reach. For now, the one I'll focus on is the ability to crack encryption. That might be the number one reason for governments to develop quantum computers.

It goes without saying that there's a need for network security. Military networks, financial systems, critical infrastructure, communications. You name it, it all needs to be secure to maintain confidence in the system. Security is built upon encryption.

Much of the encryption underpinning internet security is based upon prime numbers. As far back as 1994, American mathematician Peter Shor developed what is known as Shor's algorithm. It is used to find the prime factors of an integer. Put simply, this algorithm can be used to break many public key cryptography schemes, including RSA, one of the most widely used, and oldest algorithms for encryption.

I don't mean to be a scaremonger here. A QC capable of breaking a large key RSA encryption is probably years away at best, but the theoretical vulnerability exists, and the time to protect the possibility of an attack against it is now.

The governments of the world are developing post-quantum encryption schemes. US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is undertaking a multi-year project with the aim of standardizing one or more quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic schemes. If successful, most of the world's networks should transition to security which will appear seamless to the wider public.

In the end, Y2K wasn't the catastrophe that many doomsayers predicted. Hopefully quantum computers vs public key encryption passes with as little impact as Y2K did.

The moral of the story is that it's important not to ignore the threat posed by a QC. If the NSA is taking steps to secure its networks, then others should take the threat seriously too.

Quantum computers present an existential threat to many cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the logical example to use. Bitcoins core protocol relies on Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) to create a private key and a corresponding public key. A sufficiently powerful QC can derive the private key from the public key. This allows an attacker to access that particular wallet. ECDSA is not easy to crack, but the potential is there and ignoring it is fraught with danger given the notoriously slow pace of blockchain development combined with head-in-the-sand tribalism.

Bitcoins early wallets are particularly vulnerable due to their use of pay to public key (p2pk) addresses, including the Satoshi Nakamoto era wallets. QC sceptics will say that BTC developers can hard fork to a quantum resistant signature scheme, and thats certainly true, but those dormant wallets remain vulnerable. Some estimates put the number of lost bitcoins at up to 25% of the entire supply. That's a lot of BTC.

What if a million bitcoins suddenly appeared on the market? Confidence would plummet and the price of bitcoin would crash. A hundred billion dollars, give or take is a juicy target for a rogue state. North Korea could certainly use the money.

But BTC and other cryptos aren't just about wealth. Their decentralised nature is antithetical to the ideologies and financial sectors of many countries. A country like China might wish to destroy all confidence in crypto, in order to remain in control of its financial sector. Perhaps the US might covertly attack crypto in order to prevent its use by criminals. Russia might.. well, who knows what Russia might do.

Some cryptos have already adopted QC secure signature schemes. Others including Ethereum and Cardano have quantum signatures or protection on their roadmaps.

I want to note again, my aim here isn't to pronounce doom and gloom. Bitcoin and others will survive if they take steps to protect against QCs, it's just that time is definitely ticking along. Cryptocurrencies already face numerous adversaries day after day, and yet it survives.

But it's time to get past the FUD and take quantum computers seriously. Developers need to act now. It might be a year or 10, but If a black swan event occurs, itll be far too late to do anything about it. The later the threat gets taken seriously, the harder it will be to mitigate against it.

No. Don't stress. Most of the legwork is being done behind the scenes and your current passwords and data should remain unaffected as long as the corporate caretakers of it are competent.

You can do things like change your private keys to longer key lengths where possible, but it's pretty safe to say that an adversary with a quantum computer isn't going to be worried about accessing your personal router, banking, or Coinbase password. There's bigger fish in the sea to go after.

The main thing is to be aware of the possible threat. The more people that are aware, the more questions get asked and hopefully answered. With any luck, by the time a fully functional quantum computer sees the light of day, the world will continue just as it always has, while enjoying the benefits they will bring.

In the future, hopefully stories like this one will be long forgotten, much like those Y2K doom and gloom articles were. I want to move on to talk about how a quantum computer can help to solve the really big problems, like clean energy, cures or treatments for things like cancer or diabetes, developing next generation materials, climate simulation or managing an entire city full of self-driving cars. But we all know that the likes of China and the US are after strategic and national security objectives first. And with that in mind, the wider internet and cryptocurrency remains vulnerable.

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Something has to be done about the quantum computer security threat - PC Gamer

SSH Communications Security Oyj

SSH launches Tectia Quantum-Safe and Zero-Trust Editions for the Next Wave of Secure Application Communications

SSH announces two new editions of their flagship product Tectia SSH Client Server: Tectia Quantum Safe Edition and Tectia Zero Trust Edition. These new additions to the Tectia product family will ensure that SSHs secure remote access solutions stay agile, dynamic and robust enough to meet the challenges posed by quantum computing and cloudification.

Secure Shell (SSH) protocol enables online connections and file transfers between systems handling critical data. Tectia is the original commercial implementation of the SSH protocol, providing secure point-to-point remote access, file transfer and tunneling connections between and to applications.

Quantum computing presents challenge to encryption in the near future by threatening to render classic cryptography useless. Even now, transmissions are recorded and then decrypted when Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers are available, making long-term secrets vulnerable as we speak. Tectia Quantum Safe Edition protects critical remote access, file transfers and tunneling connections against the quantum threat.

Tectia Zero Trust Edition introduces an efficient role-based access control (RBAC) upgrade to bring scalability to managing access to large server estates. By operating without permanent credentials like SSH keys or passwords, Tectia Zero Trust Edition eliminates the costly process of managing or rotating credentials while also greatly enhancing system security by removing a significant potential attack vector. Additionally, it increases transparency by centralizing system audit logs.

Quantum Safe and Zero Trust are the two cornerstones of our solution portfolio. I'm extremely proud that we have upgraded Tectia with technologies that will keep our customers safe long into the future while making their environments more dynamic," says SSH CEO, Dr. Teemu Tunkelo. Tectia has a very strong and loyal customer base, especially on the financial sector, Teemu continues. It is therefore not a surprise that our first Tectia Quantum and Tectia Zero Trust customers are banks, since these businesses want to stay ahead of the cybersecurity game.

Story continues

Tectia Quantum-Safe Edition will be available to customers during Q2/2022. Tectia Zero-Trust Edition is available to customers immediately.

For more information on Tectia Quantum Safe Edition, please visit: Tectia SSH Client/Server Quantum-Safe Edition

For more information on Tectia Zero Trust Edition, please visit: Tectia SSH Client/Server Zero Trust Edition

Learn more about Tectia: Tectia SSH Client/Server

About SSHSSH helps organizations safeguard their mission-critical digital assets at rest, in transit and in use. We have 5,000+ customers worldwide, including 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and major organizations in Finance, Government, Retail, and Industrial segments. We are committed to helping our customers secure their business in the age of hybrid cloud and distributed IT and OT solutions. Our Zero Trust solutions offer safe electronic communications, secure access to servers and between servers. Our teams in North America, Europe, Asia along with a global network of certified partners ensure customer success. The companys shares (SSH1V) are listed on Nasdaq Helsinki. http://www.ssh.com.

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PRESS RELEASE: SSH launches Tectia Quantum-Safe and Zero-Trust Editions for the Next Wave of Secure Application Communications - Yahoo Finance

Quantum computers may one day break encryption. So might stochastic magnetic tunnel junction machines, also known as spintronics. But we don't need next-generation computing power to break encryption. Its successfully happening right here and now.

Why Does Encryption Fail?There are many factors that contribute to encryption weaknesses and create vulnerabilities ready for exploitation by cybercriminals or state-sponsored actors. Chief among them is poorly implemented cryptography in terms of both the crypto libraries themselves and the way they are used. Bugs such as Heartbleed or the recent implementation error of the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature (ECDS) algorithm in Java versions 15 and above, undermine all programs based on them. The incorrect use of a library, insufficient entropy, or use of weak ciphers is a daily occurrence that impacts specific applications, making bugs even harder to find. Other encryption failings include weak passwords and certificates taken from compromised machines. Combine these techniques with harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks, and encryption technology is no longer what it used to be.

Mathematics, the Cornerstone of Encryption Extremely difficult mathematics underlie our encryption. RSA, the gold standard for public key encryption, is based on the complexity of breaking down a large number into its constituent primes. The forward problem is easy and quick to solve: Take some primes and multiply. But the reverse problem is much harder: Given an integer, which primes were multiplied to make it? Attempts to solve the problem of prime factorization dates back centuries, with Euclid of Alexandria working on specific properties of prime numbers more than 2,000 years ago.

Although no solutions have been found that work on conventional binary computers, that does not mean none exist. After more than 2,000 years of work, most mathematicians agree a prime-factorization algorithm used by a classic computer wont be here anytime soon. Peter Shor proposed an algorithm that could do composite number decomposition in polynomial time on a quantum computer breaking RSA and Diffie-Hellman ciphers but a quantum computer of this kind has not been publicly demonstrated at sufficient scale. Yet.

To prepare for the day when Shors algorithm is in play, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has sponsored a post-quantum cryptography (PQC) competition. Now in its sixth year, the competition that began with 82 submissions is expected to announce its four finalists this year.

The remaining candidates are asymmetric-key algorithms (similar in concept to RSA) believed to be capable of withstanding the computational power of a stochastic algorithm that might run on a scalable quantum computer. The mathematical problems upon which these newer algorithms are based are much younger and have not been studied extensively.

In the field of complex mathematics centuries are common time frames. For example, Fermats last theorem took 358 years to be proven. By that logic, its no wonder we have already seen a previously unknown or unforeseen weakness revealed in Rainbow what had been the most peer-reviewed quantum-resistant algorithm now deemed unsuitable for use by NIST. Its only a matter of time, then, before new encryption standards are weakened or outright broken. This is why NIST is encouraging organizations to embrace crypto agility in their post-quantum preparedness planning.

What complicates this matter further is that we don't and won't know which methods are bearing fruit and which techniques are being used, and by whom, to break the encryption we rely on to secure our digital universe. For all we know, large-scale quantum computers are already in use. If you were a nation state or criminal mastermind and had the ability to factor large numbers into their primes, would you tell the world? This is the fundamental problem with modern encryption: We often dont know which, when, or how ciphers are compromised. However, we can say with certainty that encryption is being broken and will be broken.

Look to Wall Street and Diversify To harden IT environments and digital assets in the face of such uncertainty, we can look to Wall Street for strategic advice. To combat the uncertainties and risks associated with loans and stocks go bad, financial institutions embrace diversification. By diversifying investments across multiple asset classes, geographies, and industries, the risks of an entire portfolio imploding are minimized.

This approach can, and should, be applied by enterprise IT and SOC teams when it comes to encryption. Using and mixing/stacking multiple encryption techniques helps to keep data traveling securely even if a flaw is uncovered in one of the encryption layers. We wont always know which part of a crypto stack has been defeated and how, but it wont matter if the cryptography is sufficiently diversified.

As an industry, we need to support the simultaneous use of multiple approaches, anticipating that new crypto methods will come and go. We must mix asymmetric key technology with symmetric key technology, and transmit keys through out-of-band channels. Most importantly, we must develop agreed-on metrics and industrywide benchmarks to measure exactly how diversified our crypto strategy is.

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Take a Diversified Approach to Encryption - DARKReading

A tutorial to higher rankings for WordPress sites

This is the original WordPress SEO article since 2008, fully updated for 2021!

WordPress is one of the best content management systems when it comes to SEO. But even though it gets a lot right out of the box, theres much more that you can do to improve your performance. Its time to focus on WordPress SEO!

Optimizing your site using the tactics and best practices outlined in this article will help you improve your rankings, gain more subscribers or sales, and have a better website in general.

Because you should ingrain proper SEO in all aspects of your online marketing and PR, this guide covers quite a lot of ground! Its a long read, so feel free to use the table of contents below to jump around.

This article assumes that youre using our Yoast SEO plugin, which adds significantly more features and SEO tools to WordPress. If youre not already using it, you can set it up right away with our beginners guide to Yoast SEO. If you are on Shopify, please check out the Yoast SEO for Shopify app.

Read more: How much does Yoast SEO cost?

If youre using another SEO plugin, most of the principles will still apply. Of course, wed prefer you to switch over and make use of our potent WordPress SEO plugin, which is why weve written a migration guide for you. Its a straightforward process!

We have an epic article on that including hours of video. Find out how to make a WordPress website.

Out of the box, WordPress is a pretty well-optimized content management system. A basic setup can provide a strong foundation without extensive customization, theme optimization, and plugins. That said, there are a few things you can do with WordPress SEO to increase your chances of ranking, refine your workflow, and make sure your website is perfectly optimized.

By putting the right basic settings in place and applying a few simple techniques, you can ensure that you have a strong foundation to build upon!

Before you make any changes to your site, it is good to see where you are now. Theres a lot to gain from getting it right: running your website on a server with updated software at a web host that offers excellent performance. So ask yourself: on what hardware and software are your sites running? What is your hosting plan? Are you using a budget shared hosting provider, or have you invested in a dedicated hosting plan at a well-known web host that fine-tuned its servers for use with WordPress?

To find out whats going on behind the scenes of your site, you can visit the Site Health section in WordPress. Also, you could choose to install the Health Check plugin. This plugin gives you loads of technical insights and helps you get information that outside parties can use to help you improve your site. Eventually, all features of the Health Check plugin will move to WordPress core.

According to WordPresss technical requirements page, the recommended hosting plan to run WordPress should include a modern version of PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, and HTTPS support. It is possible to work with older server software, but that is not recommended. If you check your Site Health, you can see the technical details of your installation. In addition, if you open the dashboard of your hosting provider, you should be able to see what type of plan you are on.

Remember, paying for good WordPress hosting pays dividends. Upgrading your hosting plan is one of the easiest improvements you can make.

While the numbers are going down quickly, many WordPress sites still run on outdated versions of PHP. One look at the WordPress stats reveals that some sites still run on a PHP version in the five series, while PHP 8.0 and up have been available for years.

Backward compatibility is cool and all, but its holding back WordPress as a technology and site owners from getting the most out of their sites. These old PHP versions dont receive any more security fixes and are thus increasingly vulnerable to attacks.

Luckily, the WordPress team has dropped support for anything older than PHP 5.6.20. Today, the project recommends running WordPress on at least PHP 7.4.

So, one of the most important things you can do to improve the performance and security of your site and thus, your WordPress SEO , is to upgrade your hosting environment to a modern version of PHP. There are a lot of benefits to this:

Now, this is something we all want. If youve checked your current hosting set-up in the previous section, you have an idea of what your site runs on now. If this shows outdated server software like PHP 5.5, it is good to update this, if possible.

However, take special care before doing so. Ask for help if youre not sure what you are doing.

Here are some steps to take:

We have a post that shows you how to set up a test environment for your WordPress site. WordPress.org has a post on the advantages of updating your PHP version and what to take into consideration when doing that.

Historically, adopting SSL (getting an HTTPS URL and a green padlock icon in the browser URL bar) was an optional tactic. Many sites, arguably, didnt need the extra level of security that SSL provides.

Today, having a valid SSL certificate installed is mandatory search engines may penalize sites without valid SSL certificates and setups (and/or show warnings next to their search results). Google has mentioned that HTTPS is a ranking signal. In addition, its generally good practice for all websites to use SSL to prevent hackers and third parties from intercepting requests and data.

Additionally, many modern site speed and performance techniques require a valid SSL/HTTPS setup. To take advantage of faster web technologies like HTTP/2 and the upcoming HTTP/3, browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox need the website to have a valid SSL certificate.

If you want to move to SSL and ensure that your site is served correctly over HTTPS, we have a handy guide with tips & tricks for moving to HTTPS. Since version 5.7, WordPress comes with a basic tool to make the detection of and move to HTTPS easier.

Its worth spending some time clicking through all of the sections in the WordPress Settings menu, as many of the options there can impact the SEO of your WordPress site.

In particular, its worth double-checking your visibility settings in Settings Reading, to make sure that youre not accidentally preventing search engines from indexing your website. Thatd definitely hurt your visibility and your WordPress SEO!

You should also make sure that your Writing and Reading settings are all set correctly, these control your default categories, and what should be displayed on your homepage. Dont forget to give your site a strong tagline in Settings General, too!

Your permalink settings define what format your page and post URLs will take, which can have a big impact on WordPress SEO. So if youre creating a new site, one of the first things you should do is change your permalink settings, which you can find in Settings Permalinks.

If you dont change your settings from the default, all of your pages and posts will have URLs that look like example.com/?p=123. Whilst this is perfectly okay, its not particularly nice, and it might impact how users and search engines perceive the quality and relevance of your pages.

Changing the permalink structure alters the components, ordering, and structure of your websites URLs. Therefore, its important to select the right structure when setting up your website, as changing it later can cause SEO issues.

We usually recommend that people use a structure that creates URLs that look like example.com/post-name/, or example.com/category/post-name/, depending on how much importance they anticipate placing on the categorization of their content. For most WordPress sites, choosing either of these options will be perfectly suitable.

For the first option, you can just change the permalink setting to /%postname%/, like so:

To include the category, you can select Custom Structure and change the value to /%category%/%postname%/.

If you previously had ?p= as your permalink, WordPress will take care of all the redirects for you. This is also true if you change from /%postname%/ to /%category%/%postname%/.

If you have an established site and change from any other permalink structure, you might want to consult our article on changing your WordPress permalink structure and the tool that youll find within it.

You need to think about what you want your site to show up as http://www.example.com, or simply example.com. Make sure that in your general settings, in Settings General, the version you want to show up is properly reflected:

From an SEO perspective, theres little difference either way. Additionally, most hosting and server setups will automatically redirect requests for the wrong version to the version youve selected. That makes this primarily a branding consideration which approach feels best for your site?

From a technical perspective, theres not a huge amount of difference, either. Some setups might have some minor headaches if they omit the www component, but these are increasingly rare.

WordPress SEO also means your site should provide the best content on your chosen subject period. People are looking for engaging, authoritative articles and trustworthy answers to their questions. Writing high-quality content for your WordPress site begins with your unique ideas or distinctive take on a particular topic. But it also means presenting these ideas in a well-structured and accessible manner. Together, this will help you attract the audience youre looking for and keep them engaged.

Still havent tried the new block editor? Tried, but found it confusing? Were here to help: our free WordPress block editor course explains everything you need to know!

Before writing your content, you should think about what search terms you want to be found for. Then, you should optimize every page or post for a specific keyphrase.

But how can you determine what keyphrase you want to be found for? To find out, you need to do keyword research. In this process, you should ask yourself questions: what terms do I want to rank for? How realistic is it that I can rank for these terms?

Imagine you have a baking blog, and youre passionate about sharing your favorite recipes and baking techniques. Optimizing a post for a term such as [best cake recipe] isnt a realistic goal because its a very general term. Theres a lot of competition for such general terms. Instead, it would help if you thought about finding your own niche. This niche could be [healthy, low-sugar cake recipes] or [French patisserie you can make at home].

Within a niche, you can become an expert. Your expertise enables you to create content that goes beyond that of your competitors. You can go deeper than others or shed light on different angles of the same topic. For this, youll want to focus on long-tail keyphrases. For example, a long-tail keyphrase might be [how to make a low-calorie vegan blueberry cheesecake]. A keyphrase like this is more specific, and therefore easier to rank for. Also, itll be more suitable for your particular niche topic.

Its also essential to think about what your audience wants to achieve by searching for a specific term. This is called search intent. For example, they could be looking for the answer to a particular question, and you can provide the necessary information. Or they might want to buy a specific product that you can offer them. Think about the needs of your visitors and address them by creating content accordingly.

Need a hand doing keyword research properly? Our Keyword research training can help. This course is part of our Yoast SEO academy.Youll automatically get access to Academy for free once you sign up for Yoast SEO Premium two essential products for one low price.

After youve done your keyword research and know the topics you want to write about, you need to get to the actual writing. Most of the time, thats easier said than done. To get from an idea to a great piece of content, most likely, youll have to follow a cycle of drafting, writing, editing, and rewriting.

Your first draft can be an outline of your structure. You dont have to write out everything in perfect prose at this point, but make sure that you follow a logical structure. Most pieces will include an introduction, your main points of argument, and a conclusion. Of course, this will vary per genre a recipe will have a completely different structure.

You can further flesh out the points in the writing phase, where you try to develop a first complete version of your text. Finally, you should check whether your piece is engaging and easy to read in the editing phase. You might be an expert on your topic, but your audience probably isnt (yet). So try to make your writing as accessible as possible. Readability is essential. The readability analysis in Yoast SEO helps you improve your writing.

When in doubt, its always best to ask a friend or colleague for some feedback. Another helpful trick is to read your text out loud to yourself. You can even let your computer speak it. It will give you a better idea of whether everything flows nicely.

When writing or editing your post for your WordPress site, you need to pay special attention to some elements to make it SEO-friendly. These elements include your subheadings, your title, and your meta description all of these need to reflect the topic of the specific post.

Dont forget, SEO-friendly doesnt just mean that its easy for a search engine to grasp a pages topic. More importantly, it means that your visitors can get the gist of your page at a single glance.

Your meta description and your title might be a deciding factor for whether visitors click on your page in the search results in the first place. And once theyve visited your site, elements like subheadings can be critical for visitors to decide whether they want to stay on your site.

One important rule is not to use a focus keyphrase on more than one page. Otherwise, you might end up cannibalizing yourself. Most of the time, you dont want to rank for multiple pages on the same keyphrase because it means that youre setting yourself up as your own competition.

Its also essential to include the focus keyphrase in crucial elements of your post, such as the title, the introduction, your subheadings, and your meta description. All of these elements are signals for what your post is about. Since your focus keyphrase is, in fact, the main topic of your page, its a logical consequence that you should make sure this topic is reflected in all of these elements.

The same logic holds for your text overall: you need to make sure that you dont stray off-topic; if you stay on-topic, it should follow naturally that you use your keyphrase multiple times throughout your text. But avoid stuffing your writing with your keyphrase just for the sake of it. If you find it hard to include your keyphrase in your text a sufficient number of times, it might be a sign that you should take a different approach to the topic.

To avoid repetition, you can use synonyms. Synonyms are words that mean the same or more or less the same as your keyphrase. An example of this is the words film and movie. Search engines will recognize that they have the same meaning, which you can also check by having a look at the search results: if you search for movie, film will also be highlighted in the results, and vice versa.

You can also make use of related keyphrases to optimize a single page for similar, related terms. You can use these to give context to your keyphrase. For example, if your keyphrase is [pumpkin soup], your related keyphrase might be [winter weeknight dinners]. This second, broader term gives additional information about your topic. It can also create coherence by establishing a link to similar pages on your post.

The Yoast SEO Premium analysis makes it easier to optimize your post thanks to word forms, synonyms, and related keyphrases. Not only that, but Yoast SEO also comes with a Semrush integration that helps you find related keyphrases including volume and trend data.

In most cases, your posts URL should probably contain your focus keyphrase, so that its obvious what your page is about from the link. That said, you should always try and keep your permalinks short, descriptive, and clean dont put unnecessary words in for the sake of it!

Before you publish new posts or pages, you may also wish to consider removing function words from your permalink. These are words like a, and, and the. When done carefully, this may make your permalinks more readable, and easier to use or link to. Posts with especially long titles may benefit from this approach.

For posts that you have already published, wed recommend being careful when changing permalinks. If people have already linked to your pages, changing the URLs may make a mess. Even though WordPress will sometimes redirect users to the new location (the redirect manager in Yoast SEO Premium handles this automatically and more reliably), changing URLs can impact performance.

Each pages title the contents of the HTML